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The Secret Doctrine by H P Blavatsky
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A MASTER-KEY
TO THE
MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT AND
MODERN
SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY.
BY
H. P. BLAVATSKY,
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY OF THE
THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.
"Cecy est un livre de
bonne Foy." -- MONTAIGNE.
VOL. I. -- SCIENCE.
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE
THE present edition is a
faithful reprinting of Isis Unveiled as originally published in
The Index has been
considerably enlarged, and an Appendix added, containing a Bibliographical
Index of works and authors quoted and two articles by HPB on the writing of
Isis Unveiled: "Theories about Reincarnation and Spirits" (1886) and
"My Books" (1891).
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THE AUTHOR
Dedicates these Volumes
TO THE
THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY,
WHICH WAS FOUNDED AT NEW YORK,
A.D. 1875,
TO STUDY THE SUBJECTS ON WHICH
THEY TREAT.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
---------------------
[[PUBLISHER'S NOTE]]
PREFACE ... v
BEFORE THE VEIL.
Dogmatic assumptions of modern
science and theology ... ix
The Platonic philosophy
affords the only middle ground ... xi
Review of the ancient
philosophical systems ... xv
A Syriac manuscript on Simon
Magus ... xxiii
Glossary of terms used in this
book ... xxiii
---------------------
Volume First.
THE "INFALLIBILITY"
OF MODERN SCIENCE.
---------------------
CHAPTER I.
OLD THINGS WITH NEW NAMES.
The Oriental Kabala ... 1
Ancient traditions supported
by modern research ... 3
The progress of mankind marked
by cycles ... 5
Ancient cryptic science ... 7
Priceless value of the Vedas
... 12
Mutilations of the Jewish
sacred books in translation ... 13
Magic always regarded as a
divine science ... 25
Achievements of its adepts and
hypotheses of their modern detractors ... 25
Man's yearning for immortality
... 37
CHAPTER II.
PHENOMENA AND FORCES.
The servility of society ...
39
Prejudice and bigotry of men
of science ... 40
They are chased by psychical
phenomena ... 41
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Lost arts ... 49
The human will the
master-force of forces ... 57
Superficial generalizations of
the French savants ... 60
Mediumistic phenomena, to what
attributable ... 67
Their relation to crime ... 71
CHAPTER III.
BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND.
Huxley's derivation from the
Orohippus ... 74
Comte, his system and
disciples ... 75
The
Borrowed robes ... 89
Emanation of the objective
universe from the subjective ... 92
CHAPTER IV.
THEORIES RESPECTING PSYCHIC
PHENOMENA.
Theory of de Gasparin ... 100
[[Theory]] of Thury ... 100
[[Theory]] of des Mousseaux,
de Mirville ... 100
[[Theory]] of Babinet ... 101
[[Theory]] of Houdin ... 101
[[Theory]] of MM. Royer and
Jobart de Lamballe ... 102
The twins -- "unconscious
cerebration" and "unconscious ventriloquism" ... 105
Theory of Crookes ... 112
[[Theory]] of Faraday ... 116
[[Theory]] of Chevreuil ...
116
The Mendeleyeff commission of
1876 ... 117
Soul blindness ... 121
CHAPTER V.
THE ETHER, OR "ASTRAL
LIGHT."
One primal force, but many
correlations ... 126
Tyndall narrowly escapes a
great discovery ... 127
The impossibility of miracle
... 128
Nature of the primordial
substance ... 133
Interpretation of certain
ancient myths ... 133
Experiments of the fakirs ...
139
Evolution in Hindu allegory
... 153
CHAPTER VI.
PSYCHO-PHYSICAL PHENOMENA.
The debt we owe to Paracelsus
... 163
Mesmerism -- its parentage,
reception, potentiality ... 165
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"Psychometry" ...
183
Time, space, eternity ... 184
Transfer of energy from the
visible to the invisible universe ... 186
The Crookes experiments and
Cox theory ... 195
CHAPTER VII
THE ELEMENTS, ELEMENTALS, AND
ELEMENTARIES.
Attraction and repulsion
universal in all the kingdoms of nature ... 206
Psychical phenomena depend on
physical surroundings ... 211
Observations in
Music in nervous disorders ...
215
The "world-soul" and
its potentialities ... 216
Healing by touch, and healers
... 217
"Diakka" and
Porphyry's bad demons ... 219
The quenchless lamp ... 224
Modern ignorance of vital
force ... 237
Antiquity of the theory of
force-correlation ... 241
Universality of belief in
magic ... 247
CHAPTER VIII.
SOME MYSTERIES OF NATURE.
Do the planets affect human
destiny? ... 253
Very curious passage from
Hermes ... 254
The restlessness of matter ...
257
Prophecy of Nostradamus
fulfilled ... 260
Sympathies between planets and
plants ... 264
Hindu knowledge of the
properties of colors ... 265
"Coincidences" the
panacea of modern science ... 268
The moon and the tides ... 273
Epidemic mental and moral
disorders ... 274
The gods of the Pantheons only
natural forces ... 280
Proofs of the magical powers
of Pythagoras ... 283
The viewless races of ethereal
space ... 284
The "four truths" of
Buddhism ... 291
CHAPTER IX.
CYCLIC PHENOMENA.
Meaning of the expression
"coats of skin" ... 293
Natural selection and its
results ... 295
The Egyptian "circle of
necessity" ... 296
Pre-Adamite races ... 299
Descent of spirit into matter
... 302
The triune nature of man ...
309
The lowest creatures in the
scale of being ... 310
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Elementals specifically
described ... 311
Proclus on the beings of the
air ... 312
Various names for elementals
... 313
Swedenborgian views on
soul-death ... 317
Earth-bound human souls ...
319
Impure mediums and their
"guides" ... 325
Psychometry an aid to
scientific research ... 333
CHAPTER X.
THE INNER AND OUTER MAN.
Pere Felix arraigns the
scientists ... 338
The "Unknowable" ...
340
Danger of evocations by tyros
... 342
Lares and Lemures ... 345
Secrets of Hindu temples ...
350
Reincarnation ... 351
Witchcraft and witches ... 353
The sacred soma trance ... 357
Vulnerability of certain
"shadows" ... 363
Experiment of Clearchus on a
sleeping boy ... 365
The author witnesses a trial
of magic in
Case of the Cevennois ... 371
CHAPTER XI.
PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PHYSICAL
MARVELS.
Invulnerability attainable by
man ... 379
Projecting the force of the
will ... 380
Insensibility to snake-poison
... 381
Charming serpents by music ...
383
Teratological phenomena
discussed ... 385
The psychological domain
confessedly unexplored ... 407
Despairing regrets of
Berzelius ... 411
Turning a river into blood a
vegetable phenomenon ... 413
CHAPTER XII.
THE "IMPASSABLE
CHASM."
Confessions of ignorance by
men of science ... 417
The Pantheon of nihilism ...
421
Triple composition of fire ...
423
Instinct and reason defined
... 425
Philosophy of the Hindu Jains
... 429
Deliberate misrepresentations
of Lempriere ... 431
Man's astral soul not immortal
... 432
The reincarnation of Buddha
... 437
Magical sun and moon pictures
of Thibet ... 441
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Vampirism -- its phenomena
explained ... 449
Bengalese jugglery ... 457
CHAPTER XIII.
REALITIES AND ILLUSION.
The rationale of talismans ...
462
Unexplained mysteries ... 466
Magical experiment in
Chibh Chondor's surprising
feats ... 471
The Indian tape-climbing trick
an illusion ... 473
Resuscitation of buried fakirs
... 477
Limits of suspended animation
... 481
Mediumship totally
antagonistic to adeptship ... 487
What are "materialized
spirits"? ... 493
The Shudala Madan ... 495
Philosophy of levitation ...
497
The elixir and alkahest ...
503
CHAPTER XIV.
EGYPTIAN WISDOM.
Origin of the Egyptians ...
515
Their mighty engineering works
... 517
The ancient land of the
Pharaohs ... 521
Antiquity of the Nilotic
monuments ... 529
Arts of war and peace ... 531
Mexican myths and ruins ...
545
Resemblances to the Egyptian
... 551
Moses a priest of Osiris ...
555
The lessons taught by the
ruins of
The Egyptian Tau at
CHAPTER XV.
Acquisition of the
"secret doctrine" ... 575
Two relics owned by a Pali scholar
... 577
Jealous exclusiveness of the
Hindus ... 581
Lydia Maria Child on Phallic
symbolism ... 583
The age of the Vedas and Manu
... 587
Traditions of pre-diluvian
races ... 589
Atlantis and its peoples ...
593
Peruvian relics ... 597
The
Thibetan and Chinese legends
... 600
The magician aids, not
impedes, nature ... 617
Philosophy, religion, arts and
sciences bequeathed by Mother India to posterity ... 618
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-----------------------
THE work now submitted to
public judgment is the fruit of a somewhat intimate acquaintance with Eastern
adepts and study of their science. It is offered to such as are willing to
accept truth wherever it may be found, and to defend it, even looking popular
prejudice straight in the face. It is an attempt to aid the student to detect
the vital principles which underlie the philosophical systems of old.
The book is written in all
sincerity. It is meant to do even justice, and to speak the truth alike without
malice or prejudice. But it shows neither mercy for enthroned error, nor
reverence for usurped authority. It demands for a spoliated past, that credit
for its achievements which has been too long withheld. It calls for a
restitution of borrowed robes, and the vindication of calumniated but glorious
reputations. Toward no form of worship, no religious faith, no scientific hypothesis
has its criticism been directed in any other spirit. Men and parties, sects and
schools are but the mere ephemera of the world's day. TRUTH, high-seated upon
its rock of adamant, is alone eternal and supreme.
We believe in no Magic which
transcends the scope and capacity of the human mind, nor in
"miracle," whether divine or diabolical, if such imply a
transgression of the laws of nature instituted from all eternity. Nevertheless,
we accept the saying of the gifted author of Festus, that the human heart has
not yet fully uttered itself, and that we have never attained or even
understood the extent of its powers. Is it too much to believe that man should
be developing new sensibilities and a closer relation with nature? The logic of
evolution must teach as much, if carried to its legitimate conclusions. If,
somewhere, in the line of ascent from vegetable or ascidian to the noblest man
a soul was evolved, gifted with intellectual qualities, it cannot be
unreasonable to infer and believe that a faculty of perception is also growing
in man, enabling him to descry facts and truths even beyond our ordinary ken.
Yet we do not hesitate to accept the assertion of Biffe, that "the
essential is forever the same. Whether we cut away the marble inward that hides
the statue in the
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block, or pile stone upon
stone outward till the temple is completed, our NEW result is only an old idea.
The latest of all the eternities will find its destined other half-soul in the
earliest."
When, years ago, we first
travelled over the East, exploring the penetralia of its deserted sanctuaries,
two saddening and ever-recurring questions oppressed our thoughts: Where, WHO,
WHAT is GOD? Who ever saw the IMMORTAL SPIRIT of man, so as to be able to
assure himself of man's immortality?
It was while most anxious to
solve these perplexing problems that we came into contact with certain men,
endowed with such mysterious powers and such profound knowledge that we may
truly designate them as the sages of the Orient. To their instructions we lent
a ready ear. They showed us that by combining science with religion, the
existence of God and immortality of man's spirit may be demonstrated like a
problem of
In our studies, mysteries were
shown to be no mysteries. Names and places that to the Western mind have only a
significance derived from Eastern fable, were shown to be realities. Reverently
we stepped in spirit within the temple of Isis; to lift aside the veil of
"the one that is and was and shall be" at Sais; to look through the
rent curtain of the Sanctum Sanctorum at Jerusalem; and even to interrogate
within the crypts which once existed beneath the sacred edifice, the mysterious
Bath-Kol. The Filia Vocis -- the daughter of the divine voice --
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responded from the mercy-seat
within the veil,* and science, theology, every human hypothesis and conception
born of imperfect knowledge, lost forever their authoritative character in our
sight. The one-living God had spoken through his oracle -- man, and we were
satisfied. Such knowledge is priceless; and it has been hidden only from those
who overlooked it, derided it, or denied its existence.
From such as these we
apprehend criticism, censure, and perhaps hostility, although the obstacles in
our way neither spring from the validity of proof, the authenticated facts of
history, nor the lack of common sense among the public whom we address. The
drift of modern thought is palpably in the direction of liberalism in religion
as well as science. Each day brings the reactionists nearer to the point where
they must surrender the despotic authority over the public conscience, which
they have so long enjoyed and exercised. When the Pope can go to the extreme of
fulminating anathemas against all who maintain the liberty of the Press and of
speech, or who insist that in the conflict of laws, civil and ecclesiastical,
the civil law should prevail, or that any method of instruction solely secular,
may be approved;** and Mr. Tyndall, as the mouth-piece of nineteenth century
science, says, ". . . the impregnable position of science may be stated in
a few words: we claim, and we shall wrest from theology, the entire domain of
cosmological theory"*** -- the end is not difficult to foresee.
Centuries of subjection have
not quite congealed the life-blood of men into crystals around the nucleus of
blind faith; and the nineteenth is witnessing the struggles of the giant as he
shakes off the Liliputian cordage and rises to his feet. Even the Protestant
communion of England and America, now engaged in the revision of the text of
its Oracles, will be compelled to show the origin and merits of the text
itself. The day of domineering over men with dogmas has reached its gloaming.
Our work, then, is a plea for
the recognition of the Hermetic philosophy, the anciently universal
Wisdom-Religion, as the only possible key to the Absolute in science and
theology. To show that we do not at all conceal from ourselves the gravity of
our undertaking, we may say in advance that it would not be strange if the
following classes should array themselves against us:
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Lightfoot assures us that
this voice, which had been used in times past for a testimony from heaven,
"was indeed performed by magic art" (vol. ii., p. 128). This latter
term is used as a supercilious expression, just because it was and is still
misunderstood. It is the object of this work to correct the erroneous opinions
concerning "magic art."
** Encyclical of 1864.
*** "Fragments of
Science."
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The Christians, who will see
that we question the evidences of the genuineness of their faith.
The Scientists, who will find
their pretensions placed in the same bundle with those of the Roman Catholic
Church for infallibility, and, in certain particulars, the sages and
philosophers of the ancient world classed higher than they.
Pseudo-Scientists will, of
course, denounce us furiously.
Broad Churchmen and
Freethinkers will find that we do not accept what they do, but demand the
recognition of the whole truth.
Men of letters and various
authorities, who hide their real belief in deference to popular prejudices.
The mercenaries and parasites
of the Press, who prostitute its more than royal power, and dishonor a noble
profession, will find it easy to mock at things too wonderful for them to
understand; for to them the price of a paragraph is more than the value of
sincerity. From many will come honest criticism; from many -- cant. But we look
to the future.
The contest now going on
between the party of public conscience and the party of reaction, has already
developed a healthier tone of thought. It will hardly fail to result ultimately
in the overthrow of error and the triumph of Truth. We repeat again -- we are
laboring for the brighter morrow.
And yet, when we consider the
bitter opposition that we are called upon to face, who is better entitled than
we upon entering the arena to write upon our shield the hail of the Roman gladiator
to Caesar: MORITURUS TE SALUTAT!
New York, September, 1877.
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Joan. -- Advance our waving
colors on the walls! -- King Henry VI. Act IV.
"My life has been devoted
to the study of man, his destiny and his happiness." -- J. R. BUCHANAN,
M.D., Outlines of Lectures on Anthropology.
IT is nineteen centuries
since, as we are told, the night of Heathenism and Paganism was first dispelled
by the divine light of Christianity; and two-and-a-half centuries since the
bright lamp of Modern Science began to shine on the darkness of the ignorance
of the ages. Within these respective epochs, we are required to believe, the
true moral and intellectual progress of the race has occurred. The ancient
philosophers were well enough for their respective generations, but they were
illiterate as compared with modern men of science. The ethics of Paganism
perhaps met the wants of the uncultivated people of antiquity, but not until
the advent of the luminous "Star of Bethlehem," was the true road to
moral perfection and the way to salvation made plain. Of old, brutishness was
the rule, virtue and spirituality the exception. Now, the dullest may read the
will of God in His revealed word; men have every incentive to be good, and are
constantly becoming better.
This is the assumption; what
are the facts? On the one hand an unspiritual, dogmatic, too often debauched
clergy; a host of sects, and three warring great religions; discord instead of
union, dogmas without proofs, sensation-loving preachers, and wealth and
pleasure-seeking parishioners' hypocrisy and bigotry, begotten by the
tyrannical exigencies of respectability, the rule of the day, sincerity and
real piety exceptional. On the other hand, scientific hypotheses built on sand;
no accord upon a single question; rancorous quarrels and jealousy; a general
drift into materialism. A death-grapple of Science with Theology for
infallibility -- "a conflict of ages."
At Rome, the self-styled seat
of Christianity, the putative successor to the chair of Peter is undermining
social order with his invisible but omnipresent net-work of bigoted agents, and
incites them to revolutionize Europe for his temporal as well as spiritual
supremacy. We see him who calls himself the "Vicar of Christ,"
fraternizing with the anti-Christian Moslem against another Christian nation,
publicly invoking the blessing of God upon the arms of those who have for
centuries withstood, with
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fire and sword, the pretensions
of his Christ to Godhood! At Berlin -- one of the great seats of learning --
professors of modern exact sciences, turning their backs on the boasted results
of enlightenment of the post-Galileonian period, are quietly snuffing out the
candle of the great Florentine; seeking, in short, to prove the heliocentric
system, and even the earth's rotation, but the dreams of deluded scientists,
Newton a visionary, and all past and present astronomers but clever calculators
of unverifiable problems.*
Between these two conflicting
Titans -- Science and Theology -- is a bewildered public, fast losing all
belief in man's personal immortality, in a deity of any kind, and rapidly
descending to the level of a mere animal existence. Such is the picture of the
hour, illumined by the bright noonday sun of this Christian and scientific era!
Would it be strict justice to
condemn to critical lapidation the most humble and modest of authors for
entirely rejecting the authority of both these combatants? Are we not bound
rather to take as the true aphorism of this century, the declaration of Horace
Greeley: "I accept unreservedly the views of no man, living or
dead"?** Such, at all events, will be our motto, and we mean that
principle to be our constant guide throughout this work.
Among the many phenomenal
outgrowths of our century, the strange creed of the so-called Spiritualists has
arisen amid the tottering ruins of self-styled revealed religions and
materialistic philosophies; and yet it alone offers a possible last refuge of
compromise between the two. That this unexpected ghost of pre-Christian days
finds poor welcome from our sober and positive century, is not surprising.
Times have strangely changed; and it is but recently that a well-known Brooklyn
preacher pointedly remarked in a sermon, that could Jesus come back and behave
in the streets of New York, as he did in those of Jerusalem, he would find
himself confined in the prison of the Tombs.*** What sort of welcome, then,
could Spiritualism ever expect? True enough, the weird stranger seems neither
attractive nor promising at first sight. Shapeless and uncouth, like an infant
attended by seven nurses, it is coming out of its teens lame and mutilated. The
name of its enemies is legion; its friends and protectors are a handful. But
what of that? When was ever truth accepted a priori? Because the champions of
Spiritualism have in their fanaticism magnified its qualities, and remained
blind to its imperfections, that gives no excuse to doubt its reality. A
forgery is impossible when we have no model to forge after. The fanaticism of
Spiritualists is itself
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See the last chapter of this
volume, p. 622.
** "Recollections of a
Busy Life," p. 147.
*** Henry Ward Beecher.
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a proof of the genuineness and
possibility of their phenomena. They give us facts that we may investigate, not
assertions that we must believe without proof. Millions of reasonable men and
women do not so easily succumb to collective hallucination. And so, while the
clergy, following their own interpretations of the Bible, and science its
self-made Codex of possibilities in nature, refuse it a fair hearing, real
science and true religion are silent, and gravely wait further developments.
The whole question of
phenomena rests on the correct comprehension of old philosophies. Whither,
then, should we turn, in our perplexity, but to the ancient sages, since, on
the pretext of superstition, we are refused an explanation by the modern? Let
us ask them what they know of genuine science and religion; not in the matter
of mere details, but in all the broad conception of these twin truths -- so
strong in their unity, so weak when divided. Besides, we may find our profit in
comparing this boasted modern science with ancient ignorance; this improved modern
theology with the "Secret doctrines" of the ancient universal
religion. Perhaps we may thus discover a neutral ground whence we can reach and
profit by both.
It is the Platonic philosophy,
the most elaborate compend of the abstruse systems of old India, that can alone
afford us this middle ground. Although twenty-two and a quarter centuries have
elapsed since the death of Plato, the great minds of the world are still
occupied with his writings. He was, in the fullest sense of the word, the
world's interpreter. And the greatest philosopher of the pre-Christian era
mirrored faithfully in his works the spiritualism of the Vedic philosophers who
lived thousands of years before himself, and its metaphysical expression.
Vyasa, Djeminy, Kapila, Vrihaspati, Sumati, and so many others, will be found
to have transmitted their indelible imprint through the intervening centuries
upon Plato and his school. Thus is warranted the inference that to Plato and
the ancient Hindu sages was alike revealed the same wisdom. So surviving the
shock of time, what can this wisdom be but divine and eternal?
Plato taught justice as
subsisting in the soul of its possessor and his greatest good. "Men, in
proportion to their intellect, have admitted his transcendent claims." Yet
his commentators, almost with one consent, shrink from every passage which
implies that his metaphysics are based on a solid foundation, and not on ideal
conceptions.
But Plato could not accept a
philosophy destitute of spiritual aspirations; the two were at one with him.
For the old Grecian sage there was a single object of attainment: REAL
KNOWLEDGE. He considered those only to be genuine philosophers, or students of
truth, who possess the knowledge of the really-existing, in opposition to the
mere seeming; of
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the always-existing, in
opposition to the transitory; and of that which exists permanently, in
opposition to that which waxes, wanes, and is developed and destroyed
alternately. "Beyond all finite existences and secondary causes, all laws,
ideas, and principles, there is an INTELLIGENCE or MIND [nous, the spirit], the
first principle of all principles, the Supreme Idea on which all other ideas
are grounded; the Monarch and Lawgiver of the universe; the ultimate substance
from which all things derive their being and essence, the first and efficient
Cause of all the order, and harmony, and beauty, and excellency, and goodness,
which pervades the universe -- who is called, by way of preeminence and
excellence, the Supreme Good, the God ([[ho theos]]) 'the God over all' ([[ho
epi pasi theos]])."* He is not the truth nor the intelligence, but
"the father of it." Though this eternal essence of things may not be
perceptible by our physical senses, it may be apprehended by the mind of those
who are not wilfully obtuse. "To you," said Jesus to his elect
disciples, "it is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God, but
to them [the [[polloi]] ]it is not given; . . . therefore speak I to them in
parables [or allegories]; because they seeing, see not, and hearing, they hear
not, neither do they understand."**
The philosophy of Plato, we
are assured by Porphyry, of the Neoplatonic School was taught and illustrated
in the MYSTERIES. Many have questioned and even denied this; and Lobeck, in his
Aglaophomus, has gone to the extreme of representing the sacred orgies as
little more than an empty show to captivate the imagination. As though Athens
and Greece would for twenty centuries and more have repaired every fifth year
to Eleusis to witness a solemn religious farce! Augustine, the papa-bishop of
Hippo, has resolved such assertions. He declares that the doctrines of the
Alexandrian Platonists were the original esoteric doctrines of the first
followers of Plato, and describes Plotinus as a Plato resuscitated. He also
explains the motives of the great philosopher for veiling the interior sense of
what he taught.***
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Cocker: "Christianity
and Greek Philosophy," xi., p. 377.
** Gospel according to
Matthew, xiii. 11, 13.
*** "The accusations of
atheism, the introducing of foreign deities, and corrupting of the Athenian
youth, which were made against Socrates, afforded ample justification for Plato
to conceal the arcane preaching of his doctrines. Doubtless the peculiar
diction or 'jargon' of the alchemists was employed for a like purpose. The
dungeon, the rack, and the fagot were employed without scruple by Christians of
every shade, the Roman Catholics especially, against all who taught even
natural science contrary to the theories entertained by the Church. Pope
Gregory the Great even inhibited the grammatical use of Latin as heathenish.
The offense of Socrates consisted in unfolding to his disciples the arcane
doctrine concerning the gods, which was taught in the Mysteries and was a
capital crime. He also was charged by Aristophanes with intro-
[[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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As to the myths, Plato
declares in the Gorgias and the Phaedon that they were the vehicles of great
truths well worth the seeking. But commentators are so little en rapport with
the great philosopher as to be compelled to acknowledge that they are ignorant
where "the doctrinal ends, and the mythical begins." Plato put to
flight the popular superstition concerning magic and daemons, and developed the
exaggerated notions of the time into rational theories and metaphysical
conceptions. Perhaps these would not quite stand the inductive method of
reasoning established by Aristotle; nevertheless they are satisfactory in the
highest degree to those who apprehend the existence of that higher faculty of
insight or intuition, as affording a criterion for ascertaining truth.
Basing all his doctrines upon
the presence of the Supreme Mind, Plato taught that the nous, spirit, or
rational soul of man, being "generated by the Divine Father,"
possessed a nature kindred, or even homogeneous, with the Divinity, and was
capable of beholding the eternal realities. This faculty of contemplating
reality in a direct and immediate manner belongs to God alone; the aspiration
for this knowledge constitutes what is really meant by philosophy -- the love
of wisdom. The love of truth is inherently the love of good; and so
predominating over every desire of the soul, purifying it and assimilating it
to the divine, thus governing every act of the individual, it raises man to a
participation and communion with Divinity, and restores him to the likeness of
God. "This flight," says Plato in the Theaetetus, "consists in
becoming like God, and this assimilation is the becoming just and holy with
wisdom."
The basis of this assimilation
is always asserted to be the preexistence of the spirit or nous. In the
allegory of the chariot and winged steeds, given in the Phaedrus, he represents
the psychical nature as composite and two-fold; the thumos, or epithumetic
part, formed from the substances of the world of phenomena; and the thumoeides,
the essence of which is linked to the eternal world. The present earth-life is
a fall and punishment. The soul dwells in "the grave which we call the
body," and in its incorporate state, and previous to the discipline of
education, the noetic or spiritual element is "asleep." Life is thus
a dream, rather than a reality. Like the captives in the subterranean cave,
described in The Republic, the back is turned to the light, we perceive only
the shadows of objects, and think them the actual realities. Is not this
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] ducing the new god Dinos into the republic as the demiurgos or
artificer, and the lord of the solar universe. The Heliocentric system was also
a doctrine of the Mysteries; and hence, when Aristarchus the Pythagorean taught
it openly, Cleanthes declared that the Greeks ought to have called him to
account and condemned him for blasphemy against the gods," --
("Plutarch"). But Socrates had never been initiated, and hence
divulged nothing which had ever been imparted to him.
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the idea of Maya, or the
illusion of the senses in physical life, which is so marked a feature in
Buddhistical philosophy? But these shadows, if we have not given ourselves up
absolutely to the sensuous nature, arouse in us the reminiscence of that higher
world that we once inhabited. "The interior spirit has some dim and
shadowy recollection of its antenatal state of bliss, and some instinctive and
proleptic yearnings for its return." It is the province of the discipline
of philosophy to disinthrall it from the bondage of sense, and raise it into
the empyrean of pure thought, to the vision of eternal truth, goodness, and
beauty. "The soul," says Plato, in the Theaetetus, "cannot come
into the form of a man if it has never seen the truth. This is a recollection of
those things which our soul formerly saw when journeying with Deity, despising
the things which we now say are, and looking up to that which REALLY IS.
Wherefore the nous, or spirit, of the philosopher (or student of the higher
truth) alone is furnished with wings; because he, to the best of his ability,
keeps these things in mind, of which the contemplation renders even Deity
itself divine. By making the right use of these things remembered from the
former life, by constantly perfecting himself in the perfect mysteries, a man
becomes truly perfect -- an initiate into the diviner wisdom."
Hence we may understand why
the sublimer scenes in the Mysteries were always in the night. The life of the
interior spirit is the death of the external nature; and the night of the
physical world denotes the day of the spiritual. Dionysus, the night-sun, is,
therefore, worshipped rather than Helios, orb of day. In the Mysteries were
symbolized the preexistent condition of the spirit and soul, and the lapse of
the latter into earth-life and Hades, the miseries of that life, the
purification of the soul, and its restoration to divine bliss, or reunion with
spirit. Theon, of Smyrna, aptly compares the philosophical discipline to the
mystic rites: "Philosophy," says he, "may be called the
initiation into the true arcana, and the instruction in the genuine Mysteries.
There are five parts of this initiation: I., the previous purification; II.,
the admission to participation in the arcane rites; III., the epoptic
revelation; IV., the investiture or enthroning; V. -- the fifth, which is
produced from all these, is friendship and interior communion with God, and the
enjoyment of that felicity which arises from intimate converse with divine
beings. . . . Plato denominates the epopteia, or personal view, the perfect
contemplation of things which are apprehended intuitively, absolute truths and
ideas. He also considers the binding of the head and crowning as analogous to
the authority which any one receives from his instructors, of leading others
into the same contemplation. The fifth gradation is the most perfect felicity
arising from hence, and, according to
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Plato, an assimilation to
divinity as far as is possible to human beings."*
Such is Platonism. "Out
of Plato," says Ralph Waldo Emerson, "come all things that are still
written and debated among men of thought." He absorbed the learning of his
times -- of Greece from Philolaus to Socrates; then of Pythagoras in Italy;
then what he could procure from Egypt and the East. He was so broad that all
philosophy, European and Asiatic, was in his doctrines; and to culture and
contemplation he added the nature and qualities of the poet.
The followers of Plato
generally adhered strictly to his psychological theories. Several, however,
like Xenocrates, ventured into bolder speculations. Speusippus, the nephew and
successor of the great philosopher, was the author of the Numerical Analysis, a
treatise on the Pythagorean numbers. Some of his speculations are not found in
the written Dialogues; but as he was a listener to the unwritten lectures of
Plato, the judgment of Enfield is doubtless correct, that he did not differ
from his master. He was evidently, though not named, the antagonist whom
Aristotle criticised, when professing to cite the argument of Plato against the
doctrine of Pythagoras, that all things were in themselves numbers, or rather,
inseparable from the idea of numbers. He especially endeavored to show that the
Platonic doctrine of ideas differed essentially from the Pythagorean, in that
it presupposed numbers and magnitudes to exist apart from things. He also asserted
that Plato taught that there could be no real knowledge, if the object of that
knowledge was not carried beyond or above the sensible.
But Aristotle was no
trustworthy witness. He misrepresented Plato, and he almost caricatured the
doctrines of Pythagoras. There is a canon of interpretation, which should guide
us in our examinations of every philosophical opinion: "The human mind
has, under the necessary operation of its own laws, been compelled to entertain
the same fundamental ideas, and the human heart to cherish the same feelings in
all ages." It is certain that Pythagoras awakened the deepest intellectual
sympathy of his age, and that his doctrines exerted a powerful influence upon
the mind of Plato. His cardinal idea was that there existed a permanent
principle of unity beneath the forms, changes, and other phenomena of the
universe. Aristotle asserted that he taught that "numbers are the first
principles of all entities." Ritter has expressed the opinion that the
formula of Pythagoras should be taken symbolically, which is doubtless correct.
Aristotle goes on to associate these numbers with the "forms" and
"ideas" of Plato. He even declares that Plato said:
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Thomas Taylor: "Eleusinian
and Bacchic Mysteries," p. 47. New York: J. W. Bouton, 1875.
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"forms are numbers,"
and that "ideas are substantial existences -- real beings." Yet Plato
did not so teach. He declared that the final cause was the Supreme Goodness --
[[to agathon]] "Ideas are objects of pure conception for the human reason,
and they are attributes of the Divine Reason."* Nor did he ever say that
"forms are numbers." What he did say may be found in the Timaeus:
"God formed things as they first arose according to forms and
numbers."
It is recognized by modern
science that all the higher laws of nature assume the form of quantitative
statement. This is perhaps a fuller elaboration or more explicit affirmation of
the Pythagorean doctrine. Numbers were regarded as the best representations of
the laws of harmony which pervade the cosmos. We know too that in chemistry the
doctrine of atoms and the laws of combination are actually and, as it were,
arbitrarily defined by numbers. As Mr. W. Archer Butler has expressed it:
"The world is, then, through all its departments, a living arithmetic in
its development, a realized geometry in its repose."
The key to the Pythagorean
dogmas is the general formula of unity in multiplicity, the one evolving the
many and pervading the many. This is the ancient doctrine of emanation in few
words. Even the apostle Paul accepted it as true. "[[Ex auton, kai di
auton, kai eis auton ta panta]]" -- Out of him and through him and in him
all things are. This, as we can see by the following quotation, is purely Hindu
and Brahmanical:
"When the dissolution --
Pralaya -- had arrived at its term, the great Being -- Para-Atma or
Para-Purusha -- the Lord existing through himself, out of whom and through whom
all things were, and are and will be . . . resolved to emanate from his own
substance the various creatures" (Manava-Dharma-Sastra, book i., slokas 6
and 7).
The mystic Decad 1 + 2 + 3 + 4
= 10 is a way of expressing this idea. The One is God, the Two, matter; the
Three, combining Monad and Duad, and partaking of the nature of both, is the
phenomenal world; the Tetrad, or form of perfection, expresses the emptiness of
all; and the Decad, or sum of all, involves the entire cosmos. The universe is
the combination of a thousand elements, and yet the expression of a single
spirit -- a chaos to the sense, a cosmos to the reason.
The whole of this combination
of the progression of numbers in the idea of creation is Hindu. The Being
existing through himself, Swayambhu or Swayambhuva, as he is called by some, is
one. He emanates from himself the creative faculty, Brahma or Purusha (the
divine male), and the one becomes Two; out of this Duad, union of the purely
intel-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Cousin: "History of
Philosophy," I., ix.
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lectual principle with the
principle of matter, evolves a third, which is Viradj, the phenomenal world. It
is out of this invisible and incomprehensible trinity, the Brahmanic Trimurty,
that evolves the second triad which represents the three faculties -- the
creative, the conservative, and the transforming. These are typified by Brahma,
Vishnu, and Siva, but are again and ever blended into one. Unity, Brahma, or as
the Vedas called him, Tridandi, is the god triply manifested, which gave rise
to the symbolical Aum or the abbreviated Trimurty. It is but under this
trinity, ever active and tangible to all our senses, that the invisible and unknown
Monas can manifest itself to the world of mortals. When he becomes Sarira, or
he who puts on a visible form, he typifies all the principles of matter, all
the germs of life, he is Purusha, the god of the three visages, or triple
power, the essence of the Vedic triad. "Let the Brahmas know the sacred
Syllable (Aum), the three words of the Savitri, and read the Vedas daily"
(Manu, book iv., sloka 125).
"After having produced
the universe, He whose power is incomprehensible vanished again, absorbed in
the Supreme Soul. . . . Having retired into the primitive darkness, the great
Soul remains within the unknown, and is void of all form. . . .
"When having again
reunited the subtile elementary principles, it introduces itself into either a
vegetable or animal seed, it assumes at each a new form."
"It is thus that, by an
alternative waking and rest, the Immutable Being causes to revive and die
eternally all the existing creatures, active and inert" (Manu, book i.,
sloka 50, and others).
He who has studied Pythagoras
and his speculations on the Monad, which, after having emanated the Duad
retires into silence and darkness, and thus creates the Triad can realize
whence came the philosophy of the great Samian Sage, and after him that of
Socrates and Plato.
Speusippus seems to have
taught that the psychical or thumetic soul was immortal as well as the spirit
or rational soul, and further on we will show his reasons. He also -- like
Philolaus and Aristotle, in his disquisitions upon the soul -- makes of aether
an element; so that there were five principal elements to correspond with the
five regular figures in Geometry. This became also a doctrine of the
Alexandrian school.* Indeed, there was much in the doctrines of the
Philaletheans which did not appear in the works of the older Platonists, but
was doubtless taught in substance by the philosopher himself, but with his
usual reticence was not committed to writing as being too arcane for
promiscuous publication. Speusippus and Xenocrates after him, held, like their
great master, that the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Theol. Arithme.,"
p. 62: "On Pythag. Numbers."
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anima mundi, or world-soul,
was not the Deity, but a manifestation. Those philosophers never conceived of
the One as an animate nature.* The original One did not exist, as we understand
the term. Not till he had united with the many -- emanated existence (the monad
and duad) was a being produced. The [[timion]], honored -- the something
manifested, dwells in the centre as in the circumference, but it is only the
reflection of the Deity -- the World-Soul.** In this doctrine we find the
spirit of esoteric Buddhism.
A man's idea of God, is that
image of blinding light that he sees reflected in the concave mirror of his own
soul, and yet this is not, in very truth, God, but only His reflection. His
glory is there, but, it is the light of his own Spirit that the man sees, and
it is all he can bear to look upon. The clearer the mirror, the brighter will
be the divine image. But the external world cannot be witnessed in it at the
same moment. In the ecstatic Yogin, in the illuminated Seer, the spirit will
shine like the noonday sun; in the debased victim of earthly attraction, the
radiance has disappeared, for the mirror is obscured with the stains of matter.
Such men deny their God, and would willingly deprive humanity of soul at one
blow.
No GOD, NO SOUL? Dreadful,
annihilating thought! The maddening nightmare of a lunatic -- Atheist;
presenting before his fevered vision, a hideous, ceaseless procession of sparks
of cosmic matter created by no one; self-appearing, self-existent, and
self-developing; this Self no Self, for it is nothing and nobody; floating
onward from nowhence, it is propelled by no Cause, for there is none, and it
rushes nowhither. And this in a circle of Eternity blind, inert, and -- CAUSELESS.
What is even the erroneous conception of the Buddhistic Nirvana in comparison!
The Nirvana is preceded by numberless spiritual transformations and
metempsychoses, during which the entity loses not for a second the sense of its
own individuality, and which may last for millions of ages before the Final
No-Thing is reached.
Though some have considered
Speusippus as inferior to Aristotle, the world is nevertheless indebted to him
for defining and expounding many things that Plato had left obscure in his doctrine
of the Sensible and Ideal. His maxim was "The Immaterial is known by means
of scientific thought, the Material by scientific perception."***
Xenocrates expounded many of
the unwritten theories and teachings of his master. He too held the Pythagorean
doctrine, and his system of numerals and mathematics in the highest estimation.
Recognizing but three degrees of knowledge -- Thought, Perception, and
Envisagement (or knowledge by Intuition), he made the former busy itself with
all that
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Plato:
"Parmenid.," 141 E.
** See Stoboeus'
"Ecl.," i., 862.
*** Sextus: "Math.,"
vii. 145.
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which is beyond the heavens;
Perception with things in the heavens; Intuition with the heavens themselves.
We find again these theories,
and nearly in the same language in the Manava-Dharma-Sastra, when speaking of
the creation of man: "He (the Supreme) drew from his own essence the
immortal breath which perisheth not in the being, and to this soul of the being
he gave the Ahancara (conscience of the ego) sovereign guide." Then he
gave to that soul of the being (man) the intellect formed of the three
qualities, and the five organs of the outward perception."
These three qualities are
Intelligence, Conscience, and Will; answering to the Thought, Perception, and
Envisagement of Xenocrates. The relation of numbers to Ideas was developed by
him further than by Speusippus, and he surpassed Plato in his definition of the
doctrine of Indivisible Magnitudes. Reducing them to their ideal primary
elements, he demonstrated that every figure and form originated out of the
smallest indivisible line. That Xenocrates held the same theories as Plato in
relation to the human soul (supposed to be a number) is evident, though
Aristotle contradicts this, like every other teaching of this philosopher.*
This is conclusive evidence that many of Plato's doctrines were delivered
orally, even were it shown that Xenocrates and not Plato was the first to
originate the theory of indivisible magnitudes. He derives the Soul from the
first Duad, and calls it a self-moved number.** Theophrastus remarks that he
entered and eliminated this Soul-theory more than any other Platonist. He built
upon it the cosmological doctrine, and proved the necessary existence in every
part of the universal space of a successive and progressive series of animated
and thinking though spiritual beings.*** The Human Soul with him is a compound
of the most spiritual properties of the Monad and the Duad, possessing the
highest principles of both. If, like Plato and Prodicus, he refers to the
Elements as to Divine Powers, and calls them gods, neither himself nor others
connected any anthropomorphic idea with the appellation. Krische remarks that
he called them gods only that these elementary powers should not be confounded
with the daemons of the nether world**** (the Elementary Spirits). As the Soul
of the World permeates the whole Cosmos, even beasts must have in them
something divine.***** This, also, is the doctrine of Buddhists and the
Hermetists, and Manu endows with a living soul even the plants and the tiniest
blade of grass.
The daemons, according to this
theory, are intermediate beings be-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Metaph.," 407, a.
3.
** Appendix to
"Timaeus."
*** Stob.: "Ecl.,"
i., 62.
**** Krische: "Forsch.,"
p. 322, etc.
***** Clem.: "Alex.
Stro.," v., 590.
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tween the divine perfection
and human sinfulness,* and he divides them into classes, each subdivided in
many others. But he states expressly that the individual or personal soul is
the leading guardian daemon of every man, and that no daemon has more power
over us than our own. Thus the Daimonion of Socrates is the god or Divine
Entity which inspired him all his life. It depends on man either to open or
close his perceptions to the Divine voice. Like Speusippus he ascribed
immortality to the [[psuche]], psychical body, or irrational soul. But some
Hermetic philosophers have taught that the soul has a separate continued
existence only so long as in its passage through the spheres any material or
earthly particles remain incorporated in it; and that when absolutely purified,
the latter are annihilated, and the quintessence of the soul alone becomes
blended with its divine spirit (the Rational), and the two are thenceforth one.
Zeller states that Xenocrates
forbade the eating of animal food, not because he saw in beasts something akin
to man, as he ascribed to them a dim consciousness of God, but, "for the
opposite reason, lest the irrationality of animal souls might thereby obtain a
certain influence over us."** But we believe that it was rather because,
like Pythagoras, he had had the Hindu sages for his masters and models. Cicero
depicted Xenocrates utterly despising everything except the highest virtue;***
and describes the stainlessness and severe austerity of his character.****
"To free ourselves from the subjection of sensuous existence, to conquer
the Titanic elements in our terrestrial nature through the Divine one, is our
problem." Zeller makes him say: ***** "Purity, even in the secret
longings of our heart, is the greatest duty, and only philosophy and the
initiation into the Mysteries help toward the attainment of this object."
Crantor, another philosopher
associated with the earliest days of Plato's Academy, conceived the human soul
as formed out of the primary substance of all things, the Monad or One, and the
Duad or the Two. Plutarch speaks at length of this philosopher, who like his
master believed in souls being distributed in earthly bodies as an exile and
punishment.
Herakleides, though some
critics do not believe him to have strictly adhered to Plato's primal
philosophy,****** taught the same ethics. Zeller presents him to us imparting,
like Hicetas and Ecphantus, the Pythagorean doctrine of the diurnal rotation of
the earth and the immobility of the fixed stars, but adds that he was ignorant
of the annual revolution of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Plutarch: "De
Isid," chap. 25, p. 360.
** "Plato und die Alt.
Akademie."
*** "Tusc.," v., 18,
51.
**** Ibid. Cf. p. 559.
***** "Plato und die Alt.
Akademie."
****** Ed. Zeller:
"Philos. der Griech."
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earth around the sun, and of
the heliocentric system.* But we have good evidence that the latter system was
taught in the Mysteries, and that Socrates died for atheism, i.e., for
divulging this sacred knowledge. Herakleides adopted fully the Pythagorean and
Platonic views of the human soul, its faculties and its capabilities. He
describes it as a luminous, highly ethereal essence. He affirms that souls
inhabit the milky way before descending "into generation" or
sublunary existence. His daemons or spirits are airy and vaporous bodies.
In the Epinomis is fully
stated the doctrine of the Pythagorean numbers in relation to created things.
As a true Platonist, its author maintains that wisdom can only be attained by a
thorough inquiry into the occult nature of the creation; it alone assures us an
existence of bliss after death. The immortality of the soul is greatly
speculated upon in this treatise; but its author adds that we can attain to
this knowledge only through a complete comprehension of the numbers; for the
man, unable to distinguish the straight line from a curved one will never have
wisdom enough to secure a mathematical demonstration of the invisible, i.e., we
must assure ourselves of the objective existence of our soul (astral body)
before we learn that we are in possession of a divine and immortal spirit.
Iamblichus says the same thing; adding, moreover, that it is a secret belonging
to the highest initiation. The Divine Power, he says, always felt indignant
with those "who rendered manifest the composition of the icostagonus,"
viz., who delivered the method of inscribing in a sphere the dodecahedron.**
The idea that
"numbers" possessing the greatest virtue, produce always what is good
and never what is evil, refers to justice, equanimity of temper, and everything
that is harmonious. When the author speaks of every star as an individual soul,
he only means what the Hindu initiates and the Hermetists taught before and
after him, viz.: that every star is an independent planet, which, like our
earth, has a soul of its own, every atom of matter being impregnated with the
divine influx of the soul of the world. It breathes and lives; it feels and
suffers as well as enjoys life in its way. What naturalist is prepared to
dispute it on good evidence? Therefore, we must consider the celestial bodies
as the images of gods; as partaking of the divine powers in their substance;
and though they are not immortal in their soul-entity, their agency in the
economy of the universe is entitled to divine honors, such as we pay to minor
gods. The idea is plain, and one must be malevolent indeed to misrepresent it.
If the author of Epinomis places these fiery gods higher than the animals,
plants, and even mankind, all of which, as earthly creatures, are assigned
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Plato und die Alt.
Akademie."
** One of the five solid
figures in Geometry.
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by him a lower place, who can
prove him wholly wrong? One must needs go deep indeed into the profundity of
the abstract metaphysics of the old philosophies, who would understand that
their various embodiments of their conceptions are, after all, based upon an
identical apprehension of the nature of the First Cause, its attributes and
method.
Again when the author of
Epinomis locates between these highest and lowest gods (embodied souls) three
classes of daemons, and peoples the universe with invisible beings, he is more
rational than our modern scientists, who make between the two extremes one vast
hiatus of being, the playground of blind forces. Of these three classes the
first two are invisible; their bodies are pure ether and fire (planetary
spirits); the daemons of the third class are clothed with vapory bodies; they
are usually invisible, but sometimes making themselves concrete become visible
for a few seconds. These are the earthly spirits, or our astral souls.
It is these doctrines, which,
studied analogically, and on the principle of correspondence, led the ancient,
and may now lead the modern Philaletheian step by step toward the solution of
the greatest mysteries. On the brink of the dark chasm separating the spiritual
from the physical world stands modern science, with eyes closed and head
averted, pronouncing the gulf impassable and bottomless, though she holds in
her hand a torch which she need only lower into the depths to show her her
mistake. But across this chasm, the patient student of Hermetic philosophy has
constructed a bridge.
In his Fragments of Science
Tyndall makes the following sad confession: "If you ask me whether science
has solved, or is likely in our day to solve the problem of this universe, I
must shake my head in doubt." If moved by an afterthought, he corrects
himself later, and assures his audience that experimental evidence has helped
him to discover, in the opprobrium-covered matter, the "promise and
potency of every quality of life," he only jokes. It would be as difficult
for Professor Tyndall to offer any ultimate and irrefutable proofs of what he
asserts, as it was for Job to insert a hook into the nose of the leviathan.
To avoid confusion that might
easily arise by the frequent employment of certain terms in a sense different
from that familiar to the reader, a few explanations will be timely. We desire
to leave no pretext either for misunderstanding or misrepresentation. Magic may
have one signification to one class of readers and another to another class. We
shall give it the meaning which it has in the minds of its Oriental students
and practitioners. And so with the words Hermetic Science, Occultism,
Hierophant, Adept, Sorcerer, etc.; there has been little agreement of late as to
their meaning. Though the distinctions between the terms are very often
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insignificant -- merely ethnic
-- still, it may be useful to the general reader to know just what that is. We
give a few alphabetically.
AETHROBACY, is the Greek name
for walking or being lifted in the air; levitation, so called, among modern
spiritualists. It may be either conscious or unconscious; in the one case, it
is magic; in the other, either disease or a power which requires a few words of
elucidation.
A symbolical explanation of
aethrobacy is given in an old Syriac manuscript which was translated in the fifteenth
century by one Malchus, an alchemist. In connection with the case of Simon
Magus, one passage reads thus:
"Simon, laying his face
upon the ground, whispered in her ear, 'O mother Earth, give me, I pray thee,
some of thy breath; and I will give thee mine; let me loose, O mother, that I
may carry thy words to the stars, and I will return faithfully to thee after a
while.' And the Earth strengthening her status, none to her detriment, sent her
genius to breathe of her breath on Simon, while he breathed on her; and the
stars rejoiced to be visited by the mighty One."
The starting-point here is the
recognized electro-chemical principle that bodies similarly electrified repel
each other, while those differently electrified mutually attract. "The
most elementary knowledge of chemistry," says Professor Cooke, "shows
that, while radicals of opposite natures combine most eagerly together, two
metals, or two closely-allied metalloids, show but little affinity for each
other."
The earth is a magnetic body;
in fact, as some scientists have found, it is one vast magnet, as Paracelsus
affirmed some 300 years ago. It is charged with one form of electricity -- let
us call it positive -- which it evolves continuously by spontaneous action, in
its interior or centre of motion. Human bodies, in common with all other forms
of matter, are charged with the opposite form of electricity -- negative. That
is to say, organic or inorganic bodies, if left to themselves will constantly
and involuntarily charge themselves with, and evolve the form of electricity
opposed to that of the earth itself. Now, what is weight? Simply the attraction
of the earth. "Without the attractions of the earth you would have no
weight," says Professor Stewart;* "and if you had an earth twice as
heavy as this, you would have double the attraction." How then, can we get
rid of this attraction? According to the electrical law above stated, there is
an attraction between our planet and the organisms upon it, which holds them
upon the surface of the ground. But the law of gravitation has been
counteracted in many instances, by levitations of persons and inanimate
objects; how account
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* "The Sun and the
Earth."
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for this? The condition of our
physical systems, say theurgic philosophers, is largely dependent upon the action
of our will. If well-regulated, it can produce "miracles"; among
others a change of this electrical polarity from negative to positive; the
man's relations with the earth-magnet would then become repellent, and
"gravity" for him would have ceased to exist. It would then be as
natural for him to rush into the air until the repellent force had exhausted
itself, as, before, it had been for him to remain upon the ground. The altitude
of his levitation would be measured by his ability, greater or less, to charge
his body with positive electricity. This control over the physical forces once
obtained, alteration of his levity or gravity would be as easy as breathing.
The study of nervous diseases
has established that even in ordinary somnambulism, as well as in mesmerized
somnambulists, the weight of the body seems to be diminished. Professor Perty
mentions a somnambulist, Koehler, who when in the water could not sink, but
floated. The seeress of Prevorst rose to the surface of the bath and could not
be kept seated in it. He speaks of Anna Fleisher, who being subject to
epileptic fits, was often seen by the Superintendent to rise in the air; and
was once, in the presence of two trustworthy witnesses (two deans) and others,
raised two and a half yards from her bed in a horizontal position. The similar
case of Margaret Rule is cited by Upham in his History of Salem Witchcraft.
"In ecstatic subjects," adds Professor Perty, "the rising in the
air occurs much more frequently than with somnambulists. We are so accustomed
to consider gravitation as being a something absolute and unalterable, that the
idea of a complete or partial rising in opposition to it seems inadmissible;
nevertheless, there are phenomena in which, by means of material forces,
gravitation is overcome. In several diseases -- as, for instance, nervous fever
-- the weight of the human body seems to be increased, but in all ecstatic
conditions to be diminished. And there may, likewise, be other forces than
material ones which can counteract this power."
A Madrid journal, El Criterio
Espiritista, of a recent date, reports the case of a young peasant girl near
Santiago, which possesses a peculiar interest in this connection. "Two
bars of magnetized iron held over her horizontally, half a metre distant, was
sufficient to suspend her body in the air."
Were our physicians to
experiment on such levitated subjects, it would be found that they are strongly
charged with a similar form of electricity to that of the spot, which,
according to the law of gravitation, ought to attract them, or rather prevent
their levitation. And, if some physical nervous disorder, as well as spiritual
ecstasy produce
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unconsciously to the subject
the same effects, it proves that if this force in nature were properly studied,
it could be regulated at will.
ALCHEMISTS. -- From Al and
Chemi, fire, or the god and patriarch, Kham, also, the name of Egypt. The
Rosicrucians of the middle ages, such as Robertus de Fluctibus (Robert Fludd),
Paracelsus, Thomas Vaughan (Eugenius Philalethes), Van Helmont, and others,
were all alchemists, who sought for the hidden spirit in every inorganic
matter. Some people -- nay, the great majority -- have accused alchemists of
charlatanry and false pretending. Surely such men as Roger Bacon, Agrippa,
Henry Kunrath, and the Arabian Geber (the first to introduce into Europe some
of the secrets of chemistry), can hardly be treated as impostors -- least of
all as fools. Scientists who are reforming the science of physics upon the
basis of the atomic theory of Demokritus, as restated by John Dalton,
conveniently forget that Demokritus, of Abdera, was an alchemist, and that the
mind that was capable of penetrating so far into the secret operations of
nature in one direction must have had good reasons to study and become a
Hermetic philosopher. Olaus Borrichias says, that the cradle of alchemy is to be
sought in the most distant times.
ASTRAL LIGHT. -- The same as
the sidereal light of Paracelsus and other Hermetic philosophers. Physically,
it is the ether of modern science. Metaphysically, and in its spiritual, or
occult sense, ether is a great deal more than is often imagined. In occult
physics, and alchemy, it is well demonstrated to enclose within its shoreless
waves not only Mr. Tyndall's "promise and potency of every quality of
life," but also the realization of the potency of every quality of spirit.
Alchemists and Hermetists believe that their astral, or sidereal ether, besides
the above properties of sulphur, and white and red magnesia, or magnes, is the
anima mundi, the workshop of Nature and of all the cosmos, spiritually, as well
as physically. The "grand magisterium" asserts itself in the
phenomenon of mesmerism, in the "levitation" of human and inert
objects; and may be called the ether from its spiritual aspect.
The designation astral is
ancient, and was used by some of the Neoplatonists. Porphyry describes the
celestial body which is always joined with the soul as "immortal,
luminous, and star-like." The root of this word may be found, perhaps, in
the Scythic aist-aer -- which means star, or the Assyrian Istar, which,
according to Burnouf has the same sense. As the Rosicrucians regarded the real,
as the direct opposite of the apparent, and taught that what seems light to
matter, is darkness to spirit, they searched for the latter in the astral ocean
of invisible fire which encompasses the world; and claim to have traced the
equally invisible divine spirit, which overshadows every man and is erroneously
called soul, to the very throne of the Invisible and Unknown God.
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As the great cause must always
remain invisible and imponderable, they could prove their assertions merely by
demonstration of its effects in this world of matter, by calling them forth
from the unknowable down into the knowable universe of effects. That this
astral light permeates the whole cosmos, lurking in its latent state even in
the minutest particle of rock, they demonstrate by the phenomenon of the spark
from flint and from every other stone, whose spirit when forcibly disturbed
springs to sight spark-like, and immediately disappears in the realms of the
unknowable.
Paracelsus named it the
sidereal light, taking the term from the Latin. He regarded the starry host
(our earth included) as the condensed portions of the astral light which
"fell down into generation and matter," but whose magnetic or
spiritual emanations kept constantly a never-ceasing intercommunication between
themselves and the parent-fount of all -- the astral light. "The stars
attract from us to themselves, and we again from them to us," he says. The
body is wood and the life is fire, which comes like the light from the stars
and from heaven. "Magic is the philosophy of alchemy," he says
again.* Everything pertaining to the spiritual world must come to us through
the stars, and if we are in friendship with them, we may attain the greatest
magical effects.
"As fire passes through
an iron stove, so do the stars pass through man with all their properties and
go into him as the rain into the earth, which gives fruit out of that same
rain. Now observe that the stars surround the whole earth, as a shell does the
egg; through the shell comes the air, and penetrates to the centre of the
world." The human body is subjected as well as the earth, and planets, and
stars, to a double law; it attracts and repels, for it is saturated through
with double magnetism, the influx of the astral light. Everything is double in
nature; magnetism is positive and negative, active and passive, male and
female. Night rests humanity from the day's activity, and restores the
equilibrium of human as well as of cosmic nature. When the mesmerizer will have
learned the grand secret of polarizing the action and endowing his fluid with a
bisexual force he will have become the greatest magician living. Thus the
astral light is androgyne, for equilibrium is the resultant of two opposing
forces eternally reacting upon each other. The result of this is LIFE. When the
two forces are expanded and remain so long inactive, as to equal one another
and so come to a complete rest, the condition is DEATH. A human being can blow
either a hot or a cold breath; and can absorb either cold or hot air. Every
child knows how to regulate
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "De Ente
Spirituali," lib. iv.; "de Ente Astrorum," book i.; and opera
omnia, vol. i., pp. 634 and 699.
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the temperature of his breath;
but how to protect one's self from either hot or cold air, no physiologist has yet
learned with certainty. The astral light alone, as the chief agent in magic,
can discover to us all secrets of nature. The astral light is identical with
the Hindu akasa, a word which we will now explain.
AKASA. -- Literally the word
means in Sanscrit sky, but in its mystic sense it signifies the invisible sky;
or, as the Brahmans term it in the Soma-sacrifice (the Gyotishtoma Agnishtoma),
the god Akasa, or god Sky. The language of the Vedas shows that the Hindus of
fifty centuries ago ascribed to it the same properties as do the Thibetan lamas
of the present day; that they regarded it as the source of life, the reservoir
of all energy, and the propeller of every change of matter. In its latent state
it tallies exactly with our idea of the universal ether; in its active state it
became the Akasa, the all-directing and omnipotent god. In the Brahmanical
sacrificial mysteries it plays the part of Sadasya, or superintendent over the
magical effects of the religious performance, and it had its own appointed Hotar
(or priest), who took its name. In India, as in other countries in ancient
times, the priests are the representatives on earth of different gods; each
taking the name of the deity in whose name he acts.
The Akasa is the indispensable
agent of every Kritya (magical performance) either religious or profane. The
Brahmanical expression "to stir up the Brahma" -- Brahma jinvati --
means to stir up the power which lies latent at the bottom of every such
magical operation, for the Vedic sacrifices are but ceremonial magic. This
power is the Akasa or the occult electricity; the alkahest of the alchemists in
one sense, or the universal solvent, the same anima mundi as the astral light.
At the moment of the sacrifice, the latter becomes imbued with the spirit of Brahma,
and so for the time being is Brahma himself. This is the evident origin of the
Christian dogma of transubstantiation. As to the most general effects of the
Akasa, the author of one of the most modern works on the occult philosophy,
Art-Magic, gives for the first time to the world a most intelligible and
interesting explanation of the Akasa in connection with the phenomena
attributed to its influence by the fakirs and lamas.
ANTHROPOLOGY. -- The science
of man; embracing among other things:
Physiology, or that branch of
natural science which discloses the mysteries of the organs and their functions
in men, animals, and plants; and also, and especially,
Psychology, or the great, and
in our days, so neglected science of the
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soul, both as an entity
distinct from the spirit and in its relations with the spirit and body. In
modern science, psychology relates only or principally to conditions of the
nervous system, and almost absolutely ignores the psychical essence and nature.
Physicians denominate the science of insanity psychology, and name the lunatic
chair in medical colleges by that designation.
CHALDEANS, or Kasdim. -- At
first a tribe, then a caste of learned kabalists. They were the savants, the
magians of Babylonia, astrologers and diviners. The famous Hillel, the
precursor of Jesus in philosophy and in ethics, was a Chaldean. Franck in his
Kabbala points to the close resemblance of the "secret doctrine"
found in the Avesta and the religious metaphysics of the Chaldees.
DACTYLS (daktulos, a finger).
-- A name given to the priests attached to the worship of Kybele (Cybele). Some
archaeologists derive the name from [[daktulos]], finger, because they were
ten, the same in number as the fingers of the hand. But we do not believe the
latter hypothesis is the correct one.
DAEMONS. -- A name given by
the ancient people, and especially the philosophers of the Alexandrian school,
to all kinds of spirits, whether good or bad, human or otherwise. The
appellation is often synonymous with that of gods or angels. But some
philosophers tried, with good reason, to make a just distinction between the
many classes.
DEMIURGOS, or Demiurge. --
Artificer; the Supernal Power which built the universe. Freemasons derive from
this word their phrase of "Supreme Architect." The chief magistrates
of certain Greek cities bore the title.
DERVISHES, or the "whirling
charmers," as they are called. Apart from the austerities of life, prayer
and contemplation, the Mahometan devotee presents but little similarity with
the Hindu fakir. The latter may become a sannyasi, or saint and holy mendicant;
the former will never reach beyond his second class of occult manifestations.
The dervish may also be a strong mesmerizer, but he will never voluntarily
submit to the abominable and almost incredible self-punishment which the fakir
invents for himself with an ever-increasing avidity, until nature succumbs and
he dies in slow and excruciating tortures. The most dreadful operations, such
as flaying the limbs alive; cutting off the toes, feet, and legs; tearing out
the eyes; and causing one's self to be buried alive up to the chin in the
earth, and passing whole months in this posture, seem child's play to them. One
of the most common tortures is that of Tshiddy-Parvady.* It consists in
suspending the fakir to one of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Or more commonly charkh
puja.
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mobile arms of a kind of
gallows to be seen in the vicinity of many of the temples. At the end of each
of these arms is fixed a pulley over which passes a rope terminated by an iron
hook. This hook is inserted into the bare back of the fakir, who inundating the
soil with blood is hoisted up in the air and then whirled round the gallows.
From the first moment of this cruel operation until he is either unhooked or
the flesh of his back tears out under the weight of the body and the fakir is
hurled down on the heads of the crowd, not a muscle of his face will move. He
remains calm and serious and as composed as if taking a refreshing bath. The
fakir will laugh to scorn every imaginable torture, persuaded that the more his
outer body is mortified, the brighter and holier becomes his inner, spiritual
body. But the Dervish, neither in India, nor in other Mahometan lands, will
ever submit to such operations.
DRUIDS. -- A sacerdotal caste
which flourished in Britain and Gaul.
ELEMENTAL SPIRITS. -- The
creatures evolved in the four kingdoms of earth, air, fire, and water, and
called by the kabalists gnomes, sylphs, salamanders, and undines. They may be
termed the forces of nature, and will either operate effects as the servile
agents of general law, or may be employed by the disembodied spirits -- whether
pure or impure -- and by living adepts of magic and sorcery, to produce desired
phenomenal results. Such beings never become men.*
Under the general designation
of fairies, and fays, these spirits of the elements appear in the myth, fable,
tradition, or poetry of all nations, ancient and modern. Their names are legion
-- peris, devs, djins, sylvans, satyrs, fauns, elves, dwarfs, trolls, norns,
nisses, kobolds, brownies, necks, stromkarls, undines, nixies, salamanders,
goblins, ponkes, banshees, kelpies, pixies, moss people, good people, good
neighbors, wild women, men of peace, white ladies -- and many more. They have
been seen, feared, blessed, banned, and invoked in every quarter of the globe
and in every age. Shall we then concede that all who have met them were
hallucinated?
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Persons who believe in the
clairvoyant power, but are disposed to discredit the existence of any other spirits
in nature than disembodied human spirits, will be interested in an account of
certain clairvoyant observations which appeared in the London Spiritualist of
June 29, 1877. A thunder-storm approaching, the seeress saw "a bright
spirit emerge from a dark cloud and pass with lightning speed across the sky,
and, a few minutes after, a diagonal line of dark spirits in the clouds."
These are the Maruts of the "Vedas" (See Max Muller's "Rig-Veda
Sanhita").
The well-known and respected
lecturer, author, and clairvoyant, Mrs. Emma Hardinge Britten, has published
accounts of her frequent experiences with these elemental spirits.
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These elementals are the
principal agents of disembodied but never visible spirits at seances, and the
producers of all the phenomena except the subjective.
ELEMENTARY SPIRITS. --
Properly, the disembodied souls of the depraved; these souls having at some
time prior to death separated from themselves their divine spirits, and so lost
their chance for immortality. Eliphas Levi and some other kabalists make little
distinction between elementary spirits who have been men, and those beings
which people the elements, and are the blind forces of nature. Once divorced
from their bodies, these souls (also called "astral bodies") of
purely materialistic persons, are irresistibly attracted to the earth, where
they live a temporary and finite life amid elements congenial to their gross
natures. From having never, during their natural lives, cultivated their
spirituality, but subordinated it to the material and gross, they are now
unfitted for the lofty career of the pure, disembodied being, for whom the
atmosphere of earth is stifling and mephitic, and whose attractions are all
away from it. After a more or less prolonged period of time these material
souls will begin to disintegrate, and finally, like a column of mist, be dissolved,
atom by atom, in the surrounding elements.
ESSENES -- from Asa, a healer.
A sect of Jews said by Pliny to have lived near the Dead Sea "per millia
saeculorum" -- for thousands of ages. Some have supposed them to be
extreme Pharisees; and others -- which may be the true theory -- the
descendants of the Benim-nabim of the Bible, and think they were
"Kenites" and "Nazarites." They had many Buddhistic ideas
and practices; and it is noteworthy that the priests of the Great Mother at Ephesus,
Diana-Bhavani with many breasts, were also so denominated. Eusebius, and after
him De Quincey, declared them to be the same as the early Christians, which is
more than probable. The title "brother," used in the early Church,
was Essenean: they were a fraternity, or a koinobion or community like the
early converts. It is noticeable that only the Sadducees, or Zadokites, the
priest-caste and their partisans, persecuted the Christians; the Pharisees were
generally scholastic and mild, and often sided with the latter. James the Just
was a Pharisee till his death; but Paul or Aher was esteemed a schismatic.
EVOLUTION. -- The development
of higher orders of animals from the lower. Modern, or so-called exact science,
holds but to a one-sided physical evolution, prudently avoiding and ignoring
the higher or spiritual evolution, which would force our contemporaries to
confess the superiority of the ancient philosophers and psychologists over
themselves. The ancient sages, ascending to the UNKNOWABLE, made their
starting-point from the first manifestation of the unseen, the unavoidable, and
from a strict logical reasoning, the absolutely necessary creative Being,
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the Demiurgos of the universe.
Evolution began with them from pure spirit, which descending lower and lower
down, assumed at last a visible and comprehensible form, and became matter.
Arrived at this point, they speculated in the Darwinian method, but on a far
more large and comprehensive basis.
In the Rig-Veda-Sanhita, the
oldest book of the World* (to which even our most prudent Indiologists and
Sanscrit scholars assign an antiquity of between two and three thousand years
B.C.), in the first book, "Hymns to the Maruts," it is said:
"Not-being and Being are
in the highest heaven, in the birthplace of Daksha, in the lap of Aditi"
(Mandala, i, Sukta 166).
"In the first age of the
gods, Being (the comprehensible Deity) was born from Not-being (whom no
intellect can comprehend); after it were born the Regions (the invisible), from
them Uttanapada."
"From Uttanapad the Earth
was born, the Regions (those that are visible) were born from the Earth. Daksha
was born of Aditi, and Aditi from Daksha" (Ibid.).
Aditi is the Infinite, and
Daksha is dakska-pitarah, literally meaning the father of gods, but understood
by Max Muller and Roth to mean the fathers of strength, "preserving,
possessing, granting faculties." Therefore, it is easy to see that
"Daksha, born of Aditi and Aditi from Daksha," means what the moderns
understand by "correlation of forces"; the more so as we find in this
passage (translated by Prof. Muller):
"I place Agni, the source
of all beings, the father of strength" (iii., 27, 2), a clear and
identical idea which prevailed so much in the doctrines of the Zoroastrians,
the Magians, and the mediaeval fire-philosophers. Agni is god of fire, of the
Spiritual Ether, the very substance of the divine essence of the Invisible God
present in every atom of His creation and called by the Rosicrucians the
"Celestial Fire." If we only carefully compare the verses from this
Mandala, one of which runs thus: "The Sky is your father, the Earth your
mother, Soma your brother, Aditi your sister" (i., 191, 6),** with the
inscription on the Smaragdine Tablet of Hermes, we will find the same
substratum of metaphysical philosophy, the identical doctrines!
"As all things were
produced by the mediation of one being, so all things were produced from this
one thing by adaptation: 'Its father is the sun; its mother is the moon' . . .
etc. Separate the earth from the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Translated by Max Muller,
Professor of Comparative Philology at the Oxford University, England.
** "Dyarih vah pita,
prithivi mata somah bhrata Aditih svasa."
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fire, the subtile from the
gross. . . . What I had to say about the operation of the sun is
completed" (Smaragdine Tablet).*
Professor Max Muller sees in
this Mandala "at last, something like a theogony, though full of
contradictions."** The alchemists, kabalists, and students of mystic
philosophy will find therein a perfectly defined system of Evolution in the
Cosmogony of a people who lived a score of thousands of years before our era.
They will find in it, moreover, a perfect identity of thought and even doctrine
with the Hermetic philosophy, and also that of Pythagoras and Plato.
In Evolution, as it is now
beginning to be understood, there is supposed to be in all matter an impulse to
take on a higher form -- a supposition clearly expressed by Manu and other
Hindu philosophers of the highest antiquity. The philosopher's tree illustrates
it in the case of the zinc solution. The controversy between the followers of
this school and the Emanationists may be briefly stated thus: The Evolutionist
stops all inquiry at the borders of "the Unknowable"; the
Emanationist believes that nothing can be evolved -- or, as the word means,
unwombed or born -- except it has first been involved, thus indicating that
life is from a spiritual potency above the whole.
FAKIRS. -- Religious devotees
in East India. They are generally attached to Brahmanical pagodas and follow
the laws of Manu. A strictly religious fakir will go absolutely naked, with the
exception of a small piece of linen called dhoti, around his loins. They wear
their hair long, and it serves them as a pocket, as they stick in it various
objects -- such as a pipe, a small flute called vagudah, the sounds of which
throw the serpents into a cataleptic torpor, and sometimes their bamboo-stick
(about one foot long) with the seven mystical knots on it. This magical stick,
or rather rod, the fakir receives from his guru on the day of his initiation,
together with the three mantrams, which are communicated to him "mouth to
ear." No fakir will be seen without this powerful adjunct of his calling.
It is, as they all claim, the divining rod, the cause of every occult
phenomenon produced by them.*** The Brahmanical fakir is en-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* As the perfect identity of
the philosophical and religious doctrines of antiquity will be fully treated
upon in subsequent chapters, we limit our explanations for the present.
**
"Rig-Veda-Anhita," p. 234.
*** Philostratus assures us
that the Brahmins were able, in his time, to perform the most wonderful cures
by merely pronouncing certain magical words. "The Indian Brahmans carry a
staff and a ring, by means of which they are able to do almost anything."
Origenes states the same ("Contra Celsum"). But if a strong mesmeric
fluid -- say projected from the eye, and without any other contact -- is not
added, no magical words would be efficacious.
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tirely distinct from the
Mussulman mendicant of India, also called fakirs in some parts of the British
territory.
HERMETIST. -- From Hermes, the
god of Wisdom, known in Egypt, Syria, and Phoenicia as Thoth, Tat, Adad, Seth,
and Sat-an (the latter not to be taken in the sense applied to it by Moslems
and Christians), and in Greece as Kadmus. The kabalists identify him with Adam
Kadmon, the first manifestation of the Divine Power, and with Enoch. There were
two Hermes: the elder was the Trismegistus, and the second an emanation, or
"permutation" of himself; the friend and instructor of Isis and
Osiris. Hermes is the god of the priestly wisdom, like Mazeus.
HIEROPHANT. -- Discloser of
sacred learning. The Old Man, the Chief of the Adepts at the initiations, who
explained the arcane knowledge to the neophytes, bore this title. In Hebrew and
Chaldaic the term was Peter, or opener, discloser; hence, the Pope, as the
successor of the hierophant of the ancient Mysteries, sits in the Pagan chair
of "St. Peter." The vindictiveness of the Catholic Church toward the
alchemists, and to arcane and astronomical science, is explained by the fact
that such knowledge was the ancient prerogative of the hierophant, or
representative of Peter, who kept the mysteries of life and death. Men like
Bruno, Galileo, and Kepler, therefore, and even Cagliostro, trespassed on the
preserves of the Church, and were accordingly murdered.
Every nation had its Mysteries
and hierophants. Even the Jews had their Peter -- Tanaim or Rabbin, like
Hillel, Akiba,* and other famous kabalists, who alone could impart the awful
knowledge contained in the Merkaba. In India, there was in ancient times one,
and now there are several hierophants scattered about the country, attached to
the principal pagodas, who are known as the Brahma-atmas. In Thibet the chief
hierophant is the Dalay, or Taley-Lama of Lha-ssa.** Among Christian nations,
the Catholics alone have preserved this "heathen" custom, in the
person of their Pope, albeit they have sadly disfigured its majesty and the
dignity of the sacred office.
INITIATES. -- In times of
antiquity, those who had been initiated into the arcane knowledge taught by the
hierophants of the Mysteries; and in our modern days those who have been
initiated by the adepts of mystic lore into the mysterious knowledge, which,
notwithstanding the lapse of ages, has yet a few real votaries on earth.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Akiba was a friend of Aher,
said to have been the Apostle Paul of Christian story. Both are depicted as
having visited Paradise. Aher took branches from the Tree of Knowledge, and so
fell from the true (Jewish) religion. Akiba came away in peace. See 2d Epistle
to the Corinthians, chapter xii.
** Taley means ocean or sea.
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KABALIST, from , KABALA; an
unwritten or oral tradition. The kabalist is a student of "secret
science," one who interprets the hidden meaning of the Scriptures with the
help of the symbolical Kabala, and explains the real one by these means. The Tanaim
were the first kabalists among the Jews; they appeared at Jerusalem about the
beginning of the third century before the Christian era. The Books of Ezekiel,
Daniel, Henoch, and the Revelation of St. John, are purely kabalistical. This
secret doctrine is identical with that of the Chaldeans, and includes at the
same time much of the Persian wisdom, or "magic."
LAMAS. -- Buddhist monks
belonging to the Lamaic religion of Thibet, as, for instance, friars are the
monks belonging to the Popish or Roman Catholic religion. Every lama is subject
to the grand Taley-Lama, the Buddhist pope of Thibet, who holds his residence
at Lha-ssa, and is a reincarnation of Buddha.
MAGE, or Magian; from Mag or
Maha. The word is the root of the word magician. The Maha-atma (the great Soul
or Spirit) in India had its priests in the pre-Vedic times. The Magians were
priests of the fire-god; we find them among the Assyrians and Babylonians, as
well as among the Persian fire-worshippers. The three magi, also denominated
kings, that are said to have made gifts of gold, incense, and myrrh to the
infant Jesus, were fire-worshippers like the rest, and astrologers; for they
saw his star. The high priest of the Parsis, at Surat, is called Mobed, others
derived the word from Megh; Meh-ab signifying something grand and noble.
Zoroaster's disciples were called Meghestom, according to Kleuker.
MAGICIAN. -- This term, once a
title of renown and distinction, has come to be wholly perverted from its true
meaning. Once the synonym of all that was honorable and reverent, of a
possessor of learning and wisdom, it has become degraded into an epithet to
designate one who is a pretender and a juggler; a charlatan, in short, or one
who has "sold his soul to the Evil One"; who misuses his knowledge,
and employs it for low and dangerous uses, according to the teachings of the
clergy, and a mass of superstitious fools who believe the magician a sorcerer
and an enchanter. But Christians forget, apparently, that Moses was also a
magician, and Daniel, "Master of the magicians, astrologers, Chaldeans,
and soothsayers" (Daniel, v. II).
The word magician then,
scientifically speaking, is derived from Magh, Mah, Hindu or Sanscrit Maha --
great; a man well versed in the secret or esoteric knowledge; properly a Sacerdote.
MANTICISM, or mantic frenzy.
During this state was developed the gift of prophecy. The two words are nearly
synonymous. One was as honored as the other. Pythagoras and Plato held it in
high esteem, and
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Socrates advised his disciples
to study Manticism. The Church Fathers, who condemned so severely the mantic
frenzy in Pagan priests and Pythiae, were not above applying it to their own
uses. The Montanists, who took their name from Montanus, a bishop of Phrygia,
who was considered divinely inspired, rivalled with the manteis or prophets.
"Tertullian, Augustine, and the martyrs of Carthage, were of the
number," says the author of Prophecy, Ancient and Modern. "The
Montanists seem to have resembled the Bacchantes in the wild enthusiasm that
characterized their orgies," he adds. There is a diversity of opinion as
to the origin of the word Manticism. There was the famous Mantis the Seer, in
the days of Melampus and Proetus, King of Argos; and there was Manto, the
daughter of the prophet of Thebes, herself a prophetess. Cicero describes
prophecy and mantic frenzy by saying that "in the inner recesses of the
mind is divine prophecy hidden and confined, a divine impulse, which when it
burns more vividly is called furor" (frenzy, madness).
But there is still another
etymology possible for the word mantis, and to which we doubt if the attention
of the philologists was ever drawn. The mantic frenzy may, perchance, have a
still earlier origin. The two sacrificial cups of the Soma-mystery used during
the religious rites, and generally known as grahas, are respectively called
Sukra and Manti.*
It is in the latter manti or
manthi cup that Brahma is said to be "stirred up." While the initiate
drinks (albeit sparingly) of this sacred soma-juice, the Brahma, or rather his
"spirit," personified by the god Soma, enters into the man and takes
possession of him. Hence, ecstatic vision, clairvoyance, and the gift of
prophecy. Both kinds of divination -- the natural and the artificial -- are
aroused by the Soma. The Sukra-cup awakens that which is given to every man by
nature. It unites both spirit and soul, and these, from their own nature and
essence, which are divine, have a foreknowledge of future things, as dreams,
unexpected visions, and presentiments, well prove. The contents of the other
cup, the manti, which "stirs the Brahma," put thereby the soul in communication
not only with the minor gods -- the well-informed but not omniscient spirits --
but actually with the highest divine essence itself. The soul receives a direct
illumination from the presence of its "god"; but as it is not allowed
to remember certain things, well known only in heaven, the initiated person is
generally seized with a kind of sacred frenzy, and upon recovering from it,
only remembers that which is allowed to him. As to the other kind of seers and
diviners -- those who make a
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Aytareya
Brahmanan," 3, I.
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profession of and a living by
it -- they are usually held to be possessed by a gandharva, a deity which is
nowhere so little honored as in India.
MANTRA. -- A Sanskrit word
conveying the same idea as the "Ineffable Name." Some mantras, when
pronounced according to magical formula taught in the Atharva-Veda, produce an
instantaneous and wonderful effect. In its general sense, though, a mantra is
either simply a prayer to the gods and powers of heaven, as taught by the Brahmanical
books, and especially Manu, or else a magical charm. In its esoteric sense, the
"word" of the mantra, or mystic speech, is called by the Brahmans
Vach. It resides in the mantra, which literally means those parts of the sacred
books which are considered as the Sruti, or direct divine revelation.
MARABUT. -- A Mahometan
pilgrim who has been to Mekka; a saint, after whose death his body is placed in
an open sepulchre built on the surface, like other buildings, but in the middle
of the streets and public places of populated cities. Placed inside the small
and only room of the tomb (and several such public sarcophagi of brick and
mortar may be seen to this day in the streets and squares of Cairo), the
devotion of the wayfarers keeps a lamp ever burning at his head. The tombs of
some of these marabuts have a great fame for the miracles they are alleged to
perform.
MATERIALIZATION. -- A word
employed by spiritualists to indicate the phenomenon of "a spirit clothing
himself with a material form." The far less objectionable term,
"form-manifestation," has been recently suggested by Mr.
Stainton-Moses, of London. When the real nature of these apparitions is better
comprehended, a still more appropriate name will doubtless be adopted. To call
them materialized spirits is inadmissible, for they are not spirits but
animated portrait-statues.
MAZDEANS, from (Ahura) Mazda.
(See Spiegel's Yasna, xl.) They were the ancient Persian nobles who worshipped
Ormazd, and, rejecting images, inspired the Jews with the same horror for every
concrete representation of the Deity. "They seem in Herodotus's time to
have been superseded by the Magian religionists. The Parsis and Ghebers
geberim, mighty men, of Genesis vi. and x. 8) appear to be Magian religionists.
. . . By a curious muddling of ideas, Zoro-Aster (Zero, a circle, a son or
priest, Aster, Ishtar, or Astarte -- in Aryan dialect, a star), the title of
the head of the Magians and fire-worshippers, or Surya-ishtara, the
sun-worshipper, is often confounded in modern times with Zara-tustra, the
reputed Mazdean apostle" (Zoroaster).
METEMPSYCHOSIS. -- The
progress of the soul from one stage of existence to another. Symbolized and
vulgarly believed to be rebirths in animal bodies. A term generally
misunderstood by every class of European and
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American society, including
many scientists. The kabalistic axiom, "A stone becomes a plant, a plant
an animal, an animal a man, a man a spirit, and a spirit a god," receives
an explanation in Manu's Manava-Dharma-Sastra, and other Brahmanical books.
MYSTERIES. -- Greek teletai,
or finishings, as analogous to teleuteia or death. They were observances,
generally kept secret from the profane and uninitiated, in which were taught by
dramatic representation and other methods, the origin of things, the nature of
the human spirit, its relations to the body, and the method of its purification
and restoration to higher life. Physical science, medicine, the laws of music,
divination, were all taught in the same manner. The Hippocratic oath was but a
mystic obligation. Hippocrates was a priest of Asklepios, some of whose
writings chanced to become public. But the Asklepiades were initiates of the
AEsculapian serpent-worship, as the Bacchantes were of the Dionysia; and both
rites were eventually incorporated with the Eleusinia. We will treat of the
Mysteries fully in the subsequent chapters.
MYSTICS. -- Those initiated.
But in the mediaeval and later periods the term was applied to men like Boehmen
the Theosophist, Molinos the Quietist, Nicholas of Basle, and others who
believed in a direct interior communion with God, analogous to the inspiration
of the prophets.
NABIA. -- Seership,
soothsaying. This oldest and most respected of mystic phenomena, is the name
given to prophecy in the Bible, and is correctly included among the spiritual
powers, such as divination, clairvoyant visions, trance-conditions, and
oracles. But while enchanters, diviners, and even astrologers are strictly
condemned in the Mosaic books, prophecy, seership, and nabia appear as the
special gifts of heaven. In early ages they were all termed Epoptai, the Greek
word for seers, clairvoyants; after which they were designated as Nebim,
"the plural of Nebo, the Babylonian god of wisdom." The kabalist
distinguishes between the seer and the magician; one is passive, the other
active; Nebirah, is one who looks into futurity and a clairvoyant; Nebi-poel,
he who possesses magic powers. We notice that Elijah and Apollonius resorted to
the same means to isolate themselves from the disturbing influences of the
outer world, viz.: wrapping their heads entirely in a woolen mantle; from its
being an electric non-conductor we must suppose.
OCCULTIST. -- One who studies
the various branches of occult science. The term is used by the French
kabalists (See Eliphas Levi's works). Occultism embraces the whole range of
psychological, physiological, cosmical, physical, and spiritual phenomena. From
the word occult, hidden or secret; applying therefore to the study of the
Kabala, astrology, alchemy, and all arcane sciences.
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PAGAN GODS. -- This term gods
is erroneously understood by most of the reading public, to mean idols. The
idea attached to them is not that of something objective or anthropomorphical.
With the exception of occasions when "gods" mean either divine
planetary entities (angels), or disembodied spirits of pure men, the term
simply conveys to the mind of the mystic -- whether Hindu Hotar, Mazdean Mage,
Egyptian hierophant, or disciple of the Greek philosophers -- the idea of a
visible or cognized manifestation of an invisible potency of nature. And such
occult potencies are invoked under the appellation of various gods, who, for
the time being, are personating these powers. Thus every one of the numberless
deities of the Hindu, Greek, and Egyptian Pantheons, are simply Powers of the
"Unseen Universe." When the officiating Brahman invokes Aditya --
who, in her cosmic character, is the goddess-sun -- he simply commands that
potency (personified in some god), which, as he asserts, "resides in the
Mantra, as the sacred Vach." These god-powers are allegorically regarded
as the divine Hotars of the Supreme One; while the priest (Brahman) is the
human Hotar who officiates on earth, and representing that particular Power
becomes, ambassador-like, invested with the very potency which he personates.
PITRIS. -- It is generally
believed that the Hindu term Pitris means the spirits of our direct ancestors;
of disembodied people. Hence the argument of some spiritualists that fakirs,
and other Eastern wonder-workers, are mediums; that they themselves confess to
being unable to produce anything without the help of the Pitris, of whom they
are the obedient instruments. This is in more than one sense erroneous. The
Pitris are not the ancestors of the present living men, but those of the human
kind or Adamic race; the spirits of human races which, on the great scale of
descending evolution, preceded our races of men, and were physically, as well
as spiritually, far superior to our modern pigmies. In Manava-Dharma-Sastra
they are called the Lunar ancestors.
PYTHIA, or Pythoness. --
Webster dismisses the word very briefly by saying that it was the name of one
who delivered the oracles at the Temple of Delphi, and "any female
supposed to have the spirit of divination in her -- a witch," which is
neither complimentary, exact, nor just. A Pythia, upon the authority of
Plutarch, Iamblichus, Lamprias, and others, was a nervous sensitive; she was
chosen from among the poorest class, young and pure. Attached to the temple,
within whose precincts she had a room, secluded from every other, and to which
no one but the priest, or seer, had admittance, she had no communications with
the outside world, and her life was more strict and ascetic than that of a
Catholic nun. Sitting on a tripod of brass placed over a fissure in the ground,
through which arose intoxicating vapors, these subterranean
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exhalations penetrating her
whole system produced the prophetic mania. In this abnormal state she delivered
oracles. She was sometimes called ventriloqua vates,* the
ventriloquist-prophetess.
The ancients placed the astral
soul of man, [[psuche]], or his self-consciousness, in the pit of the stomach.
The Brahmans shared this belief with Plato and other philosophers. Thus we find
in the fourth verse of the second Nabhanedishtha Hymn it is said: "Hear, O
sons of the gods (spirits) one who speaks through his navel (nabha) for he
hails you in your dwellings!"
Many of the Sanscrit scholars
agree that this belief is one of the most ancient among the Hindus. The modern
fakirs, as well as the ancient gymnosophists, unite themselves with their atman
and the Deity by remaining motionless in contemplation and concentrating their
whole thought on their navel. As in modern somnambulic phenomena, the navel was
regarded as "the circle of the sun," the seat of internal divine
light.** Is the fact of a number of modern somnambulists being enabled to read
letters, hear, smell, and see, through that part of their body to be regarded
again as a simple "coincidence," or shall we admit at last that the
old sages knew something more of physiological and psychological mysteries than
our modern Academicians? In modern Persia, when a "magician" (often
simply a mesmerizer) is consulted upon occasions of theft and other puzzling
occurrences, he makes his manipulations over the pit of his stomach, and so
brings himself into a state of clairvoyance. Among the modern Parsis, remarks a
translator of the Rig-vedas, there exists a belief up to the present day that
their adepts have a flame in their navel, which enlightens to them all darkness
and discloses the spiritual world, as well as all things unseen, or at a
distance. They call it the lamp of the Deshtur, or high priest; the light of
the Dikshita (the initiate), and otherwise designate it by many other names.
SAMOTHRACES. -- A designation
of the Fane-gods worshipped at Samothracia in the Mysteries. They are
considered as identical with the Kabeiri, Dioskuri, and Korybantes. Their names
were mystical -- denoting Pluto, Ceres or Proserpina, Bacchus, and AEsculapius
or Hermes.
SHAMANS, or Samaneans. -- An
order of Buddhists among the Tartars, especially those of Siberia. They are
possibly akin to the philosophers
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Pantheon:
"Myths," p. 31; also Aristophanes in "Voestas," i., reg.
28.
** The oracle of Apollo was at
Delphos, the city of the [[delphus]], womb or abdomen; the place of the temple
was denominated the omphalos or navel. The symbols are female and lunary;
reminding us that the Arcadians were called Proseleni, pre-Hellenic or more
ancient than the period when Ionian and Olympian lunar worship was introduced.
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anciently known as Brachmanes,
mistaken sometimes for Brahmans.* They are all magicians, or rather sensitives
or mediums artificially developed. At present those who act as priests among
the Tartars are generally very ignorant, and far below the fakirs in knowledge
and education. Both men and women may be Shamans.
SOMA. -- This Hindu sacred
beverage answers to the Greek ambrosia or nectar, drunk by the gods of Olympus.
A cup of kykeon was also quaffed by the mysta at the Eleusinian initiation. He
who drinks it easily reaches Bradhna, or place of splendor (Heaven). The
soma-drink known to Europeans is not the genuine beverage, but its substitute;
for the initiated priests alone can taste of the real soma; and even kings and
rajas, when sacrificing, receive the substitute. Haug shows by his own
confession, in his Aytareya Brahmanan, that it was not the Soma that he tasted
and found nasty, but the juice from the roots of the Nyagradha, a plant or bush
which grows on the hills of Poona. We were positively informed that the
majority of the sacrificial priests of the Dekkan have lost the secret of the
true soma. It can be found neither in the ritual books nor through oral
information. The true followers of the primitive Vedic religion are very few;
these are the alleged descendants from the Rishis, the real Agnihotris, the
initiates of the great Mysteries. The soma-drink is also commemorated in the
Hindu Pantheon, for it is called the King-Soma. He who drinks of it is made to
participate in the heavenly king, because he becomes filled with it, as the
Christian apostles and their converts became filled with the Holy Ghost, and
purified of their sins. The soma makes a new man of the initiate; he is reborn
and transformed, and his spiritual nature overcomes the physical; it gives the
divine power of inspiration, and develops the clairvoyant faculty to the
utmost. According to the exoteric explanation the soma is a plant, but, at the
same time it is an angel. It forcibly connects the inner, highest
"spirit" of man, which spirit is an angel like the mystical soma,
with his "irrational soul," or astral body, and thus united by the
power of the magic drink, they soar together above physical nature, and
participate during life in the beatitude and ineffable glories of Heaven.
Thus the Hindu soma is
mystically, and in all respects the same that the Eucharistic supper is to the
Christian. The idea is similar. By
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* From the accounts of Strabo
and Megasthenes, who visited Palibothras, it would seem that the persons termed
by him Samanean, or Brachmane priests, were simply Buddhists. "The
singularly subtile replies of the Samanean or Brahman philosophers, in their
interview with the conqueror, will be found to contain the spirit of the
Buddhist doctrine," remarks Upham. (See the "History and Doctrine of
Buddhism"; and Hale's "Chronology," vol. iii, p. 238.)
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means of the sacrificial
prayers -- the mantras -- this liquor is supposed to be transformed on the spot
into real soma -- or the angel, and even into Brahma himself. Some missionaries
have expressed themselves very indignantly about this ceremony, the more so,
that, generally speaking, the Brahmans use a kind of spirituous liquor as a
substitute. But do the Christians believe less fervently in the
transubstantiation of the communion-wine into the blood of Christ, because this
wine happens to be more or less spirituous? Is not the idea of the symbol
attached to it the same? But the missionaries say that this hour of soma-drinking
is the golden hour of Satan, who lurks at the bottom of the Hindu sacrificial
cup.*
SPIRIT. -- The lack of any
mutual agreement between writers in the use of this word has resulted in dire
confusion. It is commonly made synonymous with soul; and the lexicographers
countenance the usage. This is the natural result of our ignorance of the other
word, and repudiation of the classification adopted by the ancients. Elsewhere
we attempt to make clear the distinction between the terms "spirit"
and "soul." There are no more important passages in this work.
Meanwhile, we will only add that "spirit" is the [[nous]] of Plato,
the immortal, immaterial, and purely divine principle in man -- the crown of
the human Triad; whereas,
SOUL is the [[psuche]], or the
nephesh of the Bible; the vital principle, or the breath of life, which every
animal, down to the infusoria, shares with man. In the translated Bible it
stands indifferently for life, blood, and soul. "Let us not kill his
nephesh," says the original text: "let us not kill him,"
translate the Christians (Genesis xxxvii. 21), and so on.
THEOSOPHISTS. -- In the
mediaeval ages it was the name by which were known the disciples of Paracelsus
of the sixteenth century, the so-called fire-philosophers or Philosophi per
ignem. As well as the Platonists they regarded the soul [[psuche]] and the
divine spirit, nous, as a particle of the great Archos -- a fire taken from the
eternal ocean of light.
The Theosophical Society, to
which these volumes are dedicated by the author as a mark of affectionate
regard, was organized at New York in 1875. The object of its founders was to
experiment practically in the occult powers of Nature, and to collect and
disseminate among Christians information about the Oriental religious philosophies.
Later, it has determined to spread among the "poor benighted heathen"
such evi-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In their turn, the heathen may
well ask the missionaries what sort of a spirit lurks at the bottom of the
sacrificial beer-bottle. That evangelical New York journal, the
"Independent," says: "A late English traveller found a
simple-minded Baptist mission church, in far-off Burmah, using for the
communion service, and we doubt not with God's blessing, Bass's pale ale
instead of wine." Circumstances alter cases, it seems!
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dences as to the practical
results of Christianity as will at least give both sides of the story to the
communities among which missionaries are at work. With this view it has
established relations with associations and individuals throughout the East, to
whom it furnishes authenticated reports of the ecclesiastical crimes and
misdemeanors, schisms and heresies, controversies and litigations, doctrinal
differences and biblical criticisms and revisions, with which the press of
Christian Europe and America constantly teems. Christendom has been long and
minutely informed of the degradation and brutishness into which Buddhism,
Brahmanism, and Confucianism have plunged their deluded votaries, and many millions
have been lavished upon foreign missions under such false representations. The
Theosophical Society, seeing daily exemplifications of this very state of
things as the sequence of Christian teaching and example -- the latter
especially -- thought it simple justice to make the facts known in Palestine,
India, Ceylon, Cashmere, Tartary, Thibet, China, and Japan, in all which
countries it has influential correspondents. It may also in time have much to
say about the conduct of the missionaries to those who contribute to their
support.
THEURGIST. -- From [[theos]],
god, and [[ergon]], work. The first school of practical theurgy in the
Christian period was founded by Iamblichus among the Alexandrian Platonists;
but the priests attached to the temples of Egypt, Assyria, and Babylonia, and
who took an active part in the evocations of the gods during the Sacred
Mysteries, were known by this name from the earliest archaic period. The
purpose of it was to make spirits visible to the eyes of mortals. A theurgist
was one expert in the esoteric learning of the Sanctuaries of all the great
countries. The Neoplatonists of the school of Iamblichus were called
theurgists, for they performed the so-called "ceremonial magic," and
evoked the "spirits" of the departed heroes, "gods," and
Daimonia ([[daimonia]], divine, spiritual entities). In the rare cases when the
presence of a tangible and visible spirit was required, the theurgist had to
furnish the weird apparition with a portion of his own flesh and blood -- he
had to perform the theopoea, or the "creation of gods," by a
mysterious process well known to the modern fakirs and initiated Brahmans of
India. This is what is said in the Book of Evocations of the pagodas. It shows
the perfect identity of rites and ceremonial between the oldest Brahmanic
theurgy and that of the Alexandrian Platonists:
"The Brahman Grihasta
(the evocator) must be in a state of complete purity before he ventures to call
forth the Pitris."
After having prepared a lamp,
some sandal, incense, etc., and having traced the magic circles taught to him
by the superior guru, in order to keep away bad spirits, he "ceases to
breathe, and calls the fire to his
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help to disperse his
body." He pronounces a certain number of times the sacred word, and
"his soul escapes from his body, and his body disappears, and the soul of
the evoked spirit descends into the double body and animates it." Then
"His (Grihasta's) soul reenters into his body, whose subtile particles
have again been aggregating, after having formed of their emanations an aerial
body to the spirit he evoked."
And now, that he has formed
for the Pitri a body with the particles the most essential and pure of his own,
the grihasta is allowed, after the ceremonial sacrifice is over, to
"converse with the souls of the ancestors and the Pitris, and offer them
questions on the mysteries of the Being and the transformations of the
imperishable."
"Then after having blown
out his lamp he must light it again, and set at liberty the bad spirits shut
out from the place by the magical circles, and leave the sanctuary of the
Pitris."*
The school of Iamblichus was
distinct from that of Plotinus and Porphyry, who were strongly against
ceremonial magic and practical theurgy as dangerous, though these two eminent
men firmly believed in both. "The theurgic or benevolent magic, the
Goetic, or dark and evil necromancy, were alike in preeminent repute during the
first century of the Christian era."** But never have any of the highly
moral and pious philosophers, whose fame has descended to us spotless of any
evil deed, practiced any other kind of magic than the theurgic, or benevolent,
as Bulwer-Lytton terms it. "Whoever is acquainted with the nature of
divinely luminous appearances [[phasmata]] knows also on what account it is
requisite to abstain from all birds (animal food), and especially for him who
hastens to be liberated from terrestrial concerns and to be established with
the celestial gods," says Porphyry.***
Though he refused to practice
theurgy himself, Porphyry, in his Life of Plotinus, mentions a priest of Egypt,
who, "at the request of a certain friend of Plotinus (which friend was
perhaps Porphyry himself, remarks T. Taylor), exhibited to Plotinus, in the
temple of Isis at Rome, the familiar daimon, or, in modern language, the
guardian angel of that philosopher."****
The popular, prevailing idea
was that the theurgists, as well as the magicians, worked wonders, such as
evoking the souls or shadows of the heroes and gods, and doing other
thaumaturgic works by supernatural powers.
YAJNA. -- "The
Yajna," say the Brahmans, exists from eternity, for
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Book of Brahmanical
Evocations," part iii.
** Bulwer-Lytton: "Last
Days of Pompeii," p. 147.
*** "Select Works,"
p. 159.
**** Ibid., p. 92.
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it proceeded forth from the
Supreme One, the Brahma-Prajapati, in whom it lay dormant from "no
beginning." It is the key to the TRAIVIDYA, the thrice sacred science
contained in the Rig verses, which teaches the Yagus or sacrificial mysteries.
"The Yajna" exists as an invisible thing at all times; it is like the
latent power of electricity in an electrifying machine, requiring only the
operation of a suitable apparatus in order to be elicited. It is supposed to
extend from the Ahavaniya or sacrificial fire to the heavens, forming a bridge
or ladder by means of which the sacrificer can communicate with the world of
gods and spirits, and even ascend when alive to their abodes.*
This Yajna is again one of the
forms of the Akasa, and the mystic word calling it into existence and
pronounced mentally by the initiated Priest is the Lost Word receiving impulse
through WILL-POWER.
To complete the list, we will
now add that in the course of the following chapters, whenever we use the term
Archaic, we mean before the time of Pythagoras; when Ancient, before the time
of Mahomet; and when Mediaeval, the period between Mahomet and Martin Luther.
It will only be necessary to infringe the rule when from time to time we may
have to speak of nations of a pre-Pythagorean antiquity, and will adopt the
common custom of calling them "ancient."
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Before closing this initial
chapter, we venture to say a few words in explanation of the plan of this work.
Its object is not to force upon the public the personal views or theories of
its author; nor has it the pretensions of a scientific work, which aims at
creating a revolution in some department of thought. It is rather a brief
summary of the religions, philosophies, and universal traditions of human kind,
and the exegesis of the same, in the spirit of those secret doctrines, of which
none -- thanks to prejudice and bigotry -- have reached Christendom in so
unmutilated a form, as to secure it a fair judgment. Since the days of the
unlucky mediaeval philosophers, the last to write upon these secret doctrines
of which they were the depositaries, few men have dared to brave persecution
and prejudice by placing their knowledge upon record. And these few have never,
as a rule, written for the public, but only for those of their own and
succeeding times who possessed the key to their jargon. The multitude, not
understanding them or their doctrines, have been accustomed to regard them en
masse as either charlatans or dreamers. Hence the unmerited contempt into which
the study of the noblest of sciences -- that of the spiritual man -- has
gradually fallen.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Aitareya
Brahmanan," Introduction.
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In undertaking to inquire into
the assumed infallibility of Modern Science and Theology, the author has been
forced, even at the risk of being thought discursive, to make constant
comparison of the ideas, achievements, and pretensions of their
representatives, with those of the ancient philosophers and religious teachers.
Things the most widely separated as to time, have thus been brought into
immediate juxtaposition, for only thus could the priority and parentage of
discoveries and dogmas be determined. In discussing the merits of our
scientific contemporaries, their own confessions of failure in experimental
research, of baffling mysteries, of missing links in their chains of theory, of
inability to comprehend natural phenomena, of ignorance of the laws of the
causal world, have furnished the basis for the present study. Especially (since
Psychology has been so much neglected, and the East is so far away that few of
our investigators will ever get there to study that science where alone it is
understood), we will review the speculations and policy of noted authorities in
connection with those modern psychological phenomena which began at Rochester
and have now overspread the world. We wish to show how inevitable were their
innumerable failures, and how they must continue until these pretended
authorities of the West go to the Brahmans and Lamaists of the far Orient, and
respectfully ask them to impart the alphabet of true science. We have laid no
charge against scientists that is not supported by their own published
admissions, and if our citations from the records of antiquity rob some of what
they have hitherto viewed as well-earned laurels, the fault is not ours but
Truth's. No man worthy of the name of philosopher would care to wear honors
that rightfully belong to another.
Deeply sensible of the Titanic
struggle that is now in progress between materialism and the spiritual
aspirations of mankind, our constant endeavor has been to gather into our
several chapters, like weapons into armories, every fact and argument that can
be used to aid the latter in defeating the former. Sickly and deformed child as
it now is, the materialism of To-Day is born of the brutal Yesterday. Unless
its growth is arrested, it may become our master. It is the bastard progeny of
the French Revolution and its reaction against ages of religious bigotry and
repression. To prevent the crushing of these spiritual aspirations, the
blighting of these hopes, and the deadening of that intuition which teaches us
of a God and a hereafter, we must show our false theologies in their naked
deformity, and distinguish between divine religion and human dogmas. Our voice
is raised for spiritual freedom, and our plea made for enfranchisement from all
tyranny, whether of SCIENCE or THEOLOGY.
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THE VEIL OF ISIS.
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PART ONE. -- SCIENCE.
---------------------
CHAPTER I.
"Ego sum qui sum." --
An axiom of Hermetic Philosophy.
"We commenced research
where modern conjecture closes its faithless wings. And with us, those were the
common elements of science which the sages of to-day disdain as wild chimeras,
or despair of as unfathomable mysteries." -- BULWER'S "ZANONI."
THERE exists somewhere in this
wide world an old Book -- so very old that our modern antiquarians might ponder
over its pages an indefinite time, and still not quite agree as to the nature
of the fabric upon which it is written. It is the only original copy now in
existence. The most ancient Hebrew document on occult learning -- the Siphra
Dzeniouta -- was compiled from it, and that at a time when the former was
already considered in the light of a literary relic. One of its illustrations
represents the Divine Essence emanating from ADAM* like a luminous arc
proceeding to form a circle; and then, having attained the highest point of its
circumference, the ineffable Glory bends back again, and returns to earth,
bringing a higher type of humanity in its vortex. As it approaches nearer and
nearer to our planet, the Emanation becomes more and more shadowy, until upon
touching the ground it is as black as night.
A conviction, founded upon
seventy thousand years of experience,** as they allege, has been entertained by
hermetic philosophers of all periods that matter has in time become, through
sin, more gross and dense than it was at man's first formation; that, at the
beginning, the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The name is used in the
sense of the Greek word [[anthropos]].
** The traditions of the
Oriental Kabalists claim their science to be older than that. Modern scientists
may doubt and reject the assertion. They cannot prove it false.
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human body was of a
half-ethereal nature; and that, before the fall, mankind communed freely with
the now unseen universes. But since that time matter has become the formidable
barrier between us and the world of spirits. The oldest esoteric traditions
also teach that, before the mystic Adam, many races of human beings lived and
died out, each giving place in its turn to another. Were these precedent types
more perfect? Did any of them belong to the winged race of men mentioned by
Plato in Phaedrus? It is the special province of science to solve the problem.
The caves of France and the relics of the stone age afford a point at which to
begin.
As the cycle proceeded, man's
eyes were more and more opened, until he came to know "good and evil"
as well as the Elohim themselves. Having reached its summit, the cycle began to
go downward. When the arc attained a certain point which brought it parallel
with the fixed line of our terrestrial plane, the man was furnished by nature
with "coats of skin," and the Lord God "clothed them."
This same belief in the
pre-existence of a far more spiritual race than the one to which we now belong
can be traced back to the earliest traditions of nearly every people. In the
ancient Quiche manuscript, published by Brasseur de Bourbourg -- the Popol Vuh
-- the first men are mentioned as a race that could reason and speak, whose
sight was unlimited, and who knew all things at once. According to Philo
Judaeus, the air is filled with an invisible host of spirits, some of whom are
free from evil and immortal, and others are pernicious and mortal. "From
the sons of EL we are descended, and sons of EL must we become again." And
the unequivocal statement of the anonymous Gnostic who wrote The Gospel
according to John, that "as many as received Him," i.e., who followed
practically the esoteric doctrine of Jesus, would "become the sons of
God," points to the same belief. (i., 12.) "Know ye not, ye are
gods?" exclaimed the Master. Plato describes admirably in Phaedrus the
state in which man once was, and what he will become again: before, and after
the "loss of his wings"; when "he lived among the gods, a god
himself in the airy world." From the remotest periods religious
philosophies taught that the whole universe was filled with divine and
spiritual beings of divers races. From one of these evolved, in the course of
time, ADAM, the primitive man.
The Kalmucks and some tribes
of Siberia also describe in their legends earlier creations than our present
race. These beings, they say, were possessed of almost boundless knowledge, and
in their audacity even threatened rebellion against the Great Chief Spirit. To
punish their presumption and humble them, he imprisoned them in bodies, and
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so shut in their senses. From
these they can escape but through long repentance, self-purification, and
development. Their Shamans, they think, occasionally enjoy the divine powers
originally possessed by all human beings.
The Astor Library of New York
has recently been enriched by a facsimile of an Egyptian Medical Treatise,
written in the sixteenth century B.C. (or, more precisely, 1552 B.C.), which,
according to the commonly received chronology, is the time when Moses was just
twenty-one years of age. The original is written upon the inner bark of Cyperus
papyrus, and has been pronounced by Professor Schenk, of Leipsig, not only
genuine, but also the most perfect ever seen. It consists of a single sheet of
yellow-brown papyrus of finest quality, three-tenths of a metre wide, more than
twenty metres long, and forming one roll divided into one hundred and ten
pages, all carefully numbered. It was purchased in Egypt, in 1872-3, by the
archaeologist Ebers, of "a well-to-do Arab from Luxor." The New York
Tribune, commenting upon the circumstance, says: The papyrus "bears
internal evidence of being one of the six Hermetic Books on Medicine, named by
Clement of Alexandria."
The editor further says:
"At the time of Iamblichus, A.D. 363, the priests of Egypt showed
forty-two books which they attributed to Hermes (Thuti). Of these, according to
that author, thirty-six contained the history of all human knowledge; the last
six treated of anatomy, of pathology, of affections of the eye, instruments of
surgery, and of medicines.* The Papyrus Ebers is indisputably one of these
ancient Hermetic works."
If so clear a ray of light has
been thrown upon ancient Egyptian science, by the accidental (?) encounter of
the German archaeologist with one "well-to-do Arab" from Luxor, how
can we know what sunshine may be let in upon the dark crypts of history by an
equally accidental meeting between some other prosperous Egyptian and another
enterprising student of antiquity!
The discoveries of modern
science do not disagree with the oldest traditions which claim an incredible
antiquity for our race. Within the last few years geology, which previously had
only conceded that man could be traced as far back as the tertiary period, has
found unanswerable proofs that human existence antedates the last glaciation of
Europe -- over 250,000 years! A hard nut, this, for Patristic Theology to
crack; but an accepted fact with the ancient philosophers.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Clement of Alexandria
asserted that in his day the Egyptian priests possessed forty-two Canonical
Books.
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Moreover, fossil implements
have been exhumed together with human remains, which show that man hunted in
those remote times, and knew how to build a fire. But the forward step has not
yet been taken in this search for the origin of the race; science comes to a
dead stop, and waits for future proofs. Unfortunately, anthropology and
psychology possess no Cuvier; neither geologists nor archaeologists are able to
construct, from the fragmentary bits hitherto discovered, the perfect skeleton
of the triple man -- physical, intellectual, and spiritual. Because the fossil
implements of man are found to become more rough and uncouth as geology
penetrates deeper into the bowels of the earth, it seems a proof to science
that the closer we come to the origin of man, the more savage and brute-like he
must be. Strange logic! Does the finding of the remains in the cave of Devon
prove that there were no contemporary races then who were highly civilized?
When the present population of the earth have disappeared, and some
archaeologist belonging to the "coming race" of the distant future
shall excavate the domestic implements of one of our Indian or Andaman Island
tribes, will he be justified in concluding that mankind in the nineteenth century
was "just emerging from the Stone Age"?
It has lately been the fashion
to speak of "the untenable conceptions of an uncultivated past." As
though it were possible to hide behind an epigram the intellectual quarries out
of which the reputations of so many modern philosophers have been carved! Just
as Tyndall is ever ready to disparage ancient philosophers -- for a dressing-up
of whose ideas more than one distinguished scientist has derived honor and
credit -- so the geologists seem more and more inclined to take for granted
that all of the archaic races were contemporaneously in a state of dense
barbarism. But not all of our best authorities agree in this opinion. Some of
the most eminent maintain exactly the reverse. Max Muller, for instance, says:
"Many things are still unintelligible to us, and the hieroglyphic language
of antiquity records but half of the mind's unconscious intentions. Yet more
and more the image of man, in whatever clime we meet him, rises before us,
noble and pure from the very beginning; even his errors we learn to understand,
even his dreams we begin to interpret. As far as we can trace back the
footsteps of man, even on the lowest strata of history, we see the divine gift
of a sound and sober intellect belonging to him from the very first, and the
idea of a humanity emerging slowly from the depths of an animal brutality can
never be maintained again."*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Chips from a German
Work-shop," vol. ii., p. 7. "Comparative Mythology."
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SCIENCE.
As it is claimed to be
unphilosophical to inquire into first causes, scientists now occupy themselves
with considering their physical effects. The field of scientific investigation
is therefore bounded by physical nature. When once its limits are reached,
enquiry must stop, and their work be recommenced. With all due respect to our
learned men, they are like the squirrel upon its revolving wheel, for they are
doomed to turn their "matter" over and over again. Science is a
mighty potency, and it is not for us pigmies to question her. But the
"scientists" are not themselves science embodied any more than the
men of our planet are the planet itself. We have neither the right to demand,
nor power to compel our "modern-day philosopher" to accept without
challenge a geographical description of the dark side of the moon. But, if in
some lunar cataclysm one of her inhabitants should be hurled thence into the
attraction of our atmosphere, and land, safe and sound, at Dr. Carpenter's
door, he would be indictable as recreant to professional duty if he should fail
to set the physical problem at rest.
For a man of science to refuse
an opportunity to investigate any new phenomenon, whether it comes to him in
the shape of a man from the moon, or a ghost from the Eddy homestead, is alike
reprehensible.
Whether arrived at by the
method of Aristotle, or that of Plato, we need not stop to inquire; but it is a
fact that both the inner and outer natures of man are claimed to have been
thoroughly understood by the ancient andrologists. Notwithstanding the
superficial hypotheses of geologists, we are beginning to have almost daily
proofs in corroboration of the assertions of those philosophers.
They divided the interminable
periods of human existence on this planet into cycles, during each of which
mankind gradually reached the culminating point of highest civilization and
gradually relapsed into abject barbarism. To what eminence the race in its
progress had several times arrived may be feebly surmised by the wonderful
monuments of old, still visible, and the descriptions given by Herodotus of
other marvels of which no traces now remain. Even in his days the gigantic
structures of many pyramids and world-famous temples were but masses of ruins.
Scattered by the unrelenting hand of time, they are described by the Father of
History as "these venerable witnesses of the long bygone glory of departed
ancestors." He "shrinks from speaking of divine things," and
gives to posterity but an imperfect description from hearsay of some marvellous
subterranean chambers of the Labyrinth, where lay -- and now lie -- concealed,
the sacred remains of the King-Initiates.
We can judge, moreover, of the
lofty civilization reached in some
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periods of antiquity by the
historical descriptions of the ages of the Ptolemies, yet in that epoch the
arts and sciences were considered to be degenerating, and the secret of a
number of the former had been already lost. In the recent excavations of
Mariette-Bey, at the foot of the Pyramids, statues of wood and other relics
have been exhumed, which show that long before the period of the first
dynasties the Egyptians had attained to a refinement and perfection which is calculated
to excite the wonder of even the most ardent admirers of Grecian art. Bayard
Taylor describes these statues in one of his lectures, and tells us that the
beauty of the heads, ornamented with eyes of precious stones and copper
eyelids, is unsurpassed. Far below the stratum of sand in which lay the remains
gathered into the collections of Lepsius, Abbott, and the British Museum, were
found buried the tangible proofs of the hermetic doctrine of cycles which has
been already explained.
Dr. Schliemann, the
enthusiastic Hellenist, has recently found, in his excavations in the Troad,
abundant evidences of the same gradual change from barbarism to civilization,
and from civilization to barbarism again. Why then should we feel so reluctant
to admit the possibility that, if the antediluvians were so much better versed
than ourselves in certain sciences as to have been perfectly acquainted with
important arts, which we now term lost, they might have equally excelled in
psychological knowledge? Such a hypothesis must be considered as reasonable as
any other until some countervailing evidence shall be discovered to destroy it.
Every true savant admits that
in many respects human knowledge is yet in its infancy. Can it be that our
cycle began in ages comparatively recent? These cycles, according to the
Chaldean philosophy, do not embrace all mankind at one and the same time.
Professor Draper partially corroborates this view by saying that the periods
into which geology has "found it convenient to divide the progress of man
in civilization are not abrupt epochs which hold good simultaneously for the
whole human race"; giving as an instance the "wandering Indians of
America," who "are only at the present moment emerging from the stone
age." Thus more than once scientific men have unwittingly confirmed the
testimony of the ancients.
Any Kabalist well acquainted
with the Pythagorean system of numerals and geometry can demonstrate that the
metaphysical views of Plato were based upon the strictest mathematical
principles. "True mathematics," says the Magicon, "is something
with which all higher sciences are connected; common mathematics is but a
deceitful phantasmagoria, whose much-praised infallibility only arises from
this -- that
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materials, conditions, and
references are made its foundation." Scientists who believe they have
adopted the Aristotelian method only because they creep when they do not run
from demonstrated particulars to universals, glorify this method of inductive
philosophy, and reject that of Plato, which they treat as unsubstantial.
Professor Draper laments that such speculative mystics as Ammonius Saccas and
Plotinus should have taken the place "of the severe geometers of the old
museum."* He forgets that geometry, of all sciences the only one which
proceeds from universals to particulars, was precisely the method employed by
Plato in his philosophy. As long as exact science confines its observations to
physical conditions and proceeds Aristotle-like, it certainly cannot fail. But
notwithstanding that the world of matter is boundless for us, it still is
finite; and thus materialism will turn forever in this vitiated circle, unable
to soar higher than the circumference will permit. The cosmological theory of
numerals which Pythagoras learned from the Egyptian hierophants, is alone able
to reconcile the two units, matter and spirit, and cause each to demonstrate
the other mathematically.
The sacred numbers of the
universe in their esoteric combination solve the great problem and explain the
theory of radiation and the cycle of the emanations. The lower orders before
they develop into higher ones must emanate from the higher spiritual ones, and
when arrived at the turning-point, be reabsorbed again into the infinite.
Physiology, like everything
else in this world of constant evolution, is subject to the cyclic revolution.
As it now seems to be hardly emerging from the shadows of the lower arc, so it
may be one day proved to have been at the highest point of the circumference of
the circle far earlier than the days of Pythagoras.
Mochus, the Sidonian, the
physiologist and teacher of the science of anatomy, flourished long before the
Sage of Samos; and the latter received the sacred instructions from his
disciples and descendants. Pythagoras, the pure philosopher, the deeply-versed
in the profounder phenomena of nature, the noble inheritor of the ancient lore,
whose great aim was to free the soul from the fetters of sense and force it to
realize its powers, must live eternally in human memory.
The impenetrable veil of
arcane secrecy was thrown over the sciences taught in the sanctuary. This is
the cause of the modern depreciating of the ancient philosophies. Even Plato
and Philo Judaeus have been accused by many a commentator of absurd
inconsistencies, whereas the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Conflict between
Religion and Science," ch. i.
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design which underlies the
maze of metaphysical contradictions so perplexing to the reader of the Timaeus,
is but too evident. But has Plato ever been read understandingly by one of the
expounders of the classics? This is a question warranted by the criticisms to
be found in such authors as Stalbaum, Schleirmacher, Ficinus (Latin
translation), Heindorf, Sydenham, Buttmann, Taylor and Burges, to say nothing
of lesser authorities. The covert allusions of the Greek philosopher to
esoteric things have manifestly baffled these commentators to the last degree.
They not only with unblushing coolness suggest as to certain difficult passages
that another phraseology was evidently intended, but they audaciously make the
changes! The Orphic line:
"Of the song, the order
of the sixth race close" --
which can only be interpreted
as a reference to the sixth race evolved in the consecutive evolution of the
spheres,* Burges says: ". . . was evidently taken from a cosmogony where
man was feigned to be created the last."** -- Ought not one who undertakes
to edit another's works at least understand what his author means?
Indeed, the ancient
philosophers seem to be generally held, even by the least prejudiced of our
modern critics, to have lacked that profundity and thorough knowledge in the
exact sciences of which our century is so boastful. It is even questioned
whether they understood that basic scientific principle: ex nihilo nihil fit.
If they suspected the indestructibility of matter at all, -- say these
commentators -- it was not in consequence of a firmly-established formula but
only through an intuitional reasoning and by analogy.
We hold to the contrary
opinion. The speculations of these philosophers upon matter were open to public
criticism: but their teachings in regard to spiritual things were profoundly
esoteric. Being thus sworn to secrecy and religious silence upon abstruse
subjects involving the relations of spirit and matter, they rivalled each other
in their ingenious methods for concealing their real opinions.
The doctrine of Metempsychosis
has been abundantly ridiculed by men of science and rejected by theologians,
yet if it had been properly understood in its application to the
indestructibility of matter and the immortality of spirit, it would have been
perceived that it is a sublime conception. Should we not first regard the
subject from the stand-point
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In another place, we explain
with some minuteness the Hermetic philosophy of the evolution of the spheres
and their several races.
** J. Burges: "The Works
of Plato," p. 207, note.
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HINDU.
of the ancients before
venturing to disparage its teachers? The solution of the great problem of
eternity belongs neither to religious superstition nor to gross materialism.
The harmony and mathematical equiformity of the double evolution -- spiritual
and physical -- are elucidated only in the universal numerals of Pythagoras,
who built his system entirely upon the so-called "metrical speech" of
the Hindu Vedas. It is but lately that one of the most zealous Sanskrit
scholars, Martin Haug, undertook the translation of the Aitareya Brahmana of
the Rig-Veda. It had been till that time entirely unknown; these explanations
indicate beyond dispute the identity of the Pythagorean and Brahmanical
systems. In both, the esoteric significance is derived from the number: in the
former, from the mystic relation of every number to everything intelligible to
the human mind; in the latter, from the number of syllables of which each verse
in the Mantras consists. Plato, the ardent disciple of Pythagoras, realized it
so fully as to maintain that the Dodecahedron was the geometrical figure
employed by the Demiurgus in constructing the universe. Some of these figures
had a peculiarly solemn significance. For instance four, of which the
Dodecahedron is the trine, was held sacred by the Pythagoreans. It is the
perfect square, and neither of the bounding lines exceeds the other in length,
by a single point. It is the emblem of moral justice and divine equity
geometrically expressed. All the powers and great symphonies of physical and
spiritual nature lie inscribed within the perfect square; and the ineffable
name of Him, which name otherwise, would remain unutterable, was replaced by
this sacred number 4 the most binding and solemn oath with the ancient mystics
-- the Tetractys.
If the Pythagorean metempsychosis
should be thoroughly explained and compared with the modern theory of
evolution, it would be found to supply every "missing link" in the
chain of the latter. But who of our scientists would consent to lose his
precious time over the vagaries of the ancients. Notwithstanding proofs to the
contrary, they not only deny that the nations of the archaic periods, but even
the ancient philosophers had any positive knowledge of the Heliocentric system.
The "Venerable Bedes," the Augustines and Lactantii appear to have
smothered, with their dogmatic ignorance, all faith in the more ancient
theologists of the pre-Christian centuries. But now philology and a closer
acquaintance with Sanskrit literature have partially enabled us to vindicate
them from these unmerited imputations. In the Vedas, for instance, we find
positive proof that so long ago as 2000 B.C., the Hindu sages and scholars must
have been acquainted with the rotundity of our globe and the Heliocentric
system. Hence, Pythagoras and Plato knew well this astronomical truth; for
Pythagoras obtained his knowledge
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in India, or from men who had
been there, and Plato faithfully echoed his teachings. We will quote two
passages from the Aitareya Brahmana:
In the
"Serpent-Mantra,"* the Brahmana declares as follows: that this Mantra
is that one which was seen by the Queen of the Serpents, Sarpa-rajni; because
the earth (iyam) is the Queen of the Serpents, as she is the mother and queen
of all that moves (sarpat). In the beginning she (the earth) was but one head
(round), without hair (bald), i.e., without vegetation. She then perceived this
Mantra which confers upon him who knows it, the power of assuming any form
which he might desire. She "pronounced the Mantra," i.e., sacrificed
to the gods; and, in consequence, immediately obtained a motley appearance; she
became variegated, and able to produce any form she might like, changing one
form into another. This Mantra begins with the words: "Ayam gauh pris'nir
akramit" (x., 189).
The description of the earth
in the shape of a round and bald head, which was soft at first, and became hard
only from being breathed upon by the god Vayu, the lord of the air, forcibly
suggests the idea that the authors of the sacred Vedic books knew the earth to
be round or spherical; moreover, that it had been a gelatinous mass at first,
which gradually cooled off under the influence of the air and time. So much for
their knowledge about our globe's sphericity; and now we will present the
testimony upon which we base our assertion, that the Hindus were perfectly
acquainted with the Heliocentric system, at least 2000 years B.C.
In the same treatise the
Hotar, (priest), is taught how the Shastras should be repeated, and how the
phenomena of sunrise and sunset are to be explained. It says: "The
Agnishtoma is that one (that god) who burns. The sun never sets nor rises. When
people think the sun is setting, it is not so; they are mistaken. For after
having arrived at the end of the day, it produces two opposite effects, making
night to what is below, and day to what is on the other side. When they (the
people) believe it rises in the morning, the sun only does thus: having reached
the end of the night, it makes itself produce two opposite effects, making day
to what is below, and night to what is on the other side. In fact the sun never
sets; nor does it set for him who has such a knowledge. . . ."**
This sentence is so
conclusive, that even the translator of the Rig-Veda, Dr. Haug, was forced to
remark it. He says this passage contains "the denial of the existence of
sunrise and sunset," and that the author supposes the sun "to remain
always in its high position."***
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* From the Sanskrit text of
the Aitareya Brahmanam. Rig-Veda, v., ch. ii., verse 23.
** Aitareya Brahmanam, book
iii., c. v., 44.
*** Ait. Brahm., vol. ii., p.
242.
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CALCULATIONS.
In one of the earliest Nivids,
Rishi Kutsa, a Hindu sage of the remotest antiquity, explains the allegory of
the first laws given to the celestial bodies. For doing "what she ought
not to do," Anahit (Anaitis or Nana, the Persian Venus), representing the
earth in the legend, is sentenced to turn round the sun. The Sattras, or
sacrificial sessions* prove undoubtedly that so early as in the eighteenth or
twentieth century B.C., the Hindus had made considerable progress in
astronomical science. The Sattras lasted one year, and were "nothing but
an imitation of the sun's yearly course. They were divided, says Haug, into two
distinct parts, each consisting of six months of thirty days each; in the midst
of both was the Vishuvan (equator or central day), cutting the whole Sattras
into two halves, etc."** This scholar, although he ascribes the
composition of the bulk of the Brahmanas to the period 1400-1200 B.C., is of
opinion that the oldest of the hymns may be placed at the very commencement of
Vedic literature, between the years 2400-2000, B.C. He finds no reason for
considering the Vedas less ancient than the sacred books of the Chinese. As the
Shu-King or Book of History, and the sacrificial songs of the Shi-King, or Book
of Odes, have been proved to have an antiquity as early as 2200, B.C., our
philologists may yet be compelled before long to acknowledge, that in
astronomical knowledge, the antediluvian Hindus were their masters.
At all events, there are facts
which prove that certain astronomical calculations were as correct with the Chaldeans
in the days of Julius Caesar as they are now. When the calendar was reformed by
the Conqueror, the civil year was found to correspond so little with the
seasons, that summer had merged into the autumn months, and the autumn months
into full winter. It was Sosigenes, the Chaldean astronomer, who restored order
into the confusion, by putting back the 25th of March ninety days, thus making
it correspond with the vernal equinox; and it was Sosigenes, again, who fixed
the lengths of the months as they now remain.
In America, it was found by
the Montezuman army, that the calendar of the Aztecs gave an equal number of
days and weeks to each month. The extreme accuracy of their astronomical
calculations was so great, that no error has been discovered in their reckoning
by subsequent verifications; while the Europeans, who landed in Mexico in 1519,
were, by the Julian calendar, nearly eleven days in advance of the exact time.
It is to the priceless and
accurate translations of the Vedic Books, and to the personal researches of Dr.
Haug, that we are indebted for the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ait. Brahm., book iv.
** Septenary Institutions;
"Stone him to Death," p. 20.
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corroboration of the claims of
the hermetic philosophers. That the period of Zarathustra Spitama (Zoroaster)
was of untold antiquity, can be easily proved. The Brahmanas, to which Haug
ascribes four thousand years, describe the religious contest between the
ancient Hindus, who lived in the pre-Vedic period, and the Iranians. The
battles between the Devas and the Asuras -- the former representing the Hindus
and the latter the Iranians -- are described at length in the sacred books. As
the Iranian prophet was the first to raise himself against what he called the
"idolatry" of the Brahmans, and to designate them as the Devas
(devils), how far back must then have been this religious crisis?
"This contest,"
answers Dr. Haug, "must have appeared to the authors of the Brahmanas as
old as the feats of King Arthur appear to English writers of the nineteenth
century."
There was not a philosopher of
any notoriety who did not hold to this doctrine of metempsychosis, as taught by
the Brahmans, Buddhists, and later by the Pythagoreans, in its esoteric sense,
whether he expressed it more or less intelligibly. Origen and Clemens
Alexandrinus, Synesius and Chalcidius, all believed in it; and the Gnostics,
who are unhesitatingly proclaimed by history as a body of the most refined,
learned, and enlightened men,* were all believers in metempsychosis. Socrates
entertained opinions identical with those of Pythagoras; and both, as the
penalty of their divine philosophy, were put to a violent death. The rabble has
been the same in all ages. Materialism has been, and will ever be blind to
spiritual truths. These philosophers held, with the Hindus, that God had infused
into matter a portion of his own Divine Spirit, which animates and moves every
particle. They taught that men have two souls, of separate and quite different
natures: the one perishable -- the Astral Soul, or the inner, fluidic body --
the other incorruptible and immortal -- the Augoeides, or portion of the Divine
Spirit; that the mortal or Astral Soul perishes at each gradual change at the
threshold of every new sphere, becoming with every transmigration more
purified. The astral man, intangible and invisible as he might be to our
mortal, earthly senses, is still constituted of matter, though sublimated.
Aristotle, notwithstanding that for political reasons of his own he maintained
a prudent silence as to certain esoteric matters, expressed very clearly his
opinion on the subject. It was his belief that human souls are emanations of
God, that are finally re-absorbed into Divinity. Zeno, the founder of the
Stoics, taught that there are "two eternal qualities throughout nature:
the one active, or male; the other passive, or female: that the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Gibbon's "Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire."
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SOUL" OF BEASTS.
former is pure, subtile ether,
or Divine Spirit; the other entirely inert in itself till united with the
active principle. That the Divine Spirit acting upon matter produced fire,
water, earth, and air; and that it is the sole efficient principle by which all
nature is moved. The Stoics, like the Hindu sages, believed in the final
absorption. St. Justin believed in the emanation of these souls from Divinity,
and Tatian, the Assyrian, his disciple, declared that "man was as immortal
as God himself."*
That profoundly significant
verse of the Genesis, "And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl
of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, I gave a living
soul, . . . ." should arrest the attention of every Hebrew scholar capable
of reading the Scripture in its original, instead of following the erroneous
translation, in which the phrase reads, "wherein there is life."**
From the first to the last chapters,
the translators of the Jewish Sacred Books misconstrued this meaning. They have
even changed the spelling of the name of God, as Sir W. Drummond proves. Thus
El, if written correctly, would read Al, for it stands in the original -- Al,
and, according to Higgins, this word means the god Mithra, the Sun, the
preserver and savior. Sir W. Drummond shows that Beth-El means the House of the
Sun in its literal translation, and not of God. "El, in the composition of
these Canaanite names, does not signify Deus, but Sol."*** Thus Theology
has disfigured ancient Theosophy, and Science ancient Philosophy.****
For lack of comprehension of
this great philosophical principle, the methods of modern science, however
exact, must end in nullity. In no one branch can it demonstrate the origin and
ultimate of things. Instead of tracing the effect from its primal source, its
progress is the reverse. Its higher types, as it teaches, are all evolved from
antecedent lower ones. It starts from the bottom of the cycle, led on step by
step in the great labyrinth of nature by a thread of matter. As soon as this
breaks and the clue is lost, it recoils in affright from the Incomprehensible,
and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Turner; also G.
Higgins's "Anacalypsis."
** Genesis, i, 30.
*** Sir William Drummond:
"OEdipus Judicus," p. 250.
**** The absolute necessity
for the perpetration of such pious frauds by the early fathers and later
theologians becomes apparent, if we consider that if they had allowed the word
Al to remain as in the original, it would have become but too evident -- except
for the initiated -- that the Jehovah of Moses and the sun were identical. The
multitudes, which ignore that the ancient hierophant considered our visible sun
but as an emblem of the central, invisible, and spiritual Sun, would have
accused Moses -- as many of our modern commentators have already done -- of
worshipping the planetary bodies; in short, of actual Zabaism.
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confesses itself powerless.
Not so did Plato and his disciples. With him the lower types were but the
concrete images of the higher abstract ones. The soul, which is immortal, has
an arithmetical, as the body has a geometrical, beginning. This beginning, as
the reflection of the great universal ARCHAEUS, is self-moving, and from the
centre diffuses itself over the whole body of the microcosm.
It was the sad perception of
this truth that made Tyndall confess how powerless is science, even over the
world of matter. "The first marshalling of the atoms, on which all
subsequent action depends, baffles a keener power than that of the
microscope." "Through pure excess of complexity, and long before
observation can have any voice in the matter, the most highly trained
intellect, the most refined and disciplined imagination, retires in
bewilderment from the contemplation of the problem. We are struck dumb by an
astonishment which no microscope can relieve, doubting not only the power of
our instrument, but even whether we ourselves possess the intellectual elements
which will ever enable us to grapple with the ultimate structural energies of
nature."
The fundamental geometrical
figure of the Kabala -- that figure which tradition and the esoteric doctrines
tell us was given by the Deity itself to Moses on Mount Sinai* -- contains in
its grandiose, because simple combination, the key to the universal problem.
This figure contains in itself all the others. For those who are able to master
it, there is no need to exercise imagination. No earthly microscope can be
compared with the keenness of the spiritual perception.
And even for those who are
unacquainted with the GREAT SCIENCE, the description given by a well-trained
child-psychometer of the genesis of a grain, a fragment of crystal, or any
other object -- is worth all the telescopes and microscopes of "exact
science."
There may be more truth in the
adventurous pangenesis of Darwin -- whom Tyndall calls a "soaring
speculator" -- than in the cautious, line-bound hypothesis of the latter;
who, in common with other thinkers of his class, surrounds his imagination
"by the firm frontiers of reason." The theory of a microscopic germ
which contains in itself "a world of minor germs," soars in one sense
at least into the infinite. It oversteps the world of matter, and begins
unconsciously busying itself in the world of spirit.
If we accept Darwin's theory
of the development of species, we find that his starting-point is placed in
front of an open door. We are at liberty with him, to either remain within, or
cross the threshold, beyond
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Exodus, xxv., 40.
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"BEYOND."
which lies the limitless and
the incomprehensible, or rather the Unutterable. If our mortal language is
inadequate to express what our spirit dimly foresees in the great
"Beyond" -- while on this earth -- it must realize it at some point
in the timeless Eternity.
Not so with Professor Huxley's
theory of the "Physical Basis of Life." Regardless of the formidable
majority of "nays" from his German brother-scientists, he creates a
universal protoplasm and appoints its cells to become henceforth the sacred
founts of the principle of all life. By making the latter identical in living
man, "dead mutton," a nettle-sting, and a lobster; by shutting in, in
the molecular cell of the protoplasm, the life-principle, and by shutting out
from it the divine influx which comes with subsequent evolution, he closes every
door against any possible escape. Like an able tactician he converts his
"laws and facts" into sentries whom he causes to mount guard over
every issue. The standard under which he rallies them is inscribed with the
word "necessity"; but hardly is it unfurled when he mocks the legend
and calls it "an empty shadow of my own imagination."
The fundamental doctrines of
spiritualism, he says, "lie outside the limits of philosophical
inquiry." We will be bold enough to contradict this assertion, and say that
they lie a great deal more within such inquiry than Mr. Huxley's protoplasm.
Insomuch that they present evident and palpable facts of the existence of
spirit, and the protoplasmic cells, once dead, present none whatever of being
the originators or the bases of life, as this one of the few "foremost
thinkers of the day" wants us to believe.**
The ancient Kabalist rested
upon no hypothesis till he could lay its basis upon the firm rock of recorded
experiment.
But the too great dependence
upon physical facts led to a growth of materialism and a decadence of
spirituality and faith. At the time of Aristotle, this was the prevailing
tendency of thought. And though the Delphic commandment was not as yet
completely eliminated from Grecian thought; and some philosophers still held
that "in order to know what man is, we ought to know what man was" --
still materialism had already begun to gnaw at the root of faith. The Mysteries
themselves had degenerated in a very great degree into mere priestly speculations
and religious fraud. Few were the true adepts and initiates, the heirs and
descendants of those who had been dispersed by the conquering swords of various
invaders of Old Egypt.
The time predicted by the
great Hermes in his dialogue with AEscu-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The Physical Basis of
Life." A Lecture by T. H. Huxley.
** Huxley: "Physical
Basis of Life."
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lapius had indeed come; the
time when impious foreigners would accuse Egypt of adoring monsters, and naught
but the letters engraved in stone upon her monuments would survive -- enigmas incredible
to posterity. Their sacred scribes and hierophants were wanderers upon the face
of the earth. Obliged from fear of a profanation of the sacred mysteries to
seek refuge among the Hermetic fraternities -- known later as the Essenes --
their esoteric knowledge was buried deeper than ever. The triumphant brand of
Aristotle's pupil swept away from his path of conquest every vestige of a once
pure religion, and Aristotle himself, the type and child of his epoch, though
instructed in the secret science of the Egyptians, knew but little of this
crowning result of millenniums of esoteric studies.
As well as those who lived in
the days of the Psammetics, our present-day philosophers "lift the Veil of
Isis" -- for Isis is but the symbol of nature. But, they see only her
physical forms. The soul within escapes their view; and the Divine Mother has
no answer for them. There are anatomists, who, uncovering to sight no
indwelling spirit under the layers of muscles, the network of nerves, or the
cineritious matter, which they lift with the point of the scalpel, assert that
man has no soul. Such are as purblind in sophistry as the student, who,
confining his research to the cold letter of the Kabala, dares say it has no
vivifying spirit. To see the true man who once inhabited the subject which lies
before him, on the dissecting table, the surgeon must use other eyes than those
of his body. So, the glorious truth covered up in the hieratic writings of the
ancient papyri can be revealed only to him who possesses the faculty of
intuition -- which, if we call reason the eye of the mind, may be defined as
the eye of the soul.
Our modern science
acknowledges a Supreme Power, an Invisible Principle, but denies a Supreme
Being, or Personal God.* Logically, the difference between the two might be
questioned; for in this case the Power and the Being are identical. Human
reason can hardly imagine to itself an Intelligent Supreme Power without
associating it with the idea of an Intelligent Being. The masses can never be
expected to have a clear conception of the omnipotence and omnipresence of a
supreme God, without investing with those attributes a gigantic projection of
their own personality. But the kabalists have never looked upon the invisible
EN-SOPH otherwise than as a Power.
So far our modern positivists
have been anticipated by thousands of ages, in their cautious philosophy. What
the hermetic adept claims to demonstrate is, that simple common sense precludes
the possibility that
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Prof. J. W. Draper:
"Conflict Between Religion and Science."
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POTENT ADEPTS.
the universe is the result of
mere chance. Such an idea appears to him more absurd than to think that the
problems of Euclid were unconsciously formed by a monkey playing with
geometrical figures.
Very few Christians
understand, if indeed they know anything at all, of the Jewish Theology. The
Talmud is the darkest of enigmas even for most Jews, while those Hebrew
scholars who do comprehend it do not boast of their knowledge. Their kabalistic
books are still less understood by them; for in our days more Christian than
Jewish students are engrossed in the elimination of their great truths. How
much less is definitely known of the Oriental, or the universal Kabala! Its
adepts are few; but these heirs elect of the sages who first discovered
"the starry truths which shone on the great Shemaia of the Chaldean
lore"* have solved the "absolute" and are now resting from their
grand labor. They cannot go beyond that which is given to mortals of this earth
to know; and no one, not even these elect, can trespass beyond the line drawn
by the finger of the Divinity itself. Travellers have met these adepts on the
shores of the sacred Ganges, brushed against them in the silent ruins of
Thebes, and in the mysterious deserted chambers of Luxor. Within the halls upon
whose blue and golden vaults the weird signs attract attention, but whose
secret meaning is never penetrated by the idle gazers, they have been seen but
seldom recognized. Historical memoirs have recorded their presence in the
brilliantly illuminated salons of European aristocracy. They have been
encountered again on the arid and desolate plains of the Great Sahara, as in
the caves of Elephanta. They may be found everywhere, but make themselves known
only to those who have devoted their lives to unselfish study, and are not
likely to turn back.
Maimonides, the great Jewish
theologian and historian, who at one time was almost deified by his countrymen
and afterward treated as a heretic, remarks, that the more absurd and void of
sense the Talmud seems the more sublime is the secret meaning. This learned man
has successfully demonstrated that the Chaldean Magic, the science of Moses and
other learned thaumaturgists was wholly based on an extensive knowledge of the
various and now forgotten branches of natural science. Thoroughly acquainted
with all the resources of the vegetable, animal, and mineral kingdoms, experts
in occult chemistry and physics, psychologists as well as physiologists, why
wonder that the graduates or adepts instructed in the mysterious sanctuaries of
the temples, could perform wonders, which even in our days of enlightenment
would appear super-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Bulwer's "Zanoni."
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natural? It is an insult to
human nature to brand magic and the occult science with the name of imposture.
To believe that for so many thousands of years, one-half of mankind practiced
deception and fraud on the other half, is equivalent to saying that the human
race was composed only of knaves and incurable idiots. Where is the country in
which magic was not practised? At what age was it wholly forgotten?
In the oldest documents now in
our possession -- the Vedas and the older laws of Manu -- we find many magical
rites practiced and permitted by the Brahmans.* Thibet, Japan and China teach
in the present age that which was taught by the oldest Chaldeans. The clergy of
these respective countries, prove moreover what they teach, namely: that the
practice of moral and physical purity, and of certain austerities, developes
the vital soulpower of self-illumination. Affording to man the control over his
own immortal spirit, it gives him truly magical powers over the elementary
spirits inferior to himself. In the West we find magic of as high an antiquity
as in the East. The Druids of Great Britain practised it in the silent crypts
of their deep caves; and Pliny devotes many a chapter to the
"wisdom"** of the leaders of the Celts. The Semothees, -- the Druids
of the Gauls, expounded the physical as well as the spiritual sciences. They
taught the secrets of the universe, the harmonious progress of the heavenly
bodies, the formation of the earth, and above all -- the immortality of the
soul.*** Into their sacred groves -- natural academies built by the hand of the
Invisible Architect -- the initiates assembled at the still hour of midnight to
learn about what man once was and what he will be.**** They needed no
artificial illumination, nor life-drawing gas, to light up their temples, for
the chaste goddess of night beamed her most silvery rays on their oak-crowned
heads; and their white-robed sacred bards knew how to converse with the
solitary queen of the starry vault.*****
On the dead soil of the long
by-gone past stand their sacred oaks, now dried up and stripped of their
spiritual meaning by the venomous breath of materialism. But for the student of
occult learning, their vegetation is still as verdant and luxuriant, and as
full of deep and sacred truths, as at that hour when the arch-druid performed
his magical cures, and waving the branch of mistletoe, severed with his golden
sickle the green bough from its mother oak-tree. Magic is as old as man. It is
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See the Code published by
Sir William Jones, chap. ix., p. 11.
** Pliny: "Hist.
Nat.," xxx. I: Ib., xvi., 14; xxv., 9, etc.
*** Pomponius ascribes to them
the knowledge of the highest sciences.
**** Caesar, iii., 14.
***** Pliny, xxx.
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APOLLONIUS.
as impossible to name the time
when it sprang into existence as to indicate on what day the first man himself
was born. Whenever a writer has started with the idea of connecting its first
foundation in a country with some historical character, further research has
proved his views groundless. Odin, the Scandinavian priest and monarch, was
thought by many to have originated the practice of magic some seventy years
B.C. But it was easily demonstrated that the mysterious rites of the
priestesses called Voilers, Valas, were greatly anterior to his age.* Some
modern authors were bent on proving that Zoroaster was the founder of magic,
because he was the founder of the Magian religion. Ammianus Marcellinus,
Arnobius, Pliny, and other ancient historians demonstrated conclusively that he
was but a reformer of Magic as practiced by the Chaldeans and Egyptians.**
The greatest teachers of
divinity agree that nearly all ancient books were written symbolically and in a
language intelligible only to the initiated. The biographical sketch of
Apollonius of Tyana affords an example. As every Kabalist knows, it embraces
the whole of the Hermetic philosophy, being a counterpart in many respects of
the traditions left us of King Solomon. It reads like a fairy story, but, as in
the case of the latter, sometimes facts and historical events are presented to
the world under the colors of a fiction. The journey to India represents
allegorically the trials of a neophyte. His long discourses with the Brahmans,
their sage advice, and the dialogues with the Corinthian Menippus would, if
interpreted, give the esoteric catechism. His visit to the empire of the wise
men, and interview with their king Hiarchas, the oracle of Amphiaraus, explain
symbolically many of the secret dogmas of Hermes. They would disclose, if
understood, some of the most important secrets of nature. Eliphas Levi points
out the great resemblance which exists between King Hiarchas and the fabulous
Hiram, of whom Solomon procured the cedars of Lebanon and the gold of Ophir. We
would like to know whether modern Masons, even "Grand Lecturers" and
the most intelligent craftsmen belonging to important lodges, understand who
the Hiram is whose death they combine together to avenge?
Putting aside the purely
metaphysical teachings of the Kabala, if one would devote himself but to
physical occultism, to the so-called branch of therapeutics, the results might benefit
some of our modern sciences; such as chemistry and medicine. Says Professor
Draper: "Sometimes, not
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Munter, on the most ancient
religion of the North before the time of Odin. Memoires de la Societe des
Antiquaires de France. Tome ii., p. 230.
** Ammianus Marcellinus,
xxvi., 6.
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without surprise, we meet with
ideas which we flatter ourselves originated in our own times." This
remark, uttered in relation to the scientific writings of the Saracens, would
apply still better to the more secret Treatises of the ancients. Modern
medicine, while it has gained largely in anatomy, physiology, and pathology,
and even in therapeutics, has lost immensely by its narrowness of spirit, its
rigid materialism, its sectarian dogmatism. One school in its purblindness
sternly ignores whatever is developed by other schools; and all unite in
ignoring every grand conception of man or nature, developed by Mesmerism, or by
American experiments on the brain -- every principle which does not conform to
a stolid materialism. It would require a convocation of the hostile physicians
of the several different schools to bring together what is now known of medical
science, and it too often happens that after the best practitioners have vainly
exhausted their art upon a patient, a mesmerist or a "healing medium"
will effect a cure! The explorers of old medical literature, from the time of
Hippocrates to that of Paracelsus and Van Helmont, will find a vast number of
well-attested physiological and psychological facts and of measures or medicines
for healing the sick which modern physicians superciliously refuse to employ.*
Even with respect to surgery, modern practitioners have humbly and publicly
confessed the total impossibility of their approximating to anything like the
marvellous skill displayed in the art of bandaging by ancient Egyptians. The
many hundred yards of ligature enveloping a mummy from its ears down to every
separate toe, were studied by the chief surgical operators in Paris, and,
notwithstanding that the models were before their eyes, they were unable to
accomplish anything like it.
In the Abbott Egyptological
collection, in New York City, may be seen numerous evidences of the skill of
the ancients in various handicrafts; among others the art of lace-making; and,
as it could hardly be expected but that the signs of woman's vanity should go
side by side with
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In some respects our modern
philosophers, who think they make new discoveries can be compared to "the
very clever, learned, and civil gentleman" whom Hippocrates having met at
Samos one day, describes very good-naturedly. "He informed me," the
Father of Medicine proceeds to say, "that he had lately discovered an herb
never before known in Europe or Asia, and that no disease, however malignant or
chronic, could resist its marvellous properties. Wishing to be civil in turn, I
permitted myself to be persuaded to accompany him to the conservatory in which
he had transplanted the wonderful specific. What I found was one of the
commonest plants in Greece, namely, garlic -- the plant which above all others
has least pretensions to healing virtues." Hippocrates: "De optima
praedicandi ratione item judicii operum magni." I.
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SUN.
those of man's strength, there
are also specimens of artificial hair, and gold ornaments of different kinds.
The New York Tribune, reviewing the contents of the Ebers Papyrus, says: --
"Verily, there is no new thing under the sun. . . . Chapters 65, 66, 79,
and 89 show that hair invigorators, hair dyes, pain-killers, and flea-powders
were desiderata 3,400 years ago."
How few of our recent alleged
discoveries are in reality new, and how many belong to the ancients, is again
most fairly and eloquently though but in part stated by our eminent
philosophical writer, Professor John W. Draper. His Conflict between Religion
and Science -- a great book with a very bad title -- swarms with such facts. At
page 13, he cites a few of the achievements of ancient philosophers, which
excited the admiration of Greece. In Babylon was a series of Chaldean
astronomical observations, ranging back through nineteen hundred and three
years, which Callisthenes sent to Aristotle. Ptolemy, the Egyptian
king-astronomer possessed a Babylonian record of eclipses going back seven
hundred and forty-seven years before our era. As Prof. Draper truly remarks: "Long-continued
and close observations were necessary before some of these astronomical results
that have reached our times could have been ascertained. Thus, the Babylonians
had fixed the length of a tropical year within twenty-five seconds of the
truth; their estimate of the sidereal year was barely two minutes in excess.
They had detected the precession of the equinoxes. They knew the causes of
eclipses, and, by the aid of their cycle, called saros, could predict them.
Their estimate of the value of that cycle, which is more than 6,585 days, was
within nineteen and a half minutes of the truth."
"Such facts furnish
incontrovertible proof of the patience and skill with which astronomy had been
cultivated in Mesopotamia, and that, with very inadequate instrumental means,
it had reached no inconsiderable perfection. These old observers had made a
catalogue of the stars, had divided the zodiac into twelve signs; they had
parted the day into twelve hours, the night into twelve. They had, as Aristotle
says, for a long time devoted themselves to observations of star-occultations
by the moon. They had correct views of the structure of the solar system, and
knew the order of emplacement of the planets. They constructed sundials,
clepsydras, astrolabes, gnomons."
Speaking of the world of
eternal truths that lies "within the world of transient delusions and
unrealities," Professor Draper says: "That world is not to be
discovered through the vain traditions that have brought down to us the opinion
of men who lived in the morning of civilization, nor in the dreams of mystics
who thought that they were inspired. It is to be
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discovered by the
investigations of geometry, and by the practical interrogations of
nature."
Precisely. The issue could not
be better stated. This eloquent writer tells us a profound truth. He does not, however,
tell us the whole truth, because he does not know it. He has not described the
nature or extent of the knowledge imparted in the Mysteries. No subsequent
people has been so proficient in geometry as the builders of the Pyramids and
other Titanic monuments, antediluvian and postdiluvian. On the other hand, none
has ever equalled them in the practical interrogation of nature.
An undeniable proof of this is
the significance of their countless symbols. Every one of these symbols is an
embodied idea, -- combining the conception of the Divine Invisible with the
earthly and visible. The former is derived from the latter strictly through
analogy according to the hermetic formula -- "as below, so it is
above." Their symbols show great knowledge of natural sciences and a
practical study of cosmical power.
As to practical results to be
obtained by "the investigations of geometry," very fortunately for
students who are coming upon the stage of action, we are no longer forced to
content ourselves with mere conjectures. In our own times, an American, Mr.
George H. Felt, of New York, who, if he continues as he has begun, may one day
be recognized as the greatest geometer of the age, has been enabled, by the
sole help of the premises established by the ancient Egyptians, to arrive at
results which we will give in his own language. "Firstly," says Mr.
Felt, "the fundamental diagram to which all science of elementary
geometry, both plane and solid, is referable; to produce arithmetical systems
of proportion in a geometrical manner; to identify this figure with all the
remains of architecture and sculpture, in all which it had been followed in a
marvellously exact manner; to determine that the Egyptians had used it as the
basis of all their astronomical calculations, on which their religious
symbolism was almost entirely founded; to find its traces among all the
remnants of art and architecture of the Greeks; to discover its traces so
strongly among the Jewish sacred records, as to prove conclusively that it was
founded thereon; to find that the whole system had been discovered by the
Egyptians after researches of tens of thousands of years into the laws of
nature, and that it might truly be called the science of the Universe."
Further it enabled him "to determine with precision problems in physiology
heretofore only surmised; to first develop such a Masonic philosophy as showed
it to be conclusively the first science and religion, as it will be the
last"; and we may add, lastly, to prove by ocular demonstrations that the
Egyptian sculptors and architects ob-
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tained the models for the
quaint figures which adorn the facades and vestibules of their temples, not in
the disordered fantasies of their own brains, but from the "viewless races
of the air," and other kingdoms of nature, whom he, like them, claims to
make visible by resort to their own chemical and kabalistical processes.
Schweigger proves that the
symbols of all the mythologies have a scientific foundation and substance.* It
is only through recent discoveries of the physical electro-magnetical powers of
nature that such experts in Mesmerism as Ennemoser, Schweigger and Bart, in
Germany, Baron Du Potet and Regazzoni, in France and Italy, were enabled to
trace with almost faultless accuracy the true relation which each Theomythos
bore to some one of these powers. The Idaeic finger, which had such importance
in the magic art of healing, means an iron finger, which is attracted and
repulsed in turn by magnetic, natural forces. It produced, in Samothrace,
wonders of healing by restoring affected organs to their normal condition.
Bart goes deeper than Schweigger
into the significations of the old myths, and studies the subject from both its
spiritual and physical aspects. He treats at length of the Phrygian Dactyls,
those "magicians and exorcists of sickness," and of the Cabeirian
Theurgists. He says: "While we treat of the close union of the Dactyls and
magnetic forces, we are not necessarily confined to the magnetic stone, and our
views of nature but take a glance at magnetism in its whole meaning. Then it is
clear how the initiated, who called themselves Dactyls, created astonishment in
the people through their magic arts, working as they did, miracles of a healing
nature. To this united themselves many other things which the priesthood of
antiquity was wont to practice; the cultivation of the land and of morals, the
advancement of art and science, mysteries, and secret consecrations. All this
was done by the priestly Cabeirians, and wherefore not guided and supported by
the mysterious spirits of nature?"** Schweigger is of the same opinion,
and demonstrates that the phenomena of ancient Theurgy were produced by
magnetic powers "under the guidance of spirits."
Despite their apparent
Polytheism, the ancients -- those of the educated class at all events -- were
entirely monotheistical; and this, too, ages upon ages before the days of
Moses. In the Ebers Papyrus this fact is shown conclusively in the following
words, translated from the first four lines of Plate I.: "I came from
Heliopolis with the great ones from
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Schweigger:
"Introduction to Mythology through Natural History."
** Ennemoser: "History of
Magic," i, 3.
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Het-aat, the Lords of
Protection, the masters of eternity and salvation. I came from Sais with the
Mother-goddesses, who extended to me protection. The Lord of the Universe told
me how to free the gods from all murderous diseases." Eminent men were
called gods by the ancients. The deification of mortal men and supposititious
gods is no more a proof against their monotheism than the monument-building of
modern Christians, who erect statues to their heroes, is proof of their
polytheism. Americans of the present century would consider it absurd in their
posterity 3,000 years hence to classify them as idolaters for having built
statues to their god Washington. So shrouded in mystery was the Hermetic
Philosophy that Volney asserted that the ancient peoples worshipped their gross
material symbols as divine in themselves; whereas these were only considered as
representing esoteric principles. Dupuis, also, after devoting many years of
study to the problem, mistook the symbolic circle, and attributed their
religion solely to astronomy. Eberhart (Berliner Monatschrift) and many other
German writers of the last and present centuries, dispose of magic most
unceremoniously, and think it due to the Platonic mythos of the Timaeus. But
how, without possessing a knowledge of the mysteries, was it possible for these
men or any others not endowed with the finer intuition of a Champollion, to
discover the esoteric half of that which was concealed, behind the veil of
Isis, from all except the adepts?
The merit of Champollion as an
Egyptologist none will question. He declares that everything demonstrates the
ancient Egyptians to have been profoundly monotheistical. The accuracy of the
writings of the mysterious Hermes Trismegistus, whose antiquity runs back into
the night of time, is corroborated by him to their minutest details. Ennemoser
also says: "Into Egypt and the East went Herodotus, Thales, Parmenides,
Empedocles, Orpheus, and Pythagoras, to instruct themselves in Natural Philosophy
and Theology." There, too, Moses acquired his wisdom, and Jesus passed the
earlier years of his life.
Thither gathered the students
of all countries before Alexandria was founded. "How comes it,"
Ennemoser goes on to say, "that so little has become known of these
mysteries? through so many ages and amongst so many different times and people?
The answer is that it is owing to the universally strict silence of the
initiated. Another cause may be found in the destruction and total loss of all
the written memorials of the secret knowledge of the remotest antiquity."
Numa's books, described by Livy, consisting of treatises upon natural
philosophy, were found in his tomb; but they were not allowed to be made known,
lest they should reveal the most secret mysteries of the state religion. The
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ANTIQUITY.
senate and the tribune of the people
determined that the books themselves should be burned, which was done in
public.*
Magic was considered a divine
science which led to a participation in the attributes of Divinity itself.
"It unveils the operations of nature," says Philo Judaeus, "and
leads to the contemplation of celestial powers."** In later periods its
abuse and degeneration into sorcery made it an object of general abhorrence. We
must therefore deal with it only as it was in the remote past, during those
ages when every true religion was based on a knowledge of the occult powers of
nature. It was not the sacerdotal class in ancient Persia that established
magic, as it is commonly thought, but the Magi, who derive their name from it.
The Mobeds, priests of the Parsis -- the ancient Ghebers -- are named, even at
the present day, Magoi, in the dialect of the Pehlvi.*** Magic appeared in the
world with the earlier races of men. Cassien mentions a treatise, well-known in
the fourth and fifth centuries, which was accredited to Ham, the son of Noah,
who in his turn was reputed to have received it from Jared, the fourth
generation from Seth, the son of Adam.****
Moses was indebted for his
knowledge to the mother of the Egyptian princess, Thermuthis, who saved him
from the waters of the Nile. The wife of Pharaoh,***** Batria, was an initiate
herself, and the Jews owe to her the possession of their prophet, "learned
in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and mighty in words and deeds."******
Justin Martyr, giving as his authority Trogus Pompeius, shows Joseph as having
acquired a great knowledge in magical arts with the high priests of
Egypt.*******
The ancients knew more
concerning certain sciences than our modern savants have yet discovered.
Reluctant as many are to confess as much, it has been acknowledged by more than
one scientist. "The degree of scientific knowledge existing in an early
period of society was much greater than the moderns are willing to admit";
says Dr. A. Todd Thomson, the editor of Occult Sciences, by Salverte; "but,"
he adds, "it was confined to the temples, carefully veiled from the eyes
of the people and opposed only to the priesthood." Speaking of the Kabala,
the learned Franz von Baader remarks that "not only our salvation and
wisdom, but our science itself came to us from the Jews." But why not
complete the sentence and tell the reader from whom the Jews got their wisdom?
Origen, who had belonged to
the Alexandrian school of Platonists,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Hist. of Magic,"
vol. i, p. 3.
** Philo Jud.: "De
Specialibus Legibus."
*** Zend-Avesta, vol. ii., p.
506.
**** Cassian:
"Conference," i., 21.
***** "De Vita et Morte
Mosis," p. 199.
****** Acts of the Apostles,
vii., 22.
******* Justin, xxxvi., 2.
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declares that Moses, besides
the teachings of the covenant, communicated some very important secrets
"from the hidden depths of the law" to the seventy elders. These he
enjoined them to impart only to persons whom they found worthy.
St. Jerome names the Jews of
Tiberias and Lydda as the only teachers of the mystical manner of
interpretation. Finally, Ennemoser expresses a strong opinion that "the
writings of Dionysius Areopagita have palpably been grounded on the Jewish
Kabala." When we take in consideration that the Gnostics, or early
Christians, were but the followers of the old Essenes under a new name, this
fact is nothing to be wondered at. Professor Molitor gives the Kabala its just
due. He says:
"The age of inconsequence
and shallowness, in theology as well as in sciences, is past, and since that
revolutionary rationalism has left nothing behind but its own emptiness, after
having destroyed everything positive, it seems now to be the time to direct our
attention anew to that mysterious revelation which is the living spring whence
our salvation must come . . . the Mysteries of ancient Israel, which contain
all secrets of modern Israel, would be particularly calculated to . . . found
the fabric of theology upon its deepest theosophical principles, and to gain a
firm basis to all ideal sciences. It would open a new path . . . to the obscure
labyrinth of the myths, mysteries and constitutions of primitive nations. . . .
In these traditions alone are contained the system of the schools of the
prophets, which the prophet Samuel did not found, but only restored, whose end
was no other than to lead the scholars to wisdom and the highest knowledge, and
when they had been found worthy, to induct them into deeper mysteries. Classed
with these mysteries was magic, which was of a double nature -- divine magic,
and evil magic, or the black art. Each of these is again divisible into two
kinds, the active and seeing; in the first, man endeavors to place himself en
rapport with the world to learn hidden things; in the latter he endeavors to
gain power over spirits; in the former, to perform good and beneficial acts; in
the latter to do all kinds of diabolical and unnatural deeds."*
The clergy of the three most
prominent Christian bodies, the Greek, Roman Catholic, and Protestant,
discountenance every spiritual phenomenon manifesting itself through the
so-called "mediums." A very brief period, indeed, has elapsed since
both the two latter ecclesiastical corporations burned, hanged, and otherwise
murdered every helpless victim through whose organism spirits -- and sometimes
blind and as yet unex-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Molitor: "Philosophy of
History and Traditions," Howitt's Translation, p. 285.
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ROME.
plained forces of nature --
manifested themselves. At the head of these three churches, pre-eminent stands
the Church of Rome. Her hands are scarlet with the innocent blood of countless
victims shed in the name of the Moloch-like divinity at the head of her creed.
She is ready and eager to begin again. But she is bound hand and foot by that
nineteenth century spirit of progress and religious freedom which she reviles
and blasphemes daily. The Graeco-Russian Church is the most amiable and
Christ-like in her primitive, simple, though blind faith. Despite the fact that
there has been no practical union between the Greek and Latin Churches, and
that the two parted company long centuries ago, the Roman Pontiffs seem to
invariably ignore the fact. They have in the most impudent manner possible
arrogated to themselves jurisdiction not only over the countries within the
Greek communion but also over all Protestants as well. "The Church
insists," says Professor Draper, "that the state has no rights over
any thing which it declares to be within its domain, and that Protestantism
being a mere rebellion, has no rights at all; that even in Protestant
communities the Catholic bishop is the only lawful spiritual pastor."*
Decrees unheeded, encyclical letters unread, invitations to ecumenical councils
unnoticed, excommunications laughed at -- all these have seemed to make no
difference. Their persistence has only been matched by their effrontery. In
1864, the culmination of absurdity was attained when Pius IX. excommunicated
and fulminated publicly his anathemas against the Russian Emperor, as a
"schismatic cast out from the bosom of the Holy Mother Church."**
Neither he nor his ancestors, nor Russia since it was Christianized, a thousand
years ago, have ever consented to join the Roman Catholics. Why not claim
ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the Buddhists of Thibet, or the shadows of the
ancient Hyk-Sos?
The mediumistic phenomena have
manifested themselves at all times in Russia as well as in other countries.
This force ignores religious differences; it laughs at nationalities; and
invades unasked any individuality, whether of a crowned head or a poor beggar.
Not even the present Vice-God,
Pius IX., himself, could avoid the unwelcome guest. For the last fifty years
his Holiness has been known to be subject to very extraordinary fits. Inside
the Vatican they are termed Divine visions; outside, physicians call them
epileptic fits; and popular rumor attributes them to an obsession by the ghosts
of Peruggia, Castelfidardo, and Mentana!
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Conflict between
Religion and Science," p. 329.
** See "Gazette du
Midi," and "Le Monde," of 3 May, 1864.
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"The lights burn blue: it
is now dead midnight,
Cold fearful drops stand on my
trembling flesh,
Methought the souls of all
that I caused to be murdered
Came. . . ." *
The Prince of Hohenlohe, so
famous during the first quarter of our century for his healing powers, was
himself a great medium. Indeed, these phenomena and powers belong to no
particular age or country. They form a portion of the psychological attributes
of man -- the Microcosmos.
For centuries have the
Klikouchy,** the Yourodevoy,*** and other miserable creatures been afflicted
with strange disorders, which the Russian clergy and the populace attribute to
possession by the devil. They throng the entrances of the cathedrals, without
daring to trust themselves inside, lest their self-willed controlling demons
might fling them on the ground. Voroneg, Kiew, Kazan, and all cities which possess
the thaumaturgical relics of canonized saints, abound with such unconscious
mediums. One can always find numbers of them, congregating in hideous groups,
and hanging about the gates and porches. At certain stages of the celebration
of the mass by the officiating clergy, such as the appearance of the
sacraments, or the beginning of the prayer and chorus, "Ejey
Cherouvim," these half-maniacs, half-mediums, begin crowing like cocks,
barking, bellowing and braying, and, finally, fall down in fearful convulsions.
"The unclean one cannot bear the holy prayer," is the pious
explanation. Moved by pity, some charitable souls administer restoratives to
the "afflicted ones," and distribute alms among them. Occasionally, a
priest is invited to exorcise, in which event he either performs the ceremony
for the sake of love and charity, or the alluring prospect of a twenty-copeck
silver bit, according to his Christian impulses. But these miserable creatures
-- who are mediums, for they prophesy and see visions sometimes, when the fit
is genuine**** -- are never molested because of their misfortune. Why should
the clergy persecute them, or people hate and denounce them as damnable witches
or wizards? Common sense and justice surely suggest that if any are to be
punished it is certainly not the victims who cannot help themselves, but the
demon who is alleged to control their actions. The worst that happens to the
patient is, that the priest inundates him or her with holy water, and causes
the poor creature to catch cold. This failing in efficacy, the Klikoucha is
left to the will
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Shakespere: "Richard
III."
** Literally, the screaming or
the howling ones.
*** The half-demented, the
idiots.
**** But such is not always
the case, for some among these beggars make a regular and profitable trade of
it.
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SUN.
of God, and taken care of in
love and pity. Superstitious and blind as it is, a faith conducted on such
principles certainly deserves some respect, and can never be offensive, either
to man or the true God. Not so with that of the Roman Catholics; and hence, it
is they, and secondarily, the Protestant clergy -- with the exception of some
foremost thinkers among them -- that we purpose questioning in this work. We
want to know upon what grounds they base their right to treat Hindus and
Chinese spiritualists and kabalists in the way they do; denouncing them, in
company with the infidels -- creatures of their own making -- as so many
convicts sentenced to the inextinguishable fires of hell.
Far from us be the thought of
the slightest irreverence -- let alone blasphemy -- toward the Divine Power
which called into being all things, visible and invisible. Of its majesty and
boundless perfection we dare not even think. It is enough for us to know that
It exists and that It is all wise. Enough that in common with our fellow
creatures we possess a spark of Its essence. The supreme power whom we revere
is the boundless and endless one -- the grand "CENTRAL SPIRITUAL SUN"
by whose attributes and the visible effects of whose inaudible WILL we are
surrounded -- the God of the ancient and the God of modern seers. His nature
can be studied only in the worlds called forth by his mighty FIAT. His
revelation is traced with his own finger in imperishable figures of universal
harmony upon the face of the Cosmos. It is the only INFALLIBLE gospel we
recognize.
Speaking of ancient
geographers, Plutarch remarks in Theseus, that they "crowd into the edges
of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in
the margin to the effect that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full
of wild beasts and unapproachable bogs." Do not our theologians and
scientists do the same? While the former people the invisible world with either
angels or devils, our philosophers try to persuade their disciples that where
there is no matter there is nothing.
How many of our inveterate
skeptics belong, notwithstanding their materialism, to Masonic Lodges? The
brothers of the Rosie-Cross, mysterious practitioners of the mediaeval ages,
still live -- but in name only. They may "shed tears at the grave of their
respectable Master, Hiram Abiff "; but vainly will they search for the
true locality, "where the sprig of myrtle was placed." The dead
letter remains alone, the spirit has fled. They are like the English or German
chorus of the Italian opera, who descend in the fourth act of Ernani into the
crypt of Charlemagne, singing their conspiracy in a tongue utterly unknown to
them. So, our modern knights of the Sacred Arch may descend every night if they
choose
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"through the nine arches
into the bowels of the earth," -- they "will never discover the
sacred Delta of Enoch." The "Sir Knights in the South Valley"
and those in "the North Valley" may try to assure themselves that
"enlightenment dawns upon their minds," and that as they progress in
Masonry "the veil of superstition, despotism, tyranny" and so on, no
longer obscures the visions of their minds. But these are all empty words so
long as they neglect their mother Magic, and turn their backs upon its twin
sister, Spiritualism. Verily, "Sir Knights of the Orient," you may
"leave your stations and sit upon the floor in attitudes of grief, with
your heads resting upon your hands," for you have cause to bewail and
mourn your fate. Since Philippe le Bel destroyed the Knights-Templars, not one
has appeared to clear up your doubts notwithstanding all claims to the
contrary. Truly, you are "wanderers from Jerusalem, seeking the lost
treasure of the holy place." Have you found it? Alas, no! for the holy
place is profaned; the pillars of wisdom, strength and beauty are destroyed.
Henceforth, "you must wander in darkness," and "travel in
humility," among the woods and mountains in search of the "lost
word." "Pass on!" -- you will never find it so long as you limit
your journeys to seven or even seven times seven; because you are
"travelling in darkness," and this darkness can only be dispelled by
the light of the blazing torch of truth which alone the right descendants of
Ormasd carry. They alone can teach you the true pronunciation of the name
revealed to Enoch, Jacob and Moses. "Pass on! Till your R. S. W. shall
learn to multiply 333, and strike instead 666 -- the number of the Apocalyptic
Beast, you may just as well observe prudence and act "sub rosa."
In order to demonstrate that
the notions which the ancients entertained about dividing human history into
cycles were not utterly devoid of a philosophical basis, we will close this
chapter by introducing to the reader one of the oldest traditions of antiquity
as to the evolution of our planet.
At the close of each
"great year," called by Aristotle -- according to Censorinus -- the
greatest, and which consists of six sars* our planet is subjected to a thorough
physical revolution. The polar and equatorial climates gradually exchange
places; the former moving slowly toward the Line, and the tropical zone, with
its exuberant vegetation and swarming animal life, replacing the forbidding
wastes of the icy poles. This
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Webster declares very
erroneously that the Chaldeans called saros, the cycle of eclipses, a period of
about 6,586 years, "the time of revolution of the moon's node."
Berosus, himself a Chaldean astrologer, at the Temple of Belus, at Babylon,
gives the duration of the sar, or sarus, 3,600 years; a neros 600; and a sossus
60. (See, Berosus from Abydenus, "Of the Chaldaean Kings and the
Deluge." See also Eusebius, and Cory's MS. Ex. Cod. reg. gall. gr. No.
2360, fol. 154.)
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KALPAS.
change of climate is
necessarily attended by cataclysms, earthquakes, and other cosmical throes.* As
the beds of the ocean are displaced, at the end of every decimillennium and
about one neros, a semi-universal deluge like the legendary Noachian flood is
brought about. This year was called the Heliacal by the Greeks; but no one
outside the sanctuary knew anything certain either as to its duration or
particulars. The winter of this year was called the Cataclysm or the Deluge, --
the Summer, the Ecpyrosis. The popular traditions taught that at these
alternate seasons the world was in turn burned and deluged. This is what we
learn at least from the Astronomical Fragments of Censorinus and Seneca. So
uncertain were the commentators about the length of this year, that none except
Herodotus and Linus, who assigned to it, the former 10,800, and the latter
13,984, came near the truth.** According to the claims of the Babylonian
priests, corroborated by Eupolemus,*** "the city of Babylon, owes its
foundation to those who were saved from the catastrophe of the deluge; they
were the giants and they built the tower which is noticed in history."****
These giants who were great astrologers and had received moreover from their
fathers, "the sons of God," every instruction pertaining to secret
matters, instructed the priests in their turn, and left in the temples all the
records of the periodical cataclysm that they had witnessed themselves. This is
how the high priests came by the knowledge of the great years. When we
remember, moreover, that Plato in the Timaeus cites the old Egyptian priest
rebuking Solon for his ignorance of the fact that there were several such
deluges as the great one of Ogyges, we can easily ascertain that this belief in
the Heliakos was a doctrine held by the initiated priests the world over.
The Neroses, the Vrihaspati,
or the periods called yugas or kalpas, are life-problems to solve. The
Satya-yug and Buddhistic cycles of chronology would make a mathematician stand
aghast at the array of ciphers. The Maha-kalpa embraces an untold number of
periods far
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Before scientists reject
such a theory -- traditional as it is -- it would be in order for them to
demonstrate why, at the end of the tertiary period, the Northern Hemisphere had
undergone such a reduction of temperature as to utterly change the torrid zone
to a Siberian climate? Let us bear in mind that the heliocentric system came to
us from upper India; and that the germs of all great astronomical truths were
brought thence by Pythagoras. So long as we lack a mathematically correct demonstration,
one hypothesis is as good as another.
** Censorinus: "De Natal
Die." Seneca: "Nat. Quaest.," iii., 29.
*** Euseb.: "Praep.
Evan." Of the Tower of Babel and Abraham.
**** This is in flat
contradiction of the Bible narrative, which tells us that the deluge was sent
for the special destruction of these giants. The Babylon priests had no object
to invent lies.
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back in the antediluvian ages.
Their system comprises a kalpa or grand period of 4,320,000,000 years, which
they divide into four lesser yugas, running as follows:
1st. -- Satya yug -- 1,728,000
years.
2d. -- Tretya yug -- 1,296,000
years.
3d. -- Dvapa yug ---- 864,000
years.
4th. -- Kali yug ------
432,000 years.
Total -------------- 4,320,000
years.
which make one divine age or
Maha-yug; seventy-one Maha-yugs make 306,720,000 years, to which is added a
sandhi (or the time when day and night border on each other, morning and
evening twilight), equal to a Satya-yug, 1,728,000, make a manwantara of
308,448,000 years;* fourteen manwantaras make 4,318,272,000 years; to which
must be added a sandhi to begin the kalpa, 1,728,000 years, making the kalpa or
grand period of 4,320,000,000 of years. As we are now only in the Kali-yug of
the twenty-eighth age of the seventh manwantara of 308,448,000 years, we have
yet sufficient time before us to wait before we reach even half of the time
allotted to the world.
These ciphers are not
fanciful, but founded upon actual astronomical calculations, as has been
demonstrated by S. Davis.** Many a scientist, Higgins among others,
notwithstanding their researches, has been utterly perplexed as to which of
these was the secret cycle. Bunsen has demonstrated that the Egyptian priests,
who made the cyclic notations, kept them always in the profoundest mystery.***
Perhaps their difficulty arose from the fact that the calculations of the
ancients applied equally to the spiritual progress of humanity as to the
physical. It will not be difficult to understand the close correspondence drawn
by the ancients between the cycles of nature and of mankind, if we keep in mind
their belief in the constant and all-potent influences of the planets upon the
fortunes of humanity. Higgins justly believed that the cycle of the Indian
system, of 432,000, is the true key of the secret cycle. But his failure in
trying to decipher it was made apparent; for as it pertained to the mystery of
the creation, this cycle was the most inviolable of all. It was repeated in
symbolic figures only in the Chaldean Book of Numbers, the original of which,
if
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Coleman, who makes this
calculation, allowed a serious error to escape the proofreader; the length of
the manwantara is given at 368,448,000, which is just sixty million years too
much.
** S. Davis: "Essay in
the Asiatic Researches"; and Higgins's "Anacalypsis"; also see
Coleman's "Mythology of the Hindus." Preface, p. xiii.
*** Bunsen:
"Egypte," vol. i.
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NEROS.
now extant, is certainly not
to be found in libraries, as it formed one of the most ancient Books of
Hermes,* the number of which is at present undetermined.
Calculating by the secret
period of the Great Neros and the Hindu Kalpas, some kabalists, mathematicians
and archeologists who knew naught of the secret computations made the above
number of 21,000 years to be 24,000 years, for the length of the great year, as
it was to the renewal only of our globe that they thought the last period of
6,000 years applied. Higgins gives as a reason for it, that it was anciently
thought that the equinoxes preceded only after the rate of 2,000, not 2,160,
years in a sign; for thus it would allow for the length of the great year four times
6,000 or 24,000 years. "Hence," he says, "might arise their
immensely-lengthened cycles; because, it would be the same with this great year
as with the common year, till it travelled round an immensely-lengthened
circle, when it would come to the old point again." He therefore accounts
for the 24,000 in the following manner: "If the angle which the plane of
the ecliptic makes with the plane of the equator had decreased gradually and
regularly, as it was till very lately supposed to do, the two planes would have
coincided in about ten ages, 6,000 years;
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The forty-two Sacred Books
of the Egyptians mentioned by Clement of Alexandria as having existed in his
time, were but a portion of the Books of Hermes. Iamblichus, on the authority
of the Egyptian priest Abammon, attributes 1200 of such books to Hermes, and
Manetho 36,000. But the testimony of Iamblichus as a neo-Platonist and
theurgist is of course rejected by modern critics. Manetho, who is held by
Bunsen in the highest consideration as a "purely historical
personage" . . . with whom "none of the later native historians can
be compared . . . ." (See "Egypte," i, p. 97), suddenly becomes
a Pseudo-Manetho, as soon as the ideas propounded by him clash with the
scientific prejudices against magic and the occult knowledge claimed by the
ancient priests. However, none of the archeologists doubt for a moment the
almost incredible antiquity of the Hermetic books. Champollion shows the
greatest regard for their authenticity and great truthfulness, corroborated as
it is by many of the oldest monuments. And Bunsen brings irrefutable proofs of
their age. From his researches, for instance, we learn that there was a line of
sixty-one kings before the days of Moses, who preceded the Mosaic period by a
clearly-traceable civilization of several thousand years. Thus we are warranted
in believing that the works of Hermes Trismegistus were extant many ages before
the birth of the Jewish law-giver. "Styli and inkstands were found on
monuments of the fourth Dynasty, the oldest in the world," says Bunsen. If
the eminent Egyptologist rejects the period of 48,863 years before Alexander,
to which Diogenes Laertius carries back the records of the priests, he is evidently
more embarrassed with the ten thousand of astronomical observations, and
remarks that "if they were actual observations, they must have extended
over 10,000 years" (p. 14). "We learn, however," he adds,
"from one of their own old chronological works . . . that the genuine
Egyptian traditions concerning the mythological period, treated of myriads of
years." ("Egypte," i, p. 15).
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in ten ages, 6,000 years more,
the sun would have been situated relatively to the Southern Hemisphere as he is
now to the Northern; in ten ages, 6,000 years more, the two planes would
coincide again; and, in ten ages, 6,000 years more, he would be situated as he
is now, after a lapse of about twenty-four or twenty-five thousand years in
all. When the sun arrived at the equator, the ten ages or six thousand years
would end, and the world would be destroyed by fire; when he arrived at the
southern point, it would be destroyed by water. And thus, it would be destroyed
at the end of every 6,000 years, or ten neroses."*
This method of calculating by
the neroses, without allowing any consideration for the secrecy in which the
ancient philosophers, who were exclusively of the sacerdotal order, held their
knowledge, gave rise to the greatest errors. It led the Jews, as well as some
of the Christian Platonists, to maintain that the world would be destroyed at
the end of six thousand years. Gale shows how firmly this belief was rooted in
the Jews. It has also led modern scientists to discredit entirely the
hypothesis of the ancients. It has given rise to the formation of different
religious sects, which, like the Adventists of our century, are always living
in the expectation of the approaching destruction of the world.
As our planet revolves once
every year around the sun and at the same time turns once in every twenty-four
hours upon its own axis, thus traversing minor circles within a larger one, so
is the work of the smaller cyclic periods accomplished and recommenced, within
the Great Saros.
The revolution of the physical
world, according to the ancient doctrine, is attended by a like revolution in
the world of intellect -- the spiritual evolution of the world proceeding in
cycles, like the physical one.
Thus we see in history a
regular alternation of ebb and flow in the tide of human progress. The great
kingdoms and empires of the world, after reaching the culmination of their
greatness, descend again, in accordance with the same law by which they
ascended; till, having reached the lowest point, humanity reasserts itself and
mounts up once more, the height of its attainment being, by this law of
ascending progression by cycles, somewhat higher than the point from which it
had before descended.
The division of the history of
mankind into Golden, Silver, Copper and Iron Ages, is not a fiction. We see the
same thing in the literature of peoples. An age of great inspiration and
unconscious productiveness is invariably followed by an age of criticism and
consciousness. The one affords material for the analyzing and critical
intellect of the other.
Thus, all those great
characters who tower like giants in the history of mankind, like
Buddha-Siddartha, and Jesus, in the realm of spiritual, and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Higgins:
"Anacalypsis."
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PROTOTYPES.
Alexander the Macedonian and
Napoleon the Great, in the realm of physical conquests, were but reflexed
images of human types which had existed ten thousand years before, in the
preceding decimillennium, reproduced by the mysterious powers controlling the
destinies of our world. There is no prominent character in all the annals of
sacred or profane history whose prototype we cannot find in the half-fictitious
and half-real traditions of bygone religions and mythologies. As the star,
glimmering at an immeasurable distance above our heads, in the boundless
immensity of the sky, reflects itself in the smooth waters of a lake, so does
the imagery of men of the antediluvian ages reflect itself in the periods we
can embrace in an historical retrospect.
"As above, so it is
below. That which has been, will return again. As in heaven, so on earth."
The world is always ungrateful
to its great men. Florence has built a statue to Galileo, but hardly even
mentions Pythagoras. The former had a ready guide in the treatises of
Copernicus, who had been obliged to contend against the universally established
Ptolemaic system. But neither Galileo nor modern astronomy discovered the
emplacement of the planetary bodies. Thousands of ages before, it was taught by
the sages of Middle Asia, and brought thence by Pythagoras, not as a
speculation, but as a demonstrated science. "The numerals of Pythagoras,"
says Porphyry, "were hieroglyphical symbols, by means whereof he explained
all ideas concerning the nature of all things."*
Verily, then, to antiquity
alone have we to look for the origin of all things. How well Hargrave Jennings
expresses himself when speaking of Pyramids, and how true are his words when he
asks: "Is it at all reasonable to conclude, at a period when knowledge was
at the highest, and when the human powers were, in comparison with ours at the
present time, prodigious, that all these indomitable, scarcely believable
physical effects -- that such achievements as those of the Egyptians -- were
devoted to a mistake? that the myriads of the Nile were fools laboring in the
dark, and that all the magic of their great men was forgery, and that we, in
despising that which we call their superstition and wasted power, are alone the
wise? No! there is much more in these old religions than probably -- in the
audacity of modern denial, in the confidence of these superficial-science
times, and in the derision of these days without faith -- is in the least
degree supposed. We do not understand the old time. . . . . Thus we see how
classic practice and heathen teaching may be made to reconcile -- how even the
Gentile and the Hebrew, the mytho-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "De Vite Pythag."
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logical and the Christian
doctrine harmonize in the general faith founded on Magic. That Magic is indeed
possible is the moral of this book."*
It is possible. Thirty years
ago, when the first rappings of Rochester awakened slumbering attention to the
reality of an invisible world; when the gentle shower of raps gradually became
a torrent which overflowed the whole globe, spiritualists had to contend but
against two potencies -- theology and science. But the theosophists have, in
addition to these, to meet the world at large and the spiritualists first of
all.
"There is a personal God,
and there is a personal Devil!" thunders the Christian preacher. "Let
him be anathema who dares say nay!" "There is no personal God, except
the gray matter in our brain," contemptuously replies the materialist.
"And there is no Devil. Let him be considered thrice an idiot who says
aye." Meanwhile the occultists and true philosophers heed neither of the
two combatants, but keep perseveringly at their work. None of them believe in
the absurd, passionate, and fickle God of superstition, but all of them believe
in good and evil. Our human reason, the emanation of our finite mind, is
certainly incapable of comprehending a divine intelligence, an endless and
infinite entity; and, according to strict logic, that which transcends our
understanding and would remain thoroughly incomprehensible to our senses cannot
exist for us; hence, it does not exist. So far finite reason agrees with
science, and says: "There is no God." But, on the other hand, our
Ego, that which lives and thinks and feels independently of us in our mortal
casket, does more than believe. It knows that there exists a God in nature, for
the sole and invincible Artificer of all lives in us as we live in Him. No
dogmatic faith or exact science is able to uproot that intuitional feeling
inherent in man, when he has once fully realized it in himself.
Human nature is like universal
nature in its abhorrence of a vacuum. It feels an intuitional yearning for a
Supreme Power. Without a God, the cosmos would seem to it but like a soulless
corpse. Being forbidden to search for Him where alone His traces would be
found, man filled the aching void with the personal God whom his spiritual
teachers built up for him from the crumbling ruins of heathen myths and hoary
philosophies of old. How otherwise explain the mushroom growth of new sects,
some of them absurd beyond degree? Mankind have one innate, irrepressible
craving, that must be satisfied in any religion that would supplant the
dogmatic, undemonstrated and undemonstrable theology of our Christian ages.
This is the yearning after the proofs of immortality. As Sir Thomas Browne has
expressed it: . . . . "it is the heaviest stone that
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The
Rosicrucians," etc., by Hargrave Jennings.
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IMMORTALITY.
melancholy can throw at a man,
to tell him that he is at the end of his nature, or that there is no future
state to come, unto which this seems progressive, and otherwise made in
vain." Let any religion offer itself that can supply these proofs in the
shape of scientific facts, and the established system will be driven to the
alternative of fortifying its dogmas with such facts, or of passing out of the
reverence and affection of Christendom. Many a Christian divine has been forced
to acknowledge that there is no authentic source whence the assurance of a
future state could have been derived by man. How could then such a belief have
stood for countless ages, were it not that among all nations, whether civilized
or savage, man has been allowed the demonstrative proof? Is not the very
existence of such a belief an evidence that thinking philosopher and
unreasoning savage have both been compelled to acknowledge the testimony of
their senses? That if, in isolated instances, spectral illusion may have
resulted from physical causes, on the other hand, in thousands of instances,
apparitions of persons have held converse with several individuals at once, who
saw and heard them collectively, and could not all have been diseased in mind?
The greatest thinkers of
Greece and Rome regarded such matters as demonstrated facts. They distinguished
the apparitions by the names of manes, anima and umbra: the manes descending
after the decease of the individual into the Underworld; the anima, or pure
spirit, ascending to heaven; and the restless umbra (earth-bound spirit),
hovering about its tomb, because the attraction of matter and love of its
earthly body prevailed in it and prevented its ascension to higher regions.
"Terra legit carnem
tumulum circumvolet umbra,
Orcus habet manes, spiritus
astra petit,"
says Ovid, speaking of the
threefold constituents of souls.
But all such definitions must
be subjected to the careful analysis of philosophy. Too many of our thinkers do
not consider that the numerous changes in language, the allegorical phraseology
and evident secretiveness of old Mystic writers, who were generally under an
obligation never to divulge the solemn secrets of the sanctuary, might have
sadly misled translators and commentators. The phrases of the mediaeval
alchemist they read literally; and even the veiled symbolology of Plato is
commonly misunderstood by the modern scholar. One day they may learn to know
better, and so become aware that the method of extreme necessarianism was
practiced in ancient as well as in modern philosophy; that from the first ages
of man, the fundamental truths of all that we are permitted to know on earth
was in the safe keeping of the adepts of the sanc-
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tuary; that the difference in
creeds and religious practice was only external; and that those guardians of
the primitive divine revelation, who had solved every problem that is within
the grasp of human intellect, were bound together by a universal freemasonry of
science and philosophy, which formed one unbroken chain around the globe. It is
for philology and psychology to find the end of the thread. That done, it will
then be ascertained that, by relaxing one single loop of the old religious
systems, the chain of mystery may be disentangled.
The neglect and withholding of
these proofs have driven such eminent minds as Hare and Wallace, and other men
of power, into the fold of modern spiritualism. At the same time it has forced
others, congenitally devoid of spiritual intuitions, into a gross materialism
that figures under various names.
But we see no utility in
prosecuting the subject further. For, though in the opinion of most of our
contemporaries, there has been but one day of learning, in whose twilight stood
the older philosophers, and whose noontide brightness is all our own; and
though the testimony of scores of ancient and mediaeval thinkers has proved
valueless to modern experimenters, as though the world dated from A.D. 1, and
all knowledge were of recent growth, we will not lose hope or courage. The
moment is more opportune than ever for the review of old philosophies.
Archaeologists, philologists, astronomers, chemists and physicists are getting
nearer and nearer to the point where they will be forced to consider them.
Physical science has already reached its limits of exploration; dogmatic
theology sees the springs of its inspiration dry. Unless we mistake the signs,
the day is approaching when the world will receive the proofs that only ancient
religions were in harmony with nature, and ancient science embraced all that
can be known. Secrets long kept may be revealed; books long forgotten and arts
long time lost may be brought out to light again; papyri and parchments of
inestimable importance will turn up in the hands of men who pretend to have
unrolled them from mummies, or stumbled upon them in buried crypts; tablets and
pillars, whose sculptured revelations will stagger theologians and confound
scientists, may yet be excavated and interpreted. Who knows the possibilities
of the future? An era of disenchantment and rebuilding will soon begin -- nay,
has already begun. The cycle has almost run its course; a new one is about to
begin, and the future pages of history may contain full evidence, and convey
full proof that
"If ancestry can be in
aught believed,
Descending spirits have
conversed with man,
And told him secrets of the
world unknown."
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CHAPTER II
"Pride, where wit fails,
steps in to our defence
And fills up all the mighty
void of sense. . . . " -- POPE.
"But why should the
operations of nature be changed? There may be a deeper philosophy than we dream
of -- a philosophy that discovers the secrets of nature, but does not alter, by
penetrating them, its course." -- BULWER.
IS it enough for man to know
that he exists? Is it enough to be formed a human being to enable him to
deserve the appellation of MAN? It is our decided impression and conviction,
that to become a genuine spiritual entity, which that designation implies, man
must first create himself anew, so to speak -- i.e., thoroughly eliminate from
his mind and spirit, not only the dominating influence of selfishness and other
impurity, but also the infection of superstition and prejudice. The latter is
far different from what we commonly term antipathy or sympathy. We are at first
irresistibly or unwittingly drawn within its dark circle by that peculiar
influence, that powerful current of magnetism which emanates from ideas as well
as from physical bodies. By this we are surrounded, and finally prevented through
moral cowardice -- fear of public opinion -- from stepping out of it. It is
rare that men regard a thing in either its true or false light, accepting the
conclusion by the free action of their own judgment. Quite the reverse. The
conclusion is more commonly reached by blindly adopting the opinion current at
the hour among those with whom they associate. A church member will not pay an
absurdly high price for his pew any more than a materialist will go twice to
listen to Mr. Huxley's talk on evolution, because they think that it is right
to do so; but merely because Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so have done it, and these
personages are THE S---- AND S----'s.
The same holds good with
everything else. If psychology had had its Darwin, the descent of man as regards
moral qualities might have been found inseparably linked with that of his
physical form. Society in its servile condition suggests to the intelligent
observer of its mimicry a kinship between the Simia and human beings even more
striking than is exhibited in the external marks pointed out by the great
anthropologist.
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The many varieties of the ape
-- "mocking presentments of ourselves" -- appear to have been evolved
on purpose to supply a certain class of expensively-dressed persons with the
material for genealogical trees.
Science is daily and rapidly
moving toward the great discoveries in chemistry and physics, organology, and
anthropology. Learned men ought to be free from preconceptions and prejudices
of every kind; yet, although thought and opinion are now free, scientists are
still the same men as of old. An Utopian dreamer is he who thinks that man ever
changes with the evolution and development of new ideas. The soil may be well
fertilized and made to yield with every year a greater and better variety of
fruit; but, dig a little deeper than the stratum required for the crop, and the
same earth will be found in the subsoil as was there before the first furrow
was turned.
Not many years ago, the person
who questioned the infallibility of some theological dogma was branded at once
an iconoclast and an infidel. Vae victis! . . . Science has conquered. But in
its turn the victor claims the same infallibility, though it equally fails to
prove its right. "Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis," the
saying of the good old Lotharius, applies to the case. Nevertheless, we feel as
if we had some right to question the high-priests of science.
For many years we have watched
the development and growth of that apple of discord -- MODERN SPIRITUALISM.
Familiar with its literature both in Europe and America, we have closely and eagerly
witnessed its interminable controversies and compared its contradictory
hypotheses. Many educated men and women -- heterodox spiritualists, of course
-- have tried to fathom the Protean phenomena. The only result was that they
came to the following conclusion: whatever may be the reason of these constant
failures -- whether such are to be laid at the door of the investigators
themselves, or of the secret Force at work -- it is at least proved that, in
proportion as the psychological manifestations increase in frequency and
variety, the darkness surrounding their origin becomes more impenetrable.
That phenomena are actually
witnessed, mysterious in their nature -- generally and perhaps wrongly termed
spiritual -- it is now idle to deny. Allowing a large discount for clever
fraud, what remains is quite serious enough to demand the careful scrutiny of
science. "E pur se muove," the sentence spoken ages since, has passed
into the category of household words. The courage of Galileo is not now required
to fling it into the face of the Academy. Psychological phenomena are already
on the offensive.
The position assumed by modern
scientists is that even though the occurrence of certain mysterious phenomena
in the presence of the
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PROOF.
mediums be a fact, there is no
proof that they are not due to some abnormal nervous condition of those
individuals. The possibility that they may be produced by returning human
spirits need not be considered until the other question is decided. Little
exception can be taken to this position. Unquestionably, the burden of proof
rests upon those who assert the agency of spirits. If the scientists would
grapple with the subject in good faith, showing an earnest desire to solve the
perplexing mystery, instead of treating it with undignified and unprofessional
contempt, they would be open to no censure. True, the great majority of
"spiritual" communications are calculated to disgust investigators of
even moderate intelligence. Even when genuine they are trivial, commonplace,
and often vulgar. During the past twenty years we have received through various
mediums messages purporting to be from Shakespere, Byron, Franklin, Peter the
Great, Napoleon and Josephine, and even from Voltaire. The general impression
made upon us was that the French conqueror and his consort seemed to have
forgotten how to spell words correctly; Shakespere and Byron had become chronic
inebriates; and Voltaire had turned an imbecile. Who can blame men trained to
habits of exactitude, or even simply well-educated persons, for hastily
concluding that when so much palpable fraud lies upon the surface, there could
hardly be truth if they should go to the bottom? The huckstering about of
pompous names attached to idiotic communications has given the scientific
stomach such an indigestion that it cannot assimilate even the great truth
which lies on the telegraphic plateaux of this ocean of psychological
phenomena. They judge by its surface, covered with froth and scum. But they
might with equal propriety deny that there is any clear water in the depths of
the sea when an oily scum was floating upon the surface. Therefore, if on one
hand we cannot very well blame them for stepping back at the first sight of
what seems really repulsive, we do, and have a right to censure them for their
unwillingness to explore deeper. Neither pearls nor cut diamonds are to be
found lying loose on the ground; and these persons act as unwisely as would a
professional diver, who should reject an oyster on account of its filthy and
slimy appearance, when by opening it he might find a precious pearl inside the
shell.
Even the just and severe
rebukes of some of their leading men are of no avail and the fear on the part
of men of science to investigate such an unpopular subject, seems to have now
become a general panic. "The phenomena chase the scientists, and the
scientists run away from the phenomena," very pointedly remarks M. A. N.
Aksakof in an able article on Mediumism and the St. Petersburg Scientific
Committee. The attitude
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of this body of professors
toward the subject which they had pledged themselves to investigate was
throughout simply disgraceful. Their premature and prearranged report was so
evidently partial and inconclusive as to call out a scornful protest even from
unbelievers.
The inconsistency of the logic
of our learned gentlemen against the philosophy of spiritualism proper is
admirably pointed out by Professor John Fisk -- one of their own body. In a
recent philosophical work, The Unseen World, while showing that from the very
definition of the terms, ,matter and spirit, the existence of spirit cannot be
demonstrated to the senses, and that thus no theory is amenable to scientific
tests, he deals a severe blow at his colleagues in the following lines:
"The testimony in such a
case," he says, "must, under the conditions of the present life, be
forever inaccessible. It lies wholly outside the range of experience. However
abundant it may be, we cannot expect to meet it. And, accordingly, our failure
to produce it does not raise even the slightest presumption against our theory.
When conceived in this way, the belief in the future life is without scientific
support, but at the same time it is placed beyond the need of scientific
support and the range of scientific criticism. It is a belief which no
imaginable future advance of physical discovery can in any way impugn. It is a
belief which is in no sense irrational, and which may be logically entertained
without in the least affecting our scientific habit of mind, or influencing our
scientific conclusions." "If now," he adds, "men of science
will accept the position that spirit is not matter, nor governed by the laws of
matter, and refrain from speculations concerning it restricted by their
knowledge of material things, they will withdraw what is to men of religion, at
present, their principal cause of irritation."
But, they will do no such
thing. They feel incensed at the brave, loyal, and highly commendable surrender
of such superior men as Wallace, and refuse to accept even the prudent and
restrictive policy of Mr. Crookes.
No other claim is advanced for
a hearing of the opinions contained in the present work than that they are
based upon many years' study of both ancient magic and its modern form,
Spiritualism. The former, even now, when phenomena of the same nature have
become so familiar to all, is commonly set down as clever jugglery. The latter,
when overwhelming evidence precludes the possibility of truthfully declaring it
charlatanry, is denominated an universal hallucination.
Many years of wandering among
"heathen" and "Christian" magicians, occultists,
mesmerisers; and the tutti quanti of white and black art, ought to be
sufficient, we think, to give us a certain right to
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BARRACHIAS-HASSAN-OGLU.
feel competent to take a
practical view of this doubted and very complicated question. We have
associated with the fakirs, the holy men of India, and seen them when in
intercourse with the Pitris. We have watched the proceedings and modus operandi
of the howling and dancing dervishes; held friendly communications with the
marabouts of European and Asiatic Turkey; and the serpent-charmers of Damascus
and Benares have but few secrets that we have not had the fortune to study.
Therefore, when scientists who have never had an opportunity of living among
these oriental jugglers and can judge at the best but superficially, tell us
that there is naught in their performances but mere tricks of prestidigitation,
we cannot help feeling a profound regret for such hasty conclusions. That such
pretentious claims should be made to a thorough analysis of the powers of
nature, and at the same time such unpardonable neglect displayed of questions
of purely physiological and psychological character, and astounding phenomena
rejected without either examination or appeal, is an exhibition of
inconsistency, strongly savoring of timidity, if not of moral obliquity.
If, therefore, we should ever
receive from some contemporaneous Faraday the same fling that that gentleman
made years since, when, with more sincerity than good breeding, he said that
"many dogs have the power of coming to much more logical conclusions than
some spiritualists,"* we fear we must still persist. Abuse is not
argument, least of all, proof. Because such men as Huxley and Tyndall denominate
spiritualism "a degrading belief" and oriental magic
"jugglery," they cannot thereby take from truth its verity.
Skepticism, whether it proceeds from a scientific or an ignorant brain, is
unable to overturn the immortality of our souls -- if such immortality is a
fact -- and plunge them into post-mortem annihilation. "Reason is subject
to error," says Aristotle; so is opinion; and the personal views of the
most learned philosopher are often more liable to be proved erroneous, than the
plain common sense of his own illiterate cook. In the Tales of the Impious
Khalif, Barrachias-Hassan-Oglu, the Arabian sage holds a wise discourse:
"Beware, O my son, of self-incense," he says. "It is the most
dangerous, on account of its agreeable intoxication. Profit by thy own wisdom,
but learn to respect the wisdom of thy fathers likewise. And remember, O my
beloved, that the light of Allah's truth will often penetrate much easier an
empty head, than one that is so crammed with learning that many a silver ray is
crowded out for want of space; . . . such is the case with our over-wise
Kadi."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* W. Crookes, F.R.S.:
"Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism."
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These representatives of
modern science in both hemispheres seem never to have exhibited more scorn, or
to have felt more bitterly toward the unsolvable mystery, than since Mr.
Crookes began the investigation of the phenomena, in London. This courageous
gentleman was the first to introduce to the public one of those alleged
"materialized" sentries that guard the forbidden gates. Following
after him, several other learned members of the scientific body had the rare
integrity, combined with a degree of courage, which, in view of the
unpopularity of the subject, may be deemed heroic, to take the phenomena in
hand.
But, alas! although the spirit,
indeed, was willing, the mortal flesh proved weak. Ridicule was more than the
majority of them could bear; and so, the heaviest burden was thrown upon the
shoulders of Mr. Crookes. An account of the benefit this gentleman reaped from
his disinterested investigations, and the thanks he received from his own
brother scientists, can be found in his three pamphlets, entitled, Researches
in the Phenomena of Spiritualism.
After a while, the members
appointed on the Committee of the Dialectical Society and Mr. Crookes, who had
applied to his mediums the most crucial tests, were forced by an impatient
public to report in so many plain words what they had seen. But what could they
say, except the truth? Thus, they were compelled to acknowledge: 1st. That the
phenomena which they, at least, had witnessed, were genuine, and impossible to
simulate; thus showing that manifestations produced by some unknown force,
could and did happen. 2d. That, whether the phenomena were produced by
disembodied spirits or other analogous entities, they could not tell; but that
manifestations, thoroughly upsetting many preconceived theories as to natural
laws, did happen and were undeniable. Several of these occurred in their own
families. 3d. That, notwithstanding all their combined efforts to the contrary,
beyond the indisputable fact of the reality of the phenomena, "glimpses of
natural action not yet reduced to law,"* they, to borrow the expression of
the Count de Gabalis, "could make neither head nor tail on't."
Now this was precisely what a
skeptical public had not bargained for. The discomfiture of the believers in
spiritualism had been impatiently anticipated before the conclusions of Messrs.
Crookes, Varley, and the Dialectical Society were announced. Such a confession
on the part of their brother-scientists was too humiliating for the pride of
even those who had timorously abstained from investigation. It was regarded as
really too much, that such vulgar and repulsive manifestations of phe-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* W. Crookes:
"Experiments on Psychic Force," page 25.
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nomena which had always, by
common consent of educated people, been regarded as nursery tales, fit only to
amuse hysterical servant-girls and afford revenue to professional somnambulists
-- that manifestations which had been consigned by the Academy and Institute of
Paris to oblivion, should so impertinently elude detection at the hands of
experts in physical sciences.
A tornado of indignation
followed the confession. Mr. Crookes depicts it in his pamphlet on Psychic
Force. He heads it very pointedly with the quotation from Galvani: "I am
attacked by two very opposite sects -- the scientists and the know-nothings,
yet I know that I have discovered one of the greatest forces in nature. . .
." He then proceeds:
"It was taken for granted
that the results of my experiments would be in accordance with their
preconceptions. What they really desired was not the truth, but an additional
witness in favor of their own foregone conclusions. When they found the facts
which that investigation established could not be made to fit those opinions,
why, . . . so much the worse for the facts. They try to creep out of their own
confident recommendations of the inquiry, by declaring 'that Mr. Home is a
clever conjurer who has duped us all.' 'Mr. Crookes might, with equal
propriety, examine the performances of an Indian juggler.' 'Mr. Crookes must
get better witnesses before he can be believed.' 'The thing is too absurd to be
treated seriously.' 'It is impossible, and therefore can't be.' . . . (I never
said it was impossible, I only said it was true.) 'The observers have all been
biologized, and fancy they saw things occur which really never took place,'
etc., etc., etc."*
After expending their energy
on such puerile theories as "unconscious cerebration,"
"involuntary muscular contraction," and the sublimely ridiculous one
of the "cracking knee-joints" (le muscle craqueur); after meeting
ignominious failures by the obstinate survival of the new force, and finally,
after every desperate effort to compass its obliteration, these filii
diffidentiae -- as St. Paul calls their class -- thought best to give up the
whole thing in disgust. Sacrificing their courageously persevering brethren as
a holocaust on the altar of public opinion, they withdrew in dignified silence.
Leaving the arena of investigation to more fearless champions, these unlucky
experimenters are not likely to ever enter it again.** It is easier by far to
deny the reality of such manifestations from a secure distance, than find for
them a proper place among the classes of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* W. Crookes:
"Spiritualism Viewed by the Light of Modern Science." See
"Quarterly Journal of Science."
** A. Aksakof: "Phenomena
of Mediumism."
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natural phenomena accepted by
exact science. And how can they, since all such phenomena pertain to
psychology, and the latter, with its occult and mysterious powers, is a terra
incognita for modern science. Thus, powerless to explain that which proceeds
directly from the nature of the human soul itself -- the existence of which
most of them deny -- unwilling at the same time to confess their ignorance,
scientists retaliate very unjustly on those who believe in the evidence of
their senses without any pretence to science.
"A kick from thee, O
Jupiter! is sweet," says the poet Tretiakowsky, in an old Russian tragedy.
Rude as those Jupiters of science may be occasionally toward us credulous
mortals, their vast learning -- in less abstruse questions, we mean -- if not
their manners, entitles them to public respect. But unfortunately it is not the
gods who shout the loudest.
The eloquent Tertullian,
speaking of Satan and his imps, whom he accuses of ever mimicking the Creator's
works, denominates them the "monkeys of God." It is fortunate for the
philosophicules that we have no modern Tertullian to consign them to an immortality
of contempt as the "monkeys of science."
But to return to genuine
scientists. "Phenomena of a merely objective character," says A. N.
Aksakof, "force themselves upon the representatives of exact sciences for
investigation and explanation; but the high-priests of science, in the face of
apparently such a simple question . . . are totally disconcerted! This subject
seems to have the privilege of forcing them to betray, not only the highest
code of morality -- truth, but also the supreme law of science -- experiment! .
. . They feel that there is something too serious underlying it. The cases of
Hare, Crookes, de Morgan, Varley, Wallace, and Butleroff create a panic! They
fear that as soon as they concede one step, they will have to yield the whole
ground. Time-honored principles, the contemplative speculations of a whole
life, of a long line of generations, are all staked on a single card!"*
In the face of such experience
as that of Crookes and the Dialectical Society, of Wallace and the late
Professor Hare, what can we expect from our luminaries of erudition? Their
attitude toward the undeniable phenomena is in itself another phenomenon. It is
simply incomprehensible, unless we admit the possibility of another
psychological disease, as mysterious and contagious as hydrophobia. Although we
claim no honor for this new discovery, we nevertheless propose to recognize it
under the name of scientific psychophobia.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* A. N. Aksakof:
"Phenomena of Mediumism."
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THEORIES.
They ought to have learned by
this time, in the school of bitter experience, that they can rely on the
self-sufficiency of the positive sciences only to a certain point; and that, so
long as there remains one single unexplained mystery in nature, the word
"impossible" is a dangerous word for them to pronounce.
In the Researches on the
Phenomena of Spiritualism, Mr. Crookes submits to the option of the reader
eight theories "to account for the phenomena observed."
These theories run as follows:
"First Theory. -- The
phenomena are all the result of tricks, clever mechanical arrangements, or
legerdemain; the mediums are impostors, and the rest of the company fools.
"Second Theory. -- The
persons at a seance are the victims of a sort of mania, or delusion, and
imagine phenomena to occur which have no real objective existence.
"Third Theory. -- The
whole is the result of conscious or unconscious cerebral action.
"Fourth Theory. -- The
result of the spirit of the medium, perhaps in association with the spirits of
some or all of the people present.
"Fifth Theory. -- The
actions of evil spirits, or devils, personifying whom or what they please, in
order to undermine Christianity, and ruin men's souls. (Theory of our
theologians.)
"Sixth Theory. -- The
actions of a separate order of beings living on this earth, but invisible and
immaterial to us. Able, however, occasionally to manifest their presence, known
in almost all countries and ages as demons (not necessarily bad), gnomes,
fairies, kobolds, elves, goblins, Puck, etc. (One of the claims of the
kabalists.)
"Seventh Theory. -- The
actions of departed human beings. (The spiritual theory par excellence.)
"Eighth Theory. -- (The
psychic force) . . . an adjunct to the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh
theories."
The first of these theories having
been proved valid only in exceptional, though unfortunately still too frequent
cases, must be ruled out as having no material bearing upon the phenomena
themselves. Theories the second and the third are the last crumbling
entrenchments of the guerilla of skeptics and materialists, and remain, as
lawyers say, "Adhuc sub judice lis est." Thus, we can deal in this
work but with the four remaining ones, the last, eighth, theory being according
to Mr. Crookes's opinion, but "a necessary adjunct" of the others.
How subject even a scientific
opinion is to error, we may see, if we only compare the several articles on
spiritual phenomena from the able
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pen of that gentleman, which
appeared from 1870 to 1875. In one of the first we read: . . . "the
increased employment of scientific methods will promote exact observations and
greater love of truths among inquirers, and will produce a race of observers
who will drive the worthless residuum of spiritualism hence into the unknown
limbo of magic and necromancy." And in 1875, we read, over his own
signature, minute and most interesting descriptions of the materialized spirit
-- Katie King!*
It is hardly possible to
suppose that Mr. Crookes could be under electro-biological influence or
hallucination for two or three consecutive years. The "spirit"
appeared in his own house, in his library, under the most crucial tests, and
was seen, felt, and heard by hundreds of persons.
But Mr. Crookes denies that he
ever took Katie King for a disembodied spirit. What was it then? If it was not
Miss Florence Cook, and his word is our sufficient guarantee for it -- then it
was either the spirit of one who had lived on earth, or one of those that come
directly under the sixth theory of the eight the eminent scientist offers to
the public choice. It must have been one of the classes named: Fairies,
Kobolds, Gnomes, Elves, Goblins, or a Puck.**
Yes; Katie King must have been
a fairy -- a Titania. For to a fairy only could be applied with propriety the
following poetic effusion which Mr. Crookes quotes in describing this wonderful
spirit:
"Round her she made an
atmosphere of life;
The very air seemed lighter
from her eyes;
They were so soft and
beautiful and rife
With all we can imagine of the
skies;
Her overpowering presence
makes you feel
It would not be idolatry to
kneel!"***
And thus, after having
written, in 1870, his severe sentence against spiritualism and magic; after
saying that even at that moment he believed "the whole affair a
superstition, or, at least, an unexplained trick -- a delusion of the
senses;"**** Mr. Crookes, in 1875, closes his letter with the following
memorable words: -- "To imagine, I say, the Katie King of the last three
years to be the result of imposture does more violence to one's reason and
common sense than to believe her to be what she herself affirms."*****
This last remark, moreover, conclusively proves that:
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The Last of Katie
King," pamphlet iii., p. 119.
** Ibid., pam. i., p. 7.
*** "The Last of Katie
King," pamp. iii., p. 112.
**** Ibid., p. 112.
***** "Researches in the
Phenomena of Spiritualism," p. 45.
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OBSCURIUS.
1. Notwithstanding Mr. Crookes's
full convictions that the somebody calling herself Katie King was neither the
medium nor some confederate, but on the contrary an unknown force in nature,
which -- like love -- "laughs at locksmiths"; 2. That that hitherto
unrecognized form of Force, albeit it had become with him "not a matter of
opinion, but of absolute knowledge," -- the eminent investigator still did
not abandon to the last his skeptical attitude toward the question. In short,
he firmly believes in the phenomenon, but cannot accept the idea of its being
the human spirit of a departed somebody.
It seems to us, that, as far
as public prejudice goes, Mr. Crookes solves one mystery by creating a still
deeper one: the obscurum per obscurius. In other words, rejecting "the
worthless residuum of spiritualism," the courageous scientist fearlessly
plunges into his own "unknown limbo of magic and necromancy!"
The recognized laws of
physical science account for but a few of the more objective of the so-called
spiritual phenomena. While proving the reality of certain visible effects of an
unknown force, they have not thus far enabled scientists to control at will
even this portion of the phenomena. The truth is that the professors have not
yet discovered the necessary conditions of their occurrence. They must go as
deeply into the study of the triple nature of man -- physiological,
psychological, and divine -- as did their predecessors, the magicians,
theurgists, and thaumaturgists of old. Until the present moment, even those who
have investigated the phenomena as thoroughly and impartially as Mr. Crookes,
have set aside the cause as something not to be discovered now, if ever. They
have troubled themselves no more about that than about the first cause of the
cosmic phenomena of the correlation of forces, whose endless effects they are
at such pains to observe and classify. Their course has been as unwise as that
of a man who should attempt to discover the sources of a river by exploring
toward its mouth. It has so narrowed their views of the possibilities of
natural law that very simple forms of occult phenomena have necessitated their
denial that they can occur unless miracles were possible; and this being a
scientific absurdity the result has been that physical science has latterly
been losing prestige. If scientists had studied the so-called
"miracles" instead of denying them, many secret laws of nature
comprehended by the ancients would have been again discovered.
"Conviction," says Bacon, "comes not through arguments but
through experiments."
The ancients were always
distinguished -- especially the Chaldean astrologers and Magians -- for their
ardent love and pursuit of knowledge in every branch of science. They tried to
penetrate the secrets of na-
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ture in the same way as our
modern naturalists, and by the only method by which this object can be
obtained, namely: by experimental researches and reason. If our modern
philosophers cannot apprehend the fact that they penetrated deeper than
themselves into the mysteries of the universe, this does not constitute a valid
reason why the credit of possessing this knowledge should be denied them or the
imputation of superstition laid at their door. Nothing warrants the charge; and
every new archaeological discovery militates against the assumption. As
chemists they were unequalled, and in his famous lecture on The Lost Arts,
Wendell Phillips says: "The chemistry of the most ancient period had
reached a point which we have never even approached." The secret of the
malleable glass, which, "if supported by one end by its own weight, in
twenty hours dwindles down to a fine line that you can curve around your
wrist," would be as difficult to rediscover in our civilized countries as
to fly to the moon.
The fabrication of a cup of
glass which was brought by an exile to Rome in the reign of Tiberius, -- a cup
"which he dashed upon the marble pavement, and it was not crushed nor
broken by the fall," and which, as it got "dented some" was
easily brought into shape again with a hammer, is a historic fact. If it is
doubted now it is merely because the moderns cannot do the same. And yet, in
Samarkand and some monasteries of Thibet such cups and glass-ware may be found
to this day; nay, there are persons who claim that they can make the same by
virtue of their knowledge of the much-ridiculed and ever-doubted alkahest --
the universal solvent. This agent that Paracelsus and Van Helmont maintain to
be a certain fluid in nature, "capable of reducing all sublunary bodies,
as well homogeneous as mixed, into their ens primum, or the original matter of
which they are composed; or into an uniform, equable, and potable liquor, that
will unite with water, and the juices of all bodies, and yet retain its own
radical virtues; and, if again mixed with itself will thereby be converted into
pure elementary water": what impossibilities prevent our crediting the
statement? Why should it not exist and why the idea be considered Utopian? Is
it again because our modern chemists are unable to produce it? But surely it
may be conceived without any great effort of imagination that all bodies must
have originally come from some first matter, and that this matter, according to
the lessons of astronomy, geology and physics, must have been a fluid. Why
should not gold -- of whose genesis our scientists know so little -- have been
originally a primitive or basic matter of gold, a ponderous fluid which, as
says Van Helmont, "from its own nature, or a strong cohesion between its
particles, acquired afterward a solid form?"
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There seems to be very little
absurdity to believe in a "universal ens that resolves all bodies into
their ens genitale." Van Helmont calls it "the highest and most
successful of all salts; which having obtained the supreme degree of
simplicity, purity, subtilty, enjoys alone the faculty of remaining unchanged
and unimpaired by the subjects it works upon, and of dissolving the most
stubborn and untractable bodies; as stones, gems, glass, earth, sulphur,
metals, etc., into red salt, equal in weight to the matter dissolved; and this
with as much ease as hot water melts down snow."
It is into this fluid that the
makers of malleable glass claimed, and now claim, that they immersed common
glass for several hours, to acquire the property of malleability.
We have a ready and palpable
proof of such possibilities. A foreign correspondent of the Theosophical
Society, a well-known medical practitioner, and one who has studied the occult
sciences for upward of thirty years, has succeeded in obtaining what he terms
the "true oil of gold," i.e., the primal element. Chemists and
physicists have seen and examined it, and were driven to confess that they
neither knew how it was obtained nor could they do the same. That he desires
his name to remain unknown is not to be wondered at; ridicule and public
prejudice are more dangerous sometimes than the inquisition of old. This
"Adamic earth" is next-door neighbor to the alkahest, and one of the
most important secrets of the alchemists. No Kabalist will reveal it to the
world, for, as he expresses it in the well-known jargon: "it would explain
the eagles of the alchemists, and how the eagles' wings are clipped," a
secret that it took Thomas Vaughan (Eugenius Philalethes) twenty years to
learn.
As the dawn of physical
science broke into a glaring day-light, the spiritual sciences merged deeper
and deeper into night, and in their turn they were denied. So, now, these
greatest masters in psychology are looked upon as "ignorant and
superstitious ancestors"; as mountebanks and jugglers, because, forsooth,
the sun of modern learning shines to-day so bright, it has become an axiom that
the philosophers and men of science of the olden time knew nothing, and lived
in a night of superstition. But their traducers forget that the sun of to-day
will seem dark by comparison with the luminary of to-morrow, whether justly or
not; and as the men of our century think their ancestors ignorant, so will
perhaps their descendants count them for know-nothings. The world moves in
cycles. The coming races will be but the reproductions of races long bygone; as
we, perhaps, are the images of those who lived a hundred centuries ago. The
time will come when those who now in public slan-
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der the hermetists, but ponder
in secret their dust-covered volumes; who plagiarize their ideas, assimilate
and give them out as their own -- will receive their dues. "Who,"
honestly exclaims Pfaff -- "what man has ever taken more comprehensive
views of nature than Paracelsus? He was the bold creator of chemical medicines;
the founder of courageous parties; victorious in controversy, belonging to
those spirits who have created amongst us a new mode of thinking on the natural
existence of things. What he scattered through his writings on the
philosopher's stone, on pigmies and spirits of the mines; on signs, on
homunculi, and the elixir of life, and which are employed by many to lower his
estimation, cannot extinguish our grateful remembrance of his general works,
nor our admiration of his free, bold exertions, and his noble, intellectual
life."*
More than one pathologist,
chemist, homoeopathist, and magnetist has quenched his thirst for knowledge in
the books of Paracelsus. Frederick Hufeland got his theoretical doctrines on
infection from this mediaeval "quack," as Sprengel delights in
calling one who was immeasurably higher than himself. Hemman, who endeavors to
vindicate this great philosopher, and nobly tries to redress his slandered
memory, speaks of him as the "greatest chemist of his time."** So do
Professor Molitor,*** and Dr. Ennemoser, the eminent German psychologist.****
According to their criticisms on the labors of this Hermetist, Paracelsus is
the most "wondrous intellect of his age," a "noble genius."
But our modern lights assume to know better, and the ideas of the Rosicrucians
about the elementary spirits, the goblins and the elves, have sunk into the
"limbo of magic" and fairy tales for early childhoods.*****
We are quite ready to concede
to skeptics that one-half, and even more, of seeming phenomena, are but more or
less clever fraud. Recent exposures, especially of "materializing"
mediums, but too well prove the fact. Unquestionably numerous others are still
in store, and this will
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Pfaff's
"Astrology." Berl.
** "Medico-Surgical
Essays."
*** "The Philosophy of
Hist."
**** On Theoph. Paracelsus. --
Magic.
***** Kemshead says in his
"Inorganic Chemistry" that "the element hydrogen was first
mentioned in the sixteenth century by Paracelsus, but very little was known of
it in any way." (P. 66.) And why not be fair and confess at once that
Paracelsus was the re-discoverer of hydrogen as he was the re-discoverer of the
hidden properties of the magnet and animal magnetism? It is easy to show that
according to the strict vows of secrecy taken and faithfully observed by every
Rosicrucian (and especially by the alchemist) he kept his knowledge secret.
Perhaps it would not prove a very difficult task for any chemist well versed in
the works of Paracelsus to demonstrate that oxygen, the discovery of which is
credited to Priestley, was known to the Rosicrucian alchemists as well as
hydrogen.
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CHURCHWARD.
continue until tests have
become so perfect and spiritualists so reasonable as no longer to furnish
opportunity to mediums or weapons to adversaries.
What should sensible
spiritualists think of the character of angel guides, who after monopolizing,
perhaps for years, a poor medium's time, health and means, suddenly abandon him
when he most needs their help? None but creatures without soul or conscience
would be guilty of such injustice. Conditions? -- Mere sophistry. What sort of
spirits must they be who would not summon if necessary an army of
spirit-friends (if such there be) to snatch the innocent medium from the pit
dug for his feet? Such things happened in the olden time, such may happen now.
There were apparitions before modern spiritualism, and phenomena like ours in
every previous age. If modern manifestations are a reality and palpable facts,
so must have been the so-called "miracles" and thaumaturgic exploits
of old; or if the latter are but fictions of superstition so must be the
former, for they rest on no better testimony.
But, in this daily-increasing
torrent of occult phenomena that rushes from one end of the globe to the other,
though two-thirds of the manifestations are proved spurious, what of those
which are proved genuine beyond doubt or cavil? Among these may be found
communications coming through non-professional as well as professional mediums,
which are sublime and divinely grand. Often, through young children, and
simple-minded ignorant persons, we receive philosophical teachings and
precepts, poetry and inspirational orations, music and paintings that are fully
worthy of the reputations of their alleged authors. Their prophecies are often
verified and their moral disquisitions beneficent, though the latter is of
rarer occurrence. Who are those spirits, what those powers or intelligences
which are evidently outside of the medium proper and entities per se? These
intelligences deserve the appellation; and they differ as widely from the generality
of spooks and goblins that hover around the cabinets for physical
manifestations, as day from night.
We must confess that the
situation appears to be very grave. The control of mediums by such unprincipled
and lying "spirits" is constantly becoming more and more general; and
the pernicious effects of seeming diabolism constantly multiply. Some of the
best mediums are abandoning the public rostrum and retiring from this
influence; and the movement is drifting churchward. We venture the prediction that
unless spiritualists set about the study of ancient philosophy, so as to learn
to discriminate between spirits and to guard themselves against the baser sort,
twenty-five years more will not elapse before they will have to fly to the
Romish communion to escape these "guides" and "controls"
that they have fondled so long. The signs of this catastrophe already exhibit
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themselves. At a recent
convention at Philadelphia, it was seriously proposed to organize a sect of
Christian Spiritualists! This is because, having withdrawn from the church and
learned nothing of the philosophy of the phenomena, or the nature of their
spirits, they are drifting about on a sea of uncertainty like a ship without
compass or rudder. They cannot escape the dilemma; they must choose between
Porphyry and Pio Nono.
While men of genuine science,
such as Wallace, Crookes, Wagner, Butlerof, Varley, Buchanan, Hare,
Reichenbach, Thury, Perty, de Morgan, Hoffmann, Goldschmidt, W. Gregory,
Flammarion, Sergeant Cox and many others, firmly believe in the current
phenomena, many of the above named reject the theory of departed spirits.
Therefore, it seems but logical to think that if the London "Katie
King," the only materialized something which the public is obliged more or
less to credit out of respect to science, -- is not the spirit of an ex-mortal,
then it must be the astral solidified shadow of either one of the Rosicrucian
spooks -- "fantasies of superstition" -- or of some as yet
unexplained force in nature. Be it however a "spirit of health or goblin
damn'd" it is of little consequence; for if it be once proved that its
organism is not solid matter, then it must be and is a "spirit," an
apparition, a breath. It is an intelligence which acts outside our organisms
and therefore must belong to some existing even though unseen race of beings.
But what is it? What is this something which thinks and even speaks but yet is
not human; that is impalpable and yet not a disembodied spirit; that simulates
affection, passion, remorse, fear, joy, but yet feels neither? What is this
canting creature which rejoices in cheating the truthful inquirer and mocking
at sacred human feeling? For, if not Mr. Crookes's Katie King, other similar
creatures have done all these. Who can fathom the mystery? The true
psychologist alone. And where should he go for his text-books but to the
neglected alcoves of libraries where the works of despised hermetists and
theurgists have been gathering dust these many years.
Says Henry More, the revered
English Platonist, in his answer to an attack on the believers of spiritual and
magic phenomena by a skeptic of that age, named Webster:* "As for that
other opinion, that the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Letter to J. Glanvil,
chaplain to the king and a fellow of the Royal Society." Glanvil was the author
of the celebrated work on Apparitions and Demonology entitled "Sadducismus
Triumphatus, or a full and plain evidence concerning witches and
apparitions," in two parts, "proving partly by Scripture, and partly
by a choice collection of modern relations, the real existence of apparitions,
spirits and witches." -- 1700.
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THING.
greater part of the reformed
divines hold, that it was the Devil that appeared in Samuel's shape, it is
beneath contempt; for though I do not doubt but that in many of these
necromantic apparitions, they are ludicrous spirits, not the souls of the
deceased that appear, yet I am clear for the appearing of the soul of Samuel,
and as clear that in other necromancies, it may be such kinds of spirits, as
Porphyrius above describes, 'that change themselves into omnifarious forms and
shapes, and one while act the parts of daemons, another while of angels or
gods, and another while of the souls of the departed.' And I confess such a
spirit as this might personate Samuel here, for anything Webster alleged to the
contrary, for his arguments indeed are wonderfully weak and wooden."
When such a metaphysician and
philosopher as Henry More gives such testimony as this, we may well assume our
point to have been well taken. Learned investigators, all very skeptical as to
spirits in general and "departed human spirits" in particular, during
the last twenty years have taxed their brains to invent new names for an old
thing. Thus, with Mr. Crookes and Sergeant Cox, it is the "psychic
force." Professor Thury of Geneva calls it the "psychode" or
ectenic force; Professor Balfour Stewart, the "electro-biological
power"; Faraday, the "great master of experimental philosophy in
physics," but apparently a novice in psychology, superciliously termed it
an "unconscious muscular action," an "unconscious cerebration,"
and what not? Sir William Hamilton, a "latent thought"; Dr.
Carpenter, "the ideo-motor principle," etc., etc. So many scientists
-- so many names.
Years ago the old German
philosopher, Schopenhauer, disposed of this force and matter at the same time;
and since the conversion of Mr. Wallace, the great anthropologist has evidently
adopted his ideas. Schopenhauer's doctrine is that the universe is but the
manifestation of the will. Every force in nature is also an effect of will,
representing a higher or lower degree of its objectiveness. It is the teaching
of Plato, who stated distinctly that everything visible was created or evolved
out of the invisible and eternal WILL, and after its fashion. Our Heaven -- he
says -- was produced according to the eternal pattern of the "Ideal World,"
contained, as everything else, in the dodecahedron, the geometrical model used
by the Deity.* With Plato, the Primal Being is an emanation of the Demiurgic
Mind (Nous), which contains from the eternity the "idea" of the
"to be created world" within itself, and which idea he produces out
of himself.** The laws of nature are the established relations of this idea to
the forms of its manifestations; "these
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Plato: "Timaeus
Soerius," 97.
** See Movers'
"Explanations," 268.
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forms," says
Schopenhauer, "are time, space, and causality. Through time and space the
idea varies in its numberless manifestations."
These ideas are far from being
new, and even with Plato they were not original. This is what we read in the
Chaldean Oracles:* "The works of nature co-exist with the intellectual
[[noerio]], spiritual Light of the Father. For it is the soul [[psuche]] which
adorned the great heaven, and which adorns it after the Father."
"The incorporeal world
then was already completed, having its seat in the Divine Reason," says
Philo** who is erroneously accused of deriving his philosophy from Plato's.
In the Theogony of Mochus, we
find AEther first, and then the air; the two principles from which Ulom, the
intelligible [[noetos]] God (the visible universe of matter) is born.***
In the Orphic hymns, the
Eros-Phanes evolves from the Spiritual Egg, which the AEthereal winds
impregnate, Wind**** being "the spirit of God," who is said to move
in AEther, "brooding over the Chaos" -- the Divine "Idea."
In the Hindu Katakopanisad, Purusha, the Divine Spirit, already stands before
the original matter, from whose union springs the great Soul of the World,
"Maha =Atma, Brahm, the Spirit of Life";***** these latter
appellations are identical with the Universal Soul, or Anima Mundi, and the
Astral Light of the theurgists and kabalists.
Pythagoras brought his
doctrines from the eastern sanctuaries, and Plato compiled them into a form
more intelligible than the mysterious numerals of the sage -- whose doctrines
he had fully embraced -- to the uninitiated mind. Thus, the Cosmos is "the
Son" with Plato, having for his father and mother the Divine Thought and
Matter.******
"The Egyptians,"
says Dunlap,******* "distinguish between an older and younger Horus, the
former the brother of Osiris, the latter the son of Osiris and Isis." The
first is the Idea of the world remaining in the Demiurgic Mind, "born in
darkness before the creation of the world." The second Horus is this
"Idea" going forth from the Logos, becoming clothed with matter, and
assuming an actual existence.********
"The mundane God,
eternal, boundless, young and old, of winding form," ********* say the
Chaldean Oracles.
This "winding form"
is a figure to express the vibratory motion of the Astral Light, with which the
ancient priests were perfectly well
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Cory: "Chaldean
Oracles," 243.
** Philo Judaeus: "On the
Creation," x.
*** Movers:
"Phoinizer," 282.
**** K. O. Muller, 236.
***** Weber: "Akad.
Vorles," 213, 214, etc.
****** Plutarch, "Isis
and Osiris," i., vi.
******* "Spirit History
of Man," p. 88.
******** Movers:
"Phoinizer," 268.
********* Cory:
"Fragments," 240.
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acquainted, though they may
have differed in views of ether, with modern scientists; for in the AEther they
placed the Eternal Idea pervading the Universe, or the Will which becomes
Force, and creates or organizes matter.
"The will," says Van
Helmont, "is the first of all powers. For through the will of the Creator
all things were made and put in motion. . . . The will is the property of all
spiritual beings, and displays itself in them the more actively the more they
are freed from matter." And Paracelsus, "the divine," as he was
called, adds in the same strain: "Faith must confirm the imagination, for
faith establishes the will. . . . Determined will is a beginning of all magical
operations. . . . Because men do not perfectly imagine and believe the result,
is that the arts are uncertain, while they might be perfectly certain."
The opposing power alone of
unbelief and skepticism, if projected in a current of equal force, can check
the other, and sometimes completely neutralize it. Why should spiritualists
wonder that the presence of some strong skeptics, or of those who, feeling
bitterly opposed to the phenomenon, unconsciously exercise their will-power in
opposition, hinders and often stops altogether the manifestations? If there is
no conscious power on earth but sometimes finds another to interfere with or
even counterbalance it, why wonder when the unconscious, passive power of a
medium is suddenly paralyzed in its effects by another opposing one, though it
also be as unconsciously exercised? Professors Faraday and Tyndall boasted that
their presence at a circle would stop at once every manifestation. This fact
alone ought to have proved to the eminent scientists that there was some force
in these phenomena worthy to arrest their attention. As a scientist, Prof.
Tyndall was perhaps pre-eminent in the circle of those who were present at the
seance; as a shrewd observer, one not easily deceived by a tricking medium, he
was perhaps no better, if as clever, as others in the room, and if the
manifestations were but a fraud so ingenious as to deceive the others, they
would not have stopped, even on his account. What medium can ever boast of such
phenomena as were produced by Jesus, and the apostle Paul after him? Yet even
Jesus met with cases where the unconscious force of resistance overpowered even
his so well directed current of will. "And he did not many mighty works
there, because of their unbelief."
There is a reflection of every
one of these views in Schopenhauer's philosophy. Our "investigating"
scientists might consult his works with profit. They will find therein many a
strange hypothesis founded on old ideas, speculations on the "new"
phenomena, which may prove as reasonable as any, and be saved the useless
trouble of inventing new
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theories. The psychic and ectenic
forces, the "ideo-motor" and "electro-biological powers";
"latent thought" and even "unconscious cerebration"
theories, can be condensed in two words: the kabalistic ASTRAL LIGHT.
The bold theories and opinions
expressed in Schopenhauer's works differ widely with those of the majority of
our orthodox scientists. "In reality," remarks this daring
speculator, "there is neither matter nor spirit. The tendency to
gravitation in a stone is as unexplainable as thought in human brain. . . . If
matter can -- no one knows why -- fall to the ground, then it can also -- no
one knows why -- think. . . . As soon, even in mechanics, as we trespass beyond
the purely mathematical, as soon as we reach the inscrutable, adhesion,
gravitation, and so on, we are faced by phenomena which are to our senses as
mysterious as the WILL and THOUGHT in man -- we find ourselves facing the
incomprehensible, for such is every force in nature. Where is then that matter
which you all pretend to know so well; and from which -- being so familiar with
it -- you draw all your conclusions and explanations, and attribute to it all
things? . . . That, which can be fully realized by our reason and senses, is
but the superficial: they can never reach the true inner substance of things.
Such was the opinion of Kant. If you consider that there is in a human head
some sort of a spirit, then you are obliged to concede the same to a stone. If
your dead and utterly passive matter can manifest a tendency toward
gravitation, or, like electricity, attract and repel, and send out sparks --
then, as well as the brain, it can also think. In short, every particle of the
so-called spirit, we can replace with an equivalent of matter, and every
particle of matter replace with spirit. . . . Thus, it is not the Cartesian
division of all things into matter and spirit that can ever be found
philosophically exact; but only if we divide them into will and manifestation,
which form of division has naught to do with the former, for it spiritualizes
every thing: all that, which is in the first instance real and objective --
body and matter -- it transforms into a representation, and every manifestation
into will."*
These views corroborate what
we have expressed about the various names given to the same thing. The
disputants are battling about mere words. Call the phenomena force, energy,
electricity or magnetism, will, or spirit-power, it will ever be the partial
manifestation of the soul, whether disembodied or imprisoned for a while in its
body -- of a portion of that intelligent, omnipotent, and individual WILL,
pervading all nature, and known, through the insufficiency of human language to
express correctly psychological images, as -- GOD.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Parerga," ii.,
pp. 111, 112.
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"PARERGA."
The ideas of some of our
schoolmen about matter are, from the kabalistic standing-point, in many a way
erroneous. Hartmann calls their views "an instinctual prejudice."
Furthermore, he demonstrates that no experimenter can have anything to do with
matter properly termed, but only with the forces into which he divides it. The
visible effects of matter are but the effects of force. He concludes thereby,
that that which is now called matter is nothing but the aggregation of atomic
forces, to express which the word matter is used: outside of that, for science
matter is but a word void of sense. Notwithstanding many an honest confession
on the part of our specialists -- physicists, physiologists and chemists --
that they know nothing whatever of matter,* they deify it. Every new phenomenon
which they find themselves unable to explain, is triturated, compounded into
incense, and burned on the altar of the goddess who patronizes modern
scientists.
No one can better treat his
subject than does Schopenhauer in his Parerga. In this work he discusses at
length animal magnetism, clairvoyance, sympathetic cures, seership, magic,
omens, ghost-seeing, and other spiritual matters. "All these
manifestations," he says, "are branches of one and the same tree, and
furnish us with irrefutable proofs of the existence of a chain of beings which
is based on quite a different order of things than that nature which has at its
foundation laws of space, time and adaptability. This other order of things is
far deeper, for it is the original and the direct one; in its presence the
common laws of nature, which are simply formal, are unavailing; therefore,
under its immediate action neither time nor space can separate any longer the
individuals, and the separation impendent on these forms presents no more
insurmountable barriers for the intercourse of thoughts and the immediate
action of the will. In this manner changes may be wrought by quite a different
course than the course of physical causality, i.e., through an action of the
manifestation of the will exhibited in a peculiar way and outside the
individual himself. Therefore the peculiar character of all the aforesaid
manifestations is the visio in distante et actio in distante (vision and action
at a distance) in its relation to time as well as in its relation to space.
Such an action at a distance is just what constitutes the fundamental character
of what is called magical; for such is the immediate action of our will, an
action liberated from the causal conditions of physical action, viz.,
contact."
"Besides that,"
continues Schopenhauer, "these manifestations present to us a substantial
and perfectly logical contradiction to materialism, and even to naturalism,
because in the light of such manifestations,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Huxley: "Physical
Basis of Life."
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that order of things in nature
which both these philosophies seek to present as absolute and the only genuine,
appears before us on the contrary purely phenomenal and superficial, and
containing at the bottom of it a substance of things a parte and perfectly
independent of its own laws. That is why these manifestations -- at least from
a purely philosophical point of view -- among all the facts which are presented
to us in the domain of experiment, are beyond any comparison the most
important. Therefore, it is the duty of every scientist to acquaint himself with
them."*
To pass from the philosophical
speculations of a man like Schopenhauer to the superficial generalizations of
some of the French Academicians, would be profitless but for the fact that it
enables us to estimate the intellectual grasp of the two schools of learning.
What the German makes of profound psychological questions, we have seen.
Compare with it the best that the astronomer Babinet and the chemist
Boussingault can offer by way of explaining an important spiritualistic
phenomenon. In 1854-5 these distinguished specialists presented to the Academy
a memoire, or monograph, whose evident object was to corroborate and at the
same time make clearer Dr. Chevreuil's too complicated theory in explanation of
the turning-tables, of the commission for the investigation of which he was a
member.
Here it is verbatim: "As
to the movements and oscillations alleged to happen with certain tables, they
can have no cause other than the invisible and involuntary vibrations of the
experimenter's muscular system; the extended contraction of the muscles
manifesting itself at such time by a series of vibrations, and becoming thus a
visible tremor which communicates to the object a circumrotary motion. This
rotation is thus enabled to manifest itself with a considerable energy, by a
gradually quickening motion, or by a strong resistance, whenever it is required
to stop. Hence the physical explanation of the phenomenon becomes clear and
does not offer the slightest difficulty."**
None whatever. This scientific
hypothesis -- or demonstration shall we say? -- is as clear as one of M.
Babinet's nebulae examined on a foggy night.
And still, clear as it may be,
it lacks an important feature, i.e., common sense. We are at a loss to decide
whether or not Babinet accepts en desespoir de cause Hartmann's proposition
that "the visible effects of matter are nothing but the effects of a
force," and, that in order to form a clear conception of matter, one must
first form one of force. The philosophy to the school of which belongs Hartmann,
and which is
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Schopenhauer:
"Parerga." Art. on "Will in Nature."
** "Revue des Deux
Mondes," Jan. 15, 1855, p. 108.
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ATOMS.
partly accepted by several of
the greatest German scientists, teaches that the problem of matter can only be
solved by that invisible Force, acquaintance with which Schopenhauer terms the
"magical knowledge," and "magical effect or action of
Will." Thus, we must first ascertain whether the "involuntary
vibrations of the experimenter's muscular system," which are but
"actions of matter," are influenced by a will within the experimenter
or without. In the former case Babinet makes of him an unconscious epileptic;
the latter, as we will further see, he rejects altogether, and attributes all
intelligent answers of the tipping or rapping tables to "unconscious
ventriloquism."
We know that every exertion of
will results in force, and that, according to the above-named German school,
the manifestations of atomic forces are individual actions of will, resulting
in the unconscious rushing of atoms into the concrete image already
subjectively created by the will. Democritus taught, after his instructor
Leucippus, that the first principles of all things contained in the universe
were atoms and a vacuum. In its kabalistic sense, the vacuum means in this
instance the latent Deity, or latent force, which at its first manifestation
became WILL, and thus communicated the first impulse to these atoms -- whose
agglomeration, is matter. This vacuum was but another name for chaos, and an
unsatisfactory one, for, according to the Peripatetics "nature abhors a
vacuum."
That before Democritus the
ancients were familiar with the idea of the indestructibility of matter is
proved by their allegories and numerous other facts. Movers gives a definition
of the Phoenician idea of the ideal sun-light as a spiritual influence issuing
from the highest God, IAO, "the light conceivable only by intellect -- the
physical and spiritual Principle of all things; out of which the soul
emanates." It was the male Essence, or Wisdom, while the primitive matter
or Chaos was the female. Thus the two first principles -- co-eternal and
infinite, were already with the primitive Phoenicians, spirit and matter.
Therefore the theory is as old as the world; for Democritus was not the first
philosopher who taught it; and intuition existed in man before the ultimate
development of his reason. But it is in the denial of the boundless and endless
Entity, possessor of that invisible Will which we for lack of a better term
call GOD, that lies the powerlessness of every materialistic science to explain
the occult phenomena. It is in the rejection a priori of everything which might
force them to cross the boundary of exact science and step into the domain of
psychological, or, if we prefer, metaphysical physiology, that we find the
secret cause of their discomfiture by the manifestations, and their absurd
theories to account for them. The ancient philosophy affirmed that it is in
consequence of the manifestation of that Will -- termed by Plato the Divine
Idea -- that everything visible and invisible
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sprung into existence. As that
Intelligent Idea, which, by directing its sole will-power toward a centre of
localized forces called objective forms into being, so can man, the microcosm
of the great Macrocosm, do the same in proportion with the development of his
will-power. The imaginary atoms -- a figure of speech employed by Democritus,
and gratefully seized upon by the materialists -- are like automatic workmen
moved inwardIy by the influx of that Universal Will directed upon them, and
which, manifesting itself as force, sets them into activity. The plan of the
structure to be erected is in the brain of the Architect, and reflects his
will; abstract as yet, from the instant of the conception it becomes concrete
through these atoms which follow faithfully every line, point and figure traced
in the imagination of the Divine Geometer.
As God creates, so man can
create. Given a certain intensity of will, and the shapes created by the mind
become subjective. Hallucinations, they are called, although to their creator
they are real as any visible object is to any one else. Given a more intense
and intelligent concentration of this will, and the form becomes concrete,
visible, objective; the man has learned the secret of secrets; he is a
MAGICIAN.
The materialist should not
object to this logic, for he regards thought as matter. Conceding it to be so,
the cunning mechanism contrived by the inventor; the fairy scenes born in the
poet's brain; the gorgeous painting limned by the artist's fancy; the peerless
statue chiselled in ether by the sculptor; the palaces and castles built in air
by the architect -- all these, though invisible and subjective, must exist, for
they are matter, shaped and moulded. Who shall say, then, that there are not
some men of such imperial will as to be able to drag these air-drawn fancies
into view, enveloped in the hard casing of gross substance to make them
tangible?
If the French scientists
reaped no laurels in the new field of investigation, what more was done in
England, until the day when Mr. Crookes offered himself in atonement for the
sins of the learned body? Why, Mr. Faraday, some twenty years ago, actually
condescended to be spoken to once or twice upon the subject. Faraday, whose
name is pronounced by the anti-spiritualists in every discussion upon the phenomena,
as a sort of scientific charm against the evil-eye of Spiritualism, Faraday,
who "blushed" for having published his researches upon such a
degrading belief, is now proved on good authority to have never sat at a
tipping table himself at all! We have but to open a few stray numbers of the
Journal des Debats, published while a noted Scotch medium was in England, to
recall the past events in all their primitive freshness. In one of these
numbers, Dr. Foucault, of Paris, comes out as a champion for the eminent
English experimenter. "Pray, do not imagine," says he,
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GLUE.
"that the grand physicist
had ever himself condescended so far as to sit prosaically at a jumping
table." Whence, then, came the "blushes" which suffused the
cheeks of the "Father of Experimental Philosophy"? Remembering this
fact, we will now examine the nature of Faraday's beautiful
"Indicator," the extraordinary "Medium-Catcher," invented
by him for the detection of mediumistic fraud. That complicated machine, the
memory of which haunts like a nightmare the dreams of dishonest mediums, is
carefully described in Comte de Mirville's Question des Esprits.
The better to prove to the
experimenters the reality of their own impulsion, Professor Faraday placed
several card-board disks, united to each other and stuck to the table by a
half-soft glue, which, making the whole adhere for a time together, would,
nevertheless, yield to a continuous pressure. Now, the table having turned --
yes, actually having dared to turn before Mr. Faraday, which fact is of some
value, at least -- the disks were examined; and, as they were found to have
gradually displaced themselves by slipping in the same direction as the table,
it thus became an unquestionable proof that the experimenters had pushed the
tables themselves.
Another of the so-called
scientific tests, so useful in a phenomenon alleged to be either spiritual or
psychical, consisted of a small instrument which immediately warned the
witnesses of the slightest personal impulsion on their part, or rather,
according to Mr. Faraday's own expression, "it warned them when they
changed from the passive to the active state." This needle which betrayed
the active motion proved but one thing, viz.: the action of a force which
either emanated from the sitters or controlled them. And who has ever said that
there is no such force? Every one admits so much, whether this force passes
through the operator, as it is generally shown, or acts independently of him,
as is so often the case. "The whole mystery consisted in the disproportion
of the force employed by the operators, who pushed because they were forced to
push, with certain effects of rotation, or rather, of a really marvellous race.
In the presence of such prodigious effects, how could any one imagine that the
Lilliputian experiments of that kind could have any value in this newly discovered
Land of Giants?"*
Professor Agassiz, who
occupied in America nearly the same eminent position as a scientist which Mr.
Faraday did in England, acted with a still greater unfairness. Professor J. R.
Buchanan, the distinguished anthropologist, who has treated Spiritualism in
some respects more scientifically than any one else in America, speaks of
Agassiz, in a recent article, with
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Comte de Mirville:
"Question des Esprits."
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a very just indignation. For,
of all other men, Professor Agassiz ought to believe in a phenomenon to which
he had been a subject himself. But now that both Faraday and Agassiz are
themselves disembodied, we can do better by questioning the living than the
dead.
Thus a force whose secret
powers were thoroughly familiar to the ancient theurgists, is denied by modern
skeptics. The antediluvian children -- who perhaps played with it, using it as
the boys in Bulwer-Lytton's Coming Race, use the tremendous "vril" --
called it the "Water of Phtha"; their descendants named it the Anima
Mundi, the soul of the universe; and still later the mediaeval hermetists
termed it "sidereal light," or the "Milk of the Celestial
Virgin," the "Magnes," and many other names. But our modern
learned men will neither accept nor recognize it under such appellations; for
it pertains to magic, and magic is, in their conception, a disgraceful
superstition.
Apollonius and Iamblichus held
that it was not "in the knowledge of things without, but in the perfection
of the soul within, that lies the empire of man, aspiring to be more than
men."* Thus they had arrived at a perfect cognizance of their godlike
souls, the powers of which they used with all the wisdom, outgrowth of esoteric
study of the hermetic lore, inherited by them from their forefathers. But our
philosophers, tightly shutting themselves up in their shells of flesh, cannot
or dare not carry their timid gaze beyond the comprehensible. For them there is
no future life; there are no godlike dreams, they scorn them as unscientific;
for them the men of old are but "ignorant ancestors," as they express
it; and whenever they meet during their physiological researches with an author
who believes that this mysterious yearning after spiritual knowledge is
inherent in every human being, and cannot have been given us utterly in vain,
they regard him with contemptuous pity.
Says a Persian proverb:
"The darker the sky is, the brighter the stars will shine." Thus, on
the dark firmament of the mediaeval ages began appearing the mysterious
Brothers of the Rosie Cross. They formed no associations, they built no
colleges; for, hunted up and down like so many wild beasts, when caught by the
Christian Church, they were unceremoniously roasted. "As religion forbids
it," says Bayle, "to spill blood," therefore, "to elude the
maxim, Ecclesia non novit sanguinem, they burned human beings, as burning a man
does not shed his blood!"
Many of these mystics, by
following what they were taught by some treatises, secretly preserved from one
generation to another, achieved discoveries which would not be despised even in
our modern days of exact sciences. Roger Bacon, the friar, was laughed at as a
quack, and
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Bulwer-Lytton:
"Zanoni."
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is now generally numbered
among "pretenders" to magic art; but his discoveries were
nevertheless accepted, and are now used by those who ridicule him the most.
Roger Bacon belonged by right if not by fact to that Brotherhood which includes
all those who study the occult sciences. Living in the thirteenth century,
almost a contemporary, therefore, of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, his
discoveries -- such as gunpowder and optical glasses, and his mechanical
achievements -- were considered by every one as so many miracles. He was
accused of having made a compact with the Evil One.
In the legendary history of
Friar Bacon, as "well as in an old play written by Robert Green, a
dramatist in the days of Queen Elizabeth, it is recounted, that, having been
summoned before the king, the friar was induced to show" some of his skill
before her majesty the queen. So he waved his hand (his wand, says the text),
and "presently was heard such excellent music, that they all said they had
never heard the like." Then there was heard a still louder music and four
apparitions suddenly presented themselves and danced until they vanished and
disappeared in the air. Then he waved his wand again, and suddenly there was
such a smell "as if all the rich perfumes in the whole world had been
there prepared in the best manner that art could set them out." Then Roger
Bacon having promised a gentleman to show him his sweetheart, he pulled a
hanging in the king's apartment aside and every one in the room saw "a
kitchen-maid with a basting-ladle in her hand." The proud gentleman,
although he recognized the maiden who disappeared as suddenly as she had
appeared, was enraged at the humiliating spectacle, and threatened the friar
with his revenge. What does the magician do? He simply answers: "Threaten
not, lest I do you more shame; and do you take heed how you give scholars the
lie again!"
As a commentary on this, the
modern historian* remarks: "This may be taken as a sort of exemplification
of the class of exhibitions which were probably the result of a superior
knowledge of natural sciences." No one ever doubted that it was the result
of precisely such a knowledge, and the hermetists, magicians, astrologers and
alchemists never claimed anything else. It certainly was not their fault that
the ignorant masses, under the influence of an unscrupulous and fanatical
clergy, should have attributed all such works to the agency of the devil. In
view of the atrocious tortures provided by the Inquisition for all suspected of
either black or white magic, it is not strange that these philosophers neither
boasted nor even acknowledged the fact of such an intercourse. On the contrary,
their own writings prove that they held that magic is "no more than the
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* T. Wright: "Narratives
of Sorcery and Magic."
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application of natural active
causes to passive things or subjects; by means thereof, many tremendously
surprising but yet natural effects are produced."
The phenomena of the mystic
odors and music, exhibited by Roger Bacon, have been often observed in our own
time. To say nothing of our personal experience, we are informed by English
correspondents of the Theosophical Society that they have heard strains of the
most ravishing music, coming from no visible instrument, and inhaled a
succession of delightful odors produced, as they believed, by spirit-agency.
One correspondent tells us that so powerful was one of these familiar odors --
that of sandal-wood -- that the house would be impregnated with it for weeks
after the seance. The medium in this case was a member of a private family, and
the experiments were all made within the domestic circle. Another describes
what he calls a "musical rap." The potencies that are now capable of
producing these phenomena must have existed and been equally efficacious in the
days of Roger Bacon. As to the apparitions, it suffices to say that they are
evoked now in spiritualistic circles, and guaranteed by scientists, and their
evocation by Roger Bacon is thus made more probable than ever.
Baptista Porta, in his
treatise on Natural Magic, enumerates a whole catalogue of secret formulae for
producing extraordinary effects by employing the occult powers of nature.
Although the "magicians" believed as firmly as our spiritualists in a
world of invisible spirits, none of them claimed to produce his effects under
their control or through their sole help. They knew too well how difficult it
is to keep away the elementary creatures when they have once found the door
wide open. Even the magic of the ancient Chaldeans was but a profound knowledge
of the powers of simples and minerals. It was only when the theurgist desired
divine help in spiritual and earthly matters that he sought direct
communication through religious rites, with pure spiritual beings. With them,
even, those spirits who remain invisible and communicate with mortals through
their awakened inner senses, as in clairvoyance, clairaudience and trance, could
only be evoked subjectively and as a result of purity of life and prayer. But
all physical phenomena were produced simply by applying a knowledge of natural
forces, although certainly not by the method of legerdemain, practiced in our
days by conjurers.
Men possessed of such
knowledge and exercising such powers patiently toiled for something better than
the vain glory of a passing fame. Seeking it not, they became immortal, as do
all who labor for the good of the race, forgetful of mean self. Illuminated with
the light of eternal truth, these rich-poor alchemists fixed their attention
upon the things that lie beyond the common ken, recognizing nothing inscrutable
but the First
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Cause, and finding no question
unsolvable. To dare, to know, to will, and REMAIN SILENT, was their constant
rule; to be beneficent, unselfish, and unpretending, were, with them,
spontaneous impulses. Disdaining the rewards of petty traffic, spurning wealth,
luxury, pomp, and worldly power, they aspired to knowledge as the most
satisfying of all acquisitions. They esteemed poverty, hunger, toil, and the evil
report of men, as none too great a price to pay for its achievement. They, who
might have lain on downy, velvet-covered beds, suffered themselves to die in
hospitals and by the wayside, rather than debase their souls and allow the
profane cupidity of those who tempted them to triumph over their sacred vows.
The lives of Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa, and Philalethes are too well known
to repeat the old, sad story.
If spiritualists are anxious
to keep strictly dogmatic in their notions of the "spirit-world,"
they must not set scientists to investigate their phenomena in the true
experimental spirit. The attempt would most surely result in a partial
re-discovery of the magic of old -- that of Moses and Paracelsus. Under the
deceptive beauty of some of their apparitions, they might find some day the
sylphs and fair Undines of the Rosicrucians playing in the currents of psychic
and odic force.
Already Mr. Crookes, who fully
credits the being, feels that under the fair skin of Katie, covering a
simulacrum of heart borrowed partially from the medium and the circle, there is
no soul! And the learned authors of The Unseen Universe, abandoning their
"electro-biological" theory, begin to perceive in the universal ether
the possibility that it is a photographic album of EN-SOPH -- the Boundless.
We are far from believing that
all the spirits that communicate at circles are of the classes called
"Elemental," and "Elementary." Many -- especially among
those who control the medium subjectively to speak, write, and otherwise act in
various ways -- are human, disembodied spirits. Whether the majority of such
spirits are good or bad, largely depends on the private morality of the medium,
much on the circle present, and a great deal on the intensity and object of
their purpose. If this object is merely to gratify curiosity and to pass the
time, it is useless to expect anything serious. But, in any case, human spirits
can never materialize themselves in propria persona. These can never appear to
the investigator clothed with warm, solid flesh, sweating hands and faces, and
grossly-material bodies. The most they can do is to project their aethereal
reflection on the atmospheric waves, and if the touch of their hands and
clothing can become upon rare occasions objective to the senses of a living
mortal, it will be felt as a passing breeze gently sweeping over the touched
spot, not as a human hand or material body. It is useless to plead that the
"materialized spirits" that have exhibited themselves with
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beating hearts and loud voices
(with or without a trumpet) are human spirits. The voices -- if such sound can be
termed a voice at all -- of a spiritual apparition once heard can hardly be
forgotten. That of a pure spirit is like the tremulous murmur of an AEolian
harp echoed from a distance; the voice of a suffering, hence impure, if not
utterly bad spirit, may be assimilated to a human voice issuing from an empty
barrel.
This is not our philosophy,
but that of the numberless generations of theurgists and magicians, and based
upon their practical experience. The testimony of antiquity is positive on this
subject: [[Daimonioin phonai anarthroi eisi]]. . . .* The voices of spirits are
not articulated. The spirit-voice consists of a series of sounds which conveys
the impression of a column of compressed air ascending from beneath upward, and
spreading around the living interlocutor. The many eye-witnesses who testified
in the case of Elizabeth Eslinger, namely:** the deputy-governor of the prison
of Weinsberg, Mayer, Eckhart, Theurer, and Knorr (sworn evidence), Duttenhofer,
and Kapff, the mathematician, testified that they saw the apparition like a
pillar of clouds. For the space of eleven weeks, Doctor Kerner and his sons,
several Lutheran ministers, the advocate Fraas, the engraver Duttenhofer, two
physicians, Siefer and Sicherer, the judge Heyd, and the Baron von Hugel, with
many others, followed this manifestation daily. During the time it lasted, the
prisoner Elizabeth prayed with a loud voice uninterruptedly; therefore, as the
"spirit" was talking at the same time, it could be no ventriloquism;
and that voice, they say, "had nothing human in it; no one could imitate
its sounds."
Further on we will give
abundant proofs from ancient authors concerning this neglected truism. We will
now only again assert that no spirit claimed by the spiritualists to be human
was ever proved to be such on sufficient testimony. The influence of the
disembodied ones can be felt, and communicated subjectively by them to
sensitives. They can produce objective manifestations, but they cannot produce
themselves otherwise than as described above. They can control the body of a
medium, and express their desires and ideas in various modes well known to
spiritualists; but not materialize what is matterless and purely spiritual --
their divine essence. Thus every so-called "materialization" -- when
genuine -- is either produced (perhaps) by the will of that spirit whom the
"appearance" is claimed to be but can only personate at best, or by
the elementary goblins themselves, which are generally too stupid to deserve
the honor of being called devils. Upon rare occasions the spirits are able to
subdue and control these soulless beings, which are ever ready to
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* See Des Mousseaux's
"Dodone," and "Dieu et les dieux," p. 326.
** "Apparitions,"
translated by C. Crowe, pp. 388, 391, 399.
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HUMAN.
assume pompous names if left
to themselves, in such a way that the mischievous spirit "of the
air," shaped in the real image of the human spirit, will be moved by the
latter like a marionette, and unable to either act or utter other words than those
imposed on him by the "immortal soul." But this requires many
conditions generally unknown to the circles of even spiritualists most in the
habit of regularly attending seances. Not every one can attract human spirits
who likes. One of the most powerful attractions of our departed ones is their
strong affection for those whom they have left on earth. It draws them
irresistibly, by degrees, into the current of the Astral Light vibrating
between the person sympathetic to them and the Universal Soul. Another very important
condition is harmony, and the magnetic purity of the persons present.
If this philosophy is wrong,
if all the "materialized" forms emerging in darkened rooms from still
darker cabinets, are spirits of men who once lived upon this earth, why such a difference
between them and the ghosts that appear unexpectedly -- ex abrupto -- without
either cabinet or medium? Who ever heard of the apparitions, unrestful
"souls," hovering about the spots where they were murdered, or coming
back for some other mysterious reasons of their own, with "warm
hands" feeling like living flesh, and but that they are known to be dead
and buried, not distinguishable from living mortals? We have well-attested
facts of such apparitions making themselves suddenly visible, but never, until
the beginning of the era of the "materializations," did we see
anything like them. In the Medium and Day Break, of September 8, 1876, we read
a letter from "a lady travelling on the continent," narrating a
circumstance that happened in a haunted house. She says: ". . . A strange
sound proceeded from a darkened corner of the library . . . on looking up she
perceived a cloud or column of luminous vapor; . . . . the earth-bound spirit
was hovering about the spot rendered accursed by his evil deed. . . ." As
this spirit was doubtless a genuine elementary apparition, which made itself
visible of its own free will -- in short, an umbra -- it was, as every
respectable shadow should be, visible but impalpable, or if palpable at all,
communicating to the feeling of touch the sensation of a mass of water suddenly
clasped in the hand, or of condensed but cold steam. It was luminous and
vapory; for aught we can tell it might have been the real personal umbra of the
"spirit," persecuted, and earth-bound, either by its own remorse and
crimes or those of another person or spirit. The mysteries of after-death are
many, and modern "materializations" only make them cheap and
ridiculous in the eyes of the indifferent.
To these assertions may be
opposed a fact well known among spiritualists: The writer has publicly
certified to having seen such materialized forms. We have most assuredly done
so, and are ready to repeat the
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testimony. We have recognized
such figures as the visible representations of acquaintances, friends, and even
relatives. We have, in company with many other spectators, heard them pronounce
words in languages unfamiliar not only to the medium and to every one else in
the room, except ourselves, but, in some cases, to almost if not quite every
medium in America and Europe, for they were the tongues of Eastern tribes and
peoples. At the time, these instances were justly regarded as conclusive proofs
of the genuine mediumship of the uneducated Vermont farmer who sat in the
"cabinet." But, nevertheless, these figures were not the forms of the
persons they appeared to be. They were simply their portrait statues,
constructed, animated and operated by the elementaries. If we have not
previously elucidated this point, it was because the spiritualistic public was
not then ready to even listen to the fundamental proposition that there are
elemental and elementary spirits. Since that time this subject has been
broached and more or less widely discussed. There is less hazard now in
attempting to launch upon the restless sea of criticism the hoary philosophy of
the ancient sages, for there has been some preparation of the public mind to
consider it with impartiality and deliberation. Two years of agitation have
effected a marked change for the better.
Pausanias writes that four
hundred years after the battle of Marathon, there were still heard in the place
where it was fought, the neighing of horses and the shouts of shadowy soldiers.
Supposing that the spectres of the slaughtered soldiers were their genuine
spirits, they looked like "shadows," not materialized men. Who, then,
or what, produced the neighing of horses? Equine "spirits"? And if it
be pronounced untrue that horses have spirits -- which assuredly no one among
zoologists, physiologists or psychologists, or even spiritualists, can either
prove or disprove -- then must we take it for granted that it was the
"immortal souls" of men which produced the neighing at Marathon to
make the historical battle scene more vivid and dramatic? The phantoms of dogs,
cats, and various other animals have been repeatedly seen, and the world-wide
testimony is as trustworthy upon this point as that with respect to human
apparitions. Who or what personates, if we are allowed such an expression, the
ghosts of departed animals? Is it, again, human spirits? As the matter now
stands, there is no side issue; we have either to admit that animals have
surviving spirits and souls as well as ourselves, or hold with Porphyry that
there are in the invisible world a kind of tricky and malicious demons,
intermediary beings between living men and "gods," spirits that delight
in appearing under every imaginable shape, beginning with the human form, and
ending with those of multifarious animals.*
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* "De Abstinentia,"
etc.
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CRIMES.
Before venturing to decide the
question whether the spectral animal forms so frequently seen and attested are
the returning spirits of dead beasts, we must carefully consider their reported
behavior. Do these spectres act according to the habits and display the same
instincts, as the animals during life? Do the spectral beasts of prey lie in
wait for victims, and timid animals flee before the presence of man; or do the
latter show a malevolence and disposition to annoy, quite foreign to their
natures? Many victims of these obsessions -- notably, the afflicted persons of
Salem and other historical witchcrafts -- testify to having seen dogs, cats,
pigs, and other animals, entering their rooms, biting them, trampling upon
their sleeping bodies, and talking to them; often inciting them to suicide and
other crimes. In the well-attested case of Elizabeth Eslinger, mentioned by Dr.
Kerner, the apparition of the ancient priest of Wimmenthal* was accompanied by
a large black dog, which he called his father, and which dog in the presence of
numerous witnesses jumped on all the beds of the prisoners. At another time the
priest appeared with a lamb, and sometimes with two lambs. Most of those
accused at Salem were charged by the seeresses with consulting and plotting
mischief with yellow birds, which would sit on their shoulder or on the beams
overhead.** And unless we discredit the testimony of thousands of witnesses, in
all parts of the world, and in all ages, and allow a monopoly of seership to
modern mediums, spectre-animals do appear and manifest all the worst traits of
depraved human nature, without themselves being human. What, then, can they be
but elementals?
Descartes was one of the few
who believed and dared say that to occult medicine we shall owe discoveries
"destined to extend the domain of philosophy"; and Brierre de
Boismont not only shared in these hopes but openly avowed his sympathy with
"supernaturalism," which he considered the universal "grand
creed." ". . . We think with Guizot," he says, "that the
existence of society is bound up in it. It is in vain that modern reason, which,
notwithstanding its positivism, cannot explain the intimate cause of any
phenomena, rejects the supernatural; it is universal, and at the root of all
hearts. The most elevated minds are frequently its most ardent
disciples."***
Christopher Columbus
discovered America, and Americus Vespucius reaped the glory and usurped his
dues. Theophrastus Paracelsus rediscovered the occult properties of the magnet
-- "the bone of Horus" which, twelve centuries before his time, had
played such an important part in the theurgic mysteries -- and he very naturally
became the founder
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* C. Crowe: "On
Apparitions," p. 398.
** Upham: "Salem
Witchcraft."
*** Brierre de Boismont:
"On Hallucinations," p. 60.
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of the school of magnetism and
of mediaeval magico-theurgy. But Mesmer, who lived nearly three hundred years after
him, and as a disciple of his school brought the magnetic wonders before the
public, reaped the glory that was due to the fire-philosopher, while the great
master died in a hospital!
So goes the world: new
discoveries, evolving from old sciences; new men -- the same old nature!
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CHAPTER III.
"The mirror of the soul
cannot reflect both earth and heaven; and the one vanishes from its surface, as
the other is glassed upon its deep." ZANONI.
"Qui, donc, t'a donne la
mission d'annoncer au peuple que la Divinite n'existe pas -- quel avantage
trouves tu a persuader a l'homme qu'une force aveugle preside a ses destinees
et frappe au hasard le crime et la vertu?"
ROBESPIERRE (Discours), May 7,
1794.
WE believe that few of those
physical phenomena which are genuine are caused by disembodied human spirits.
Still, even those that are produced by occult forces of nature, such as happen
through a few genuine mediums, and are consciously employed by the so-called
"jugglers" of India and Egypt, deserve a careful and serious
investigation by science; especially now that a number of respected authorities
have testified that in many cases the hypothesis of fraud does not hold. No
doubt, there are professed "conjurors" who can perform cleverer
tricks than all the American and English "John Kings" together.
Robert Houdin unquestionably could, but this did not prevent his laughing
outright in the face of the academicians, when they desired him to assert in
the newspapers, that he could make a table move, or rap answers to questions,
without contact of hands, unless the table was a prepared one.* The fact alone,
that a now notorious London juggler refused to accept a challenge for Ł1,000
offered him by Mr. Algernon Joy,* to produce such manifestations as are usually
obtained through mediums, unless he was left unbound and free from the hands of
a committee, negatives his expose of the occult phenomena. Clever as he may be,
we defy and challenge him to reproduce, under the same conditions, the
"tricks" exhibited even by a common Indian juggler. For instance, the
spot to be chosen by the investigators at the moment of the performance, and
the juggler to know nothing of the choice; the experiment to be made in broad
daylight, without the least preparations for it; without any confederate but a
boy absolutely naked, and the juggler to be in a condition of semi-nudity.
After that, we should select out of a variety three tricks, the most common
among such public jugglers, and that were recently exhibited to some gentlemen
belonging to
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See de Mirville's
"Question des Esprits," and the works on the "Phenomenes
Spirites," by de Gasparin.
** Honorary Secretary to the
National Association of Spiritualists of London.
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the suite of the Prince of
Wales: 1. To transform a rupee -- firmly clasped in the hand of a skeptic --
into a living cobra, the bite of which would prove fatal, as an examination of
its fangs would show. 2. To cause a seed chosen at random by the spectators,
and planted in the first semblance of a flower-pot, furnished by the same
skeptics, to grow, mature, and bear fruit in less than a quarter of an hour. 3.
To stretch himself on three swords, stuck perpendicularly in the ground at
their hilts, the sharp points upward; after that, to have removed first one of
the swords, then the other, and, after an interval of a few seconds, the last
one, the juggler remaining, finally, lying on nothing -- on the air,
miraculously suspended at about one yard from the ground. When any
prestidigitateur, to begin with Houdin and end with the last trickster who has
secured gratuitous advertisement by attacking spiritualism, does the same, then
-- but only then -- we will train ourselves to believe that mankind has been
evolved out of the hind-toe of Mr. Huxley's Eocene Orohippus.
We assert again, in full
confidence, that there does not exist a professional wizard, either of the
North, South or West, who can compete with anything approaching success, with
these untutored, naked sons of the East. These require no Egyptian Hall for
their performances, nor any preparations or rehearsals; but are ever ready, at
a moment's notice, to evoke to their help the hidden powers of nature, which,
for European prestidigitateurs as well as for scientists, are a closed book.
Verily, as Elihu puts it, "great men are not always wise; neither do the
aged understand judgment."* To repeat the remark of the English divine, Dr.
Henry More, we may well say: ". . . indeed, if there were any modesty left
in mankind, the histories of the Bible might abundantly assure men of the
existence of angels and spirits." The same eminent man adds, "I look
upon it as a special piece of Providence that . . . fresh examples of
apparitions may awaken our benumbed and lethargic minds into an assurance that
there are other intelligent beings besides those that are clothed in heavy
earth or clay . . . for this evidence, showing that there are bad spirits, will
necessarily open a door to the belief that there are good ones, and lastly,
that there is a God." The instance above given carries a moral with it,
not only to scientists, but theologians. Men who have made their mark in the
pulpit and in professors' chairs, are continually showing the lay public that
they really know so little of psychology, as to take up with any plausible
schemer who comes their way, and so make themselves ridiculous in the eyes of
the thoughtful student. Public opinion upon this subject has been manufactured
by jugglers and self-styled savants, unworthy of respectful consideration.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Job.
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The development of
psychological science has been retarded far more by the ridicule of this class
of pretenders, than by the inherent difficulties of its study. The empty laugh
of the scientific nursling or of the fools of fashion, has done more to keep
man ignorant of his imperial psychical powers, than the obscurities, the
obstacles and the dangers that cluster about the subject. This is especially
the case with spiritualistic phenomena. That their investigation has been so
largely confined to incapables, is due to the fact that men of science, who
might and would have studied them, have been frightened off by the boasted
exposures, the paltry jokes, and the impertinent clamor of those who are not
worthy to tie their shoes. There are moral cowards even in university chairs.
The inherent vitality of modern spiritualism is proven in its survival of the
neglect of the scientific body, and of the obstreperous boasting of its
pretended exposers. If we begin with the contemptuous sneers of the patriarchs
of science, such as Faraday and Brewster, and end with the professional (?)
exposes of the successful mimicker of the phenomena, ----, of London, we will
not find them furnishing one single, well-established argument against the
occurrence of spiritual manifestations. "My theory is," says this
individual, in his recent soi-disant "expose," "that Mr.
Williams dressed up and personified John King and Peter. Nobody can prove that
it wasn't so." Thus it appears that, notwithstanding the bold tone of
assertion, it is but a theory after all, and spiritualists might well retort
upon the exposer, and demand that he should prove that it is so.
But the most inveterate,
uncompromising enemies of Spiritualism are a class very fortunately composed of
but few members, who, nevertheless, declaim the louder and assert their views
with a clamorousness worthy of a better cause. These are the pretenders to science
of young America -- a mongrel class of pseudo-philosophers, mentioned at the
opening of this chapter, with sometimes no better right to be regarded as
scholars than the possession of an electrical machine, or the delivery of a
puerile lecture on insanity and mediomania. Such men are -- if you believe them
-- profound thinkers and physiologists; there is none of your metaphysical
nonsense about them; they are Positivists -- the mental sucklings of Auguste
Comte, whose bosoms swell at the thought of plucking deluded humanity from the
dark abyss of superstition, and rebuilding the cosmos on improved principles.
Irascible psychophobists, no more cutting insult can be offered them than to
suggest that they may be endowed with immortal spirits. To hear them, one would
fancy that there can be no other souls in men and women than
"scientific" or "unscientific souls"; whatever that kind of
soul may be.*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Dr. F. R. Marvin's
"Lectures on Mediomania and Insanity."
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Some thirty or forty years
ago, in France, Auguste Comte -- a pupil of the Ecole Polytechnique, who had
remained for years at that establishment as a repetiteur of Transcendant
Analysis and Rationalistic Mechanics -- awoke one fine morning with the very
irrational idea of becoming a prophet. In America, prophets can be met with at
every street-corner; in Europe, they are as rare as black swans. But France is
the land of novelties. Auguste Comte became a prophet; and so infectious is
fashion, sometimes, that even in sober England he was considered, for a certain
time, the Newton of the nineteenth century.
The epidemic extended, and for
the time being, it spread like wildfire over Germany, England, and America. It
found adepts in France, but the excitement did not last long with these. The
prophet needed money: the disciples were unwilling to furnish it. The fever of
admiration for a religion without a God cooled off as quickly as it had come
on; of all the enthusiastic apostles of the prophet, there remained but one
worthy of any attention. It was the famous philologist Littre, a member of the
French Institute, and a would-be member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences,
but whom the archbishop of Orleans maliciously prevented from becoming one of
the "Immortals."*
The philosopher-mathematician
-- the high-priest of the "religion of the future" -- taught his
doctrine as do all his brother-prophets of our modern days. He deified
"woman," and furnished her with an altar; but the goddess had to pay
for its use. The rationalists had laughed at the mental aberration of Fourier;
they had laughed at the St. Simonists; and their scorn for Spiritualism knew no
bounds. The same rationalists and materialists were caught, like so many
empty-headed sparrows, by the bird-lime of the new prophet's rhetoric. A
longing for some kind of divinity, a craving for the "unknown," is a
feeling congenital in man; hence the worst atheists seem not to be exempt from
it. Deceived by the outward brilliancy of this ignus fatuus, the disciples
followed it until they found themselves floundering in a bottomless morass.
Covering themselves with the
mask of a pretended erudition, the Positivists of this country have organized
themselves into clubs and committees with the design of uprooting Spiritualism,
while pretending to impartially investigate it.
Too timid to openly challenge
the churches and the Christian doctrine, they endeavor to sap that upon which
all religion is based -- man's faith in God and his own immortality. Their
policy is to ridicule that which affords an unusual basis for such a faith --
phenomenal Spiritualism.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Vapereau: "Biographie
Contemporaine," art. Littre; and Des Mousseaux: "Les Hauts Phenomenes
de la Magie," ch. 6.
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FUTURE.
Attacking it at its weakest
side, they make the most of its lack of an inductive method, and of the exaggerations
that are to be found in the transcendental doctrines of its propagandists.
Taking advantage of its unpopularity, and displaying a courage as furious and
out of place as that of the errant knight of La Mancha, they claim recognition
as philanthropists and benefactors who would crush out a monstrous
superstition.
Let us see in what degree
Comte's boasted religion of the future is superior to Spiritualism, and how
much less likely its advocates are to need the refuge of those lunatic asylums
which they officiously recommend for the mediums whom they have been so
solicitous about. Before beginning, let us call attention to the fact that
three-fourths of the disgraceful features exhibited in modern Spiritualism are
directly traceable to the materialistic adventurers pretending to be
spiritualists. Comte has fulsomely depicted the
"artificially-fecundated" woman of the future. She is but elder
sister to the Cyprian ideal of the free-lovers. The immunity against the future
offered by the teachings of his moonstruck disciples, has inoculated some
pseudo-spiritualists to such an extent as to lead them to form communistic
associations. None, however, have proved long-lived. Their leading feature
being generally a materialistic animalism, gilded over with a thin leaf of
Dutch-metal philosophy and tricked out with a combination of hard Greek names,
the community could not prove anything else than a failure.
Plato, in the fifth book of
the Republic, suggests a method for improving the human race by the elimination
of the unhealthy or deformed individuals, and by coupling the better specimens
of both sexes. It was not to be expected that the "genius of our
century," even were he a prophet, would squeeze out of his brain anything
entirely new.
Comte was a mathematician.
Cleverly combining several old utopias, he colored the whole, and, improving on
Plato's idea, materialized it, and presented the world with the greatest
monstrosity that ever emanated from a human mind!
We beg the reader to keep in
view, that we do not attack Comte as a philosopher, but as a professed
reformer. In the irremediable darkness of his political, philosophical and
religious views, we often meet with isolated observations and remarks in which
profound logic and judiciousness of thought rival the brilliancy of their
interpretation. But then, these dazzle you like flashes of lightning on a
gloomy night, to leave you, the next moment, more in the dark than ever. If
condensed and repunctuated, his several works might produce, on the whole, a volume
of very original aphorisms, giving a very clear and really clever definition of
most of our social evils; but it would be vain to seek, either through the
tedious circumlocution of the six volumes of his Cours de Philoso-
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phie Positive, or in that
parody on priesthood, in the form of a dialogue -- The Catechism of the
Religion of Positivism -- any idea suggestive of even provisional remedies for
such evils. His disciples suggest that the sublime doctrines of their prophet
were not intended for the vulgar. Comparing the dogmas preached by Positivism
with their practical exemplifications by its apostles, we must confess the
possibility of some very achromatic doctrine being at the bottom of it. While
the "high-priest" preaches that "woman must cease to be the
female of the man";* while the theory of the positivist legislators on
marriage and the family, chiefly consists in making the woman the "mere
companion of man by ridding her of every maternal function";** and while
they are preparing against the future a substitute for that function by
applying "to the chaste woman" "a latent force,"*** some of
its lay priests openly preach polygamy, and others affirm that their doctrines
are the quintessence of spiritual philosophy.
In the opinion of the Romish
clergy, who labor under a chronic nightmare of the devil, Comte offers his
"woman of the future" to the possession of the
"incubi."**** In the opinion of more prosaic persons, the Divinity of
Positivism, must henceforth be regarded as a biped broodmare. Even Littre, made
prudent restrictions while accepting the apostleship of this marvellous
religion. This is what he wrote in 1859:
"M. Comte not only
thought that he found the principles, traced the outlines, and furnished the
method, but that he had deduced the consequences and constructed the social and
religious edifice of the future. It is in this second division that we make our
reservations, declaring, at the same time, that we accept as an inheritance,
the whole of the first."*****
Further, he says: "M.
Comte, in a grand work entitled the System of the Positive Philosophy,
established the basis of a philosophy [?] which must finally supplant every
theology and the whole of metaphysics. Such a work necessarily contains a
direct application to the government of societies; as it has nothing arbitrary
in it [?] and as we find therein a real science [?], my adhesion to the
principles involves my adhesion to the essential consequences."
M. Littre has shown himself in
the light of a true son of his prophet. Indeed the whole system of Comte
appears to us to have been built on a play of words. When they say
"Positivism," read Nihilism; when you hear the word chastity, know
that it means impudicity; and so on.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* A. Comte: "Systeme de
Politique Positive," vol. i., p. 203, etc.
** Ibid.
*** Ibid.
**** See des Mousseaux:
"Hauts Phenomenes de la Magie," chap. 6.
***** Littre: "Paroles de
Philosophie Positive."
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NEGATION.
Being a religion based on a
theory of negation, its adherents can hardly carry it out practically without
saying white when meaning black!
"Positive
Philosophy," continues Littre, "does not accept atheism, for the
atheist is not a really-emancipated mind, but is, in his own way, a theologian
still; he gives his explanation about the essence of things; he knows how they
began! . . . Atheism is Pantheism; this system is quite theological yet, and
thus belongs to the ancient party."*
It really would be losing time
to quote any more of these paradoxical dissertations. Comte attained to the
apotheosis of absurdity and inconsistency when, after inventing his philosophy,
he named it a "Religion." And, as is usually the case, the disciples
have surpassed the reformer -- in absurdity. Supposititious philosophers, who
shine in the American academies of Comte, like a lampyris noctiluca beside a
planet, leave us in no doubt as to their belief, and contrast "that system
of thought and life" elaborated by the French apostle with the
"idiocy" of Spiritualism; of course to the advantage of the former.
"To destroy, you must replace"; exclaims the author of the Catechism
of the Religion of Positivism, quoting Cassaudiere, by the way, without
crediting him with the thought; and his disciples proceed to show by what sort
of a loathsome system they are anxious to replace Christianity, Spiritualism,
and even Science.
"Positivism,"
perorates one of them, "is an integral doctrine. It rejects completely all
forms of theological and metaphysical belief; all forms of supernaturalism, and
thus -- Spiritualism. The true positive spirit consists in substituting the
study of the invariable laws of phenomena for that of their so-called causes,
whether proximate or primary. On this ground it equally rejects atheism; for
the atheist is at bottom a theologian," he adds, plagiarizing sentences
from Littre's works: "the atheist does not reject the problems of
theology, only the solution of these, and so he is illogical. We Positivists
reject the problem in our turn on the ground that it is utterly inaccessible to
the intellect, and we would only waste our strength in a vain search for first
and final causes. As you see, Positivism gives a complete explanation [?] of
the world, of man, his duty and destiny . . . . "!**
Very brilliant this; and now,
by way of contrast, we will quote what a really great scientist, Professor
Hare, thinks of this system. "Comte's positive philosophy," he says,
"after all, is merely negative. It is admitted by Comte, that he knows
nothing of the sources and causes of nature's laws; that their origination is
so perfectly inscrutable as to make it idle to
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Littre: "Paroles de
Philosophie Positive," vii., 57.
** "Spiritualism and
Charlatanism."
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take up time in any scrutiny
for that purpose. . . . Of course his doctrine makes him avowedly a thorough
ignoramus, as to the causes of laws, or the means by which they are
established, and can have no basis but the negative argument above stated, in
objecting to the facts ascertained in relation to the spiritual creation. Thus,
while allowing the atheist his material dominion, Spiritualism will erect
within and above the same space a dominion of an importance as much greater as
eternity is to the average duration of human life, and as the boundless regions
of the fixed stars are to the habitable area of this globe."*
In short, Positivism proposes
to itself to destroy Theology, Metaphysics, Spiritualism, Atheism, Materialism,
Pantheism, and Science, and it must finally end in destroying itself. De
Mirville thinks that according to Positivism, "order will begin to reign
in the human mind only on the day when psychology will become a sort of
cerebral physics, and history a kind of social physics." The modern
Mohammed first disburdens man and woman of God and their own soul, and then
unwittingly disembowels his own doctrine with the too sharp sword of
metaphysics, which all the time he thought he was avoiding, thus letting out
every vestige of philosophy.
In 1864, M. Paul Janet, a
member of the Institute, pronounced a discourse upon Positivism, in which occur
the following remarkable words:
"There are some minds
which were brought up and fed on exact and positive sciences, but which feel
nevertheless, a sort of instinctive impulse for philosophy. They can satisfy
this instinct but with elements that they have already on hand. Ignorant in
psychological sciences, having studied only the rudiments of metaphysics, they
nevertheless are determined to fight these same metaphysics as well as
psychology, of which they know as little as of the other. After this is done,
they will imagine themselves to have founded a Positive Science, while the
truth is that they have only built up a new mutilated and incomplete
metaphysical theory. They arrogate to themselves the authority and
infallibility properly belonging alone to the true sciences, those which are
based on experience and calculations; but they lack such an authority, for
their ideas, defective as they may be, nevertheless belong to the same class as
those which they attack. Hence the weakness of their situation, the final ruin
of their ideas, which are soon scattered to the four winds."**
The Positivists of America
have joined hands in their untiring efforts to overthrow Spiritualism. To show
their impartiality, though, they propound such novel queries as follows: "
. . . how much rationality is
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Prof. Hare: "On Positivism,"
p. 29.
** "Journal des
Debats," 1864. See also des Mousseaux's "Hauts Phen. de la
Magie."
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FECUNDATION."
there in the dogmas of the
Immaculate Conception, the Trinity and Transubstantiation, if submitted to the
tests of physiology, mathematics, and chemistry?" and they "undertake
to say, that the vagaries of Spiritualism do not surpass in absurdity these
eminently respectable beliefs." Very well. But there is neither
theological absurdity nor spiritualistic delusion that can match in depravity
and imbecility that positivist notion of "artificial fecundation."
Denying to themselves all thought on primal and final causes, they apply their
insane theories to the construction of an impossible woman for the worship of
future generations; the living, immortal companion of man they would replace
with the Indian female fetich of the Obeah, the wooden idol that is stuffed
every day with serpents' eggs, to be hatched by the heat of the sun!
And now, if we are permitted
to ask in the name of common-sense, why should Christian mystics be taxed with
credulity or the spiritualists be consigned to Bedlam, when a religion
embodying such revolting absurdity finds disciples even among Academicians? --
when such insane rhapsodies as the following can be uttered by the mouth of
Comte and admired by his followers: "My eyes are dazzled; -- they open each
day more and more to the increasing coincidence between the social advent of
the feminine mystery, and the mental decadence of the eucharistical sacrament.
Already the Virgin has dethroned God in the minds of Southern Catholics!
Positivism realizes the Utopia of the mediaeval ages, by representing all the
members of the great family as the issue of a virgin mother without a husband.
. . ." And again, after giving the modus operandi: "The development
of the new process would soon cause to spring up a caste without heredity,
better adapted than vulgar procreation to the recruitment of spiritual chiefs,
or even temporal ones, whose authority would then rest upon an origin truly
superior, which would not shrink from an investigation."
To this we might inquire with propriety,
whether there has ever been found in the "vagaries of Spiritualism,"
or the mysteries of Christianity, anything more preposterous than this ideal
"coming race." If the tendency of materialism is not grossly belied
by the behavior of some of its advocates, those who publicly preach polygamy,
we fancy that whether or not there will ever be a sacerdotal stirp so begotten,
we shall see no end of progeny, -- the offspring of "mothers without
husbands."
How natural that a philosophy
which could engender such a caste of didactic incubi, should express through
the pen of one of its most garrulous essayists, the following sentiments:
"This is a sad, a very sad
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Philosophie
Positive," Vol. iv., p. 279.
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age,* full of dead and dying
faiths; full of idle prayers sent out in vain search for the departing gods.
But oh! it is a glorious age, full of the golden light which streams from the
ascending sun of science! What shall we do for those who are shipwrecked in
faith, bankrupt in intellect, but . . . who seek comfort in the mirage of
spiritualism, the delusions of transcendentalism, or the will o' the wisp of
mesmerism? . . ."
The ignis fatuus, now so
favorite an image with many dwarf philosophers, had itself to struggle for
recognition. It is not so long since the now familiar phenomenon was stoutly
denied by a correspondent of the London Times, whose assertions carried weight,
till the work of Dr. Phipson, supported by the testimony of Beccaria, Humboldt,
and other naturalists, set the question at rest.** The Positivists should
choose some happier expression, and follow the discoveries of science at the
same time. As to mesmerism, it has been adopted in many parts of Germany, and
is publicly used with undeniable success in more than one hospital; its occult
properties have been proved and are believed in by physicians, whose eminence,
learning, and merited fame, the self-complacent lecturer on mediums and
insanity cannot well hope to equal.
We have to add but a few more
words before we drop this unpleasant subject. We have found Positivists
particularly happy in the delusion that the greatest scientists of Europe were
Comtists. How far their claims may be just, as regards other savants, we do not
know, but Huxley, whom all Europe considers one of her greatest scientists, most
decidedly declines that honor, and Dr. Maudsley, of London, follows suit. In a
lecture delivered by the former gentleman in 1868, in Edinburgh, on The
Physical Basis of Life, he even appears to be very much shocked at the liberty
taken by the Archbishop of York, in identifying him with Comte's philosophy.
"So far as I am concerned," says Mr. Huxley, "the most reverend
prelate might dialectically hew Mr. Comte in pieces, as a modern Agag, and I
would not attempt to stay his hand. In so far as my study of what specially
characterizes the positive philosophy has led me, I find, therein, little or
nothing of any scientific value, and a great deal which is as thoroughly
antagonistic to the very essence of science as anything in ultramontane
Catholicism. In fact, Comte's philosophy in practice might be compendiously
described as Catholicism minus Christianity." Further, Huxley even becomes
wrathful, and falls to accusing Scotchmen of ingratitude for having allowed the
Bishop to mistake Comte for the founder of a philosophy which belonged by right
to Hume. "It was enough," exclaims the professor, "to make David
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Dr. F. R. Marvin:
"Lecture on Insanity."
** See Howitt: "History
of the Supernatural," vol. ii.
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OF SCIENCE.
Hume turn in his grave, that here,
almost within earshot of his house, an interested audience should have
listened, without a murmur, whilst his most characteristic doctrines were
attributed to a French writer of fifty years later date, in whose dreary and
verbose pages we miss alike the vigor of thought and the clearness of style. .
. ."*
Poor Comte! It appears that
the highest representatives of his philosophy are now reduced, at least in this
country, to "one physicist, one physician who has made a specialty of
nervous diseases, and one lawyer." A very witty critic nicknamed this
desperate trio, "an anomalistic triad, which, amid its arduous labors,
finds no time to acquaint itself with the principles and laws of their
language."**
To close the question, the
Positivists neglect no means to overthrow Spiritualism in favor of their
religion. Their high priests are made to blow their trumpets untiringly; and
though the walls of no modern Jericho are ever likely to tumble down in dust
before their blast, still they neglect no means to attain the desired object.
Their paradoxes are unique, and their accusations against spiritualists
irresistible in logic. In a recent lecture, for instance, it was remarked that:
"The exclusive exercise of religious instinct is productive of sexual immorality.
Priests, monks, nuns, saints, media, ecstatics, and devotees are famous for
their impurities."***
We are happy to remark that,
while Positivism loudly proclaims itself a religion, Spiritualism has never
pretended to be anything more than a science, a growing philosophy, or rather a
research in hidden and as yet unexplained forces in nature. The objectiveness
of its various phenomena has been demonstrated by more than one genuine
representative of science, and as ineffectually denied by her "monkeys."
Finally, it may be remarked of
our Positivists who deal so unceremoniously with every psychological
phenomenon, that they are like Samuel Butler's rhetorician, who
". . . . could not ope
His mouth, but out there flew
a trope."
We would there were no
occasion to extend the critic's glance beyond the circle of triflers and
pedants who improperly wear the title of men
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Prof. Huxley: "Physical
Basis of Life."
** Reference is made to a card
which appeared some time since in a New York paper, signed by three persons
styling themselves as above, and assuming to be a scientific committee
appointed two years before to investigate spiritual phenomena. The criticism on
the triad appeared in the "New Era" magazine.
*** Dr. Marvin: "Lecture
on Insanity," N. Y., 1875.
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of science. But it is also
undeniable that the treatment of new subjects by those whose rank is high in
the scientific world but too often passes unchallenged, when it is amenable to
censure. The cautiousness bred of a fixed habit of experimental research, the
tentative advance from opinion to opinion, the weight accorded to recognized
authorities -- all foster a conservatism of thought which naturally runs into
dogmatism. The price of scientific progress is too commonly the martyrdom or
ostracism of the innovator. The reformer of the laboratory must, so to speak,
carry the citadel of custom and prejudice at the point of the bayonet. It is
rare that even a postern-door is left ajar by a friendly hand. The noisy
protests and impertinent criticisms of the little people of the antechamber of
science, he can afford to let pass unnoticed; the hostility of the other class
is a real peril that the innovator must face and overcome. Knowledge does
increase apace, but the great body of scientists are not entitled to the
credit. In every instance they have done their best to shipwreck the new
discovery, together with the discoverer. The palm is to him who has won it by
individual courage, intuitiveness, and persistency. Few are the forces in
nature which, when first announced, were not laughed at, and then set aside as
absurd and unscientific. Humbling the pride of those who had not discovered
anything, the just claims of those who have been denied a hearing until
negation was no longer prudent, and then -- alas for poor, selfish humanity!
these very discoverers too often became the opponents and oppressors, in their
turn, of still more recent explorers in the domain of natural law! So, step by
step, mankind move around their circumscribed circle of knowledge, science
constantly correcting its mistakes, and readjusting on the following day the
erroneous theories of the preceding one. This has been the case, not merely
with questions pertaining to psychology, such as mesmerism, in its dual sense
of a physical and spiritual phenomenon, but even with such discoveries as
directly related to exact sciences, and have been easy to demonstrate.
What can we do? Shall we
recall the disagreeable past? Shall we point to mediaeval scholars conniving
with the clergy to deny the Heliocentric theory, for fear of hurting an
ecclesiastical dogma? Must we recall how learned conchologists once denied that
the fossil shells, found scattered over the face of the earth, were ever
inhabited by living animals at all? How the naturalists of the eighteenth
century declared these but mere fac-similes of animals? And how these
naturalists fought and quarrelled and battled and called each other names, over
these venerable mummies of the ancient ages for nearly a century, until Buffon
settled the question by proving to the negators that they were mistaken? Surely
an oyster-shell is anything but transcendental, and ought to be quite a
palpable subject for any exact study; and if the scientists could not agree
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on that, we can hardly expect
them to believe at all that evanescent forms, -- of hands, faces, and whole
bodies sometimes -- appear at the seances of spiritual mediums, when the latter
are honest.
There exists a certain work
which might afford very profitable reading for the leisure hours of skeptical
men of science. It is a book published by Flourens, the Perpetual Secretary of
the French Academy, called Histoire des Recherches de Buffon. The author shows
in it how the great naturalist combated and finally conquered the advocates of
the fac-simile theory; and how they still went on denying everything under the
sun, until at times the learned body fell into a fury, an epidemic of negation.
It denied Franklin and his refined electricity; laughed at Fulton and his
concentrated steam; voted the engineer Perdormet a strait-jacket for his offer
to build railroads; stared Harvey out of countenance; and proclaimed Bernard de
Palissy "as stupid as one of his own pots!"
In his oft-quoted work,
Conflict between Religion and Science, Professor Draper shows a decided
propensity to kick the beam of the scales of justice, and lay all such
impediments to the progress of science at the door of the clergy alone. With
all respect and admiration due to this eloquent writer and scientist, we must
protest and give every one his just due. Many of the above-enumerated
discoveries are mentioned by the author of the Conflict. In every case he
denounces the bitter resistance on the part of the clergy, and keeps silent on
the like opposition invariably experienced by every new discoverer at the hands
of science. His claim on behalf of science that "knowledge is power"
is undoubtedly just. But abuse of power, whether it proceeds from excess of
wisdom or ignorance is alike obnoxious in its effects. Besides, the clergy are
silenced now. Their protests would at this day be scarcely noticed in the world
of science. But while theology is kept in the background, the scientists have
seized the sceptre of despotism with both hands, and they use it, like the
cherubim and flaming sword of Eden, to keep the people away from the tree of
immortal life and within this world of perishable matter.
The editor of the London
Spiritualist, in answer to Dr. Gully's criticism of Mr. Tyndall's fire-mist
theory, remarks that if the entire body of spiritualists are not roasting alive
at Smithfield in the present century, it is to science alone that we are
indebted for this crowning mercy. Well, let us admit that the scientists are
indirectly public benefactors in this case, to the extent that the burning of
erudite scholars is no longer fashionable. But is it unfair to ask whether the
disposition manifested toward the spiritualistic doctrine by Faraday, Tyndall,
Huxley, Agassiz, and others, does not warrant the suspicion that if these
learned gentlemen
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and their following had the
unlimited power once held by the Inquisition, spiritualists would not have
reason to feel as easy as they do now? Even supposing that they should not
roast believers in the existence of a spirit-world -- it being unlawful to
cremate people alive -- would they not send every spiritualist they could to
Bedlam? Do they not call us "incurable monomaniacs,"
"hallucinated fools," "fetich-worshippers," and like
characteristic names? Really, we cannot see what should have stimulated to such
extent the gratitude of the editor of the London Spiritualist, for the
benevolent tutelage of the men of science. We believe that the recent
Lankester-Donkin-Slade prosecution in London ought at last to open the eyes of
hopeful spiritualists, and show them that stubborn materialism is often more
stupidly bigoted than religious fanaticism itself.
One of the cleverest
productions of Professor Tyndall's pen is his caustic essay upon Martineau and
Materialism. At the same time it is one which in future years the author will
doubtless be only too ready to trim of certain unpardonable grossnesses of
expression. For the moment, however, we will not deal with these, but consider
what he has to say of the phenomenon of consciousness. He quotes this question
from Mr. Martineau: "A man can say 'I feel, I think, I love'; but how does
consciousness infuse itself into the problem?" And thus answers: "The
passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of
consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought and a molecular
action in the brain occur simultaneously; we do not possess the intellectual
organ nor apparently any rudiments of the organ, which would enable us to pass
by a process of reasoning from one to the other. They appear together, but we
do not know why. Were our minds and senses so expanded, strengthened and
illuminated, as to enable us to see and feel the very molecules of the brain;
were we capable of following all their motions, all their groupings, all their
electric discharges, if such there be; and were we intimately acquainted with
the corresponding states of thought and feeling, we should be as far as ever
from the solution of the problem, 'How are these physical processes connected
with the facts of consciousness?' The chasm between the two classes of
phenomena would still remain intellectually impassable."*
This chasm, as impassable to
Professor Tyndall as the fire-mist where the scientist is confronted with his
unknowable cause, is a barrier only to men without spiritual intuitions.
Professor Buchanan's Outlines of Lectures on the Neurological System of
Anthropology, a work written so far back as 1854, contains suggestions that, if
the scio-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Tyndall: "Fragments of
Science."
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SCIENCE.
lists would only heed them,
would show how a bridge can be thrown across this dreadful abyss. It is one of
the bins in which the thought-seed of future harvests is stored up by a frugal
present. But the edifice of materialism is based entirely upon that gross
sub-structure -- the reason. When they have stretched its capabilities to their
utmost limits, its teachers can at best only disclose to us an universe of
molecules animated by an occult impulse. What better diagnosis of the ailment
of our scientists could be asked than can be derived from Professor Tyndall's
analysis of the mental state of the Ultramontane clergy by a very slight change
of names. For "spiritual guides" read "scientists," for
"prescientific past" substitute "materialistic present,"
say "spirit" for "science," and in the following paragraph
we have a life portrait of the modern man of science drawn by the hand of a
master:
" . . . Their spiritual
guides live so exclusively in the prescientific past, that even the really
strong intellects among them are reduced to atrophy as regards scientific
truth. Eyes they have and see not; ears they have and hear not; for both eyes
and ears are taken possession of by the sights and sounds of another age. In
relation to science, the Ultramontane brain, through lack of exercise, is
virtually the undeveloped brain of the child. And thus it is that as children
in scientific knowledge, but as potent wielders of spiritual power among the
ignorant, they countenance and enforce practices sufficient to bring the blush
of shame to the cheeks of the more intelligent among themselves."* The
Occultist holds this mirror up to science that it may see how it looks itself.
Since history recorded the
first laws established by man, there never was yet a people, whose code did not
hang the issues of the life and death of its citizens upon the testimony of two
or three credible witnesses. "At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses,
shall he that is worthy of death be put to death,"** says Moses, the first
legislator we meet in ancient history. "The laws which put to death a man
on the deposition of one witness are fatal to freedom" -- says
Montesquieu. "Reason claims there should be two witnesses."***
Thus the value of evidence has
been tacitly agreed upon and accepted in every country. But the scientists will
not accept the evidence of the million against one. In vain do hundreds of
thousands of men testify to facts. Oculos habent et non vident! They are
determined to remain blind and deaf. Thirty years of practical demonstrations
and the testimony of some millions of believers in America and Europe are
certainly entitled to some degree of respect and attention. Especially so, when
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Tyndall: Preface to
"Fragments of Science."
** Deuteronomy, chap. xvii.,
6.
*** Montesquieu: Esprit des
Lois I., xii., chap. 3.
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the verdict of twelve
spiritualists, influenced by the evidence testified to by any two others, is
competent to send even a scientist to swing on the gallows for a crime, perhaps
committed under the impulse supplied by a commotion among the cerebral
molecules unrestrained by a consciousness of future moral RETRIBUTION.
Toward science as a whole, as
a divine goal, the whole civilized world ought to look with respect and
veneration; for science alone can enable man to understand the Deity by the
true appreciation of his works. "Science is the understanding of truth or
facts," says Webster; "it is an investigation of truth for its own
sake and a pursuit of pure knowledge." If the definition be correct, then
the majority of our modern scholars have proved false to their goddess.
"Truth for its own sake!" And where should the keys to every truth in
nature be searched for, unless in the hitherto unexplored mystery of
psychology? Alas! that in questioning nature so many men of science should
daintily sort over her facts and choose only such for study as best bolster
their prejudices.
Psychology has no worse
enemies than the medical school denominated allopathists. It is in vain to
remind them that of the so-called exact sciences, medicine, confessedly, least
deserves the name. Although of all branches of medical knowledge, psychology
ought more than any other to be studied by physicians, since without its help
their practice degenerates into mere guess-work and chance-intuitions, they
almost wholly neglect it. The least dissent from their promulgated doctrines is
resented as a heresy, and though an unpopular and unrecognized curative method
should be shown to save thousands, they seem, as a body, disposed to cling to
accepted hypotheses and prescriptions, and decry both innovator and innovation
until they get the mint-stamp of regularity. Thousands of unlucky patients may
die meanwhile, but so long as professional honor is vindicated, this is a
matter of secondary importance.
Theoretically the most
benignant, at the same time no other school of science exhibits so many
instances of petty prejudice, materialism, atheism, and malicious stubbornness
as medicine. The predilections and patronage of the leading physicians are
scarcely ever measured by the usefulness of a discovery. Bleeding, by leeching,
cupping, and the lancet, had its epidemic of popularity, but at last fell into
merited disgrace; water, now freely given to fevered patients, was once denied
them, warm baths were superseded by cold water, and for a while hydropathy was
a mania. Peruvian bark -- which a modern defender of biblical authority
seriously endeavors to identify with the paradisiacal "Tree of
Life,"* and which was brought to Spain in 1632 -- was neg-
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* C. B. Warring.
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lected for years. The Church,
for once, showed more discrimination than science. At the request of Cardinal
de Lugo, Innocent X. gave it the prestige of his powerful name.
In an old book entitled
Demonologia, the author cites many instances of important remedies which being
neglected at first afterward rose into notice through mere accident. He also
shows that most of the new discoveries in medicine have turned out to be no more
than "the revival and readoption of very ancient practices." During
the last century, the root of the male fern was sold and widely advertised as a
secret nostrum by a Madame Nouffleur, a female quack, for the effective cure of
the tapeworm. The secret was bought by Louis XV. for a large sum of money;
after which the physicians discovered that it was recommended and administered
in that disease by Galen. The famous powder of the Duke of Portland for the
gout, was the diacentaureon of Caelius Aurelianus. Later it was ascertained
that it had been used by the earliest medical writers, who had found it in the
writings of the old Greek philosophers. So with the eau medicinale of Dr.
Husson, whose name it bears. This famous remedy for the gout was recognized under
its new mask to be the Colchicum autumnale, or meadow saffron, which is
identical with a plant called Hermodactylus, whose merits as a certain antidote
to gout were recognized and defended by Oribasius, a great physician of the
fourth century, and AEtius Amidenus, another eminent physician of Alexandria
(fifth century). Subsequently it was abandoned and fell into disfavor only
because it was too old to be considered good by the members of the medical
faculties that flourished toward the end of the last century!
Even the great Magendie, the
wise physiologist, was not above discovering that which had already been
discovered and found good by the oldest physicians. His proposed remedy against
consumption, namely, the use of prussic acid, may be found in the works of
Linnaeus, Amenitates Academicae, vol. iv., in which he shows distilled laurel
water to have been used with great profit in pulmonary consumption. Pliny also
assures us that the extract of almonds and cherry-pits had cured the most
obstinate coughs. As the author of Demonologia well remarks, it may be asserted
with perfect safety that "all the various secret preparations of opium
which have been lauded as the discovery of modern times, may be recognized in
the works of ancient authors," who see themselves so discredited in our
days.
It is admitted on all hands
that from time immemorial the distant East was the land of knowledge. Not even
in Egypt were botany and mineralogy so extensively studied as by the savants of
archaic Middle Asia. Sprengel, unjust and prejudiced as he shows himself in
everything else, confesses this much in his Histoire de la Medicine. And yet,
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notwithstanding this, whenever
the subject of magic is discussed, that of India has rarely suggested itself to
any one, for of its general practice in that country less is known than among
any other ancient people. With the Hindus it was and is more esoteric, if
possible, than it was even among the Egyptian priests. So sacred was it deemed
that its existence was only half admitted, and it was only practiced in public
emergencies. It was more than a religious matter, for it was considered divine.
The Egyptian hierophants, notwithstanding the practice of a stern and pure
morality, could not be compared for one moment with the ascetical
Gymnosophists, either in holiness of life or miraculous powers developed in
them by the supernatural adjuration of everything earthly. By those who knew
them well they were held in still greater reverence than the magians of
Chaldea. Denying themselves the simplest comforts of life, they dwelt in woods,
and led the life of the most secluded hermits,* while their Egyptian brothers
at least congregated together. Notwithstanding the slur thrown by history on
all who practiced magic and divination, it has proclaimed them as possessing
the greatest secrets in medical knowledge and unsurpassed skill in its
practice. Numerous are the volumes preserved in Hindu convents, in which are
recorded the proofs of their learning. To attempt to say whether these
Gymnosophists were the real founders of magic in India, or whether they only
practiced what had passed to them as an inheritance from the earliest Rishis**
-- the seven primeval sages -- would be regarded as a mere speculation by exact
scholars. "The care which they took in educating youth, in familiarizing
it with generous and virtuous sentiments, did them peculiar honor, and their
maxims and discourses, as recorded by historians, prove that they were expert
in matters of philosophy, metaphysics, astronomy, morality, and religion,"
says a modern writer. They preserved their dignity under the sway of the most
powerful princes, whom they would not condescend to visit, or to trouble for
the slightest favor. If the latter desired the advice or the prayers of the
holy men, they were either obliged to go themselves, or to send messengers. To
these men no secret power of either plant or mineral was unknown. They had
fathomed nature to its depths, while psychology and physiology were to them
open books, and the result was that science or machagiotia that is now termed,
so superciliously, magic.
While the miracles recorded in
the Bible have become accepted facts
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ammianus Marcellinus,
xxiii., 6.
** The Rishis were seven in
number, and lived in days anteceding the Vedic period. They were known as sages,
and held in reverence like demigods. Haug shows that they occupy in the
Brahmanical religion a position answering to that of the twelve sons of Jacob
in the Jewish Bible. The Brahmans claim to descend directly from these Rishis.
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with the Christians, to
disbelieve which is regarded as infidelity, the narratives of wonders and
prodigies found in the Atharva-Veda,* either provoke their contempt or are
viewed as evidences of diabolism. And yet, in more than one respect, and
notwithstanding the unwillingness of certain Sanscrit scholars, we can show the
identity between the two. Moreover, as the Vedas have now been proved by
scholars to antedate the Jewish Bible by many ages, the inference is an easy
one that if one of them has borrowed from the other, the Hindu sacred books are
not to be charged with plagiarism.
First of all, their cosmogony
shows how erroneous has been the opinion prevalent among the civilized nations
that Brahma was ever considered by the Hindus their chief or Supreme God.
Brahma is a secondary deity, and like Jehovah is "a mover of the
waters." He is the creating god, and has in his allegorical
representations four heads, answering to the four cardinal points. He is the
demiurgos, the architect of the world. "In the primordiate state of the
creation," says Polier's Mythologie des Indous, "the rudimental
universe, submerged in water, reposed in the bosom of the Eternal. Sprang from
this chaos and darkness, Brahma, the architect of the world, poised on a
lotus-leaf floated (moved?) upon the waters, unable to discern anything but
water and darkness." This is as identical as possible with the Egyptian
cosmogony, which shows in its opening sentences Athtor** or Mother Night (which
represents illimitable darkness) as the primeval element which covered the
infinite abyss, animated by water and the universal spirit of the Eternal,
dwelling alone in Chaos. As in the Jewish Scriptures, the history of the
creation opens with the spirit of God and his creative emanation -- another
Deity.*** Perceiving such a dismal state of things, Brahma soliloquizes in
consternation: "Who am I? Whence came I?" Then he hears a voice:
"Direct your prayer to Bhagavant -- the Eternal, known, also, as
Parabrahma." Brahma, rising from his natatory position, seats himself upon
the lotus in an attitude of contemplation, and reflects upon the Eternal, who,
pleased with this evidence of piety, disperses the primeval darkness and opens
his understanding. "After this Brahma issues from the universal egg --
(infinite chaos) as light, for his understanding is now opened, and he sets
himself to work; he moves on the eternal waters, with the spirit of God within
himself; in his capacity of mover of the waters he is Narayana."
The lotus, the sacred flower
of the Egyptians, as well as the Hindus, is the symbol of Horus as it is that
of Brahma. No temples in Thibet or
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The fourth Veda.
** Orthography of the
"Archaic Dictionary."
*** We do not mean the current
or accepted Bible, but the real Jewish one explained kabalistically.
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Nepaul are found without it;
and the meaning of this symbol is extremely suggestive. The sprig of lilies placed
in the hand of the archangel, who offers them to the Virgin Mary, in the
pictures of the "Annunciation," have in their esoteric symbolism
precisely the same meaning. We refer the reader to Sir William Jones.* With the
Hindus, the lotus is the emblem of the productive power of nature, through the
agency of fire and water (spirit and matter). "Eternal!" says a verse
in the Bhagavad Gita, "I see Brahma the creator enthroned in thee above
the lotus!" and Sir W. Jones shows that the seeds of the lotus contain --
even before they germinate -- perfectly-formed leaves, the miniature shapes of
what one day, as perfected plants, they will become; or, as the author of The
Heathen Religion, has it -- "nature thus giving us a specimen of the
preformation of its productions"; adding further that "the seed of
all phoenogamous plants bearing proper flowers, contain an embryo plantlet
ready formed."**
With the Buddhists, it has the
same signification. Maha-Maya, or Maha-Deva, the mother of Gautama Buddha, had
the birth of her son announced to her by Bhodisat (the spirit of Buddha), who
appeared beside her couch with a lotus in his hand. Thus, also, Osiris and
Horus are represented by the Egyptians constantly in association with the
lotus-flower.
These facts all go to show the
identical parentage of this idea in the three religious systems, Hindu,
Egyptian and Judaico-Christian. Wherever the mystic water-lily (lotus) is
employed, it signifies the emanation of the objective from the concealed, or
subjective -- the eternal thought of the ever-invisible Deity passing from the
abstract into the concrete or visible form. For as soon as darkness was
dispersed and "there was light," Brahma's understanding was opened,
and he saw in the ideal world (which had hitherto lain eternally concealed in
the Divine thought) the archetypal forms of all the infinite future things that
would be called into existence, and hence become visible. At this first stage
of action, Brahma had not yet become the architect, the builder of the
universe, for he had, like the architect, to first acquaint himself with the
plan, and realize the ideal forms which were buried in the bosom of the Eternal
One, as the future lotus-leaves are concealed within the seed of that plant.
And it is in this idea that we must look for the origin and explanation of the
verse in the Jewish cosmogony, which reads: "And God said, Let the earth
bring forth . . . the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is
in itself." In all the primitive religions, the "Son of the Father"
is the creative God -- i.e., His thought made visible; and before the Christian
era, from the Trimurti of the Hindus down to the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Dissertations Relating
to Asia."
** Dr. Gross, p. 195.
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GABRIEL.
three kabalistic heads of the
Jewish-explained scriptures, the triune godhead of each nation was fully
defined and substantiated in its allegories. In the Christian creed we see but
the artificial engrafting of a new branch upon the old trunk; and the adoption
by the Greek and Roman churches of the lily-symbol held by the archangel at the
moment of the Annunciation, shows a thought of precisely the same metaphysical
significance.
The lotus is the product of
fire (heat) and water, hence the dual symbol of spirit and matter. The God
Brahma is the second person of the Trinity, as are Jehovah (Adam-Kadmon) and
Osiris, or rather Pimander, or the Power of the Thought Divine, of Hermes; for
it is Pimander who represents the root of all the Egyptian Sun-gods. The
Eternal is the Spirit of Fire, which stirs up and fructifies and develops into
a concrete form everything that is born of water or the primordial earth,
evolved out of Brahma; but the universe is itself Brahma, and he is the
universe. This is the philosophy of Spinoza, which he derived from that of Pythagoras;
and it is the same for which Bruno died a martyr. How much Christian theology
has gone astray from its point of departure, is demonstrated in this historical
fact. Bruno was slaughtered for the exegesis of a symbol that was adopted by
the earliest Christians, and expounded by the apostles! The sprig of
water-lilies of Bhodisat, and later of Gabriel, typifying fire and water, or
the idea of creation and generation, is worked into the earliest dogma of the
baptismal sacrament.
Bruno's and Spinoza's doctrines
are nearly identical, though the words of the latter are more veiled, and far
more cautiously chosen than those to be found in the theories of the author of
the Causa Principio et Uno, or the Infinito Universo e Mondi. Both Bruno, who
confesses that the source of his information was Pythagoras, and Spinoza, who,
without acknowledging it as frankly, allows his philosophy to betray the
secret, view the First Cause from the same stand-point. With them, God is an
Entity totally per se, an Infinite Spirit, and the only Being utterly free and
independent of either effects or other causes; who, through that same Will
which produced all things and gave the first impulse to every cosmic law,
perpetually keeps in existence and order everything in the universe. As well as
the Hindu Swabhavikas, erroneously called Atheists, who assume that all things,
men as well as gods and spirits, were born from Swabhava, or their own nature,*
both
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Brahma does not create the
earth, Mirtlok, any more than the rest of the universe. Having evolved himself
from the soul of the world, once separated from the First Cause, he emanates in
his turn all nature out of himself. He does not stand above it, but is mixed up
with it; and Brahma and the universe form one Being, each particle of which is
in its essence Brahma himself, who proceeded out of himself. [Burnouf:
"Introduction," p. 118.]
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Spinoza and Bruno were led to
the conclusion that God is to be sought for within nature and not without. For,
creation being proportional to the power of the Creator, the universe as well
as its Creator must be infinite and eternal, one form emanating from its own
essence, and creating in its turn another. The modern commentators affirm that
Bruno, "unsustained by the hope of another and better world, still surrendered
his life rather than his convictions"; thereby allowing it to be inferred
that Giordano Bruno had no belief in the continued existence of man after
death. Professor Draper asserts most positively that Bruno did not believe in
the immortality of the soul. Speaking of the countless victims of the religious
intolerance of the Popish Church, he remarks: "The passage from this life
to the next, though through a hard trial, was the passage from a transient
trouble to eternal happiness. . . . On his way through the dark valley, the
martyr believed that there was an invisible hand that would lead him. . . . For
Bruno there was no such support. The philosophical opinions, for the sake of
which he surrendered his life, could give him no consolation."*
But Professor Draper seems to
have a very superficial knowledge of the true belief of the philosophers. We
can leave Spinoza out of the question, and even allow him to remain in the eyes
of his critics an utter atheist and materialist; for the cautious reserve which
he placed upon himself in his writings makes it extremely difficult for one who
does not read him between the lines, and is not thoroughly acquainted with the
hidden meaning of the Pythagorean metaphysics, to ascertain what his real
sentiments were. But as for Giordano Bruno, if he adhered to the doctrines of
Pythagoras he must have believed in another life, hence, he could not have been
an atheist whose philosophy offered him no such "consolation." His
accusation and subsequent confession, as given by Professor Domenico Berti, in
his Life of Bruno, and compiled from original documents recently published,
proved beyond doubt what were his real philosophy, creed and doctrines. In
common with the Alexandrian Platonists, and the later Kabalists, he held that Jesus
was a magician in the sense given to this appellation by Porphyry and Cicero,
who call it the divina sapientia (divine knowledge), and by Philo Judaes, who
described the Magi as the most wonderful inquirers into the hidden mysteries of
nature, not in the degrading sense given to the word magic in our century. In
his noble conception, the Magi were holy men, who, setting themselves apart
from everything else on this earth, contemplated the divine virtues and
understood the divine nature of the gods and spirits, the more clearly; and so,
initiated others into the same mys-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Conflict between
Religion and Science," 180.
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BRUNO.
teries, which consist in one
holding an uninterrupted intercourse with these invisible beings during life.
But we will show Bruno's inmost philosophical convictions better by quoting
fragments from the accusation and his own confession.
The charges in the
denunciation of Mocenigo, his accuser, are expressed in the following terms:
"I, Zuane Mocenigo, son
of the most illustrious Ser Marcantonio, denounce to your very reverend
fathership, by constraint of my conscience and by order of my confessor, that I
have heard say by Giordano Bruno, several times when he discoursed with me in
my house, that it is great blasphemy in Catholics to say that the bread
transubstantiates itself into flesh; that he is opposed to the Mass; that no
religion pleases him; that Christ was a wretch (un tristo), and that if he did
wicked works to seduce the people he might well predict that He ought to be
impaled; that there is no distinction of persons in God, and that it would be
imperfection in God; that the world is eternal, and that there are infinite
worlds, and that God makes them continually, because, he says, He desires all
He can; that Christ did apparent miracles and was a magician, and so were the
apostles, and that he had a mind to do as much and more than they did; that
Christ showed an unwillingness to die, and shunned death all He could; that
there is no punishment of sin, and that souls created by the operation of
nature pass from one animal to another, and that as the brute animals are born
of corruption, so also are men when after dissolution they come to be born
again."
Perfidious as they are, the above
words plainly indicate the belief of Bruno in the Pythagorean metempsychosis,
which, misunderstood as it is, still shows a belief in the survival of man in
one shape or another. Further, the accuser says:
"He has shown indications
of wishing to make himself the author of a new sect, under the name of 'New
Philosophy.' He has said that the Virgin could not have brought forth, and that
our Catholic faith is all full of blasphemies against the majesty of God; that
the monks ought to be deprived of the right of disputation and their revenues,
because they pollute the world; that they are all asses, and that our opinions
are doctrines of asses; that we have no proof that our faith has merit with
God, and that not to do to others what we would not have done to ourselves
suffices for a good life, and that he laughs at all other sins, and wonders how
God can endure so many heresies in Catholics. He says that he means to apply
himself to the art of divination, and make all the world run after him; that
St. Thomas and all the Doctors knew nothing to compare with him, and that he
could ask questions of all the first theologians of the world that they could
not answer."
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To this, the accused
philosopher answered by the following profession of faith, which is that of
every disciple of the ancient masters:
"I hold, in brief, to an
infinite universe, that is, an effect of infinite divine power, because I
esteemed it a thing unworthy of divine goodness and power, that being able to
produce besides this world another and infinite others, it should produce a
finite world. Thus I have declared that there are infinite particular worlds
similar to this of the earth, which, with Pythagoras, I understand to be a star
similar in nature with the moon, the other planets, and the other stars, which
are infinite; and that all those bodies are worlds, and without number, which
thus constitute the infinite universality in an infinite space, and this is
called the infinite universe, in which are innumerable worlds, so that there is
a double kind of infinite greatness in the universe, and of a multitude of
worlds. Indirectly, this may be understood to be repugnant to the truth
according to the true faith.
"Moreover, I place in
this universe a universal Providence, by virtue of which everything lives,
vegetates and moves, and stands in its perfection, and I understand it in two
ways; one, in the mode in which the whole soul is present in the whole and
every part of the body, and this I call nature, the shadow and footprint of
divinity; the other, the ineffable mode in which God, by essence, presence, and
power, is in all and above all, not as part, not as soul, but in mode
inexplicable.
"Moreover, I understand
all the attributes in divinity to be one and the same thing. Together with the
theologians and great philosophers, I apprehend three attributes, power,
wisdom, and goodness, or, rather, mind, intellect, love, with which things have
first, being, through the mind; next, ordered and distinct being, through the
intellect; and third, concord and symmetry, through love. Thus I understand
being in all and over all, as there is nothing without participation in being,
and there is no being without essence, just as nothing is beautiful without
beauty being present; thus nothing can be free from the divine presence, and
thus by way of reason, and not by way of substantial truth, do I understand
distinction in divinity.
"Assuming then the world
caused and produced, I understand that, according to all its being, it is
dependent upon the first cause, so that it did not reject the name of creation,
which I understand that Aristotle also has expressed, saying, 'God is that upon
whom the world and all nature depends,' so that according to the explanation of
St. Thomas, whether it be eternal or in time, it is, according to all its
being, dependent on the first cause, and nothing in it is independent.
"Next, in regard to what
belongs to the true faith, not speaking philosophically, to come to
individuality about the divine persons, the
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wisdom and the son of the
mind, called by philosophers intellect, and by theologians the word, which
ought to be believed to have taken on human flesh. But I, abiding in the
phrases of philosophy, have not understood it, but have doubted and held it
with inconstant faith, not that I remember to have shown marks of it in writing
nor in speech, except indirectly from other things, something of it may be
gathered as by way of ingenuity and profession in regard to what may be proved
by reason and concluded from natural light. Thus, in regard to the Holy Spirit
in a third person, I have not been able to comprehend, as ought to be believed,
but, according to the Pythagoric manner, in conformity to the manner shown by
Solomon, I have understood it as the soul of the universe, or adjoined to the
universe according to the saying of the wisdom of Solomon: 'The spirit of God
filled all the earth, and that which contains all things,' all which conforms
equally to the Pythagoric doctrine explained by Virgil in the text of the
AEneid:
Principio coelum ac terras
camposque liquentes,
Lucentemque globum Lunae,
Titaniaque astra
Spiritus intus alit, totamque
infusa per artus
Mens agitat molem;
and the lines following.
"From this spirit, then,
which is called the life of the universe, I understand, in my philosophy,
proceeds life and soul to everything which has life and soul, which, moreover,
I understand to be immortal, as also to bodies, which, as to their substance,
are all immortal, there being no other death than division and congregation,
which doctrine seems expressed in Ecclesiastes, where it is said that 'there is
nothing new under the sun; that which is is that which was.' "
Furthermore, Bruno confesses
his inability to comprehend the doctrine of three persons in the godhead, and
his doubts of the incarnation of God in Jesus, but firmly pronounces his belief
in the miracles of Christ. How could he, being a Pythagorean philosopher,
discredit them? If, under the merciless constraint of the Inquisition, he, like
Galileo, subsequently recanted, and threw himself upon the clemency of his
ecclesiastical persecutors, we must remember that he spoke like a man standing
between the rack and the fagot, and human nature cannot always be heroic when
the corporeal frame is debilitated by torture and imprisonment.
But for the opportune
appearance of Berti's authoritative work, we would have continued to revere
Bruno as a martyr, whose bust was deservedly set high in the Pantheon of Exact
Science, crowned with laurel by the hand of Draper. But now we see that their
hero of an hour
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is neither atheist,
materialist, nor positivist, but simply a Pythagorean who taught the philosophy
of Upper Asia, and claimed to possess the powers of the magicians, so despised by
Draper's own school! Nothing more amusing than this contretemps has happened
since the supposed statue of St. Peter was discovered by irreverent
archaeologists to be nothing else than the Jupiter of the Capitol, and Buddha's
identity with the Catholic St. Josaphat was satisfactorily proven.
Thus, search where we may
through the archives of history, we find that there is no fragment of modern
philosophy -- whether Newtonian, Cartesian, Huxleyian or any other -- but has
been dug from the Oriental mines. Even Positivism and Nihilism find their
prototype in the exoteric portion of Kapila's philosophy, as is well remarked
by Max Muller. It was the inspiration of the Hindu sages that penetrated the
mysteries of Pragna Paramita (perfect wisdom); their hands that rocked the
cradle of the first ancestor of that feeble but noisy child that we have
christened MODERN SCIENCE.
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CHAPTER IV.
"I choose the nobler part
of Emerson, when, after various disenchantments, he exclaimed, 'I covet Truth.'
The gladness of true heroism visits the heart of him who is really competent to
say this." -- TYNDALL.
"A testimony is sufficient
when it rests on:
1st. A great number of very
sensible witnesses who agree in having seen well.
2d. Who are sane, bodily and
mentally.
3d. Who are impartial and
disinterested.
4th. Who unanimously agree.
5th. Who solemnly certify to
the fact." -- VOLTAIRE, Dictiannaire Philosophique.
THE Count Agenor de Gasparin
is a devoted Protestant. His battle with des Mousseaux, de Mirville and other
fanatics who laid the whole of the spiritual phenomena at the door of Satan,
was long and fierce. Two volumes of over fifteen hundred pages are the result,
proving the effects, denying the cause, and employing superhuman efforts to
invent every other possible explanation that could be suggested rather than the
true one.
The severe rebuke received by
the Journal des Debats from M. de Gasparin, was read by all civilized Europe.*
After that gentleman had minutely described numerous manifestations that he had
witnessed himself, this journal very impertinently proposed to the authorities
in France to send all those who, after having read the fine analysis of the
"spiritual hallucinations" published by Faraday, should insist on
crediting this delusion, to the lunatic asylum for Incurables. "Take
care," wrote de Gasparin in answer, "the representatives of the exact
sciences are on their way to become . . . the Inquisitors of our days. . . .
Facts are stronger than Academies. Rejected, denied, mocked, they nevertheless
are facts, and do exist."**
The following affirmations of
physical phenomena, as witnessed by himself and Professor Thury, may be found
in de Gasparin's voluminous work.
"The experimenters have
often seen the legs of the table glued, so to say, to the floor, and,
notwithstanding the excitement of those present, refuse to be moved from their
place. On other occasions they have seen the tables levitated in quite an
energetic way. They heard, with their own
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Des Tables," vol.
i, p. 213.
** Ibid., 216.
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ears, loud as well as gentle
raps, the former threatening to shatter the table to pieces on account of their
violence, the latter so soft as to become hardly perceptible. . . . As to
LEVITATIONS WITHOUT CONTACT, we found means to produce them easily, and with
success. . . . And such levitations do not pertain to isolated results. We have
reproduced them over THIRTY times.* . . . One day the table will turn, and lift
its legs successively, its weight being augmented by a man weighing
eighty-seven kilogrammes seated on it; another time it will remain motionless
and immovable, notwithstanding that the person placed on it weighs but sixty.**.
. . On one occasion we willed it to turn upside down, and it turned over, with
its legs in the air, notwithstanding that our fingers never touched it
once."***
"It is certain,"
remarks de Mirville, "that a man who had repeatedly witnessed such a phenomenon,
could not accept the fine analysis of the English physicist."****
Since 1850, des Mousseaux and
de Mirville, uncompromising Roman Catholics, have published many volumes whose
titles are cleverly contrived to attract public attention. They betray on the
part of the authors a very serious alarm, which, moreover, they take no pains
to conceal. Were it possible to consider the phenomena spurious, the church of
Rome would never have gone so much out of her way to repress them.
Both sides having agreed upon
the facts, leaving skeptics out of the question, people could divide themselves
into but two parties: the believers in the direct agency of the devil, and the
believers in disembodied and other spirits. The fact alone, that theology
dreaded a great deal more the revelations which might come through this
mysterious agency than all the threatening "conflicts" with Science
and the categorical denials of the latter, ought to have opened the eyes of the
most skeptical. The church of Rome has never been either credulous or cowardly,
as is abundantly proved by the Machiavellism which marks her policy. Moreover,
she has never troubled herself much about the clever prestidigitateurs whom she
knew to be simply adepts in juggling. Robert Houdin, Comte, Hamilton and Bosco,
slept secure in their beds, while she persecuted such men as Paracelsus,
Cagliostro, and Mesmer, the Hermetic philosophers and mystics -- and
effectually stopped every genuine manifestation of an occult nature by killing
the mediums.
Those who are unable to
believe in a personal devil and the dogmas of the church must nevertheless
accord to the clergy enough of shrewdness
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Des Tables," vol.
i., p. 48.
** Ibid., p. 24.
*** Ibid., p. 35.
**** De Mirville: "Des
Esprits," p. 26.
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"UNCONSCIOUS VENTRILOQUISM!"
to prevent the compromising of
her reputation for infallibility by making so much of manifestations which, if
fraudulent, must inevitably be some day exposed.
But the best testimony to the
reality of this force was given by Robert Houdin himself, the king of jugglers,
who, upon being called as an expert by the Academy to witness the wonderful
clairvoyant powers and occasional mistakes of a table, said: "We jugglers
never make mistakes, and my second-sight never failed me yet."
The learned astronomer Babinet
was not more fortunate in his selection of Comte, the celebrated ventriloquist,
as an expert to testify against the phenomena of direct voices and the
rappings. Comte, if we may believe the witnesses, laughed in the face of
Babinet at the bare suggestion that the raps were produced by "unconscious
ventriloquism!" The latter theory, worthy twin-sister of "unconscious
cerebration," caused many of the most skeptical academicians to blush. Its
absurdity was too apparent.
"The problem of the
supernatural," says de Gasparin, "such as it was presented by the
middle ages, and as it stands now, is not among the number of those which we
are permitted to despise; its breadth and grandeur escape the notice of no one.
. . . Everything is profoundly serious in it, both the evil and the remedy, the
superstitious recrudescency, and the physical fact which is destined to conquer
the latter."*
Further, he pronounces the
following decisive opinion, to which he came, conquered by the various
manifestations, as he says himself -- "The number of facts which claim
their place in the broad daylight of truth, has so much increased of late, that
of two consequences one is henceforth inevitable: either the domain of natural
sciences must consent to expand itself, or the domain of the supernatural will
become so enlarged as to have no bounds."**
Among the multitude of books
against spiritualism emanating from Catholic and Protestant sources, none have
produced a more appalling effect than the works of de Mirville and des
Mousseaux: La Magie au XIXme Siecle -- Moeurs et Pratiques des Demons -- Hauts
Phenomees de la Magie -- Les Mediateurs de la Magie -- Des Esprits et de leurs
Manifestations, etc. They comprise the most cyclopaedic biography of the devil
and his imps that has appeared for the private delectation of good Catholics
since the middle ages.
According to the authors, he
who was "a liar and murderer from the beginning," was also the
principal motor of spiritual phenomena. He had been for thousands of years at
the head of pagan theurgy; and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Avant propos,"
pp. 12 and 16.
** Vol. i., p. 244.
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it was he, again, who,
encouraged by the increase of heresies, infidelity, and atheism, had reappeared
in our century. The French Academy lifted up its voice in a general outcry of indignation,
and M. de Gasparin even took it for a personal insult. "This is a
declaration of war, a 'levee of shields' " -- wrote he in his voluminous
book of refutations. "The work of M. de Mirville is a real manifesto. . .
. I would be glad to see in it the expression of a strictly individual opinion,
but, in truth, it is impossible. The success of the work, these solemn
adhesions, the faithful reproduction of its theses by the journals and writers
of the party, the solidarity established throughout between them and the whole
body of catholicity . . . everything goes to show a work which is essentially
an act, and has the value of a collective labor. As it is, I felt that I had a
duty to perform. . . . I felt obliged to pick up the glove. . . . and lift high
the Protestant flag against the Ultramontane banner."*
The medical faculties, as
might have been expected, assuming the part of the Greek chorus, echoed the
various expostulations against the demonological authors. The
Medico-Psychological Annals, edited by Drs. Brierre de Boismont and Cerise,
published the following: "Outside these controversies of antagonistical
parties, never in our country did a writer dare to face, with a more aggressive
serenity, . . . the sarcasms, the scorn of what we term common sense; and, as
if to defy and challenge at the same time thundering peals of laughter and
shrugging of shoulders, the author strikes an attitude, and placing himself
with effrontery before the members of the Academy . . . addresses to them what
he modestly terms his Memoire on the Devil!"**
That was a cutting insult to
the Academicians, to be sure; but ever since 1850 they seem to have been doomed
to suffer in their pride more than most of them can bear. The idea of asking
the attention of the forty "Immortals" to the pranks of the Devil!
They vowed revenge, and, leaguing themselves together, propounded a theory
which exceeded in absurdity even de Mirville's demonolatry! Dr. Royer and
Jobart de Lamballe -- both celebrities in their way -- formed an alliance and
presented to the Institute a German whose cleverness afforded, according to his
statement, the key to all the knockings and rappings of both hemispheres.
"We blush" -- remarks the Marquis de Mirville -- "to say that
the whole of the trick consisted simply in the reiterated displacement of one
of the muscular tendons of the legs. Great demonstration of the system in full
sitting of the Institute -- and on the spot . . . expressions of Academical
gratitude for this interesting communication, and, a few days later, a full
assurance given to the public by a professor of the medical
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Vol. ii., p. 524.
** "Medico-Psychological
Annals," Jan. 1, 1854.
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PILLAR OF FAITH."
faculty, that, scientists
having pronounced their opinion, the mystery was at last unravelled!"*
But such scientific
explanations neither prevented the phenomenon from quietly following its
course, nor the two writers on demonology from proceeding to expound their
strictly orthodox theories.
Denying that the Church had
anything to do with his books, des Mousseaux gravely gave the Academy, in
addition to his Memoire, the following interesting and profoundly philosophical
thoughts on Satan:
"The Devil is the chief
pillar of Faith. He is one of the grand personages whose life is closely allied
to that of the church; and without his speech which issued out so triumphantly
from the mouth of the Serpent, his medium, the fall of man could not have taken
place. Thus, if it was not for him, the Saviour, the Crucified, the Redeemer,
would be but the most ridiculous of supernumeraries, and the Cross an insult to
good sense!"**
This writer, be it remembered,
is only the faithful echo of the church, which anathematizes equally the one
who denies God and him who doubts the objective existence of Satan.
But the Marquis de Mirville
carries this idea of God's partnership with the Devil still further. According
to him it is a regular commercial affair, in which the senior "silent
partner" suffers the active business of the firm to be transacted as it
may please his junior associate, by whose audacity and industry he profits. Who
could be of any other opinion, upon reading the following?
"At the moment of this
spiritual invasion of 1853, so slightingly regarded, we had dared to pronounce
the word of a 'threatening catastrophe.' The world was nevertheless at peace,
but history showing us the same symptoms at all disastrous epochs, we had a
presentiment of the sad effects of a law which Goerres has formulated thus:
[vol. v., p. 356.] 'These mysterious apparitions have invariably indicated the
chastening hand of God on earth.' "***
These guerilla-skirmishes
between the champions of the clergy and the materialistic Academy of Science,
prove abundantly how little the latter has done toward uprooting blind
fanaticism from the minds of even very educated persons. Evidently science has
neither completely conquered nor muzzled theology. She will master her only on
that day when she will condescend to see in the spiritual phenomenon something
besides mere hallucination and charlatanry. But how can she do it without
investigating it thoroughly? Let us suppose that before the time when
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* De Mirville: "Des
Esprits," "Constitutionnel," June 16, 1854.
** Chevalier des Mousseaux:
"Moeurs et Pratiques des Demons," p. x.
*** De Mirville: "Des
Esprits," p. 4.
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electro-magnetism was publicly
acknowledged, the Copenhagen Professor Oersted, its discoverer, had been
suffering from an attack of what we call psychophobia, or pneumatophobia. He
notices that the wire along which a voltaic current is passing shows a tendency
to turn the magnetic needle from its natural position to one perpendicular to
the direction of the current. Suppose, moreover, that the professor had heard
much of certain superstitious people who used that kind of magnetized needles
to converse with unseen intelligences. That they received signals and even held
correct conversations with them by means of the tippings of such a needle, and
that in consequence he suddenly felt a scientific horror and disgust for such
an ignorant belief, and refused, point-blank, to have anything to do with such
a needle. What would have been the result? Electro-magnetism might not have
been discovered till now, and our experimentalists would have been the
principal losers thereby.
Babinet, Royer, and Jobert de
Lamballe, all three members of the Institute, particularly distinguished
themselves in this struggle between skepticism and supernaturalism, and most
assuredly have reaped no laurels. The famous astronomer had imprudently risked
himself on the battlefield of the phenomenon. He had explained scientifically
the manifestations. But, emboldened by the fond belief among scientists that
the new epidemic could not stand close investigation nor outlive the year, he
had the still greater imprudence to publish two articles on them. As M. de
Mirville very wittily remarks, if both of the articles had but a poor success
in the scientific press, they had, on the other hand, none at all in the daily
one.
M. Babinet began by accepting
a priori, the rotation and movements of the furniture, which fact he declared
to be "hors de doute." "This rotation," he said,
"being able to manifest itself with a considerable energy, either by a
very great speed, or by a strong resistance when it is desired that it should
stop."*
Now comes the explanation of
the eminent scientist. "Gently pushed by little concordant impulsions of
the hands laid upon it, the table begins to oscillate from right to left. . . .
At the moment when, after more or less delay, a nervous trepidation is
established in the hands and the little individual impulsions of all the
experimenters have become harmonized, the table is set in motion."**
He finds it very simple, for
"all muscular movements are determined over bodies by levers of the third
order, in which the fulcrum is very near to the point where the force acts.
This, consequently, communicates a
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ibid., "Revue des Deux
Mondes," January 15, 1854, p. 108.
** This is a repetition and
variation of Faraday's theory.
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HIMSELF.
great speed to the mobile
parts for the very little distance which the motor force has to run. . . . Some
persons are astonished to see a table subjected to the action of several
well-disposed individuals in a fair way to conquer powerful obstacles, even
break its legs, when suddenly stopped; but that is very simple if we consider
the power of the little concordant actions. . . . Once more, the physical
explanation offers no difficulty."*
In this dissertation, two
results are clearly shown: the reality of the phenomena proved, and the
scientific explanation made ridiculous. But M. Babinet can well afford to be
laughed at a little; he knows, as an astronomer, that dark spots are to be
found even in the sun.
There is one thing, though,
that Babinet has always stoutly denied, viz.: the levitation of furniture
without contact. De Mirville catches him proclaiming that such levitation is
impossible: "simply impossible," he says, "as impossible as
perpetual motion."**
Who can take upon himself,
after such a declaration, to maintain that the word impossible pronounced by
science is infallible?
But the tables, after having
waltzed, oscillated and turned, began tipping and rapping. The raps were
sometimes as powerful as pistol-detonations. What of this? Listen: "The
witnesses and investigators are ventriloquists!"
De Mirville refers us to the
Revue des Deux Mondes, in which is published a very interesting dialogue,
invented by M. Babinet speaking of himself to himself, like the Chaldean
En-Soph of the Kabalists: "What can we finally say of all these facts brought
under our observation? Are there such raps produced? Yes. Do such raps answer
questions? Yes. Who produces these sounds? The mediums. By what means? By the
ordinary acoustic method of the ventriloquists. But we were given to suppose
that these sounds might result from the cracking of the toes and fingers? No;
for then they would always proceed from the same point, and such is not the
fact."***
"Now," asks de
Mirville, "what are we to believe of the Americans, and their thousands of
mediums who produce the same raps before millions of witnesses?"
"Ventriloquism, to be sure," answers Babinet. "But how can you
explain such an impossibility?" The easiest thing in the world; listen
only: "All that was necessary to produce the first manifestation in the
first house in America was, a street-boy knocking at the door of a mystified
citizen, perhaps with a leaden ball attached to a
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Revue des Deux
Mondes," p. 410.
** "Revue des Deux
Mondes," January, 1854, p. 414.
*** "Revue des Deux
Mondes," May 1, 1854, p. 531.
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string, and if Mr. Weekman
(the first believer in America) (?)* when he watched for the third time, heard
no shouts of laughter in the street, it is because of the essential difference
which exists between a French street-Arab, and an English or Trans-Atlantic
one, the latter being amply provided with what we call a sad merriment,
"gaite triste."**
Truly says de Mirville in his
famous reply to the attacks of de Gasparin, Babinet, and other scientists:
"and thus according to our great physicist, the tables turn very quickly,
very energetically, resist likewise, and, as M. de Gasparin has proved, they
levitate without contact. Said a minister: 'With three words of a man's
handwriting, I take upon myself to have him hung.' With the above three lines,
we take upon ourselves, in our turn, to throw into the greatest confusion the
physicists of all the globe, or rather to revolutionize the world -- if at
least, M. de Babinet had taken the precaution of suggesting, like M. de
Gasparin, some yet unknown law or force. For this would cover the whole
ground."***
But it is in the notes
embracing the "facts and physical theories," that we find the acme of
the consistency and logic of Babinet as an expert investigator on the field of
Spiritualism.
It would appear, that M. de
Mirville in his narrative of the wonders manifested at the Presbytere de
Cideville,**** was much struck by the marvellousness of some facts. Though
authenticated before the inquest and magistrates, they were of so miraculous a
nature as to force the demonological author himself to shrink from the
responsibility of publishing them.
These facts were as follows:
"At the precise moment predicted by a sorcerer" -- case of revenge --
"a violent clap of thunder was heard above one of the chimneys of the
presbytery, after which the fluid descended with a formidable noise through
that passage, threw down believers as well as skeptics (as to the power of the
sorcerer) who were warming themselves by the fire; and, having filled the room
with a multitude of fantastic animals, returned to the chimney, and having
reascended it, disappeared, after producing the same terrible noise.
"As," adds de Mirville, "we were already but too rich in facts,
we recoiled before this new enormity added to so many others."****
But Babinet, who in common with
his learned colleagues had made such fun of the two writers on demonology, and
who was determined, moreover, to prove the absurdity of all like stories, felt
himself obliged
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* We translate verbatim. We
doubt whether Mr. Weekman was the first investigator.
** Babinet: "Revue des
Deux Mondes," May 1, 1854, p. 511.
*** De Mirville: "Des
Esprits," p. 33.
**** Notes, "Des
Esprits," p. 38.
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to discredit the
above-mentioned fact of the Cideville phenomena, by presenting one still more
incredible. We yield the floor to M. Babinet, himself.
The following circumstance
which he gave to the Academy of Sciences, on July 5, 1852, can be found without
further commentary, and merely as an instance of a sphere-like lightning, in
the "OEuvres de F. Arago," vol. i., p. 52. We offer it verbatim.
"After a strong clap of
thunder," says M. Babinet, "but not immediately following it, a
tailor apprentice, living in the Rue St. Jacques, was just finishing his
dinner, when he saw the paper-screen which shut the fireplace fall down as if
pushed out of its place by a moderate gust of wind. Immediately after that he
perceived a globe of fire, as large as the head of a child, come out quietly
and softly from within the grate and slowly move about the room, without touching
the bricks of the floor. The aspect of this fire-globe was that of a young cat,
of middle size . . . moving itself without the use of its paws. The fire-globe
was rather brilliant and luminous than hot or inflamed, and the tailor had no
sensation of warmth. This globe approached his feet like a young cat which
wishes to play and rub itself against the legs, as is habitual to these
animals; but the apprentice withdrew his feet from it, and moving with great
caution, avoided contact with the meteor. The latter remained for a few seconds
moving about his legs, the tailor examining it with great curiosity and bending
over it. After having tried several excursions in opposite directions, but
without leaving the centre of the room, the fire-globe elevated itself
vertically to the level of the man's head, who to avoid its contact with his
face, threw himself backward on his chair. Arrived at about a yard from the
floor the fire-globe slightly lengthened, took an oblique direction toward a
hole in the wall over the fireplace, at about the height of a metre above the
mantelpiece." This hole had been made for the purpose of admitting the
pipe of a stove in winter; but, according to the expression of the tailor,
"the thunder could not see it, for it was papered over like the rest of
the wall. The fire-globe went directly to that hole, unglued the paper without
damaging it, and reasscended the chimney . . . when it arrived at the top,
which it did very slowly . . . at least sixty feet above ground . . . it
produced a most frightful explosion, which partly destroyed the chimney, . .
." etc.
"It seems," remarks
de Mirville in his review, "that we could apply to M. Babinet the
following remark made by a very witty woman to Raynal, 'If you are not a
Christian, it is not for lack of faith.' "*
It was not alone believers who
wondered at the credulity displayed by
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* De Mirville: "Faits et
Theories Physiques," p. 46.
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M. Babinet, in persisting to
call the manifestation a meteor; for Dr. Boudin mentions it very seriously in a
work on lightning he was just then publishing. "If these details are
exact," says the doctor, "as they seem to be, since they are admitted
by MM. Babinet and Arago, it appears very difficult for the phenomenon to
retain its appellation of sphere-shaped lightning. However, we leave it to
others to explain, if they can, the essence of a fire-globe emitting no
sensation of heat, having the aspect of a cat, slowly promenading in a room,
which finds means to escape by reascending the chimney through an aperture in
the wall covered over with a paper which it unglues without damaging!"*
"We are of the same
opinion," adds the marquis, "as the learned doctor, on the difficulty
of an exact definition, and we do not see why we should not have in future
lightning in the shape of a dog, of a monkey, etc., etc. One shudders at the
bare idea of a whole meteorological menagerie, which, thanks to thunder, might
come down to our rooms to promenade themselves at will."
Says de Gasparin, in his
monster volume of refutations: "In questions of testimony, certitude must
absolutely cease the moment we cross the borders of the supernatural."**
The line of demarcation not
being sufficiently fixed and determined, which of the opponents is best fitted
to take upon himself the difficult task? Which of the two is better entitled to
become the public arbiter? Is it the party of superstition, which is supported
in its testimony by the evidence of many thousands of people? For nearly two
years they crowded the country where were daily manifested the unprecedented
miracles of Cideville, now nearly forgotten among other countless spiritual
phenomena; shall we believe them, or shall we bow to science, represented by
Babinet, who, on the testimony of one man (the tailor), accepts the
manifestation of the fire-globe, or the meteor-cat, and henceforth claims for
it a place among the established facts of natural phenomena?
Mr. Crookes, in his first
article in the Quarterly Journal of Science, October 1, 1871, mentions de
Gasparin and his work Science v. Spiritualism. He remarks that "the author
finally arrived at the conclusion that all these phenomena are to be accounted
for by the action of natural causes, and do not require the supposition of
miracles, nor the intervention of spirits and diabolical influences! Gasparin
considers it as a fact fully established by his experiments, that the will, in
certain
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Monograph: "Of the
Lightning considered from the point of view of the history of Legal Medicine
and Public Hygiene," by M. Boudin, Chief Surgeon of the Military Hospital
of Boule.
** De Gasparin: vol. i., page
288.
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GASPARIN.
states of organism, can act at
a distance on inert matter, and most of his work is devoted to ascertaining the
laws and conditions under which this action manifests itself."*
Precisely; but as the work of
de Gasparin called forth numberless Answers, Defenses, and Memoirs, it was then
demonstrated by his own work that as he was a Protestant, in point of religious
fanaticism, he was as little to be relied upon as des Mousseaux and de
Mirville. The former is a profoundly pious Calvinist, while the two latter are
fanatical Roman Catholics. Moreover, the very words of de Gasparin betray the
spirit of partisanship: -- "I feel I have a duty to perform. . . . I lift
high the Protestant flag against the Ultramontane banner!" etc.** In such
matters as the nature of the so-called spiritual phenomena, no evidence can be
relied upon, except the disinterested testimony of cold unprejudiced witnesses
and science. Truth is one, and Legion is the name for religious sects; every
one of which claims to have found the unadulterated truth; as "the Devil
is the chief pillar of the (Catholic) Church," so all supernaturalism and
miracles ceased, in de Gasparin's opinion, "with apostleship."
But Mr. Crookes mentioned
another eminent scholar, Thury, of Geneva, professor of natural history, who
was a brother-investigator with Gasparin in the phenomena of Valleyres. This
professor contradicts point-blank the assertions of his colleague. "The
first and most necessary condition," says Gasparin, "is the will of
the experimenter; without the will, one would obtain nothing; you can form the
chain (the circle) for twenty-four hours consecutively, without obtaining the
least movement."***
The above proves only that de
Gasparin makes no difference between phenomena purely magnetic, produced by the
persevering will of the sitters among whom there may be not even a single
medium, developed or undeveloped, and the so-called spiritual ones. While the
first can be produced consciously by nearly every person, who has a firm and
determined will, the latter overpowers the sensitive very often against his own
consent, and always acts independently of him. The mesmerizer wills a thing,
and if he is powerful enough, that thing is done. The medium, even if he had an
honest purpose to succeed, may get no manifestations at all; the less he
exercises his will, the better the phenomena: the more he feels anxious, the
less he is likely to get anything; to mesmerize requires a positive nature, to
be a medium a perfectly passive one. This is the Alphabet of Spiritualism, and
no medium is ignorant of it.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Crookes: "Physical
Force," page 26.
** De Gasparin: "Science
versus Spirit," vol. i., p. 313.
*** Ibid., vol. i., p. 313.
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The opinion of Thury, as we
have said, disagrees entirely with Gasparin's theories of will-power. He states
it in so many plain words, in a letter, in answer to the invitation of the
count to modify the last article of his memoire. As the book of Thury is not at
hand, we translate the letter as it is found in the resume of de Mirville's
Defense. Thury's article which so shocked his religious friend, related to the
possibility of the existence and intervention in those manifestations "of
wills other than those of men and animals."
"I feel, sir, the
justness of your observations in relation to the last pages of this memoire:
they may provoke a very bad feeling for me on the part of scientists in
general. I regret it the more as my determination seems to affect you so much;
nevertheless, I persist in my resolution, because I think it a duty, to shirk
which would be a kind of treason.
"If, against all
expectations, there were some truth in Spiritualism, by abstaining from saying
on the part of science, as I conceive it to be, that the absurdity of the
belief in the intervention of spirits is not as yet demonstrated scientifically
(for such is the resume, and the thesis of the past pages of my memoire), by
abstaining from saying it to those who, after having read my work, will feel
inclined to experiment with the phenomena, I might risk to entice such persons
on a path many issues of which are very equivocal.
"Without leaving the
domain of science, as I esteem it, I will pursue my duty to the end, without
any reticence to the profit of my own glory, and, to use your own words, 'as
the great scandal lies there,' I do not wish to assume the shame of it. I,
moreover, insist that 'this is as scientific as anything else.' If I wanted to
sustain now the theory of the intervention of disembodied spirits, I would have
no power for it, for the facts which are made known are not sufficient for the
demonstration of such a hypothesis. As it is, and in the position I have
assumed, I feel I am strong against every one. Willingly or not, all the
scientists must learn, through experience and their own errors, to suspend
their judgment as to things which they have not sufficiently examined. The
lesson you gave them in this direction cannot be lost.
"GENEVA, 21 December,
1854."
Let us analyze the above
letter, and try to discover what the writer thinks, or rather what he does not
think of this new force. One thing is certain, at least: Professor Thury, a
distinguished physicist and naturalist, admits, and even scientifically proves
that various manifestations take place. Like Mr. Crookes, he does not believe
that they are produced by the interference of spirits or disembodied men who
have lived
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GASPARIN.
and died on earth; for he says
in his letter that nothing has demonstrated this theory. He certainly believes
no more in the Catholic devils or demons, for de Mirville, who quotes this
letter as a triumphant proof against de Gasparin's naturalistic theory, once
arrived at the above sentence, hastens to emphasize it by a foot-note, which
runs thus: "At Valleyres -- perhaps, but everywhere else!"* showing
himself anxious to convey the idea that the professor only meant the
manifestations of Valleyres, when denying their being produced by demons.
The contradictions, and we are
sorry to say, the absurdities in which de Gasparin allows himself to be caught,
are numerous. While bitterly criticizing the pretensions of the learned
Faradaysiacs, he attributes things which he declares magical, to causes
perfectly natural. "If," he says, "we had to deal but with such
phenomena (as witnessed and explained (?) by the great physicist), we might as
well hold our tongues; but we have passed beyond, and what good can they do
now, I would ask, these apparatus which demonstrate that an unconscious
pressure explains the whole? It explains all, and the table resists pressure
and guidance! It explains all, and a piece of furniture which nobody touches
follows the fingers pointed at it; it levitates (without contact), and it turns
itself upside down!"**
But for all that, he takes
upon himself to explain the phenomena.
"People will be
advocating miracles, you say -- magic! Every new law appears to them as a
prodigy. Calm yourselves; I take upon myself the task to quiet those who are
alarmed. In the face of such phenomena, we do not cross at all the boundaries
of natural law."***
Most assuredly, we do not. But
can the scientists assert that they have in their possession the keys to such
law? M. de Gasparin thinks he has. Let us see.
"I do not risk myself to
explain anything; it is no business of mine. (?) To authenticate simple facts,
and maintain a truth which science desires to smother, is all I pretend to do.
Nevertheless, I cannot resist the temptation to point out to those who would
treat us as so many illuminati or sorcerers, that the manifestation in question
affords an interpretation which agrees with the ordinary laws of science.
"Suppose a fluid,
emanating from the experimenters, and chiefly from some of them; suppose that
the will determined the direction taken by the fluid, and you will readily
understand the rotation and levitation of that one of the legs of the table
toward which is ejected with every action of the will an excess of fluid.
Suppose that the glass causes the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* De Mirville pleads here the
devil-theory, of course.
** "Des Tables,"
vol. i., p. 213.
*** Vol. i., p. 217.
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fluid to escape, and you will
understand how a tumbler placed on the table can interrupt its rotation, and
that the tumbler, placed on one of its sides, causes the accumulation of the
fluid in the opposite side, which, in consequence of that, is lifted!"
If every one of the experimenters
were clever mesmerizers, the explanation, minus certain important details,
might be acceptable. So much for the power of human will on inanimate matter,
according to the learned minister of Louis Philippe. But how about the
intelligence exhibited by the table? What explanation does he give as to
answers obtained through the agency of this table to questions? answers which
could not possibly have been the "reflections of the brain" of those
present (one of the favorite theories of de Gasparin), for their own ideas were
quite the reverse of the very liberal philosophy given by this wonderful table?
On this he is silent. Anything but spirits, whether human, satanic, or
elemental.
Thus, the "simultaneous
concentration of thought," and the "accumulation of fluid," will
be found no better than "the unconscious cerebration" and
"psychic force" of other scientists. We must try again; and we may
predict beforehand that the thousand and one theories of science will prove of
no avail until they will confess that this force, far from being a projection
of the accumulated wills of the circle, is, on the contrary, a force which is
abnormal, foreign to themselves, and supra-intelligent.
Professor Thury, who denies
the theory of departed human spirits, rejects the Christian devil-doctrine, and
shows himself unwilling to pronounce in favor of Crookes's theory (the 6th),
that of the hermetists and ancient theurgists, adopts the one, which, he says
in his letter, is "the most prudent, and makes him feel strong against
every one." Moreover, he accepts as little of de Gasparin's hypothesis of
"unconscious will-power." This is what he says in his work:
"As to the announced
phenomena, such as the levitation without contact, and the displacement of
furniture by invisible hands -- unable to demonstrate their impossibility, a
priori, no one has the right to treat as absurd the serious evidences which
affirm their occurrence" (p. 9).
As to the theory proposed by
M. de Gasparin, Thury judges it very severely. "While admitting that in
the experiments of Valleyres," says de Mirville, "the seat of the
force might have been in the individual -- and we say that it was intrinsic and
extrinsic at the same time -- and that the will might be generally necessary
(p. 20), he repeats but what he had said in his preface, to wit: 'M. de
Gasparin presents us with crude facts, and the explanations following he offers
for what they are worth. Breathe on them, and not many will be found standing
after this. No,
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"ECTENIC FORCE."
very little, if anything, will
remain of his explanations. As to facts, they are henceforth demonstrated'
" (p. 10).
As Mr. Crookes tells us,
Professor Thury refutes "all these explanations, and considers the effects
due to a peculiar substance, fluid, or agent, pervading in a manner similar to
the luminiferous ether of the scientists, all matter, nervous, organic or
inorganic, which he terms psychode. He enters into full discussion as to the
properties of this state, or form, or matter, and proposes the term ectenic
force . . . for the power exerted when the mind acts at a distance through the
influence of the psychode."*
Mr. Crookes remarks further,
that "Professor Thury's ectenic force, and his own 'psychic force' are
evidently equivalent terms."
We certainly could very easily
demonstrate that the two forces are identical, moreover, the astral or sidereal
light as explained by the alchemists and Eliphas Levi, in his Dogme et Rituel
de la Haute Magie; and that, under the name of AKASA, or life-principle, this
all-pervading force was known to the gymnosophists, Hindu magicians, and adepts
of all countries, thousands of years ago; and, that it is still known to them,
and used at present by the Thibetan lamas, fakirs, thaumaturgists of all
nationalities, and even by many of the Hindu "jugglers."
In many cases of trance,
artificially induced by mesmerization, it is also quite possible, even quite
probable, that it is the "spirit" of the subject which acts under the
guidance of the operator's will. But, if the medium remains conscious, and psycho-physical
phenomena occur which indicate a directing intelligence, then, unless it be
conceded that he is a "magician," and can project his double,
physical exhaustion can signify nothing more than nervous prostration. The
proof that he is the passive instrument of unseen entities controlling occult
potencies, seems conclusive. Even if Thury's ectenic and Crookes's psychic
force are substantially of the same derivation, the respective discoverers seem
to differ widely as to the properties and potencies of this force; while
Professor Thury candidly admits that the phenomena are often produced by
"wills not human," and so, of course, gives a qualified endorsement
to Mr. Crookes's theory No. 6, the latter, admitting the genuineness of the
phenomena, has as yet pronounced no definite opinion as to their cause.
Thus, we find that neither M.
Thury, who investigated these manifestations with de Gasparin in 1854, nor Mr.
Crookes, who conceded their undeniable genuineness in 1874, have reached
anything definite. Both are chemists, physicists, and very learned men. Both
have given all their attention to the puzzling question; and besides these two
scien-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Crookes: "Psychic
Force," part i., pp. 26-27.
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tists there were many others
who, while coming to the same conclusion, have hitherto been as unable to
furnish the world with a final solution. It follows then, that in twenty years
none of the scientists have made a single step toward the unravelling of the
mystery, which remains as immovable and impregnable as the walls of an enchanted
castle in a fairy tale.
Would it be too impertinent to
surmise that perhaps our modern scientists have got in what the French term un
cercle vicieux? That, hampered by the weight of their materialism, and the
insufficiency of what they name "the exact sciences" to demonstrate
to them tangibly the existence of a spiritual universe, peopled and inhabited
much more than our visible one, they are doomed forever to creep around inside
that circle, unwilling rather than unable to penetrate beyond its enchanted
ring, and explore it in its length and breadth? It is but prejudice which keeps
them from making a compromise with well-established facts and seek alliance
with such expert magnetists and mesmerizers as were Du Potet and Regazzoni.
"What, then, is produced
from death?" inquired Socrates of Cebes. "Life," was the reply.*
. . . "Can the soul, since it is immortal, be anything else than
imperishable?"** The "seed cannot develop unless it is in part
consumed," says Prof. Lecomte; "it is not quickened unless it
die," says St. Paul.
A flower blossoms; then
withers and dies. It leaves a fragrance behind, which, long after its delicate
petals are but a little dust, still lingers in the air. Our material sense may
not be cognizant of it, but it nevertheless exists. Let a note be struck on an
instrument, and the faintest sound produces an eternal echo. A disturbance is
created on the invisible waves of the shoreless ocean of space, and the
vibration is never wholly lost. Its energy being once carried from the world of
matter into the immaterial world will live for ever. And man, we are asked to
believe, man, the living, thinking, reasoning entity, the indwelling deity of
our nature's crowning masterpiece, will evacuate his casket and be no more!
Would the principle of continuity which exists even for the so-called inorganic
matter, for a floating atom, be denied to the spirit, whose attributes are
consciousness, memory, mind, LOVE! Really, the very idea is preposterous. The
more we think and the more we learn, the more difficult it becomes for us to
account for the atheism of the scientist. We may readily understand that a man
ignorant of the laws of nature, unlearned in either chemistry or physics, may
be fatally drawn into materialism through his very ignorance; his incapacity of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Plato: "Phaedo," §
44.
** Ibid., § 128.
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MALFORMATION.
understanding the philosophy
of the exact sciences, or drawing any inference by analogy from the visible to
the invisible. A natural-born metaphysician, an ignorant dreamer, may awake abruptly
and say to himself: "I dreamed it; I have no tangible proof of that which
I imagined; it is all illusion," etc. But for a man of science, acquainted
with the characteristics of the universal energy, to maintain that life is
merely a phenomenon of matter, a species of energy, amounts simply to a
confession of his own incapability of analyzing and properly understanding the
alpha and the omega even of that -- matter.
Sincere skepticism as to the
immortality of man's soul is a malady; a malformation of the physical brain,
and has existed in every age. As there are infants born with a caul upon their
heads, so there are men who are incapable to their last hour of ridding
themselves of that kind of caul evidently enveloping their organs of
spirituality. But it is quite another feeling which makes them reject the
possibility of spiritual and magical phenomena. The true name for that feeling
is -- vanity. "We can neither produce nor explain it -- hence, it does not
exist, and moreover, could never have existed." Such is the irrefutable
argument of our present-day philosophers. Some thirty years ago, E. Salverte
startled the world of the "credulous" by his work, The Philosophy of
Magic. The book claimed to unveil the whole of the miracles of the Bible as
well as those of the Pagan sanctuaries. Its resume ran thus: Long ages of
observation; a great knowledge (for those days of ignorance) of natural
sciences and philosophy; imposture; legerdemain; optics; phantasmagoria;
exaggeration. Final and logical conclusion: Thaumaturgists, prophets,
magicians, rascals, and knaves; the rest of the world, fools.
Among many other conclusive
proofs, the reader can find him offering the following: "The enthusiastic
disciples of Iamblichus affirmed that when he prayed, he was raised to the
height of ten cubits from the ground; and dupes to the same metaphor, although
Christians, have had the simplicity to attribute a similar miracle to St.
Clare, and St. Francis of Assisi."*
Hundreds of travellers claimed
to have seen fakirs produce the same phenomena, and they were all thought
either liars or hallucinated. But it was but yesterday that the same phenomenon
was witnessed and endorsed by a well-known scientist; it was produced under
test conditions; declared by Mr. Crookes to be genuine, and to be beyond the
possibility of an illusion or a trick. And so was it manifested many a time
before and attested by numerous witnesses, though the latter are now invariably
disbelieved.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Philosophy of
Magic," English translation, p. 47.
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Peace to thy scientific ashes,
O credulous Eusebe Salverte! Who knows but before the close of the present
century popular wisdom will have invented a new proverb: "As incredibly
credulous as a scientist."
Why should it appear so
impossible that when the spirit is once separated from its body, it may have
the power to animate some evanescent form, created out of that magical
"psychic" or "ectenic" or "ethereal" force, with
the help of the elementaries who furnish it with the sublimated matter of their
own bodies? The only difficulty is, to realize the fact that surrounding space
is not an empty void, but a reservoir filled to repletion with the models of
all things that ever were, that are, and that will be; and with beings of
countless races, unlike our own. Seemingly supernatural facts -- supernatural
in that they openly contradict the demonstrated natural laws of gravitation, as
in the above-mentioned instance of levitation -- are recognized by many
scientists. Every one who has dared to investigate with thoroughness has found
himself compelled to admit their existence; only in their unsuccessful efforts
to account for the phenomena on theories based on the laws of such forces as
were already known, some of the highest representatives of science have
involved themselves in inextricable difficulties!
In his Resume de Mirville
describes the argumentation of these adversaries of spiritualism as consisting
of five paradoxes, which he terms distractions.
First distraction: that of
Faraday, who explains the table phenomenon, by the table which pushes you
"in consequence of the resistance which pushes it back."
Second distraction: that of
Babinet, explaining all the communications (by raps) which are produced, as he
says, "in good faith and with perfect conscientiousness, correct in every
way and sense -- by ventriloquism," the use of which faculty implies of
necessity -- bad faith.
Third distraction: that of Dr.
Chevreuil, explaining the faculty of moving furniture without contact, by the
preliminary acquisition of that faculty.
Fourth distraction: that of
the French Institute and its members, who consent to accept the miracles, on
condition that the latter will not contradict in any way those natural laws
with which they are acquainted.
Fifth distraction: that of M.
de Gasparin, introducing as a very simple and perfectly elementary phenomenon
that which every one rejects, precisely because no one ever saw the like of
it.*
While the great, world-known
scientists indulge in such fantastic theories, some less known neurologists
find an explanation for occult phe-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* De Mirville: "Des
Esprits," p. 159.
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VERSUS IMMORTALITY.
nomena of every kind in an
abnormal effluvium resulting from epilepsy.* Another would treat mediums -- and
poets, too, we may infer -- with assafoetida and ammonia,** and declare every
one of the believers in spiritual manifestations lunatics and hallucinated
mystics.
To the latter lecturer and
professed pathologist is commended that sensible bit of advice to be found in
the New Testament: "Physician, heal thyself." Truly, no sane man
would so sweepingly charge insanity upon four hundred and forty-six millions of
people in various parts of the world, who believe in the intercourse of spirits
with ourselves!
Considering all this, it
remains to us but to wonder at the preposterous presumption of these men, who
claim to be regarded by right of learning as the high priests of science, to
classify a phenomenon they know nothing about. Surely, several millions of
their countrymen and women, if deluded, deserve at least as much attention as
potato-bugs or grasshoppers! But, instead of that, what do we find? The
Congress of the United States, at the demand of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science, enacts statutes for organization of National Insect
Commissions; chemists are busying themselves in boiling frogs and bugs;
geologists amuse their leisure by osteological surveys of armor-plated ganoids,
and discuss the odontology of the various species of dinichtys; and
entomologists suffer their enthusiasm to carry them to the length of supping on
grasshoppers boiled, fried, and in soup.*** Meanwhile, millions of Americans
are either losing themselves in the maze of "crazy delusions,"
according to the opinion of some of these very learned encyclopaedists, or
perishing physically from "nervous disorders," brought on or brought
out by mediumistic diathesis.
At one time, there was reason
to hope that Russian scientists would have undertaken the task of giving the
phenomena a careful and impartial study. A commission was appointed by the
Imperial University of St. Petersburg, with Professor Mendeleyeff, the great
physicist, at its head. The advertised programme provided for a series of forty
seances to test mediums, and invitations were extended to all of this class who
chose to come to the Russian capital and submit their powers to examination. As
a rule they refused -- doubtless from a prevision of the trap that had been
laid for them. After eight sittings, upon a shallow pretext, and just when the
manifestations were becoming interesting, the commission prejudged the case,
and published a decision adverse to the claims of mediumism. Instead of
pursuing dignified, scientific methods, they set spies to peep
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See F. Gerry Fairfield's
"Ten Years with Spiritual Mediums," New York, 1875.
** Marvin: "Lecture on
Mediomania."
*** "Scientific
American," N. Y., 1875.
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through the key-holes.
Professor Mendeleyeff declared in a public lecture that spiritualism, or any
such belief in our souls' immortality, was a mixture of superstition, delusion,
and fraud; adding that every "manifestation" of such nature --
including mind-reading, trance, and other psychological phenomena, we must
suppose -- could be, and was produced by means of clever apparatus and
machinery concealed under the clothing of mediums!
After such a public exhibition
of ignorance and prejudice, Mr. Butlerof, Professor of Chemistry at the St.
Petersburg University, and Mr. Aksakof, Counsellor of State in the same city,
who had been invited to assist on the committee for mediums, became so
disgusted that they withdrew. Having published their protests in the Russian
papers, they were supported by the majority of the press, who did not spare
either Mendeleyeff or his officious committee with their sarcasms. The public
acted fairly in that case. One hundred and thirty names, of the most
influential persons of the best society of St. Petersburg, many of them no
spiritualists at all, but simply investigators, added their signatures to the well-deserved
protest.
The inevitable result of such
a procedure followed; universal attention was drawn to the question of
spiritualism; private circles were organized throughout the empire; some of the
most liberal journals began to discuss the subject; and, as we write, a new
commission is being organized to finish the interrupted task.
But now -- as a matter of
course -- they will do their duty less than ever. They have a better pretext
than they ever had in the pretended expose of the medium Slade, by Professor
Lankester, of London. True, to the evidence of one scientist and his friend, --
Messrs. Lankester and Donkin -- the accused opposed the testimony of Wallace,
Crookes, and a host of others, which totally nullifies an accusation based
merely on circumstantial evidence and prejudice. As the London Spectator very
pertinently observes:
"It is really a pure
superstition and nothing else to assume that we are so fully acquainted with
the laws of nature, that even carefully examined facts, attested by an experienced
observer, ought to be cast aside as utterly unworthy of credit, only because
they do not, at first sight, seem to be in keeping with what is most clearly
known already. To assume, as Professor Lankester appears to do, that because
there are fraud and credulity in plenty to be found in connection with these
facts -- as there is, no doubt, in connection with all nervous diseases --
fraud and credulity will account for all the carefully attested statements of
accurate and conscientious observers, is to saw away at the very branch of the
tree of knowledge on which inductive science necessarily rests, and to bring
the whole structure toppling to the ground."
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LOURDES.
But what matters all this to
scientists? The torrent of superstition, which, according to them, sweeps away
millions of bright intellects in its impetuous course, cannot reach them. The
modern deluge called spiritualism is unable to affect their strong minds; and
the muddy waves of the flood must expend their raging fury without wetting even
the soles of their boots. Surely it must be but traditional stubbornness on the
part of the Creator that prevents him from confessing what a poor chance his
miracles have in our day in blinding professed scientists. By this time even He
ought to know and take notice that long ago they decided to write on the
porticoes of their universities and colleges:
Science commands that God
shall not
Do miracles upon this spot! *
Both the infidel spiritualists
and the orthodox Roman Catholics seem to have leagued themselves this year against
the iconoclastic pretensions of materialism. Increase of skepticism has
developed of late a like increase of credulity. The champions of the Bible
"divine" miracles rival the panegyrist's mediumistic phenomena, and
the middle ages revive in the nineteenth century. Once more we see the Virgin
Mary resume her epistolary correspondence with the faithful children of her
church; and while the "angel friends" scribble messages to
spiritualists through their mediums, the "mother of God" drops
letters direct from heaven to earth. The shrine of Notre Dame de Lourdes has
turned into a spiritualistic cabinet for "materializations," while
the cabinets of popular American mediums are transformed into sacred shrines,
into which Mohammed, Bishop Polk, Joan of Arc and other aristocratic spirits
from over the "dark river," having descended, "materialize"
in full light. And if the Virgin Mary is seen taking her daily walk in the
woods about Lourdes in full human form, why not the Apostle of Islam, and the
late Bishop of Louisiana? Either both "miracles" are possible, or
both kinds of these manifestations, the "divine" as well as the
"spiritual," are arrant impostures. Time alone will prove which; but
meanwhile, as science refuses the loan of her magic lamp to illuminate these
mysteries, common people must go stumbling on whether they be mired or not.
The recent
"miracles" at Lourdes having been unfavorably discussed in the London
papers, Monsignor Capel communicates to the Times the views of the Roman Church
in the following terms:
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
*"De par le Roi, defense
a Dieu,
De faire miracle, en ces
lieux."
A satire that was found
written upon the walls of the cemetery at the time of the Jansenist miracles
and their prohibition by the police of France.
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"As to the miraculous
cures which are effected, I would refer your readers to the calm, judicious
work, La Grotte de Lourdes, written by Dr. Dozous, an eminent resident
practitioner, inspector of epidemic diseases for the district, and medical
assistant of the Court of Justice. He prefaces a number of detailed cases of
miraculous cures, which he says he has studied with great care and
perseverance, with these words: 'I declare that these cures effected at the
Sanctuary of Lourdes by means of the water of the fountain, have established
their supernatural character in the eyes of men of good faith. I ought to
confess that without these cures, my mind, little prone to listen to miraculous
explanations of any kind, would have had great difficulty in accepting even
this fact (the apparition), remarkable as it is from so many points of view.
But the cures, of which I have been so often an ocular witness, have given to
my mind a light which does not permit me to ignore the importance of the visits
of Bernadette to the Grotto, and the reality of the apparitions with which she
was favored.' The testimony of a distinguished medical man, who has carefully
watched from the beginning Bernadette, and the miraculous cures at the Grotto,
is at least worthy of respectful consideration. I may add, that the vast number
of those who come to the Grotto do so to repent of their sins, to increase
their piety, to pray for the regeneration of their country, to profess publicly
their belief in the Son of God and his Immaculate Mother. Many come to be cured
of bodily ailments; and on the testimony of eye-witnesses several return home
freed from their sickness. To upbraid with non-belief, as does your article,
those who use also the waters of the Pyrenees, is as reasonable as to charge
with unbelief the magistrates who inflict punishment on the peculiar people for
neglecting to have medical aid. Health obliged me to pass the winters of 1860
to 1867 at Pau. This gave me the opportunity of making the most minute inquiry
into the apparition at Lourdes. After frequent and lengthened examinations of
Bernadette and of some of the miracles effected, I am convinced that, if facts
are to be received on human testimony, then has the apparition at Lourdes every
claim to be received as an undeniable fact. It is, however, no part of the
Catholic faith, and may be accepted or rejected by any Catholic without the
least praise or condemnation."
Let the reader observe the
sentence we have italicized. This makes it clear that the Catholic Church,
despite her infallibility and her liberal postage convention with the Kingdom
of Heaven, is content to accept even the validity of divine miracles upon human
testimony. Now when we turn to the report of Mr. Huxley's recent New York
lectures on evolution, we find him saying that it is upon "human historical
evidence that we depend for the greater part of our knowledge for the doings of
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PROOF.
the past." In a lecture
on Biology, he has said " . . . every man who has the interest of truth at
heart must earnestly desire that every well-founded and just criticism that can
be made should be made; but it is essential . . . that the critic should know
what he is talking about." An aphorism that its author should recall when
he undertakes to pronounce upon psychological subjects. Add this to his views,
as expressed above, and who could ask a better platform upon which to meet him?
Here we have a representative
materialist, and a representative Catholic prelate, enunciating an identical
view of the sufficiency of human testimony to prove facts that it suits the
prejudices of each to believe. After this, what need for either the student of
occultism, or even the spiritualist, to hunt about for endorsements of the
argument they have so long and so persistently advanced, that the psychological
phenomena of ancient and modern thaumaturgists being superabundantly proven
upon human testimony must be accepted as facts? Church and College having
appealed to the tribunal of human evidence, they cannot deny the rest of
mankind an equal privilege. One of the fruits of the recent agitation in London
of the subject of mediumistic phenomena, is the expression of some remarkably
liberal views on the part of the secular press. "In any case, we are for
admitting spiritualism to a place among tolerated beliefs, and letting it alone
accordingly," says the London Daily News, in 1876. "It has many votaries
who are as intelligent as most of us, and to whom any obvious and palpable
defect in the evidence meant to convince must have been obvious and palpable
long ago. Some of the wisest men in the world believed in ghosts, and would
have continued to do so even though half-a-dozen persons in succession had been
convicted of frightening people with sham goblins."
It is not for the first time
in the history of the world, that the invisible world has to contend against
the materialistic skepticism of soul-blind Sadducees. Plato deplores such an
unbelief, and refers to this pernicious tendency more than once in his works.
From Kapila, the Hindu
philosopher, who many centuries before Christ demurred to the claim of the
mystic Yogins, that in ecstasy a man has the power of seeing Deity face to face
and conversing with the "highest" beings, down to the Voltaireans of
the eighteenth century, who laughed at everything that was held sacred by other
people, each age had its unbelieving Thomases. Did they ever succeed in checking
the progress of truth? No more than the ignorant bigots who sat in judgment
over Galileo checked the progress of the earth's rotation. No exposures
whatever are able to vitally affect the stability or instability of a belief
which humanity inherited from the first races of men, those, who -- if we
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can believe in the evolution
of spiritual man as in that of the physical one -- had the great truth from the
lips of their ancestors, the gods of their fathers, "that were on the
other side of the flood." The identity of the Bible with the legends of
the Hindu sacred books and the cosmogonies of other nations, must be
demonstrated at some future day. The fables of the mythopoeic ages will be
found to have but allegorized the greatest truths of geology and anthropology.
It is in these ridiculously expressed fables that science will have to look for
her "missing links."
Otherwise, whence such strange
"coincidences" in the respective histories of nations and peoples so
widely thrown apart? Whence that identity of primitive conceptions which,
fables and legends though they are termed now, contain in them nevertheless the
kernel of historical facts, of a truth thickly overgrown with the husks of
popular embellishment, but still a truth? Compare only this verse of Genesis
vi.: "And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the
earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the
daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which
they chose. . . . There were giants in the earth in those days," etc.,
with this part of the Hindu cosmogony, in the Vedas, which speaks of the
descent of the Brahmans. The first Brahman complains of being alone among all
his brethren without a wife. Notwithstanding that the Eternal advises him to
devote his days solely to the study of the Sacred Knowledge (Veda), the first-born
of mankind insists. Provoked at such ingratitude, the eternal gave Brahman a
wife of the race of the Daints, or giants, from whom all the Brahmans
maternally descend. Thus the entire Hindu priesthood is descended, on the one
hand, from the superior spirits (the sons of God), and from Daintany, a
daughter of the earthly giants, the primitive men.* "And they bare
children to them; the same became mighty men which were of old; men of
renown."**
The same is found in the
Scandinavian cosmogonical fragment. In the Edda is given the description to
Gangler by Har, one of the three informants (Har, Jafuhar, and Tredi) of the
first man, called Bur, "the father of Bor, who took for wife Besla, a
daughter of the giant Bolthara, of the race of the primitive giants." The
full and interesting narrative may be found in the Prose Edda, sects. 4-8, in
Mallett's Northern Antiquities.**
The same groundwork underlies
the Grecian fables about the Titans; and may be found in the legend of the Mexicans
-- the four successive races of Popol-Vuh. It constitutes one of the many ends
to be found in
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Polier: "Mythologie des
Indous."
** Genesis vi., 4.
*** Mallett: "Northern
Antiquities," Bohn's edition, pp. 401-405.
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PROTESTS.
the entangled and seemingly
inextricable skein of mankind, viewed as a psychological phenomenon. Belief in
supernaturalism would be otherwise inexplicable. To say that it sprang up, and
grew and developed throughout the countless ages, without either cause or the
least firm basis to rest upon, but merely as an empty fancy, would be to utter
as great an absurdity as the theological doctrine that the universe sprang into
creation out of nothing.
It is too late now to kick
against an evidence which manifests itself as in the full glare of noon.
Liberal, as well as Christian papers, and the organs of the most advanced
scientific authorities, begin to protest unanimously against the dogmatism and
narrow prejudices of sciolism. The Christian World, a religious paper, adds its
voice to that of the unbelieving London press. Following is a good specimen of
its common sense:
"If a medium," it
says,* "can be shown ever so conclusively to be an impostor, we shall
still object to the disposition manifested by persons of some authority in
scientific matters, to pooh-pooh and knock on the head all careful inquiry into
those subjects of which Mr. Barrett took note in his paper before the British
Association. Because spiritualists have committed themselves to many
absurdities, that is no reason why the phenomena to which they appeal should be
scouted as unworthy of examination. They may be mesmeric, or clairvoyant, or
something else. But let our wise men tell us what they are, and not snub us, as
ignorant people too often snub inquiring youth, by the easy but unsatisfactory
apothegm, 'Little children should not ask questions.' "
Thus the time has come when
the scientists have lost all right to be addressed with the Miltonian verse,
"O thou who, for the testimony of truth, hast borne universal
reproach!" Sad degeneration, and one that recalls the exclamation of that
"doctor of physic" mentioned one hundred and eighty years ago by Dr.
Henry More, and who, upon hearing the story told of the drummer of Tedworth and
of Ann Walker, "cryed out presently, If this be true, I have been in a
wrong box all this time, and must begin my account anew."**
But in our century,
notwithstanding Huxley's endorsement of the value of "human
testimony," even Dr. Henry More has become "an enthusiast and a
visionary, both of which, united in the same person, constitute a canting
madman."***
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In the "Quarterly
Review" of 1859, Graham gives a strange account of many now deserted
Oriental cities, in which the stone doors are of enormous dimensions, often
seemingly out of proportion with the buildings themselves, and remarks that
dwellings and doors bear all of them the impress of an ancient race of giants.
** Dr. More: "Letter to
Glanvil, author of 'Saducismus Triumphatus.' "
*** J. S. Y.:
"Demonologia, or Natural Knowledge Revealed," 1827, p. 219.
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What psychology has long
lacked to make its mysterious laws better understood and applied to the
ordinary as well as extraordinary affairs of life, is not facts. These it has
had in abundance. The need has been for their recording and classification -- for
trained observers and competent analysts. From the scientific body these ought
to have been supplied. If error has prevailed and superstition run riot these
many centuries throughout Christendom, it is the misfortune of the common
people, the reproach of science. The generations have come and gone, each
furnishing its quota of martyrs to conscience and moral courage, and psychology
is little better understood in our day than it was when the heavy hand of the
Vatican sent those brave unfortunates to their untimely doom, and branded their
memories with the stigma of heresy and sorcery.
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CHAPTER V.
"Ich bin der Geist der
stets verneint."
(I am the spirit which still
denies.) -- (Mephisto in FAUST.)
"The Spirit of truth,
whom the world cannot receive because it seeth Him not; neither knoweth
Him." -- Gospel according to John, xiv., 17.
"Millions of spiritual
creatures walk the earth
Unseen, both when we wake and
when we sleep." -- MILTON.
"Mere intellectual
enlightenment cannot recognize the spiritual. As the sun puts out a fire, so
spirit puts out the eyes of mere intellect. -- W. HOWITT.
THERE has been an infinite
confusion of names to express one and the same thing.
The chaos of the ancients; the
Zoroastrian sacred fire, or the Antusbyrum of the Parsees; the Hermes-fire; the
Elmes-fire of the ancient Germans; the lightning of Cybele; the burning torch
of Apollo; the flame on the altar of Pan; the inextinguishable fire in the
temple on the Acropolis, and in that of Vesta; the fire-flame of Pluto's helm;
the brilliant sparks on the hats of the Dioscuri, on the Gorgon head, the helm
of Pallas, and the staff of Mercury; the [[pur asbeston]]; the Egyptian Phtha,
or Ra; the Grecian Zeus Cataibates (the descending);* the pentecostal
fire-tongues; the burning bush of Moses; the pillar of fire of the Exodus, and
the "burning lamp" of Abram; the eternal fire of the "bottomless
pit"; the Delphic oracular vapors; the Sidereal light of the Rosicrucians;
the AKASA of the Hindu adepts; the Astral light of Eliphas Levi; the nerve-aura
and the fluid of the magnetists; the od of Reichenbach; the fire-globe, or
meteor-cat of Babinet; the Psychod and ectenic force of Thury; the psychic
force of Sergeant Cox and Mr. Crookes; the atmospheric magnetism of some
naturalists; galvanism; and finally, electricity, are but various names for
many different manifestations, or effects of the same mysterious, all-pervading
cause -- the Greek Archeus, or [[Archaios]].
Sir E. Bulwer-Lytton, in his
Coming Race, describes it as the VRIL,** used by the subterranean populations,
and allowed his readers to take it
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Pausanias:
"Eliae," lib. i., cap. xiv.
** We apprehend that the noble
author coined his curious names by contracting words in classical languages. Gy
would come from gune; vril from virile.
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for a fiction. "These
people," he says, "consider that in the vril they had arrived at the
unity in natural energic agencies"; and proceeds to show that Faraday
intimated them "under the more cautious term of correlation," thus:
"I have long held an
opinion, almost amounting to a conviction, in common, I believe, with many
other lovers of natural knowledge, that the various forms under which the
forces of matter are made manifest, HAVE ONE COMMON ORIGIN; or, in other words,
are so directly related and naturally dependent, that they are convertible, as
it were, into one another, and possess equivalents of power in their
action."
Absurd and unscientific as may
appear our comparison of a fictitious vril invented by the great novelist, and
the primal force of the equally great experimentalist, with the kabalistic
astral light, it is nevertheless the true definition of this force. Discoveries
are constantly being made to corroborate the statement thus boldly put forth.
Since we began to write this part of our book, an announcement has been made in
a number of papers of the supposed discovery of a new force by Mr. Edison, the
electrician, of Newark, New Jersey, which force seems to have little in common
with electricity, or galvanism, except the principle of conductivity. If
demonstrated, it may remain for a long time under some pseudonymous scientific
name; but, nevertheless, it will be but one of the numerous family of children
brought forth from the commencement of time by our kabalistic mother, the
Astral Virgin. In fact, the discoverer says that, "it is as distinct, and
has as regular laws as heat, magnetism, or electricity." The journal which
contains the first account of the discovery adds that, "Mr. Edison thinks
that it exists in connection with heat, and that it can also be generated by
independent and as yet undiscovered means."
Another of the most startling of
recent discoveries, is the possibility of annihilating distance between human
voices -- by means of the telephone (distance-sounder), an instrument invented
by Professor A. Graham Bell. This possibility, first suggested by the little
"lovers' telegraph," consisting of small tin cups with vellum and
drug-twine apparatus, by which a conversation can be carried on at a distance
of two hundred feet, has developed into the telephone, which will become the
wonder of this age. A long conversation has taken place between Boston and
Cambridgeport by telegraph; "every word being distinctly heard and
perfectly understood, and the modulations of voices being quite
distinguishable," according to the official report. The voice is seized
upon, so to say, and held in form by a magnet, and the sound-wave transmitted
by electricity acting in unison and co-operating with the magnet. The whole
success depends upon a perfect control of the electric currents and the
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BELL'S TELEPHONE.
power of the magnets used,
with which the former must co-operate. "The invention," reports the
paper, "may be rudely described as a sort of trumpet, over the bell-mouth
of which is drawn a delicate membrane, which, when the voice is thrown into the
tube, swells outward in proportion to the force of the sound-wave. To the outer
side of the membrane is attached a piece of metal, which, as the membrane
swells outward, connects with a magnet, and this, with the electric circuit, is
controlled by the operator. By some principle, not yet fully understood, the
electric current transmits the sound-wave just as delivered by the voice in the
trumpet, and the listener at the other end of the line, with a twin or
facsimile trumpet at his ear, hears every word distinctly, and readily detects
the modulations of the speaker's voice."
Thus, in the presence of such
wonderful discoveries of our age, and the further magical possibilities lying
latent and yet undiscovered in the boundless realm of nature, and further, in
view of the great probability that Edison's Force and Professor Graham Bell's
Telephone may unsettle, if not utterly upset all our ideas of the imponderable
fluids, would it not be well for such persons as may be tempted to traverse our
statements, to wait and see whether they will be corroborated or refuted by
further discoveries.
Only in connection with these
discoveries, we may, perhaps, well remind our readers of the many hints to be
found in the ancient histories as to a certain secret in the possession of the
Egyptian priesthood, who could instantly communicate, during the celebration of
the Mysteries, from one temple to another, even though the former were at
Thebes and the latter at the other end of the country; the legends attributing
it, as a matter of course, to the "invisible tribes" of the air,
which carry messages for mortals. The author of Pre-Adamite Man quotes an instance,
which being given merely on his own authority, and he seeming uncertain whether
the story comes from Macrinus or some other writer, may be taken for what it is
worth. He found good evidence, he says, during his stay in Egypt, that
"one of the Cleopatras (?) sent news by a wire to all the cities, from
Heliopolis to Elephantine, on the Upper Nile."*
It is not so long since
Professor Tyndall ushered us into a new world, peopled with airy shapes of the
most ravishing beauty.
"The discovery
consists," he says, "in subjecting the vapors of volatile liquids to
the action of concentrated sun-light, or to the concentrated beam of the
electric light." The vapors of certain nitrites, iodides, and acids are
subjected to the action of the light in an experimental tube, lying
horizontally, and so arranged that the axis of the tube and that of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* P. B. Randolph:
"Pre-Adamite Man," p. 48.
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the parallel beams issuing
from the lamp are coincident. The vapors form clouds of gorgeous tints, and
arrange themselves into the shapes of vases, of bottles and cones, in nests of
six or more; of shells, of tulips, roses, sunflowers, leaves, and of involved
scrolls. "In one case," he tells us, "the cloud-bud grew rapidly
into a serpent's head; a mouth was formed, and from the cloud, a cord of cloud
resembling a tongue was discharged." Finally, to cap the climax of
marvels, "once it positively assumed the form of a fish, with eyes, gills,
and feelers. The twoness of the animal form was displayed throughout, and no
disk, coil, or speck existed on one side that did not exist on the other."
These phenomena may possibly
be explained in part by the mechanical action of a beam of light, which Mr.
Crookes has recently demonstrated. For instance, it is a supposable case, that
the beams of light may have constituted a horizontal axis, about which the
disturbed molecules of the vapors gathered into the forms of globes and
spindles. But how account for the fish, the serpent's head, the vases, the
flowers of different varieties, the shells? This seems to offer a dilemma to
science as baffling as the meteor-cat of Babinet. We do not learn that Tyndall
ventured as absurd an explanation of his extraordinary phenomena as that of the
Frenchman about his.
Those who have not given
attention to the subject may be surprised to find how much was known in former
days of that all-pervading, subtile principle which has recently been baptized
THE UNIVERSAL ETHER.
Before proceeding, we desire
once more to enunciate in two categorical propositions, what was hinted at
before. These propositions were demonstrated laws with the ancient theurgists.
I. The so-called miracles, to
begin with Moses and end with Cagliostro, when genuine, were as de Gasparin
very justly insinuates in his work on the phenomena, "perfectly in
accordance with natural law"; hence -- no miracles. Electricity and
magnetism were unquestionably used in the production of some of the prodigies;
but now, the same as then, they are put in requisition by every sensitive, who
is made to use unconsciously these powers by the peculiar nature of his or her
organization, which serves as a conductor for some of these imponderable
fluids, as yet so imperfectly known to science. This force is the prolific
parent of numberless attributes and properties, many, or rather, most of which,
are as yet unknown to modern physics.
II. The phenomena of natural
magic to be witnessed in Siam, India, Egypt, and other Oriental countries, bear
no relationship whatever to sleight of hand; the one being an absolute physical
effect, due to the action of occult natural forces, the other, a mere deceptive
result
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obtained by dexterous
manipulations supplemented with confederacy.*
The thaumaturgists of all
periods, schools, and countries, produced their wonders, because they were
perfectly familiar with the imponderable -- in their effects -- but otherwise perfectly
tangible waves of the astral light. They controlled the currents by guiding
them with their will-power. The wonders were both of physical and psychological
character; the former embracing effects produced upon material objects, the
latter the mental phenomena of Mesmer and his successors. This class has been
represented in our time by two illustrious men, Du Potet and Regazzoni, whose
wonderful powers were well attested in France and other countries. Mesmerism is
the most important branch of magic; and its phenomena are the effects of the
universal agent which underlies all magic and has produced at all ages the
so-called miracles.
The ancients called it Chaos;
Plato and the Pythagoreans named it the Soul of the World. According to the
Hindus, the Deity in the shape of AEther pervades all things. It is the
invisible, but, as we have said before, too tangible Fluid. Among other names
this universal Proteus -- or "the nebulous Almighty," as de Mirville
calls it in derision -- was termed by the theurgists "the living
fire,"** the "Spirit of Light," and Magnes. This last
appellation indicates its magnetic properties and shows its magical nature.
For, as truly expressed by one of its enemies -- [[magos]] and [[magnes]] are
two branches growing from the same trunk, and shooting forth the same
resultants.
Magnetism is a word for the
derivation of which we have to look to an incredibly early epoch. The stone
called magnet is believed by many to owe its name to Magnesia, a city or
district in Thessaly, where these stones were found in quantity. We believe,
however, the opinion of the Hermetists to be the correct one. The word Magh,
magus, is derived from the Sanskrit Mahaji, the great or wise (the anointed by
the divine wisdom). "Eumolpus is the mythic founder of the Eumolpidae
(priests);
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* On this point at least we
are on firm ground. Mr. Crookes's testimony corroborates our assertions. On
page 84 of his pamphlet on "Phenomenal Spiritualism" he says:
"The many hundreds of facts I am prepared to attest -- facts which to
imitate by known mechanics or physical means would baffle the skill of a
Houdin, a Bosco, or an Anderson, backed with all the resources of elaborate
machinery and the practice of years -- have all taken place in my own house; at
times appointed by myself and under circumstances which absolutely precluded
the employment of the very simplest instrumental aids."
** In this appellation, we may
discover the meaning of the puzzling sentence to be found in the Zend-Avesta
that "fire gives knowledge of the future, science, and amiable
speech," as it develops an extraordinary eloquence in some sensitives.
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the priests traced their own
wisdom to the Divine Intelligence."* The various cosmogonies show that the
Archaeal Universal Soul was held by every nation as the "mind" of the
Demiurgic Creator, the Sophia of the Gnostics, or the Holy Ghost as a female
principle. As the Magi derived their name from it, so the Magnesian stone or
Magnet was called in their honor, for they were the first to discover its
wonderful properties. Their temples dotted the country in all directions, and
among these were some temples of Hercules,** -- hence the stone, when it once
became known that the priests used it for their curative and magical purposes,
received the name of the Magnesian or Heraclean stone. Socrates, speaking of
it, remarks: "Euripides calls it the Magnesian stone, but the common
people, the Heraclean."*** It was the country and stone which were called
after the Magi, not the Magi after one or the other. Pliny informs us that the
wedding-ring among the Romans was magnetized by the priests before the
ceremony. The old Pagan historians are careful to keep silent on certain
Mysteries of the "wise" (Magi) and Pausanias was warned in a dream,
he says, not to unveil the holy rites of the temple of Demeter and Persephoneia
at Athens.****
Modern science, after having
ineffectually denied animal magnetism, has found herself forced to accept it as
a fact. It is now a recognized property of human and animal organization; as to
its psychological, occult influence, the Academies battle with it, in our
century, more ferociously than ever. It is the more to be regretted and even
wondered at, as the representatives of "exact science" are unable to
either explain or even offer us anything like a reasonable hypothesis for the
undeniable mysterious potency contained in a simple magnet. We begin to have
daily proofs that these potencies underlie the theurgic mysteries, and
therefore might perhaps explain the occult faculties possessed by ancient and modern
thaumaturgists as well as a good many of their most astounding achievements.
Such were the gifts transmitted by Jesus to some of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Dunlap: "Musah, His
Mysteries," p. iii.
** "Hercules was known as
the king of the Musians," says Schwab, ii., 44; and Musien was the feast
of "Spirit and Matter," Adonis and Venus, Bacchus and Ceres. (See
Dunlap: "Mystery of Adonis," p. 95.) Dunlap shows, on the authority
of Julian and Anthon (67), AEsculapius, "the Savior of all,"
identical with Phtha (the creative Intellect, the Divine Wisdom), and with
Apollo, Baal, Adonis, and Hercules (ibid., p. 93), and Phtha is the "Anima
mundi," the Universal Soul, of Plato, the Holy Ghost of the Egyptians, and
the Astral Light of the Kabalists. M. Michelet, however, regards the Grecian
Herakles as a different character, the adversary of the Bacchic revellings and
their attendant human sacrifices.
*** Plato: "Ion"
(Burgess), vol. iv., p. 294.
**** "Attica," i.,
xiv.
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POWER.
his disciples. At the moment of
his miraculous cures, the Nazarene felt a power issuing from him. Socrates, in
his dialogue with Theages,* telling him of his familiar god (demon), and his
power of either imparting his (Socrates') wisdom to his disciples or preventing
it from benefiting those he associates with, brings the following instance in
corroboration of his words: "I will tell you, Socrates," says
Aristides, "a thing incredible, indeed, by the gods, but true. I made a
proficiency when I associated with you, even if I was only in the same house,
though not in the same room; but more so, when I was in the same room . . . and
much more when I looked at you. . . . But I made by far the greatest
proficiency when I sat near you and touched you."
This is the modern magnetism
and mesmerism of Du Potet and other masters, who, when they have subjected a
person to their fluidic influence, can impart to them all their thoughts even
at a distance, and with an irresistible power force their subject to obey their
mental orders. But how far better was this psychic force known to the ancient
philosophers! We can glean some information on that subject from the earliest
sources. Pythagoras taught his disciples that God is the universal mind
diffused through all things, and that this mind by the sole virtue of its
universal sameness could be communicated from one object to another and be made
to create all things by the sole will-power of man. With the ancient Greeks,
Kurios was the god-Mind (Nous). "Now Koros (Kurios) signifies the pure and
unmixed nature of intellect -- wisdom," says Plato.** Kurios is Mercury,
the Divine Wisdom, and "Mercury is the Sol" (Sun),*** from whom Thaut
-- Hermes -- received this divine wisdom, which, in his turn, he imparted to
the world in his books. Hercules is also the Sun -- the celestial storehouse of
the universal magnetism;**** or rather Hercules is the magnetic light which,
when having made its way through the "opened eye of heaven," enters
into the regions of our planet and thus becomes the Creator. Hercules passes through
the twelve labors, the valiant Titan! He is called "Father of All"
and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Plato: "Theages."
Cicero renders this word [[daimonion]], quiddam divinum, a divine something,
not anything personal.
** "Cratylus," p.
79.
*** "Arnobius," vi.,
xii.
**** As we will show in
subsequent chapters, the sun was not considered by the ancients as the direct
cause of the light and heat, but only as an agent of the former, through which
the light passes on its way to our sphere. Thus it was always called by the
Egyptians "the eye of Osiris," who was himself the Logos, the
First-begotten, or light made manifest to the world, "which is the mind
and divine intellect of the Concealed." It is only that light of which we
are cognizant that is the Demiurge, the creator of our planet and everything
pertaining to it; with the invisible and unknown universes disseminated through
space, none of the sun-gods had anything to do. The idea is expressed very
clearly in the "Books of Hermes."
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"self-born"
"(autophues)."* Hercules, the Sun, is killed by the Devil, Typhon,**
and so is Osiris, who is the father and brother of Horus, and at the same time
is identical with him; and we must not forget that the magnet was called the
"bone of Horus," and iron the "bone of Typhon." He is
called "Hercules Invictus," only when he descends to Hades (the
subterranean garden), and plucking the "golden apples" from the
"tree of life," slays the dragon.*** The rough Titanic power, the
"lining" of every sun-god, opposes its force of blind matter to the
divine magnetic spirit, which tries to harmonize everything in nature.
All the sun-gods, with their
symbol, the visible sun, are the creators of physical nature only. The
spiritual is the work of the Highest God -- the Concealed, the Central,
Spiritual SUN, and of his Demiurge -- the Divine Mind of Plato, and the Divine
Wisdom of Hermes Trismegistus**** -- the wisdom effused from Oulom or Kronos.
"After the distribution
of pure Fire, in the Samothracian Mysteries, a new life began."***** This
was the "new birth," that is alluded to by Jesus, in his nocturnal
conversation with Nicodemus. "Initiated into the most blessed of all
Mysteries, being ourselves pure . . . we become just and holy with
wisdom."****** "He breathed on them and saith unto them, 'Take the
Holy Pneuma.' "******* And this simple act of will-power was sufficient to
impart vaticination in its nobler and most perfect form if both the initiator
and the initiated were worthy of it. To deride this gift, even in its present
aspect, "as the corrupt offspring and lingering remains of an ignorant age
of superstition, and hastily to condemn it as unworthy of sober investigation,
would be as unphilosophical as it is wrong," remarks the Rev. J. B. Gross.
"To remove the veil which hides our vision from the future, has been
attempted -- in all ages of the world; and therefore the propensity to pry into
the lap of time, contemplated as one of the faculties of human mind, comes
recommended to us under the sanction of God. . . . Zuinglius, the Swiss
reformer, attested the comprehensiveness of his faith in the providence of the
Supreme Being, in the cosmopolitan doctrine that the Holy Ghost was not
excluded from the more worthy portion of the heathen world. Admitting its
truth, we cannot
[[Footnote(s)]]
--------------------------------------------------
* "Orphic Hymn,"
xii.; Hermann; Dunlap: "Musah, His Mysteries," p. 91.
** Movers, 525. Dunlap:
"Mysteries of Adonis," 94.
*** Preller: ii., 153. This is
evidently the origin of the Christian dogma of Christ descending into hell and
overcoming Satan.
**** This important fact
accounts admirably for the gross polytheism of the masses, and the refined,
highly-philosophical conception of one God, which was taught only in
sanctuaries of the "pagan" temples.
*****Anthon:
"Cabeiria."
****** Plato:
"Phaedrus," Cary's translation.
******* John xx., 22.
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easily conceive a valid reason
why a heathen, thus favored, should not be capable of true prophecy."*
Now, what is this mystic,
primordial substance? In the book of Genesis, at the beginning of the first
chapter, it is termed the "face of the waters," said to have been
incubated by the "Spirit of God." Job mentions, in chap. xxvi., 5,
that "dead things are formed from under the waters, and inhabitants
thereof." In the original text, instead of "dead things," it is
written dead Rephaim (giants, or mighty primitive men), from whom
"Evolution" may one day trace our present race. In the Egyptian
mythology, Kneph the Eternal unrevealed God is represented by a snake-emblem of
eternity encircling a water-urn, with his head hovering over the waters, which
it incubates with his breath. In this case the serpent is the Agathodaimon, the
good spirit; in its opposite aspect it is the Kakodaimon -- the bad one. In the
Scandinavian Eddas, the honey-dew -- the food of the gods and of the creative,
busy Yggdrasill -- bees -- falls during the hours of night, when the atmosphere
is impregnated with humidity; and in the Northern mythologies, as the passive
principle of creation, it typifies the creation of the universe out of water;
this dew is the astral light in one of its combinations and possesses creative
as well as destructive properties. In the Chaldean legend of Berosus, Oannes or
Dagon, the man-fish, instructing the people, shows the infant world created out
of water and all beings originating from this prima materia. Moses teaches that
only earth and water can bring a living soul; and we read in the Scriptures
that herbs could not grow until the Eternal caused it to rain upon earth. In
the Mexican Popol-Vuh man is created out of mud or clay (terre glaise), taken
from under the water. Brahma creates Lomus, the great Muni (or first man),
seated on his lotus, only after having called into being, spirits, who thus
enjoyed among mortals a priority of existence, and he creates him out of water,
air, and earth. Alchemists claim that primordial or pre-Adamic earth when
reduced to its first substance is in its second stage of transformation like
clear-water, the first being the alkahest** proper. This primordial substance
is said to contain within itself the essence of all that goes to make up man;
it has not only all the elements of his physical being, but even the
"breath of life" itself in a latent state, ready to be awakened. This
it derives from the "incubation" of the Spirit of God upon the face
of the waters -- chaos; in fact, this substance is chaos itself. From this it
was that Paracelsus claimed to be able to make his "homunculi"; and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Heathen
Religion," 104.
** Alkahest, a word first used
by Paracelsus, to denote the menstruum or universal solvent, that is capable of
reducing all things.
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this is why Thales, the great
natural philosopher, maintained that water was the principle of all things in
nature.
What is the primordial Chaos
but AEther? The modern Ether; not such as is recognized by our scientists, but
such as it was known to the ancient philosophers, long before the time of
Moses; Ether, with all its mysterious and occult properties, containing in
itself the germs of universal creation; Ether, the celestial virgin, the
spiritual mother of every existing form and being, from whose bosom as soon as
"incubated" by the Divine Spirit, are called into existence Matter
and Life, Force and Action. Electricity, magnetism, heat, light, and chemical
action are so little understood even now that fresh facts are constantly
widening the range of our knowledge. Who knows where ends the power of this
protean giant -- Ether; or whence its mysterious origin? -- Who, we mean, that
denies the spirit that works in it and evolves out of it all visible forms?
It is an easy task to show
that the cosmogonical legends all over the world are based on a knowledge by
the ancients of those sciences which have allied themselves in our days to
support the doctrine of evolution; and that further research may demonstrate
that they were far better acquainted with the fact of evolution itself,
embracing both its physical and spiritual aspects, than we are now. With the
old philosophers, evolution was a universal theorem, a doctrine embracing the
whole, and an established principle; while our modern evolutionists are enabled
to present us merely with speculative theoretics; with particular, if not
wholly negative theorems. It is idle for the representatives of our modern
wisdom to close the debate and pretend that the question is settled, merely
because the obscure phraseology of the Mosaic account clashes with the definite
exegesis of "exact science."
One fact at least is proved:
there is not a cosmogonical fragment, to whatever nation it may belong, but
proves by this universal allegory of water and the spirit brooding over it,
that no more than our modern physicists did any of them hold the universe to
have sprung into existence out of nothing; for all their legends begin with
that period when nascent vapors and Cimmerian darkness lay brooding over a
fluid mass ready to start on its journey of activity at the first flutter of
the breath of Him, who is the Unrevealed One. Him they felt, if they saw Him
not. Their spiritual intuitions were not so darkened by the subtile sophistry
of the forecoming ages as ours are now. If they talked less of the Silurian age
slowly developing into the Mammalian, and if the Cenozoic time was only
recorded by various allegories of the primitive man -- the Adam of our race --
it is but a negative proof after all that their "wise men" and
leaders did not know of these successive periods as well as we do now.
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ORIGIN.
In the days of Democritus and
Aristotle, the cycle had already begun to enter on its downward path of
progress. And if these two philosophers could discuss so well the atomic theory
and trace the atom to its material or physical point, their ancestors may have
gone further still and followed its genesis far beyond that limit where Mr.
Tyndall and others seem rooted to the spot, not daring to cross the line of the
"Incomprehensible." The lost arts are a sufficient proof that if even
their achievements in physiography are now doubted, because of the
unsatisfactory writings of their physicists and naturalists, -- on the other
hand their practical knowledge in phytochemistry and mineralogy far exceeded
our own. Furthermore, they might have been perfectly acquainted with the
physical history of our globe without publishing their knowledge to the
ignorant masses in those ages of religious Mysteries.
Therefore, it is not only from
the Mosaic books that we mean to adduce proof for our further arguments. The
ancient Jews got all their knowledge -- religious as well as profane -- from
the nations with which we see them mixed up from the earliest periods. Even the
oldest of all sciences, their kabalistic "secret doctrine," may be
traced in each detail to its primeval source, Upper India, or Turkestan, far
before the time of a distinct separation between the Aryan and Semitic nations.
The King Solomon so celebrated by posterity, as Josephus the historian says,*
for his magical skill, got his secret learning from India through Hiram, the
king of Ophir, and perhaps Sheba. His ring, commonly known as "Solomon's
seal," so celebrated for the potency of its sway over the various kinds of
genii and demons, in all the popular legends, is equally of Hindu origin.
Writing on the pretentious and abominable skill of the
"devil-worshippers" of Travancore, the Rev. Samuel Mateer, of the
London Missionary Society, claims at the same time to be in possession of a
very old manuscript volume of magical incantations and spells in the Malayalim
language, giving directions for effecting a great variety of purposes. Of
course he adds, that "many of these are fearful in their malignity and
obscenity," and gives in his work the fac-simile of some amulets bearing
the magical figures and designs on them. We find among them one with the
following legend: "To remove trembling
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Josephus:
"Antiquities," vol. viii., c. 2, 5.
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arising from demoniacal
possession -- write this figure on a plant that has milky juice, and drive a
nail through it; the trembling will cease."* The figure is the identical
Solomon's seal, or double triangle of the Kabalists. Did the Hindu get it from
the Jewish kabalist, or the latter from India, by inheritance from their great
king-kabalist, the wise Solomon?** But we will leave this trifling dispute to
continue the more interesting question of the astral light, and its unknown
properties.
Admitting, then, that this
mythical agent is Ether, we will proceed to see what and how much of it is
known to science.
With respect to the various
effects of the different solar rays, Robert Hunt, F. R. S., remarks, in his
Researches on Light in its Chemical Relations, that:
"Those rays which give
the most light -- the yellow and the orange rays -- will not produce change of
color in the chloride of silver"; while "those rays which have the
least illuminating power -- the blue and violet -- produce the greatest change,
and in exceedingly short time. . . . The
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The Land of
Charity," p. 210.
** The claims of certain
"adepts," which do not agree with those of the students of the purely
Jewish Kabala, and show that the "secret doctrine" has originated in
India, from whence it was brought to Chaldea, passing subsequently into the
hands of the Hebrew "Tanaim," are singularly corroborated by the
researches of the Christian missionaries. These pious and learned travellers
have inadvertently come to our help. Dr. Caldwell, in his "Comparative
Grammar of the Dravidian Languages," p. 66, and Dr. Mateer, in the
"Land of Charity," p. 83, fully support our assertions that the
"wise" King Solomon got all his kabalistic lore from India, as the
above-given magical figure well shows. The former missionary is desirous to
prove that very old and huge specimens of the baobab-tree, which is not, as it
appears, indigenous to India, but belongs to the African soil, and "found
only at several ancient sites of foreign commerce (at Travancore), may, for
aught we know," he adds, "have been introduced into India, and planted
by the servants of King Solomon." The other proof is still more
conclusive. Says Dr. Mateer, in his chapter on the Natural History of
Travancore: "There is a curious fact connected with the name of this bird
(the peacock) which throws some light upon Scripture history. King Solomon sent
his navy to Tarshish (I Kings, 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.
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DISCREDITED.
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."* 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 Pleasonton, 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Cooke: "New
Chemistry," p. 22.
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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 Hyle 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."*
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Eliphas Levi: "Dogme et
Rituel de la Haute Magie."
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FAKIR.
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,* 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 Pleasonton, 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.** His magnetism, obeying his will,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 Phaedo § 16, and commentaries on it by Henry More, the
well-known Mystic philosopher and Platonist.
** 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 [[nous, pneuma]], or divine spirit, and the other his [[Footnote
continued on next page]]
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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,* 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.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] [[psuche]], 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 ahasa,
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.
* 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.
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TRICK.
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
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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 or 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."*
In a series of remarkable
experiments made by Regazzoni in the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "La Magie
Devoilee," p. 147.
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EXPERIMENTS.
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!"*
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."**
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Magie au XIXme Siecle,"
p. 268.
** Ibid.
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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 preexistent 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
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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."*
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."**
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 per-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Brierre de Boismont:
"Des Hallucinations, ou Histoire raisonnee des apparitions, des songes,
des visions, de l'extase du Magnetisme," 1845, p. 301 (French edition).
See also Fairfield: "Ten Years Among the Mediums."
** Cabanis, seventh memoir:
"De l'Influence des Maladies sur la Formation des Idees," etc. A
respected N. Y. legislator has this faculty.
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ceives 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, aether,
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 Hyle), 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 ser-
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EVANGELISTS.
pent 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 Irenaeus, 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.*
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
Voluspa (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 Ginnungagap -- 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 (aether), 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
Elivagar, 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** (female principle), from whose udder
flowed four streams of milk,*** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Irenaeus: Book iii., chap.
ii., sec. 8.
** 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.
*** In Genesis the river of
Eden was parted, "and became into four heads" (Gen. ii., 5).
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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
mediaeval 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
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"COAT OF SKIN."
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."* 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.** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Genesis iii. 21.
** 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.
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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
archeologists say that "Adam, Enoch, and Noah might, in outward
appearance, be different men, but they were really the selfsame divine
person."* 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.**
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.***
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 Timaeus, 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;
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Godfrey Higgins:
"Anacalypsis," quoting Faber.
** See Cory's "Ancient
Fragments." BEROSUS.
*** We refer the reader for
further particulars to the "Prose Edda" in Mallett's "Northern
Antiquities."
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EDDAS.
his hair, the trees, etc.;
while his skull forms the heavenly vault, supported by four pillars
representing the four cardinal points. From the eye-brows 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 Yormungand, 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, aether, 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 Voluspa, Odin,
Honir, 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; Honir endowed
them with soul and motion; and Lodur with beauty, speech, sight, and hearing.
The man they called Askr -- the ash,* 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 AEsir, 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 Parcae), Urdhr, Verdandi, and Skuld -- or the Present, the Past, and
the Future. Every morning, while fixing the term
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
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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
Nidhogg, 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.* 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 preexisted in the parent of this race, as the seed, in which lies hid-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Kanne's "Pantheum
der AEltesten Philosophie."
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MUNDANE-TREE.
den 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 Voluspa, 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";* and that even a la rigueur
"all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended
from some one primordial form";** 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."***
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."****
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Origin of
Species," p. 484.
** 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.
*** Ibid., p. 488.
**** Lecture by T. H. Huxley,
F.R.S.: "Darwin and Haeckel."
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philosophers. "These
Chaldeans," says Philo,* "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.** 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."*** 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 electromagnetic condition, he would be bold indeed who dare say that
anything
[[Footnote(s)]]
---------------------------------------------------
* "Migration of
Abraham," § 32.
** Cory: "Ancient
Fragments."
*** "Origin of
Species," pp. 448, 489, first edition.
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VOLUSPA.
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 Somme, prove that men must have
existed at a period so remote as to be beyond calculation. If we believe
Buchner, 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."* The former have at least the inferential proof
of legendary myth, the vast antiquity of which is admitted by both philologists
and archaeologists; 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Huxley: "Darwin and
Haeckel."
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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-Zen (aether), 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,* 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** 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
startingpoint 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 scientifi-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Mithras was regarded among the
Persians as the Theos ek petros -- god of the rock.
** 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.
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cally 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 archaeology 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
Zen) 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
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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 Aour, 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 Clazomene, 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 AEther. Virgil calls Zeus, pater omnipotens aether;* Magnus,
the great god, Ether.
These beings above alluded to
are the elemental spirits of the Kabalists,** whom the Christian clergy
denounce as "devils," the enemies of mankind.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Virgil:
"Georgica," book ii.
** 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 [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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LAND.
"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
Philolaus, 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.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] 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!
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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.* "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.** 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.***
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!****
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Tria capita exsculpta
sunt, una intra alterum, et alterum supra alterum" -- (Sohar; "Idra
Suta," sectio vii.)
** Gentle gale (lit.)
*** Higgins:
"Anacalypsis"; also "Dupuis."
**** Mallett: "Northern
Antiquities," pp. 401-406, and "The Songs of a Voluspa" in the
Edda.
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THUNDERER SIGNIFY?
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 AEsirbridge, 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, Astarte, 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 principle 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
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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 ground-work of truth
in every fiction.
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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 Ampere 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,* which will be found elsewhere, might
have
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* From a London Spiritualist
journal.
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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.* 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Hemmann:
"Medico-Surgical Essays," Berl., 1778.
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AWAY.
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!"*
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."**
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Robert Fludd: "Treatise
III."
** Prof. J. P. Cooke:
"New Chemistry."
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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!*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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LACTANTIUS.
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."* 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 tinct-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] 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).
* Prophecy, Ancient and
Modern, by A. Wilder: "Phrenological Journal."
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ure, 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.*
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 acade-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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!
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DISCOVERER OF HYDROGEN.
mies? 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;* and as
we are told by Professor Mayer,** that the magnetic condition of the earth
changes with every variation upon the sun's surface, and is said to be "in
subjection
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Youmans: "Chemistry
on the Basis of the New System -- Spectrum Analysis."
** 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."
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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."*
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 mediaeval philosophers. "The
stars consist equally of the elements
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "De Magnetica Vulner
Curatione," p. 722, 1. c.
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1784.
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
Pleasonton* 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 minerals."**
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "On the Influence
of the Blue Ray."
** Ennemoser: "History of
Magic."
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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.* In Professor
Stewart's work,** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Du Magnetisme Animal,
en France." Paris, 1826.
** "The Conservation of
Energy." N. Y., 1875.
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PRIZE.
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'Angouleme, 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 Probabilites,
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
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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 Guenau 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
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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,
width 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."
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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,
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HARE.
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 zoologist 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.* "Here,"
he says, "the
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* "Fundamental Principles
of Natural Philosophy."
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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 aether. . . . In this the things without figure are figured," says
an ancient fragment of the Chaldean Oracles of Zoroaster.*
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
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Simpl. in Phys.,"
143; "The Chaldean Oracles," Cory.
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MEMORY.
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,"* 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 reincarnation
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 mediaeval 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 preexistence, yet the latter being endowed with an
individual memory apart from that of our physical brain, it is no proof of
reincarnation. 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, dream-
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Draper: "Conflict
between Religion and Science."
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less 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, Fournie, 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.
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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 ruah and 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 arcana 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
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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."*
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 dis-
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* J. R. Buchanan, M.D.:
"Outlines of Lectures on the Neurological System of Anthropology."
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turbance, 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,* 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 aether pervades all things in nature, even the most solid.
It is beginning to be admitted, also, that this preserves the images of all
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* W. and Elizabeth M. F.
Denton: "The Soul of Things; or Psychometric Researches and
Discoveries." Boston, 1873.
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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
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CANVAS.
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."*
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."** 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? Gan-
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* "Religion of
Geology."
** "Principles of
Science," vol. ii., p. 455.
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glionic 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."*
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?"**
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* J. W. Draper: "Conflict
between Religion and Science," pp. 132, 133.
** "Unseen
Universe," p. 159.
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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";* 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."**
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*** . . . 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**** between
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* F. R. Marvin: "Lecture
on Mediomania."
** "Unseen
Universe," p. 84, et seq.
*** Ibid., p. 89.
**** 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 Voluspa,"
"The Vision of Vala, the Seeress." For what is this bridge of
Bifrost, the radiant rainbow, which leads the [[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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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."*
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] 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"?
* "L'Ami des
Sciences," March 2, 1856, p. 67.
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SOLVENT.
that of the authors of the
Unseen Universe. It states that from aether 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 store-house 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 cotemporary
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."
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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."* 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 mediaeval 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."** 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** as these the substances involved
underwent a mysterious transformation. . . . Centuries," in short,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Cooke: "New
Chemistry," p. 113.
** Ibid., pp. 110-111.
*** Ibid., p. 106.
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"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."*
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "De Secretis
Adeptorum." Werdenfelt; Philalethes; Van Helmont; Paracelsus.
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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?* 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 contemporaries 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:** "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
spec-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Youmans:
"Chemistry," p. 169; and W. B. Kemshead, F. R. A. S.: "Inorganic
Chemistry."
** "Origin of
Metalliferous Deposits."
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ulations 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."*
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!**
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 Caesar'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
Caesar 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 Caesar.
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 Caesar is also a competent
witness as
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* John Bumpus: "Alchemy
and the Alkahest," 85, J. S. F., edition of 1820.
** See Boyle's works.
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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."* 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,** as facts must be our
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
** A. R. Wallace: "An
Answer to the Arguments of Hume, Lecky, etc., against Miracles."
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AVOWAL.
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 pre-conceived 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.
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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 pretense for being a passive instrument in the hands of invisible
intelligences would become useless. As well plead
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POINTS.
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,
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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 reasserts 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
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INTELLIGENCE.
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.* 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* CROOKES: "Researches,
etc.," p. 96.
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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 daemon [spirit] who, acting under the orders
of God, directs and governs thee; thou canst do nothing, thou art nothing but a
vain breath."* 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?"** 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."**
Prophecies are delivered in
two ways -- consciously, by magicians who are able to look into the astral
light; and unconsciously, by those
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Lucian:
"Pharsalia," Book v.
** "De Divinatio,"
Book i., chap. 3.
*** "De Occulta
Philosoph.," p. 355.
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FALSE.
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).* "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."**
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."***
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Plato: "Timaeus,"
vol. ii., p. 563.
** Crookes: "Researches,
etc.," p. 101.
*** Ibid., p. 101.
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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."
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.** 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."*** (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.****
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Crookes: "Researches,
etc.," p. 83.
** 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.
*** "Researches,
etc.," p. 91.
**** Ibid., pp. 86-97.
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PENCIL.
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.*
"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."** 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."*** 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?
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ibid., p. 94.
** Ibid., p. 95.
*** Ibid., p. 94.
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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 Abbe 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."
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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 mediaeval alchemists and certain other illustrious men. Almost without
exception, ancient and mediaeval 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
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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,"* 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 "aerial" and the "aethereal vehicle." During the time
that a disembodied man moves in its aerial 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.**
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,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Antidote," lib.
i., cap. 4.
** "Letter to Glanvil,
the author of 'Sadducismus Triumphatus,' May, 25, 1678."
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PORTER'S BACK.
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."*
The esteemed philosopher,
Pierre Poiret Naude, was the warmest defender of the doctrines of occult
magnetism and its first propounders,** in 1679. The magico-theosophical
philosophy is fully vindicated in his works.
The well-known Dr. Hufeland
has written a work on magic*** 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.**** "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."*****
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "History of
Magic," vol. ii., p. 272.
** "Apologie pour tous
les grands personnages faussement accuses de magie."
*** Berlin, 1817.
**** "Nova Medicina
Spirituum," 1675.
***** "History of
Magic."
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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.* 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,** 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*** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
** "Magia
Naturalis," Lugduni, 1569.
*** Athanasius Kircher:
"Magnes sive de arte magnetici, opus tripartitum." Coloniae, 1654.
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ANTIPATHIES IN PLANTS.
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
zoomagnetism, 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,*
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Lib. iii., p. 643.
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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 Loubere,
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."* De la Loubere
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."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Notes from a New
Historical Relation of the Kingdom of Siam," by de la Louere, French
Ambassador to Siam in the years 1687-8. Edition of 1692.
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THE CASHMERE GIRLS.
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 besides 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,
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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 (Augoeides)." 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 foetus, 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
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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."*
In an extended description of
the religious rites, monastic life, and "superstitions" of the
Siamese, de la Loubere cites among other things the wonderful power possessed
by the Talapoin (the monks, or the holy
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Baptist Van Helmont:
"Opera Omnia," 1682, p. 720, and others.
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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);*
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 Loubere, "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!"** "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 Loubere 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.*** 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,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* De la Loubere:
"Notes," etc. (see ante), p. 115.
** Ibid., p. 120.
*** Ibid., p. 63.
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MUSIC.
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.*
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."**
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See his "Conf.,"
xiii., 1. c. in praefatione.
** I Samuel, xvi., 14-23.
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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."*
"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."**
"He who can invigorate
the particular spirit through the universal one, might continue his life to
eternity."***
"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 expectancy 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."****
But, if the patient has no
faith, what then? If he is physically nega-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Aphorisms," 22.
** Ibid., p. 69.
*** Ibid., p. 70.
**** "Philosophie des
Sciences Occultes."
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HEALING-MEDIUMS.
tive 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;* 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, spell-bound
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,
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* I Kings, i. 1-4, 15.
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have become famous in the
world's history. Such are the Cure 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.*
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Josephus:
"Antiquities," viii., 2.
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PORPHYRY'S BAD DEMONS.
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.* 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!' "**
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."***
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.****
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,"
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The Diakka and their
Victims; an Explanation of the False and Repulsive in Spiritualism."
** See Chapter on the human
spirits becoming the denizens of the eighth sphere, whose end is generally the
annihilation of personal individuality.
*** Porphyry: "On the
Good and Bad Demons."
**** "De Mysteriis
Egyptorum," lib. iii., c. 5.
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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 exposes,
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
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CEVENNES.
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."* 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 Boehme, 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.**
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Epes Sargent: "Proof
Palpable of Immortality," p. 45.
** See Matthew xxiv. 26.
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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
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PROTOPLASM.
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,* 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 Boue, 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** was laughed at;
and that of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Wallace, "Miracles
and Modern Spiritualism," and W. Howitt, "History of the
Supernatural," vol. ii.
** See Wallace's paper read
before the Dialectical Society, in 1871: "Answer to Hume, etc."
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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,* -- 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 medieval 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.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* [["Philologos"]]
(Bailey's), second edition.
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ALCHEMY.
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 Abbe 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.* 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.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Art. on
"AEthrobacy."
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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, Coelius, Foxius, Costaeus, Casalius,
Cedrenus, Delrius, Ericius, Gesnerus, Jacobonus, Leander, Libavius, Lazius, P.
della Mirandola, Philalethes, Licetus, Maiolus, Maturantius, Baptista Porta,
Pancirollus, Ruscellius, Scardeonius, 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.* 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,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Psalm cv. 23. "The Land
of Ham," or chem, Greek [[chemi]], whence the terms alchemy and chemistry.
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ATTESTE.
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,* 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** 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 Atteste, and Scardeonius*** 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
as-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "OEdipi AEgyptiaci
Theatrum Hieroglyphicum," p. 544.
** "Lib. de Defectu
Oraculorum."
*** Lib. i., Class 3, Cap.
ult.
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serted 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.*
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 [[Nekrokedeia]], 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 reabsorb
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The details of this story
may be found in the work of Erasmus Franciscus, who quotes from Pflaumerus,
Pancirollus, and many others.
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UNQUENCHABLE LIGHT.
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.*
Asbestos, which was known to
the Greeks under the name of [[Asbestos]], or inextinguishable, is a kind of stone,
which once set on fire
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "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:
". Solis 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
loevigat, 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
Mariae (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.
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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 scapegoat, the devil, is flatly
contradicted by Ludovicus Vives,* 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,** had both flax and linen made out of another asbestos, which
Porcacchius says*** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Commentary upon St.
Augustine's 'Treatise de Civitate Dei.' "
** The author of "De
Rebus Cypriis," 1566 A. D.
*** "Book of Ancient
Funerals."
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ASBESTOS.
(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 fireproof 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
[[amiantos]] (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 Matthaeus Raderus says in his work* 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** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Comment. on the 77th
Epigram of the IXth Book of Martial."
** "De Defectu
Oraculorum."
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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 Browne,* 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."** 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."*** 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.****
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 depends 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Vulgar Errors,"
p. 124.
** "London Dialectical
Society's Report on Spiritualism," p. 229.
*** Ibid., p. 230.
**** Ibid., p. 265.
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UNCONSCIOUSLY CEREBRATE?
large part in the production
of the phenomena known as spiritualistic."*
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."**
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. . .
."***
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ibid., p. 266.
** Draper: "Conflict
between Religion and Science," p. 121.
*** Milton: "Paradise
Lost."
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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 Phoenician -- 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'Antiquite Figures, 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.* 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Ennemoser: "History
of Magic," vol. ii., and Schweigger: "Introduction to Mythology
through Natural History."
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THEURGIC ARCANA.
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.*
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "History of
Magic," vol. ii.
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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 Timaeus, 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";* 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 Timaeus, 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* B. Jowett, M.A.: "The
Dialogues of Plato," vol. ii., p. 508.
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BALLIOL COLLEGE.
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
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credit: 1. "That the
nebular theory was the received belief of the early physicists." Therefore
it could not have rested, as Draper asserts,* 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."** Thus Galileo, studying some Pythagorean
fragments, which are shown by Reuchlin to have yet existed in the days of the
Florentine mathematician;*** being, moreover, familiar with the doctrines of
the old philosophers, but reasserted 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."**** "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."*****
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Conflict between
Religion and Science," p. 240.
** "Plutarch,"
translated by Langhorne.
*** 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.
**** Jowett: Introduction to
the "Timaeus," vol. ii., p. 508.
***** Ibid.
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LUXOR.
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 mediaeval ages in some
arts, why boast of achievements which, according to strong probability, were
perfectly known thousands of years ago? The more archaeology 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
Phoenician vessels had circumnavigated the globe, and spread civilization in
regions now silent and deserted? What archaeologist 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
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along with them arts and
sciences, which neither the first crucible ever heated in a mediaeval 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."* 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;
when-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Conflict between
Religion and Science," p. 14.
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DISCOVERY?
ever 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."* 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.** 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 dis-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Conflict between
Religion and Science," p. 311.
** "Egypt's Place in
Universal History," vol. v., p. 88.
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covered 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 Naturae, 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.* 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 Timaeus the primary and secondary qualities of matter** and the
feebleness of human intellect, makes Timaeus 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 [[To On]], 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*** -- what else is this but correlation of forces?
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* W. R. Grove: "Preface
to the Correlation of Physical Forces."
** "Timaeus," p. 22.
*** Beginning with Godfrey
Higgins and ending with Max Muller, every archaeologist [[Footnote continued on
next page]]
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B C OF OCCULTISM.
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 archaeology 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] 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.
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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 supercelestial essences, while every order of
things proceeds gradually in a beautiful descent from the highest to the
lowest.* 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."**
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 mediaeval hermetists called magnetism,
attraction, affinity. It is the universal law, which is understood by Plato and
explained in Timaeus 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.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This is the exact opposite
of the modern theory of evolution.
** Ficinus: See
"Excerpta" and "Dissertation on Magic"; Taylor:
"Plato," vol. i., p. 63.
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NIGHT-CROWING COCKS.
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."* 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'** decided
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Modern American
Spiritualism," p. 119.
** The full and correct name of
this learned Society is -- "The American Association [[Footnote continued
on next page]]
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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 Muller 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] for the Advancement of Science." It is, however, often
called for brevity's sake, "The American Scientific Association."
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LIGHT.
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."*
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."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Taylor's translation of
"Select Works of Plotinus," p. 553, etc.
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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 Muller, 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."*
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Iamblichus: "De Vita
Pythag.," additional notes (Taylor).
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UPON MODERN SCIENTISTS.
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."*
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."**
"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,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The National Quarterly
Review," Dec., 1875.
** Ibid., p. 94.
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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.' "*
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 preeminently 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 rechauffe of the speculations of the
Hindu Swabhavikas or Pantheists, who assert that all things, the gods as well
as men and animals, are born from Swabhava or their own nature?** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Force and Matter,"
p. 151.
** Burnouf:
"Introduction," p. 118.
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OF MUTTON-PROTOPLASM.
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."*
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 preexistence 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, Boehius, 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 preexist before it comes into
the body."**
Years have rolled away since
the Count Joseph De Maistre wrote a sentence which, if appropriate to the
Voltairean epoch in which he lived,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The National Quarterly
Review," Dec., 1875, p. 96.
** "De Anima," lib.
i., cap. 3.
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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."*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* De Maistre: "Soirees de
St. Petersburg."
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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.* 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. Proc-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
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tor 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,* 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** 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,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 mediaeval
philosophical authors. Among these authorities are Arnoldo di Villanova's
"Rosarium philosoph."; Francesco Arnolphim's "Lucensis opus de
Iapide." Hermes Trismegistus' "Tractatus de transmutatione
metallorum," "Tabula smaragdina," and above all in the treatise
of Raymond Lulli, "Ab angelis opus divinum de quinta essentia."
** Quicksilver.
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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."*
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 est."
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 faeculent, 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 per-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Hermes," iv. 6.
Spirit here denotes the Deity -- Pneuma, [[ho Theos]].
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fection as to know why God
hath placed the earth in abscondito,* thou hast an excellent figure whereby to
know God Himself, and how He is visible, how invisible."**
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."***
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.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Magia Adamica,"
p. 11.
** 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 [[archen meu einai ten hulen]], 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: "Prooein,"
§§ 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 "Timaeus,"
notwithstanding "an unfortunate doubt" which arises in consequence of
the word [[illesthai]] 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
"Timaeus" "to mean circling or revolving" (De Coelo), 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 "Timaeus," 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.
*** "Wisdom of
Solomon," xi. 17.
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HERMES TRISMEGISTUS.
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."*
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
preexisting 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 mediaeval 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 [[polumechanos meter]], "the mother
that makes many things," or the ingenious, the contriving, the inventive
mother.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Eugenius Philalethes:
"Magia Adamica."
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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."*
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,"** 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.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Hargrave Jennings: "The
Rosicrucians."
** "Timaeus."
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DESTINIES?
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."*
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."** 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."*** Indeed, the professor sees nothing
unreasonable in their supposition that the influences exerted by the slower
moving planets "might be even more potent that 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Our Place among
Infinities," p. 313.
** Ibid.
*** Ibid., p. 314.
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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:*
"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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
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NOSTRADAMUS.
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?* Or is it again a coincidence, that Plato
should have indicated in the Timaeus 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."**
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Rawlinson, vol. xvii.,
pp. 30-32, Revised edition.
** Jowett: Introduction to
"Timaeus," "Dial. of Plato," vol. i., p. 509.
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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 zoon-ek-zoon, 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 Demiurge, 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 Neoplatonists 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 Irenaeic 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
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IDENTICAL.
its chief expounders,
Simon-Ben-Iochai,* 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!"**
This short hymn of laudation
contains within itself the groundwork of every mythopoeic 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.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* N. B. -- He lived in the
first century B. C.
** Stobaeus:
"Eclogues."
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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, Astarte, 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 AEsculapian
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
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PRECIOUS STONES.
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.* 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-Prajapati, having fallen in love
with his own daughter, Ushas (Heaven, sometimes the Dawn also), assumed the
form of a buck (ris'ya) and Ushas that of a female deer (rohit) and thus
committed the first sin.** 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 Bhutavan (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*** 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."****
Diana-Luna is the daughter of
Zeus by Proserpina, who represents the Earth in her active labor, and,
according to Hesiod, as Diana Eily-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Kieser: "Archiv.,"
vol. iv., p. 62. In fact, many of the old symbols were mere puns on names.
** See "Rig-Vedas,"
the Aitareya-Brahmanan.
*** 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.
**** Marbod: "Liber
lapid. ed Beekmann."
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thia-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 descendants 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 experi-
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ments to determine whether the
appearance of the spots on the sun's surface is in any way connected with the
potato disease, and finds it is; and that, moreover, "the earth is very
seriously affected by what takes place in the sun,"* 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 partic-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The Sun and the
Earth," Lecture by Prof. Balfour Stewart.
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ular 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 archaeologists 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.* Voltaire becomes, toward the end of his life, Pythagorical, and
concludes by saying: "I have consumed forty
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "La Loi
Naturelle," par Volney.
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SENSE.
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."*
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.** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Diction.
Philosophique," Art. "Philosophie."
** "Boston Lecture,"
December, 1875.
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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."* Agni, the "Divine Fire," the deity of the Hindu, is the
sun,** 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."*** 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,"**** 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."***** 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."******
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 cos-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Weber: "Ind. Stud.,"
i. 290.
** Wilson: "Rig-Veda
Sanhita," ii. 143.
*** "Duncker," vol.
ii., p. 162.
**** "Wultke," ii.
262.
***** Daniel vii. 9, 10.
****** Book of Enoch, xiv. 7,
ff.
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INCANDESCENT.
mic 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,* 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 [[Pater]] and [[Logos]] 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.**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 Timaeus"; 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.)
** 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, [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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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 nebulae 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] 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.
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VEGETATION?
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.*
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 mimosae 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.).
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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 anyone 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,* 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.**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
** See Charles Elam, M. D.:
"A Physician's Problems," London, 1869, p. 159.
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SPHERES.
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.
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. . . 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."* The
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Jowett: "Timaeus."
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PROBLEMS."
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."* 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;** 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 daemons) composed of fire and air, and water and earth, and
returned to the form of his first and better nature."***
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ibid.
** 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).
*** Plato:
"Timaeus."
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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."* 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** -- "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
Graeco-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, haemato-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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Littre: "Revue des Deux
Mondes."
** See des Mousseaux's
"OEuvres des Demons."
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science has heeded them not, but
gone on with her encyclopaedic 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."*
"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."** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Du Potet: "Magie
Devoilee," pp. 51-147.
** Ibid., p. 201.
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the imponderable fluids known
to physicists and this animal magnetic fluid."*
If we now refer to mediaeval
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."**
If unwilling to seek for proof
or receive information from mediaeval, 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."***
"When the initiate,"
says Levi, in his turn, "has become quite lucide,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Baron Du Potet: "Cours
de Magnetisme," pp. 17-108.
** "De Occulto
Philosophia," pp. 332-358.
*** Cicero: "De Natura
Deorum," lib. i., cap. xviii.
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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."* 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."** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Eliphas Levi.
** "Timaeus." 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.
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it. The reciprocal magnetic
relations of the planetary orbs, which are all magnets, was with them an
accepted fact, and aerolites 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,"* 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."**
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.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Alfred Marshall Mayer,
Ph.D.: "The Earth a Great Magnet," a lecture delivered before the
Yale Scientific Club, Feb. 14, 1872.
** "Strange Story."
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THE CLOUDS.
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."*
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!** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Taylor's
"Pausanias"; MS. "Treatise on Daemons," by Psellus, and the
"Treatise on the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries."
** Iamblichus: "De Vita
Pythag."
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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."*
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 Phoenicians, 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."**
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Anacalypsis,"
vol. i., p. 807.
** Iamblichus: "Life of
Pythagoras," p. 297.
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THRESHOLD.
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
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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."*
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.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Bulwer-Lytton:
"Zanoni."
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 287 WHAT MAN WAS, IS,
AND MAY BE.
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 sprang 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 Timaeus, must be taken allegorically, if we accept them at all. It is
this hidden Pythagorean meaning in Timaeus, Cratylus, and Parmenides, and a few
other trilogies and dialogues, that the Neo-platonists ventured to expound, as far
as the theurgical vow of secrecy 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 Phaedrus.*
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.** While mentioning the gods, on every page, his
monotheism is unquestionable, for the whole thread of his discourse indicates
that by the term gods he 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:*** "Those, however,
among the Greeks who philosophized in accordance with truth, were not ignorant
of anything . . . nor did they fail to perceive the chilling
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Cory: "Phaedrus,"
i. 328.
** 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").
*** "Josephus against
Apion," ii., p. 1079.
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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 Timaeus 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 OEdipus 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 Phoenix 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
Caesarea, than it is now, and while history exists, no one can help people
knowing that Plato lived 600 years before
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Irenaeus 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,* 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.** 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."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See chapter ix., p. 302.
** "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.
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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 non-entity?" 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
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BLISS.
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 Pradjna Paramita,* 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 Jutakas, are given the 550 incarnations or metempsychoses of
Buddha. They
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Perfection of
Wisdom."
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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.* 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 Svabhavat is NOT a person, but nothing, is simply
absurd. The En (or Ayin) 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.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
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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." -- GUIEOT.
"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 god-like 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 yugas; 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
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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.* 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 homo-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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."
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EYZIES.
geneous 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."*
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* W. and E. Denton: "The
Soul of Things," vol. i.
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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
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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 Timaeus, 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
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whose luxuriant branches a
serpent dwells, and cannot be dislodged,* 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 Pymander 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 Nazaraeus** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See the "Cosmogony of
Pherecydes."
** See a few pages further on
the quotation from the "Codex of the Nazarenes."
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TITAN.
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."* 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 Nazaraeus. 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"** (which properly ought to be translated
"soul," for it is the anima mundi, and which
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Plato's
"Timaeus."
** On the authority of
Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and the "Codex" itself, Dunlap shows that
the Nazarenes treated their "spirit," or rather soul, as a female and
Evil Power. Irenaeus, accusing the Gnostics of heresy, calls Christ and the
Holy Ghost "the gnostic pair that produce the AEons" (Dunlap:
"Sod, the Son of the Man," p. 52, footnote).
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with the Nazarenes and the
Gnostics was feminine), and perceiving that for Fetahil,* the newest man (the
latest), the splendor was "changed," and that for splendor existed
"decrease and damage," awakes Karabtanos,** "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 Irenaeus 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.***
Then the Codex proceeds to
tell how Bahak-Zivo was separated from the Spiritus, and the genii, or angels,
from the rebels.**** Then Mano***** (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****** 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******* (AEons), see
what the genii, the rebellious angels do, and about what they are
consulting.******** 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.' "*********
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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).
** The spirit of matter and
concupiscence.
*** See Franck's "Codex
Nazaraeus" and Dunlap's "Sod, the Son of the Man."
**** "Codex
Nazaraeus," ii. 233.
***** This Mano of the
Nazarenes strangely resembles the Hindu Manu, the heavenly man of the
"Rig-Vedas."
****** "I am the true
vine and my Father is the husbandman" (John xv. 1).
******* With the Gnostics,
Christ, as well as Michael, who is identical in some respects with him, was the
"Chief of the AEons."
******** "Codex
Nazaraeus," i. 135.
********* Ibid.
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SPLENDOR.
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"* and thus reestablishes 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.** 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,"*** 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;**** a secret which Rabbi
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Codex Nazaraeus,"
iii. 61.
** The Astral Light, or anima
mundi, is dual and bisexual. 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."
*** See Commentary on
"Idra Suta," by Rabbi Eleashar.
**** 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.
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Simeon* 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.**
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,"*** 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
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The author of the
"Sohar," the great kabalistic work of the first century B.C.
** See Abbe Huc's works.
*** "The Sohar,"
iii. 288; "Idra Suta."
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GIANTS.
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.* 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.** 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:
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Everard: "Mysteres
Physiologiques," p. 132.
** See Plato's
"Timaeus."
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"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 jawbone 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
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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* 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 attri-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Supernatural Religion;
an Inquiry into the Reality of Divine Revelation," vol. ii. London, 1875.
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butes 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 receive 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,* 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Heavenly
Arcana."
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"DEW FROM HEAVEN."
understood and thoroughly
sifted by the light of Hermetic philosophy. The great sages of antiquity, those
of the mediaeval 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, not withstanding 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 writ-
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ings 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;* 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";** 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
incomprehensible 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,"*** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Burges: Preface.
** "Seventh Letter."
*** "The True Christian
Religion."
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observes that the subject of
the Hermetic art is MAN, and the object of the art is the perfection of man.*
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."**
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
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* E. A. Hitchcock:
"Swedenborg, a Hermetic Philosopher."
** "Ripley Revived,"
1678.
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him), of hatred and discord,
and consequently of sympathy and antipathy."*
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 larvae, 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Mosaicall
Philosophy," p. 173. 1659.
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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
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spirits, according to their
hierarchies and classes. The highest among them were the twelve uper-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 ule
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 mediaeval 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"
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AUTOMATON.
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."* De Candolle
suggests the term "vital movement," instead of vital force;** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Correlation of Vital
with Chemical and Physical Forces," by J. Le Conte.
** "Archives des Sciences,"
vol. xlv., p. 345. December, 1872.
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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
reactive 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 network 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
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GENERATION.
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 medieval 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
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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 preexistent 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, Timaeus 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
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SOUL-DEATH.
and soul are preexistent. But,
while the former exists as a distinct entity, an individualization, the soul
exists as preexisting 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 -- [[nous]], and the other, the animal
soul -- [[psuche]]. 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, Irenaeus, 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
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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
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THE SHADOW."
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 Sapientiae AEternae, 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 hylozoists, nevertheless he fully believed in the
existence of a "double" soul, or spirit and soul.* He laughed at
Strabo for believing that any particles of matter, per se, could have life and
intellect in themselves suf-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Aristotle: "De Generat.
et Corrupt.," lib. ii.
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ficient to fashion by degrees
such a multiform world as ours.* 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."** 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;*** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "De Part.," an.
lib. i., c. I.
** A Pythagorean oath. The
Pythagoreans swore by their master.
*** See Lempriere:
"Classical Dictionary."
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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.*
"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.**
They objected to it for
several good reasons. 1. "It is extremely difficult to distinguish a good
daemon 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 [[Mnizourin]] 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
Magnetisme, published a few years since in
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Psel. in Alieb:
"Chaldean Oracles."
** Proc. in 1
"Alieb."
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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* 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* From the Latin word mensa --
table. This curious letter is copied in full in "La Science des Esprits,"
by Eliphas Levi.
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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
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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
harmo-
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nious 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* of the Hebrews and Egyptians,
which is mentioned in the Book of Jasher.**
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Sulanuth is described in
chap. lxxx., vers. 19, 20, of "Jasher."
** "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."
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Catholics abuse and
misrepresent the nature-spirits, when one of their greatest authorities,
Clement the Alexandrian, 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,* 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."** Origen, who before he became a Christian also belonged
to the Platonic school, is of the same opinion. Porphyry describes these
daemons 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Strom," vi., 17,
§ 159.
** Ibid., vi., 3, § 30.
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APE.
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 Timaeus 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* 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Gorgias."
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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"* 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** . . . 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"*** (the ethereal region). In
Phaedrus, again, he says that when man has ended his first life (on earth),
some go to places of punishment beneath the earth.**** 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.***** 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 through-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Timaeus."
** Cory: "Phaedro,"
i. 69.
*** Ibid., i. 123.
**** Cory:
"Phaedras"; Cory's "Plato," 325.
***** See "The Unseen
Universe," pp. 205, 206.
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BRAIN.
out 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,* 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
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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
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PSYCHOMETRY.
all 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"* (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."**
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
aerolites. 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.***
This would seem to indicate
that psychometry was known and extensively practiced by the ancients. We have
somewhere seen it stated that
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* A. R. Wallace: "The
Action of Natural Selection on Man."
** W. Denton: "The Soul
of Things," p. 273.
*** "Herodotus," b.
i., c. 181.
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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, Hellanicus -- all speak of the electrical, or electromagnetic 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 Cybele 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."*
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."**
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 Phoenician, 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."*** The latter proving that these gods were kind and
beneficent daemons, 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 daemons, there is no mischief
they will not dare commit. One day they will employ brute force; another,
cunning."**** Further, he says: "It is a child's play for them to
arouse
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Anthropology," p.
125.
** "Of Sacrifices to Gods
and Daemons," chap. ii.
*** "Odyssey," book
vii.
**** Porphyry: "Of
Sacrifices to Gods and Daemons," chap. ii.
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DARKNESS.
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)."*
Iamblichus, the great
theurgist of the Neo-platonic school, a man skilled in sacred magic, teaches
that "good daemons 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."**
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
daemons, 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 daemons, 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."***
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ibid.
** Iamblichus: "De
Mysteriis Egyptorum."
*** Ibid.: "On the
Difference between the Daemons, the Souls, etc."
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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!"*
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Du Potet: "La Magie
Devoilee."
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DISCOVERIES.
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 10
Contents
Isis Unveiled by H. P.
Blavatsky -- Vol. 1
Theosophical University Press
Online Edition
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CHAPTER X.
[[Tes de gar ek triados pan
pneuma pater ekerase.]] -- 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 I 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
foetal 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 Abbe 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 for-
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DAME.
tunate 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,* 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* We wonder if Father Felix is
prepared to include St. Augustine, Lactantius, and Bede in this category?
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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?* 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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."
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SAND.
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.*
"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?"**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
** "Le Mystere et la
Science," conferences, P. Felix de Notre Dame; des Mousseaux: "Hauts
Phen. Magie."
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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,
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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, saving 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, sprang into existence the universe, or rather, the universal world, the
first androgynous 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."* 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 rep-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Damascius, in the "Theogony,"
calls it Dis, "the disposer of all things." Cory: "Ancient
Fragments," p. 314.
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resentatives 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,* the
first-begotten "was pleased to employ twelve thousand years in its
creation." The latter number is expressed in the Tyrrhenian cosmogony,**
which shows man created in the sixth millennium. This agrees with the Egyptian
theory of 6,000 "years,"*** and with the Hebrew computation.
Sanchoniathon,**** 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 mot, or the ilus (mud).***** From this
proceeded the spores of creation and the generation of the universe.
The ancients, who named but
four elements, made of aether 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 cooperator with the spirit of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Plato: "Timaeus."
** Suidas: v.
"Tyrrhenia."
*** The reader will understand
that by "years" is meant "ages," not mere periods of twelve
lunar months each.
**** See the Greek translation
by Philo Byblius.
***** Cory: "Ancient
Fragments."
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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* 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."** 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 daemons of the theurgists, the devils of theology; the
gnomes, salamanders, sylphs, and undines will assail the rash performer under
multifarious aerial 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
** 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.
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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.
Gorres, 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."*
Porphyry presents to us some
hideous facts whose verity is substantiated in the experience of every student
of magic. "The soul,"** 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."***
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Gorres:
"Mystique," lib. iii., p. 63.
** The ancients called
"the soul" the spirits of bad people; the soul was the larva and
lemure. Good human spirits became gods.
*** Porphyry: "De
Sacrificiis." Chapter on the true Cultus.
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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."*
"The human soul (the
astral body) is a demon that our language may name genius," says
Apuleius.** "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 larvae. They become a plague for the wicked, and the vain terror of
the good."
This language can hardly be
called ambiguous, and yet, the Reincarnationists 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;
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Mysteries of the
Egyptians."
** Second century, A.D.
"Du Dieu de Socrate," Apul. class., pp. 143-145.
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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 startingpoint. 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 reincarnation; 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 reincarnation 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.* Freedom from
evil desire insures the possession of a miraculous power. At his death, the
Arhat is never reincarnated; 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 reincarnated, 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Eastern
Monachism," p. 9.
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AND VOLNEY.
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.* 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."**
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 yugs 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.*** The Monas of the Samian philo-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire," iv. 385.
** Hardy: "Manual of
Buddhism"; Dunlap: "The World's Religions."
*** Lempriere ("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
Lempriere'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
[[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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sopher is the Hindu Monas
(mind), "who has no first cause (apurva, or material cause), nor is liable
to destruction."* Brahma, as Prajapati, 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, Vayu, 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."** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] in his metaphysical theology. The fact alone that
"Sanscrit, as compared with Greek and Latin, is an elder sister," as
Max Muller 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 daeva, or evil spirit, from
which comes the word devil.
* Haug: "Aitareya
Brahmanam."
** Ibid.
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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
archaeologist 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,*
" . . . 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 by-gone 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.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Berosus: fragment preserved
by Alex. Polyhistor; Cory: "Of the Cosmogony and the Deluge."
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"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 frescos 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-
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POSSIBLE?
cut temples, as well as these
mutilated statues, show a workmanship that no work now being done by the
natives can equal.* 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
archaeology 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 reincarnation -- as distinct from
metempsychosis -- which we have from an authority. Reincarnation, 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 reincarnation 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 reenter on the
earthly plane as it was frustrated in its first attempt. Otherwise, the mortal
or astral,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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."
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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 foetus 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;* 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. Fournie,
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 sur-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Anatomie
Cerebrale," Malacarne, Milan.
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POSSIBLE.
face. 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."*
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 daemons so well known to mediaeval 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-daemons of Porphyry, the larvae 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 daemons 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Psellus, 6, Plet. 2; Cory:
"Chaldean Oracles."
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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, sagae dictae anus quae 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
vyedma, and the latter vyedmak, both from the verb to know, vedat or vyedat;
the root, moreover, being positively Sanscrit. "Veda," says Max
Muller, in his Lecture on the Vedas, "means originally knowing, or
knowledge. Veda is the same word which appears in Greek [[oida]], I know [the
digamma, vau being omitted], and in the English wise, wisdom, to wit."*
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 znahar and znaharka
(feminine) from the same verb znat 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.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Lecture on the
Vedas."
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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' 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 , shoel aub, which our English translation renders, "a consulter with
familiar spirits"; but which the Septuagint translates,
[[engastrimuthos]], 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, [[pneuma puthonos]], 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
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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 ingenious than novel.
Certainly, nowhere short of the source of such inspiration could we find such
philological profundity!*
"Shut the door in the
face of the daemon," 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 daemons 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,** for the purpose of keeping away some
disagreeable
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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?
** 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
[[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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*
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 larvae, degraded human spirits, that the ancient kabalists
entertained a hope of reincarnation. 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] 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.
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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."* 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,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Art-Magic," p.
97.
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GHOSTS.
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 Siecle, 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 plateglass. 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.
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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 aerial
"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* 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."**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This phantom is called Scin
Lecca. See Bulwer-Lytton's "Strange Story."
** In the Strasbourg edition
of his works (1603), Paracelsus writes of the wonderful
[[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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"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."
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."
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] 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."
* "Salem Witchcraft; With
an Account of Salem Village," by C. W. Upham.
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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 homines,
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 Fournie, 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.* AEneas prepares to descend to the kingdom of the
shadows, and as soon as they approach its entrance, the Sibyl who
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Odyssey," A. 82.
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SWORD.
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,
vaginaque eripe ferrum."*
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,** 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?*** 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**** 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 Demono-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "AEneid," book
vi., 260.
** "De Daemon," cap.
"Quomodo daem occupent."
*** Numquid daemonum corpora
pulsari possunt? Possunt sane, atque dolere solido quodam percussa corpore.
**** Ubi secatur, mox in se
iterum recreatur et coalescit . . . dictu velocius daemonicus spiritus in se
revertitor.
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logian, 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 Daemons, 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,*
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 larvae, 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 AEolians.
It is related by the historian Nomachius, that Polykritus died, and returned in
the ninth month after his death. "Hiero, the Ephesian, and other
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* A magistrate of the
district.
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PHILONAEA.
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 Philonaea, 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 Arridaeus to Philip.*
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 immova-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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).
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ble 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;* 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."** This delineation, established and known since the days of
Moses, the author gives as derived from "the most authentic sources."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Pliny, xxx., 1.
** T. Wright, M.A., F.S.A.,
etc.: "Sorcery and Magic," vol. iii.
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DEFINED.
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."*
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.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Art-Magic," pp.
159, 160.
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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."*
We witnessed once in India a
trial of psychical skill between a holy gossein** and a sorcerer,*** 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 mo-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Art-Magic," p.
28.
** Fakir, beggar.
*** A juggler so called.
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SKILL.
mentary 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 Abbe 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
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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 super-naturalism, together with the
commentaries of the demonological des Mousseaux, who, in one of his works,*
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
Convulsionnaires 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 proces
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 Abbe 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 ground-work 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Moeurs et Pratiques
des Demons."
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AT THE BREAST.
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 proces 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."* 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."** Many of the
prophets forcibly communicated their spirit to those who tried to break the spell.***
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.**** 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.*****
"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.' "****** "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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Histoire du
Merveilleux dans les Temps Modernes," vol. ii., p. 262.
** Ibid.
*** Ibid., p. 265.
**** Ibid., pp. 267, 401, 402.
***** Ibid., pp. 266, etc.,
400.
****** Ibid., p. 403.
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to have an appropriate name
for such a disease, we must be satisfied with the one of the Trembling
Convulsionaires of Cevennes."*
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."**
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.' "***
Thereupon, Dr. Figuier
proceeds.**** 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.
Abbe 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
Abbe. 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 them-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Histoire du
Merveilleux," vol. i., p. 397.
** Ibid., pp. 26-27.
*** Ibid., p. 238.
**** Des Mousseaux:
"Magie au XIXme Siecle," p. 452.
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PARIS.
selves, 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 Abbe 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."* Dr. Middleton, in his Free Enquiry, a book which be 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. Carre 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 Verite des Miracles operes par l'Intercession de M. de Paris,
demontree contre l'Archeveque de Sens. Ouvrage dedie 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 Bastille,
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 proces 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!'
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Hume: "Philosophical
Essays," p. 195.
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"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 Convulsionnaire (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
Convulsionnaire 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."*
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Histoire du
Merveilleux," p. 401.
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MARRIAGE!
observes: "Recourse was
had to marriage to bring to a stop these disorders of the
Convulsionnaires!"*
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 Convulsionnaires 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."**
"Let us remark,
besides," rejoins Dr. Calmeil, quoted by Figuier, "that for striking
upon the bodies of the Convulsionnaires use was made either of massive objects
with flat or rounded surfaces, or of cylindrical and blunt shapes.*** 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 Convulsionnaires 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.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ibid.
** Ibid., vol. ii., pp. 410,
411.
*** Ibid., p. 407.
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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
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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.
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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 verite que je defends
est empreinte sur tous les monuments du passe Pour comprendre l'histoire, il
faut etudier les symboles anciens, les signes sacres du sacerdoce, et l'art de
guerir dans les temps primitifs, art oublie 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 Convulsionnaires as a very
great phenomenon. The astral fluid can be compressed about a person so as to form
an elastic shell, absolutely nonpenetrable 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
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ALGERIA.
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 bystanders, 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
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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
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TAMING.
thirty paces distance, he
accomplished in less than five minutes what he had promised."*
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
Lempriere,** 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."***
"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 some-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Villecroze: "Le Docteur
H. d'Alger," 19 Mars, 1861. Pierrart: vol. iv., pp. 254-257.
** Bruce: "Travels to
Discover the Sources of the Nile," vol. x., pp. 402-447; Hasselquist:
"Voyage in the Levant," vol. i., pp. 92-100; Lempriere: "Voyage dans
l'Empire de Maroc, etc., en 1790," pp. 42-43.
*** Salverte: "La
Philosophie de la Magie. De l'Influence sur les Animaux," vol. i.
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thing more real." In the
Antilles, the negroes discover, by its odor, a serpent which they do not see.*
"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 or 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."**
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Thibaut de Chanvallon:
"Voyage a la Martinique."
** Salverte: "Philosophy
of Magic."
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 383 FAKIRS AND
CROCODILES.
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."*
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.**
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.*** (This word should be nihang or ghariyal.)
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Forbes: "Oriental
Memoirs," vol. i., p. 44; vol ii., p. 387.
** Stedmann: "Voyage in
Surinam," vol. iii., pp. 64, 65.
*** See "Edinburgh
Review," vol. lxxx., p. 428, etc.
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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 harelip." 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'Heredite 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."* 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,** a powerful argument is
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Elam: "A Physician's
Problems," p. 25.
** The "Immortality of
the Soul," by Henry More. Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge.
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PHENOMENA.
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 foetus 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 foetus, 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 naturae, 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 foetus 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 Ronsaeus 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,
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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, only 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."*
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 foetal 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 foetal 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Dr. H. More:
"Immortality of the Soul," p. 393.
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MOTHER.
circulation carried on in this
organ?" On the next page, he says: "Nothing is at present known
respecting the use of digestion in the foetus"; and respecting its
nutrition, propounds this query: "What, then, can we say of the nutrition
of the foetus? 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 foetus 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, Ratlike, 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
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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 foetus, the cause of which is not always obvious, but is for the most part
concealed. . . . Transient forms of the human foetus 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 foetus "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 corpus-
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cle, 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 laminae or coats, enclosing a
liquid. The laminae 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 foetus -- 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 foetus 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 foetus 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,
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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, affect the foetus 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 foetus 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 foetal 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 foetal
life."* With physiology in so confessedly chaotic a state as it is at
present,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Transactions of the
Medical Society of N. Y.," 1865-6-7.
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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 foetal 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 foetal 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
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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 foetus is
developed, or 2, morbid influences acting on the foetus 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,* 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.** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Dublin Quarterly
Journal of Medical Science," vol. xv., p. 263, 1853.
** "Recherches d'Anatomie
transcendante et Pathologique, etc.," Paris, 1832.
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THEORY.
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 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."* 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 stand-point 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* "Silliman's Journal of
Science and Art," vol. x., p. 48.
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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 foetus,"
admits Magendie, thus contradicting what he asserts in another place; and he
adds that "sudden terror may cause the death of the foetus, or retard its
growth."*
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Precis Elementaire de
Physiologie," p. 520.
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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 foetus, 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."*
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."**
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ibid., p. 521.
** "Dogme et Rituel de la
Haute Magie," p. 175.
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his own example verifies:*
"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 foetus, 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Transactions of
Medical Society, etc.," p. 246.
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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
foetus. 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."* 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. Fournie, of the National
Deaf and Dumb Institute of France, in chapter ii. of his work,** in discussing
the question of the foetus, 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 Pere 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,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Fournie: "Physiologie
du Systeme Nerveux, Cerebro-spinal," Paris, 1872.
** Ibid.
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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.* 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* "Night-Side of
Nature," by Catherine Crowe, p. 434, et seq.
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TERATOLOGY.
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
Bibliotheque du Magnetisme 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
moveing 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 Praestigiis 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
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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."* 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 Fournie, 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
aeriform 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 archaeus, 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 foetus are not due to the imagination 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,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Henry More:
"Immortality of the Soul," p. 399.
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NATURE.
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 foetus; 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* 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."**
Brave words, these. But how
many are the men of science who put them into practice?
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* By the word soul, neither
Demokritus nor the other philosophers understood the nous or pneuma, the divine
immaterial soul, but the psyche, or astral body; that which Plato always terms
the second mortal soul.
** Balfour Stewart, LL.D.,
F.R.S.: "The Conservation of Energy," p. 133.
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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 foetus 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 Fournie, 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."*
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,** "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.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Fournie: "Physiologie
du Systeme Nerveux," p. 16.
** "A System of
Logic." Eighth ed., 1872, vol. ii., p. 165.
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INVASION OF SCIENCE.
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 archaeological 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 cen-
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tury 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 'reexamine
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 nearly 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."*
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 demon-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Draper: "Conflict between
Religion and Science," p. 22.
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TRUTH.
strate 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."* 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 archaeus, 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, AEschylus, 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,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Edward L. Youmans, M.D.:
"A Class-book of Chemistry," p. 4.
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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. AElian 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;* and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 mad egoist, this ignorant and ridiculous
vagabond, who often seemed to have fallen into insanity." This assertion
is perfectly false. We have the writings of Hel- [[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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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 fe. 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 Fournie, 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 Systeme 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] mont 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 1. c., p. 705).
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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?* 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."** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Demokritus said that, as
from nothing, nothing could be produced, so there was not anything that could
ever be reduced to nothing.
** J. Le Conte:
"Correlation of Vital with Chemical and Physical Forces," appendix.
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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 elec-
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tricity, 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!"*
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."** 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."**
"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."***
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 per-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The date is incorrect; it
should be 1784.
** Ecclesiastes i. 10.
*** Ibid., i. 6.
**** Ibid., i. 7.
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ception 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."*
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Siljestrom: "Minnesfest
ofver Berzelius," p. 79.
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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.* 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;** 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."**
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.*** 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.**** 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,***** was found a long description
of "savage people . . . whose bodies were hairy and whom the interpreters
called gorillae"; [[anthropon agrion]] as the text reads, clearly implying
thereby that
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Seance de l'Academie
de Paris," 13 Aout, 1807.
** Mollien: "Voyage dans
l'interieur de l'Afrique," tome ii., p. 210.
*** "The Popular Science
Monthly," May, 1876, p. 110.
**** Malte-Brun, pp. 372, 373;
Herodotus.
***** "The Popular
Science Monthly," Dec., 1874, p. 252, New York.
****** The "Periplus of
Hanno."
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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.* The celebrated Atlantis is attributed by the latest modern
commentator and translator of Plato's works to one of Plato's "noble
lies."** Even the frank admission of the philosopher, in the Timaeus, 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."***
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 mediaeval 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 (thirteenth 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."****
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.***** Elsewhere we give an account of the red snow
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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."
** Professor Jowett.
*** "On the Atlantic
Island (from Marcellus) Ethiopic History."
**** "Alchemy, or the
Hermetic Philosophy."
***** See "Revue
Encyclopedique," vol. xxxiii., p. 676.
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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.*
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**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Bulletin de la Soc.
Geograph.," vol. vi., pp. 209-220.
** See "Revue
Encyclopedique," vols. xxxiii. and xxxiv., pp. 676-395.
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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
zoocarps 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,
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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 Choeremon, the
"hierogrammatist," to prove that the doctrine of the magic arts,
whose adepts "could terrify even the gods," was really countenanced
by Egyptian sages.* 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,** 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.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Porphyry: "Epistola ad
Anebo., ap. Euseb. Praep. Evangel," v. 10; Iamblichus: "De Mysteriis
AEgypt."; Porphyrii: "Epistola ad Anebonem AEgyptium."
** "Porphyry," says
the "Classical Dictionary" of Lempriere, "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."
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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
vampires 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 phenome-
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non, 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."* 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "On the Scientific Use
of the Imagination."
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LIFE.
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,* 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 Fournie 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Epes Sargent. See his
pamphlet, "Does Matter do it All?"
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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 "preexistent 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?* 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In his "Essay on
Classification" (sect. xvii., pp. 97-99), Louis Agassiz, the great
zoologist, 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?"
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HUXLEY'S COMMON SENSE.
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 im-
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plying 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 in-
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clined 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,* 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 AEthereum, beyond the grave.**
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Diog. in Vita."
** See the works of Robertus
de Fluctibus; and the "Rosicrucians," by Hargrave Jennings.
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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."* 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 Fournie 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Professor B. Stewart:
"Conservation of Energy."
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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
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IMMORTAL?
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 mediaeval 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
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able to fathom the mystery of
life, they will have come to a dead stop, their instinct may reassert 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.
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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 coeternal 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 a 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 twofold 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," [[thumos]], and the divine one
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[[Vous]] -- 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 ex-
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plicit; 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"* -- 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 "reabsorption 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.** No one, so far as we know, has ever taken
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "De Vatibus in
Problemate," sect. 21.
** See Max Muller: "The
Meaning of Nirvana."
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INCONSISTENCY.
upon himself to ascertain the
true metaphysical meaning of this word, which is not to be found, even in the
Lankavatara,* which gives the different interpretations of the Nirvana by the
Brahmans-Tirthakas. 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
Lempriere,** 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 con-
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* "The Lankavatara,"
transl. by Burnouf, p. 514.
** "Classical
Dictionary."
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cede 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 life-time 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 aerial body (astral form), till it is entirely purified from all angry and
voluptuous passions . . . then doth it put off by a second dying the aerial
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
[[aisthetikon]]; the other is the product of the reflective faculties --
[[noetikon]], 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
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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 zoophyte 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
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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."* 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 god-like 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Cabanis: "Histoire
de la Medecine."
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FAITH IN GOD.
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 Sudras!"
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
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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, [[hoi polloi]], 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
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BUDDHA.
them and their followers, in
his sketches on Neo-platonism and Alchemy: "A century has passed since the
compilers of the French Encyclopaedia 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 reincarnated 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,
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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* which says that "A Buddha is as difficult to be found
as the flowers of Udumbara and Palaca," 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 Abbe 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 Abbe himself, that the
fact that he had been unfrocked (defroque) "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 Abbe 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Le Lotus de la bonne
Loi," by E. Burnouf, translated from the Sanscrit.
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SAAR-LOUIS.
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
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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 Abbe 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 Abbe 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
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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 aeons, 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 abbe, 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.*
"One evening," says
the great Danish astronomer, "as, according
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Cosmos," vol.
iii., part i., p. 168.
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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 Muller, 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 Tripitaka," 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 Muller 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."*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Lecture on the
Vedas."
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"GOD-TAUGHT" PHILOSOPHER.
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."*
Had Max Muller 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 Muller'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
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* "The Classical
Journal," vol. iv., pp. 107, 348.
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that the whole which Christ
had in view was to reinstate and restore to its primitive integrity the wisdom
of the ancients."*
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,"** 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 Muller shows, only
means recollection or tradition.
Origen writes that the
Brahmans were always famous for the wonderful cures which they performed by
certain words;*** and in our own age we find Orioli, a learned corresponding
member of the French Institute,**** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Mosheim."
** "New Platonism and
Alchemy."
*** Origen: "Contra
Celsum."
**** "Fatti relativi al
Mesmerismo," pp. 88, 93, 1842.
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TEST.
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."*
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 Horae
Subscecivae, 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Leonard de Vair,"
1. ii., ch. ii.; "La Magie au 19me Siecle," p. 332.
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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-Ratri, 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-Sattan -- 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
bystanders 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
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SPIRITS.
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 "larvae" 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,* 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 "puttam," which
answers rather to our "spook," or malicious imp; another expression
they use is "pey" and the Sanscrit pesasu, both meaning ghosts or
"returning ones" -- perhaps goblins, in some cases. The puttam 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The Tinnevelly
Shanars," p. 43.
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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,
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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,* "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.**
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 reenter 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 reenters 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 ethereal 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."***
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Pierart: "Revue
Spiritualiste," chapter on "Vampirism."
** Maimonides: "Abodah
Sarah," 12 Absh, 11 Abth.
*** Pierart: "Revue
Spiritualiste."
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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."*
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.**
"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."***
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 de-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Dr. Pierart: "Revue
Spiritualiste," vol. iv., p. 104.
** See "Hauts
Phen.," p. 199.
*** "Huetiana," p.
81.
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scriptions -- 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 broucolak, 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."*
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Dom Calmet:
"Apparitions," etc. Paris, 1751, vol. ii., p. 47; "Hauts Phen.
de la Magie," 195.
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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."*
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,** "the principal difficulty consists in learning how these
vampires can quit their tombs, and how they reenter 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?*** 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."****
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,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Hauts Phen.," p.
196.
** Ibid.
*** See the same sworn
testimony in official documents: "De l'Inspir. des Camis," H. Blanc,
1859. Plon, Paris.
**** Dom Calmet:
"Apparit.," vol. ii., chap. xliv., p. 212.
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OF THE LIVING.
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."* 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 aerial or aetherial 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."**
Gorres, 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."***
Des Mousseaux, in company with
other Roman Catholic writers, exclaims: "This proposition is utterly
anti-Catholic! "Well, and suppose
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Pierart: "Revue
Spiritualiste," vol. iv., p. 104.
** "Sadducismus
Triumphatus," vol. ii., p. 70.
*** Gorres: "Complete
Works," vol. iii., ch. vii., p. 132.
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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.
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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 reinterred, 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
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the horrid fact substantiated.
The Rev. H. R. Haweis, M.A., author of Ashes to Ashes,* 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."**
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Ashes to Ashes,"
London: Daldy, Isbister & Co., 1875.
** The author refers all those
who may doubt such statements to G. A. Walker's "Gatherings from Graveyards,"
pp. 84-193, 194, etc.
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JUGGLERS.
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."*
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Horst: "Zauber
Bibliothek," vol. v., p. 52.
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finally the trees sank back
into the earth, out of which they had all sprung 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 bow-shot 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
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SUCCUBI.
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 mediaeval
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 reentered 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
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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.
"Haec murus aeneus esto:
nil conscire sibi, nulla pallascere culpa."
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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
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NA[2]CO[2], -- means soda! and
that C[2]H[6]O 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
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:
(Na[2]CO[3]+2HKC[4]H[4]O[6]+Aq)=
(2NaKC[4]H[4]O[6],+H[2]O+Aq)
+CO[2]
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!*
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* See Eliphas Levi: "La
Science des Esprits."
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BY WILL-POWER.
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 Prevorst, 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 Akasa.
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
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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 akasa 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* 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."**
Knowing
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Henry Maudsley: "Body
and Mind."
** Josiah Cooke, Jr.:
"The New Chemistry."
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MANDRAGORA.
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"?*
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."**
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Henry Maudsley: "The
Limits of Philosophical Inquiry," p. 266.
** "Scientific
American," August 12, 1868.
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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 zoophites 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, AElian, 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
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BENGAL.
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!"*
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
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Le Conte: "Correlation
of Vital with Chemical and Physical Forces."
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"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 wanderoo, 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,
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AND WHITE.
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 wanderoo, 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* (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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The wood-apple.
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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-American, 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 cafe 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* (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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Incorrect; the Hindustani
word for monkey is rukh-charha. Probably chokra, a little native servant is
meant.
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GOLD
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 a 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,* "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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Book of Ser Marco
Polo," vol. i., pp. 306, 307.
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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."* 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 Baxitae, 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.** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Delrio: "Disquis.
Magic," pp. 34, 100.
** Col. H. Yule: "The
Book of Ser Marco Polo," vol. i., p. 308.
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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! 't is my opinion there has been neither going up nor coming down,
neither marring, nor mending! 'T is 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
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in Batavia about the year
1670: "One of the same gang" (of conjurers), says Melton,* "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."**
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.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Edward Melton:
"Engelsch Edelmans, Zeldzaame en Gedenkwaardige Zee en Land Reizen,
etc.," p. 468. Amsterdam, 1702.
** "Memoirs of the
Emperor Jahangire," pp. 99, 102.
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DEATH.
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 reanimation 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 reanimate 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,*
what is to prevent them from being set again in motion, provided we know the
nature of the vital force, and how to command it? The materialist can certainly
offer no objection, for with him it is no question of reinfusing 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 foetal 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** -- were later corroborated by science.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* J. Hughes Bennett:
"Text Book of Physiology," Lippincott's American Edition, pp. 37-50.
** "Curiosites
Inouies."
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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.* 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."**
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 reinhabit 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,*** could at will fall into a trance and
then his second soul proceeded to any distant place he chose.
The Abbe Tritheim, 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,"
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Thoughts on the Birth
and Generation of Things."
** C. Crowe: "Night-Side
of Nature," p. 111.
*** Pliny: "Hist.
Nat.," vii., c. 52; and Plutarch: "Discourse concerning Socrates'
Daemon," 22.
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RESUSCITATION OF FAKIRS.
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."* The case of a high German official, a
counsellor Wesermann, was mentioned in a scientific paper.** 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.** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "De Res. Var.," v.
iii., i., viii., c. 43. Plutarch: "Discourse concerning Socrates'
Daemon," 22.
** Nasse: "Zeitschrift
fur Psychische Aerzte," 1820.
*** Osborne: "Camp and
Court of Rundjit Singh"; Braid: "On Trance."
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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?*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 [[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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"DEAD" DEAD?
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,* 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.** Pliny maintained the same.***
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!" Diemerbroeck 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.****
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."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] 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."
* Todd: Appendix to "Occult
Science," vol. i.
** "A Cornel.
Cels.," lib. ii., cap. vi.
*** "Hist. Nat.,"
lib. vii., cap. lii.
**** "Morning
Herald," July 21, 1836.
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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."*
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 preexistence 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 Laertius, 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "La Science des
Esprits."
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BEHIND US.
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."* 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"?**
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
reincarnate itself once more on this earth, except as described in previous
chapters. "A leaf, once fallen off, does not reattach 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."***
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
Apollo-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Vit. Apollon.
Tyan.," lib. iv., ch. xvi.
** Salverte: "Sciences
Occultes," vol. ii.
*** "La Science des
Esprits."
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nius 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.*
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 anima-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
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tion" 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 reanimated, 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
reenter its former tabernacle, either by an effort of its
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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 reenter 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, reawake 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 pow-
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erful 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 "reentered
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 reenter 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
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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 god-like 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."*
Were these God-like men
"mediums," as the orthodox spiritualists
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* A. Wilder:
"Neo-platonism and Alchemy."
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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
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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 Therapeutae 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 overpower-
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ing 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* every inferior spirit, or bad daemon, which he taught
his disciples to recognize. Proclus, who "elaborated the entire theosophy
and theurgy of his predecessors into a complete system,"** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Iamblichus was the founder
of the Neo-platonic theurgy.
** See the "Sketch of the
Eclectic Philosophy of the Alexandrian School."
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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
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MAGICIANS.
accused of VAMPIRISM, which a
spiritual paper very justly charges upon some medium-healers.*
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)** forbids expressly, in Deuteronomy,*** 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."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Medium and
Daybreak," July 7, 1876, p. 428.
** 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 Sinaitic 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).
*** Chapter xviii.
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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?"* 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 marvelous 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,"** 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.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
** Ezekiel iii. 12-14.
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BLOOD.
Philo Judaeus 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
larvae 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.*
"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!"** "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."**
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,"*** 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 --
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* William Howitt:
"History of the Supernatural," vol. ii., ch. i.
** Lib. i., Sat. 8.
*** Porphyry: "Of Sacrifices."
**** Genesis xviii., i.
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"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."* 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."** 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."***
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Daniel x. 8.
** I Samuel, x. 6.
*** Gospel according to John
vii. 20.
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THE AIR.
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.* 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 Madan, a generic name indicating wicked elemental spirits, half brutes,
half monsters, for Madan 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 Shudala-Madan, 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 Shattan, the little juggling imps.
Shudala, 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* 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.
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he is not in fire, he is in
water. It is he who blinds people "to see that which they do not
see." Shula Madan, 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. Shula 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-Madan, 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.
Poruthu Madan, 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 "AEthrobasy.")
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 aethrobasy 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.
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 497 WHAT LIFTS THE
ADEPT, AND WHAT THE MEDIUM?
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
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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."* 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 reacts upon the physical system, throw
off electromagnetic 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "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.")
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WAGNER'S VIEWS.
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
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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 anyone 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 reinforces 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
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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 cope-stone 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";* 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."** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* "Revue des Deux
Mondes," p. 414, 1858.
** "Conservation of
Energy," p. 140.
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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 reabsorbed
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 of, 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
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VITAE.
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 vitae 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,
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Geberus, Arnoldus, Thomas
Aquinas, Bernardus Comes, Joannes, Penotus, Quercetanus Geber, the Arabian
father of European alchemy, Eugenius Philalethes, Baptista Porta, Rubeus,
Dornesius, Vogelius, Irenaeus Philaletha Cosmopolita, and many mediaeval
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,* 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."** 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,*** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Eugenius Philalethes.
** "Book of Ser Marco
Polo," vol. i., p. 215.
*** See Sage's
"Dictionnaire des Tissus," vol. ii., pp. 1-12.
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EARTH."
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 preeminent among their
Mahometan brethren for cunning, secret arts, skill in exorcisms and
magic."*
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."**
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.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Book of Ser Marco
Polo," vol. i., p. 230.
** "Alchemy, or the
Hermetic Philosophy," p. 25.
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. . . Attach to the nucleus
three hydroxyl groups, and there result triatomic compounds, among which is a
very familiar substance
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 Akasa, 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?
"God geometrizes,"
said Plato.* "The laws of nature are the thoughts
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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
[[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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of God"; exclaimed
Oersted, 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 philoso-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] 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.' "
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pher'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 [[degrees]]. Can it tell us as well the cause
of this "endless variety of the most exquisite forms,"* each of which
is a most perfect geometrical figure in itself? These frozen, starlike 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,** 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."***
Dr. Peisse, of Paris, wrote in
1863, the following:
"One word, a propos, of
alchemy. What must we think of the Her-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Prof. Ed. L. Youmans:
"Descriptive Chemistry."
** In ancient nations the
Deity was a trine supplemented by a goddess -- the arba-il, or fourfold God.
*** Josiah Cooke: "The
New Chemistry."
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ALCHEMICAL DIAMONDS.
metic 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;* 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 Ecole Professionelle et
Superieure of Nantes."** 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.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Prof. Sterry Hunt's theory
of metalliferous deposits contradicts this; but is it right?
** Peisse: "La Medecine
et les Medecins," vol. i., pp. 59, 283.
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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.* 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."**
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.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The Conservation of
Energy."
** Ibid., p. 136.
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OUTFLOW OF SUNBEAMS.
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."*
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Extracts from Robertus di
Fluctibus in "The Rosicrucians."
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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,* "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.** 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,*** 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."****
"The day will never come,
when any one of the propositions of Euclid will be denied,"***** 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 (Lempriere 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Philopseud."
** Diog. Laert. in
"Demokrit. Vitae."
*** "Satyric. Vitrus D.
Architect," lib. ix., cap. iii.
**** Pliny: "Hist.
Nat."
***** "Conflict between
Religion and Science."
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LAMASERIES.
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 besides
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.* 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 Astarte (the Hermetic silver), is
one of the two chief symbols of the Rosicrucians. It is a Hermetic
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Book of Ser Marco
Polo," vol. i., pp. 133-135.
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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;* 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.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Dionysius of
Halicarnassus."
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CHAPTER XIV.
"The transactions of this
our city of Sais, are recorded in our sacred writings during a period of 8,000
years." -- PLATO: Timaeus.
"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 archaeologists?
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 OEdipus.
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
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them, and colonizing the
perhaps unoccupied Egyptian territory? But we defer a more complete elaboration
of this theme for our second volume.*
"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 Moeris, 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 floodgates, 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* See vol. ii., chap. 8.
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GRANDEUR.
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 Philae, 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 archaeological 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
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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
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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
Ptolemaeus 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
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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
archeologist 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 Astarte) 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
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EGYPT.
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.' "*
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."**
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 reassert 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* J. M. Peebles: "Around
the World."
** John Fiske: "The North
American Review," art. The Laws of History, July, 1869.
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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!"*
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 archaeologists
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* M. Peebles: "Around the
World."
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MIGHTY KARNAK.
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 archaeologists 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 archaeological 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,
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obelisks, monolithic figures,
sculptures, long rows of sphinxes, are found in such profusion at Karnak, that
the sight is too much for modem 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."*
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Savary: "Letters on
Egypt," vol. ii., p. 67. London, 1786.
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MONUMENT-BUILDERS?
the archaeologists 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."* 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** . . . 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."***
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
archaeologists 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 AEthiopians, or dark-skinned Caucasians,**** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* John Fiske: "North
American Review," art. The Laws of History, July, 1869.
** Sir G. C. Lewis:
"Astronomy of the Ancients."
*** J. Fiske: "North
American Review," art. The Laws of History.
**** We shall attempt to demonstrate
in Vol. II., chapter viii., that the ancient AEthiopians were never a Hamitic
race.
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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, archaeology 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 Caesar, 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."* "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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Servius: "Virgil,"
Eclog. vi., v. 42.
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LIGHTNING-STROKES.
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.* 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."**
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).*** "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."**** 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,***** 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 rediscovery 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.******
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ovid: "Fast.,"
lib. iii., v. 285-346.
** "Titus Livius,"
lib. i., cap. xxxi.
*** Pliny: "Hist.
Nat.," lib. ii., cap. liii.
**** Lucius: "Piso";
Pliny: "Hist. Nat.," lib. xxviii., c. ii.
***** "Columella,"
lib. x., vers. 346, etc.
****** See "Notice sur
les Travaux de l'Academie du Gard," part i., pp. 304-314, by la Boissiere.
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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,* 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."**
Ammianus Marcellinus, a famous
historian of the fourth century, a writer generally esteemed for the fairness
and correctness of his statements, tells that "The magi, preserved
perpetually in their furnaces fire that they miraculously got from
heaven."*** 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."****
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."***** 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."******
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.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Bell. Jud. adv.
Roman," lib. v., cap. xiv.
** "Magasin Scientifique
de Goethingen," 3me. annie, 5me. cahier.
*** "Ammian.
Marcel.," lib. xxiii., cap. vi.
**** "Oupnek-hat,"
Brahman xi.
***** "Ktesias, in India
ap. Photum.," Bibl. Cod. lxxii.
****** Buffon: "Histoire
Naturelle des Mineraux," 6me Mem., art. ii.
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 529 WHAT THE EBERS
PAPYRUS CONTAINS.
Professor Jowett discredits
the story of the Atlantis, in the Timaeus; 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."* Then how about the primitive Cyclopean
fortresses of ancient Greece? Can the walls of Tiryns, about which, according
to archaeological accounts, "even among the ancients it was reported to
have been the work of the Cyclops,"** 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 archaeologist, 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
time-proof. "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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Egypt's Place in
Universal History," vol. iv., p. 462.
** "Archaeologia,"
vol. xv., p. 320.
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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. . . . Horner 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 melees 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
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PEACE.
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 Curnae, 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 secrecy and the most wonderful cures were performed during the
performing of the Mysteries. Herodotus acknowledges* that the Greeks learned
all they knew, including the sacred services of the temple, from the Egyptians,
and because of that,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Lib. ii., c. 50.
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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.*
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),** 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."** 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."*** Fenelon, 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, Laertius, 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.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Galen: "De Composit.
Medec.," lib. v.
** "Ancient
Fragments": see chapter on the Early Kings of Egypt.
*** "Pliny," lib.
vii., c. 56.
**** Jablonski: "Pantheon
AEgypti.," ii., Proleg. 10.
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SCIENTIFIC GROWTH.
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,"* 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."** 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 Chaldaea, 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Cicero: "De
Divinatione."
** "Telegraphic
Journal," art. Scientific Prophecy.
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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,* 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."**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Professor Albrecht Muller:
"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."
** "Conflict between
Religion and Science," chap. i.
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"BRASS."
In his First Traces of Man in
Europe, Albrecht Muller 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:*
"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 aerial 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."**
Surely, it is not those who
warn people against "mercenary fraud" who can be accused of it; and
if they accomplished acts which seem
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Psellus: "Chaldean
Oracles," 4, cxliv.
** Psellus: "Zoroast.
Oracles," 4.
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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,
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GLASS.
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 Thmei, 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
Thmei."*
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Proctor: "Saturn and
the Sabbath of the Jews," p. 309.
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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 archeologists cannot
escape. How else could they have produced such artistic chiselling, or
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MUMMY-WRAPPING, ANAESTHESIA.
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 Muller
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 anaesthesia?
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
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reaped the honors and benefits
in 1846, as is usual in such cases. The anaesthetics 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 anaesthetic 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 anesthetics
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.* Pliny gives also a full description of it.**
From time immemorial, the
Brahmans have had in their possession secrets quite as valuable. The widow,
bent on the self-sacrifice of concremation, 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 anaesthetics. 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Dioscorides: "[[Peri
Hules Iatrikes]]" lib. v., cap. clviii.
** Pliny: "Histoire Naturelle,"
lib. xxxviii., cap. vii.
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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."*
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.** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Le P. Paulin de St.
Barthelemi: "Voyage aux Indes Orientales," vol. i., p. 358.
** Max Muller, 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 Muller's "Comparative
Mythology." "Professor Wilson," says Max Muller, "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-Sutras,' 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).
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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
scoriae, produced by smelting."* 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
Babelmandeb, 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,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Hence the story that Moses
fabricated there the serpent or seraph of brass which the Israelites worshipped
till the reign of Hezekiah.
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ARTIFICIAL GEMS.
"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.*
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 archaeological
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.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* A. Gell: "Noet.
Attic.," lib. x., cap. xiii.
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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
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OF THE GLOBE.
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 Troad, of the Lacustrians, of the
submerged continent of the fabled Atlantis, now classed with myths -- the deeds
of the Phoenicians stamp them with almost the character of demi-gods.
The writer in the National
Quarterly Review, previously quoted, says that the Phoenicians 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 maelstrom 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 Phoenician characters, "We are those who fled before the
brigand Joshua, the son of Nun or Nave."
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.* 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
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Such is not our opinion.
They were probably built by the Atlanteans.
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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,* 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Incidents of Travel in
Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan," vol. ii., p. 457.
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CORDILLERAS.
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 Quiche, 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
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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
Muller 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."* And though Professor
Muller 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 Muller, 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 Muller 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 mediaeval 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 Muller
confesses that "now and then . . . one imagines one sees certain periods
and landmarks, but in the next page all is chaos again."** 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,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Max Muller: "Chips from
a German Workshop," vol. ii., p. 269.
** Max Muller:
"Popol-Vuh," p. 327.
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COSMOGONIES.
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 Muller 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 Muller. 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 Laestrygonians, who devoured
the companions of Ulysses, are traced to the huge cannibal* 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 Laestrygonians 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 Laestrygonians 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 maelstrom; and the
Wandering Rocks** in the enormous icebergs of the Arctic seas.
If the consecutive attempts at
the creation of man described in the Quiche 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," performed 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Why not to the sacrifices of
men in ancient worship?
** "Odyssey," xii.
71.
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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,"* 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."**
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 Zmey
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."*** But still,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Chips from a German
Workshop," p. 268.
** Villemarque, Member of the
Institute. Vol. lx.; "Collect et Nouvelle Serie," 24, p. 570, 1863;
"Poesie des Cloitres Celtiques."
*** "Archaeol.,"
vol. xxv., p. 220. London.
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ABORIGINES?
"if the original
conception is natural and intelligible . . . and its occurrence need not be the
result of any historical intercourse," as Professor Muller 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.*
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 post-diluvian 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 Quiches; 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 Phoenicians, 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?" "Nunez de la Vega says that Nin, or Imos, of
the Tzendales, was the Ninus of the Babylonians."*
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Archaeol.," vol.
xxv., p. 292. London.
** Brasseur de Bourbourg:
"Cartas," p. 52.
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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
Phoenicians 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 preeminently Roman Catholic and
amounts to very little, as all their inventions do. If Nunez 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
Quiches. 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.*
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,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Stephens: "Travels
in Central America," etc.
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DEMI-GOD.
to use the expression employed
by des Mousseaux in connection with the work of the poor, unfrocked Abbe 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 preeminently 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 Quiche, 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 kuklos anagkes, 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 agujero de culebra";
and that he was admitted to it because he was himself "a son of the
snakes," or a serpent.*
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.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Cartas," 53,
7-62.
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"The Assyrian priest bore
always the name of his god," says Movers.* 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 Bretagne, 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 Phoenician Elon or Elion, whom Abraham
recognized as El Elion.** 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.***
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."**** 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!"*****
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 archaeologists 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Die Phonizier,"
70.
** See Sanchoniaton in
"Eusebius," Pr. Ev. 36; Genesis xiv.
*** "Archaeological
Society of the Antiquaries of London," vol. xxv., p. 220.
**** "Cartas," 51.
***** "Hauts Phenomenes
de la Magie," 50.
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ISRAEL.
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 Phoenicians 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, 0 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."* Now, in the original, the words "their secret," read
-- their SOD.** 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.*** 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Genesis xlix.
** 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.).
**** "The members of the
priest-colleges were called Sodales," says Freund's "Latin
Lexicon" (iv. 448). "SODALITIES were constituted in the Idaean
Mysteries of the MIGHTY MOTHER," writes Cicero ("De Senectute,"
13); Dunlap: "Mysteries of Adonis."
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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;* 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 daemon with whom
they identify themselves completely. The Chaldean and Assyrian Nargal kept his
daemon, 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 house-hold animal.**
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Wilkinson: "Ancient
Egyptians," vol. v., p. 65.
** Brasseur de Bourbourg:
"Mexique," pp. 135-574.
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WORSHIP.
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.' "*
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Catholic World,"
N. Y., January, 1877: Article Nagualism, Voodooism, etc.
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marble halls of Heliopolis and
Sais; 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 archaeologist 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;* 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."** 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.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
** "Popol-Vuh,"
reviewed by Max Muller.
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MEXICANS.
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 Muller, "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 Quiche 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
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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. Daemon est Deus
inversus, the Devil is the shadow of God, states the universal kabalistic
axiom. Could light exist but for
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A MIGHTY PAST.
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 theodike;
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 archeologists 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 Angkorthom, 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 ap-
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pearance of the wonderful
temple is beautiful and romantic, as well as impressive and grand," says
Mr. Vincent, a recent traveller.* "We whose good fortune it is to live in
the nineteenth century, are accustomed to boast of the perfection and
preeminence 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 archeologists 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Frank Vincent, Jun.:
"The Land of the White Elephant," p. 209.
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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
facade 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,* 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 Ramayana . . . 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 his-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Hanouma is over three
feet tall, and black as a coal. The Ramayana, giving the biography of this
sacred monkey, relates that Hanouma was formerly a powerful chieftain, who
being the greatest friend of Rama, helped him to find his wife, Sitha, who had
been carried off to Ceylon by Ravana, the mighty king of the giants. After
numerous adventures Hanouma was caught by the latter, while visiting the city
of the giant as Rama's spy. For this crime Ravana had the poor Hanouma'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 Hanouma 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
Rakshasas -- 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?
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torians," 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."*
But there are perhaps many
circumstances, trifling for archaeologists 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 Hanouma; 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,** 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 Carne,*** "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 archaeologists.
When they have found that
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Incidents of Travels
in Central America, etc.," vol. i., p. 105.
** They stand no more, for the
obelisk alone was removed to Paris.
*** See "The Land of the
White Elephant," p. 221.
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OF ISRAEL?
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 Stiens." 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* 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."**
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 archaeologists 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The President of the Royal
Geographical Society of Berlin.
** "The Land of the White
Elephant," p. 215.
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his hand, which is the
counterpart of that of Cheronaea, 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 Ramayana, 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 Ravana, king of the giants,
eloping with Sita, Rama's wife? The Trojan war is a counterpart of the Ramayana
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 Hanouma, 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 Hanouma.
Hypothetical as the suggestion
may now seem, it is worthy of consideration, if even for the sake of being
refuted. The Abbe 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 Phoenicians, but the
Phoenicians were beyond any doubt an
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AEthiopian race; moreover, the
present race of Punjaub are hybridized with the Asiatic AEthiopians. 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 AEthiopian 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.* Eusebius tells us that "the AEthiopians 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 Phoenicians, the latter may be traced themselves to the
nations who used the old Sanscrit language. Carthage was a Phoenician 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 cul
and its lord was Heri.** Her-culeus is therefore the translation of Melkarth
and Sanscrit in origin. Moreover all the Cyclopean races were Phoenicians. 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Phoenician Dido is the
feminine of David . Under the name of Astarte, she led the Phoenician colonies,
and her image was on the prow of their ships. But David and Saul are names belonging
to Afghanistan also.
** (Prof. A. Wilder.) This
archaeologist says: "I regard the AEthiopian, 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."
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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
archaeologists who strongly regard the twelve tribes as utterly mythical,* 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 Judaeans 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 Phoenicians
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 Phoenicia had
become a dependency as early as the days of Hiram, and the Phoenicians
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Prof. A. Wilder among
others.
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GIANTS.
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.* 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 Abir, great; , Ebir, an astrologer, or , 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
Phoenician affords its own proof. They are called [[Phoinikes]] 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 Phoenicians, 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Martin Haug's translation:
"The Aytareya Brahmanam."
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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 -- Phoenicians,
the AEthiopian 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
archaeology? 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.* Teraphim were
identical with the seraphim, and these were serpent-images, the origin of which
is in the Sanscrit sarpa (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,** as well as Saturn.*** 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,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Judges xvii-xviii., etc.
** 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.
*** Guignant: "Op.
cit.," vol. i., p. 167.
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WHITE ELEPHANT."
and other AEthiopian works,
even externally. On the other hand the assertions of certain archaeologists 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 Loubere, 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 Quiche 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."* 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Incidents of Travel in
Central America, etc."
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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 cubit, which was common to the Hebrew children of
Shem, as well as to the Phoenicians 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 Quiche, 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 (Tau),
and the astronomical cross of Egypt 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
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elephant-headed god of wisdom
(or magic learning), Ganesha, may be found among the stucco figures of the
Mexican ruins.
What explanation can the
archaeologists, 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?
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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
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AND OF FACT.
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;* 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 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."* 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
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 ,
"CHITONUTH OUR." The first
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Paul to the Galatians,
iv., 24, and Gospel according to Matthew, xiii. 10-15.
** A. Wilder says that
"Gan-duniyas," is a name of Babylonia.
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Hebrew word, chitun, is the
Greek 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."*
"The Turanian of Prof.
Muller and his school," adds our correspondent, "was evidently the
savage and nomadic Caucasian, out of whom the Hamite or AEthiopian 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 AEthiopic)
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,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The appropriate definition
of the name "Turanian" is, any ethnic family that ethnologists know
nothing about.
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RELICS.
whether they were Brahmans,
from the Brahmanic planisphere proper (40 [[degrees]] 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,"* 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 as 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Berosus and
Sanchoniathon; Cory's "Ancient Fragments"; Movers, and others.
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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;* that Abraham and Israel were names of Saturn;** 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,*** to trace unerringly the biblical myth to its source. But
this source is neither Phoenician, 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Movers, 86.
** Ibid.
*** Sanchon.: in Cory's
"Fragments," p. 14.
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CHALDEAN KABALA.
with his father, Terah, from
"Ur of the Chaldees"; and Sir H. Rawlinson found the Phoenician 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,* 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-ant 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
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the college of the weird
astrologers and magi, the Aleim.* 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 Tanaim; the Sepher Jezira; the Book of Wisdom, of
Schlomah (Solomon); the secret treatise on Muhta and Badha** attributed by the
Buddhist kabalists to Kapila, the founder of the Sankhya system; the
Brahmanas;*** the Stan-gyour,**** of the Thibetans; all these volumes have the
same ground-work. Varying but in allegories they teach the same secret doctrine
which, when once thoroughly eliminated, will prove to be the Ultima Thule 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 Muller, 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."*****
We do not wonder at the severe
criticism of this erudite scientist.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Adak in Hebrew is , and
Eden, . 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 -- , which
are spelled with aleph.
** 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 "Sutras." 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.
*** The "Brahmanas"
were translated by Dr. Haug; see his "Aitareya Brahmanam."
**** 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.
***** "Aitareya
Brahmana," Lecture by Max Muller.
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SANSCRIT WORDS.
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."*
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 Muller 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 jealously
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ibid., "Buddhist
Pilgrims."
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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
Muller 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 Macroprosopos -- the Long-Face -- lies
hidden the aerial 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
Nazaraeus 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 represent
chaotic matter "frantic and without judgment." For matter,
Karabtanos, is the son of Spirit, or
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VISHNU.
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,"* 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."** 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 suf-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Progress of Religious
Ideas through Successive Ages," vol. i., p. 17.
** "La Bible dans
l'Inde."
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fice 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 naive 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."*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "La Bible dans
l'Inde."
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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."* 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Presbyterian
Banner," December 20, 1876.
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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."*
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).
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "La Bible dans
l'Inde."
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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 Cyclopaedia 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,* 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 Cyclopaedia.
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Max Muller's
"Lecture on the Vedas."
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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
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TRANS-HIMALAYAN SEA.
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.* 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,** received
her laws, her social institutions, her arts and her sciences, from pre-Vedic
India;*** and that therefore, it is in that old initiation 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."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Roth's "The Burial
in India"; Max Muller's "Comparative Mythology" (Lecture);
Wilson's article, "The Supposed Vaidic Authority for the Burning of Hindu
Widows," etc.
** Bunsen gives as the first
year of Menes, 3645; Manetho as 3892 B.C. "Egypt's Place," etc., vol.
v., 34; Key.
*** Louis Jacolliot, in "The
Bible in India," affirms the same.
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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 -- antara -- produced and directed this world composed of movable and
unmovable beings" (Manu, book i.).
In the Siva-Purana,* 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.** Who can tell but the lost Atlantis -- which is also
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Purana means ancient and
sacred history or tradition. See Loiseleur Des-longchamp's translations of
"Manu"; also L. Jacolliot's "La Genese dans l'Humanite."
** There are archaeologists,
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
[[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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NAME AMERICA.
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?* 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
words 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."**
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,
than 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.* We adduce the following reasons in favor of our
argument:
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] perfectly arbitrary. Further discoveries are sure to show how
erroneous and unwarranted it was.
* It is a strange coincidence that
when first discovered, America was found to bear among some native tribes the
name of Atlanta.
** Baldwin: "Prehistoric
Nations," p. 179.
*** Alberico Vespuzio, the son
of Anastasio Vespuzio or Vespuchy, is now gravely
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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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 Caicai. 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 Basle, in 1522. Till that time, the region
was believed to be part of India. That year Nicaragua was conquered by Gil
Gonzales de Avida.*
2d. "The Northmen who
visited the continent in the tenth century,** 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 Abbe 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 hiero-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] 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).
* See Thomas Belt: "The
Naturalists in Nicaragua." London, 1873.
** Torfieus: "Historia
Vinlandiae Antiquae."
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ATLANTIS-RACE.
phants 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* mentioned in the Bible. His denunciations
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 2 Kings, xxii. 14; 2
Chronicles, xxxiv. 22.
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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.***
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
*** 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.' [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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PERU.
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 com-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] "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,
Pournouton, 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).
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pelled 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 Mestizos 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"* 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.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* 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 Quiches brought them to Mexico; the Peruvian
sun-worshippers also used it. When the Spaniards had landed, says the historian,
the King of the Quiches, 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).
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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,* 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,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.
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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 cooperation 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 Mycenae, 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, hang 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
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HIOUEN-THSANG.
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,"* 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 Udyana in old times, were probably strongly tinged with Sivaitic
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 formulae has become a
regular professional business with them."** 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
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The regions somewhere about
Udyana and Kashmere, as the translator and editor of Marco Polo (Colonel Yule),
believes. Vol. i., p. 173.
** "Voyage des Pelerins,
Bouddhistes," vol. i.; "Histoire de la Vie de Hiouen-Thsang,"
etc., traduit du Chinois en francais, par Stanislas Julien.
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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 encyclopaedia of modern
'Spiritualists.' Duhalde mentions among their sorceries the art of producing by
their invocations the figures of Laotsen* and their divinities in the air, and
of making a pencil write answers to questions without anybody touching
it."**
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
incom-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Lao-tsi, the Chinese
philosopher.
** "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.
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parable 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.*
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.** "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 hand-maiden.' 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.'*** 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.'
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Max Muller: "Buddhist
Pilgrims."
** Berlin Academy of Sciences,
1846.
*** 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).
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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."*
To deny to the Chinese or any
people of Asia, whether Central,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Schott: "Essay on
Buddhism," p. 103.
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THE DESERT.
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!"*
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.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The Book of Ser Marco
Polo," vol. i., Preface to the second edition, p. viii.
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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."*
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."** "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;*** AEthicus, 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 ghuls, 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 ghul
taking many forms. . . . They revile it, and it goes off uttering shrill cries."****
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."***** 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;
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Ibid., vol. i., p. 203.
** "Visdelon," p.
130.
*** "Pliny," vii.,
2.
**** "Philostratus,"
book ii., chap. iv.
***** Ibid., book iv., p. 382;
"Book of Ser Marco Polo," vol. i., p. 206.
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CALIFORNIA.
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.*
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 Ruwan 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; . . . Gibalul-Thabul, 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."**
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,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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.)
** Remusat: "Histoire du
Khotan," p. 74; "Marco Polo," vol. i., p. 206.
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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 Theatre 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.* 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."**
Two items of fact in the above
paragraph are worthy of being
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Like the Psylli, or serpent-charmers
of Libya, whose gift is hereditary.
** "Ser Marco Polo,"
vol. ii., p. 321.
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CEYLON.
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 seance which he recently attended with several other eminent men,
at Paris. Having his permission to that effect, we print his letter in full.
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"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 plombieres, 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. Cer-
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tain 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
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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 -- plombieres. 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 Plombieres -- 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
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RE-INCARNATE.
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
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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."
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 Laertius 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 Caesars and the Alexanders, knows so much better than its
preceptors about psychology, that it would vote every believer in
"animated tables" into Bedlam.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The
Spiritualist," London, Nov. 10, 1876.
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NAPLES AND NARGERCOM.
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 Nargercoil, 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 Suran; 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
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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.* 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.**
With naivete, 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.*** He has but one
thought, one anxious and all-overpowering desire -- to prove to his readers
that magic does exist,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Read any of the papers, of
the summer and autumn of 1876.
** Tite-Livy, v. dec. i., --
Val. Max., 1, cap. vii.
*** See "Les Hauts Phenomenes
de la Magie"; "La Magie au XIXme Siecle"; "Dieu et les
Dieux," etc.
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THEOPOEA.
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."*
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 theopoea.
This science taught the art of endowing the various symbols of gods with
temporary life and intelli-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "De Idol. Vanit.,"
lib. I., p. 452.
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gence. 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 Akasa 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* -- 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
theopoea 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 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 elementaries who have lost their
divine guide -- spirit -- can last no longer than the essence of the elements
which compose their astral bodies holds together.
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TALISMANS.
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."*
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* L. Jacolliot: "Voyage
au Pays des Perles."
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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 jettatore (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
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INDIA.
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 goparama 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 --
Averroes 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 foetus, 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
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supreme masters in all.
Sakuntala, Avrita, the Hindu Phaedra, Saranga, and a thousand other dramas have
their superiors neither in Sophocles nor Euripides, in Corneille nor
Shakespere. 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
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11,000 YEARS OLD.
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'oeuvre 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 Littre."
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
Nicete, 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
Schoepfer, 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
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and Galileo perfectly wrong?*
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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "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 Schoepfer. Seventh Edition.
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GEOCENTRIC SYSTEM.
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. Schoepfer.
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 it's 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
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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 ([[hoi polloi]]) perceive in
statues merely stone and wood. Thus it is generally with those who, ignorant in
letters, find naught in stylae 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
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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."*
Closing up his voluminous
summary of the psychological doctrines of the Egyptians, the sublime teachings
of the sacred Hermetic books, and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Champ.-Figeac:
"Egypte," p. 143.
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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."*
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 archaeology 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!"**
"Everything told us by Herodotus and the Egyptian priests is found to be
exact, and has been corroborated by modern scientists," adds Champollion.***
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 par-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ibid., p. 119.
** Ibid., p. 2.
*** Ibid., p. 11.
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allel 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. Phoenician 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 Thule 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
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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 Irenaeus
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.
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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. II. -- THEOLOGY.
THEOSOPHICAL UNIVERSITY PRESS
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA
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TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PREFACE -- iii
Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson and Baroness
Burdett-Coutts.
Volume Second.
THE "INFALLIBILITY"
OF MODERN RELIGION.
CHAPTER I.
THE CHURCH: WHERE IS IT?
Church statistics ... 1
Catholic "miracles"
and spiritualistic "phenomena" ... 4
Christian and Pagan beliefs
compared ... 10
Magic and sorcery practised by
Christian clergy ... 20
Comparative theology a new
science ... 25
Eastern traditions as to
Alexandrian Library ... 27
Roman pontiffs imitators of
the Hindu Brahm-atma ... 30
Christian dogmas derived from
heathen philosophy ... 33
Doctrine of the Trinity of
Pagan origin ... 45
Disputes between Gnostics and
Church Fathers ... 51
Bloody records of Christianity
... 53
CHAPTER II.
CHRISTIAN CRIMES AND HEATHEN
VIRTUES.
Sorceries of Catherine of
Medicis ... 55
Occult arts practised by the
clergy ... 59
Witch-burnings and auto-da-fe
of little children ... 62
Lying Catholic saints ... 74
Pretensions of missionaries in
India and China ... 79
Sacrilegious tricks of
Catholic clergy ... 82
Paul a kabalist ... 91
Peter not the founder of Roman
church ... 91
Strict lives of Pagan
hierophants ... 98
High character of ancient
"mysteries" ... 101
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Jacolliot's account of Hindu
fakirs ... 103
Christian symbolism derived
from Phallic worship ... 109
Hindu doctrine of the Pitris
... 114
Brahminic spirit-communion ...
115
Dangers of untrained
mediumship ... 117
CHAPTER III.
DIVISIONS AMONGST THE EARLY CHRISTIANS.
Resemblance between early
Christianity and Buddhism ... 123
Peter never in Rome ... 124
Meanings of "Nazar"
and "Nazarene" ... 129
Baptism a derived right ...
134
Is Zoroaster a generic name?
... 141
Pythagorean teachings of Jesus
... 147
The Apocalypse kabalistic ...
147
Jesus considered an adept by
some Pagan philosophers and early Christians ... 150
Doctrine of permutation ...
152
The meaning of God-Incarnate
... 153
Dogmas of the Gnostics ... 155
Ideas of Marcion, the
"heresiarch" ... 159
Precepts of Manu ... 163
Jehovah identical with Bacchus
... 165
CHAPTER IV.
ORIENTAL COSMOGONIES AND BIBLE
RECORDS.
Discrepancies in the
Pentateuch ... 167
Indian, Chaldean and Ophite
systems compared ... 170
Who were the first Christians?
... 178
Christos and Sophia-Achamoth
... 183
Secret doctrine taught by
Jesus ... 191
Jesus never claimed to be God
... 193
New Testament narratives and
Hindu legends ... 199
Antiquity of the
"Logos" and "Christ" ... 205
Comparative Virgin-worship ...
209
CHAPTER V.
MYSTERIES OF THE KABALA.
En-Soph and the Sephiroth ...
212
The primitive wisdom-religion
... 216
The book of Genesis a
compilation of Old World legends ... 217
The Trinity of the Kabala ...
222
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Gnostic and Nazarene systems
contrasted with Hindu myths ... 225
Kabalism in the book of
Ezekiel ... 232
Story of the resurrection of
Jairus's daughter found in the history of Christna ... 241
Untrustworthy teachings of the
early Fathers ... 248
Their persecuting spirit ...
249
CHAPTER VI.
ESOTERIC DOCTRINES OF BUDDHISM
PARODIED IN CHRISTIANITY.
Decisions of Nicean Council,
how arrived at ... 251
Murder of Hypatia ... 252
Origin of the fish-symbol of
Vishnu ... 256
Kabalistic doctrine of the
Cosmogony ... 264
Diagrams of Hindu and
Chaldeo-Jewish systems ... 265
Ten mythical Avatars of Vishnu
... 274
Trinity of man taught by Paul
... 281
Socrates and Plato on soul and
spirit ... 283
True Buddhism, what it is ...
288
CHAPTER VII.
EARLY CHRISTIAN HERESIES AND
SECRET SOCIETIES.
Nazareans, Ophites, and modern
Druzes ... 291
Etymology of IAO ... 298
"Hermetic Brothers"
of Egypt ... 307
True meaning of Nirvana ...
319
The Jayna sect ... 321
Christians and Chrestians ...
323
The Gnostics and their
detractors ... 325
Buddha, Jesus, and Apollonius
of Tyana ... 341
CHAPTER VIII.
JESUITRY AND MASONRY.
The Sohar and Rabbi Simeon ...
348
The Order of Jesuits and its
relation to some of the Masonic orders ... 352
Crimes permitted to its
members ... 355
Principles of Jesuitry
compared with those of Pagan moralists ... 364
Trinity of man in Egyptian
Book of the Dead ... 367
Freemasonry no longer esoteric
... 372
Persecution of Templars by the
Church ... 381
Secret Masonic ciphers ... 395
Jehovah not the
"Ineffable Name" ... 398
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CHAPTER IX.
THE VEDAS AND THE BIBLE.
Nearly every myth based on
some great truth ... 405
Whence the Christian Sabbath
... 406
Antiquity of the Vedas ... 410
Pythagorean doctrine of the
potentialities of numbers ... 417
"Days" of Genesis
and "Days" of Brahma ... 422
Fall of man and the Deluge in
the Hindu books ... 425
Antiquity of the Mahabharata
... 429
Were the ancient Egyptians of
the Aryan race? ... 434
Samuel, David, and Solomon
mythical personages ... 439
Symbolism of Noah's Ark ...
447
The Patriarchs identical with
zodiacal signs ... 459
All Bible legends belong to
universal history ... 469
CHAPTER X.
THE DEVIL-MYTH.
The devil officially
recognized by the Church ... 477
Satan the mainstay of sacerdotalism
... 480
Identity of Satan with the
Egyptian Typhon ... 483
His relation to
serpent-worship ... 489
The Book of Job and the Book
of the Dead ... 493
The Hindu devil a metaphysical
abstraction ... 501
Satan and the Prince of Hell
in the Gospel of Nicodemus ... 515
CHAPTER XI.
COMPARATIVE RESULTS OF
BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY.
The age of philosophy produced
no atheists ... 530
The legends of three Saviours
... 537
Christian doctrine of the
Atonement illogical ... 542
Cause of the failure of missionaries
to convert Buddhists and Brahmanists ... 553
Neither Buddha nor Jesus left
written records ... 559
The grandest mysteries of
religion in the Bagaved-gita ... 562
The meaning of regeneration
explained in the Satapa-Brahmana ... 565
The sacrifice of blood
interpreted ... 566
Demoralization of British
India by Christian missionaries ... 573
The Bible less authenticated
than any other sacred book ... 577
Knowledge of chemistry and
physics displayed by Indian jugglers ... 583
CHAPTER XII.
CONCLUSIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
Recapitulation of fundamental
propositions ... 587
Seership of the soul and of
the spirit ... 590
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The phenomenon of the
so-called spirit-hand ... 594
Difference between mediums and
adepts ... 595
Interview of an English
ambassador with a reincarnated Buddha ... 598
Flight of a lama's astral body
related by Abbe Huc ... 604
Schools of magic in Buddhist
lamaseries ... 609
The unknown race of Hindu
Todas ... 613
Will-power of fakirs and yogis
... 617
Taming of wild beasts by
fakirs ... 622
Evocation of a living spirit
by a Shaman, witnessed by the writer ... 626
Sorcery by the breath of a
Jesuit Father ... 633
Why the study of magic is
almost impracticable in Europe ... 635
Conclusion ... 635
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PREFACE TO PART II.
WERE it possible, we would
keep this work out of the hands of many Christians whom its perusal would not
benefit, and for whom it was not written. We allude to those whose faith in
their respective churches is pure and sincere, and those whose sinless lives
reflect the glorious example of that Prophet of Nazareth, by whose mouth the
spirit of truth spake loudly to humanity. Such there have been at all times.
History preserves the names of many as heroes, philosophers, philanthropists,
martyrs, and holy men and women; but how many more have lived and died, unknown
but to their intimate acquaintance, unblessed but by their humble
beneficiaries! These have ennobled Christianity, but would have shed the same
lustre upon any other faith they might have professed -- for they were higher
than their creed. The benevolence of Peter Cooper and Elizabeth Thompson, of
America, who are not orthodox Christians, is no less Christ-like than that of
the Baroness Angela Burdett-Coutts, of England, who is one. And yet, in
comparison with the millions who have been accounted Christians, such have
always formed a small minority. They are to be found at this day, in pulpit and
pew, in palace and cottage; but the increasing materialism, worldliness and
hypocrisy are fast diminishing their proportionate number. Their charity, and
simple, child-like faith in the infallibility of their Bible, their dogmas, and
their clergy, bring into full activity all the virtues
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that are implanted in our
common nature. We have personally known such God-fearing priests and clergymen,
and we have always avoided debate with them, lest we might be guilty of the
cruelty of hurting their feelings; nor would we rob a single layman of his
blind confidence, if it alone made possible for him holy living and serene
dying.
An analysis of religious beliefs
in general, this volume is in particular directed against theological
Christianity, the chief opponent of free thought. It contains not one word
against the pure teachings of Jesus, but unsparingly denounces their debasement
into pernicious ecclesiastical systems that are ruinous to man's faith in his
immortality and his God, and subversive of all moral restraint.
We cast our gauntlet at the
dogmatic theologians who would enslave both history and science; and especially
at the Vatican, whose despotic pretensions have become hateful to the greater
portion of enlightened Christendom. The clergy apart, none but the logician,
the investigator, the dauntless explorer should meddle with books like this.
Such delvers after truth have the courage of their opinions.
Isis Unveiled by H. P.
Blavatsky -- Vol. 2
Theosophical University Press
Online Edition
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PART TWO. -- RELIGION.
CHAPTER I.
"Yea, the time cometh,
that whomsoever killeth you, will think that he doeth God service." --
Gospel according to John, xvi. 2.
"Let him be ANATHEMA . .
. who shall say that human Sciences ought to be pursued in such a spirit of
freedom that one may be allowed to hold as true their assertions even when
opposed to revealed doctrines." -- Ecumenical Council of 1870.
"GLOUC. -- The Church!
Where is it?" -- King Henry VI., Act i., Sc. 1.
IN the United States of America,
sixty thousand (60,428) men are paid salaries to teach the Science of God and
His relations to His creatures.
These men contract to impart
to us the knowledge which treats of the existence, character, and attributes of
our Creator; His laws and government; the doctrines we are to believe and the
duties we are to practice. Five thousand (5,141) of them,* with the prospect of
1273 theological students to help them in time, teach this science according to
a formula prescribed by the Bishop of Rome, to five million people. Fifty-five
thousand (55,287) local and travelling ministers, representing fifteen
different denominations,** each contradicting the other upon more or less vital
theological questions, instruct, in their respective doctrines, thirty-three million
(33,500,000) other persons. Many of these teach according to the canons of the
cis-Atlantic branch of an establishment which acknowledges a daughter of the
late Duke of Kent as its spiritual
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* These figures are copied
from the "Religious Statistics of the United States for the year
1871."
** These are: The Baptists,
Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Northern Methodists, Southern Methodists, Methodists
various, Northern Presbyterians, Southern Presbyterians, United Presbyterians,
United Brethren, Brethren in Christ, Reformed Dutch, Reformed German, Reformed
Presbyterians, Cumberland Presbyterians.
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head. There are many hundred
thousand Jews; some thousands of Orientals of all kinds; and a very few who
belong to the Greek Church. A man at Salt Lake City, with nineteen wives and
more than one hundred children and grandchildren, is the supreme spiritual
ruler over ninety thousand people, who believe that he is in frequent
intercourse with the gods -- for the Mormons are Polytheists as well as
Polygamists, and their chief god is represented as living in a planet they call
Colob.
The God of the Unitarians is a
bachelor; the Deity of the Presbyterians, Methodists, Congregationalists, and
the other orthodox Protestant sects a spouseless Father with one Son, who is
identical with Himself. In the attempt to outvie each other in the erection of
their sixty-two thousand and odd churches, prayer-houses, and meeting-halls, in
which to teach these conflicting theological doctrines, $354,485,581 have been
spent. The value of the Protestant parsonages alone, in which are sheltered the
disputants and their families, is roughly calculated to approximate
$54,115,297. Sixteen million (16,179,387) dollars, are, moreover, contributed
every year for current expenses of the Protestant denominations only. One
Presbyterian church in New York cost a round million; a Catholic altar alone,
one-fourth as much!
We will not mention the
multitude of smaller sects, communities, and extravagantly original little heresies
in this country which spring up one year to die out the next, like so many
spores of fungi after a rainy day. We will not even stop to consider the
alleged millions of Spiritualists; for the majority lack the courage to break
away from their respective religious denominations. These are the back-door
Nicodemuses.
And now, with Pilate, let us
inquire, What is truth? Where is it to be searched for amid this multitude of
warring sects? Each claims to be based upon divine revelation, and each to have
the keys of the celestial gates. Is either in possession of this rare truth?
Or, must we exclaim with the Buddhist philosopher, "There is but one truth
on earth, and it is unchangeable: and this is -- that there is no truth on
it!"
Though we have no disposition
whatever to trench upon the ground that has been so exhaustively gleaned by
those learned scholars who have shown that every Christian dogma has its origin
in a heathen rite, still the facts which they have exhumed, since the
enfranchisement of science, will lose nothing by repetition. Besides, we
propose to examine these facts from a different and perhaps rather novel point
of view: that of the old philosophies as esoterically understood. These we have
barely glanced at in our first volume. We will use them as the standard by
which to compare Christian dogmas and miracles with the doctrines and phenomena
of ancient magic, and the modern "New Dispensation," as Spiritualism
is called by its votaries. Since the materialists deny the phenom-
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IT?"
ena without investigation, and
since the theologians in admitting them offer us the poor choice of two
palpable absurdities -- the Devil and miracles -- we can lose little by
applying to the theurgists, and they may actually help us to throw a great
light upon a very dark subject.
Professor A. Butlerof, of the
Imperial University of St. Petersburg, remarks in a recent pamphlet, entitled
Mediumistic Manifestations, as follows: "Let the facts (of modern
spiritualism) belong if you will to the number of those which were more or less
known by the ancients; let them be identical with those which in the dark ages
gave importance to the office of Egyptian priest or Roman augur; let them even
furnish the basis of the sorcery of our Siberian Shaman; . . . let them be all
these, and, if they are real facts, it is no business of ours. All the facts in
nature belong to science, and every addition to the store of science enriches
instead of impoverishing her. If humanity has once admitted a truth, and then
in the blindness of self-conceit denied it, to return to its realization is a
step forward and not backward."
Since the day that modern
science gave what may be considered the death-blow to dogmatic theology, by
assuming the ground that religion was full of mystery, and mystery is
unscientific, the mental state of the educated class has presented a curious
aspect. Society seems from that time to have been ever balancing itself upon
one leg, on an unseen tight-rope stretched from our visible universe into the
invisible one; uncertain whether the end hooked on faith in the latter might
not suddenly break, and hurl it into final annihilation.
The great body of nominal
Christians may be divided into three unequal portions: materialists,
spiritualists, and Christians proper. The materialists and spiritualists make
common cause against the hierarchical pretensions of the clergy; who, in
retaliation, denounce both with equal acerbity. The materialists are as little
in harmony as the Christian sects themselves -- the Comtists, or, as they call
themselves, the positivists, being despised and hated to the last degree by the
schools of thinkers, one of which Maudsley honorably represents in England.
Positivism, be it remembered, is that "religion" of the future about
whose founder even Huxley has made himself wrathful in his famous lecture, The
Physical Basis of Life; and Maudsley felt obliged, in behalf of modern science,
to express himself thus: "It is no wonder that scientific men should be
anxious to disclaim Comte as their law-giver, and to protest against such a
king being set up to reign over them. Not conscious of any personal obligation
to his writings -- conscious how much, in some respects, he has misrepresented
the spirit and pretensions of science -- they repudiate the allegiance which
his enthusiastic disciples would force upon them, and which popular opinion is fast
coming to think a natural one. They do
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well in thus making a timely
assertion of independence; for if it be not done soon, it will soon be too late
to be done well."* When a materialistic doctrine is repudiated so strongly
by two such materialists as Huxley and Maudsley, then we must think indeed that
it is absurdity itself.
Among Christians there is
nothing but dissension. Their various churches represent every degree of
religious belief, from the omnivorous credulity of blind faith to a
condescending and high-toned deference to the Deity which thinly masks an
evident conviction of their own deific wisdom. All these sects believe more or
less in the immortality of the soul. Some admit the intercourse between the two
worlds as a fact; some entertain the opinion as a sentiment; some positively
deny it; and only a few maintain an attitude of attention and expectancy.
Impatient of restraint,
longing for the return of the dark ages, the Romish Church frowns at the
diabolical manifestations, and indicates what she would do to their champions
had she but the power of old. Were it not for the self-evident fact that she
herself is placed by science on trial, and that she is handcuffed, she would be
ready at a moment's notice to repeat in the nineteenth century the revolting
scenes of former days. As to the Protestant clergy, so furious is their common
hatred toward spiritualism, that as a secular paper very truly remarks:
"They seem willing to undermine the public faith in all the spiritual
phenomena of the past, as recorded in the Bible, if they can only see the
pestilent modern heresy stabbed to the heart."**
Summoning back the
long-forgotten memories of the Mosaic laws, the Romish Church claims the
monopoly of miracles, and of the right to sit in judgment over them, as being
the sole heir thereto by direct inheritance. The Old Testament, exiled by
Colenso, his predecessors and contemporaries, is recalled from its banishment.
The prophets, whom his Holiness the Pope condescends at last to place, if not
on the same level with himself, at least at a less respectful distance,*** are
dusted and cleaned. The memory of all the diabolical abracadabra is evoked
anew. The blasphemous horrors perpetrated by Paganism, its
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* H. Maudsley: "Body and
Mind."
** "Boston Sunday
Herald," November 5, 1876.
*** See the self-glorification
of the present Pope in the work entitled, "Speeches of Pope Pius IX."
by Don Pascale de Franciscis; and the famous pamphlet of that name by the Rt.
Hon. W. E. Gladstone. The latter quotes from the work named the following
sentence pronounced by the Pope: "My wish is that all governments should
know that I am speaking in this strain. . . . And I have the right to speak,
even more than Nathan the prophet to David the king, and a great deal more than
St. Ambrose had to Theodosius"!!
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CHRISTIAN SYMBOLS.
phallic worship,
thaumaturgical wonders wrought by Satan, human sacrifices, incantations,
witchcraft, magic, and sorcery are recalled and DEMONISM is confronted with
spiritualism for mutual recognition and identification. Our modern
demonologists conveniently overlook a few insignificant details, among which is
the undeniable presence of heathen phallism in the Christian symbols. A strong
spiritual element of this worship may be easily demonstrated in the dogma of
the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mother of God; and a physical element
equally proved in the fetish-worship of the holy limbs of Sts. Cosmo and
Damiano, at Isernia, near Naples; a successful traffic in which ex-voto in wax
was carried on by the clergy, annually, until barely a half century ago.*
We find it rather unwise on
the part of Catholic writers to pour out their vials of wrath in such sentences
as these: "In a multitude of pagodas, the phallic stone, ever and always
assuming, like the Grecian batylos, the brutally indecent form of the lingham .
. . the Maha Deva."** Before casting slurs on a symbol whose profound
metaphysical meaning is too much for the modern champions of that religion of
sensualism par excellence, Roman Catholicism, to grasp, they are in duty bound
to destroy their oldest churches, and change the form of the cupolas of their
own temples. The Mahody of Elephanta, the Round Tower of Bhangulpore, the
minarets of Islam -- either rounded or pointed -- are the originals of the
Campanile column of San Marco, at Venice, of the Rochester Cathedral, and of
the modern Duomo of Milan. All of these steeples, turrets, domes, and Christian
temples, are the reproductions of the primitive idea of the lithos, the upright
phallus. "The western tower of St. Paul's Cathedral, London," says
the author of The Rosicrucians, "is one of the double lithoi placed always
in front of every temple, Christian as well as heathen."*** Moreover, in
all Christian Churches, "particularly in Protestant churches, where they
figure most conspicuously, the two tables of stone of the Mosaic Dispensation
are placed over the altar, side by side, as a united stone, the tops of which
are rounded. . . . The right stone is masculine, the left feminine."
Therefore neither Catholics nor Protestants have a right to talk of the
"indecent forms" of heathen monuments so long as they ornament their
own churches with the symbols of the Lingham and Yoni, and even write the laws
of their God upon them.
Another detail not redounding
very particularly to the honor of the Christian clergy might be recalled in the
word Inquisition. The torrents
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See King's
"Gnostics," and other works.
** Des Mousseaux: "La
Magie au XIXme Siecle," chap. i.
*** Hargrave Jennings:
"The Rosicrucians," pp. 228-241.
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of human blood shed by this
Christian institution, and the number of its human sacrifices, are unparalleled
in the annals of Paganism. Another still more prominent feature in which the
clergy surpassed their masters, the "heathen," is sorcery. Certainly
in no Pagan temple was black magic, in its real and true sense, more practiced
than in the Vatican. While strongly supporting exorcism as an important source
of revenue, they neglected magic as little as the ancient heathen. It is easy
to prove that the sortilegium, or sorcery, was widely practiced among the
clergy and monks so late as the last century, and is practiced occasionally
even now.
Anathematizing every
manifestation of occult nature outside the precincts of the Church, the clergy
-- notwithstanding proofs to the contrary -- call it "the work of
Satan," "the snares of the fallen angels," who "rush in and
out from the bottomless pit," mentioned by John in his kabalistic
Revelation, "from whence arises a smoke as the smoke of a great
furnace." "Intoxicated by its fumes, around this pit are daily
gathering millions of Spiritualists, to worship at 'the Abyss of Baal.' "*
More than ever arrogant,
stubborn, and despotic, now that she has been nearly upset by modern research,
not daring to interfere with the powerful champions of science, the Latin Church
revenges herself upon the unpopular phenomena. A despot without a victim, is a
word void of sense; a power which neglects to assert itself through outward,
well-calculated effects, risks being doubted in the end. The Church has no
intention to fall into the oblivion of the ancient myths, or to suffer her
authority to be too closely questioned. Hence she pursues, as well as the times
permit, her traditional policy. Lamenting the enforced extinction of her ally,
the Holy Inquisition, she makes a virtue of necessity. The only victims now
within reach are the Spiritists of France. Recent events have shown that the
meek spouse of Christ never disdains to retaliate on helpless victims.
Having successfully performed
her part of Deus-ex-Machina from behind the French Bench, which has not
scrupled to disgrace itself for her, the Church of Rome sets to work and shows
in the year 1876 what she can do. From the whirling tables and dancing pencils
of profane Spiritualism, the Christian world is warned to turn to the divine
"miracles" of Lourdes. Meanwhile, the ecclesiastical authorities
utilize their time in arranging for other more easy triumphs, calculated to
scare the superstitious out of their senses. So, acting under orders, the
clergy hurl dramatic, if not very impressive anathemas from every Catholic
diocese; threaten right and left; excommunicate and curse. Per-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Des Mousseaux: "Hauts
Phenomenes de la Magie."
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VITUPERATION.
ceiving, finally, that her
thunderbolts directed even against crowned heads fall about as harmlessly as
the Jupiterean lightnings of Offenbach's Calchas, Rome turns about in powerless
fury against the victimized proteges of the Emperor of Russia -- the
unfortunate Bulgarians and Servians. Undisturbed by evidence and sarcasm,
unbaffled by proof, "the lamb of the Vatican" impartially divides his
wrath between the liberals of Italy, "the impious whose breath has the
stench of the sepulchre,"* the "schismatic Russian Sarmates,"
and the heretics and spiritualists, "who worship at the bottomless pit
where the great Dragon lies in wait."
Mr. Gladstone went to the
trouble of making a catalogue of what he terms the "flowers of
speech," disseminated through these Papal discourses. Let us cull a few of
the chosen terms used by this vicegerent of Him who said that, "whosoever
shall say Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell-fire." They are selected
from authentic discourses. Those who oppose the Pope are "wolves,
Pharisees, thieves, liars, hypocrites, dropsical children of Satan, sons of
perdition, of sin, and corruption, satellites of Satan in human flesh, monsters
of hell, demons incarnate, stinking corpses, men issued from the pits of hell,
traitors and Judases led by the spirit of hell; children of the deepest pits of
hell," etc., etc.; the whole piously collected and published by Don
Pasquale di Franciscis, whom Gladstone has, with perfect propriety, termed,
"an accomplished professor of flunkeyism in things spiritual."**
Since his Holiness the Pope
has such a rich vocabulary of invectives at his command, why wonder that the
Bishop of Toulouse did not scruple to utter the most undignified falsehoods
about the Protestants and Spiritualists of America -- people doubly odious to a
Catholic -- in his address to his diocese: "Nothing," he remarks,
"is more common in an era of unbelief than to see a false revelation
substitute itself for the true one, and minds neglect the teachings of the Holy
Church, to devote themselves to the study of divination and the occult
sciences." With a fine episcopal contempt for statistics, and strangely
confounding in his memory the audiences of the revivalists, Moody and Sankey,
and the patrons of darkened seance-rooms, he utters the unwarranted and
fallacious assertion that "it has been proven that Spiritualism, in the
United States, has caused one-sixth of all the cases of suicide and
insanity." He says that it is not possible that the spirits "teach
either an exact science, because they are lying demons, or a useful science,
because the character
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Don Pasquale di Franciscis:
"Discorsi del Sommo Pontefice Pio IX.," Part i., p. 340.
** "Speeches of Pius
IX.," p. 14. Am. Edition.
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of the word of Satan, like
Satan himself, is sterile." He warns his dear collaborateurs, that
"the writings in favor of Spiritualism are under the ban"; and he
advises them to let it be known that "to frequent spiritual circles with
the intention of accepting the doctrine, is to apostatize from the Holy Church,
and assume the risk of excommunication"; finally, says he, "Publish
the fact that the teaching of no spirit should prevail against that of the
pulpit of Peter, which is the teaching of the Spirit of God Himself"!!
Aware of the many false
teachings attributed by the Roman Church to the Creator, we prefer disbelieving
the latter assertion. The famous Catholic theologian, Tillemont, assures us in
his work that "all the illustrious Pagans are condemned to the eternal
torments of hell, because they lived before the time of Jesus, and, therefore,
could not be benefited by the redemption"!! He also assures us that the
Virgin Mary personally testified to this truth over her own signature in a
letter to a saint. Therefore, this is also a revelation -- "the Spirit of
God Himself" teaching such charitable doctrines.
We have also read with great
advantage the topographical descriptions of Hell and Purgatory in the
celebrated treatise under that name by a Jesuit, the Cardinal Bellarmin. A
critic found that the author, who gives the description from a divine vision
with which he was favored, "appears to possess all the knowledge of a
land-measurer" about the secret tracts and formidable divisions of the
"bottomless pit." Justin Martyr having actually committed to paper
the heretical thought that after all Socrates might not be altogether fixed in
hell, his Benedictine editor criticises this too benevolent father very
severely. Whoever doubts the Christian charity of the Church of Rome in this
direction is invited to peruse the Censure of the Sorbonne, on Marmontel's
Belisarius. The odium theologicum blazes in it on the dark sky of orthodox
theology like an aurora borealis -- the precursor of God's wrath, according to
the teaching of certain mediaeval divines.
We have attempted in the first
part of this work to show, by historical examples, how completely men of
science have deserved the stinging sarcasm of the late Professor de Morgan, who
remarked of them that "they wear the priest's cast-off garb, dyed to
escape detection." The Christian clergy are, in like manner, attired in
the cast-off garb of the heathen priesthood; acting diametrically in opposition
to their God's moral precepts, but nevertheless, sitting in judgment over the
whole world.
When dying on the cross, the
martyred Man of Sorrows forgave his enemies. His last words were a prayer in
their behalf. He taught his disciples to curse not, but to bless, even their
foes. But the heirs of
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HEAVEN.
St. Peter, the self-constituted
representatives on earth of that same meek Jesus, unhesitatingly curse whoever
resists their despotic will. Besides, was not the "Son" long since
crowded by them into the background? They make their obeisance only to the
Dowager Mother, for -- according to their teaching -- again through "the
direct Spirit of God," she alone acts as a mediatrix. The OEcumenical
Council of 1870 embodied the teaching into a dogma, to disbelieve which is to
be doomed forever to the 'bottomless pit.' The work of Don Pasquale di
Franciscis is positive on that point; for he tells us that, as the Queen of
Heaven owes to the present Pope "the finest gem in her coronet,"
since he has conferred on her the unexpected honor of becoming suddenly
immaculate, there is nothing she cannot obtain from her Son for "her
Church."*
Some years ago, certain
travellers saw in Barri, Italy, a statue of the Madonna, arrayed in a flounced
pink skirt over a swelling crinoline! Pious pilgrims who may be anxious to
examine the regulation wardrobe of their God's mother may do so by going to
Southern Italy, Spain, and Catholic North and South America. The Madonna of
Barri must still be there -- between two vineyards and a locanda (gin-shop).
When last seen, a half-successful attempt had been made to clothe the infant
Jesus; they had covered his legs with a pair of dirty, scollop-edged
pantaloons. An English traveller having presented the "Mediatrix"
with a green silk parasol, the grateful population of the contadini,
accompanied by the village-priest, went in procession to the spot. They managed
to stick the sunshade, opened, between the infant's back and the arm of the
Virgin which embraced him. The scene and ceremony were both solemn and highly
refreshing to our religious feelings. For there stood the image of the goddess
in its niche, surrounded with a row of ever-burning lamps, the flames of which,
flickering in the breeze, infect God's pure air with an offensive smell of
olive oil. The Mother and Son truly represent the two most conspicuous idols of
Monotheistic Christianity!
For a companion to the idol of
the poor contadini of Barri, go to the rich city of Rio Janeiro. In the Church
of the Duomo del Candelaria, in a long hall running along one side of the
church, there might be seen, a few years ago, another Madonna. Along the walls
of the hall there is a line of saints, each standing on a contribution-box,
which thus forms a fit pedestal. In the centre of this line, under a gorgeously
rich canopy of blue silk, is exhibited the Virgin Mary leaning on the arm of
Christ. "Our Lady" is arrayed in a very decollete blue satin dress
with short
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Vide "Speeches of Pope
Pius IX.," by Don Pasq. di Franciscis; Gladstone's pamphlet on this book;
Draper's "Conflict between Religion and Science," and others.
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sleeves, showing, to great
advantage, a snow-white, exquisitely-moulded neck, shoulders, and arms. The
skirt equally of blue satin with an overskirt of rich lace and gauze puffs, is
as short as that of a ballet-dancer; hardly reaching the knee, it exhibits a
pair of finely-shaped legs covered with flesh colored silk tights, and blue
satin French boots with very high red heels! The blonde hair of this
"Mother of God" is arranged in the latest fashion, with a voluminous
chignon and curls. As she leans on her Son's arm, her face is lovingly turned
toward her Only-Begotten, whose dress and attitude are equally worthy of
admiration. Christ wears an evening dress-coat, with swallow-tail, black
trousers, and low cut white vest; varnished boots, and white kid gloves, over
one of which sparkles a rich diamond ring, worth many thousands we must suppose
-- a precious Brazilian jewel. Above this body of a modern Portuguese dandy, is
a head with the hair parted in the middle; a sad and solemn face, and eyes
whose patient look seems to reflect all the bitterness of this last insult
flung at the majesty of the Crucified.*
The Egyptian Isis was also
represented as a Virgin Mother by her devotees, and as holding her infant son,
Horus, in her arms. In some statues and basso-relievos, when she appears alone
she is either completely nude or veiled from head to foot. But in the
Mysteries, in common with nearly every other goddess, she is entirely veiled
from head to foot, as a symbol of a mother's chastity. It would not do us any
harm were we to borrow from the ancients some of the poetic sentiment in their
religions, and the innate veneration they entertained for their symbols.
It is but fair to say at once
that the last of the true Christians died with the last of the direct apostles.
Max Muller forcibly asks: "How can a missionary in such circumstances meet
the surprise and questions of his pupils, unless he may point to that seed,**
and tell them what Christianity was meant to be? unless he may show that, like
all other religions, Christianity too, has had its history; that the
Christianity of the nineteenth century is not the Christianity of the middle
ages, and that the Christianity of the middle ages was not that of the early
Councils; that the Christianity of the early Councils was not that of the
Apostles, and that what has been said by Christ, that alone was well
said?"***
Thus we may infer that the
only characteristic difference between modern Christianity and the old heathen
faiths is the belief of the former in a personal devil and in hell. "The
Aryan nations had no devil," says Max Muller. "Pluto, though of a
sombre character, was a very
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The fact is given to us by
an eye-witness who has visited the church several times; a Roman Catholic, who
felt perfectly horrified, as he expressed it.
** Referring to the seed
planted by Jesus and his Apostles.
*** "Chips," vol.
i., p. 26, Preface.
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NATIONS.
respectable personage; and
Loki (the Scandinavian), though a mischievous person, was not a fiend. The German
Goddess, Hell, too, like Proserpine, had once seen better days. Thus, when the
Germans were indoctrinated with the idea of a real devil, the Semitic Seth,
Satan or Diabolus, they treated him in the most good-humored way."
The same may be said of hell.
Hades was quite a different place from our region of eternal damnation, and
might be termed rather an intermediate state of purification. Neither does the
Scandinavian Hel or Hela, imply either a state or a place of punishment; for
when Frigga, the grief-stricken mother of Bal-dur, the white god, who died and
found himself in the dark abodes of the shadows (Hades) sent Hermod, a son of
Thor, in quest of her beloved child, the messenger found him in the inexorable
region -- alas! but still comfortably seated on a rock, and reading a book.*
The Norse kingdom of the dead is moreover situated in the higher latitudes of
the Polar regions; it is a cold and cheerless abode, and neither the gelid
halls of Hela, nor the occupation of Baldur present the least similitude to the
blazing hell of eternal fire and the miserable "damned" sinners with
which the Church so generously peoples it. No more is it the Egyptian Amenthes,
the region of judgment and purification; nor the Onderah -- the abyss of
darkness of the Hindus; for even the fallen angels hurled into it by Siva, are
allowed by Parabrahma to consider it as an intermediate state, in which an
opportunity is afforded them to prepare for higher degrees of purification and
redemption from their wretched condition. The Gehenna of the New Testament was
a locality outside the walls of Jerusalem; and in mentioning it, Jesus used but
an ordinary metaphor. Whence then came the dreary dogma of hell, that
Archimedean lever of Christian theology, with which they have succeeded to hold
in subjection the numberless millions of Christians for nineteen centuries?
Assuredly not from the Jewish Scriptures, and we appeal for corroboration to
any well-informed Hebrew scholar.
The only designation of
something approaching hell in the Bible is Gehenna or Hinnom, a valley near
Jerusalem, where was situated Tophet, a place where a fire was perpetually kept
for sanitary purposes. The prophet Jeremiah informs us that the Israelites used
to sacrifice their children to Moloch-Hercules on that spot; and later we find
Christians quietly replacing this divinity by their god of mercy, whose wrath
will not be appeased, unless the Church sacrifices to him her unbaptized
children and sinning sons on the altar of "eternal damnation"!
Whence then did the divine
learn so well the conditions of hell, as
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Mallet: "Northern
Antiquities."
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to actually divide its
torments into two kinds, the poena damni and poenae sensus, the former being
the privation of the beatific vision; the latter the eternal pains in a lake of
fire and brimstone? If they answer us that it is in the Apocalypse (xx. 10), we
are prepared to demonstrate whence the theologist John himself derived the
idea, "And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and
brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are and shall be tormented for
ever and ever," he says. Laying aside the esoteric interpretation that the
"devil" or tempting demon meant our own earthly body, which after
death will surely dissolve in the fiery or ethereal elements,* the word
"eternal" by which our theologians interpret the words "for ever
and ever" does not exist in the Hebrew language, either as a word or
meaning. There is no Hebrew word which properly expresses eternity; [[Heb
char]] oulam, according to Le Clerc, only imports a time whose beginning or end
is not known. While showing that this word does not mean infinite duration, and
that in the Old Testament the word forever only signifies a long time,
Archbishop Tillotson has completely perverted its sense with respect to the
idea of hell-torments. According to his doctrine, when Sodom and Gomorrah are
said to be suffering "eternal fire," we must understand it only in
the sense of that fire not being extinguished till both cities were entirely
consumed. But, as to hell-fire the words must be understood in the strictest
sense of infinite duration. Such is the decree of the learned divine. For the
duration of the punishment of the wicked must be proportionate to the eternal
happiness of the righteous. So he says, "These (speaking of the wicked)
shall go away [[eis kolasin aionion]] into eternal punishment; but the
righteous [[eis zoen aionion]] into life eternal."
The Reverend T. Surnden,**
commenting on the speculations of his predecessors, fills a whole volume with
unanswerable arguments, tending to show that the locality of Hell is in the
sun. We suspect that the reverend speculator had read the Apocalypse in bed,
and had the nightmare in consequence. There are two verses in the Revelation of
John reading thus: "And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun,
and power was given him to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with
great heat, and blasphemed the name of God."*** This is simply Pythagorean
and kabalistic allegory. The idea is new neither with the above-mentioned
author nor with John. Pythagoras placed the "sphere of purification in the
sun," which sun, with its sphere, he moreover
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ether is both pure and
impure fire. The composition of the latter comprises all its visible forms,
such as the "correlation of forces" -- heat, flame, electricity, etc.
The former is the Spirit of Fire. The difference is purely alchemical.
** See "Inquiry into the
Nature and Place of Hell," by Rev. T. Surnden.
*** Revelation xvi. 8-9.
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HELL.
locates in the middle of the
universe,* the allegory having a double meaning: 1. Symbolically, the central,
spiritual sun, the Supreme Deity. Arrived at this region every soul becomes
purified of its sins, and unites itself forever with its spirit, having
previously suffered throughout all the lower spheres. 2. By placing the sphere
of visible fire in the middle of the universe, he simply taught the
heliocentric system which appertained to the Mysteries, and was imparted only
in the higher degree of initiation. John gives to his Word a purely kabalistic
significance, which no "Fathers," except those who had belonged to
the Neo-platonic school, were able to comprehend. Origen understood it well,
having been a pupil of Ammonius Saccas; therefore we see him bravely denying
the perpetuity of hell-torments. He maintains that not only men, but even
devils (by which term he meant disembodied human sinners), after a certain
duration of punishment shall be pardoned and finally restored to heaven.** In
consequence of this and other such heresies Origen was, as a matter of course,
exiled.
Many have been the learned and
truly-inspired speculations as to the locality of hell. The most popular were
those which placed it in the centre of the earth. At a certain time, however,
skeptical doubts which disturbed the placidity of faith in this
highly-refreshing doctrine arose in consequence of the meddling scientists of
those days. As a Mr. Swinden in our own century observes, the theory was
inadmissible because of two objections: 1st, that a fund of fuel or sulphur sufficient
to maintain so furious and constant a fire could not be there supposed; and,
2d, that it must want the nitrous particles in the air to sustain and keep it
alive. "And how," says he, "can a fire be eternal, when, by
degrees, the whole substance of the earth must be consumed thereby?"**
The skeptical gentleman had
evidently forgotten that centuries ago St. Augustine solved the difficulty.
Have we not the word of this learned divine that hell, nevertheless, is in the
centre of the earth, for "God supplies the central fire with air by a
miracle"? The argument is unanswerable, and so we will not seek to upset
it.
The Christians were the first
to make the existence of Satan a dogma of the Church. And once that she had
established it, she had to struggle for over 1,700 years for the repression of
a mysterious force which it was her policy to make appear of diabolical origin.
Unfortunately, in manifesting itself, this force invariably tends to upset such
a belief by the ridiculous discrepancy it presents between the alleged cause
and the effects. If the clergy have not over-estimated the real power of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Aristotle mentions
Pythagoreans who placed the sphere of fire in the sun, and named it Jupiter's
Prison. See "De Coelo," lib. ii.
** "De Civit. Dei,"
I, xxi., c. 17.
*** "Demonologia and
Hell," p. 289.
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the "Arch-Enemy of
God," it must be confessed that he takes mighty precautions against being
recognized as the "Prince of Darkness" who aims at our souls. If
modern "spirits" are devils at all, as preached by the clergy, then
they can only be those "poor" or "stupid devils" whom Max
Muller describes as appearing so often in the German and Norwegian tales.
Notwithstanding this, the
clergy fear above all to be forced to relinquish this hold on humanity. They
are not willing to let us judge of the tree by its fruits, for that might
sometimes force them into dangerous dilemmas. They refuse, likewise, to admit,
with unprejudiced people, that the phenomena of Spiritualism has unquestionably
spiritualized and reclaimed from evil courses many an indomitable atheist and
skeptic. But, as they confess themselves, what is the use in a Pope, if there
is no Devil?
And so Rome sends her ablest
advocates and preachers to the rescue of those perishing in "the
bottomless pit." Rome employs her cleverest writers for this purpose --
albeit they all indignantly deny the accusation -- and in the preface to every
book put forth by the prolific des Mousseaux, the French Tertullian of our
century, we find undeniable proofs of the fact. Among other certificates of
ecclesiastical approval, every volume is ornamented with the text of a certain
original letter addressed to the very pious author by the world-known Father
Ventura de Raulica, of Rome. Few are those who have not heard this famous name.
It is the name of one of the chief pillars of the Latin Church, the ex-General
of the Order of the Theatins, Consultor of the Sacred Congregation of Rites,
Examiner of Bishops, and of the Roman Clergy, etc., etc., etc. This strikingly
characteristic document will remain to astonish future generations by its
spirit of unsophisticated demonolatry and unblushing sincerity. We translate a
fragment verbatim, and by thus helping its circulation hope to merit the
blessings of Mother Church:*
"MONSIEUR AND EXCELLENT FRIEND:
"The greatest victory of
Satan was gained on that day when he succeeded in making himself denied.
"To demonstrate the
existence of Satan, is to reestablish one of the fundamental dogmas of the
Church, which serve as a basis for Christianity, and, without which, Satan
would be but a name. . . .
"Magic, mesmerism,
magnetism, somnambulism, spiritualism, spiritism, hypnotism . . . are only
other names for SATANISM.
"To bring out such a
truth and show it in its proper light, is to unmask the enemy; it is to unveil
the immense danger of certain practices, reputed innocent; it is to deserve
well in the eyes of humanity and of religion.
"FATHER VENTURA DE
RAULICA."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Les Hauts Phenomenes
de la Magie," p. v., Preface.
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DEVIL.
A--men!
This is an unexpected honor indeed,
for our American "controls" in general, and the innocent "Indian
guides" in particular. To be thus introduced in Rome as princes of the
Empire of Eblis, is more than they could ever hope for in other lands.
Without in the least
suspecting that she was working for the future welfare of her enemies -- the
spiritualists and spiritists -- the Church, some twenty years since, in
tolerating des Mousseaux and de Mirville as the biographers of the Devil, and
giving her approbation thereto, tacitly confessed the literary copartnership.
M. the Chevalier Gougenot des
Mousseaux, and his friend and collaborateur, the Marquis Eudes de Mirville, to
judge by their long titles, must be aristocrats pur sang, and they are,
moreover, writers of no small erudition and talent. Were they to show
themselves a little more parsimonious of double points of exclamation following
every vituperation, and invective against Satan and his worshippers, their
style would be faultless. As it is, the crusade against the enemy of mankind was
fierce, and lasted for over twenty years.
What with the Catholics piling
up their psychological phenomena to prove the existence of a personal devil,
and the Count de Gasparin, an ancient minister of Louis Philippe, collecting
volumes of other facts to prove the contrary, the spiritists of France have
contracted an everlasting debt of gratitude toward the disputants. The
existence of an unseen spiritual universe peopled with invisible beings has now
been demonstrated beyond question. Ransacking the oldest libraries, they have
distilled from the historical records the quintessence of evidence. All epochs,
from the Homeric ages down to the present day, have supplied their choicest
materials to these indefatigable authors. In trying to prove the authenticity
of the miracles wrought by Satan in the days preceding the Christian era, as
well as throughout the middle ages, they have simply laid a firm foundation for
a study of the phenomena in our modern times.
Though an ardent,
uncompromising enthusiast, des Mousseaux unwittingly transforms himself into
the tempting demon, or -- as he is fond of calling the Devil -- the
"serpent of Genesis." In his desire to demonstrate in every
manifestation the presence of the Evil One, he only succeeds in demonstrating
that Spiritualism and magic are no new things in the world, but very ancient
twin-brothers, whose origin must be sought for in the earliest infancy of
ancient India, Chaldea, Babylonia, Egypt, Persia, and Greece.
He proves the existence of
"spirits," whether these be angels or devils, with such a clearness
of argument and logic, and such an amount
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of evidence, historical,
irrefutable, and strictly authenticated, that little is left for spiritualist
authors who may come after him. How unfortunate that the scientists, who
believe neither in devil nor spirit, are more than likely to ridicule M. des
Mousseaux's books without reading them, for they really contain so many facts
of profound scientific interest!
But what can we expect in our
own age of unbelief, when we find Plato, over twenty-two centuries ago,
complaining of the same? "Me, too," says he, in his Euthyphron,
"when I say anything in the public assembly concerning divine things, and
predict to them what is going to happen, they ridicule as mad; and although
nothing that I have predicted has proved untrue, yet they envy all such men as
we are. However, we ought not to heed, but pursue our own way."
The literary resources of the
Vatican and other Catholic repositories of learning must have been freely
placed at the disposal of these modern authors. When one has such treasures at
hand -- original manuscripts, papyri, and books pillaged from the richest
heathen libraries; old treatises on magic and alchemy; and records of all the
trials for witchcraft, and sentences for the same to rack, stake, and torture,
it is mighty easy to write volumes of accusations against the Devil. We affirm
on good grounds that there are hundreds of the most valuable works on the
occult sciences, which are sentenced to eternal concealment from the public,
but are attentively read and studied by the privileged who have access to the
Vatican Library. The laws of nature are the same for heathen sorcerer as for
Catholic saint; and a "miracle" may be produced as well by one as by
the other, without the slightest intervention of God or devil.
Hardly had the manifestations
begun to attract attention in Europe, than the clergy commenced their outcry
that their traditional enemy had reappeared under another name, and
"divine miracles" also began to be heard of in isolated instances.
First they were confined to humble individuals, some of whom claimed to have
them produced through the intervention of the Virgin Mary, saints and angels;
others -- according to the clergy -- began to suffer from obsession and
possession; for the Devil must have his share of fame as well as the Deity. Finding
that, notwithstanding the warning, the independent, or so-called spiritual
phenomena went on increasing and multiplying, and that these manifestations
threatened to upset the carefully-constructed dogmas of the Church, the world
was suddenly startled by extraordinary intelligence. In 1864, a whole community
became possessed of the Devil. Morzine, and the awful stories of its demoniacs;
Valleyres, and the narratives of its well-authenticated exhibitions of sorcery;
and those of the Presbytere de Cideville curdled the blood in Catholic veins.
Strange to say, the question
has been asked over and over again,
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IN RUSSIA.
why the "divine"
miracles and most of the obsessions are so strictly confined to Roman Catholic
dioceses and countries? Why is it that since the Reformation there has been
scarcely one single divine "miracle" in a Protestant land? Of course,
the answer we must expect from Catholics is, that the latter are peopled by
heretics, and abandoned by God. Then why are there no more Church-miracles in
Russia, a country whose religion differs from the Roman Catholic faith but in
external forms of rites, its fundamental dogmas being identically the same,
except as to the emanation of the Holy Ghost? Russia has her accepted saints
and thaumaturgical relics, and miracle-working images. The St. Mitrophaniy of
Voroneg is an authenticated miracle-worker, but his miracles are limited to
healing; and though hundreds upon hundreds have been healed through faith, and
though the old cathedral is full of magnetic effluvia, and whole generations
will go on believing in his power, and some persons will always be healed,
still no such miracles are heard of in Russia as the Madonna-walking, and
Madonna letter-writing, and statue-talking of Catholic countries. Why is this
so? Simply because the emperors have strictly forbidden that sort of thing. The
Czar, Peter the Great, stopped every spurious "divine" miracle with
one frown of his mighty brow. He declared he would have no false miracles
played by the holy icones (images of saints), and they disappeared forever.*
There are cases on record of
isolated and independent phenomena exhibited by certain images in the last
century; the latest was the bleeding of the cheek of an image of the Virgin,
when a soldier of Napoleon cut her face in two. This miracle, alleged to have
happened in 1812, in the days of the invasion by the "grand army,"
was the final farewell.**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Dr. Stanley: "Lectures
on the Eastern Church," p. 407.
** In the government of Tambov,
a gentleman, a rich landed proprietor, had a curious case happen in his family
during the Hungarian campaign of 1848. His only and much-beloved nephew, whom,
having no children, he had adopted as a son, was in the Russian army. The
elderly couple had a portrait of his -- a water-color painting -- constantly,
during the meals, placed on the table in front of the young man's usual seat.
One evening as the family, with some friends, were at their early tea, the
glass over the portrait, without any one touching it, was shattered to atoms
with a loud explosion. As the aunt of the young soldier caught the picture in
her hand she saw the forehead and head besmeared with blood. The guests, in
order to quiet her, attributed the blood to her having cut her fingers with the
broken glass. But, examine as they would, they could not find the vestige of a
cut on her fingers, and no one had touched the picture but herself. Alarmed at
her state of excitement the husband, pretending to examine the portrait more
closely, cut his finger on purpose, and then tried to assure her that it was
his blood and that, in the first excitement, he had touched the frame without
any one remarking it. All was in vain, the old lady felt sure that Dimitry was
killed. She began to have masses said for him daily at the village church, and
arrayed [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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But since then, although the
three successive emperors have been pious men, their will has been respected,
and the images and saints have remained quiet, and hardly been spoken of except
as connected with religious worship. In Poland, a land of furious
ultramontanism, there were, at different times, desperate attempts at
miracle-doing. They died at birth, however, for the argus-eyed police were
there; a Catholic miracle in Poland, made public by the priests, generally
meaning political revolution, bloodshed, and war.
Is it then, not permissible to
at least suspect that if, in one country divine miracles may be arrested by
civil and military law, and in another they never occur, we must search for the
explanation of the two facts in some natural cause, instead of attributing them
to either god or devil? In our opinion -- if it is worth anything -- the whole
secret may be accounted for as follows. In Russia, the clergy know better than
to bewilder their parishes, whose piety is sincere and faith strong without
miracles; they know that nothing is better calculated than the latter to sow
seeds of distrust, doubt, and finally of skepticism which leads directly to
atheism. Moreover the climate is less propitious, and the magnetism of the
average population too positive, too healthy, to call forth independent
phenomena; and fraud would not answer. On the other hand, neither in Protestant
Germany, nor England, nor yet in America, since the days of the Reformation,
has the clergy had access to any of the Vatican secret libraries. Hence they
are all but poor hands at the magic of Albertus Magnus.
As for America being
overflowed with sensitives and mediums, the reason for it is partially
attributable to climatic influence and especially to the physiological condition
of the population. Since the days of the Salem witchcraft, 200 years ago, when
the comparatively few settlers had pure and unadulterated blood in their veins,
nothing much had been heard of "spirits" or "mediums" until
1840.* The phenomena then first appeared among the ascetic and exalted Shakers,
whose religious aspirations, peculiar mode of life, moral purity, and physical
chastity all led to the production of independent phenomena of a psychological
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from next
page]] the whole household in deep mourning. Several weeks later, an official
communication was received from the colonel of the regiment, stating that their
nephew was killed by a fragment of a shell which had carried off the upper part
of his head.
* Executions for witchcraft
took place, not much later than a century ago, in other of the American
provinces. Notoriously there were negroes executed in New Jersey by burning at
the stake -- the penalty denounced in several States. Even in South Carolina,
in 1865, when the State government was "reconstructed," after the
civil war, the statutes inflicting death for witchcraft were found to be still
unrepealed. It is not a hundred years since they have been enforced to the
murderous letter of their text.
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AMERICAN TYPE.
as well as physical nature.
Hundreds of thousands, and even millions of men from various climates and of
different constitutions and habits, have, since 1692, invaded North America,
and by intermarrying have substantially changed the physical type of the
inhabitants. Of what country in the world do the women's constitutions bear
comparison with the delicate, nervous, and sensitive constitutions of the
feminine portion of the population of the United States? We were struck on our
arrival in the country with the semi-transparent delicacy of skin of the
natives of both sexes. Compare a hard-working Irish factory girl or boy, with
one from a genuine American family. Look at their hands. One works as hard as
the other; they are of equal age, and both seemingly healthy; and still, while
the hands of the one, after an hour's soaping, will show a skin little softer
than that of a young alligator, those of the other, notwithstanding constant
use, will allow you to observe the circulation of the blood under the thin and
delicate epidermis. No wonder, then, that while America is the conservatory of
sensitives the majority of its clergy, unable to produce divine or any other
miracles, stoutly deny the possibility of any phenomena except those produced
by tricks and juggling. And no wonder also that the Catholic priesthood, who
are practically aware of the existence of magic and spiritual phenomena, and
believe in them while dreading their consequences, try to attribute the whole
to the agency of the Devil.
Let us adduce one more
argument, if only for the sake of circumstantial evidence. In what countries
have "divine miracles" flourished most, been most frequent and most
stupendous? Catholic Spain, and Pontifical Italy, beyond question. And which
more than these two, has had access to ancient literature? Spain was famous for
her libraries; the Moors were celebrated for their profound learning in alchemy
and other sciences. The Vatican is the storehouse of an immense number of
ancient manuscripts. During the long interval of nearly 1,500 years they have
been accumulating, from trial after trial, books and manuscripts confiscated
from their sentenced victims, to their own profit. The Catholics may plead that
the books were generally committed to the flames; that the treatises of famous
sorcerers and enchanters perished with their accursed authors. But the Vatican,
if it could speak, could tell a different story. It knows too well of the
existence of certain closets and rooms, access to which is had but by the very
few. It knows that the entrances to these secret hiding-places are so cleverly
concealed from sight in the carved frame-work and under the profuse
ornamentation of the library-walls, that there have even been Popes who lived
and died within the precincts of the palace without ever suspecting their
existence. But these Popes were neither Sylvester II., Benedict IX., John XX.,
nor
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the VIth and VIIth Gregory;
nor yet the famous Borgia of toxicological memory. Neither were those who
remained ignorant of the hidden lore friends of the sons of Loyola.
Where, in the records of
European Magic, can we find cleverer enchanters than in the mysterious
solitudes of the cloister? Albert Magnus, the famous Bishop and conjurer of
Ratisbon, was never surpassed in his art. Roger Bacon was a monk, and Thomas
Aquinas one of the most learned pupils of Albertus. Trithemius, Abbott of the
Spanheim Benedictines, was the teacher, friend, and confidant of Cornelius
Agrippa; and while the confederations of the Theosophists were scattered
broadcast about Germany, where they first originated, assisting one another,
and struggling for years for the acquirement of esoteric knowledge, any person
who knew how to become the favored pupil of certain monks, might very soon be
proficient in all the important branches of occult learning.
This is all in history and
cannot be easily denied. Magic, in all its aspects, was widely and nearly
openly practiced by the clergy till the Reformation. And even he who was once
called the "Father of the Reformation," the famous John Reuchlin,*
author of the Mirific Word and friend of Pico di Mirandola, the teacher and
instructor of Erasmus, Luther, and Melancthon, was a kabalist and occultist.
The ancient Sortilegium, or
divination by means of Sortes or lots -- an art and practice now decried by the
clergy as an abomination, designated by Stat. 10 Jac. as felony,** and by Stat.
12 Carolus II excepted out of the general pardons, on the ground of being
sorcery -- was widely practiced by the clergy and monks. Nay, it was sanctioned
by St. Augustine himself, who does not "disapprove of this method of
learning futurity, provided it be not used for worldly purposes." More
than that, he confesses having practiced it himself.***
Aye; but the clergy called it
Sortes Sanctorum, when it was they who practiced it; while the Sortes
Praenestinae, succeeded by the Sortes Homericae and Sortes Virgilianae, were
abominable heathenism, the worship of the Devil, when used by any one else.
Gregory de Tours informs us
that when the clergy resorted to the Sortes their custom was to lay the Bible on
the altar, and to pray the Lord that He would discover His will, and disclose
to them futurity in one of the verses of the book. Gilbert de Nogent writes
that in his days
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Vide the title-page on the
English translation of Mayerhoff's "Reuchlin und Seine Zeit," Berlin,
1830. "The Life and Times of John Reuchlin, or Capnion, the Father of the
German Reformation," by F. Barham, London, 1843.
** Lord Coke: 3
"Institutes," fol. 44.
*** Vide "The Life of St.
Gregory of Tours."
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THE "LOT."
(about the twelfth century)
the custom was, at the consecration of bishops, to consult the Sortes
Sanctorum, to thereby learn the success and fate of the episcopate. On the
other hand, we are told that the Sortes Sanctorum were condemned by the Council
of Agda, in 506. In this case again we are left to inquire, in which instance
has the infallibility of the Church failed? Was it when she prohibited that
which was practiced by her greatest saint and patron, Augustine, or in the
twelfth century, when it was openly and with the sanction of the same Church
practiced by the clergy for the benefit of the bishop's elections? Or, must we
still believe that in both of these contradictory cases the Vatican was
inspired by the direct "spirit of God"?
If any doubt that Gregory of
Tours approved of a practice that prevails to this day, more or less, even
among strict Protestants, let them read this: "Lendastus, Earl of Tours,
who was for ruining me with Queen Fredegonde, coming to Tours, big with evil
designs against me, I withdrew to my oratory under a deep concern, where I took
the Psalms, . . . My heart revived within me when I cast my eyes on this of the
seventy-seventh Psalm: 'He caused them to go on with confidence, whilst the sea
swallowed up their enemies.' Accordingly, the count spoke not a word to my
prejudice; and leaving Tours that very day, the boat in which he was, sunk in a
storm, but his skill in swimming saved him."
The sainted bishop simply
confesses here to having practiced a bit of sorcery. Every mesmerizer knows the
power of will during an intense desire bent on any particular subject. Whether
in consequence of "co-incidents" or otherwise, the opened verse
suggested to his mind revenge by drowning. Passing the remainder of the day in
"deep concern," and possessed by this all-absorbing thought, the
saint -- it may be unconsciously -- exercises his will on the subject; and thus
while imagining in the accident the hand of God, he simply becomes a sorcerer
exercising his magnetic will which reacts on the person feared; and the count barely
escapes with his life. Were the accident decreed by God, the culprit would have
been drowned; for a simple bath could not have altered his malevolent
resolution against St. Gregory had he been very intent on it.
Furthermore, we find anathemas
fulminated against this lottery of fate, at the council of Varres, which
forbids "all ecclesiastics, under pain of excommunication, to perform that
kind of divination, or to pry into futurity, by looking into any book, or
writing, whatsoever." The same prohibition is pronounced at the councils
of Agda in 506, of Orleans, in 511, of Auxerre in 595, and finally at the
council of Aenham in 1110; the latter condemning "sorcerers, witches,
diviners, such as occasioned death by magical operations, and who practiced
fortune-telling by the
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holy-book lots"; and the
complaint of the joint clergy against de Garlande, their bishop at Orleans, and
addressed to Pope Alexander III., concludes in this manner: "Let your
apostolical hands put on strength to strip naked the iniquity of this man, that
the curse prognosticated on the day of his consecration may overtake him; for
the gospels being opened on the altar according to custom, the first words
were: and the young man, leaving his linen cloth, fled from them naked."*
Why then roast the
lay-magicians and consulters of books, and canonize the ecclesiastics? Simply
because the mediaeval as well as the modern phenomena, manifested through
laymen, whether produced through occult knowledge or happening independently,
upset the claims of both the Catholic and Protestant Churches to divine
miracles. In the face of reiterated and unimpeachable evidence it became
impossible for the former to maintain successfully the assertion that seemingly
miraculous manifestations by the "good angels" and God's direct
intervention could be produced exclusively by her chosen ministers and holy
saints. Neither could the Protestant well maintain on the same ground that
miracles had ended with the apostolic ages. For, whether of the same nature or
not, the modern phenomena claimed close kinship with the biblical ones. The
magnetists and healers of our century came into direct and open competition
with the apostles. The Zouave Jacob, of France, had outrivalled the prophet
Elijah in recalling to life persons who were seemingly dead; and Alexis, the
somnambulist, mentioned by Mr. Wallace in his work,** was, by his lucidity,
putting to shame apostles, prophets, and the Sibyls of old. Since the burning
of the last witch, the great Revolution of France, so elaborately prepared by
the league of the secret societies and their clever emissaries, had blown over
Europe and awakened terror in the bosom of the clergy. It had, like a
destroying hurricane, swept away in its course those best allies of the Church,
the Roman Catholic aristocracy. A sure foundation was now laid for the right of
individual opinion. The world was freed from ecclesiastical tyranny by opening
an unobstructed path to Napoleon the Great, who had given the deathblow to the
Inquisition. This great slaughter-house of the Christian Church -- wherein she
butchered, in the name of the Lamb, all the sheep arbitrarily declared scurvy
-- was in ruins, and she found herself left to her own responsibility and
resources.
So long as the phenomena had
appeared only sporadically, she had always felt herself powerful enough to
repress the consequences. Super-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Translated from the original
document in the Archives of Orleans, France; also see "Sortes and
Sortilegium"; "Life of Peter de Blois."
** "Miracles and Modern
Spiritualism."
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stition and belief in the
Devil were as strong as ever, and Science had not yet dared to publicly measure
her forces with those of supernatural Religion. Meanwhile the enemy had slowly
but surely gained ground. All at once it broke out with an unexpected violence.
"Miracles" began to appear in full daylight, and passed from their mystic
seclusion into the domain of natural law, where the profane hand of Science was
ready to strip off their sacerdotal mask. Still, for a time, the Church held
her position, and with the powerful help of superstitious fear checked the
progress of the intruding force. But, when in succession appeared mesmerists
and somnambulists, reproducing the physical and mental phenomenon of ecstasy,
hitherto believed to be the special gift of saints; when the passion for the
turning tables had reached in France and elsewhere its climax of fury; when the
psychography -- alleged spiritual -- from a simple curiosity had developed
itself and settled into an unabated interest, and finally ebbed into religious
mysticism; when the echoes aroused by the first raps of Rochester, crossing the
oceans, spread until they were re-percussed from nearly every corner of the
world -- then, and only then, the Latin Church was fully awakened to a sense of
danger. Wonder after wonder was reported to have occurred in the spiritual
circles and the lecture-rooms of the mesmerists; the sick were healed, the
blind made to see, the lame to walk, the deaf to hear. J. R. Newton in America,
and Du Potet in France, were healing the multitude without the slightest claim
to divine intervention. The great discovery of Mesmer, which reveals to the
earnest inquirer the mechanism of nature, mastered, as if by magical power,
organic and inorganic bodies.
But this was not the worst. A
more direful calamity for the Church occurred in the evocation from the upper
and nether worlds of a multitude of "spirits," whose private bearing
and conversation gave the direct lie to the most cherished and profitable
dogmas of the Church. These "spirits" claimed to be the identical
entities, in a disembodied state, of fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters,
friends and acquaintances of the persons viewing the weird phenomena. The Devil
seemed to have no objective existence, and this struck at the very foundation
upon which the chair of St. Peter rested.* Not a spirit except the mocking
manni-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* There were two chairs of the
titular apostle at Rome. The clergy, frightened at the uninterrupted evidence
furnished by scientific research, at last decided to confront the enemy, and we
find the "Chronique des Arts" giving the cleverest, and at the same
time most Jesuitical, explanation of the fact. According to their story,
"The increase in the number of the faithful decided Peter upon making Rome
henceforth the centre of his action. The cemetery of Ostrianum was too distant
and would not suffice for the reunions of the Christians. The motive which had
induced the Apostle to confer on Linus and Cletus successively the episcopal
character, in order to render them capa-
[[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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kins of Planchette would
confess to the most distant relationship with the Satanic majesty, or accredit
him with the governorship of a single inch of territory. The clergy felt their
prestige growing weaker every day, as they saw the people impatiently shaking
off, in the broad daylight of truth, the dark veils with which they had been
blindfolded for so many centuries. Then finally, fortune, which previously had
been on their side in the long-waged conflict between theology and science,
deserted to their adversary. The help of the latter to the study of the occult
side of nature was truly precious and timely, and science has unwittingly
widened the once narrow path of the phenomena into a broad highway. Had not
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] ble of sharing the solicitudes of a church whose extent was to be
without limits, led naturally to a multiplication of the places of meeting. The
particular residence of Peter was therefore fixed at Viminal; and there was
established that mysterious Chair, the symbol of power and truth. The august
seat which was venerated at the Ostrian Catacombs was not, however, removed.
Peter still visited this cradle of the Roman Church, and often, without doubt,
exercised his holy functions there. A second Chair, expressing the same mystery
as the first, was set up at Cornelia, and it is this which has come down to us
through the ages."
Now, so far from it being
possible that there ever were two genuine chairs of this kind, the majority of
critics show that Peter never was at Rome at all; the reasons are many and
unanswerable. Perhaps we had best begin by pointing to the works of Justin
Martyr. This great champion of Christianity, writing in the early part of the
second century in Rome, where he fixed his abode, eager to get hold of the
least proof in favor of the truth for which he suffered, seems perfectly
unconscious of St. Peter's existence!!
Neither does any other writer
of any consequence mention him in connection with the Church of Rome, earlier
than the days of Irenaeus, when the latter set himself to invent a new
religion, drawn from the depths of his imagination. We refer the reader anxious
to learn more to the able work of Mr. George Reber, entitled "The Christ
of Paul." The arguments of this author are conclusive. The above article
in the "Chronique des Arts," speaks of the increase of the faithful
to such an extent that Ostrianum could not contain the number of Christians.
Now, if Peter was at Rome at all -- runs Mr. Reber's argument -- it must have
been between the years A.D. 64 and 69; for at 64 he was at Babylon, from whence
he wrote epistles and letters to Rome, and at some time between 64 and 68 (the
reign of Nero) he either died a martyr or in his bed, for Irenaeus makes him
deliver the Church of Rome, together with Paul (! ?) (whom he persecuted and
quarrelled with all his life), into the hands of Linus, who became bishop in 69
(see Reber's "Christ of Paul," p. 122). We will treat of it more
fully in chapter iii.
Now, we ask, in the name of common
sense, how could the faithful of Peter's Church increase at such a rate, when
Nero trapped and killed them like so many mice during his reign? History shows
the few Christians fleeing from Rome, wherever they could, to avoid the
persecution of the emperor, and the "Chronique des Arts" makes them
increase and multiply! "Christ," the article goes on to say,
"willed that this visible sign of the doctrinal authority of his vicar
should also have its portion of immortality; one can follow it from age to age
in the documents of the Roman Church." Tertullian formally attests its
existence in his book "De Praescriptionibus." Eager to learn
everything concerning so interesting a subject, we would like to be shown when
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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PETER.
this conflict culminated at
the nick of time, we might have seen reproduced on a miniature scale the
disgraceful scenes of the episodes of Salem witchcraft and the Nuns of Loudun.
As it was, the clergy were muzzled.
But if Science has
unintentionally helped the progress of the occult phenomena, the latter have reciprocally
aided science herself. Until the days when newly-reincarnated philosophy boldly
claimed its place in the world, there had been but few scholars who had
undertaken the difficult task of studying comparative theology. This science
occupies a domain heretofore penetrated by few explorers. The necessity which
it involved of being well acquainted with the dead languages, necessarily
limited the number of students. Besides, there was less popular need for it so
long as people could not replace the Christian orthodoxy by something more
tangible. It is one of the most undeniable facts of psychology, that the
average man can as little exist out of a religious element of some kind, as a
fish out of the water. The voice of truth, "a voice stronger than the
voice of the mightiest thunder," speaks to the inner man in the nineteenth
century of the Christian era, as it spoke in the corresponding century B.C. It
is a useless and unprofitable task to offer to humanity the choice between a
future life and annihilation. The only chance that remains for those friends of
human progress who seek to establish for the good of mankind a faith,
henceforth stripped entirely of superstition
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] did Christ WILL anything of the kind? However: "Ornaments
of ivory have been fitted to the front and back of the chair, but only on those
parts repaired with acacia-wood. Those which cover the panel in front are
divided into three superimposed rows, each containing six plaques of ivory, on
which are engraved various subjects, among others the 'Labors of Hercules.'
Several of the plaques were wrongly placed, and seemed to have been affixed to
the chair at a time when the remains of antiquity were employed as ornaments,
without much regard to fitness." This is the point. The article was
written simply as a clever answer to several facts published during the present
century. Bower, in his "History of the Popes" (vol. ii., p. 7),
narrates that in the year 1662, while cleaning one of the chairs, "the
'Twelve Labors of Hercules' unluckily appeared engraved upon it," after
which the chair was removed and another substituted. But in 1795, when
Bonaparte's troops occupied Rome, the chair was again examined. This time there
was found the Mahometan confession of faith, in Arabic letters: "There is
no Deity but Allah, and Mahomet is his Apostle." (See appendix to
"Ancient Symbol-Worship," by H. M. Westropp and C. Staniland Wake.)
In the appendix Prof. Alexander Wilder very justly remarks as follows: "We
presume that the Apostle of the Circumcision, as Paul, his great rival, styles
him, was never at the Imperial City, nor had a successor there, not even in the
ghetto. The 'Chair of Peter,' therefore, is sacred rather than apostolical. Its
sanctity proceeded, however, from the esoteric religion of the former times of
Rome. The hierophant of the Mysteries probably occupied it on the day of
initiations, when exhibiting to the candidates the Petroma (stone tablet
containing the last revelation made by the hierophant to the neophyte for
initiation)."
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and dogmatic fetters is to
address them in the words of Joshua: "Choose ye this day whom you will
serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side
of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell."*
"The science of
religion," wrote Max Muller in 1860, "is only just beginning. . . .
During the last fifty years the authentic documents of the most important
religions in the world have been recovered in a most unexpected and almost
miraculous manner.** We have now before us the Canonical books of Buddhism; the
Zend-Avesta of Zoroaster is no longer a sealed book; and the hymns of the
Rig-Veda have revealed a state of religions anterior to the first beginnings of
that mythology which in Homer and Hesiod stands before us as a mouldering
ruin."***
In their insatiable desire to
extend the dominion of blind faith, the early architects of Christian theology
had been forced to conceal, as much as it was possible, the true sources of the
same. To this end they are said to have burned or otherwise destroyed all the
original manuscripts on the Kabala, magic, and occult sciences upon which they
could lay their hands. They ignorantly supposed that the most dangerous
writings of this class had perished with the last Gnostic; but some day they
may discover their mistake. Other authentic and as important documents will
perhaps reappear in a "most unexpected and almost miraculous manner."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Joshua xxiv., 15.
** One of the most surprising
facts that have come under our observation, is that students of profound
research should not couple the frequent recurrence of these "unexpected
and almost miraculous" discoveries of important documents, at the most
opportune moments, with a premeditated design. Is it so strange that the
custodians of "Pagan" lore, seeing that the proper moment had
arrived, should cause the needed document, book, or relic to fall as if by
accident in the right man's way? Geological surveyors and explorers even as
competent as Humboldt and Tschuddi, have not discovered the hidden mines from
which the Peruvian Incas dug their treasure, although the latter confesses that
the present degenerate Indians have the secret. In 1839, Perring, the archaeologist,
proposed to the sheik of an Arab village two purses of gold, if he helped him
to discover the entrance to the hidden passage leading to the sepulchral
chambers in the North Pyramid of Doshoor. But though his men were out of
employment and half-starved, the sheik proudly refused to "sell the secret
of the dead," promising to show it gratis, when the time would come for
it. Is it, then, impossible that in some other regions of the earth are guarded
the remains of that glorious literature of the past, which was the fruit of its
majestic civilization? What is there so surprising in the idea? Who knows but
that as the Christian Church has unconsciously begotten free thought by
reaction against her own cruelty, rapacity, and dogmatism, the public mind may
be glad to follow the lead of the Orientalists, away from Jerusalem and towards
Ellora; and that then much more will be discovered that is now hidden?
*** "Chips from a German
Workshop," vol. i., p. 373; Semitic Monotheism.
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BRUCKION.
There are strange traditions
current in various parts of the East -- on Mount Athos and in the Desert of
Nitria, for instance -- among certain monks, and with learned Rabbis in
Palestine, who pass their lives in commenting upon the Talmud. They say that
not all the rolls and manuscripts, reported in history to have been burned by
Caesar, by the Christian mob, in 389, and by the Arab General Amru, perished as
it is commonly believed; and the story they tell is the following: At the time
of the contest for the throne, in 51 B.C., between Cleopatra and her brother
Dionysius Ptolemy, the Bruckion, which contained over seven hundred thousand
rolls, all bound in wood and fire-proof parchment, was undergoing repairs, and
a great portion of the original manuscripts, considered among the most
precious, and which were not duplicated, were stored away in the house of one
of the librarians. As the fire which consumed the rest was but the result of
accident, no precautions had been taken at the time. But they add, that several
hours passed between the burning of the fleet, set on fire by Caesar's order,
and the moment when the first buildings situated near the harbor caught fire in
their turn; and that all the librarians, aided by several hundred slaves
attached to the museum, succeeded in saving the most precious of the rolls. So
perfect and solid was the fabric of the parchment, that while in some rolls the
inner pages and the wood-binding were reduced to ashes, of others the parchment
binding remained unscorched. These particulars were all written out in Greek,
Latin, and the Chaldeo-Syriac dialect, by a learned youth named Theodas, one of
the scribes employed in the museum. One of these manuscripts is alleged to be
preserved till now in a Greek convent; and the person who narrated the
tradition to us had seen it himself. He said that many more will see it and learn
where to look for important documents, when a certain prophecy will be
fulfilled; adding, that most of these works could be found in Tartary and
India.* The monk showed us a copy of the original, which, of course, we could
read but poorly, as we claim but little erudition in the matter of dead
languages. But we were so particularly struck by the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* An after-thought has made us
fancy that we can understand what is meant by the following sentences of Moses
of Chorene: "The ancient Asiatics," says he, "five centuries
before our era -- and especially the Hindus, the Persians, and the Chaldeans,
had in their possession a quantity of historical and scientific books. These
works were partially borrowed, partially translated in the Greek language,
mostly since the Ptolemies had established the Alexandrian library and
encouraged the writers by their liberalities, so that the Greek language became
the deposit of all the sciences" ("History of Armenia").
Therefore, the greater part of the literature included in the 700,000 volumes
of the Alexandrian Library was due to India, and her next neighbors.
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the vivid and picturesque
translation of the holy father, that we perfectly remember some curious
paragraphs, which run, as far as we can recall them, as follows: -- "When
the Queen of the Sun (Cleopatra) was brought back to the half-ruined city,
after the fire had devoured the Glory of the World; and when she saw the
mountains of books -- or rolls -- covering the half-consumed steps of the
estrada; and when she perceived that the inside was gone and the indestructible
covers alone remained, she wept in rage and fury, and cursed the meanness of
her fathers who had grudged the cost of the real Pergamos for the inside as
well as the outside of the precious rolls." Further, our author, Theodas,
indulges in a joke at the expense of the queen for believing that nearly all
the library was burned; when, in fact, hundreds and thousands of the choicest
books were safely stored in his own house and those of other scribes,
librarians, students, and philosophers.
No more do sundry very learned
Copts scattered all over the East in Asia Minor, Egypt, and Palestine believe
in the total destruction of the subsequent libraries. For instance, they say
that out of the library of Attalus III. of Pergamus, presented by Antony to
Cleopatra, not a volume was destroyed. At that time, according to their
assertions, from the moment that the Christians began to gain power in
Alexandria -- about the end of the fourth century -- and Anatolius, Bishop of
Laodicea, began to insult the national gods, the Pagan philosophers and learned
theurgists adopted effective measures to preserve the repositories of their
sacred learning. Theophilus, a bishop, who left behind him the reputation of a
most rascally and mercenary villain, was accused by one named Antoninus, a
famous theurgist and eminent scholar of occult science of Alexandria, with
bribing the slaves of the Serapion to steal books which he sold to foreigners
at great prices. History tells us how Theophilus had the best of the
philosophers, in A.D. 389; and how his successor and nephew, the no less
infamous Cyril, butchered Hypatia. Suidas gives us some details about
Antoninus, whom he calls Antonius, and his eloquent friend Olympus, the
defender of the Serapion. But history is far from being complete in the
miserable remnants of books, which, crossing so many ages, have reached our own
learned century; it fails to give the facts relating to the first five
centuries of Christianity which are preserved in the numerous traditions
current in the East. Unauthenticated as these may appear, there is
unquestionably in the heap of chaff much good grain. That these traditions are
not oftener communicated to Europeans is not strange, when we consider how apt
our travellers are to render themselves antagonistic to the natives by their
skeptical bearing and, occasionally, dogmatic intolerance. When exceptional men
like some archaeologists, who knew how to win the
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ISHMONIA.
confidence and even friendship
of certain Arabs, are favored with precious documents, it is declared simply a
"coincidence." And yet there are widespread traditions of the
existence of certain subterranean, and immense galleries, in the neighborhood
of Ishmonia -- the "petrified City," in which are stored numberless
manuscripts and rolls. For no amount of money would the Arabs go near it. At
night, they say, from the crevices of the desolate ruins, sunk deep in the
unwatered sands of the desert, stream the rays from lights carried to and fro
in the galleries by no human hands. The Afrites study the literature of the
antediluvian ages, according to their belief, and the Djin learns from the
magic rolls the lesson of the following day.
The Encyclopedia Britannica,
in its article on Alexandria, says: "When the temple of Serapis was
demolished . . . the valuable library was pillaged or destroyed; and twenty
years afterwards* the empty shelves excited the regret . . . etc." But it
does not state the subsequent fate of the pillaged books.
In rivalry of the fierce
Mary-worshippers of the fourth century, the modern clerical persecutors of
liberalism and "heresy" would willingly shut up all the heretics and
their books in some modern Serapion and burn them alive.** The cause of this
hatred is natural. Modern research has more than ever unveiled the secret.
"Is not the worship of saints and angels now," said Bishop Newton,
years ago, "in all respects the same that the worship of demons was in
former times? The name only is different, the thing is identically the same . .
. the very same temples, the very same images, which were once consecrated to
Jupiter and the other demons, are now consecrated to the Virgin Mary and other
saints . . . the whole of Paganism is converted and applied to Popery."
Why not be impartial and add
that "a good portion of it was adopted by Protestant religions also"?
The very apostolic designation
Peter is from the Mysteries. The hierophant or supreme pontiff bore the
Chaldean title [[Heb char]], Peter, or interpreter. The names Phtah, Peth'r,
the residence of Balaam, Patara, and Patras, the names of oracle-cities,
pateres or pateras and, perhaps,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Bonamy says in "La
Bibliotheque d'Alexandrie," quoting, we suppose, the Presbyter Orosius,
who was an eye-witness, "thirty years later."
** Since the above was
written, the spirit here described has been beautifully exemplified at
Barcelona, Spain, where the Bishop Fray Joachim invited the local spiritualists
to witness a formal burning of spiritual books. We find the account in a paper
called "The Revelation," published at Alicante, which sensibly adds
that the performance was "a caricature of the memorable epoch of the
Inquisition."
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Buddha,* all come from the
same root. Jesus says: "Upon this petra I will build my Church, and the
gates, or rulers of Hades, shall not prevail against it"; meaning by petra
the rock-temple, and by metaphor, the Christian Mysteries; the adversaries to
which were the old mystery-gods of the underworld, who were worshipped in the
rites of Isis, Adonis, Atys, Sabazius, Dionysus, and the Eleusinia. No apostle
Peter was ever at Rome; but the Pope, seizing the sceptre of the Pontifex Maximus,
the keys of Janus and Kubele, and adorning his Christian head with the cap of
the Magna Mater, copied from that of the tiara of Brahmatma, the Supreme
Pontiff of the Initiates of old India, became the successor of the Pagan high
priest, the real Peter-Roma, or Petroma.**
The Roman Catholic Church has
two far mightier enemies than the "heretics" and the
"infidels"; and these are -- Comparative Mythology and Philology.
When such eminent divines as the Rev. James Freeman Clarke go so much out of
their way to prove to their readers that "Critical Theology from the time
of Origen and Jerome . . . and the Controversial Theology during fifteen
centuries, has not consisted in accepting on authority the opinions of other
people," but has shown, on the contrary, much "acute and
comprehensive reasoning," we can but regret that so much scholarship
should have been wasted in attempting to prove that which a fair survey of the
history of theology upsets at every step. In these "controversies"
and critical treatment of the doctrines of the Church one can certainly find
any amount of "acute reasoning," but far more of a still acuter
sophistry.
Recently the mass of
cumulative evidence has been re-inforced to an extent which leaves little, if
any, room for further controversy. A conclusive opinion is furnished by too
many scholars to doubt the fact that India was the Alma-Mater, not only of the
civilization, arts, and sciences, but also of all the great religions of
antiquity; Judaism, and hence Christianity, included. Herder places the cradle
of humanity in India, and shows Moses as a clever and relatively modern
compiler of the ancient Brahmanical traditions: "The river which encircles
the country (India) is the sacred Ganges, which all Asia considers as the
paradisaical river. There, also, is the biblical Gihon, which is none else but
the Indus. The Arabs call it so unto this day, and the names of the countries
watered by it are yet existing among the Hindus." Jacolliot claims to have
translated every ancient palm-leaf manuscript which he had the fortune of being
allowed by the Brahmans of the pagodas to see. In one of his
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* E. Pococke gives the variations
of the name Buddha as: Bud'ha, Buddha, Booddha, Butta, Pout, Pote, Pto, Pte,
Phte, Phtha, Phut, etc., etc. See "India in Greece," Note, Appendix,
397.
** The tiara of the Pope is
also a perfect copy of that of the Dalai-Lama of Thibet.
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AND KEYS.
translations, we found
passages which reveal to us the undoubted origin of the keys of St. Peter, and
account for the subsequent adoption of the symbol by their Holinesses, the
Popes of Rome.
He shows us, on the testimony
of the Agrouchada Parikshai, which he freely translates as "the Book of
Spirits" (Pitris), that centuries before our era the initiates of the
temple chose a Superior Council, presided over by the Brahm-atma or supreme
chief of all these Initiates. That this pontificate, which could be exercised
only by a Brahman who had reached the age of eighty years;* that the Brahm-atma
was sole guardian of the mystic formula, resume of every science, contained in
the three mysterious letters,
A
U M
which signify creation,
conservation, and transformation. He alone could expound its meaning in the
presence of the initiates of the third and supreme degree. Whomsoever among
these initiates revealed to a profane a single one of the truths, even the
smallest of the secrets entrusted to his care, was put to death. He who
received the confidence had to share his fate.
"Finally, to crown this
able system," says Jacolliot, "there existed a word still more
superior to the mysterious monosyllable -- A U M, and which rendered him who
came into the possession of its key nearly the equal of Brahma himself. The
Brahm-atma alone possessed this key, and transmitted it in a sealed casket to
his successor.
"This unknown word, of
which no human power could, even to-day, when the Brahmanical authority has
been crushed under the Mongolian and European invasions, to-day, when each
pagoda has its Brahm-atma** force the disclosure, was engraved in a golden
triangle and preserved in a sanctuary of the temple of Asgartha, whose
Brahm-atma alone held the keys. He also bore upon his tiara two crossed keys
supported by two kneeling Brahmans, symbol of the precious deposit of which he
had the keeping. . . . This word and this triangle were engraved upon the
tablet of the ring that this religious chief wore as one of the signs of his
dignity; it was also framed in a golden sun on the altar, where every morning
the Supreme Pontiff offered the sacrifice of the sarvameda, or sacrifice to all
the forces of nature."***
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is the traditional policy
of the College of Cardinals to elect, whenever practicable, the new Pope among
the oldest valetudinarians. The hierophant of the Eleusinia was likewise always
an old man, and unmarried.
** This is not correct.
*** "Le Spiritisme dans
le Monde," p. 28.
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Is this clear enough? And will
the Catholics still maintain that it was the Brahmans of 4,000 years ago who
copied the ritual, symbols, and dress of the Roman Pontiffs? We would not feel
in the least surprised.
Without going very far back
into antiquity for comparisons, if we only stop at the fourth and fifth
centuries of our era, and contrast the so-called "heathenism" of the third
Neo-platonic Eclectic School with the growing Christianity, the result may not
be favorable to the latter. Even at that early period, when the new religion
had hardly outlined its contradictory dogmas; when the champions of the
bloodthirsty Cyril knew not themselves whether Mary was to become "the
Mother of God," or rank as a "demon" in company with Isis; when
the memory of the meek and lowly Jesus still lingered lovingly in every
Christian heart, and his words of mercy and charity vibrated still in the air,
even then the Christians were outdoing the Pagans in every kind of ferocity and
religious intolerance.
And if we look still farther
back, and seek for examples of true Christism, in ages when Buddhism had hardly
superseded Brahmanism in India, and the name of Jesus was only to be pronounced
three centuries later, what do we find? Which of the holy pillars of the Church
has ever elevated himself to the level of religious tolerance and noble
simplicity of character of some heathen? Compare, for instance, the Hindu
Asoka, who lived 300 B.C., and the Carthaginian St. Augustine, who flourished
three centuries after Christ. According to Max Muller, this is what is found
engraved on the rocks of Girnar, Dhauli, and Kapurdigiri:
"Piyadasi, the king
beloved of the gods, desires that the ascetics of all creeds might reside in
all places. All these ascetics profess alike the command which people should
exercise over themselves, and the purity of the soul. But people have different
opinions and different inclinations."
And here is what Augustine
wrote after his baptism: "Wondrous depth of thy words! whose surface,
behold! is before us, inviting to little ones; yet are they a wondrous depth, O
my God, a wondrous depth! It is awful to look therein; yes . . . an awfulness
of honor, and a trembling of love. Thy enemies [read Pagans] thereof I hate
vehemently; Oh, that thou wouldst slay them with thy two-edged sword, that they
might no longer be enemies to it; for so do I love to have them slain."
Wonderful spirit of Christianity;
and that from a Manichean converted to the religion of one who even on his
cross prayed for his enemies!
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Translated by Prof. Draper
for "Conflict between Religion and Science"; book xii.
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Who the enemies of the
"Lord" were, according to the Christians, is not difficult to
surmise; the few inside the Augustinian fold were His new children and
favorites, who had supplanted in His affections the sons of Israel, His
"chosen people." The rest of mankind were His natural foes. The
teeming multitudes of heathendom were proper food for the flames of hell; the
handful within the Church communion, "heirs of salvation."
But if such a proscriptive
policy was just, and its enforcement was "sweet savor" in the
nostrils of the "Lord," why not scorn also the Pagan rites and
philosophy? Why draw so deep from the wells of wisdom, dug and filled up to
brim by the same heathen? Or did the fathers, in their desire to imitate the
chosen people whose time-worn shoes they were trying to fit upon their feet,
contemplate the reenaction of the spoliation-scene of the Exodus? Did they
propose, in fleeing from heathendom as the Jews did from Egypt, to carry off
the valuables of its religious allegories, as the "chosen ones" did
the gold and silver ornaments?
It certainly does seem as if
the events of the first centuries of Christianity were but the reflection of
the images thrown upon the mirror of the future at the time of the Exodus.
During the stormy days of Irenaeus the Platonic philosophy, with its mystical
submersion into Deity, was not so obnoxious after all to the new doctrine as to
prevent the Christians from helping themselves to its abstruse metaphysics in
every way and manner. Allying themselves with the ascetical therapeutae --
forefathers and models of the Christian monks and hermits, it was in
Alexandria, let it be remembered, that they laid the first foundations of the
purely Platonic trinitarian doctrine. It became the Plato-Philonean doctrine
later, and such as we find it now. Plato considered the divine nature under a three-fold
modification of the First Cause, the reason or Logos, and the soul or spirit of
the universe. "The three archial or original principles," says
Gibbon,* "were represented in the Platonic system as three gods, united
with each other by a mysterious and ineffable generation." Blending this
transcendental idea with the more hypostatic figure of the Logos of Philo,
whose doctrine was that of the oldest Kabala, and who viewed the King Messiah,
as the metatron, or "the angel of the Lord," the Legatus descended in
flesh, but not the Ancient of Days Himself;** the Christians clothed with this
mythical representation of the Mediator for the fallen race of Adam, Jesus, the
son of Mary. Under this unexpected garb his personality was all but lost. In
the modern Jesus of the Christian Church, we find the ideal of the imaginative
Irenaeus, not the adept
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire."
** "Sohar Comment.,"
Gen. A. 10; "Kabbal. Denud.," i., 528.
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of the Essenes, the obscure
reformer from Galilee. We see him under the disfigured Plato-Philonean mask,
not as the disciples heard him on the mount.
So far then the heathen
philosophy had helped them in the building of the principal dogma. But when the
theurgists of the third Neo-platonic school, deprived of their ancient Mysteries,
strove to blend the doctrines of Plato with those of Aristotle, and by
combining the two philosophies added to their theosophy the primeval doctrines
of the Oriental Kabala, then the Christians from rivals became persecutors.
Once that the metaphysical allegories of Plato were being prepared to be
discussed in public in the form of Grecian dialectics, all the elaborate system
of the Christian trinity would be unravelled and the divine prestige completely
upset. The eclectic school, reversing the order, had adopted the inductive
method; and this method became its death-knell. Of all things on earth, logic
and reasonable explanations were the most hateful to the new religion of
mystery; for they threatened to unveil the whole ground-work of the trinitarian
conception; to apprise the multitude of the doctrine of emanations, and thus
destroy the unity of the whole. It could not be permitted, and it was not.
History records the Christ-like means that were resorted to.
The universal doctrine of
emanations, adopted from time immemorial by the greatest schools which taught
the kabalistic, Alexandrian, and Oriental philosophers, gives the key to that
panic among the Christian fathers. That spirit of Jesuitism and clerical craft,
which prompted Parkhurst, many centuries later, to suppress in his Hebrew
Lexicon the true meaning of the first word of Genesis, originated in those days
of war against the expiring Neo-platonic and eclectic school. The fathers had
decided to pervert the meaning of the word "daimon,"* and they
dreaded above all to have the esoteric and true meaning of the word Rasit
unveiled to the multitudes; for if once the true sense of this sentence, as
well as that of the Hebrew word asdt (translated in the Septuagint
"angels," while it means emanations),** were understood rightly, the
mystery of the Christian trinity would have crumbled, carrying in its downfall
the new religion into the same heap of ruins with the ancient Mysteries. This
is the true reason why dialecticians, as well as Aristotle himself, the
"prying philosopher," were ever obnoxious to Christian theology. Even
Luther, while on his work of reform, feeling the ground insecure under his
feet, notwithstanding that the dogmas had
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The beings which the
philosophers of other peoples distinguish by the name 'Daemons,' Moses names
'Angels,' " says Philo Judaeus. -- "De Gigant," i. 253.
** Deuteronomy xxxiii. 2.,
[[Heb chars] is translated "fiery law" in the English Bible.
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been reduced by him to their
simplest expression, gave full vent to his fear and hatred for Aristotle. The
amount of abuse he heaped upon the memory of the great logician can only be
equalled -- never surpassed -- by the Pope's anathemas and invectives against
the liberals of the Italian government. Compiled together, they might easily
fill a copy of a new encyclopaedia with models for monkish diatribes.
Of course the Christian clergy
can never get reconciled with a doctrine based on the application of strict
logic to discursive reasoning? The number of those who have abandoned theology
on this account has never been made known. They have asked questions and been
forbidden to ask them; hence, separation, disgust, and often a despairing
plunge into the abyss of atheism. The Orphean views of ether as chief medium between
God and created matter were likewise denounced. The Orphic AEther recalled too
vividly the Archeus, the Soul of the World, and the latter was in its
metaphysical sense as closely related to the emanations, being the first
manifestation -- Sephira, or Divine Light. And when could the latter be more
feared than at that critical moment?
Origen, Clemens Alexandrinus,
Chalcidius, Methodius, and Maimonides, on the authority of the Targum of
Jerusalem, the orthodox and greatest authority of the Jews, held that the first
two words in the book of Genesis -- B-RASIT, mean Wisdom, or the Principle. And
that the idea of these words meaning "in the beginning" was never
shared but by the profane, who were not allowed to penetrate any deeper into
the esoteric sense of the sentence. Beausobre, and after him Godfrey Higgins,
have demonstrated the fact. "All things," says the Kabala, "are
derived from one great Principle, and this principle is the unknown and
invisible God. From Him a substantial power immediately proceeds, which is the
image of God, and the source of all subsequent emanations. This second
principle sends forth, by the energy (or will and force) of emanation, other
natures, which are more or less perfect, according to their different degrees
of distance, in the scale of emanation, from the First Source of existence, and
which constitute different worlds, or orders of being, all united to the
eternal power from which they proceed. Matter is nothing more than the most
remote effect of the emanative energy of the Deity. The material world receives
its form from the immediate agency of powers far beneath the First Source of
Being* . . . Beausobref** makes St. Augustine the Manichean say thus: 'And if
by Rasit we understand the active Principle of the creation, instead of its
beginning, in such a case we will clearly perceive that Moses never meant to
say
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Rees's
"Encyclopaedia," art. Kabala.
** "Histor.
Manich.," Liv. vi., ch. i., p. 291.
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that heaven and earth were the
first works of God. He only said that God created heaven and earth through the
Principle, who is His Son. It is not the time he points to, but to the
immediate author of the creation.' Angels, according to Augustine, were created
before the firmament, and according to the esoteric interpretation, the heaven
and earth were created after that, evolving from the second Principle or the
Logos -- the creative Deity. "The word principle," says Beausobre,
"does not mean that the heaven and earth were created before anything
else, for, to begin with, the angels were created before that; but that God did
everything through His Wisdom, which is His Verbum, and which the Christian
Bible named the Beginning," thus adopting the exoteric meaning of the word
abandoned to the multitudes. The Kabala -- the Oriental as well as the Jewish
-- shows that a number of emanations (the Jewish Sephiroth) issued from the
First Principle, the chief of which was Wisdom. This Wisdom is the Logos of
Philo, and Michael, the chief of the Gnostic Eons; it is the Ormazd of the
Persians; Minerva, goddess of wisdom, of the Greeks, who emanated from the head
of Jupiter; and the second Person of the Christian Trinity. The early Fathers
of the Church had not much to exert their imagination; they found a ready-made
doctrine that had existed in every theogony for thousands of years before the
Christian era. Their trinity is but the trio of Sephiroth, the first three
kabalistic lights of which Moses Nachmanides says, that "they have never
been seen by any one; there is not any defect in them, nor any disunion."
The first eternal number is the Father, or the Chaldean primeval, invisible,
and incomprehensible chaos, out of which proceeded the Intelligible one. The
Egyptian Phtah, or "the Principle of Light -- not the light itself, and
the Principle of Life, though himself no life." The Wisdom by which the
Father created the heavens is the Son, or the kabalistic androgynous Adam
Kadmon. The Son is at once the male Ra, or Light of Wisdom, Prudence or
Intelligence, Sephira, the female part of Himself; while from this dual being
proceeds the third emanation, the Binah or Reason, the second Intelligence --
the Holy Ghost of the Christians. Therefore, strictly speaking, there is a
TETRAKTIS or quaternary, consisting of the Unintelligible First monad, and its
triple emanation, which properly constitute our Trinity.
How then avoid perceiving at
once, that had not the Christians purposely disfigured in their interpretation
and translation the Mosaic Genesis to fit their own views, their religion, with
its present dogmas, would have been impossible? The word Rasit, once taught in
its new sense of the Principle and not the Beginning, and the anathematized
doctrine of emanations accepted, the position of the second trinitarian
personage
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EN-SOPH.
becomes untenable. For, if the
angels are the first divine emanations from the Divine Substance, and were in
existence before the Second Principle, then the anthropomorphized Son is at
best an emanation like themselves, and cannot be God hypostatically any more
than our visible works are ourselves. That these metaphysical subtleties never
entered into the head of the honest-minded, sincere Paul, is evident; as it is
furthermore evident, that like all learned Jews he was well acquainted with the
doctrine of emanations and never thought of corrupting it. How can any one
imagine that Paul identified the Son with the Father, when he tells us that God
made Jesus "a little lower than the angels" (Hebrews ii. 9), and a
little higher than Moses! "For this MAN was counted worthy of more glory
than Moses" (Hebrews iii. 3). Of whatever, or how many forgeries,
interlined later in the Acts, the Fathers are guilty we know not; but that Paul
never considered Christ more than a man "full of the Spirit of God"
is but too evident: "In the arche was the Logos, and the Logos was adnate
to the Theos."
Wisdom, the first emanation of
En-Soph; the Protogonos, the Hypostasis; the Adam Kadmon of the kabalist, the
Brahma of the Hindu; the Logos of Plato, and the "Beginning" of St.
John -- is the Rasit -- of the Book of Genesis. If rightly interpreted it
overturns, as we have remarked, the whole elaborate system of Christian
theology, for it proves that behind the creative Deity, there was a HIGHER god;
a planner, an architect; and that the former was but His executive agent -- a
simple POWER!
They persecuted the Gnostics,
murdered the philosophers, and burned the kabalists and the masons; and when
the day of the great reckoning arrives, and the light shines in darkness, what
will they have to offer in the place of the departed, expired religion? What
will they answer, these pretended monotheists, these worshippers and
pseudo-servants of the one living God, to their Creator? How will they account
for this long persecution of them who were the true followers of the grand Megalistor,
the supreme great master of the Rosicrucians, the FIRST of masons. "For he
is the Builder and Architect of the Temple of the universe; He is the Verbum
Sapienti."*
"Every one knows,"
wrote the great Manichean of the third century, Fauste, "that the
Evangeliums were written neither by Jesus Christ,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The altogether
mystical coloring of Christianity harmonized with the Essene rules of life and
opinions, and it is not improbable that Jesus and John the Baptist were
initiated into the Essene Mysteries, to which Christianity may be indebted for
many a form of expression; as indeed the community of Therapeutae, an offspring
of the Essene order, soon belonged wholly to Christianity" ("Yost,"
i., 411 -- quoted by the author of "Sod, the Son of the Man").
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nor his apostles, but long
after their time by some unknown persons, who, judging well that they would
hardly be believed when telling of things they had not seen themselves, headed
their narratives with the names of the apostles or of disciples contemporaneous
with the latter."
Commenting upon the subject,
A. Franck, the learned Hebrew scholar of the Institute and translator of the
Kabala, expresses the same idea. "Are we not authorized," he asks,
"to view the Kabala as a precious remnant of religious philosophy of the Orient,
which, transported into Alexandria, got mixed to the doctrine of Plato, and
under the usurped name of Dionysius the Areopagite, bishop of Athens, converted
and consecrated by St. Paul, was thus enabled to penetrate into the mysticism
of the mediaeval ages?"*
Says Jacolliot: "What is
then this religious philosophy of the Orient, which has penetrated into the
mystic symbolism of Christianity? We answer: This philosophy, the traces of
which we find among the Magians, the Chaldeans, the Egyptians, the Hebrew
kabalists and the Christians, is none other than that of the Hindu Brahmans,
the sectarians of the pitris, or the spirits of the invisible worlds which
surround us."**
But if the Gnostics were
destroyed, the Gnosis, based on the secret science of sciences, still lives. It
is the earth which helps the woman, and which is destined to open her mouth to
swallow up mediaeval Christianity, the usurper and assassin of the great
master's doctrine. The ancient Kabala, the Gnosis, or traditional secret knowledge,
was never without its representatives in any age or country. The trinities of
initiates, whether passed into history or concealed under the impenetrable veil
of mystery, are preserved and impressed throughout the ages. They are known as
Moses, Aholiab, and Bezaleel, the son of Uri, the son of Hur, as Plato, Philo,
and Pythagoras, etc. At the Transfiguration we see them as Jesus, Moses, and
Elias, the three Trismegisti; and three kabalists, Peter, James, and John --
whose revelation is the key to all wisdom. We found them in the twilight of
Jewish history as Zoroaster, Abraham, and Terah, and later as Henoch, Ezekiel,
and Daniel.
Who, of those who ever studied
the ancient philosophies, who understand intuitionally the grandeur of their
conceptions, the boundless sublimity of their views of the Unknown Deity, can
hesitate for a moment to give the preference to their doctrines over the
incomprehensible dogmatic and contradictory theology of the hundreds of
Christian sects? Who that ever read Plato and fathomed his [[To On]],
"whom no person has seen except the Son," can doubt that Jesus was a
disciple of the same
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* A. Franck: "Die
Kabbala."
** "Le Spiritisme dans le
Monde."
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secret doctrine which had
instructed the great philosopher? For, as we have shown before now, Plato never
claimed to be the inventor of all that he wrote, but gave credit for it to
Pythagoras, who, in his turn, pointed to the remote East as the source whence
he derived his information and his philosophy. Colebrooke shows that Plato
confesses it in his epistles, and says that he has taken his teachings from
ancient and sacred doctrines!* Moreover, it is undeniable that the theologies
of all the great nations dovetail together and show that each is a part of
"one stupendous whole." Like the rest of the initiates we see Plato
taking great pains to conceal the true meaning of his allegories. Every time
the subject touches the greater secrets of the Oriental Kabala, secret of the
true cosmogony of the universe and of the ideal, preexisting world, Plato shrouds
his philosophy in the profoundest darkness. His Timaeus is so confused that no
one but an initiate can understand the secret meaning. And Mosheim thinks that
Philo has filled his works with passages directly contradicting each other for
the sole purpose of concealing the true doctrine. For once we see a critic on
the right track.
And this very trinitarian
idea, as well as the so bitterly denounced doctrine of emanations, whence their
remotest origin? The answer is easy, and every proof is now at hand. In the
sublime and profoundest of all philosophies, that of the universal
"Wisdom-Religion," the first traces of which, historical research now
finds in the old pre-Vedic religion of India. As the much-abused Jacolliot well
remarks, "It is not in the religious works of antiquity, such as the
Vedas, the Zend Avesta, the Bible, that we have to search for the exact
expression of the ennobling and sublime beliefs of those epochs."**
"The holy primitive syllable,
composed of the three letters A ---- U ---- M., in which is contained the Vedic
Trimurti (Trinity), must be kept secret, like another triple Veda," says
Manu, in book xi., sloka 265.
Swayambhouva is the unrevealed
Deity; it is the Being existent through and of itself; he is the central and
immortal germ of all that exists in the universe. Three trinities emanate and
are confounded in him, forming a Supreme unity. These trinities, or the triple
Trimurti, are: the Nara, Nari, and Viradyi -- the initial triad; the Agni,
Vaya, and Sourya -- the manifested triad; Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, the
creative triad. Each of these triads becomes less metaphysical and more adapted
to the vulgar intelligence as it descends. Thus the last becomes but the symbol
in its concrete expression; the necessarianism of a purely meta-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Asiat. Trans.,"
i., p. 579.
** Louis Jacolliot: "The
Initiates of the Ancient Temples."
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physical conception. Together
with Swayambhouva, they are the ten Sephiroth of the Hebrew kabalists, the ten
Hindu Prajapatis -- the En-Soph of the former, answering to the great Unknown,
expressed by the mystic A U M of the latter.
Says Franck, the translator of
the Kabala:
"The ten Sephiroth are
divided into three classes, each of them presenting to us the divinity under a
different aspect, the whole still remaining an indivisible Trinity.
"The first three
Sephiroth are purely intellectual in metaphysics, they express the absolute
identity of existence and thought, and form what the modern kabalists called
the intelligible world -- which is the first manifestation of God.
"The three that follow,
make us conceive God in one of their aspects, as the identity of goodness and
wisdom; in the other they show to us, in the Supreme good, the origin of beauty
and magnificence (in the creation). Therefore, they are named the virtues, or
the sensible world.
"Finally, we learn, by
the last three Sephiroth, that the Universal Providence, that the Supreme
artist is also absolute Force, the all-powerful cause, and that, at the same
time, this cause is the generative element of all that is. It is these last
Sephiroth that constitute the natural world, or nature in its essence and in
its active principle. Natura naturans."*
This kabalistic conception is
thus proved identical with that of the Hindu philosophy. Whoever reads Plato
and his Dialogue Timaeus, will find these ideas as faithfully re-echoed by the
Greek philosopher. Moreover, the injunction of secrecy was as strict with the
kabalists, as with the initiates of the Adyta and the Hindu Yogis.
"Close thy mouth, lest
thou shouldst speak of this (the mystery), and thy heart, lest thou shouldst
think aloud; and if thy heart has escaped thee, bring it back to its place, for
such is the object of our alliance" (Sepher Jezireh, Book of Creation).
"This is a secret which
gives death: close thy mouth lest thou shouldst reveal to the vulgar; compress
thy brain lest something should escape from it and fall outside"
(Agrouchada-Parikshai).
Truly the fate of many a
future generation hung on a gossamer thread, in the days of the third and
fourth centuries. Had not the Emperor sent in 389 to Alexandria a rescript --
which was forced from him by the Christians -- for the destruction of every
idol, our own century would never have had a Christian mythological Pantheon of
its own. Never
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Franck: "Die
Kabbala."
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RECHRISTENED.
did the Neo-platonic school
reach such a height of philosophy as when nearest its end. Uniting the mystic
theosophy of old Egypt with the refined philosophy of the Greeks; nearer to the
ancient Mysteries of Thebes and Memphis than they had been for centuries;
versed in the science of soothsaying and divination, as in the art of the
Therapeutists; friendly with the acutest men of the Jewish nation, who were
deeply imbued with the Zoroastrian ideas, the Neo-platonists tended to
amalgamate the old wisdom of the Oriental Kabala with the more refined
conceptions of the Occidental Theosophists. Notwithstanding the treason of the
Christians, who saw fit, for political reasons, after the days of Constantine,
to repudiate their tutors, the influence of the new Platonic philosophy is
conspicuous in the subsequent adoption of dogmas, the origin of which can be
traced but too easily to that remarkable school. Though mutilated and
disfigured, they still preserve a strong family likeness, which nothing can
obliterate.
But, if the knowledge of the
occult powers of nature opens the spiritual sight of man, enlarges his
intellectual faculties, and leads him unerringly to a profounder veneration for
the Creator, on the other hand ignorance, dogmatic narrow-mindedness, and a
childish fear of looking to the bottom of things, invariably leads to
fetish-worship and superstition.
When Cyril, the Bishop of
Alexandria, had openly embraced the cause of Isis, the Egyptian goddess, and
had anthropomorphized her into Mary, the mother of God; and the trinitarian
controversy had taken place; from that moment the Egyptian doctrine of the
emanation of the creative God out of Emepht began to be tortured in a thousand
ways, until the Councils had agreed upon the adoption of it as it now stands --
the disfigured Ternary of the kabalistic Solomon and Philo! But as its origin
was yet too evident, the Word was no longer called the "Heavenly
man," the primal Adam Kadmon, but became the Logos -- Christ, and was made
as old as the "Ancient of the Ancient," his father. The concealed
WISDOM became identical with its emanation, the DIVINE THOUGHT, and made to be
regarded coequal and coeternal with its first manifestation.
If we now stop to consider
another of the fundamental dogmas of Christianity, the doctrine of atonement,
we may trace it as easily back to heathendom. This corner-stone of a Church
which had believed herself built on a firm rock for long centuries, is now
excavated by science and proved to come from the Gnostics. Professor Draper
shows it as hardly known in the days of Tertullian, and as having
"originated among the Gnostic heretics."* We will not permit
ourselves to contradict such a
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Conflict between
Religion and Science," p. 224.
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learned authority, farther
than to state that it originated among them no more than their
"anointed" Christos and Sophia. The former they modelled on the
original of the "King Messiah," the male principle of wisdom, and the
latter on the third Sephiroth, from the Chaldean Kabala,* and even from the
Hindu Brahma and Sara-asvati,** and the Pagan Dionysus and Demeter. And here we
are on firm ground, if it were only because it is now proved that the New
Testament never appeared in its complete form, such as we find it now, till 300
years after the period of apostles,*** and the Sohar and other kabalistic books
are found to belong to the first century before our era, if not to be far older
still.
The Gnostics entertained many
of the Essenean ideas; and the Essenes had their "greater" and
"minor" Mysteries at least two centuries before our era. They were
the Isarim or Initiates, the descendants of the Egyptian hierophants, in whose
country they had been settled for several centuries before they were converted
to Buddhistic monasticism by the missionaries of King Asoka, and amalgamated
later with the earliest Christians; and they existed, probably, before the old
Egyptian temples were desecrated and ruined in the incessant invasions of
Persians, Greeks, and other conquering hordes. The hierophants had their
atonement enacted in the Mystery of Initiation ages before the Gnostics, or
even the Essenes, had appeared. It was known among hierophants as the BAPTISM
OF BLOOD, and was considered not as an atonement for the "fall of
man" in Eden, but simply as an expiation for the past, present, and future
sins of ignorant but nevertheless polluted mankind. The hierophant had the
option of either offering his pure and sinless life as a sacrifice for his race
to the gods whom he hoped to rejoin, or an animal victim. The former depended
entirely on their own will. At the last moment of the solemn "new
birth," the initiator passed "the word" to the initiated, and
immediately after that the latter had a weapon placed in his right hand, and
was ordered to strike.**** This is the true origin of the Christian dogma of
atonement.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Sohar";
"Kab. Den."; "The Book of Mystery," the oldest book of the
kabalists; and Milman: "History of Christianity," pp. 212, 213-215.
** Milman: "History of
Christianity," p. 280. The Kurios and Kora are mentioned repeatedly in
"Justin Martyr." See p. 97.
*** See Olshausen:
"Biblischer Commentar uber sammtliche Schriften des Neuen Testaments,"
ii.
**** There is a wide-spread
superstition (?), especially among the Slavonians and Russians, that the
magician or wizard cannot die before he has passed the "word" to a
successor. So deeply is it rooted among the popular beliefs, that we do not imagine
there is a person in Russia who has not heard of it. It is but too easy to
trace the origin of this superstition to the old Mysteries which had been for
ages spread all over
[[Footnote continued on next
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DEATH-BED.
Verily the "Christs"
of the pre-Christian ages were many. But they died unknown to the world, and disappeared
as silently and as mysteriously from the sight of man as Moses from the top of
Pisgah, the mountain of Nebo (oracular wisdom), after he had laid his hands
upon Joshua, who thus became "full of the spirit of wisdom" (i.e.,
initiated).
Nor does the Mystery of the
Eucharist pertain to Christians alone. Godfrey Higgins proves that it was
instituted many hundreds of years before the "Paschal Supper," and
says that "the sacrifice of bread and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] the globe. The ancient Variago-Rouss had his Mysteries in the
North as well as in the South of Russia; and there are many relics of the
by-gone faith scattered in the lands watered by the sacred Dnieper, the
baptismal Jordan of all Russia. No Znachar (the knowing one) or Koldoun
(sorcerer), male or female, can die in fact before he has passed the mysterious
word to some one. The popular belief is that unless he does that he will linger
and suffer for weeks and months, and were he even finally to get liberated, it
would be only to wander on earth, unable to quit its region unless he finds a
successor even after death. How far the belief may be verified by others, we do
not know, but we have seen a case which, for its tragical and mysterious
denoument, deserves to be given here as an illustration of the subject in hand.
An old man, of over one hundred years of age, a peasant-serf in the government
of S----, having a wide reputation as a sorcerer and healer, was said to be
dying for several days, and still unable to die. The report spread like
lightning, and the poor old fellow was shunned by even the members of his own
family, as the latter were afraid of receiving the unwelcome inheritance. At
last the public rumor in the village was that he had sent a message to a
colleague less versed than himself in the art, and who, although he lived in a
distant district, was nevertheless coming at the call, and would be on hand
early on the following morning. There was at that time on a visit to the
proprietor of the village a young physician who, belonging to the famous school
of Nihilism of that day, laughed outrageously at the idea. The master of the
house, being a very pious man, and but half inclined to make so cheap of the
"superstition," smiled -- as the saying goes -- but with one corner
of his mouth. Meanwhile the young skeptic, to gratify his curiosity, had made a
visit to the dying man, had found that he could not live twenty-four hours
longer, and, determined to prove the absurdity of the "superstition,"
had taken means to detain the coming "successor" at a neighboring
village.
Early in the morning a company
of four persons, comprising the physician, the master of the place, his
daughter, and the writer of the present lines, went to the hut in which was to
be achieved the triumph of skepticism. The dying man was expecting his
liberator every moment, and his agony at the delay became extreme. We tried to
persuade the physician to humor the patient, were it for humanity's sake. He
only laughed. Getting hold with one hand of the old wizard's pulse, he took out
his watch with the other, and remarking in French that all would be over in a
few moments, remained absorbed in his professional experiment. The scene was
solemn and appalling. Suddenly the door opened, and a young boy entered with
the intelligence, addressed to the doctor, that the koum was lying dead drunk
at a neighboring village, and, according to his orders, could not be with
"grandfather" till the next day. The young doctor felt confused, and
was just going to address the old man, when, as quick as lightning, the Znachar
snatched his hand from his grasp and raised himself in bed. His deep-sunken
eyes flashed; his yellow-white beard and hair streaming round his livid face
made him a
[[Footnote continued on next
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wine was common to many
ancient nations."* Cicero mentions it in his works, and wonders at the
strangeness of the rite. There had been an esoteric meaning attached to it from
the first establishment of the Mysteries, and the Eucharistia is one of the
oldest rites of antiquity. With the hierophants it had nearly the same
significance as with the Christians. Ceres was bread, and Bacchus was wine; the
former meaning regeneration of life from the seed, and the latter -- the grape
-- the emblem of wisdom and knowledge; the accumulation of the spirit of
things, and the fermentation and subsequent strength of that esoteric knowledge
being justly symbolized by wine. The mystery related to the drama of Eden; it
is said to have been first taught by Janus, who was also the first to introduce
in the temples the sacrifices of "bread" and "wine" in
commemoration of the "fall into generation" as the symbol of the
"seed." "I am the vine, and my Father is the husbandman,"
says Jesus, alluding to the secret knowledge that could be imparted by him.
"I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine until that day that I drink
it new in the kingdom of God."
The festival of the Eleusinian
Mysteries began in the month of Boedromion, which corresponds with the month of
September, the time of grape-gathering, and lasted from the 15th to the 22d of
the month, seven days.** The Hebrew festival of the Feast of Tabernacles began
on the 15th and ended on the 22d of the month of Ethanim, which Dunlap shows as
derived from Adonim, Adonia, Attenim, Ethanim;*** and this feast is named in
Exodus (xxiii. 16) the feast of ingatherings. "All the men of Israel
assembled unto King Solomon at the feast in the month Ethanim, which is the
seventh."****
Plutarch thinks the feast of
the booths to be the Bacchic rites, not the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] dreadful sight. One instant more, and his long, sinewy arms
were clasped round the physician's neck, as with a supernatural force he drew
the doctor's head closer and closer to his own face, where he held him as in a
vise, while whispering words inaudible to us in his ear. The skeptic struggled
to free himself, but before he had time to make one effective motion the work
had evidently been done; the hands relaxed their grasp, and the old sorcerer
fell on his back -- a corpse! A strange and ghostly smile had settled on the
stony lips -- a smile of fiendish triumph and satisfied revenge; but the doctor
looked paler and more ghastly than the dead man himself. He stared round with
an expression of terror difficult to describe, and without answering our
inquiries rushed out wildly from the hut, in the direction of the woods.
Messengers were sent after him, but he was nowhere to be found. About sunset a
report was heard in the forest. An hour later his body was brought home, with a
bullet through his head, for the skeptic had blown out his brains!
What made him commit suicide?
What magic spell of sorcery had the "word" of the dying wizard left
on his mind? Who can tell?
* "Anacalypsis";
also Tertullian.
** "Anthon," art.
Eleusinia.
*** Dunlap: "Musah, His
Mysteries," p. 71.
**** Kings, viii. 2.
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the Eleusinian. Thus
"Bacchus was directly called upon," he says. The Sabazian worship was
Sabbatic; the names Evius, or Hevius, and Luaios are identical with Hivite and
Levite. The French name Louis is the Hebrew Levi; Iacchus again is Iao or
Jehovah; and Baal or Adon, like Bacchus, was a phallic god. "Who shall
ascend into the hill (the high place) of the Lord?" asks the holy king
David, "who shall stand in the place of his Kadushu [[Heb char]]"?
(Psalms xxiv. 3). Kadesh may mean in one sense to devote, hallow, sanctify, and
even to initiate or to set apart; but it also means the ministers of lascivious
rites (the Venus-worship) and the true interpretation of the word Kadesh is bluntly
rendered in Deuteronomy xxiii. 17; Hosea iv. 14; and Genesis xxxviii., from
verses 15 to 22. The "holy" Kadeshuth of the Bible were identical as
to the duties of their office with the Nautch-girls of the later Hindu pagodas.
The Hebrew Kadeshim or galli lived "by the house of the Lord, where the
women wove hangings for the grove," or bust of Venus-Astarte, says verse
the seventh in the twenty-third chapter of 2 Kings.
The dance performed by David
round the ark was the "circle-dance" said to have been prescribed by
the Amazons for the Mysteries. Such was the dance of the daughters of Shiloh
(Judges xxi. 21, 23 et passim), and the leaping of the prophets of Baal (I
Kings xviii. 26). It was simply a characteristic of the Sabean worship, for it
denoted the motion of the planets round the sun. That the dance was a Bacchic
frenzy is apparent. Sistra were used on the occasion, and the taunt of Michael
and the king's reply are very expressive. "The king of Israel uncovered
himself before his maid-servants as one of the vain (or debauched) fellows
shamelessly uncovereth himself." And he retorts: "I will play (act
wantonly) before [[Heb char]], and I will be yet more vile than this, and I
will be base in my own sight." When we remember that David had sojourned
among the Tyrians and Philistines, where their rites were common; and that
indeed he had conquered that land away from the house of Saul, by the aid of
mercenaries from their country, the countenancing and even, perhaps, the
introduction of such a Pagan-like worship by the weak "psalmist"
seems very natural. David knew nothing of Moses, it seems, and if he introduced
the Jehovah-worship it was not in its monotheistic character, but simply as
that of one of the many gods of the neighboring nations -- a tutelary deity to
whom he had given the preference, and chosen among "all other gods."
Following the Christian dogmas
seriatim, if we concentrate our attention upon one which provoked the fiercest
battles until its recognition, that of the Trinity, what do we find? We meet
it, as we have shown, northeast of the Indus; and tracing it to Asia Minor and
Europe, recognize it among every people who had anything like an established
re-
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ligion. It was taught in the
oldest Chaldean, Egyptian, and Mithraitic schools. The Chaldean Sun-god,
Mithra, was called "Triple," and the trinitarian idea of the Chaldeans
was a doctrine of the Akkadians, who, themselves, belonged to a race which was
the first to conceive a metaphysical trinity. The Chaldeans are a tribe of the
Akkadians, according to Rawlinson, who lived in Babylonia from the earliest
times. They were Turanians, according to others, and instructed the Babylonians
into the first notions of religion. But these same Akkadians, who were they?
Those scientists who would ascribe to them a Turanian origin, make of them the
inventors of the cuneiform characters; others call them Sumerians; others
again, respectively, make their language, of which (for very good reasons) no
traces whatever remain -- Kasdean, Chaldaic, Proto-Chaldean, Kasdo-Scythic, and
so on. The only tradition worthy of credence is that these Akkadians instructed
the Babylonians in the Mysteries, and taught them the sacerdotal or
Mystery-language. These Akkadians were then simply a tribe of the
Hindu-Brahmans, now called Aryans -- their vernacular language, the Sanscrit*
of the Vedas; and the sacred or Mystery-language, that which, even in our own
age, is used by the Hindu fakirs and initiated Brahmans in their magical
evocations.** It has been, from time immemorial, and still is employed by the
initiates of all countries, and the Thibetan lamas claim that it is in this
tongue that appear the mysterious characters on the leaves and bark of the
sacred Koumboum.
Jacolliot, who took such pains
to penetrate the mysteries of the Brahmanical initiation in translating and
commenting upon the Agrouchada-Parikshai, confesses the following:
"It is pretended also,
without our being able to verify the assertion, that the magical evocations
were pronounced in a particular language, and that it was forbidden, under pain
of death, to translate them into vulgar dialects. The rare expressions that we
have been able to catch like -- L'rhom, h'hom, sh'hrum, sho'rhim, are in fact
most curious, and do not seem to belong to any known idiom."***
Those who have seen a fakir or
a lama reciting his mantras and con-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Let us remember in this
connection that Col. Vans Kennedy has long ago declared his opinion that
Babylonia was once the seat of the Sanscrit language and of Brahmanical
influence.
** " 'The Agrouchada-Parikshai,'
which discloses, to a certain extent, the order of initiation, does not give
the formula of evocation," says Jacolliot, and he adds that, according to
some Brahmans, "these formulae were never written, they were and still are
imparted in a whisper in the ear of the adepts" ("mouth to ear, and
the word at low breath," say the Masons). -- "Le Spiritisme dans le
Monde," p. 108.
*** "Le Spiritisme dans
le Monde," p. 108.
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UNMITIGATED HUMBUG?
jurations, know that he never
pronounces the words audibly when preparing for a phenomenon. His lips move,
and none will ever hear the terrible formula pronounced, except in the interior
of the temples, and then in a cautious whisper. This, then, was the language
now respectively baptized by every scientist, and, according to his imaginative
and philological propensities, Kasdeo-Semitic, Scythic, Proto-Chaldean, and the
like.
Scarcely two of even the most
learned Sanscrit philologists are agreed as to the true interpretation of Vedic
words. Let one put forth an essay, a lecture, a treatise, a translation, a
dictionary, and straightway all the others fall to quarrelling with each other
and with him as to his sins of omission and commission. Professor Whitney,
greatest of American Orientalists, says that Professor Muller's notes on the
Rig Veda Sanhita "are far from showing that sound and thoughtful judgment,
that moderation and economy which are among the most precious qualities of an
exegete." Professor Muller angrily retorts upon his critics that "not
only is the joy embittered which is the inherent reward of all bona fide work,
but selfishness, malignity, aye, even untruthfulness, gain the upper hand, and
the healthy growth of science is stunted." He differs "in many cases
from the explanations of Vedic words given by Professor Roth" in his
Sanscrit Dictionary, and Professor Whitney shampooes both their heads by saying
that there are, unquestionably, words and phrases "as to which both alike
will hereafter be set right."
In volume i. of his Chips,
Professor Muller stigmatizes all the Vedas except the Rik, the Atharva-Veda
included, as "theological twaddle," while Professor Whitney regards
the latter as "the most comprehensive and valuable of the four
collections, next after the Rik." To return to the case of Jacolliot.
Professor Whitney brands him as a "bungler and a humbug," and, as we remarked
above, this is the very general verdict. But when the Bible dans l'Inde
appeared, the Societe Academique de Saint Quentin requested M. Textor de
Ravisi, a learned Indianist, ten years Governor of Karikal, India, to report
upon its merits. He was an ardent Catholic, and bitterly opposed Jacolliot's
conclusions where they discredited the Mosaic and Catholic revelations; but he
was forced to say: "Written with good faith, in an easy, vigorous, and
passionate style, of an easy and varied argumentation, the work of M. Jacolliot
is of absorbing interest . . . a learned work on known facts and with familiar
arguments."
Enough. Let Jacolliot have the
benefit of the doubt when such very imposing authorities are doing their best
to show up each other as incompetents and literary journeymen. We quite agree
with Professor Whitney that "the truism, that [for European critics?] it
is far easier to pull to
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pieces than to build up, is
nowhere truer than in matters affecting the archeology and history of
India."*
Babylonia happened to be
situated on the way of the great stream of the earliest Hindu emigration, and
the Babylonians were one of the first peoples benefited thereby.** These Khaldi
were the worshippers of the Moon-god, Deus Lunus, from which fact we may infer
that the Akkadians -- if such must be their name -- belonged to the race of the
Kings of the Moon, whom tradition shows as having reigned in Pruyay -- now
Allahabad. With them the trinity of Deus Lunus was manifested in the three
lunar phases, completing the quaternary with the fourth, and typifying the
death of the Moon-god in its gradual waning and final disappearance. This death
was allegorized by them, and attributed to the triumph of the genius of evil
over the light-giving deity; as the later nations allegorized the death of
their Sun-gods, Osiris and Apollo, at the hands of Typhon and the great Dragon
Python, when the sun entered the winter solstice. Babel, Arach, and Akkad are
names of the sun. The Zoroastrian Oracles are full and explicit upon the
subject of the Divine Triad. "A triad of Deity shines forth throughout the
whole world, of which a Monad is the head," admits the Reverend Dr.
Maurice.
"For from this Triad, in
the bosoms, are all things governed," says a Chaldean oracle. The Phos,
Pur, and Phlox, of Sanchoniathon,*** are Light, Fire, and Flame, three
manifestations of the Sun who is one. Bel-Saturn, Jupiter-Bel, and Bel or
Baal-Chom are the Chaldean trinity;**** "The Babylonian Bel was regarded
in the Triune aspect of Belitan, Zeus-Belus (the mediator) and Baal-Chom who is
Apollo Chomaeus. This was the Triune aspect of the 'Highest God,' who is,
according to Berosus, either El (the Hebrew), Bel, Belitan, Mithra, or Zervana,
and has the name [[Pater]], "the Father."***** The Brahma, Vishnu,
and Siva,****** corresponding to Power, Wisdom, and Justice, which answer in
their turn
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* W. D. Whitney:
"Oriental and Linguistic Studies, The Veda, etc."
** Jacolliot seems to have
very logically demonstrated the absurd contradictions of some philologists,
anthropologists, and Orientalists, in regard to their Akkado and Semito mania.
"There is not, perhaps, much of good faith in their negations," he
writes. "The scientists who invent Turanian peoples know very well that in
Manu alone, there is more of veritable science and philosophy than in all that
this pretended Semitism has hitherto furnished us with; but they are the slaves
of a path which some of them are following the last fifteen, twenty, or even
thirty years. . . . We expect, therefore, nothing of the present. India will
owe its reconstitution to the scientists of the next generation" ("La
Genese de l'Humanite," pp. 60-61).
*** Cory: "Anc.
Frag."
**** Movers:
"Phoinizer," 263.
***** Dunlap: "Sp. Hist.
of Man," p. 281.
****** Siva is not a god of
the Vedas, strictly speaking. When the Vedas were written, he held the rank of
Maha-Deva or Bel among the gods of aboriginal India.
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RELIGIONS.
to Spirit, Matter, Time, and
the Past, Present, and Future, can be found in the temple of Gharipuri;
thousands of dogmatic Brahmans worship these attributes of the Vedic Deity,
while the severe monks and nuns of Buddhistic Thibet recognize but the sacred
trinity of the three cardinal virtues: Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience,
professed by the Christians, practiced by the Buddhists and some Hindus alone.
The Persian triplicate Deity
also consists of three persons, Ormazd, Mithra, and Ahriman. "That is that
principle," says Porphyry,* "which the author of the Chaldaic Summary
saith, 'They conceive there is one principle of all things, and declare that is
one and good.' " The Chinese idol Sanpao, consists of three equal in all
respects;** and the Peruvians "supposed their Tanga-tanga to be one in
three, and three in one," says Faben.*** The Egyptians have their Emepht,
Eicton, and Phta; and the triple god seated on the Lotos can be seen in the St.
Petersburg Museum, on a medal of the Northern Tartars.
Among the Church dogmas which
have most seriously suffered of late at the hands of the Orientalists, the last
in question stands conspicuous. The reputation of each of the three personages of
the anthropomorphic godhead as an original revelation to the Christians through
Divine will, has been badly compromised by inquiry into its predecessors and
origin. Orientalists have published more about the similarity between
Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Christianity than was strictly agreeable to the
Vatican. Draper's assertion that "Paganism was modified by Christianity,
Christianity by Paganism,"**** is being daily verified. "Olympus was
restored but the divinities passed under other names," he says, treating
of the Constantine period. "The more powerful provinces insisted on the
adoption of their time-honored conceptions. Views of the trinity in accordance
with the Egyptian traditions were established. Not only was the adoration of
Isis under a new name restored, but even her image, standing on the crescent
moon, reappeared. The well-known effigy of that goddess with the infant Horus
in her arms has descended to our days, in the beautiful artistic creations of
the Madonna and child."
But a still earlier origin
than the Egyptian and Chaldean can be assigned to the Virgin "Mother of
God," Queen of Heaven. Though Isis
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "De Antro
Nympharum."
** "Navarette," book
ii., c. x.
*** "On the Origin of
Heathen Idolatry."
**** Isis and Osiris are said,
in the Egyptian sacred books, to have appeared (i.e., been worshipped), on
earth, later than Thot, the first Hermes, called Trismegistus, who wrote all
their sacred books according to the command of God or by "divine
revelation." The companion and instructor of Isis and Osiris was Thot, or
Hermes II., who was an incarnation of the celestial Hermes.
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is also by right the Queen of
Heaven, and is generally represented carrying in her hand the Crux Ansata
composed of the mundane cross, and of the Stauros of the Gnostics, she is a
great deal younger than the celestial virgin, Neith. In one of the tombs of the
Pharaohs -- Rhameses, in the valley of Biban-el-Molouk, in Thebes, Champollion,
Junior, discovered a picture, according to his opinion the most ancient ever
yet found. It represents the heavens symbolized by the figure of a woman
bedecked with stars. The birth of the Sun is figured by the form of a little
child, issuing from the bosom of its "Divine Mother."
In the Book of Hermes,
"Pimander" is enunciated in distinct and unequivocal sentences, the
whole trinitarian dogma accepted by the Christians. "The light is
me," says Pimander, the DIVINE THOUGHT. "I am the nous or
intelligence, and I am thy god, and I am far older than the human principle
which escapes from the shadow. I am the germ of thought, the resplendent WORD,
the SON of GOD. Think that what thus sees and hears in thee, is the Verbum of
the Master, it is the Thought, which is God the Father. . . . The celestial
ocean, the AETHER, which flows from east to west, is the Breath of the Father,
the life-giving Principle, the HOLY GHOST!" "For they are not at all
separated and their union is LIFE."
Ancient as may be the origin
of Hermes, lost in the unknown days of Egyptian colonization, there is yet a
far older prophecy, directly relating to the Hindu Christna, according to the
Brahmans. It is, to say the least, strange that the Christians claim to base
their religion upon a prophecy of the Bible, which exists nowhere in that book.
In what chapter or verse does Jehovah, the "Lord God," promise Adam
and Eve to send them a Redeemer who will save humanity? "I will put enmity
between thee and the woman," says the Lord God to the serpent, "and
between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise
his heel."
In these words there is not
the slightest allusion to a Redeemer, and the subtilest of intellects could not
extract from them, as they stand in the third chapter of Genesis, anything like
that which the Christians have contrived to find. On the other hand, in the traditions
and Manu, Brahma promises directly to the first couple to send them a Saviour
who will teach them the way to salvation.
"It is from the lips of a
messenger of Brahma, who will be born in Kuroukshetra, Matsya, and the land of
Pantchola, also called Kanya-Cubja (mountain of the Virgin), that all men on
earth will learn their duty," says Manu (book ii., slokas 19 and 20).
The Mexicans call the Father
of their Trinity Yzona, the Son Bacab, and the Holy Ghost Echvah, "and say
they received it (the doctrine)
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ADOPTED BY CHRISTIANS.
from their ancestors."*
Among the Semitic nations we can trace the trinity to the prehistorical days of
the fabled Sesostris, who is identified by more than one critic with Nimrod,
"the mighty hunter." Manetho makes the oracle rebuke the king, when
the latter asks, "Tell me, O thou strong in fire, who before me could
subjugate all things? and who shall after me?" And the oracle saith thus:
"First God, then the Word, and then 'the Spirit.' "**
In the foregoing lies the
foundation of the fierce hatred of the Christians toward the "Pagans"
and the theurgists. Too much had been borrowed; the ancient religions and the
Neo-platonists had been laid by them under contribution sufficiently to perplex
the world for several thousand years. Had not the ancient creeds been speedily
obliterated, it would have been found impossible to preach the Christian
religion as a New Dispensation, or the direct Revelation from God the Father,
through God the Son, and under the influence of God the Holy Ghost. As a
political exigence the Fathers had -- to gratify the wishes of their rich
converts -- instituted even the festivals of Pan. They went so far as to accept
the ceremonies hitherto celebrated by the Pagan world in honor of the God of
the gardens, in all their primitive sincerity.*** It was time to sever the
connection. Either the Pagan worship and the Neo-platonic theurgy, with all
ceremonial of magic, must be crushed out forever, or the Christians become
Neo-platonists.
The fierce polemics and
single-handed battles between Irenaeus and the Gnostics are too well known to
need repetition. They were carried on for over two centuries after the
unscrupulous Bishop of Lyons had uttered his last religious paradox. Celsus,
the Neo-platonist, and a disciple of the school of Ammonius Saccas, had thrown
the Christians into perturbation, and even had arrested for a time the progress
of proselytism by successfully proving that the original and purer forms of the
most important dogmas of Christianity were to be found only in the teachings of
Plato. Celsus accused them of accepting the worst superstitions of Paganism,
and of interpolating passages from the books of the Sybils, without rightly
understanding their meaning. The accusations were so plausible, and the facts
so patent, that for a long time no Christian writer had ventured to answer the
challenge. Origen, at the fervent request of his friend, Ambrosius, was the
first to take the defense in hand, for, having belonged to the same Platonic
school of Ammonius, he was considered the most competent man to refute the
well-founded charges. But his eloquence failed, and the only remedy that could
be found was to destroy the writings of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Lord Kingsborough:
"Ant. Mex.," p. 165.
** "Ap. Malal.,"
lib. i., cap. iv.
*** Payne Knight:
"Phallic Worship."
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Celsus themselves.* This could
be achieved only in the fifth century, when copies had been taken from this
work, and many were those who had read and studied them. If no copy of it has
descended to our present generation of scientists, it is not because there is
none extant at present, but for the simple reason that the monks of a certain
Oriental church on Mount Athos will neither show nor confess they have one in
their possession.** Perhaps they do not even know themselves the value of the
contents of their manuscripts, on account of their great ignorance.
The dispersion of the Eclectic
school had become the fondest hope of the Christians. It had been looked for
and contemplated with intense anxiety. It was finally achieved. The members
were scattered by the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Celsus above mentioned,
who lived between the second and third centuries, is not Celsus the Epicurean.
The latter wrote several works against Magic, and lived earlier, during the
reign of Hadrian.
** We have the facts from a trustworthy
witness, having no interest to invent such a story. Having injured his leg in a
fall from the steamer into the boat in which he was to land at the Mount, he
was taken care of by these monks, and during his convalescence, through gifts
of money and presents, became their greatest friend, and finally won their
entire confidence. Having asked for the loan of some books, he was taken by the
Superior to a large cellar in which they keep their sacred vessels and other
property. Opening a great trunk, full of old musty manuscripts and rolls, he
was invited by the Superior to "amuse himself." The gentleman was a
scholar, and well versed in Greek and Latin text. "I was amazed," he
says, in a private letter, "and had my breath taken away, on finding among
these old parchments, so unceremoniously treated, some of the most valuable
relics of the first centuries, hitherto believed to have been lost." Among
others he found a half-destroyed manuscript, which he is perfectly sure must be
a copy of the "True Doctrine," the [[Aogos ale thes]] of Celsus, out
of which Origen quoted whole pages. The traveller took as many notes as he
could on that day, but when he came to offer to the Superior to purchase some
of these writings he found, to his great surprise, that no amount of money
would tempt the monks. They did not know what the manuscripts contained, nor
"did they care," they said. But the "heap of writing," they
added, was transmitted to them from one generation to another, and there was a
tradition among them that these papers would one day become the means of
crushing the "Great Beast of the Apocalypse," their hereditary enemy,
the Church of Rome. They were constantly quarrelling and fighting with the
Catholic monks, and among the whole "heap" they knew that there was a
"holy" relic which protected them. They did not know which, and so in
their doubt abstained. It appears that the Superior, a shrewd Greek, understood
his bevue and repented of his kindness, for first of all he made the traveller
give him his most sacred word of honor, strengthened by an oath he made him
take on the image of the Holy Patroness of the Island, never to betray their
secret, and never mention, at least, the name of their convent. And finally,
when the anxious student who had passed a fortnight in reading all sorts of
antiquated trash before he happened to stumble over some precious manuscript,
expressed the desire to have the key, to "amuse himself" with the
writings once more, he was very naively informed that the "key had been
lost," and that they did not know where to look for it. And thus he was
left to the few notes he had taken.
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BUTCHERS SAINTED.
hand of the monsters
Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, and his nephew Cyril -- the murderer of the
young, the learned, and the innocent Hypatia!*
With the death of the martyred
daughter of Theon, the mathematician, there remained no possibility for the
Neo-platonists to continue their school at Alexandria. During the life-time of
the youthful Hypatia her friendship and influence with Orestes, the governor of
the city, had assured the philosophers security and protection against their
murderous enemies. With her death they had lost their strongest friend. How
much she was revered by all who knew her for her erudition, noble virtues, and
character, we can infer from the letters addressed to her by Synesius, Bishop
of Ptolemais, fragments of which have reached us. "My heart yearns for the
presence of your divine spirit," he wrote in 413 A.D., "which more
than anything else could alleviate the bitterness of my fortunes." At
another time he says: "Oh, my mother, my sister, my teacher, my
benefactor! My soul is very sad. The recollection of my children I have lost is
killing me. . . . When I have news of you and learn, as I hope, that you are
more fortunate than myself, I am at least only half-unhappy."
What would have been the
feelings of this most noble and worthy of Christian bishops, who had
surrendered family and children and happiness for the faith into which he had
been attracted, had a prophetic vision disclosed to him that the only friend
that had been left to him, his "mother, sister, benefactor," would
soon become an unrecognizable mass of flesh and blood, pounded to jelly under
the blows of the club of Peter the Reader -- that her youthful, innocent body
would be cut to pieces, "the flesh scraped from the bones," by
oyster-shells and the rest of her cast into the fire, by order of the same
Bishop Cyril he knew so well -- Cyril, the CANONIZED Saint!!**
There has never been a
religion in the annals of the world with such a bloody record as Christianity.
All the rest, including the traditional fierce fights of the "chosen
people" with their next of kin, the idolatrous tribes of Israel, pale
before the murderous fanaticism of the alleged followers of Christ! Even the
rapid spread of Mahometanism before the conquering sword of the Islam prophet,
is a direct consequence of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See the historical romance
of Canon Kingsley, "Hypatia," for a highly picturesque account of the
tragical fate of this young martyr.
** We beg the reader to bear
in mind that it is the same Cyril who was accused and proved guilty of having
sold the gold and silver ornaments of his church, and spent the money. He
pleaded guilty, but tried to excuse himself on the ground that he had used the
money for the poor, but could not give evidence of it. His duplicity with Arius
and his party is well known. Thus one of the first Christian saints, and the
founder of the Trinity, appears on the pages of history as a murderer and a
thief!
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bloody riots and fights among
Christians. It was the intestine war between the Nestorians and Cyrilians that
engendered Islamism; and it is in the convent of Bozrah that the prolific seed
was first sown by Bahira, the Nestorian monk. Freely watered by rivers of
blood, the tree of Mecca has grown till we find it in the present century
overshadowing nearly two hundred millions of people. The recent Bulgarian
atrocities are but the natural outgrowth of the triumph of Cyril and the
Mariolaters.
The cruel, crafty politician,
the plotting monk, glorified by ecclesiastical history with the aureole of a
martyred saint. The despoiled philosophers, the Neo-platonists, and the
Gnostics, daily anathematized by the Church all over the world for long and
dreary centuries. The curse of the unconcerned Deity hourly invoked on the magian
rites and theurgic practice, and the Christian clergy themselves using sorcery
for ages. Hypatia, the glorious maiden-philosopher, torn to pieces by the
Christian mob. And such as Catherine de Medicis, Lucrezia Borgia, Joanna of
Naples, and the Isabellas of Spain, presented to the world as the faithful
daughters of the Church -- some even decorated by the Pope with the order of
the "Immaculate Rose," the highest emblem of womanly purity and
virtue, a symbol sacred to the Virgin-mother of God! Such are the examples of
human justice! How far less blasphemous appears a total rejection of Mary as an
immaculate goddess, than an idolatrous worship of her, accompanied by such
practices.
In the next chapter we will
present a few illustrations of sorcery, as practiced under the patronage of the
Roman Church.
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CHAPTER II.
"They undertake by scales
of miles to tell
The bounds, dimensions, and
extent of hell;
* * * * * * * * * *
Where bloated souls in smoky
durance hung
Like a Westphalia gammon or
neat's tongue,
To be redeemed with masses and
a song." -- OLDHAM: Satires upon the Jesuits.
"York. -- But you are more
inhuman, more inexorable --
O, ten times more -- than
tigers of Hyrcania." -- King Henry VI., Part Third, Act i., Scene iv.
"War. -- And hark ye,
Sirs; because she is a maid
Spare for no faggots, let
there be enough;
Place barrels of pitch upon
the fatal stake." -- King Henry VI., Part First, Act v., Scene iv.
IN that famous work of Bodin,
on sorcery,* a frightful story is told about Catherine of Medicis. The author
was a learned publicist, who, during twenty years of his life, collected authentic
documents from the archives of nearly every important city of France, to make
up a complete work on sorcery, magic, and the power of various
"demons." To use an expression of Eliphas Levi, his book offers a
most remarkable collection of "bloody and hideous facts; acts of revolting
superstition, arrests, and executions of stupid ferocity." "Burn
every body!" the Inquisition seemed to say -- God will easily sort out His
own! Poor fools, hysterical women, and idiots were roasted alive, without
mercy, for the crime of "magic." But, "at the same time, how
many great culprits escaped this unjust and sanguinary justice! This is what
Bodin makes us fully appreciate."
Catherine, the pious Christian
-- who has so well deserved in the eyes of the Church of Christ for the
atrocious and never-to-be-forgotten massacre of St. Bartholomew -- the Queen
Catherine, kept in her service an apostate Jacobin priest. Well versed in the
"black art," so fully patronized by the Medici family, he had won the
gratitude and protection of his pious mistress, by his unparalleled skill in
killing people at a distance, by torturing with various incantations their wax
simulacra. The process has been described over and over again, and we scarcely
need repeat it.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "La Demonomanie, ou
traite des Sorciers." Paris, 1587.
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Charles was lying sick of an
incurable disease. The queen-mother, had everything to lose in case of his
death, resorted to necromancy, consulted the oracle of the "bleeding
head." This infernal operation required the decapitation of a child who
must be possessed of great beauty and purity. He had been prepared in secret
for his first communion, by the chaplain of the palace, who was apprised of the
plot, and at midnight of the appointed day, in the chamber of the sick man, and
in presence only of Catherine and a few of her confederates, the "devil's
mass" was celebrated. Let us give the rest of the story as we find it in
one of Levi's works: "At this mass, celebrated before the image of the
demon, having under his feet a reversed cross, the sorcerer consecrated two
wafers, one black and one white. The white was given to the child, whom they
brought clothed as for baptism, and who was murdered upon the very steps of the
altar, immediately after his communion. His head, separated from the trunk by a
single blow, was placed, all palpitating, upon the great black wafer which
covered the bottom of the paten, then placed upon a table where some mysterious
lamps were burning. The exorcism then began, and the demon was charged to
pronounce an oracle, and reply by the mouth of this head to a secret question
that the king dared not speak aloud, and that had been confided to no one. Then
a feeble voice, a strange voice, which had nothing of human character about it,
made itself audible in this poor little martyr's head." The sorcery
availed nothing; the king died, and -- Catherine remained the faithful daughter
of Rome!
How strange, that des
Mousseaux, who makes such free use of Bodin's materials to construct his
formidable indictment against Spiritualists and other sorcerers, should have
overlooked this interesting episode!
It is a well-attested fact
that Pope Sylvester II. was publicly accused by Cardinal Benno with being a
sorcerer and an enchanter. The brazen "oracular head" made by his
Holiness was of the same kind as the one fabricated by Albertus Magnus. The
latter was smashed to pieces by Thomas Aquinas, not because it was the work of
or inhabited by a "demon," but because the spook who was fixed
inside, by mesmeric power, talked incessantly, and his verbiage prevented the
eloquent saint from working out his mathematical problems. These heads and
other talking statues, trophies of the magical skill of monks and bishops, were
fac-similes of the "animated" gods of the ancient temples. The accusation
against the Pope was proved at the time. It was also demonstrated that he was
constantly attended by "demons" or spirits. In the preceding chapter
we have mentioned Benedict IX., John XX., and the VIth and VIIth Gregory, who
were all known as magicians. The latter Pope, moreover, was the famous
Hildebrand, who was said to have
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PRIESTS AS SORCERERS.
been so expert at
"shaking lightning out of his sleeve." An expression which makes the
venerable spiritualistic writer, Mr. Howitt, think that "it was the origin
of the celebrated thunder of the Vatican."
The magical achievements of
the Bishop of Ratisbon and those of the "angelic doctor," Thomas
Aquinas, are too well known to need repetition; but we may explain farther how
the "illusions" of the former were produced. If the Catholic bishop
was so clever in making people believe on a bitter winter night that they were
enjoying the delights of a splendid summer day, and cause the icicles hanging
from the boughs of the trees in the garden to seem like so many tropical
fruits, the Hindu magicians also practice such biological powers unto this very
day, and claim the assistance of neither god nor devil. Such
"miracles" are all produced by the same human power that is inherent
in every man, if he only knew how to develop it.
About the time of the
Reformation, the study of alchemy and magic had become so prevalent among the
clergy as to produce great scandal. Cardinal Wolsey was openly accused before
the court and the privy-council of confederacy with a man named Wood, a
sorcerer, who said that "My Lord Cardinale had suche a rynge that
whatsomevere he askyd of the Kynges grace that he hadd yt"; adding that
"Master Cromwell, when he . . . was servaunt in my lord cardynales housse
. . . rede many bokes and specyally the boke of Salamon . . . and studied
mettells and what vertues they had after the canon of Salamon." This case,
with several others equally curious, is to be found among the Cromwell papers
in the Record Office of the Rolls House.
A priest named William
Stapleton was arrested as a conjurer, during the reign of Henry VIII., and an
account of his adventures is still preserved in the Rolls House records. The
Sicilian priest whom Benvenuto Cellini calls a necromancer, became famous
through his successful conjurations, and was never molested. The remarkable
adventure of Cellini with him in the Colosseum, where the priest conjured up a
whole host of devils, is well known to the reading public. The subsequent
meeting of Cellini with his mistress, as predicted and brought about by the
conjurer, at the precise time fixed by him, is to be considered, as a matter of
course, a "curious coincidence." In the latter part of the sixteenth
century there was hardly a parish to be found in which the priests did not
study magic and alchemy. The practice of exorcism to cast out devils "in
imitation of Christ," who by the way never used exorcism at all, led the
clergy to devote themselves openly to "sacred" magic in
contradistinction to black art, of which latter crime were accused all those
who were neither priests nor monks.
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The occult knowledge gleaned
by the Roman Church from the once fat fields of theurgy she sedulously guarded
for her own use, and sent to the stake only those practitioners who
"poached" on her lands of the Scientia Scientiarum, and those whose
sins could not be concealed by the friar's frock. The proof of it lies in the
records of history. "In the course only of fifteen years, between 1580 to
1595, and only in the single province of Lorraine, the President Remigius
burned 900 witches," says Thomas Wright, in his Sorcery and Magic. It was
during these days, prolific in ecclesiastical murder and unrivalled for cruelty
and ferocity, that Jean Bodin wrote.
While the orthodox clergy
called forth whole legions of "demons" through magical incantations,
unmolested by the authorities, provided they held fast to the established
dogmas and taught no heresy, on the other hand, acts of unparalleled atrocity
were perpetrated on poor, unfortunate fools. Gabriel Malagrida, an old man of
eighty, was burnt by these evangelical Jack Ketches in 1761. In the Amsterdam
library there is a copy of the report of his famous trial, translated from the
Lisbon edition. He was accused of sorcery and illicit intercourse with the
Devil, who had "disclosed to him futurity." (?) The prophecy imparted
by the Arch-Enemy to the poor visionary Jesuit is reported in the following
terms: "The culprit hath confessed that the demon, under the form of the
blessed Virgin, having commanded him to write the life of Antichrist (?), told
him that he, Malagrida, was a second John, but more clear than John the
Evangelist; that there were to be three Antichrists, and that the last should
be born at Milan, of a monk and a nun, in the year 1920; that he would marry
Proserpine, one of the infernal furies," etc.
The prophecy is to be verified
forty-three years hence. Even were all the children born of monks and nuns
really to become antichrists if allowed to grow up to maturity, the fact would
seem far less deplorable than the discoveries made in so many convents when the
foundations have been removed for some reason. If the assertion of Luther is to
be disbelieved on account of his hatred for popery, then we may name
discoveries of the same character made quite recently in Austrian and Russian
Poland. Luther speaks of a fish-pond at Rome, situated near a convent of nuns,
which, having been cleared out by order of Pope Gregory, disclosed, at the
bottom, over six thousand infant skulls; and of a nunnery at Neinburg, in
Austria, whose foundations, when searched, disclosed the same relics of
celibacy and chastity!
"Ecclesia non novit
Sanguinem!" meekly repeated the scarlet-robed cardinals. And to avoid the
spilling of blood which horrified them, they instituted the Holy Inquisition.
If, as the occultists maintain, and science half confirms, our most trifling
acts and thoughts are indelibly impressed
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TORQUEMADA.
upon the eternal mirror of the
astral ether, there must be somewhere, in the boundless realm of the unseen
universe, the imprint of a curious picture. It is that of a gorgeous standard
waving in the heavenly breeze at the foot of the great "white throne"
of the Almighty. On its crimson damask face a cross, symbol of "the Son of
God who died for mankind," with an olive branch on one side, and a sword,
stained to the hilt with human gore, on the other. A legend selected from the
Psalms emblazoned in golden letters, reading thus: "Exurge, Domine, et
judica causam meam." For such appears the standard of the Inquisition, on
a photograph in our possession, from an original procured at the Escurial of
Madrid.
Under this Christian standard,
in the brief space of fourteen years, Tomas de Torquemada, the confessor of
Queen Isabella, burned over ten thousand persons, and sentenced to the torture
eighty thousand more. Orobio, the well-known writer, who was detained so long
in prison, and who hardly escaped the flames of the Inquisition, immortalized
this institution in his works when once at liberty in Holland. He found no
better argument against the Holy Church than to embrace the Judaic faith and
submit even to circumcision. "In the cathedral of Saragossa," says a
writer on the Inquisition, "is the tomb of a famous inquisitor. Six
pillars surround the tomb; to each is chained a Moor, as preparatory to being
burned." On this St. Foix ingenuously observes: "If ever the Jack
Ketch of any country should be rich enough to have a splendid tomb, this might
serve as an excellent model!" To make it complete, however, the builders
of the tomb ought not to have omitted a bas-relief of the famous horse which
was burnt for sorcery and witchcraft. Granger tells the story, describing it as
having occurred in his time. The poor animal "had been taught to tell the
spots upon cards, and the hour of the day by the watch. Horse and owner were
both indicted by the sacred office for dealing with the Devil, and both were
burned, with a great ceremony of auto-da-fe, at Lisbon, in 1601, as
wizards!"
This immortal institution of
Christianity did not remain without its Dante to sing its praise. "Macedo,
a Portuguese Jesuit," says the author of Demonologia, "has discovered
the origin of the Inquisition, in the terrestrial Paradise, and presumes to
allege that God was the first who began the functions of an inquisitor over
Cain and the workmen of Babel!"
Nowhere, during the middle
ages, were the arts of magic and sorcery more practiced by the clergy than in
Spain and Portugal. The Moors were profoundly versed in the occult sciences,
and at Toledo, Seville, and Salamanca, were, once upon a time, the great
schools of magic. The kabalists of the latter town were skilled in all the
abstruse sciences; they
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knew the virtues of precious
stones and other minerals, and had extracted from alchemy its most profound
secrets.
The authentic documents
pertaining to the great trial of the Marechale d'Ancre, during the regency of
Marie de Medicis, disclose that the unfortunate woman perished through the
fault of the priests with whom, like a true Italian, she surrounded herself.
She was accused by the people of Paris of sorcery, because it had been asserted
that she had used, after the ceremony of exorcism, newly-killed white cocks.
Believing herself constantly bewitched, and being in very delicate health, the
Marechale had the ceremony of exorcism publicly applied to herself in the
Church of the Augustins; as to the birds, she used them as an application to
the forehead on account of dreadful pains in the head, and had been advised to
do so by Montalto, the Jew physician of the queen, and the Italian priests.
In the sixteenth century, the
Cure de Barjota, of the diocese of Callahora, Spain, became the world's wonder
for his magical powers. His most extraordinary feat consisted, it was said, in
transporting himself to any distant country, witnessing political and other
events, and then returning home to predict them in his own country. He had a
familiar demon, who served him faithfully for long years, says the Chronicle,
but the cure turned ungrateful and cheated him. Having been apprised by his
demon of a conspiracy against the Pope's life, in consequence of an intrigue of
the latter with a fair lady, the cure transported himself to Rome (in his
double, of course) and thus saved his Holiness' life. After which he repented,
confessed his sins to the gallant Pope, and got absolution. "On his return
he was delivered, as a matter of form, into the custody of the inquisitors of
Logrono, but was acquitted and restored to his liberty very soon."
Friar Pietro, a Dominican monk
of the fourteenth century -- the magician who presented the famous Dr. Eugenio
Torralva, a physician attached to the house of the admiral of Castile, with a
demon named Zequiel -- won his fame through the subsequent trial of Torralva.
The procedure and circumstances attendant upon the extraordinary trial are
described in the original papers preserved in the Archives of the Inquisition.
The Cardinal of Volterra, and the Cardinal of Santa Cruz, both saw and
communicated with Zequiel, who proved, during the whole of Torralva's life, to
be a pure, kind, elemental spirit, doing many beneficent actions, and remaining
faithful to the physician to the last hour of his life. Even the Inquisition
acquitted Torralva, on that account; and, although an immortality of fame was
insured to him by the satire of Cervantes, neither Torralva nor the monk Pietro
are fictitious heroes, but historical personages, recorded in ecclesiastical
documents of Rome and Cuenca,
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AND WURZBURG.
in which town the trial of the
physician took place, January the 29th, 1530.
The book of Dr. W. G. Soldan,
of Stuttgart, has become as famous in Germany, as Bodin's book on Demonomania
in France. It is the most complete German treatise on witchcraft of the
sixteenth century. One interested to learn the secret machinery underlying
these thousands of legal murders, perpetrated by a clergy who pretended to
believe in the Devil, and succeeded in making others believe in him, will find
it divulged in the above-mentioned work.* The true origin of the daily
accusations and death-sentences for sorcery are cleverly traced to personal and
political enmities, and, above all, to the hatred of the Catholics toward the Protestants.
The crafty work of the Jesuits is seen at every page of the bloody tragedies;
and it is in Bamberg and Wurzburg, where these worthy sons of Loyola were most
powerful at that time, that the cases of witchcraft were most numerous. On the
next page we give a curious list of some victims, many of whom were children
between the ages of seven and eight years, and Protestants. "Of the
multitudes of persons who perished at the stake in Germany during the first
half of the seventeenth century for sorcery, the crime of many was their
attachment to the religion of Luther," says T. Wright, " . . . and
the petty princes were not unwilling to seize upon any pretense to fill their
coffers . . . the persons most persecuted being those whose property was a
matter of consideration. . . . At Bamberg, as well as at Wurzburg, the bishop
was a sovereign prince in his dominions. The Prince-Bishop, John George II.,
who ruled Bamberg . . . after several unsuccessful attempts to root out
Lutheranism, distinguished his reign by a series of sanguinary witch-trials,
which disgrace the annals of that city. . . . We may form some notion of the
proceedings of his worthy agent,** from the statement of the most authentic
historians, that between 1625 and 1630, not less than 900 trials took place in
the two courts of Bamberg and Zeil; and a pamphlet published at Bamberg by
authority, in 1659, states the number of persons whom Bishop John George had
caused to be burned for sorcery, to have been 600."***
Regretting that space should
prevent our giving one of the most curious lists in the world of burned
witches, we will nevertheless make a few extracts from the original record as
printed in Hauber's Bibliotheca
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Dr. W. G. Soldan:
"Geschichte der Hexenprocesse, aus den Quellen dargestellt,"
Stuttgart, 1843.
** Frederick Forner, Suffragan
of Bamberg, author of a treatise against heretics and sorcerers, under the
title of "Panoplia Armaturoe Dei."
*** "Sorcery and
Magic," by T. Wright, M.A., F.S.A., etc., Corresponding Member of the
National Institute of France, vol. ii., p. 185.
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Magica. One glance at this
horrible catalogue of murders in Christ's name, is sufficient to discover that
out of 162 persons burned, more than one-half of them are designated as
strangers (i.e., Protestants) in this hospitable town; and of the other half we
find thirty-four children, the oldest of whom was fourteen, the youngest an
infant child of Dr. Schutz. To make the catalogue shorter we will present of
each of the twenty-nine burnings, but the most remarkable.*
IN THE FIRST BURNING, FOUR
PERSONS.
Old Ancker's widow.
The wife of Liebler.
The wife of Gutbrodt.
The wife of Hocker.
IN THE SECOND BURNING, FOUR
PERSONS.
Two strange women (names
unknown). The old wife of Beutler.
IN THE THIRD BURNING, FIVE
PERSONS.
Tungersleber, a minstrel.
Four wives of citizens.
IN THE FOURTH BURNING, FIVE
PERSONS.
A strange man.
IN THE FIFTH BURNING, NINE
PERSONS.
Lutz, an eminent shop-keeper.
The wife of Baunach, a
senator.
IN THE SIXTH BURNING, SIX
PERSONS.
The fat tailor's wife.
A strange man.
A strange woman.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Besides these burnings in
Germany, which amount to many thousands, we find some very interesting
statements in Prof. Draper's "Conflict between Religion and Science."
On page 146, he says: "The families of the convicted were plunged into
irretrievable ruin. Llorente, the historian of the Inquisition, computes that
Torquemada and his collaborators, in the course of eighteen years, burned at
the stake 10,220 persons, 6,860 in effigy, and otherwise punished 97,321! . . .
With unutterable disgust and indignation, we learn that the papal government
realized much money by selling to the rich, dispensations to secure them from
the Inquisition."
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CRUELTY.
IN THE SEVENTH BURNING, SEVEN
PERSONS.
A strange girl of twelve years
old.
A strange man, a strange woman.
A strange bailiff
(Schultheiss).
Three strange women.
IN THE EIGHTH BURNING, SEVEN
PERSONS.
Baunach, a senator, the
fattest citizen in Wurzburg.
A strange man.
Two strange women.
IN THE NINTH BURNING, FIVE
PERSONS.
A strange man.
A mother and daughter.
IN THE TENTH BURNING, THREE
PERSONS.
Steinacher, a very rich man.
A strange man, a strange
woman.
IN THE ELEVENTH BURNING, FOUR
PERSONS.
Two women and two men.
IN THE TWELFTH BURNING, TWO
PERSONS.
Two strange women.
IN THE THIRTEENTH BURNING,
FOUR PERSONS.
A little girl nine or ten
years old.
A younger girl, her little
sister.
IN THE FOURTEENTH BURNING, TWO
PERSONS.
The mother of the two little
girls before mentioned.
A girl twenty-four years old.
IN THE FIFTEENTH BURNING, TWO
PERSONS.
A boy twelve years of age, in
the first school.
A woman.
IN THE SIXTEENTH BURNING, SIX
PERSONS.
A boy of ten years of age.
IN THE SEVENTEENTH BURNING,
FOUR PERSONS.
A boy eleven years old.
A mother and daughter.
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IN THE EIGHTEENTH BURNING, SIX
PERSONS.
Two boys, twelve years old.
The daughter of Dr. Junge.
A girl of fifteen years of
age.
A strange woman.
IN THE NINETEENTH BURNING, SIX
PERSONS.
A boy of ten years of age.
Another boy, twelve years old.
IN THE TWENTIETH BURNING, SIX
PERSONS.
Gobel's child, the most
beautiful girl in Wurzburg.
Two boys, each twelve years
old.
Stepper's little daughter.
IN THE TWENTY-FIRST BURNING,
SIX PERSONS.
A boy fourteen years old.
The little son of Senator
Stolzenberger.
Two alumni.
IN THE TWENTY-SECOND BURNING,
SIX PERSONS.
Sturman, a rich cooper.
A strange boy.
IN THE TWENTY-THIRD BURNING,
NINE PERSONS.
David Croten's boy, nine years
old.
The two sons of the prince's
cook, one fourteen, the other ten years old.
IN THE TWENTY-FOURTH BURNING,
SEVEN PERSONS.
Two boys in the hospital.
A rich cooper.
IN THE TWENTY-FIFTH BURNING,
SIX PERSONS.
A strange boy.
IN THE TWENTY-SIXTH BURNING,
SEVEN PERSONS.
Weydenbush, a senator.
The little daughter of
Valkenberger.
The little son of the town
council bailiff.
IN THE TWENTY-SEVENTH BURNING,
SEVEN PERSONS.
A strange boy.
A strange woman.
Another boy.
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IN THE TWENTY-EIGHTH BURNING,
SIX PERSONS.
The infant daughter of Dr.
Schutz.
A blind girl.
IN THE TWENTY-NINTH BURNING,
SEVEN PERSONS.
The fat noble lady (Edelfrau).
A doctor of divinity.
Item.
"Strange" men and
women, i.e., Protestants, 28
Citizens, apparently all
WEALTHY people, 100
Summary: Boys, girls, and
little children, 34
In nineteen months, 162 persons.
"There were," says
Wright, "little girls of from seven to ten years of age among the witches,
and seven and twenty of them were convicted and burnt," at some of the
other brande, or burnings. "The numbers brought to trial in these terrible
proceedings were so great, and they were treated with so little consideration,
that it was usual not even to take the trouble of setting down their names, but
they were cited as the accused No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, and so on.* The Jesuits
took their confessions in private."
What room is there in a
theology which exacts such holocausts as these to appease the bloody appetites
of its priests for the following gentle words:
"Suffer the little
children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of Heaven."
"Even so it is not the will of your Father . . . that one of these little
ones should perish." "But whoso shall offend one of these little ones
which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about
his neck and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea."
We sincerely hope that the
above words have proved no vain threat to these child-burners.
Did this butchery in the name
of their Moloch-god prevent these treasure-hunters from resorting to the black
art themselves? Not in the least; for in no class were such consulters of
"familiar" spirits more numerous than among the clergy during the
fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. True, there were some Catholic
priests among the victims, but though these were generally accused of having
"been
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Sorcery and
Magic"; "The Burnings at Wurzburg," p. 186.
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led into practices too
dreadful to be described," it was not so. In the twenty-nine burnings
above catalogued we find the names of twelve vicars, four canons, and two
doctors of divinity burnt alive. But we have only to turn to such works as were
published at the time to assure ourselves that each popish priest executed was
accused of "damnable heresy," i.e., a tendency to reformation -- a
crime more heinous far than sorcery.
We refer those who would learn
how the Catholic clergy united duty with pleasure in the matter of exorcisms,
revenge, and treasure-hunting, to volume II., chapter i., of W. Howitt's
History of the Supernatural. "In the book called Pneumatologia Occulta et
Vera, all the forms of adjuration and conjuration were laid down," says
this veteran writer. He then proceeds to give a long description of the
favorite modus operandi. The Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie of the late
Eliphas Levi, treated with so much abuse and contempt by des Mousseaux, tells
nothing of the weird ceremonies and practices but what was practiced legally
and with the tacit if not open consent of the Church, by the priests of the
middle ages. The exorcist-priest entered a circle at midnight; he was clad in a
new surplice, and had a consecrated band hanging from the neck, covered with
sacred characters. He wore on the head a tall pointed cap, on the front of
which was written in Hebrew the holy word, Tetragrammaton -- the ineffable
name. It was written with a new pen dipped in the blood of a white dove. What
the exorcists most yearned after, was to release miserable spirits which haunt
spots where hidden treasures lie. The exorcist sprinkles the circle with the
blood of a black lamb and a white pigeon. The priest had to adjure the evil
spirits of hell -- Acheront, Magoth, Asmodei, Beelzebub, Belial, and all the
damned souls, in the mighty names of Jehovah, Adonay, Elohah, and Sabaioth,
which latter was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who dwelt in the Urim
and Thummim. When the damned souls flung in the face of the exorcist that he
was a sinner, and could not get the treasure from them, the priest-sorcerer had
to reply that "all his sins were washed out in the blood of Christ,* and
he bid them depart as cursed ghosts and damned flies." When the exorcist
dislodged them at last, the poor soul was "comforted in the name of the
Saviour, and consigned to the care of good angels," who were less
powerful, we must think, than the exorcising Catholic worthies, "and the
rescued treasure, of course, was secured for the Church."
"Certain days," adds
Howitt, "are laid down in the calendar of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* And retinted in the blood of
the millions murdered in his name -- in the no less
innocent blood than his own,
of the little child-witches!
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Church as most favorable for
the practice of exorcism; and, if the devils are difficult to drive, a fume of
sulphur, assafoetida, bear's gall, and rue is recommended, which, it was
presumed, would outstench even devils."
This is the Church, and this
the priesthood, which, in the nineteenth century, pays 5,000 priests to teach
the people of the United States the infidelity of science and the infallibility
of the Bishop of Rome!
We have already noticed the
confession of an eminent prelate that the elimination of Satan from theology
would be fatal to the perpetuity of the Church. But this is only partially
true. The Prince of Sin would be gone, but sin itself would survive. If the
Devil were annihilated, the Articles of Faith and the Bible would remain. In
short there would still be a pretended divine revelation, and the necessity for
self-assumed inspired interpreters. We must, therefore, consider the
authenticity of the Bible itself. We must study its pages, and see if they,
indeed, contain the commands of the Deity, or but a compendium of ancient
traditions and hoary myths. We must try to interpret them for ourselves -- if
possible. As to its pretended interpreters, the only possible assimilation we
can find for them in the Bible is to compare them with the man described by the
wise King Solomon in his Proverbs, with the perpetrator of these "six
things . . . yea seven . . . which doth the Lord hate," and which are an
abomination unto Him, to wit: "A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands
that shed innocent blood; an heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that
be swift in running to mischief; a false witness that speaketh lies, and he
that soweth discord among brethren" (Proverbs vi. 16, 17, 18, 19).
Of which of these accusations
are the long line of men who have left the imprint of their feet in the Vatican
guiltless?
"When the demons,"
says Augustine, "insinuate themselves in the creatures, they begin by
conforming themselves to the will of every one. . . . In order to attract men,
they begin by seducing them, by simulating obedience. . . . How could one know,
had he not been taught by the demons themselves, what they like or what they
hate; the name which attracts, or that which forces them into obedience; all
this art, in short, of magic, the whole science of the magicians?"*
To this impressive
dissertation of the "saint," we will add that no magician has ever
denied that he had learned the art from "spirits," whether, being a
medium, they acted independently on him, or he had been initiated into the
science of "evocation" by his fathers who knew it before himself. But
who was it then that taught the exorcist? The priest
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* St. Augustine: "City of
God," i, xxi., ch. vi.; des Mousseaux: "Moeurs et Pratiques des
Demons."
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who clothes himself with an
authority not only over the magician, but even over all these
"spirits," whom he calls demons and devils as soon as he finds them
obeying any one but himself? He must have learned somewhere from some one that
power which he pretends to possess. For, ". . . how could one know had he
not been taught by the demons themselves . . . the name which attracts, or that
which forces them into obedience?" asks Augustine.
Useless to remark that we know
the answer beforehand: "Revelation . . . divine gift . . . the Son of God;
nay, God Himself, through His direct Spirit, who descended on the apostles as
the Pentecostal fire," and who is now alleged to overshadow every priest
who sees fit to exorcise for either glory or a gift. Are we then to believe
that the recent scandal of public exorcism, performed about the 14th of
October, 1876, by the senior priest of the Church of the Holy Spirit, at
Barcelona, Spain, was also done under the direct superintendence of the Holy
Ghost?*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* A correspondent of the
London "Times" describes the Catalonian exorcist in the following
lines:
"About the 14th of
October it was privately announced that a young woman of seventeen or eighteen
years of age, of the lower class, having long been afflicted with 'a hatred of
holy things,' the senior priest of the Church of the Holy Spirit would cure her
of her disease. The exhibition was to be held in a church frequented by the
best part of the community. The church was dark, but a sickly light was shed by
wax lights on the sable forms of some eighty or a hundred persons who clustered
round the presbyterio, or sanctuary, in front of the altar. Within the little
enclosure or sanctuary, separated from the crowd by a light railing, lay, on a
common bench, with a little pillow for her head to recline upon, a poorly-clad
girl, probably of the peasant or artisan class; her brother or husband stood at
her feet to restrain her (at times) frantic kicking by holding her legs. The
door of the vestry opened; the exhibitor -- I mean the priest -- came in. The
poor girl, not without just reason, 'had an aversion to holy things,' or, at
least, the 400 devils within her distorted body had such an aversion, and in
the confusion of the moment, thinking that the father was 'a holy thing,' she
doubled up her legs, screamed out with twitching mouth, her whole body
writhing, and threw herself nearly off the bench. The male attendant seized her
legs, the women supported her head and swept out her dishevelled hair. The priest
advanced and, mingling familiarly with the shuddering and horror-struck crowd,
said, pointing at the suffering child, now sobbing and twitching on the bench,
'Promise me, my children, that you will be prudent (prudentes), and of a truth,
sons and daughters mine, you shall see marvels.' The promise was given. The
exhibitor went to procure stole and short surplice (estola y roquete), and
returned in a moment, taking his stand at the side of the 'possessed with the
devils,' with his face toward the group of students. The order of the day's
proceedings was a lecture to the bystanders, and the operation of exorcising
the devils. 'You know,' said the priest, 'that so great is this girl's aversion
to holy things, myself included, that she goes into convulsions, kicks,
screams, and distorts her body the moment she arrives at the corner of this
street, and her convulsive struggles reach their climax when she enters the
sacred house of the Most High.' Turning to the prostrate, shuddering, most
unhappy object of his attack, the priest commenced: 'In the name of
[[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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SPIRITUALISM.
It will be urged that the
"bishop was not cognizant of this freak of the clergy"; but even if
he were, how could he have protested against a rite considered since the days
of the apostles, one of the most holy prerogatives of the Church of Rome? So
late as in 1852, only twenty-five years ago, these rites received a public and
solemn sanction from the Vatican, and a new Ritual of Exorcism was published in
Rome, Paris, and other Catholic capitals. Des Mousseaux, writing under the
immediate patronage of Father Ventura, the General of the Theatines of Rome,
even favors us with lengthy extracts from this famous ritual, and explains the
reason why it was enforced again. It was in consequence of the revival of Magic
under the name of Modern Spiritualism. The bull of Pope Innocent VIII. is
exhumed, and translated for the benefit of des Mousseaux's readers. "We
have heard," exclaims the Sovereign Pontiff, "that a great number of
persons of both sexes have feared not to enter into relations with the spirits
of hell; and that, by their practice of sorcery . . . they strike with
sterility the conjugal bed, destroy the germs of humanity in the bosom of the
mother, and throw spells on them, and set a barrier to the multiplication of
animals . . . etc., etc."; then follow curses and anathemas against the
practice.
This belief of the Sovereign
Pontiffs of an enlightened Christian country is a direct inheritance by the
most ignorant multitudes from the southern Hindu rabble -- the
"heathen." The diabolical arts of certain kangalins (witches) and
jadugar (sorcerers) are firmly believed in by these people. The following are
among their most dreaded powers: to inspire love and hatred at will; to send a
devil to take possession of a person and torture
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] God, of the saints, of the blessed Host, of every holy
sacrament of our Church, I adjure thee, Rusbel, come out of her.' (N. B.
'Rusbel' is the name of a devil, the devil having 257 names in Catalonia.) Thus
adjured, the girl threw herself -- in an agony of convulsion, till her
distorted face, foam-bespattered lips and writhing limbs grew well-nigh stiff
-- at full length upon the floor, and, in language semi-obscene, semi-violent,
screamed out, 'I don't choose to come out, you thieves, scamps, robbers.' At
last, from the quivering lips of the girl, came the words, 'I will'; but the
devil added, with traditional perversity, 'I will cast the 100 out, but by the
mouth of the girl.' The priest objected. The exit, he said, of 100 devils out
of the small Spanish mouth of the woman would 'leave her suffocated.' Then the
maddened girl said she must undress herself for the devils to escape. This
petition the holy father refused. 'Then I will come out through the right foot,
but first' -- the girl had on a hempen sandal, she was obviously of the poorest
class -- 'you must take off her sandal.' The sandal was untied; the foot gave a
convulsive plunge; the devil and his myrmidons (so the cura said, looking round
triumphantly) had gone to their own place. And, assured of this, the wretched
dupe of a girl lay quite still. The bishop was not cognizant of this freak of
the clergy, and the moment it came to the ears of the civil authorities, the
sharpest means were taken to prevent a repetition of the scandal."
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him; to expel him; to cause
sudden death or an incurable disease; to either strike cattle with or protect
them from epidemics; to compose philtres that will either strike with sterility
or provoke unbounded passions in men and women, etc., etc. The sight alone of a
man said to be such a sorcerer excites in a Hindu profound terror.
And now we will quote in this
connection the truthful remark of a writer who passed years in India in the
study of the origin of such superstitions: "Vulgar magic in India, like a
degenerated infiltration, goes hand-in-hand with the most ennobling beliefs of
the sectarians of the Pitris. It was the work of the lowest clergy, and
designed to hold the populace in a perpetual state of fear. It is thus that in
all ages and under every latitude, side by side with philosophical speculations
of the highest character, one always finds the religion of the rabble."*
In India it was the work of the lowest clergy; in Rome, that of the highest
Pontiffs. But then, have they not as authority their greatest saint, Augustine,
who declares that "whoever believes not in the evil spirits, refuses to
believe in Holy Writ?"**
Therefore, in the second half
of the nineteenth century, we find the counsel for the Sacred Congregation of
Rites (exorcism of demons included), Father Ventura de Raulica, writing thus,
in a letter published by des Mousseaux, in 1865:
"We are in full magic!
and under false names; the Spirit of lies and impudicity goes on perpetrating
his horrible deprecations. . . . The most grievous feature in this is that
among the most serious persons they do not attach the importance to the strange
phenomena which they deserve, these manifestations that we witness, and which
become with every day more weird, striking, as well as most fatal.
"I cannot sufficiently
admire and praise, from this standpoint, the zeal and courage displayed by you
in your work. The facts which you have collected are calculated to throw light
and conviction into the most skeptical minds; and after reading this remarkable
work, written with so much learnedness and consciousness, blindness is no
longer possible.
"If anything could
surprise us, it would be the indifference with which these phenomena have been
treated by false Science, endeavoring as she has, to turn into ridicule so
grave a subject; the childish simplicity exhibited by her in the desire to
explain the facts by absurd and contradictory hypotheses. . . . ***
[Signed] "The Father
Ventura de Raulica, etc., etc."
Thus encouraged by the
greatest authorities of the Church of Rome, ancient and modern, the Chevalier
argues the necessity and the efficacy of exorcism by the priests. He tries to
demonstrate -- on faith, as usual --
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Louis Jacolliot: "Le
Spiritisme dans le Monde," p. 162.
** St. Augustine: "City
of God."
*** "Moeurs et Pratiques
des Demons," p. ii.
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RELICS.
that the power of the spirits
of hell is closely related to certain rites, words, and formal signs. "In
the diabolical Catholicism," he says, "as well as in the divine Catholicism,
potential grace is bound (liee) to certain signs." While the power of the
Catholic priest proceeds from God, that of the Pagan priest proceeds from the
Devil. The Devil, he adds, "is forced to submission" before the holy
minister of God -- "he dares not LIE."*
We beg the reader to note well
the underlined sentence, as we mean to test its truth impartially. We are
prepared to adduce proofs, undeniable and undenied even by the Popish Church --
forced, as she was, into the confession -- proofs of hundreds of cases in
relation to the most solemn of her dogmas, wherein the "spirits" lied
from beginning to end. How about certain holy relics authenticated by visions
of the blessed Virgin, and a host of saints? We have at hand a treatise by a
pious Catholic, Jilbert de Nogen, on the relics of saints. With honest despair
he acknowledges the "great number of false relics, as well as false
legends," and severely censures the inventors of these lying miracles.
"It was on the occasion of one of our Saviour's teeth," writes the
author of Demonologia, "that de Nogen took up his pen on this subject, by
which the monks of St. Medard de Soissons pretended to work miracles; a
pretension which he asserted to be as chimerical as that of several persons who
believed they possessed the navel, and other parts less comely, of the body of
Christ."**
"A monk of St.
Antony," says Stephens,*** "having been at Jerusalem, saw there
several relics, among which was a bit of the finger of the Holy Ghost, as sound
and entire as it had ever been; the snout of the seraph that appeared to St.
Francis; one of the nails of a cherub; one of the ribs of the Verbum caro
factum (the Word made flesh); some rays of the star that appeared to the three
kings of the East; a phial of St. Michael's sweat, that exuded when he was
fighting against the Devil, etc. 'All which things,' observes the monkish
treasurer of relics, 'I have brought with me home very devoutly.' "
And if the foregoing is set
aside as the invention of a Protestant enemy, may we not be allowed to refer
the reader to the History of England and authentic documents which state the
existence of a relic not less extraordinary than the best of the others? Henry
III. received from the Grand Master of the Templars a phial containing a small
portion of the sacred blood of Christ which he had shed upon the cross. It was
attested to be genuine by the seals of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and others.
The
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Des Mousseaux: "Table des
Matieres."
** "Demonologia";
London, 1827, J. Bumpus, 23 Skinner Street.
*** "Traite Preparatif a
l'Apologie pour Herodote," c. 39.
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procession bearing the sacred
phial from St. Paul's to Westminster Abbey is described by the historian:
"Two monks received the phial, and deposited it in the Abbey . . . which
made all England shine with glory, dedicating it to God and St. Edward."
The story of the Prince
Radzivil is well known. It was the undeniable deception of the monks and nuns
surrounding him and his own confessor which made the Polish nobleman become a
Lutheran. He felt at first so indignant at the "heresy" of the
Reformation spreading in Lithuania, that he travelled all the way to Rome to
pay his homage of sympathy and veneration to the Pope. The latter presented him
with a precious box of relics. On his return home, his confessor saw the
Virgin, who descended from her glorious abode for the sole purpose of blessing
these relics and authenticating them. The superior of the neighboring convent
and the mother-abbess of a nunnery both saw the same vision, with a
reenforcement of several saints and martyrs; they prophesied and "felt the
Holy Ghost" ascending from the box of relics and overshadowing the prince.
A demoniac provided for the purpose by the clergy was exorcised in full
ceremony, and upon being touched by the box immediately recovered, and rendered
thanks on the spot to the Pope and the Holy Ghost. After the ceremony was over
the guardian of the treasury in which the relics were kept, threw himself at
the feet of the prince, and confessed that on their way back from Rome he had
lost the box of relics. Dreading the wrath of his master, he had procured a
similar box, "which he had filled with the small bones of dogs and
cats"; but seeing how the prince was deceived, he preferred confessing his
guilt to such blasphemous tricks. The prince said nothing, but continued for
some time testing -- not the relics, but his confessor and the vision-seers.
Their mock raptures made him discover so thoroughly the gross impositions of
the monks and nuns that he joined the Reformed Church.
This is history. Bayle shows
that when the Roman Church is no longer able to deny that there have been false
relics, she resorts to sophistry, and replies that if false relics have wrought
miracles it is "because of the good intentions of the believers, who thus obtained
from God a reward of their good faith!" The same Bayle shows, by numerous
instances, that whenever it was proved that several bodies of the same saint,
or three heads of him, or three arms (as in the case of Augustine) were said to
exist in different places, and that they could not well be all authentic, the
cool and invariable answer of the Church was that they were all genuine; for
"God had multiplied and miraculously reproduced them for the greater glory
of His Holy Church!" In other words they would have the faithful believe
that the body of a deceased saint may, through divine miracle, acquire the
physiological peculiarities of a crawfish!
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LYING SPIRITS.
We fancy that it would be hard
to demonstrate to satisfaction that the visions of Catholic saints, are, in any
one particular instance, better or more trustworthy than the average visions
and prophecies of our modern "mediums." The visions of Andrew Jackson
Davis -- however our critics may sneer at them -- are by long odds more
philosophical and more compatible with modern science than the Augustinian
speculations. Whenever the visions of Swedenborg, the greatest among the modern
seers, run astray from philosophy and scientific truth, it is when they most
run parallel with theology. Nor are these visions any more useless to either
science or humanity than those of the great orthodox saints. In the life of St.
Bernard it is narrated that as he was once in church, upon a Christmas eve, he
prayed that the very hour in which Christ was born might be revealed to him;
and when the "true and correct hour came, he saw the divine babe appear in
his manger." What a pity that the divine babe did not embrace so favorable
an opportunity to fix the correct day and year of his death, and thereby
reconcile the controversies of his putative historians. The Tischendorfs,
Lardners, and Colensos, as well as many a Catholic divine, who have vainly
squeezed the marrow out of historical records and their own brains, in the
useless search, would at least have had something for which to thank the saint.
As it is, we are hopelessly
left to infer that most of the beatific and divine visions of the Golden
Legend, and those to be found in the more complete biographies of the most
important "saints," as well as most of the visions of our own
persecuted seers and seeresses, were produced by ignorant and undeveloped
"spirits" passionately fond of personating great historical
characters. We are quite ready to agree with the Chevalier des Mousseaux, and
other unrelenting persecutors of magic and spiritualism in the name of the
Church, that modern spirits are often "lying spirits"; that they are
ever on hand to humor the respective hobbies of the persons who communicate
with them at "circles"; that they deceive them and, therefore, are
not always good "spirits."
But, having conceded so much,
we will now ask of any impartial person: is it possible to believe at the same
time that the power given to the exorcist-priest, that supreme and divine power
of which he boasts, has been given to him by God for the purpose of deceiving
people? That the prayer pronounced by him in the name of Christ, and which,
forcing the demon into submission, makes him reveal himself, is calculated at
the same time to make the devil confess not the truth, but that only which it
is the interest of the church to which the exorcist belongs, should pass for
truth? And this is what invariably happens. Compare, for instance, the
responses given by the demon to Luther, with those obtained from the devils by
St. Dominick. The one argues against the
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private mass, and upbraids
Luther with placing the Virgin Mary and saints before Christ, and thus dishonoring
the Son of God;* while the demons exorcised by St. Dominick, upon seeing the
Virgin whom the holy father had also evoked to help him, roar out: "Oh!
our enemy! oh! our damner! . . . why didst thou descend from heaven to torment
us? Why art thou so powerful an intercessor for sinners! Oh! thou most certain
and secure way to heaven . . . thou commandest us and we are forced to confess
that nobody is damned who only perseveres in thy holy worship, etc.,
etc."** Luther's "Saint Satan" assures him that while believing
in the transubstantiation of Christ's body and blood he had been worshipping
merely bread and wine; and the devils of all the Catholic saints promise
eternal damnation to whomsoever disbelieves or even so much as doubts the
dogma!
Before leaving the subject,
let us give one or two more instances from the Chronicles of the Lives of the
Saints, selected from such narratives as are fully accepted by the Church. We
might fill volumes with proofs of undeniable confederacy between the exorcisers
and the demons. Their very nature betrays them. Instead of being independent,
crafty entities bent on the destruction of men's souls and spirits, the
majority of them are simply the elementals of the kabalists; creatures with no
intellect of their own, but faithful mirrors of the WILL which evokes,
controls, and guides them. We will not waste our time in drawing the reader's
attention to doubtful or obscure thaumaturgists and exorcisers, but take as our
standard one of the greatest saints of Catholicism, and select a bouquet from
that same prolific conservatory of pious lies, The Golden Legend, of James de
Voragine.***
St. Dominick, the founder of
the famous order of that name, is one of the mightiest saints on the calendar.
His order was the first that received a solemn confirmation from the Pope,****
and he is well known in history as the associate and counsellor of the infamous
Simon de Montfort, the papal general, whom he helped to butcher the unfortunate
Albigenses in and near Toulouse. The story goes that this saint and the Church
after him, claim that he received from the Virgin, in propria persona, a
rosary, whose virtues produced such stupendous miracles that they throw
entirely into the shade those of the apostles, and even of Jesus himself. A man,
says the biographer, an abandoned sinner, was bold enough to doubt the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* De Missa Privata et Unctione
Sacerdotum.
** See the "Life of St.
Dominick" and the story about the miraculous Rosary; also the "Golden
Legend."
*** James de Varasse, known by
the Latin name of James de Voragine, was Vicar General of the Dominicans and
Bishop of Genoa in 1290.
**** Thirteenth century.
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THE DEVILS.
virtue of the Dominican
rosary; and for this unparalleled blasphemy was punished on the spot by having
15,000 devils take possession of him. Seeing the great suffering of the
tortured demoniac, St. Dominick forgot the insult and called the devils to
account.
Following is the colloquy
between the "blessed exorcist" and the demons:
Question. -- How did you take
possession of this man, and how many are you?
Answer of the Devils. --We
came into him for having spoken disrespectfully of the rosary. We are 15,000.
Question. -- Why did so many
as 15,000 enter him?
Answer. -- Because there are
fifteen decades in the rosary which he derided, etc.
Dominick. -- Is not all true I
have said of the virtues of the rosary?
Devils. -- Yes! Yes! (they
emit flames through the nostrils of the demoniac). Know all ye Christians that
Dominick never said one word concerning the rosary that is not most true; and
know ye further, that if you do not believe him, great calamities will befall
you.
Dominick. -- Who is the man in
the world the Devil hates the most?
Devils. -- (In chorus.) Thou
art the very man (here follow verbose compliments).
Dominick. -- Of which state of
Christians are there the most damned?
Devils. -- In hell we have
merchants, pawnbrokers, fraudulent bankers, grocers, Jews, apothecaries, etc.,
etc.
Dominick. -- Are there any
priests or monks in hell?
Devils. -- There are a great number
of priests, but no monks, with the exception of such as have transgressed the
rule of their order.
Dominick. -- Have you any
Dominicans?
Devils. -- Alas! alas! we have
not one yet, but we expect a great number of them after their devotion is a
little cooled.
We do not pretend to give the
questions and answers literally, for they occupy twenty-three pages; but the
substance is here, as may be seen by any one who cares to read the Golden
Legend. The full description of the hideous bellowings of the demons, their
enforced glorification of the saint, and so on, is too long for this chapter.
Suffice it to say that as we read the numerous questions offered by Dominick
and the answers of the demons, we become fully convinced that they corroborate
in every detail the unwarranted assertions and support the interests of the
Church. The narrative is suggestive. The legend graphically describes the
battle of the exorcist with the legion from the bottomless pit. The sulphurous
flames which burst forth from the nose, mouth, eyes, and ears, of the demoniac;
the sudden appearance of over a hun-
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dred angels, clad in golden
armor; and, finally, the descent of the blessed Virgin herself, in person,
bearing a golden rod, with which she administers a sound thrashing to the
demoniac, to force the devils to confess that of herself which we scarcely need
repeat. The whole catalogue of theological truths uttered by Dominick's devils
were embodied in so many articles of faith by his Holiness, the present Pope,
in 1870, at the last OEcumenical Council.
From the foregoing it is easy
to see that the only substantial difference between infidel "mediums"
and orthodox saints lies in the relative usefulness of the demons, if demons we
must call them. While the Devil faithfully supports the Christian exorcist in
his orthodox (?) views, the modern spook generally leaves his medium in the
lurch. For, by lying, he acts against his or her interests rather than
otherwise, and thereby too often casts foul suspicion on the genuineness of the
mediumship. Were modern "spirits" devils, they would evidently
display a little more discrimination and cunning than they do. They would act
as the demons of the saint which, compelled by the ecclesiastical magician and
by the power of "the name . . . which forces them into submission,"
lie in accordance with the direct interest of the exorcist and his church. The
moral of the parallel we leave to the sagacity of the reader.
"Observe well,"
exclaims des Mousseaux, "that there are demons which sometimes will speak
the truth." "The exorcist," he adds, quoting the Ritual,
"must command the demon to tell him whether he is detained in the body of
the demoniac through some magic art, or by signs, or any objects which usually
serve for this evil practice. In case the exorcised person has swallowed the
latter, he must vomit them back; and if they are not in his body, the demon
must indicate the proper place where they are to be found; and having found
them they must be burned."* Thus some "demons reveal the existence of
the bewitchment, tell who is its author, and indicate the means to destroy the
malefice. But beware to ever resort, in such a case, to magicians, sorcerers,
or mediums. You must call to help you but the minister of your Church!"
"The Church believes in magic, as you well see," he adds, "since
she expresses it so formally. And those who disbelieve in magic, can they still
hope to share the faith of their own Church? And who can teach them better? To
whom did Christ say: 'Go ye therefore, and teach all nations . . . and lo, I am
with you always, even to the end of the world?' "**
Are we to believe that he said
this but to those who wear these black
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* "Rituale Romanum,"
pp. 475-478. Parisiis, 1852.
** "Moeurs et Pratiques
des Demons," p. 177.
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AND WOLVES.
or scarlet liveries of Rome?
Must we then credit the story that this power was given by Christ to Simon
Stylites, the saint who sanctified himself by perching on a pillar (stylos)
sixty feet high, for thirty-six years of his life, without ever descending from
it, in order that, among other miracles stated in the Golden Legend, he might
cure a dragon of a sore eye? "Near Simon's pillar was the dwelling of a
dragon, so very venomous that the stench was spread for miles round his
cave." This ophidian-hermit met with an accident; he got a thorn in his
eye, and, becoming blind, crept to the saint's pillar, and pressed his eye
against it for three days, without touching any one. Then the blessed saint,
from his aerial seat, "three feet in diameter," ordered earth and
water to be placed on the dragon's eye, out of which suddenly emerged a thorn
(or stake), a cubit in length; when the people saw the "miracle" they
glorified the Creator. As to the grateful dragon, he arose and, "having
adored God for two hours, returned to his cave"* -- a half-converted
ophidian, we must suppose.
And what are we to think of
that other narrative, to disbelieve in which is "to risk one's
salvation," as we were informed by a Pope's missionary, of the Order of
the Franciscans? When St. Francis preached a sermon in the wilderness, the
birds assembled from the four cardinal points of the world. They warbled and
applauded every sentence; they sang a holy mass in chorus; finally they
dispersed to carry the glad tidings all over the universe. A grasshopper,
profiting by the absence of the Holy Virgin, who generally kept company with
the saint, remained perched on the head of the "blessed one" for a
whole week. Attacked by a ferocious wolf, the saint, who had no other weapon
but the sign of the cross which he made upon himself, instead of running away
from his rabid assailant, began arguing with the beast. Having imparted to him
the benefit to be derived from the holy religion, St. Francis never ceased
talking until the wolf became as meek as a lamb, and even shed tears of
repentance over his past sins. Finally, he "stretched his paws in the hands
of the saint, followed him like a dog through all the towns in which he
preached, and became half a Christian"!** Wonders of zoology! a horse
turned sorcerer, a wolf and a dragon turned Christians!
These two anecdotes, chosen at
random from among hundreds, if rivalled are not surpassed by the wildest
romances of the Pagan thaumaturgists, magicians, and spiritualists! And yet,
when Pythagoras is said to have subdued animals, even wild beasts, merely
through a power-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See the narrative selected
from the "Golden Legend," by Alban Butler.
** See the "Golden
Legend"; "Life of St. Francis"; "Demonologia."
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ful mesmeric influence, he is
pronounced by one-half of the Catholics a bare-faced impostor, and by the rest
a sorcerer, who worked magic in confederacy with the Devil. Neither the
she-bear, nor the eagle, nor yet the bull that Pythagoras is said to have
persuaded to give up eating beans, were alleged to have answered with human
voices; while St. Benedict's "black raven," whom he called "brother,"
argues with him, and croaks his answers like a born casuist. When the saint
offers him one-half of a poisoned loaf, the raven grows indignant and
reproaches him in Latin as though he had just graduated at the Propaganda!
If it be objected that the Golden
Legend is now but half supported by the Church; and that it is known to have
been compiled by the writer from a collection of the lives of the saints, for
the most part unauthenticated, we can show that, at least in one instance, the
biography is no legendary compilation, but the history of one man, by another
one who was his contemporary. Jortin and Gibbon demonstrated years ago, that
the early fathers used to select narratives, wherewith to ornament the lives of
their apocryphal saints, from Ovid, Homer, Livy, and even from the unwritten
popular legends of Pagan nations. But such is not the case in the above
instances. St. Bernard lived in the twelfth century, and St. Dominick was
nearly contemporaneous with the author of the Golden Legend. De Voragine died
in 1298, and Dominick, whose exorcisms and life he describes so minutely,
instituted his order in the first quarter of the thirteenth century. Moreover,
de Voragine was Vicar-General of the Dominicans himself, in the middle of the
same century, and therefore described the miracles wrought by his hero and
patron but a few years after they were alleged to have happened. He wrote them
in the same convent; and while narrating these wonders he had probably fifty
persons at hand who had been eye-witnesses to the saint's mode of living. What
must we think, in such a case, of a biographer who seriously describes the
following: One day, as the blessed saint was occupied in his study, the Devil
began pestering him, in the shape of a flea. He frisked and jumped about the
pages of his book until the harassed saint, unwilling as he was to act
unkindly, even toward a devil, felt compelled to punish him by fixing the
troublesome devil on the very sentence on which he stopped, by clasping the
book. At another time the same devil appeared under the shape of a monkey. He
grinned so horribly that Dominick, in order to get rid of him, ordered the
devil-monkey to take the candle and hold it for him until he had done reading.
The poor imp did so, and held it until it was consumed to the very end of the
wick; and, notwithstanding his pitiful cries for mercy, the saint compelled him
to hold it till his fingers were burned to the bones!
Enough! The approbation with
which this book was received by the
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"GOLDEN LEGEND."
Church, and the peculiar
sanctity attributed to it, is sufficient to show the estimation in which
veracity was held by its patrons. We may add, in conclusion, that the finest
quintessence of Boccaccio's Decameron appears prudery itself by comparison with
the filthy realism of the Golden Legend.
We cannot regard with too much
astonishment the pretensions of the Catholic Church in seeking to convert
Hindus and Buddhists to Christianity. While the "heathen" keeps to
the faith of his fathers, he has at least the one redeeming quality -- that of
not having apostatized for the mere pleasure of exchanging one set of idols for
another. There may be for him some novelty in his embracing Protestantism; for
in that he gains the advantage, at least, of limiting his religious views to
their simplest expression. But when a Buddhist has been enticed into exchanging
his Shoe Dagoon for the Slipper of the Vatican, or the eight hairs from the
head of Gautama and Buddha's tooth, which work miracles, for the locks of a
Christian saint, and a tooth of Jesus, which work far less clever miracles, he
has no cause to boast of his choice. In his address to the Literary Society of
Java, Sir T. S. Raffles is said to have narrated the following characteristic
anecdote: "On visiting the great temple on the hills of Nagasaki, the
English commissioner was received with marked regard and respect by the
venerable patriarch of the northern provinces, a man eighty years of age, who
entertained him most sumptuously. On showing him round the courts of the
temple, one of the English officers present heedlessly exclaimed, in surprise, 'Jesus
Christus!' The patriarch turning half round, with a placid smile, bowed
significantly, with the expression: 'We know your Jasus Christus! Well, don't
obtrude him upon us in our temples, and we remain friends.' And so, with a
hearty shake of the hands, these two opposites parted."
There is scarcely a report
sent by the missionaries from India, Thibet, and China, but laments the
diabolical "obscenity" of the heathen rites, their lamentable
impudicity; all of which "are so strongly suggestive of devil-worship,"
as des Mousseaux tells us. We can scarcely be assured that the morality of the
Pagans would be in the least improved were they allowed a free inquiry into the
life of say the psalmist-king, the author of those sweet Psalms which are so
rapturously repeated by Christians. The difference between David performing a
phallic dance before the holy ark -- emblem of the female principle -- and a
Hindu Vishnavite bearing the same emblem on his forehead, favors the former
only in the eyes of those who have studied neither the ancient faith nor their
own. When a religion which compelled David to cut off and deliver two hundred
foreskins of his enemies before he could become the king's son-in-law (I Sam.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The Mythology of the
Hindus," by Charles Coleman. Japan.
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xviii.) is accepted as a
standard by Christians, they would do well not to cast into the teeth of
heathen the impudicities of their faiths. Remembering the suggestive parable of
Jesus, they ought to cast the beam out of their own eye before plucking at the
mote in their neighbor's. The sexual element is as marked in Christianity as in
any one of the "heathen religions." Certainly, nowhere in the Vedas
can be found the coarseness and downright immodesty of language, that Hebraists
now discover throughout the Mosaic Bible.
It would profit little were we
to dwell much upon subjects which have been disposed of in such a masterly way
by an anonymous author whose work electrified England and Germany last year;*
while as regards the particular topic under notice, we cannot do better than
recommend the scholarly writings of Dr. Inman. Albeit one-sided, and in many
instances unjust to the ancient heathen, Pagan, and Jewish religions, the facts
treated in the Ancient and Pagan Christian Symbolism, are unimpeachable.
Neither can we agree with some English critics who charge him with an intent to
destroy Christianity. If by Christianity is meant the external religious forms
of worship, then he certainly seeks to destroy it, for in his eyes, as well as
in those of every truly religious man, who has studied ancient exoteric faiths,
and their symbology, Christianity is pure heathenism, and Catholicism, with its
fetish-worshipping, is far worse and more pernicious than Hinduism in its most
idolatrous aspect. But while denouncing the exoteric forms and unmasking the
symbols, it is not the religion of Christ that the author attacks, but the
artificial system of theology. We will allow him to illustrate the position in
his own language, and quote from his preface:
"When vampires were
discovered by the acumen of any observer," he says, "they were, we
are told, ignominiously killed, by a stake being driven through the body; but
experience showed them to have such tenacity of life that they rose, again and
again, notwithstanding renewed impalement, and were not ultimately laid to rest
till wholly burned. In like manner, the regenerated heathendom, which dominates
over the followers of Jesus of Nazareth, has risen again and again, after being
transfixed. Still cherished by the many, it is denounced by the few. Amongst
other accusers, I raise my voice against the Paganism which exists so
extensively in ecclesiastical Christianity, and will do my utmost to expose the
imposture. . . . In a vampire story told in Thalaba, by Southey, the
resuscitated being takes the form of a dearly-beloved maiden, and the hero is
obliged to kill her with his own hand. He does so; but, whilst he strikes the
form of the loved one, he feels sure that he slays
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Supernatural
Religion."
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WITH ISLAM.
only a demon. In like manner,
when I endeavor to destroy the current heathenism, which has assumed the garb
of Christianity, I do not attack real religion.* Few would accuse a workman of
malignancy, who cleanses from filth the surface of a noble statue. There may be
some who are too nice to touch a nasty subject, yet even they will rejoice when
some one else removes the dirt. Such a scavenger is wanted."**
But is it merely Pagans and
heathen that the Catholics persecute, and about whom, like Augustine, they cry
to the Deity, "Oh, my God! so do I wish Thy enemies to be slain"? Oh,
no! their aspirations are more Mosaic and Cain-like than that. It is against
their next of kin in faith, against their schismatic brothers that they are now
intriguing within the walls which sheltered the murderous Borgias. The larvae
of the infanticidal, parricidal, and fratricidal Popes have proved themselves
fit counsellors for the Cains of Castelfidardo and Mentana. It is now the turn
of the Slavonian Christians, the Oriental Schismatics -- the Philistines of the
Greek Church!
His Holiness the Pope, after
exhausting, in a metaphor of self-laudation, every point of assimilation
between the great biblical prophets and himself, has finally and truly compared
himself with the Patriarch Jacob "wrestling against his God." He now
crowns the edifice of Catholic piety by openly sympathizing with the Turks! The
vicegerent of God inaugurates his infallibility by encouraging, in a true
Christian spirit, the acts of that Moslem David, the modern Bashi-Bazuk; and it
seems as if nothing would more please his Holiness than to be presented by the
latter with several thousands of the Bulgarian or Servian
"foreskins." True to her policy to be all things to all men to
promote her own interests, the Romish Church is, at this writing (1876),
benevolently viewing the Bulgarian and Servian atrocities, and, probably,
manoeuvring with Turkey against Russia. Better Islam, and the hitherto-hated
Crescent over the sepulchre of the Christian god, than the Greek Church
established at Constantinople and Jerusalem as the state religion. Like a
decrepit and toothless ex-tyrant in exile, the Vatican is eager for any
alliance that promises, if not a restoration of its own power, at least the
weakening of its rival. The axe its inquisitors once swung, it now toys
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Neither do we, if by true
religion the world shall at last understand the adoration of one Supreme,
invisible, and Unknown Deity, by works and acts, not by the profession of vain
human dogmas. But our intention is to go farther. We desire to demonstrate that
if we exclude ceremonial and fetish worship from being regarded as essential
parts of religion, then the true Christ-like principles have been exemplified,
and true Christianity practiced since the days of the apostles, exclusively
among Buddhists and "heathen."
** "Ancient Pagan and
Modern Christian Symbolism," p. xvi.
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with in secret, feeling its
edge, and waiting, and hoping against hope. In her time, the Popish Church has
lain with strange bedfellows, but never before now sunk to the degradation of
giving her moral support to those who for over 1200 years spat in her face,
called her adherents "infidel dogs," repudiated her teachings, and
denied godhood to her God!
The press of even Catholic
France is fairly aroused at this indignity, and openly accuses the Ultramontane
portion of the Catholic Church and the Vatican of siding, during the present
Eastern struggle, with the Mahometan against the Christian. "When the
Minister of Foreign Affairs in the French Legislature spoke some mild words in
favor of the Greek Christians, he was only applauded by the liberal Catholics,
and received coldly by the Ultramontane party," says the French
correspondent of a New York paper.
"So pronounced was this,
that M. Lemoinne, the well-known editor of the great liberal Catholic journal,
the Debats, was moved to say that the Roman Church felt more sympathy for the
Moslem than the schismatic, just as they preferred an infidel to the
Protestant. 'There is at bottom,' says this writer, 'a great affinity between
the Syllabus and the Koran, and between the two heads of the faithful. The two
systems are of the same nature, and are united on the common ground of a one
and unchangeable theory.' In Italy, in like manner, the King and Liberal
Catholics are in warm sympathy with the unfortunate Christians, while the Pope
and Ultramontane faction are believed to be inclining to the Mahometans."
The civilized world may yet
expect the apparition of the materialized Virgin Mary within the walls of the
Vatican. The so often-repeated "miracle" of the Immaculate Visitor in
the mediaeval ages has recently been enacted at Lourdes, and why not once more,
as a coup de grace to all heretics, schismatics, and infidels? The miraculous
wax taper is yet seen at Arras, the chief city of Artois; and at every new
calamity threatening her beloved Church, the "Blessed Lady" appears
personally, and lights it with her own fair hands, in view of a whole
"biologized" congregation. This sort of "miracle," says E.
Worsley, wrought by the Roman Catholic Church, "being most certain, and
never doubted of by any."* Neither has the private correspondence with
which the most "Gracious Lady" honors her friends been doubted. There
are two precious missives from her in the archives of the Church. The first
purports to be a letter in answer to one addressed to her by Ignatius. She
confirms all things learned by her correspondent from "her friend" --
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Discourses of Miracles
wrought in the Roman Catholic Church; or a full Refutation of Dr.
Stillingfleet's unjust Exceptions against Miracles." Octavo, 1676, p. 64.
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VIRGIN.
meaning the Apostle John. She
bids him hold fast to his vows, and adds as an inducement: "I and John
will come together and pay you a visit."*
Nothing was known of this
unblushing fraud till the letters were published at Paris, in 1495. By a
curious accident it appeared at a time when threatening inquiries began to be
made as to the genuineness of the fourth Synoptic. Who could doubt, after such
a confirmation from headquarters! But the climax of effrontery was capped in
1534, when another letter was received from the "Mediatrix," which
sounds more like the report of a lobby-agent to a brother-politician. It was
written in excellent Latin, and was found in the Cathedral of Messina, together
with the image to which it alludes. Its contents run as follows:
"Mary Virgin, Mother of
the Redeemer of the world, to the Bishop, Clergy, and the other faithful of
Messina, sendeth health and benediction from herself and son:**
"Whereas ye have been
mindful of establishing the worship of me; now this is to let you know that by
so doing ye have found great favor in my sight. I have a long time reflected
with pain upon your city, which is exposed to much danger from its contiguity
to the fire of Etna, and I have often had words about it with my son, for he
was vexed with you because of your guilty neglect of my worship, so that he
would not care a pin about my intercession. Now, however, that you have come to
your senses, and have happily begun to worship me, he has conferred upon me the
right to become your everlasting protectress; but, at the same time, I warn you
to mind what you are about, and give me no cause of repenting of my kindness to
you. The prayers and festivals instituted in my honor please me tremendously
(vehementer), and if you faithfully persevere in these things, and provided you
oppose to the utmost of your power, the heretics which now-a-days are spreading
through the world, by which both my worship and that of the other saints, male
and female, are so endangered, you shall enjoy my perpetual protection.
"In sign of this compact,
I send you down from Heaven the image of myself, cast by celestial hands, and
if ye hold it in the honor to which it is entitled, it will be an evidence to
me of your obedience and your faith. Farewell. Dated in Heaven, whilst sitting
near the throne of my son, in the month of December, of the 1534th year from
his incarnation.
"MARY VIRGIN"
The reader should understand
that this document is no anti-Catholic forgery. The author from whom it is
taken,** says that the authenticity of the missive "is attested by the
Bishop himself, his Vicar-General,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* After this, why should the
Roman Catholics object to the claims of the Spiritualists? If, without proof,
they believe in the "materialization" of Mary and John, for Ignatius,
how can they logically deny the materialization of Katie and John (King), when
it is attested by the careful experiments of Mr. Crookes, the English chemist,
and the cumulative testimony of a large number of witnesses?
** The "Mother of
God" takes precedence therefore of God?
*** See the "New
Era" for July, 1875. N. Y.
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Secretary, and six Canons of
the Cathedral Church of Messina, all of whom have signed that attestation with
their names, and confirmed it upon oath.
"Both the epistle and image
were found upon the high altar, where they had been placed by angels from
heaven."
A Church must have reached the
last stages of degradation, when such sacrilegious trickery as this could be
resorted to by its clergy, and accepted with or without question by the people.
No! far from the man who feels
the workings of an immortal spirit within him, be such a religion! There never
was nor ever will be a truly philosophical mind, whether of Pagan, heathen,
Jew, or Christian, but has followed the same path of thought. Gautama-Buddha is
mirrored in the precepts of Christ; Paul and Philo Judaeus are faithful echoes
of Plato; and Ammonius Saccas and Plotinus won their immortal fame by combining
the teachings of all these grand masters of true philosophy. "Prove all
things; hold fast that which is good," ought to be the motto of all
brothers on earth. Not so is it with the interpreters of the Bible. The seed of
the Reformation was sown on the day that the second chapter of The Catholic
Epistle of James, jostled the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews in
the same New Testament. One who believes in Paul cannot believe in James,
Peter, and John. The Paulists, to remain Christians with their apostle, must
withstand Peter "to the face"; and if Peter "was to be
blamed" and was wrong, then he was not infallible. How then can his
successor (?) boast of his infallibility? Every kingdom divided against itself
is brought to desolation; and every house divided against itself must fall. A
plurality of masters has proved as fatal in religions as in politics. What Paul
preached, was preached by every other mystic philosopher. "Stand fast
therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not
entangled again with the yoke of bondage!" exclaims the honest
apostle-philosopher; and adds, as if prophetically inspired: "But if ye
bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of
another."
That the Neo-platonists were
not always despised or accused of demonolatry is evidenced in the adoption by
the Roman Church of their very rites and theurgy. The identical evocations and
incantations of the Pagan and Jewish Kabalist, are now repeated by the
Christian exorcist, and the theurgy of Iamblichus was adopted word for word.
"Distinct as were the Platonists and Pauline Christians of the earlier
centuries," writes Professor A. Wilder, "many of the more
distinguished teachers of the new faith were deeply tinctured with the
philosophical leaven. Synesius, the Bishop of Cyrene, was the disciple of
Hypatia. St. Anthony reiterated the theurgy of Iamblichus. The Logos, or word
of the Gospel
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RITUAL.
according to John, was a
Gnostic personification. Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and others of the
fathers drank deeply from the fountains of philosophy. The ascetic idea which
carried away the Church was like that which was practiced by Plotinus . . . all
through the middle ages there rose up men who accepted the interior doctrines
which were promulgated by the renowned teacher of the Academy."*
To substantiate our accusation
that the Latin Church first despoiled the kabalists and theurgists of their
magical rites and ceremonies, before hurling anathemas upon their devoted
heads, we will now translate for the reader fragments from the forms of
exorcism employed by kabalists and Christians. The identity in phraseology,
may, perhaps, disclose one of the reasons why the Romish Church has always
desired to keep the faithful in ignorance of the meaning of her Latin prayers
and ritual. Only those directly interested in the deception have had the
opportunity to compare the rituals of the Church and the magicians. The best
Latin scholars were, until a comparatively recent date, either churchmen, or
dependent upon the Church. Common people could not read Latin, and even if they
could, the reading of the books on magic was prohibited, under the penalty of
anathema and excommunication. The cunning device of the confessional made it
almost impossible to consult, even surreptitiously, what the priests call a
grimoire (a devil's scrawl), or Ritual of Magic. To make assurance doubly sure,
the Church began destroying or concealing everything of the kind she could lay
her hands upon.
The following are translated
from the Kabalistic Ritual, and that generally known as the Roman Ritual. The
latter was promulgated in 1851 and 1852, under the sanction of Cardinal
Engelbert, Archbishop of Malines, and of the Archbishop of Paris. Speaking of
it, the demonologist des Mousseaux says: "It is the ritual of Paul V.,
revised by the most learned of modern Popes, by the contemporary of Voltaire,
Benedict XIV."**
[[Column one]]
KABALISTIC. (Jewish and
Pagan.)
Exorcism of Salt.
The Priest-Magician blesses
the Salt, and says: "Creature of Salt,*** in thee may remain the WISDOM
(of God); and may it preserve from all corruption our minds and [[Continued on
next page]]
[[Column two]]
ROMAN CATHOLIC
Exorcism of Salt.****
The Priest blesses the Salt
and says: "Creature of Salt, I exorcise thee in the name of the living God
. . . become the health of the soul and of the body! Every- [[Continued on next
page]]
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Paul and Plato."
** See "La Magie au XIXme
Siecle," p. 168.
*** Creature of salt, air,
water, or of any object to be enchanted or blessed, is a technical word in
magic, adopted by the Christian clergy.
**** "Rom. Rit.,"
edit. of 1851, pp. 291-296, etc., etc.
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[[Column one: KABALISTIC.
(Jewish and Pagan.) -- Continued]]
bodies. Through Hochmael (God
of wisdom), and the power of Ruach Hochmael (Spirit of the Holy Ghost) may the
Spirits of matter (bad spirits) before it recede. . . . Amen."
Exorcism of Water (and Ashes).
"Creature of the Water, I
exorcise thee . . . by the three names which are Netsah, Hod, and Jerod
(kabalistic trinity), in the beginning and in the end, by Alpha and Omega,
which are in the Spirit Azoth (Holy Ghost, or the 'Universal Soul'), I exorcise
and adjure thee. . . . Wandering eagle, may the Lord command thee by the wings
of the bull and his flaming sword." (The cherub placed at the east gate of
Eden.)
Exorcism of an Elemental
Spirit.
"Serpent, in the name of
the Tetragrammaton, the Lord; He commands thee, by the angel and the lion.
"Angel of darkness, obey,
and run away with this holy (exorcised) water. Eagle in chains, obey this sign,
and retreat before the breath. Moving serpent, crawl at my feet, or be tortured
by this sacred fire, and evaporate before this holy incense. Let water return
to water (the elemental spirit of water); let the fire burn, and the air
circulate; let the earth return to earth by the virtue of the Pentagram, which
is the Morning Star, and in the name of the tetragrammaton which is traced in
the centre of the Cross of Light. Amen."
[[Column two: ROMAN CATHOLIC
-- Continued]]
where where thou art thrown
may the unclean spirit be put to flight. . . . Amen."
Exorcism of Water.
"Creature of the water,
in the name of the Almighty God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost . . .
be exorcised. . . . I adjure thee in the name of the Lamb . . . (the magician
says bull or ox -- per alas Tauri) of the Lamb that trod upon the basilisk and the
aspic, and who crushes under his foot the lion and the dragon."
Exorcism of the Devil.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
"O Lord, let him who
carries along with him the terror, flee, struck in his turn by terror and
defeated. O thou, who art the Ancient Serpent . . . tremble before the hand of
him who, having triumphed of the tortures of hell (?) devictis gemitibus
inferni, recalled the souls to light. . . . The more whilst thou decay, the
more terrible will be thy torture . . . by Him who reigns over the living and
the dead . . . and who will judge the century by fire, saeculum per ignem, etc.
In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen."*
It is unnecessary to try the
patience of the reader any longer, although we might multiply examples. It must
not be forgotten that we have quoted from the latest revision of the Ritual,
that of 1851-2. If we were to go back to the former one we would find a far
more striking identity, not merely of phraseology but of ceremonial form. For
the purpose of comparison we have not even availed ourselves of the ritual of
ceremonial magic of the Christian kabalists of the middle ages, wherein the
language modelled upon a belief in the divinity of Christ is, with the
exception of a stray expression here and there, identical with the Catholic
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Rom. Rit.," pp.
421-435.
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KABALISTIC.
Ritual.* The latter, however,
makes one improvement, for the originality of which the Church should be
allowed all credit. Certainly nothing so fantastical could be found in a ritual
of magic. "Give place," apostrophizing the "Demon," it
says, "give place to Jesus Christ . . . thou filthy, stinking, and
ferocious beast . . . dost thou rebel? Listen and tremble, Satan; enemy of the
faith, enemy of the human race, introducer of death . . . root of all evil, promoter
of vice, soul of envy, origin of avarice, cause of discord, prince of homicide,
whom God curses; author of incest and sacrilege, inventor of all obscenity,
professor of the most detestable actions, and Grand Master of Heretics (!!)
(Doctor Haereticorum!) What! . . . dost thou still stand? Dost dare to resist,
and thou knowest that Christ, our Lord, is coming? . . . Give place to Jesus
Christ, give place to the Holy Ghost, which, by His blessed Apostle Peter, has
flung thee down before the public, in the person of Simon the Magician"
(te manifeste stravit in Simone mago).**
After such a shower of abuse,
no devil having the slightest feeling of self-respect could remain in such
company; unless, indeed, he should chance to be an Italian Liberal, or King Victor
Emmanuel himself both of whom, thanks to Pius IX., have become anathema-proof.
It really seems too bad to
strip Rome of all her symbols at once; but justice must be done to the
despoiled hierophants. Long before the sign of the Cross was adopted as a
Christian symbol, it was employed as a secret sign of recognition among
neophytes and adepts. Says Levi: "The sign of the Cross adopted by the
Christians does not belong exclusively to them. It is kabalistic, and
represents the oppositions and quaternary equilibrium of the elements. We see
by the occult verse of the Pater, to which we have called attention in another
work, that there were originally two ways of making it, or, at least, two very
different formulas to express its meaning -- one reserved for priests and
initiates; the other given to neophytes and the profane. Thus, for example, the
initiate, carrying his hand to his forehead, said: To thee; then he added,
belong; and continued, while carrying his hand to the breast -- the kingdom;
then, to the left shoulder -- justice; to the right shoulder -- and mercy. Then
he joined the two hands, adding: throughout the generating cycles: 'Tibi sunt
Malchut, et Geburah et Chassed per AEonas' -- a sign of the Cross, absolutely
and magnificently kabalistic, which the profanations of Gnosticism made the
militant and official Church completely lose."***
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Art-Magic,"
art. Peter d'Abano.
** "Ritual," pp.
429-433; see "La Magie au XIXme Siecle," pp. 171, 172.
*** "Dogme et Rituel de
la Haute Magie," vol. ii., p. 88.
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How fantastical, therefore, is
the assertion of Father Ventura, that, while Augustine was a Manichean, a
philosopher, ignorant of and refusing to humble himself before the sublimity of
the "grand Christian revelation," he knew nothing, understood naught
of God, man, or universe; ". . . he remained poor, small, obscure,
sterile, and wrote nothing, did nothing really grand or useful." But,
hardly had he become a Christian ". . . when his reasoning powers and
intellect, enlightened at the luminary of faith, elevated him to the most
sublime heights of philosophy and theology." And his other proposition
that Augustine's genius, as a consequence, "developed itself in all its
grandeur and prodigious fecundity . . . his intellect radiated with that
immense splendor which, reflecting itself in his immortal writings, has never
ceased for one moment during fourteen centuries to illuminate the Church and
the world"!*
Whatever Augustine was as a
Manichean, we leave Father Ventura to discover; but that his accession to
Christianity established an everlasting enmity between theology and science is
beyond doubt. While forced to confess that "the Gentiles had possibly
something divine and true in their doctrines," he, nevertheless, declared
that for their superstition, idolatry, and pride, they had "to be
detested, and, unless they improved, to be punished by divine judgment."
This furnishes the clew to the subsequent policy of the Christian Church, even
to our day. If the Gentiles did not choose to come into the Church, all that
was divine in their philosophy should go for naught, and the divine wrath of
God should be visited upon their heads. What effect this produced is succinctly
stated by Draper: "No one did more than this Father to bring science and
religion into antagonism; it was mainly he who diverted the Bible from its true
office -- a guide to purity of life -- and placed it in the perilous position
of being the arbiter of human knowledge, an audacious tyranny over the mind of
man. The example once set, there was no want of followers; the works of the
Greek philosophers were stigmatized as profane; the transcendently glorious
achievements of the Museum of Alexandria were hidden from sight by a cloud of
ignorance, mysticism, and unintelligible jargon, out of which there too often
flashed the destroying lightnings of ecclesiastical vengeance."**
Augustine and Cyprian*** admit
that Hermes and Hostanes believed in one true god; the first two maintaining,
as well as the two Pagans, that he is invisible and incomprehensible, except spiritually.
Moreover we invite any man of intelligence -- provided he be not a religious
fanatic -- after reading fragments chosen at random from the works of Hermes
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Conferences," by
Le Pere Ventura, vol. ii., part i., p. lvi., Preface.
** "Conflict between
Religion and Science," p. 62.
*** "De Baptismo Contra
Donatistas," lib. vi., ch. xliv.
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MAGUS" ST. PAUL?
and Augustine on the Deity, to
decide which of the two gives a more philosophical definition of the
"unseen Father." We have at least one writer of fame who is of our
opinion. Draper calls the Augustinian productions a "rhapsodical
conversation" with God; an "incoherent dream."*
Father Ventura depicts the
saint as attitudinizing before an astonished world upon "the most sublime
heights of philosophy." But here steps in again the same unprejudiced
critic, who passes the following remarks on this colossus of Patristic
philosophy. "Was it for this preposterous scheme," he asks,
"this product of ignorance and audacity, that the works of the Greek
philosophers were to be given up? It was none too soon that the great critics
who appeared at the Reformation, by comparing the works of these writers with
one another, brought them to their proper level, and taught us to look upon them
all with contempt."**
For such men as Plotinus,
Porphyry, Iamblichus, Apollonius, and even Simon Magus, to be accused of having
formed a pact with the Devil, whether the latter personage exist or not, is so
absurd as to need but little refutation. If Simon Magus -- the most
problematical of all in an historical sense -- ever existed otherwise than in
the overheated fancy of Peter and the other apostles, he was evidently no worse
than any of his adversaries. A difference in religious views, however great, is
insufficient per se to send one person to heaven and the other to hell. Such
uncharitable and peremptory doctrines might have been taught in the middle
ages; but it is too late now for even the Church to put forward this
traditional scarecrow. Research begins to suggest that which, if ever verified,
will bring eternal disgrace on the Church of the Apostle Peter, whose very
imposition of herself upon that disciple must be regarded as the most
unverified and unverifiable of the assumptions of the Catholic clergy.
The erudite author of
Supernatural Religion assiduously endeavors to prove that by Simon Magus we
must understand the apostle Paul, whose Epistles were secretly as well as
openly calumniated by Peter, and charged with containing "dysnoetic
learning." The Apostle of the Gentiles was brave, outspoken, sincere, and
very learned; the Apostle of Circumcision, cowardly, cautious, insincere, and
very ignorant. That Paul had been, partially, at least, if not completely,
initiated into the theurgic mysteries, admits of little doubt. His language,
the phraseology so peculiar to the Greek philosophers, certain expressions used
but by the initiates, are so many sure ear-marks to that supposition. Our
suspicion has been strengthened by an able article in one of the New York peri-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Conflict, etc.,"
p. 37.
** Ibid.
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odicals, entitled Paul and
Plato,* in which the author puts forward one remarkable and, for us, very
precious observation. In his Epistles to the Corinthians he shows Paul
abounding with "expressions suggested by the initiations of Sabazius and
Eleusis, and the lectures of the (Greek) philosophers. He (Paul) designates
himself an idiotes -- a person unskilful in the Word, but not in the gnosis or
philosophical learning. 'We speak wisdom among the perfect or initiated,' he
writes; 'not the wisdom of this world, nor of the archons of this world, but
divine wisdom in a mystery, secret -- which none of the Archons of this world
knew.' "** What else can the apostle mean by these unequivocal words, but
that he himself, as belonging to the mystae (initiated), spoke of things shown
and explained only in the Mysteries? The "divine wisdom in a mystery which
none of the archons of this world knew," has evidently some direct
reference to the basileus of the Eleusinian initiation who did know. The
basileus belonged to the staff of the great hierophant, and was an archon of
Athens; and as such was one of the chief mystae, belonging to the interior
Mysteries, to which a very select and small number obtained an entrance.*** The
magistrates supervising the Eleusinians were called archons.
Another proof that Paul
belonged to the circle of the "Initiates" lies in the following fact.
The apostle had his head shorn at Cenchrea (where Lucius, Apulcius, was
initiated) because "he had a vow." The nazars -- or set apart -- as
we see in the Jewish Scriptures, had to cut their hair which they wore long,
and which "no razor touched" at any other time, and sacrifice it on
the altar of initiation. And the nazars were a class of Chaldean theurgists. We
will show further that Jesus belonged to this class.
Paul declares that:
"According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise
master-builder, I have laid the foundation."****
This expression,
master-builder, used only once in the whole Bible, and by Paul, may be
considered as a whole revelation. In the Mysteries, the third part of the
sacred rites was called Epopteia, or revelation, reception into the secrets. In
substance it means that stage of divine clairvoyance when everything pertaining
to this earth disappears, and earthly sight is paralyzed, and the soul is
united free and pure with its Spirit, or God. But the real significance of the
word is "overseeing," from [[optomai]] -- I see myself. In Sanscrit
the word evapto has the same meaning, as
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Paul and Plato,"
by A. Wilder, editor of "The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries," of
Thomas Taylor.
** "Paul and Plato."
*** See Taylor's "Eleus.
and Bacchic Myst."
**** I Corin., iii. 10.
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well as to obtain.* The word epopteia
is a compound one, from [[Epi]] -- upon, and [[optomai]]-- to look, or an
overseer, an inspector -- also used for a master-builder. The title of
master-mason, in Freemasonry, is derived from this, in the sense used in the
Mysteries. Therefore, when Paul entitles himself a "master-builder,"
he is using a word pre-eminently kabalistic, theurgic, and masonic, and one
which no other apostle uses. He thus declares himself an adept, having the
right to initiate others.
If we search in this
direction, with those sure guides, the Grecian Mysteries and the Kabala, before
us, it will be easy to find the secret reason why Paul was so persecuted and
hated by Peter, John, and James. The author of the Revelation was a Jewish
kabalist pur sang, with all the hatred inherited by him from his forefathers
toward the Mysteries.** His jealousy during the life of Jesus extended even to
Peter; and it is but after the death of their common master that we see the two
apostles -- the former of whom wore the Mitre and the Petaloon of the Jewish
Rabbis -- preach so zealously the rite of circumcision. In the eyes of Peter,
Paul, who had humiliated him, and whom he felt so much his superior in
"Greek learning" and philosophy, must have naturally appeared as a
magician, a man polluted with the "Gnosis," with the
"wisdom" of the Greek Mysteries -- hence, perhaps, "Simon*** the
Magician."
As to Peter, biblical
criticism has shown before now that he had probably no more to do with the
foundation of the Latin Church at Rome, than to furnish the pretext so readily
seized upon by the cunning Irenaeus to benefit this Church with the new name of
the apostle -- Petra or Kiffa, a name which allowed so readily, by an easy play
upon words to connect it with Petroma, the double set of stone tablets used
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In its most extensive
meaning, the Sanscrit word has the same literal sense as the Greek term; both
imply "revelation," by no human agent, but through the
"receiving of the sacred drink." In India the initiated received the
"Soma," sacred drink, which helped to liberate his soul from the
body; and in the Eleusinian Mysteries it was the sacred drink offered at the
Epopteia. The Grecian Mysteries are wholly derived from the Brahmanical Vedic
rites, and the latter from the ante-vedic religious Mysteries -- primitive
Buddhist philosophy.
** It is needless to state
that the Gospel according to John was not written by John but by a Platonist or
a Gnostic belonging to the Neo-platonic school.
*** The fact that Peter
persecuted the "Apostle to the Gentiles," under that name, does not
necessarily imply that there was no Simon Magus individually distinct from
Paul. It may have become a generic name of abuse. Theodoret and Chrysostom, the
earliest and most prolific commentators on the Gnosticism of those days, seem
actually to make of Simon a rival of Paul, and to state that between them
passed frequent messages. The former, as a diligent propagandist of what Paul
terms the "antitheses of the Gnosis" (1st Epistle to Timothy), must
have been a sore thorn in the side of the apostle. There are sufficient proofs
of the actual existence of Simon Magus.
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by the hierophant at the
initiations, during the final Mystery. In this, perhaps, lies concealed the
whole secret of the claims of the Vatican. As Professor Wilder happily suggests:
"In the Oriental countries the designation [[Heb char]], Peter (in
Phoenician and Chaldaic, an interpreter) appears to have been the title of this
personage (the hierophant). . . . There is in these facts some reminder of the
peculiar circumstances of the Mosaic Law . . . and also of the claim of the
Pope to be the successor of Peter, the hierophant or interpreter of the
Christian religion."*
As such, we must concede to
him, to some extent, the right to be such an interpreter. The Latin Church has
faithfully preserved in symbols, rites, ceremonies, architecture, and even in
the very dress of her clergy, the tradition of the Pagan worship -- of the
public or exoteric ceremonies, we should add; otherwise her dogmas would embody
more sense and contain less blasphemy against the majesty of the Supreme and
Invisible God.
An inscription found on the
coffin of Queen Mentuhept, of the eleventh dynasty (2250 B.C.), now proved to
have been transcribed from the seventeenth chapter of the Book of the Dead
(dating not later than 4500 B.C.), is more than suggestive. This monumental
text contains a group of hieroglyphics, which, when interpreted, read thus:
PTR. RF. SU.
Peter- ref- su.
Baron Bunsen shows this sacred
formulary mixed up with a whole series of glosses and various interpretations
on a monument forty centuries old. "This is identical with saying that the
record (the true interpretation) was at that time no longer intelligible. . . .
We beg our readers to understand," he adds, "that a sacred text, a
hymn, containing the words of a departed spirit, existed in such a state about
4,000 years ago . . . as to be all but unintelligible to royal scribes."**
That it was unintelligible to
the uninitiated among the latter is as well proved by the confused and
contradictory glossaries, as that it was a "mystery"-word, known to
the hierophants of the sanctuaries, and, moreover, a word chosen by Jesus, to
designate the office assigned by him to one of his apostles. This word, PTR,
was partially interpreted, owing to another word similarly written in another
group of hieroglyphics, on a
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Introd. to Eleus. and
Bacchic Mysteries," p. x. Had we not trustworthy kabalistic tradition to rely
upon, we might be, perhaps, forced to question whether the authorship of the
Revelation is to be ascribed to the apostle of that name. He seems to be termed
John the Theologist.
** Bunsen: "Egypt's Place
in Universal History," vol. v., p. 90.
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OF "PETRUM."
stele, the sign used for it
being an opened eye.* Bunsen mentions as another explanation of PTR -- "to
show." "It appears to me," he remarks, "that our PTR is
literally the old Aramaic and Hebrew 'Patar,' which occurs in the history of
Joseph as the specific word for interpreting; whence also Pitrum is the term
for interpretation of a text, a dream."** In a manuscript of the first
century, a combination of the Demotic and Greek texts,*** and most probably one
of the few which miraculously escaped the Christian vandalism of the second and
third centuries, when all such precious manuscripts were burned as magical, we
find occurring in several places a phrase, which, perhaps, may throw some light
upon this question. One of the principal heroes of the manuscript, who is
constantly referred to as "the Judean Illuminator" or Initiate,
[[Teleiotes]], is made to communicate but with his Patar; the latter being
written in Chaldaic characters. Once the latter word is coupled with the name
Shimeon. Several times, the "Illuminator," who rarely breaks his
contemplative solitude, is shown inhabiting a [[Krupte]] (cave), and teaching
the multitudes of eager scholars standing outside, not orally, but through this
Patar. The latter receives the words of wisdom by applying his ear to a
circular hole in a partition which conceals the teacher from the listeners, and
then conveys them, with explanations and glossaries, to the crowd. This, with a
slight change, was the method used by Pythagoras, who, as we know, never
allowed his neophytes to see him during the years of probation, but instructed
them from behind a curtain in his cave.
But, whether the
"Illuminator" of the Graeco-Demotic manuscript is identical with
Jesus or not, the fact remains, that we find him selecting a
"mystery"-appellation for one who is made to appear later by the
Catholic Church as the janitor of the Kingdom of Heaven and the interpreter of
Christ's will. The word Patar or Peter locates both master and disciple in the
circle of initiation, and connects them with the "Secret Doctrine."
The great hierophant of the ancient Mysteries never allowed the candidates to
see or hear him personally. He was the Deus-ex-Machina, the presiding but
invisible Deity, uttering his will and instructions through a second party; and
2,000 years later, we discover that the Dalai-Lamas of Thibet had been
following for centuries the same traditional programme during the most
important religious mysteries of lamaism.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See de Rouge:
"Stele," p. 44; PTAR (videus) is interpreted on it "to
appear," with a sign of interrogation after it -- the usual mark of
scientific perplexity. In Bunsen's fifth volume of "Egypte," the
interpretation following is "Illuminator," which is more correct.
** Bunsen's "Egypt,"
vol. v., p. 90.
*** It is the property of a
mystic whom we met in Syria.
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If Jesus knew the secret
meaning of the title bestowed by him on Simon, then he must have been
initiated; otherwise he could not have learned it; and if he was an initiate of
either the Pythagorean Essenes, the Chaldean Magi, or the Egyptian Priests,
then the doctrine taught by him was but a portion of the "Secret
Doctrine" taught by the Pagan hierophants to the few select adepts
admitted within the sacred adyta.
But we will discuss this
question further on. For the present we will endeavor to briefly indicate the
extraordinary similarity -- or rather identity, we should say -- of rites and
ceremonial dress of the Christian clergy with that of the old Babylonians,
Assyrians, Phoenicians, Egyptians, and other Pagans of the hoary antiquity.
If we would find the model of
the Papal tiara, we must search the annals of the ancient Assyrian tablets. We
invite the reader to give his attention to Dr. Inman's illustrated work,
Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism. On page sixty-four, he will
readily recognize the head-gear of the successor of St. Peter in the coiffure
worn by gods or angels in ancient Assyria, "where it appears crowned by an
emblem of the male trinity" (the Christian Cross). "We may mention,
in passing," adds Dr. Inman, "that, as the Romanists adopted the
mitre and the tiara from 'the cursed brood of Ham,' so they adopted the
Episcopalian crook from the augurs of Etruria, and the artistic form with which
they clothe their angels from the painters and urn-makers of Magna Grecia and
Central Italy."
Would we push our inquiries
farther, and seek to ascertain as much in relation to the nimbus and the
tonsure of the Catholic priest and monk?* We shall find undeniable proofs that
they are solar emblems. Knight, in his Old England Pictorially Illustrated,
gives a drawing by St. Augustine, representing an ancient Christian bishop, in
a dress probably identical with that worn by the great "saint"
himself. The pallium, or the ancient stole of the bishop, is the feminine sign
when worn by a priest in worship. On St. Augustine's picture it is bedecked with
Buddhistic crosses, and in its whole appearance it is a representation of the
Egyptian [[Design T]] (tau), assuming slightly the figure of the letter
[[design Y]]. "Its lower end is the mark of the masculine triad,"
says Inman; "the right hand (of the figure) has the forefinger extended,
like the Assyrian priests while doing homage to the grove. . . . When a male
dons the pallium in worship, he becomes the representative of the trinity in
the unity, the arba, or mystic four."**
"Immaculate is our Lady
Isis," is the legend around an engraving
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Priests of Isis were
tonsured.
** See "Ancient
Faiths," vol. ii., pp. 915-918.
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BUDDHIST PAGODAS.
of Serapis and Isis, described
by King, in The Gnostics and their Remains, [['H KYRIA ICIC ATNH]] ". . .
the very terms applied afterwards to that personage (the Virgin Mary) who
succeeded to her form, titles, symbols, rites, and ceremonies. . . . Thus, her
devotees carried into the new priesthood the former badges of their profession,
the obligation to celibacy, the tonsure, and the surplice, omitting,
unfortunately, the frequent ablutions prescribed by the ancient creed."
"The 'Black Virgins,' so highly reverenced in certain French cathedrals .
. . proved, when at last critically examined, basalt figures of Isis"!*
Before the shrine of Jupiter
Ammon were suspended tinkling bells, from the sound of whose chiming the
priests gathered the auguries; "A golden bell and a pomegranate . . .
round about the hem of the robe," was the result with the Mosaic Jews. But
in the Buddhistic system, during the religious services, the gods of the Deva
Loka are always invoked, and invited to descend upon the altars by the ringing
of bells suspended in the pagodas. The bell of the sacred table of Siva at
Kuhama is described in Kailasa, and every Buddhist vihara and lamasery has its
bells.
We thus see that the bells
used by Christians come to them directly from the Buddhist Thibetans and
Chinese. The beads and rosaries have the same origin, and have been used by
Buddhist monks for over 2,300 years. The Linghams in the Hindu temples are
ornamented upon certain days with large berries, from a tree sacred to
Mahadeva, which are strung into rosaries. The title of "nun" is an
Egyptian word, and had with them the actual meaning; the Christians did not
even take the trouble of translating the word Nonna. The aureole of the saints
was used by the antediluvian artists of Babylonia, whenever they desired to
honor or deify a mortal's head. In a celebrated picture in Moore's Hindoo
Pantheon, entitled, "Christna nursed by Devaki, from a highly-finished
picture," the Hindu Virgin is represented as seated on a lounge and
nursing Christna. The hair brushed back, the long veil, and the golden aureole
around the Virgin's head, as well as around that of the Hindu Saviour, are
striking. No Catholic, well versed as he might be in the mysterious symbolism
of iconology, would hesitate for a moment to worship at that shrine the Virgin
Mary, the mother of his God!** In Indur Subba, the south entrance of the Caves
of Ellora, may be seen to this day the figure of Indra's wife, Indranee,
sitting with her infant son-god, pointing the finger to heaven with the same
gesture as the Italian Madonna and child. In Pagan and Christian Symbolism, the
author gives a figure from a
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The Gnostics and their
Remains," p. 71.
** See illustration in Inman's
"Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism," p. 27.
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mediaeval woodcut -- the like
of which we have seen by dozens in old psalters -- in which the Virgin Mary,
with her infant, is represented as the Queen of Heaven, on the crescent moon,
emblem of virginity. "Being before the sun, she almost eclipses its light.
Than this, nothing could more completely identify the Christian mother and
child with Isis and Horus, Ishtar, Venus, Juno, and a host of other Pagan
goddesses, who have been called 'Queen of Heaven,' 'Queen of the Universe,'
'Mother of God,' 'Spouse of God,' 'the Celestial Virgin,' 'the Heavenly
Peace-Maker,' etc."*
Such pictures are not purely
astronomical. They represent the male god and the female goddess, as the sun
and moon in conjunction, "the union of the triad with the unit." The
horns of the cow on the head of Isis have the same significance.
And so above, below, outside,
and inside, the Christian Church, in the priestly garments, and the religious
rites, we recognize the stamp of exoteric heathenism. On no subject within the
wide range of human knowledge, has the world been more blinded or deceived with
such persistent misrepresentation as on that of antiquity. Its hoary past and its
religious faiths have been misrepresented and trampled under the feet of its
successors. Its hierophants and prophets, mystae and epoptae,** of the once
sacred adyta of the temple shown as demoniacs and devil-worshippers. Donned in
the despoiled garments of the victim, the Christian priest now anathematizes
the latter with rites and ceremonies which he has learned from the theurgists
themselves. The Mosaic Bible is used as a weapon against the people who
furnished it. The heathen philosopher is cursed under the very roof which has
witnessed his initiation; and the "monkey of God" (i.e., the devil of
Tertullian), "the originator and founder of magical theurgy, the science
of illusions and lies, whose father and author is the demon," is exorcised
with holy water by the hand which holds the identical lituus*** with which the
ancient augur, after a solemn prayer, used to determine the regions of heaven,
and evoke, in the name of the HIGHEST, the minor god (now termed the Devil),
who unveiled to his eyes futurity, and enabled him to prophesy! On the part of
the Christians and the clergy it is nothing but shameful ignorance, prejudice,
and that contemptible pride so boldly denounced by one of their own reverend
ministers, T. Gross,**** which rails against all investigation "as a
useless or a criminal labor, when it must be feared that they will result in
the overthrow of preestablished systems of faith." On the part of the
scholars it is the same apprehension of the possible necessity of having to
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ibid., p. 76.
** Initiates and seers.
*** The augur's, and now
bishop's, pastoral crook.
**** "The Heathen
Religion."
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CONFESSION ABOUT THEURGIC AMULETS.
modify some of their
erroneously-established theories of science. "Nothing but such pitiable
prejudice," says Gross, "can have thus misrepresented the theology of
heathenism, and distorted -- nay, caricatured -- its forms of religious
worship. It is time that posterity should raise its voice in vindication of
violated truth, and that the present age should learn a little of that common
sense of which it boasts with as much self-complacency as if the prerogative of
reason was the birthright only of modern times."
All this gives a sure clew to
the real cause of the hatred felt by the early and mediaeval Christian toward
his Pagan brother and dangerous rival. We hate but what we fear. The Christian
thaumaturgist once having broken all association with the Mysteries of the
temples and with "these schools so renowned for magic," described by
St. Hilarion,* could certainly expect but little to rival the Pagan
wonder-workers. No apostle, with the exception perhaps of healing by mesmeric
power, has ever equalled Apollonius of Tyana; and the scandal created among the
apostles by the miracle-doing Simon Magus, is too notorious to be repeated here
again. "How is it," asks Justin Martyr, in evident dismay, "how
is it that the talismans of Apollonius (the [[telesmata]]) have power in
certain members of creation, for they prevent, as we see, the fury of the
waves, and the violence of the winds, and the attacks of wild beasts; and
whilst our Lord's miracles are preserved by tradition alone, those of
Apollonius are most numerous, and actually manifested in present facts, so as
to lead astray all beholders?"** This perplexed martyr solves the problem
by attributing very correctly the efficacy and potency of the charms used by
Apollonius to his profound knowledge of the sympathies and antipathies (or
repugnances) of nature.
Unable to deny the evident
superiority of their enemies' powers, the fathers had recourse to the old but
ever successful method -- that of slander. They honored the theurgists with the
same insinuating calumny that had been resorted to by the Pharisees against
Jesus. "Thou hast a daemon," the elders of the Jewish Synagogue had
said to him. "Thou hast the Devil," repeated the cunning fathers,
with equal truth, addressing the Pagan thaumaturgist; and the widely-bruited
charge, erected later into an article of faith, won the day.
But the modern heirs of these
ecclesiastical falsifiers, who charge magic, spiritualism, and even magnetism
with being produced by a demon, forget or perhaps never read the classics. None
of our bigots has ever looked with more scorn on the abuses of magic than did
the true initiate
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Peres du Desert
d'Orient," vol. ii., p. 283.
** Justin Martyr:
"Quaest.," xxiv.
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of old. No modern or even
mediaeval law could be more severe than that of the hierophant. True, he had
more discrimination, charity, and justice, than the Christian clergy; for while
banishing the "unconscious" sorcerer, the person troubled with a
demon, from within the sacred precincts of the adyta, the priests, instead of
mercilessly burning him, took care of the unfortunate "possessed
one." Having hospitals expressly for that purpose in the neighborhood of
temples, the ancient "medium," if obsessed, was taken care of and
restored to health. But with one who had, by conscious witchcraft, acquired
powers dangerous to his fellow-creatures, the priests of old were as severe as
justice herself. "Any person accidentally guilty of homicide, or of any
crime, or convicted of witchcraft, was excluded from the Eleusinian
Mysteries."* And so were they from all others. This law, mentioned by all
writers on the ancient initiation, speaks for itself. The claim of Augustine,
that all the explanations given by the Neo-platonists were invented by
themselves is absurd. For nearly every ceremony in their true and successive
order is given by Plato himself, in a more or less covered way. The Mysteries
are as old as the world, and one well versed in the esoteric mythologies of
various nations can trace them back to the days of the ante-Vedic period in
India. A condition of the strictest virtue and purity is required from the
Vatou, or candidate in India before he can become an initiate, whether he aims
to be a simple fakir, a Purohita (public priest) or a Sannyasi, a saint of the
second degree of initiation, the most holy as the most revered of them all.
After having conquered, in the terrible trials preliminary to admittance to the
inner temple in the subterranean crypts of his pagoda, the sannyasi passes the
rest of his life in the temple, practicing the eighty-four rules and ten
virtues prescribed to the Yogis.
"No one who has not
practiced, during his whole life, the ten virtues which the divine Manu makes
incumbent as a duty, can be initiated into the Mysteries of the council,"
say the Hindu books of initiation.
These virtues are:
"Resignation; the act of rendering good for evil; temperance; probity;
purity; chastity; repression of the physical senses; the knowledge of the Holy
Scriptures; that of the Superior soul (spirit); worship of truth; abstinence
from anger." These virtues must alone direct the life of a true Yogi.
"No unworthy adept ought to defile the ranks of the holy initiates by his
presence for twenty-four hours." The adept becomes guilty after having
once broken any one of these vows. Surely the exercise of such virtues is
inconsistent with the idea one has of devil-worship and lasciviousness of purpose!
And now we will try to give a
clear insight into one of the chief ob-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Taylor's
"Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries"; Porphyry and others.
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INITIATION.
jects of this work. What we
desire to prove is, that underlying every ancient popular religion was the same
ancient wisdom-doctrine, one and identical, professed and practiced by the
initiates of every country, who alone were aware of its existence and
importance. To ascertain its origin, and the precise age in which it was
matured, is now beyond human possibility. A single glance, however, is enough
to assure one that it could not have attained the marvellous perfection in
which we find it pictured to us in the relics of the various esoteric systems,
except after a succession of ages. A philosophy so profound, a moral code so
ennobling, and practical results so conclusive and so uniformly demonstrable is
not the growth of a generation, or even a single epoch. Fact must have been
piled upon fact, deduction upon deduction, science have begotten science, and
myriads of the brightest human intellects have reflected upon the laws of
nature, before this ancient doctrine had taken concrete shape. The proofs of
this identity of fundamental doctrine in the old religions are found in the
prevalence of a system of initiation; in the secret sacerdotal castes who had
the guardianship of mystical words of power, and a public display of a
phenomenal control over natural forces, indicating association with preterhuman
beings. Every approach to the Mysteries of all these nations was guarded with
the same jealous care, and in all, the penalty of death was inflicted upon
initiates of any degree who divulged the secrets entrusted to them. We have
seen that such was the case in the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, among the
Chaldean Magi, and the Egyptian hierophants; while with the Hindus, from whom
they were all derived, the same rule has prevailed from time immemorial. We are
left in no doubt upon this point; for the Agrushada Parikshai says explicitly,
"Every initiate, to whatever degree he may belong, who reveals the great
sacred formula, must be put to death."
Naturally enough, this same
extreme penalty was prescribed in all the multifarious sects and brotherhoods
which at different periods have sprung from the ancient stock. We find it with
the early Essenes, Gnostics, theurgic Neo-platonists, and mediaeval
philosophers; and in our day, even the Masons perpetuate the memory of the old
obligations in the penalties of throat-cutting, dismemberment, and disemboweling,
with which the candidate is threatened. As the Masonic "master's
word" is communicated only at "low breath," so the selfsame
precaution is prescribed in the Chaldean Book of Numbers and the Jewish
Mercaba. When initiated, the neophyte was led by an ancient to a secluded spot,
and there the latter whispered in his ear the great secret.* The Mason swears,
under the most frightful penalties, that he will not communicate the secrets of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Franck: "Die
Kabbala."
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any degree "to a brother
of an inferior degree"; and the Agrushada Parikshai says: "Any
initiate of the third degree who reveals before the prescribed time, to the
initiates of the second degree, the superior truths, must be put to
death." Again, the Masonic apprentice consents to have his "tongue
torn out by the roots" if he divulge anything to a profane; and in the
Hindu books of initiation, the same Agrushada Parikshai, we find that any
initiate of the first degree (the lowest) who betrays the secrets of his
initiation, to members of other castes, for whom the science should be a closed
book, must have "his tongue cut out," and suffer other mutilations.
As we proceed, we will point
out the evidences of this identity of vows, formulas, rites, and doctrines,
between the ancient faiths. We will also show that not only their memory is
still preserved in India, but also that the Secret Association is still alive
and as active as ever. That, after reading what we have to say, it may be
inferred that the chief pontiff and hierophants, the Brahmatma, is still
accessible to those "who know," though perhaps recognized by another
name; and that the ramifications of his influence extend throughout the world.
But we will now return again to the early Christian period.
As though he were not aware
that there was any esoteric significance to the exoteric symbols, and that the
Mysteries themselves were composed of two parts, the lesser at Agrae, and the
higher ones at Eleusinia, Clemens Alexandrinus, with a rancorous bigotry that
one might expect from a renegade Neo-platonist, but is astonished to find in
this generally honest and learned Father, stigmatized the Mysteries as indecent
and diabolical. Whatever were the rites enacted among the neophytes before they
passed to a higher form of instruction; however misunderstood were the trials of
Katharsis or purification, during which they were submitted to every kind of
probation; and however much the immaterial or physical aspect might have led to
calumny, it is but wicked prejudice which can compel a person to say that under
this external meaning there was not a far deeper and spiritual significance.
It is positively absurd to
judge the ancients from our own standpoint of propriety and virtue. And most
assuredly it is not for the Church -- which now stands accused by all the
modern symbologists of having adopted precisely these same emblems in their
coarsest aspect, and feels herself powerless to refute the accusations -- to
throw the stone at those who were her models. When men like Pythagoras, Plato,
and Iamblichus, renowned for their severe morality, took part in the Mysteries,
and spoke of them with veneration, it ill behooves our modern critics to judge
them so rashly upon their merely external aspects. Iamblichus explains the
worst; and his explanation, for an unprejudiced mind, ought to be
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IN TENDENCY.
perfectly plausible.
"Exhibitions of this kind," he says, "in the Mysteries were
designed to free us from licentious passions, by gratifying the sight, and at
the same time vanquishing all evil thought, through the awful sanctity with
which these rites were accompanied."* "The wisest and best men in the
Pagan world," adds Dr. Warburton, "are unanimous in this, that the
Mysteries were instituted pure, and proposed the noblest ends by the worthiest
means."**
In these celebrated rites,
although persons of both sexes and all classes were allowed to take a part, and
a participation in them was even obligatory, very few indeed attained the
higher and final initiation. The gradation of the Mysteries is given us by
Proclus in the fourth book of his Theology of Plato. "The perfective rite
[[telete]], precedes in order the initiation -- Muesis -- and the initiation,
Epopteia, or the final apocalypse (revelation)." Theon of Smyrna, in
Mathematica, also divides the mystic rites into five parts: "the first of
which is the previous purification; for neither are the Mysteries communicated
to all who are willing to receive them; . . . there are certain persons who are
prevented by the voice of the crier ([[Kerux]]) . . . since it is necessary
that such as are not expelled from the Mysteries should first be refined by
certain purifications which the reception of the sacred rites succeeds. The
third part is denominated epopteia or reception. And the fourth, which is the
end and design of the revelation, is the binding of the head and fixing of the
crowns*** . . . whether after this he (the initiated person) becomes . . . an
hierophant or sustains some other part of the sacerdotal office. But the fifth,
which is produced from all these, is friendship and interior communion with
God." And this was the last and most awful of all the Mysteries.
There are writers who have
often wondered at the meaning of this claim to a "friendship and interior
communion with God." Christian authors have denied the pretensions of the
"Pagans" to such "communion," affirming that only Christian
saints were and are capable of enjoying it; materialistic skeptics have
altogether scoffed at the idea of both. After long ages of religious
materialism and spiritual stagnation, it has most certainly become difficult if
not altogether impossible to substantiate the claims of either party. The old
Greeks, who had once crowded
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Mysteries of the
Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians."
** "Divine Legation of
Moses"; The "Eleusinian Mysteries" as quoted by Thos. Taylor.
*** This expression must not
be understood literally; for as in the initiation of certain Brotherhoods it
has a secret meaning, hinted at by Pythagoras, when he describes his feelings
after the initiation and tells that he was crowned by the gods in whose
presence he had drunk "the waters of life" -- in Hindu, a-bi-hayat,
fount of life.
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around the Agora of Athens,
with its altar to the "Unknown God," are no more; and their
descendants firmly believe that they have found the "Unknown" in the
Jewish Jehova. The divine ecstasies of the early Christians have made room for
visions of a more modern character, in perfect keeping with progress and
civilization. The "Son of man" appearing to the rapt vision of the
ancient Christian as coming from the seventh heaven, in a cloud of glory, and
surrounded with angels and winged seraphim, has made room for a more prosaic
and at the same time more business-like Jesus. The latter is now shown as
making morning calls upon Mary and Martha in Bethany; as seating himself on
"the ottoman" with the younger sister, a lover of "ethics,"
while Martha goes off to the kitchen to cook. Anon the heated fancy of a
blasphemous Brooklyn preacher and harlequin, the Reverend Dr. Talmage, makes us
see her rushing back "with besweated brow, a pitcher in one hand and the
tongs in the other . . . into the presence of Christ," and blowing him up
for not caring that her sister hath left her "to serve alone."*
From the birth of the solemn
and majestic conception of the unrevealed Deity of the ancient adepts to such
caricatured descriptions of him who died on the Cross for his philanthropic
devotion to humanity, long centuries have intervened, and their heavy tread
seems to have almost entirely obliterated all sense of a spiritual religion
from the hearts of his professed followers. No wonder then, that the sentence
of Proclus is no longer understood by the Christians, and is rejected as a
"vaglary" by the materialists, who, in their negation, are less
blasphemous and atheistical than many of the reverends and members of the
churches. But, although the Greek epoptai are no more, we have now, in our own
age, a people far more ancient than the oldest Hellenes, who practice the
so-called "preterhuman" gifts to the same extent as did their
ancestors far earlier than the days of Troy. It is to this people that we draw
the attention of the psychologist and philosopher.
One need not go very deep into
the literature of the Orientalists to become convinced that in most cases they
do not even suspect that in
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This original and very long
sermon was preached in a church at Brooklyn, N. Y., on the 15th day of April,
1877. On the following morning, the reverend orator was called in the
"Sun" a gibbering charlatan; but this deserved epithet will not prevent
other reverend buffoons doing the same and even worse. And this is the religion
of Christ! Far better disbelieve in him altogether than caricature one's God in
such a manner. We heartily applaud the "Sun" for the following views:
"And then when Talmage makes Christ say to Martha in the tantrums: 'Don't
worry, but sit down on this ottoman,' he adds the climax to a scene that the
inspired writers had nothing to say about. Talmage's buffoonery is going too
far. If he were the worst heretic in the land, instead of being straight in his
orthodoxy, he would not do so much evil to religion as he does by his familiar
blasphemies."
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THE THIRD DEGREE.
the arcane philosophy of India
there are depths which they have not sounded, and cannot sound, for they pass
on without perceiving them. There is a pervading tone of conscious superiority,
a ring of contempt in the treatment of Hindu metaphysics, as though the
European mind is alone enlightened enough to polish the rough diamond of the
old Sanscrit writers, and separate right from wrong for the benefit of their
descendants. We see them disputing over the external forms of expression
without a conception of the great vital truths these hide from the profane
view.
"As a rule, the
Brahmans," says Jacolliot, "rarely go beyond the class of grihesta
[priests of the vulgar castes] and purahita [exorcisers, divines, prophets, and
evocators of spirits]. And yet, we shall see . . . once that we have touched
upon the question and study of manifestations and phenomena, that these
initiates of the first degree (the lowest) attribute to themselves, and in appearance
possess faculties developed to a degree which has never been equalled in
Europe. As to the initiates of the second and especially of the third category,
they pretend to be enabled to ignore time, space, and to command life and
death."*
Such initiates as these M.
Jacolliot did not meet; for, as he says himself, they only appear on the most
solemn occasions, and when the faith of the multitudes has to be strengthened
by phenomena of a superior order. "They are never seen, either in the
neighborhood of, or even inside the temples, except at the grand quinquennial
festival of the fire. On that occasion, they appear about the middle of the
night, on a platform erected in the centre of the sacred lake, like so many
phantoms, and by their conjurations they illumine the space. A fiery column of
light ascends from around them, rushing from earth to heaven. Unfamiliar sounds
vibrate through the air, and five or six hundred thousand Hindus, gathered from
every part of India to contemplate these demi-gods, throw themselves with their
faces buried in the dust, invoking the souls of their ancestors."**
Let any impartial person read
the Spiritisme dans le Monde, and he cannot believe that this "implacable
rationalist," as Jacolliot takes pride in terming himself, said one word
more than is warranted by what he had seen. His statements support and are
corroborated by those of other skeptics. As a rule, the missionaries, even
after passing half a lifetime in the country of "devil-worship," as
they call India, either disingenuously deny altogether what they cannot help
knowing to be true, or ridiculously attribute phenomena to this power of the
Devil, that outrival the "miracles" of the apostolic ages. And what
do we see this French
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Le Spiritisme dans le
Monde," p. 68.
** Ibid., pp. 78, 79.
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author, notwithstanding his
incorrigible rationalism, forced to admit, after having narrated the greatest
wonders? Watch the fakirs as he would, he is compelled to bear the strongest
testimony to their perfect honesty in the matter of their miraculous phenomena.
"Never," he says, "have we succeeded in detecting a single one
in the act of deceit." One fact should be noted by all who, without having
been in India, still fancy they are clever enough to expose the fraud of pretended
magicians. This skilled and cool observer, this redoubtable materialist, after
his long sojourn in India, affirms, "We unhesitatingly avow that we have
not met, either in India or in Ceylon, a single European, even among the oldest
residents, who has been able to indicate the means employed by these devotees
for the production of these phenomena!"
And how should they? Does not
this zealous Orientalist confess to us that even he, who had every available
means at hand to learn many of their rites and doctrines at first hand, failed
in his attempts to make the Brahmans explain to him their secrets. "All
that our most diligent inquiries of the Pourohitas could elicit from them
respecting the acts of their superiors (the invisible initiates of the temples),
amounts to very little." And again, speaking of one of the books, he
confesses that, while purporting to reveal all that is desirable to know, it
"falls back into mysterious formulas, in combinations of magical and
occult letters, the secret of which it has been impossible for us to
penetrate," etc.
The fakirs, although they can
never reach beyond the first degree of initiation, are, notwithstanding, the
only agents between the living world and the "silent brothers," or
those initiates who never cross the thresholds of their sacred dwellings. The
Fukara-Yogis belong to the temples, and who knows but these cenobites of the
sanctuary have far more to do with the psychological phenomena which attend the
fakirs, and have been so graphically described by Jacolliot, than the Pitris
themselves? Who can tell but that the fluidic spectre of the ancient Brahman
seen by Jacolliot was the Scin-lecca, the spiritual double, of one of these
mysterious sannyasi?
Although the story has been
translated and commented upon by Professor Perty, of Geneva, still we will
venture to give it in Jacolliot's own words: "A moment after the
disappearance of the hands, the fakir continuing his evocations (mantras) more
earnestly than ever, a cloud like the first, but more opalescent and more
opaque, began to hover near the small brasier, which, by request of the Hindu,
I had constantly fed with live coals. Little by little it assumed a form entire
human, and I distinguished the spectre -- for I cannot call it otherwise -- of
an old Brahman sacrificator, kneeling near the little brasier.
"He bore on his forehead
the signs sacred to Vishnu, and around his
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BRAHMAN.
body the triple cord, sign of
the initiates of the priestly caste. He joined his hands above his head, as
during the sacrifices, and his lips moved as if they were reciting prayers. At
a given moment, he took a pinch of perfumed powder, and threw it upon the
coals; it must have been a strong compound, for a thick smoke arose on the
instant, and filled the two chambers.
"When it was dissipated,
I perceived the spectre, which, two steps from me, was extending to me its
fleshless hand; I took it in mine, making a salutation, and I was astonished to
find it, although bony and hard, warm and living.
" 'Art thou, indeed,'
said I at this moment, in a loud voice, 'an ancient inhabitant of the earth?'
"I had not finished the
question, when the word AM, (yes) appeared and then disappeared in letters of
fire, on the breast of the old Brahman, with an effect much like that which the
word would produce if written in the dark with a stick of phosphorus.
" 'Will you leave me
nothing in token of your visit?' I continued.
"The spirit broke the
triple cord, composed of three strands of cotton, which begirt his loins, gave
it to me, and vanished at my feet."*
"Oh Brahma! what is this
mystery which takes place every night? . . . When lying on the matting, with
eyes closed, the body is lost sight of, and the soul escapes to enter into
conversation with the Pitris. . . . Watch over it, O Brahma, when, forsaking
the resting body, it goes away to hover over the waters, to wander in the
immensity of heaven, and penetrate into the dark and mysterious nooks of the
valleys and grand forests of the Hymavat! " (Agroushada Parikshai.)
The fakirs, when belonging to
some particular temple, never act but under orders. Not one of them, unless he
has reached a degree of extraordinary sanctity, is freed from the influence and
guidance of his guru, his teacher, who first initiated and instructed him in
the mysteries of the occult sciences. Like the subject of the European
mesmerizer, the average fakir can never rid himself entirely of the
psychological influence exercised on him by his guru. Having passed two or
three hours in the silence and solitude of the inner temple in prayer and
meditation, the fakir, when he emerges thence, is mesmerically strengthened and
prepared; he produces wonders far more varied and powerful than before he
entered. The "master" has laid his hands upon him, and the fakir
feels strong.
It may be shown, on the
authority of many Brahmanical and Buddhist sacred books, that there has ever
existed a great difference between
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Louis Jacolliot:
"Phenomenes et Manifestations."
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adepts of the higher order,
and purely psychological subjects -- like many of these fakirs, who are mediums
in a certain qualified sense. True, the fakir is ever talking of Pitris, and
this is natural; for they are his protecting deities. But are the Pitris
disembodied human beings of our race? This is the question, and we will discuss
it in a moment.
We say that the fakir may be
regarded in a degree as a medium; for he is -- what is not generally known --
under the direct mesmeric influence of a living adept, his sannyasi or guru.
When the latter dies, the power of the former, unless he has received the last
transfer of spiritual forces, wanes and often even disappears. Why, if it were
otherwise, should the fakirs have been excluded from the right of advancing to
the second and third degree? The lives of many of them exemplify a degree of
self-sacrifice and sanctity unknown and utterly incomprehensible to Europeans,
who shudder at the bare thought of such self-inflicted tortures. But however
shielded from control by vulgar and earth-bound spirits, however wide the chasm
between a debasing influence and their self-controlled souls; and however well
protected by the seven-knotted magical bamboo rod which he receives from the
guru, still the fakir lives in the outer world of sin and matter, and it is
possible that his soul may be tainted, perchance, by the magnetic emanations
from profane objects and persons, and thereby open an access to strange spirits
and gods. To admit one so situated, one not under any and all circumstances
sure of the mastery over himself, to a knowledge of the awful mysteries and
priceless secrets of initiation, would be impracticable. It would not only
imperil the security of that which must, at all hazards, be guarded from
profanation, but it would be consenting to admit behind the veil a fellow
being, whose mediumistic irresponsibility might at any moment cause him to lose
his life through an involuntary indiscretion. The same law which prevailed in
the Eleusinian Mysteries before our era, holds good now in India.
Not only must the adept have
mastery over himself, but he must be able to control the inferior grades of
spiritual beings, nature-spirits, and earthbound souls, in short the very ones
by whom, if by any, the fakir is liable to be affected.
For the objector to affirm
that the Brahman-adepts and the fakirs admit that of themselves they are
powerless, and can only act with the help of disembodied human spirits, is to
state that these Hindus are unacquainted with the laws of their sacred books
and even the meaning of the word Pitris. The Laws of Manu, the Atharva-Veda,
and other books, prove what we now say. "All that exists," says the
Atharva-Veda, "is in the power of the gods. The gods are under the power
of magical conjurations. The magical conjurations are under the control of the
Brahmans. Hence
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ARE NOT.
the gods are in the power of
the Brahmans." This is logical, albeit seemingly paradoxical, and it is
the fact. And this fact will explain to those who have not hitherto had the
clew (among whom Jacolliot must be numbered, as will appear on reading his
works), why the fakir should be confined to the first, or lowest degree of that
course of initiation whose highest adepts, or hierophants, are the sannyasis,
or members of the ancient Supreme Council of Seventy.
Moreover, in Book I., of the
Hindu Genesis, or Book of Creation of Manu, the Pitris are called the lunar
ancestors of the human race. They belong to a race of beings different from
ourselves, and cannot properly be called "human spirits" in the sense
in which the spiritualists use this term. This is what is said of them:
"Then they (the gods)
created the Jackshas, the Rakshasas, the Pisatshas,* the Gandarbas** and the
Apsaras, and the Asuras, the Nagas, the Sarpas and the Suparnas,*** and the
Pitris -- lunar ancestors of the human race" (See Institutes of Manu, Book
I., sloka 37, where the Pitris are termed "progenitors of mankind").
The Pitris are a distinct race
of spirits belonging to the mythological hierarchy or rather to the
kabalistical nomenclature, and must be included with the good genii, the
daemons of the Greeks, or the inferior gods of the invisible world; and when a
fakir attributes his phenomena to the Pitris, he means only what the ancient
philosophers and theurgists meant when they maintained that all the
"miracles" were obtained through the intervention of the gods, or the
good and bad daemons, who control the powers of nature, the elementals, who are
subordinate to the power of him "who knows." A ghost or human phantom
would be termed by a fakir palit, or chutna, as that of a female human spirit
pichhalpai, not pitris. True, pitara means (plural) fathers, ancestors; and
pitra-i is a kinsman; but these words are used in quite a different sense from
that of the Pitris invoked in the mantras.
To maintain before a devout
Brahman or a fakir that any one can converse with the spirits of the dead,
would be to shock him with what would appear to him blasphemy. Does not the
concluding verse of the Bagavat state that this supreme felicity is alone
reserved to the holy sannyasis, the gurus, and yogis?
"Long before they finally
rid themselves of their mortal envelopes, the souls who have practiced only good,
such as those of the sannyasis and the vanaprasthas, acquire the faculty of
conversing with the souls which preceded them to the swarga."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Pisatshas, daemons of the
race of the gnomes, the giants and the vampires.
** Gandarbas, good daemon,
celestial seraphs, singers.
*** Asuras and Nagas are the
Titanic spirits and the dragon or serpent-headed spirits.
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In this case the Pitris
instead of genii are the spirits, or rather souls, of the departed ones. But
they will freely communicate only with those whose atmosphere is as pure as
their own, and to whose prayerful kalassa (invocation) they can respond without
the risk of defiling their own celestial purity. When the soul of the invocator
has reached the Sayadyam, or perfect identity of essence with the Universal
Soul, when matter is utterly conquered, then the adept can freely enter into
daily and hourly communion with those who, though unburdened with their
corporeal forms, are still themselves progressing through the endless series of
transformations included in the gradual approach to the Paramatma, or the grand
Universal Soul.
Bearing in mind that the
Christian fathers have always claimed for themselves and their saints the name
of "friends of God," and knowing that they borrowed this expression, with
many others, from the technology of the Pagan temples, it is but natural to
expect them to show an evil temper whenever alluding to these rites. Ignorant,
as a rule, and having had biographers as ignorant as themselves, we could not
well expect them to find in the accounts of their beatific visions a
descriptive beauty such as we find in the Pagan classics. Whether the visions
and objective phenomena claimed by both the fathers of the desert and the
hierophants of the sanctuary are to be discredited, or accepted as facts, the
splendid imagery employed by Proclus and Apuleius in narrating the small
portion of the final initiation that they dared reveal, throws completely into
the shade the plagiaristic tales of the Christian ascetics, faithful copies though
they were intended to be. The story of the temptation of St. Anthony in the
desert by the female demon, is a parody upon the preliminary trials of the
neophyte during the Mikra, or minor Mysteries of Agrae -- those rites at the
thought of which Clemens railed so bitterly, and which represented the bereaved
Demeter in search of her child, and her good-natured hostess Baubo.*
Without entering again into a
demonstration that in Christian, and especially Irish Roman Catholic,
churches** the same apparently indecent customs as the above prevailed until
the end of the last century, we will recur to the untiring labors of that
honest and brave defender of the ancient faith, Thomas Taylor, and his works.
However much dogmatic Greek scholarship may have found to say against his
"mistranslations," his memory must be dear to every true Platonist,
who seeks rather to learn the inner thought of the great philosopher than enjoy
the mere external mechanism of his writings. Better classical translators may
have
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Arnolius: "Op.
Cit.," pp. 249, 250.
** See Inman's "Ancient
Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism."
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THOMAS TAYLOR.
rendered us, in more correct
phraseology, Plato's words, but Taylor shows us Plato's meaning, and this is
more than can be said of Zeller, Jowett, and their predecessors. Yet, as writes
Professor A. Wilder, "Taylor's works have met with favor at the hands of
men capable of profound and recondite thinking; and it must be conceded that he
was endowed with a superior qualification -- that of an intuitive perception of
the interior meaning of the subjects which he considered. Others may have known
more Greek, but he knew more Plato."*
Taylor devoted his whole
useful life to the search after such old manuscripts as would enable him to
have his own speculations concerning several obscure rites in the Mysteries
corroborated by writers who had been initiated themselves. It is with full
confidence in the assertions of various classical writers that we say that
ridiculous, perhaps licentious in some cases, as may appear ancient worship to
the modern critic, it ought not to have so appeared to the Christians. During
the mediaeval ages, and even later, they accepted pretty nearly the same
without understanding the secret import of its rites, and quite satisfied with
the obscure and rather fantastic interpretations of their clergy, who accepted
the exterior form and distorted the inner meaning. We are ready to concede, in
full justice, that centuries have passed since the great majority of the
Christian clergy, who are not allowed to pry into God's mysteries nor seek to
explain that which the Church has once accepted and established, have had the
remotest idea of their symbolism, whether in its exoteric or esoteric meaning.
Not so with the head of the Church and its highest dignitaries. And if we fully
agree with Inman that it is "difficult to believe that the ecclesiastics
who sanctioned the publication of such prints** could have been as ignorant as
modern ritualists," we are not at all prepared to believe with the same
author "that the latter, if they knew the real meaning of the symbols
commonly used by the Roman Church, would not have adopted them."
To eliminate what is plainly
derived from the sex and nature wor-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Introduction to Taylor's
"Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries," published by J. W. Bouton.
** Illustrated figures
"from an ancient Rosary of the blessed Virgin Mary, printed at Venice,
1524, with a license from the Inquisition." In the illustrations given by
Dr. Inman the Virgin is represented in an Assyrian "grove," the
abomination in the eyes of the Lord, according to the Bible prophets. "The
book in question," says the author, "contains numerous figures, all
resembling closely the Mesopotamian emblem of Ishtar. The presence of the woman
therein identifies the two as symbolic of Isis, or la nature; and a man bowing
down in adoration thereof shows the same idea as is depicted in Assyrian
sculptures, where males offer to the goddess symbols of themselves" (See
"Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism," p. 91. Second
edition. J. W. Bouton, publisher, New York).
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ship of the ancient heathens,
would be equivalent to pulling down the whole Roman Catholic image-worship --
the Madonna element -- and reforming the faith to Protestantism. The
enforcement of the late dogma of the Immaculation was prompted by this very
secret reason. The science of symbology was making too rapid progress. Blind
faith in the Pope's infallibility and in the immaculate nature of the Virgin
and of her ancestral female lineage to a certain remove could alone save the
Church from the indiscreet revelations of science. It was a clever stroke of
policy on the part of the vicegerent of God. What matters it if, by
"conferring upon her such an honor," as Don Pascale de Franciscis
naively expresses it, he has made a goddess of the Virgin Mary, an Olympian
Deity, who, having been by her very nature placed in the impossibility of
sinning, can claim no virtue, no personal merit for her purity, precisely for
which, as we were taught to believe in our younger days, she was chosen among
all other women. If his Holiness has deprived her of this, perhaps, on the
other hand, he thinks that he has endowed her with at least one physical
attribute not shared by the other virgin-goddesses. But even this new dogma,
which, in company with the new claim to infallibility, has quasi-revolutionized
the Christian world, is not original with the Church of Rome. It is but a
return to a hardly-remembered heresy of the early Christian ages, that of the
Collyridians, so called from their sacrificing cakes to the Virgin, whom they
claimed to be Virgin-born.* The new sentence, "O, Virgin Mary, conceived
without sin," is simply a tardy acceptance of that which was at first
deemed a "blasphemous heresie" by the orthodox fathers.
To think for one moment that
any of the popes, cardinals, or other high dignitaries "were not
aware" from the first to the last of the external meanings of their
symbols, is to do injustice to their great learning and their spirit of
Machiavellism. It is to forget that the emissaries of Rome will never be
stopped by any difficulty which can be skirted by the employment of Jesuitical
artifice. The policy of complaisant conformity was never carried to greater
lengths than by the missionaries in Ceylon, who, according to the Abbe Dubois
-- certainly a learned and competent authority -- "conducted the images of
the Virgin and Saviour on triumphal cars, imitated from the orgies of
Juggernauth, and introduced the dancers from the Brahminical rites into the
ceremonial of the church."** Let us at least thank these black-frocked
politicians for their consistency in employing the car of Juggernauth, upon
which the "wicked heathen"
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See King's
"Gnostics," pp. 91, 92; "The Genealogy of the Blessed Virgin
Mary," by Faustus, Bishop of Riez.
** Prinseps quotes Dubois,
"Edinburgh Review," April, 1851, p. 411.
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CAR OF JUGGERNAUTH.
convey the lingham of Siva. To
have used this car to carry in its turn the Romish representative of the female
principle in nature, is to show discrimination and a thorough knowledge of the
oldest mythological conceptions. They have blended the two deities, and thus
represented, in a Christian procession, the "heathen" Brahma, or Nara
(the father), Nari (the mother), and Viradj (the son).
Says Manu: "The Sovereign
Master who exists through himself, divides his body into two halves, male and
female, and from the union of these two principles is born Viradj, the
Son."*
There was not a Christian
Father who could have been ignorant of these symbols in their physical meaning;
for it is in this latter aspect that they were abandoned to the ignorant
rabble. Moreover, they all had as good reasons to suspect the occult symbolism
contained in these images; although as none of them -- Paul excepted, perhaps
-- had been initiated they could know nothing whatever about the nature of the
final rites. Any person revealing these mysteries was put to death, regardless
of sex, nationality, or creed. A Christian father would no more be proof
against an accident than a Pagan Mysta or the [[Mustes]].
If during the Aporreta or
preliminary arcanes, there were some practices which might have shocked the
pudicity of a Christian convert -- though we doubt the sincerity of such
statements -- their mystical symbolism was all sufficient to relieve the performance
of any charge of licentiousness. Even the episode of the Matron Baubo -- whose
rather eccentric method of consolation was immortalized in the minor Mysteries
-- is explained by impartial mystagogues quite naturally. Ceres-Demeter and her
earthly wanderings in search of her daughter are the euhemerized descriptions
of one of the most metaphysico-psychological subjects ever treated of by human
mind. It is a mask for the transcendent narrative of the initiated seers; the
celestial vision of the freed soul of the initiate of the last hour describing
the process by which the soul that has not yet been incarnated descends for the
first time into matter, "Blessed is he who hath seen those common concerns
of the underworld; he knows both the end of life and its divine origin from
Jupiter," says Pindar. Taylor shows, on the authority of more than one
initiate, that the "dramatic performances of the Lesser Mysteries were
designed by their founders, to signify occultly the condition of the unpurified
soul invested with an earthly body, and enveloped in a material and physical
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Manu," book I.,
sloka 32: Sir W. Jones, translating from the Northern "Manu," renders
this sloka as follows: "Having divided his own substance, the mighty Power
became half male, half female, or nature active and passive; and from that
female he produced VIRAJ."
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nature . . . that the soul,
indeed, till purified by philosophy, suffers death through its union with the
body."
The body is the sepulchre, the
prison of the soul, and many Christian Fathers held with Plato that the soul is
punished through its union with the body. Such is the fundamental doctrine of
the Buddhists and of many Brahmanists too. When Plotinus remarks that
"when the soul has descended into generation (from its half-divine condition)
she partakes of evil, and is carried a great way into a state the opposite of
her first purity and integrity, to be entirely merged in which is nothing more
than to fall into dark mire";* he only repeats the teachings of
Gautama-Buddha. If we have to believe the ancient initiates at all, we must
accept their interpretation of the symbols. And if, moreover, we find them
perfectly coinciding with the teachings of the greatest philosophers and that
which we know symbolizes the same meaning in the modern Mysteries in the East,
we must believe them to be right.
If Demeter was considered the
intellectual soul, or rather the Astral soul, half emanation from the spirit
and half tainted with matter through a succession of spiritual evolutions -- we
may readily understand what is meant by the Matron Baubo, the Enchantress, who
before she succeeds in reconciling the soul -- Demeter, to its new position,
finds herself obliged to assume the sexual forms of an infant. Baubo is matter,
the physical body; and the intellectual, as yet pure astral soul can be
ensnared into its new terrestrial prison but by the display of innocent
babyhood. Until then, doomed to her fate, Demeter, or Magna-mater, the Soul,
wonders and hesitates and suffers; but once having partaken of the magic potion
prepared by Baubo, she forgets her sorrows; for a certain time she parts with
that consciousness of higher intellect that she was possessed of before
entering the body of a child. Thenceforth she must seek to rejoin it again; and
when the age of reason arrives for the child, the struggle -- forgotten for a
few years of infancy -- begins again. The astral soul is placed between matter
(body) and the highest intellect (its immortal spirit or nous). Which of those
two will conquer? The result of the battle of life lies between the triad. It
is a question of a few years of physical enjoyment on earth and -- if it has
begotten abuse -- of the dissolution of the earthly body being followed by
death of the astral body, which thus is prevented from being united with the
highest spirit of the triad, which alone confers on us individual immortality;
or, on the other hand, of becoming immortal mystae; initiated before death of
the body into the divine truths of the after life. Demi-gods below, and GODS
above.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Enead," i., book
viii.
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THE EPOPTEIA.
Such was the chief object of
the Mysteries represented as diabolical by theology, and ridiculed by modern
symbologists. To disbelieve that there exist in man certain arcane powers,
which, by psychological study he can develop in himself to the highest degree,
become an hierophant and then impart to others under the same conditions of
earthly discipline, is to cast an imputation of falsehood and lunacy upon a
number of the best, purest, and most learned men of antiquity and of the middle
ages. What the hierophant was allowed to see at the last hour is hardly hinted
at by them. And yet Pythagoras, Plato, Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus, and many
others knew and affirmed their reality.
Whether in the "inner
temple," or through the study of theurgy carried on privately, or by the
sole exertion of a whole life of spiritual labor, they all obtained the
practical proof of such divine possibilities for man fighting his battle with
life on earth to win a life in the eternity. What the last epopteia was is
alluded to by Plato in Phaedrus (64); ". . . being initiated in those
Mysteries, which it is lawful to call the most blessed of all mysteries . . .
we were freed from the molestations of evils which otherwise await us in a
future period of time. Likewise, in consequence of this divine initiation, we
became spectators of entire, simple, immovable, and blessed visions, resident
in a pure light." This sentence shows that they saw visions, gods,
spirits. As Taylor correctly observes, from all such passages in the works of
the initiates it may be inferred, "that the most sublime part of the
epopteia . . . consisted in beholding the gods themselves invested with a
resplendent light," or highest planetary spirits. The statement of Proclus
upon this subject is unequivocal: "In all the initiations and mysteries,
the gods exhibit many forms of themselves, and appear in a variety of shapes,
and sometimes, indeed, a formless light of themselves is held forth to the
view; sometimes this light is according to a human form, and sometimes it
proceeds into a different shape."*
"Whatever is on earth is
the resemblance and SHADOW of something that is in the sphere, while that
resplendent thing (the prototype of the soul-spirit) remaineth in unchangeable
condition, it is well also with its shadow. But when the resplendent one
removeth far from its shadow life removeth from the latter to a distance. And
yet, that very light is the shadow of something still more resplendent than
itself." Thus speaks Desatir, the Persian Book of Shet,** thereby showing
its identity of esoteric doctrines with those of the Greek philosophers.
The second statement of Plato
confirms our belief that the Mysteries of the ancients were identical with the
Initiations, as practiced now
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Commentary upon the
Republic of Plato," p, 380.
** Verses 33-41.
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among the Buddhists and the
Hindu adepts. The highest visions, the most truthful, are produced, not through
natural ecstatics or "mediums," as it is sometimes erroneously
asserted, but through a regular discipline of gradual initiations and
development of psychical powers. The Mystae were brought into close union with
those whom Proclus calls "mystical natures," "resplendent
gods," because, as Plato says, "we were ourselves pure and immaculate,
being liberated from this surrounding vestment, which we denominate body, and
to which we are now bound like an oyster to its shell."*
So the doctrine of planetary
and terrestrial Pitris was revealed entirely in ancient India, as well as now,
only at the last moment of initiation, and to the adepts of superior degrees.
Many are the fakirs, who, though pure, and honest, and self-devoted, have yet
never seen the astral form of a purely human pitar (an ancestor or father),
otherwise than at the solemn moment of their first and last initiation. It is
in the presence of his instructor, the guru, and just before the vatou-fakir is
dispatched into the world of the living, with his seven-knotted bamboo wand for
all protection, that he is suddenly placed face to face with the unknown
PRESENCE. He sees it, and falls prostrate at the feet of the evanescent form,
but is not entrusted with the great secret of its evocation; for it is the
supreme mystery of the holy syllable. The AUM contains the evocation of the
Vedic triad, the Trimurti Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, say the Orientalists;** it
contains the evocation of something more real and objective than this triune
abstraction -- we say, respectfully contradicting the eminent scientists. It is
the trinity of man himself, on his way to become immortal through the solemn
union of his inner triune SELF -- the exterior, gross body, the husk not even
being taken in consideration in this human trinity.*** It is, when this
trinity, in anticipation of the final
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Phaedrus," p. 64.
** The Supreme Buddha is
invoked with two of his acolytes of the theistic triad, Dharma and Sanga. This
triad is addressed in Sanscrit in the following terms:
Namo Buddhaya,
Namo Dharmaya,
Namo Sangaya,
Aum!
while the Thibetan Buddhists
pronounce their invocations as follows:
Nan-won Fho-tho-ye,
Nan-won Tha-ma-ye,
Nan-won Seng-kia-ye,
Aan!
See also "Journal
Asiatique," tome vii., p. 286.
*** The body of man -- his coat
of skin -- is an inert mass of matter, per se; it is but the sentient living
body within the man that is considered as the man's body
[[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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CONFERRED WITH.
triumphant reunion beyond the
gates of corporeal death became for a few seconds a UNITY, that the candidate
is allowed, at the moment of the initiation, to behold his future self. Thus we
read in the Persian Desatir, of the "Resplendent one"; in the Greek
philosopher-initiates, of the Augoeides -- the self-shining "blessed
vision resident in the pure light"; in Porphyry, that Plotinus was united
to his "god" six times during his lifetime; and so on.
"In ancient India, the
mystery of the triad, known but to the initiates, could not, under the penalty
of death, be revealed to the vulgar," says Vrihaspati.
Neither could it in the
ancient Grecian and Samothracian Mysteries. Nor can it be now. It is in the
hands of the adepts, and must remain a mystery to the world so long as the
materialistic savant regards it as an undemonstrated fallacy, an insane
hallucination, and the dogmatic theologian, a snare of the Evil One.
Subjective communication with
the human, god-like spirits of those who have preceded us to the silent land of
bliss, is in India divided into three categories. Under the spiritual training
of a guru or sannyasi, the vatou (disciple or neophyte) begins to feel them.
Were he not under the immediate guidance of an adept, he would be controlled by
the invisibles, and utterly at their mercy, for among these subjective
influences he is unable to discern the good from the bad. Happy the sensitive
who is sure of the purity of his spiritual atmosphere!
To this subjective
consciousness, which is the first degree, is, after a time, added that of
clairaudience. This is the second degree or stage of development. The sensitive
-- when not naturally made so by psychological training -- now audibly hears,
but is still unable to discern; and is incapable of verifying his impressions,
and one who is unprotected the tricky powers of the air but too often delude
with semblances of voices and speech. But the guru's influence is there; it is
the most powerful shield against the intrusion of the bhutna into the
atmosphere of the vatou, consecrated to the pure, human, and celestial Pitris.
The third degree is that when
the fakir or any other candidate both feels, hears, and sees; and when he can
at will produce the reflections of the Pitris on the mirror of astral light.
All depends upon his psychological and mesmeric powers, which are always
proportionate to the intensity of his will. But the fakir will never control
the Akasa, the spiritual life-principle, the omnipotent agent of every
phenomenon, in the same degree as an adept of the third and highest initiation.
And the
[[Footnote(s)]]
--------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] proper, and it is that which, together with the fontal soul or
purely astral body, directly connected with the immortal spirit, constitutes
the trinity of man.
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phenomena produced by the will
of the latter do not generally run the market-places for the satisfaction of
open-mouthed investigators.
The unity of God, the immortality
of the spirit, belief in salvation only through our works, merit and demerit;
such are the principal articles of faith of the Wisdom-religion, and the
ground-work of Vedaism, Buddhism, Parsism, and such we find to have been even
that of the ancient Osirism, when we, after abandoning the popular sun-god to
the materialism of the rabble, confine our attention to the Books of Hermes,
the thrice-great.
"The THOUGHT concealed as
yet the world in silence and darkness. . . . Then the Lord who exists through
Himself, and who is not to be divulged to the external senses of man;
dissipated darkness, and manifested the perceptible world."
"He that can be perceived
only by the spirit, that escapes the organs of sense, who is without visible parts,
eternal, the soul of all beings, that none can comprehend, displayed His own
splendor" (Manu, book i., slokas, 6-7).
Such is the ideal of the
Supreme in the mind of every Hindu philosopher.
"Of all the duties, the
principal one is to acquire the knowledge of the supreme soul (the spirit); it
is the first of all sciences, for it alone confers on man immortality"
(Manu, book xii., sloka 85).
And our scientists talk of the
Nirvana of Buddha and the Moksha of Brahma as of a complete annihilation! It is
thus that the following verse is interpreted by some materialists.
"The man who recognizes
the Supreme Soul, in his own soul, as well as in that of all creatures, and who
is equally just to all (whether man or animals) obtains the happiest of all
fates, that to be finally absorbed in the bosom of Brahma" (Manu, book
xii., sloka 125).
The doctrine of the Moksha and
the Nirvana, as understood by the school of Max Muller, can never bear
confronting with numerous texts that can be found, if required, as a final refutation.
There are sculptures in many pagodas which contradict, point-blank, the
imputation. Ask a Brahman to explain Moksha, address yourself to an educated
Buddhist and pray him to define for you the meaning of Nirvana. Both will
answer you that in every one of these religions Nirvana represents the dogma of
the spirit's immortality. That, to reach the Nirvana means absorption into the
great universal soul, the latter representing a state, not an individual being
or an anthropomorphic god, as some understand the great EXISTENCE. That a
spirit reaching such a state becomes a part of the integral whole, but never
loses its individuality for all that. Henceforth, the spirit lives spiritually,
without any fear of further modi-
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PROVOKED BY DRUGS.
fications of form; for form
pertains to matter, and the state of Nirvana implies a complete purification or
a final riddance from even the most sublimated particle of matter.
This word, absorbed, when it
is proved that the Hindus and Buddhists believe in the immortality of the
spirit, must necessarily mean intimate union, not annihilation. Let Christians
call them idolaters, if they still dare do so, in the face of science and the
latest translations of the sacred Sanscrit books; they have no right to present
the speculative philosophy of ancient sages as an inconsistency and the philosophers
themselves as illogical fools. With far better reason we can accuse the ancient
Jews of utter nihilism. There is not a word contained in the Books of Moses --
or the prophets either -- which, taken literally, implies the spirit's
immortality. Yet every devout Jew hopes as well to be "gathered into the
bosom of A-Braham."
The hierophants and some
Brahmans are accused of having administered to their epoptai strong drinks or
anaesthetics to produce visions which shall be taken by the latter as
realities. They did and do use sacred beverages which, like the Soma-drink,
possess the faculty of freeing the astral form from the bonds of matter; but in
those visions there is as little to be attributed to hallucination as in the
glimpses which the scientist, by the help of his optical instrument, gets into
the microscopic world. A man cannot perceive, touch, and converse with pure
spirit through any of his bodily senses. Only spirit alone can talk to and see
spirit; and even our astral soul, the Doppelganger, is too gross, too much
tainted yet with earthly matter to trust entirely to its perceptions and
insinuations.
How dangerous may often become
untrained mediumship, and how thoroughly it was understood and provided against
by the ancient sages, is perfectly exemplified in the case of Socrates. The old
Grecian philosopher was a "medium"; hence, he had never been
initiated into the Mysteries; for such was the rigorous law. But he had his
"familiar spirit" as they call it, his daimonion; and this invisible
counsellor became the cause of his death. It is generally believed that if he
was not initiated into the Mysteries it was because he himself neglected to
become so. But the Secret Records teach us that it was because he could not be
admitted to participate in the sacred rites, and precisely, as we state, on
account of his mediumship. There was a law against the admission not only of
such as were convicted of deliberate witchcraft* but even
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* We really think that the
word "witchcraft" ought, once for all, to be understood in the sense
which properly belongs to it. Witchcraft may be either conscious or
unconscious. Certain wicked and dangerous results may be obtained through the
mesmeric powers of a so-called sorcerer, who misuses his potential fluid; or
again they may be achieved through an easy access of malicious tricky
"spirits" (so much the worse if
[[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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but even of those who were
known to have "a familiar spirit." The law was just and logical,
because a genuine medium is more or less irresponsible; and the eccentricities
of Socrates are thus accounted for in some degree. A medium must be passive;
and if a firm believer in his "spirit-guide" he will allow himself to
be ruled by the latter, not by the rules of the sanctuary. A medium of olden
times, like the modern "medium" was subject to be entranced at the
will and pleasure of the "power" which controlled him; therefore, he
could not well have been entrusted with the awful secrets of the final
initiation, "never to be revealed under the penalty of death." The
old sage, in unguarded moments of "spiritual inspiration," revealed
that which he had never learned; and was therefore put to death as an atheist.
How then, with such an
instance as that of Socrates, in relation to the visions and spiritual wonders
at the epoptai, of the Inner Temple, can any one assert that these seers,
theurgists, and thaumaturgists were all "spirit-mediums"? Neither
Pythagoras, Plato, nor any of the later more important Neo-platonists; neither
Iamblichus, Longinus, Proclus, nor Apollonius of Tyana, were ever mediums; for
in such case they would not have been admitted to the Mysteries at all. As
Taylor proves -- "This assertion of divine visions in the Mysteries is
clearly confirmed by Plotinus. And in short, that magical evocation formed a
part of the sacerdotal office in them, and that this was universally believed
by all antiquity long before the era of the later Platonists," shows that
apart from natural "mediumship," there has existed, from the
beginning of time, a mysterious science, discussed by many, but known only to a
few.
The use of it is a longing
toward our only true and real home -- the after-life, and a desire to cling
more closely to our parent spirit; abuse of it is sorcery, witchcraft, black
magic. Between the two is placed natural "mediumship"; a soul clothed
with imperfect matter, a ready agent for either the one or the other, and
utterly dependent on its surroundings of life, constitutional heredity --
physical as well as mental -- and on the nature of the "spirits" it
attracts around itself. A blessing or a curse, as fate will have it, unless the
medium is purified of earthly dross.
The reason why in every age so
little has been generally known of the mysteries of initiation, is twofold. The
first has already been explained by more than one author, and lies in the
terrible penalty following the least indiscretion. The second, is the
superhuman difficulties and even dangers which the daring candidate of old had
to encounter, and either conquer, or die in the attempt, when, what is still
worse, he did not lose his
[[Footnote (s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] human) to the atmosphere surrounding a medium. How many thousands
of such irresponsible innocent victims have met infamous deaths through the
tricks of those Elementaries!
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TALMUD.
reason. There was no real
danger to him whose mind had become thoroughly spiritualized, and so prepared
for every terrific sight. He who fully recognized the power of his immortal
spirit, and never doubted for one moment its omnipotent protection, had naught
to fear. But woe to the candidate in whom the slightest physical fear -- sickly
child of matter -- made him lose sight and faith in his own invulnerability. He
who was not wholly confident of his moral fitness to accept the burden of these
tremendous secrets was doomed.
The Talmud gives the story of
the four Tanaim, who are made, in allegorical terms, to enter into the garden
of delights; i.e., to be initiated into the occult and final science.
"According to the
teaching of our holy masters the names of the four who entered the garden of
delight, are: Ben Asai, Ben Zoma, Acher, and Rabbi Akiba. . . .
"Ben Asai looked and --
lost his sight.
"Ben Zoma looked and --
lost his reason.
"Acher made depredations
in the plantation" (mixed up the whole and failed). "But Akiba, who
had entered in peace, came out of it in peace, for the saint whose name be
blessed had said, 'This old man is worthy of serving us with glory.' "
"The learned commentators
of the Talmud, the Rabbis of the synagogue, explain that the garden of delight,
in which those four personages are made to enter, is but that mysterious
science, the most terrible of sciences for weak intellects, which it leads
directly to insanity," says A. Franck, in his Kabbala. It is not the pure
at heart and he who studies but with a view to perfecting himself and so more
easily acquiring the promised immortality, who need have any fear; but rather
he who makes of the science of sciences a sinful pretext for worldly motives,
who should tremble. The latter will never withstand the kabalistic evocations
of the supreme initiation.
The licentious performances of
the thousand and one early Christian sects, may be criticised by partial
commentators as well as the ancient Eleusinian and other rites. But why should
they incur the blame of the theologians, the Christians, when their own
"Mysteries" of "the divine incarnation with Joseph, Mary, and
the angel" in a sacred trilogue used to be enacted in more than one
country, and were famous at one time in Spain and Southern France? Later, they
fell like many other once secret rites into the hands of the populace. It is
but a few years since, during every Christmas week, Punch-and-Judy-boxes,
containing the above named personages, an additional display of the infant
Jesus in his manger, were carried about the country in Poland and Southern
Russia. They were called Kaliadovki, a word the correct etymology of which we
are
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unable to give unless it is
from the verb Kaliadovat, a word that we as willingly abandon to learned
philologists. We have seen this show in our days of childhood. We remember the
three king-Magi represented by three dolls in powdered wigs and colored tights;
and it is from recollecting the simple, profound veneration depicted on the
faces of the pious audience, that we can the more readily appreciate the honest
and just remark by the editor, in the introduction to the Eleusinian Mysteries,
who says: "It is ignorance which leads to profanation. Men ridicule what
they do not properly understand. . . . The undercurrent of this world is set
toward one goal; and inside of human credulity -- call it human weakness, if
you please -- is a power almost infinite, a holy faith capable of apprehending
the supremest truths of all existence."
If that abstract sentiment
called Christian charity prevailed in the Church, we would be well content to
leave all this unsaid. We have no quarrel with Christians whose faith is
sincere and whose practice coincides with their profession. But with an
arrogant, dogmatic, and dishonest clergy, we have nothing to do except to see the
ancient philosophy -- antagonized by modern theology in its puny offspring --
Spiritualism -- defended and righted so far as we are able, so that its
grandeur and sufficiency may be thoroughly displayed. It is not alone for the
esoteric philosophy that we fight; nor for any modern system of moral
philosophy, but for the inalienable right of private judgment, and especially
for the ennobling idea of a future life of activity and accountability.
We eagerly applaud such
commentators as Godfrey Higgins, Inman, Payne Knight, King, Dunlap, and Dr.
Newton, however much they disagree with our own mystical views, for their
diligence is constantly being rewarded by fresh discoveries of the Pagan
paternity of Christian symbols. But otherwise, all these learned works are
useless. Their researches only cover half the ground. Lacking the true key of
interpretation they see the symbols only in a physical aspect. They have no
password to cause the gates of mystery to swing open; and ancient spiritual
philosophy is to them a closed book. Diametrically opposed though they be to
the clergy in their ideas respecting it, in the way of interpretation they do
little more than their opponents for a questioning public. Their labors tend to
strengthen materialism as those of the clergy, especially the Romish clergy, do
to cultivate belief in diabolism.
If the study of Hermetic
philosophy held out no other hope of reward, it would be more than enough to
know that by it we may learn with what perfection of justice the world is
governed. A sermon upon this text is preached by every page of history. Among
all there is not one that conveys a deeper moral than the case of the Roman
Church. The divine law of compensation was never more strikingly exemplified
than in the
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SELF-DOOMED.
fact that by her own act she
has deprived herself of the only possible key to her own religious mysteries.
The assumption of Godfrey Higgins that there are two doctrines maintained in
the Roman Church, one for the masses and the other -- the esoteric -- for the
"perfect," or the initiates, as in the ancient Mysteries, appears to
us unwarranted and rather fantastic. They have lost the key, we repeat;
otherwise no terrestrial power could have prostrated her, and except a
superficial knowledge of the means of producing "miracles," her
clergy can in no way be compared in their wisdom with the hierophants of old.
In burning the works of the
theurgists; in proscribing those who affect their study; in affixing the stigma
of demonolatry to magic in general, Rome has left her exoteric worship and
Bible to be helplessly riddled by every free-thinker, her sexual emblems to be
identified with coarseness, and her priests to unwittingly turn magicians and
even sorcerers in their exorcisms, which are but necromantic evocations. Thus
retribution, by the exquisite adjustment of divine law, is made to overtake this
scheme of cruelty, injustice, and bigotry, through her own suicidal acts.
True philosophy and divine
truth are convertible terms. A religion which dreads the light cannot be a
religion based on either truth or philosophy -- hence, it must be false. The ancient
Mysteries were mysteries to the profane only, whom the hierophant never sought
nor would accept as proselytes; to the initiates the Mysteries became explained
as soon as the final veil was withdrawn. No mind like that of Pythagoras or
Plato would have contented itself with an unfathomable and incomprehensible
mystery, like that of the Christian dogma. There can be but one truth, for two
small truths on the same subject can but constitute one great error. Among
thousands of exoteric or popular conflicting religions which have been
propagated since the days when the first men were enabled to interchange their
ideas, not a nation, not a people, nor the most abject tribe, but after their
own fashion has believed in an Unseen God, the First Cause of unerring and
immutable laws, and in the immortality of our spirit. No creed, no false
philosophy, no religious exaggerations, could ever destroy that feeling. It
must, therefore, be based upon an absolute truth. On the other hand, every one
of the numberless religions and religious sects views the Deity after its own
fashion; and, fathering on the unknown its own speculations, it enforces these
purely human outgrowths of overheated imagination on the ignorant masses, and
calls them "revelation." As the dogmas of every religion and sect
often differ radically, they cannot be true. And if untrue, what are they?
"The greatest curse to a
nation," remarks Dr. Inman, "is not a bad religion, but a form of faith
which prevents manly inquiry. I know of no nation of old that was priest-ridden
which did not fall under the swords
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of those who did not care for
hierarchs. . . . The greatest danger is to be feared from those ecclesiastics
who wink at vice, and encourage it as a means whereby they can gain power over
their votaries. So long as every man does to other men as he would that they
should do to him, and allows no one to interfere between him and his Maker, all
will go well with the world."*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Ancient Pagan and
Modern Christian Symbolism," preface, p. 34.
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CHAPTER III.
"KING. -- Let us from
point to point this story know." -- All's Well That Ends Well. -- Act v.,
Scene 3.
"He is the One,
self-proceeding; and from Him all things proceed.
And in them He Himself exerts
His activity; no mortal
BEHOLDS HIM, but HE beholds
all!" -- Orphic Hymn.
"And Athens, O Athena, is
thy own!
Great Goddess hear! and on my
darkened mind
Pour thy pure light in measure
unconfined;
That sacred light, O
all-proceeding Queen,
Which beams eternal from thy
face serene.
My soul, while wand'ring on
the earth, inspire
With thy own blessed and
impulsive fire!" -- PROCLUS; TAYLOR: To Minerva.
"Now faith is the
substance of things. . . . By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them
that believed not, when she had received the spies in peace." -- Hebrews
xi. 1, 31.
"What doth it profit, my
brethren, though a man hath faith, and have not works? Can FAITH save him? . .
. Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had
received the messengers, and had sent them out another way?" -- James ii.
14, 25.
CLEMENT describes Basilides,
the Gnostic, as "a philosopher devoted to the contemplation of divine
things." This very appropriate expression may be applied to many of the
founders of the more important sects which later were all engulfed in one --
that stupendous compound of unintelligible dogmas enforced by Irenaeus,
Tertullian, and others, which is now termed Christianity. If these must be
called heresies, then early Christianity itself must be included in the number.
Basilides and Valentinus preceded Irenaeus and Tertullian; and the two latter
Fathers had less facts than the two former Gnostics to show that their heresy
was plausible. Neither divine right nor truth brought about the triumph of
their Christianity; fate alone was propitious. We can assert, with entire
plausibility, that there is not one of all these sects -- Kabalism, Judaism,
and our present Christianity included -- but sprung from the two main branches
of that one mother-trunk, the once universal religion, which antedated the
Vedaic ages -- we speak of that prehistoric Buddhism which merged later into
Brahmanism.
The religion which the
primitive teaching of the early few apostles most resembled -- a religion
preached by Jesus himself -- is the elder of these two, Buddhism. The latter as
taught in its primitive purity, and carried to perfection by the last of the
Buddhas, Gautama, based its
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moral ethics on three
fundamental principles. It alleged that 1, every thing existing, exists from
natural causes; 2, that virtue brings its own reward, and vice and sin their
own punishment; and, 3, that the state of man in this world is probationary. We
might add that on these three principles rested the universal foundation of
every religious creed; God, and individual immortality for every man -- if he
could but win it. However puzzling the subsequent theological tenets; however seemingly
incomprehensible the metaphysical abstractions which have convulsed the
theology of every one of the great religions of mankind as soon as it was
placed on a sure footing, the above is found to be the essence of every
religious philosophy, with the exception of later Christianity. It was that of
Zoroaster, of Pythagoras, of Plato, of Jesus, and even of Moses, albeit the
teachings of the Jewish law-giver have been so piously tampered with.
We will devote the present
chapter mainly to a brief survey of the numerous sects which have recognized
themselves as Christians; that is to say, that have believed in a Christos, or
an ANOINTED ONE. We will also endeavor to explain the latter appellation from
the kabalistic stand-point, and show it reappearing in every religious system.
It might be profitable, at the same time, to see how much the earliest apostles
-- Paul and Peter, agreed in their preaching of the new Dispensation. We will
begin with Peter.
We must once more return to
that greatest of all the Patristic frauds; the one which has undeniably helped
the Roman Catholic Church to its unmerited supremacy, viz.: the barefaced
assertion, in the teeth of historical evidence, that Peter suffered martyrdom
at Rome. It is but too natural that the Latin clergy should cling to it, for,
with the exposure of the fraudulent nature of this pretext, the dogma of
apostolic succession must fall to the ground.
There have been many able
works of late, in refutation of this preposterous claim. Among others we note
Mr. G. Reber's, The Christ of Paul, which overthrows it quite ingeniously. The
author proves, 1, that there was no church established at Rome, until the reign
of Antoninus Pius; 2, that as Eusebius and Irenaeus both agree that Linus was
the second Bishop of Rome, into whose hands "the blessed apostles"
Peter and Paul committed the church after building it, it could not have been
at any other time than between A.D. 64 and 68; 3, that this interval of years
happens during the reign of Nero, for Eusebius states that Linus held this
office twelve years (Ecclesiastical History, book iii., c. 13), entering upon
it A.D. 69, one year after the death of Nero, and dying himself in 81. After
that the author maintains, on very solid grounds, that Peter could not be in
Rome A.D. 64, for he was then in Babylon; wherefrom he
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SUCCESSION.
wrote his first Epistle, the
date of which is fixed by Dr. Lardner and other critics at precisely this year.
But we believe that his best argument is in proving that it was not in the
character of the cowardly Peter to risk himself in such close neighborhood with
Nero, who "was feeding the wild beasts of the Amphitheatre with the flesh
and bones of Christians"* at that time.
Perhaps the Church of Rome was
but consistent in choosing as her titular founder the apostle who thrice denied
his master at the moment of danger; and the only one, moreover, except Judas,
who provoked Christ in such a way as to be addressed as the "Enemy."
"Get thee behind me, SATAN!" exclaims Jesus, rebuking the taunting
apostle.**
There is a tradition in the
Greek Church which has never found favor at the Vatican. The former traces its
origin to one of the Gnostic leaders -- Basilides, perhaps, who lived under
Trajan and Adrian, at the end of the first and the beginning of the second
century. With regard to this particular tradition, if the Gnostic is Basilides,
then he must be accepted as a sufficient authority, having claimed to have been
a disciple of the Apostle Matthew, and to have had for master Glaucias, a
disciple of St. Peter himself. Were the narrative attributed to him
authenticated, the London Committee for the Revision of the Bible would have to
add a new verse to Matthew, Mark, and John, who tell the story of Peter's
denial of Christ.
This tradition, then, of which
we have been speaking, affirms that, when frightened at the accusation of the
servant of the high priest, the apostle had thrice denied his master, and the
cock had crowed, Jesus, who was then passing through the hall in custody of the
soldiers, turned, and, looking at Peter, said: "Verily, I say unto thee,
Peter, thou shalt deny me throughout the coming ages, and never stop until thou
shalt be old, and shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee
and carry thee whither thou wouldst not." The latter part of this
sentence, say the Greeks, relates to the Church of Rome, and prophesies her
constant apostasy from Christ, under the mask of false religion. Later, it was
inserted in the twenty-first chapter of John, but the whole of this chapter had
been pronounced a forgery, even before it was found that this Gospel was never
written by John the Apostle at all.
The anonymous author of
Supernatural Religion, a work which in two years passed through several
editions, and which is alleged to have been written by an eminent theologian,
proves conclusively the spuriousness of the four gospels, or at least their
complete transformation in the hands
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The Christ of
Paul," p. 123.
** Gospel according to Mark,
viii. 33.
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of the too-zealous Irenaeus
and his champions. The fourth gospel is completely upset by this able author;
the extraordinary forgeries of the Fathers of the early centuries are plainly
demonstrated, and the relative value of the synoptics is discussed with an
unprecedented power of logic. The work carries conviction in its every line.
From it we quote the following: "We gain infinitely more than we lose in
abandoning belief in the reality of Divine Revelation. Whilst we retain, pure
and unimpaired, the treasure of Christian morality, we relinquish nothing but
the debasing elements added to it by human superstition. We are no longer bound
to believe a theology which outrages reason and moral sense. We are freed from
base anthropomorphic views of God and His government of the Universe, and from
Jewish Mythology we rise to higher conceptions of an infinitely wise and
beneficent Being, hidden from our finite minds, it is true, in the impenetrable
glory of Divinity, but whose laws of wondrous comprehensiveness and perfection
we ever perceive in operation around us. . . . The argument so often employed
by theologians, that Divine revelation is necessary for man, and that certain
views contained in that revelation are required for our moral consciousness, is
purely imaginary, and derived from the revelation which it seeks to maintain.
The only thing absolutely necessary for man is TRUTH, and to that, and that
alone, must our moral consciousness adapt itself."*
We will consider farther in
what light was regarded the Divine revelation of the Jewish Bible by the
Gnostics, who yet believed in Christ in their own way, a far better and less blasphemous
one than the Roman Catholic. The Fathers have forced on the believers in Christ
a Bible, the laws prescribed in which he was the first to break; the teachings
of which he utterly rejected; and for which crimes he was finally crucified. Of
whatever else the Christian world can boast, it can hardly claim logic and
consistency as its chief virtues.
The fact alone that Peter
remained to the last an "apostle of the circumcision," speaks for
itself. Whosoever else might have built the Church of Rome it was not Peter. If
such were the case, the successors of this apostle would have to submit
themselves to circumcision, if it were but for the sake of consistency, and to
show that the claims of the popes are not utterly groundless, Dr. Inman asserts
that report says that "in our Christian times popes have to be privately
perfect,"** but we do not know whether it is carried to the extent of the
Levitical Jewish law. The first fifteen Christian bishops of Jerusalem,
commencing with James and including Judas, were all circumcised Jews.***
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Supernatural
Religion," vol. ii., p. 489.
** "Ancient Pagan and
Modern Christian Symbolism," p. 28.
*** See Eusebius, "Ex.
H.," bk. iv., ch. v.; "Sulpicius Severus," vol. ii., p. 31.
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In the Sepher Toldos Jeshu,* a
Hebrew manuscript of great antiquity, the version about Peter is different.
Simon Peter, it says, was one of their own brethren, though he had somewhat
departed from the laws, and the Jewish hatred and persecution of the apostle
seems to have existed but in the fecund imagination of the fathers. The author
speaks of him with great respect and fairness, calling him "a faithful
servant of the living God," who passed his life in austerity and
meditation, "living in Babylon at the summit of a tower," composing
hymns, and preaching charity. He adds that Peter always recommended to the
Christians not to molest the Jews, but as soon as he was dead, behold another
preacher went to Rome and pretended that Simon Peter had altered the teachings
of his master. He invented a burning hell and threatened every one with it;
promised miracles, but worked none.
How much there is in the above
of fiction and how much of truth, it is for others to decide; but it certainly
bears more the evidence of sincerity and fact on its face, than the fables
concocted by the fathers to answer their end.
We may the more readily credit
this friendship between Peter and his late co-religionists as we find in
Theodoret the following assertion: "The Nazarenes are Jews, honoring the
ANOINTED (Jesus) as a just man and using the Evangel according to
Peter."** Peter was a Nazarene, according to the Talmud. He belonged to
the sect of the later Nazarenes, which dissented from the followers of John the
Baptist, and became a rival sect; and which -- as tradition goes -- was
instituted by Jesus himself.
History finds the first
Christian sects to have been either Nazarenes like John the Baptist; or
Ebionites, among whom were many of the relatives of Jesus; or Essenes
(Iessaens) the Therapeutae, healers, of which the Nazaria were a branch. All
these sects, which only in the days of Irenaeus began to be considered
heretical, were more or less kabalistic. They believed in the expulsion of
demons by magical incantations, and practiced this method; Jervis terms the
Nabatheans and other such sects "wandering Jewish exorcists,"*** the
Arabic word Nabae, meaning to wander, and the Hebrew [[Heb char]] naba, to
prophesy. The Talmud indiscrimi-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It appears that the Jews
attribute a very high antiquity to "Sepher Toldos Jeshu." It was
mentioned for the first time by Martin, about the beginning of the thirteenth
century, for the Talmudists took great care to conceal it from the Christians.
Levi says that Porchetus Salvaticus published some portions of it, which were
used by Luther (see vol. viii., Jena Ed.). The Hebrew text, which was missing,
was at last found by Munster and Buxtorf, and published in 1681, by Christopher
Wagenseilius, in Nuremberg, and in Frankfort, in a collection entitled
"Tela Ignea Satanae," or The Burning Darts of Satan (See Levi's
"Science des Esprits").
** Theodoret: "Haeretic.
Fab.," lib. ii., 11.
*** Jervis W. Jervis:
"Genesis," p. 324.
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nately calls all the
Christians Nozari.* All the Gnostic sects equally believed in magic. Irenaeus, in
describing the followers of Basilides, says, "They use images,
invocations, incantations, and all other things pertaining unto magic."
Dunlap, on the authority of Lightfoot, shows that Jesus was called Nazaraios,
in reference to his humble and mean external condition; "for Nazaraios
means separation, alienation from other men."**
The real meaning of the word
nazar [[heb char]] signifies to vow or consecrate one's self to the service of
God. As a noun it is a diadem or emblem of such consecration, a head so
consecrated.*** Joseph was styled a nazar.**** "The head of Joseph, the
vertex of the nazar among his brethren." Samson and Samuel ([[Heb char]]
Semes-on and Sem-va-el) are described alike as nazars. Porphyry, treating of
Pythagoras, says that he was purified and initiated at Babylon by Zar-adas, the
head of the sacred college. May it not be surmised, therefore, that the
Zoro-Aster was the nazar of Ishtar, Zar-adas or Na-Zar-Ad,***** being the same
with change of idiom? Ezra, or [[Heb char]], was a priest and scribe, a
hierophant; and the first Hebrew colonizer of Judea was [[Heb char]] Zeru-Babel
or the Zoro or nazar of Babylon.
The Jewish Scriptures indicate
two distinct worships and religions among the Israelites; that of
Bacchus-worship under the mask of Jehovah, and that of the Chaldean initiates
to whom belonged some of the nazars, the theurgists, and a few of the prophets.
The headquarters of these were always at Babylon and Chaldea, where two rival
schools of Magians can be distinctly shown. Those who would doubt the statement
will have in such a case to account for the discrepancy between history and
Plato, who of all men of his day was certainly one of the best informed.
Speaking of the Magians, he shows them as instructing the Persian kings of Zoroaster,
as the son or priest of Oromasdes; and yet Darius, in the inscription at
Bihistun, boasts of having restored the cultus of Ormazd and put down the
Magian rites! Evidently there were two distinct and antagonistic Magian
schools. The oldest and the most esoteric of the two being that which,
satisfied with its unassailable knowledge and secret power, was content to
apparently relinquish her exoteric popularity, and concede her supremacy into
the hands of the reforming Darius. The later Gnostics showed the same prudent
policy by accommodating themselves in every country to the prevailing religious
forms, still secretly adhering to their own essential doctrines.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Lightfoot," 501.
** Dunlap: "Sod, the Son
of the Man," p. x.
*** Jeremiah vii. 29:
"Cut off thine hair, O Jerusalem, and cast it away, and take up a
lamentation on high places."
**** Genesis xlix. 26.
***** Nazareth?
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EURYDIKE FABLE EXPLAINED.
There is another hypothesis
possible, which is that Zero-Ishtar was the high priest of the Chaldean
worship, or Magian hierophant. When the Aryans of Persia, under Darius
Hystaspes, overthrew the Magian Gomates, and restored the Masdean worship,
there ensued an amalgamation by which the Magian Zoro-astar became the
Zara-tushra of the Vendidad. This was not acceptable to the other Aryans, who
adopted the Vedic religion as distinguished from that of Avesta. But this is
but an hypothesis.
And whatever Moses is now
believed to have been, we will demonstrate that he was an initiate. The Mosaic
religion was at best a sun-and-serpent worship, diluted, perhaps, with some
slight monotheistic notions before the latter were forcibly crammed into the
so-called "inspired Scriptures" by Ezra, at the time he was alleged
to have rewritten the Mosaic books. At all events the Book of Numbers was a
later book; and there the sun-and-serpent worship is as plainly traceable as in
any Pagan story. The tale of the fiery serpents is an allegory in more than one
sense. The "serpents" were the Levites or Ophites, who were Moses'
body-guard (see Exodus xxxii. 26); and the command of the "Lord" to
Moses to hang the heads of the people "before the Lord against the
sun," which is the emblem of this Lord, is unequivocal.
The nazars or prophets, as
well as the Nazarenes, were an anti-Bacchus caste, in so far that, in common
with all the initiated prophets, they held to the spirit of the symbolical
religions and offered a strong opposition to the idolatrous and exoteric
practices of the dead letter. Hence, the frequent stoning of the prophets by
the populace and under the leadership of those priests who made a profitable
living out of the popular superstitions. Otfried Muller shows how much the
Orphic Mysteries differed from the popular rites of Bacchus,* although the
Orphikoi are known to have followed the worship of Bacchus. The system of the
purest morality and of a severe asceticism promulgated in the teachings of
Orpheus, and so strictly adhered to by his votaries, are incompatible with the
lasciviousness and gross immorality of the popular rites. The fable of
Aristaeus pursuing Eurydike into the woods where a serpent occasions her death,
is a very plain allegory, which was in part explained at the earliest times.
Aristaeus is brutal power, pursuing Eurydike, the esoteric doctrine, into the
woods where the serpent (emblem of every sun-god, and worshipped under its
grosser aspect even by the Jews) kills her; i.e., forces truth to become still
more esoteric, and seek shelter in the Underworld, which is not the hell of our
theologians. Moreover, the fate of Orpheus, torn to pieces by the Bacchantes,
is
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Otfried Muller:
"Historical Greek Literature," pp. 230-240.
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another allegory to show that
the gross and popular rites are always more welcome than divine but simple truth,
and proves the great difference that must have existed between the esoteric and
the popular worship. As the poems of both Orpheus and Musaeus were said to have
been lost since the earliest ages, so that neither Plato nor Aristotle
recognized anything authentic in the poems extant in their time, it is
difficult to say with precision what constituted their peculiar rites. Still we
have the oral tradition, and every inference to draw therefrom; and this
tradition points to Orpheus as having brought his doctrines from India. As one
whose religion was that of the oldest Magians -- hence, that to which belonged
the initiates of all countries, beginning with Moses, the "sons of the
Prophets," and the ascetic nazars (who must not be confounded with those
against whom thundered Hosea and other prophets) to the Essenes. This latter
sect were Pythagoreans before they rather degenerated, than became perfected in
their system by the Buddhist missionaries, whom Pliny tells us established
themselves on the shores of the Dead Sea, ages before his time, "per
saeculorum millia." But if, on the one hand, these Buddhist monks were the
first to establish monastic communities and inculcate the strict observance of
dogmatic conventual rule, on the other they were also the first to enforce and
popularize those stern virtues so exemplified by Sakya-muni, and which were
previously exercised only in isolated cases of well-known philosophers and
their followers; virtues preached two or three centuries later by Jesus,
practiced by a few Christian ascetics, and gradually abandoned, and even
entirely forgotten by the Christian Church.
The initiated nazars had ever
held to this rule, which had to be followed before them by the adepts of every
age; and the disciples of John were but a dissenting branch of the Essenes.
Therefore, we cannot well confound them with all the nazars spoken of in the
Old Testament, and who are accused by Hosea with having separated or
consecrated themselves to Bosheth [[Heb char]] (see Hebrew text); which implied
the greatest possible abomination. To infer, as some critics and theologians
do, that it means to separate one's self to chastity or continence, is either
to advisedly pervert the true meaning, or to be totally ignorant of the Hebrew
language. The eleventh verse of the first chapter of Micah half explains the
word in its veiled translation: "Pass ye away, thou inhabitant of Saphir,
etc.," and in the original text the word is Bosheth. Certainly neither
Baal, nor Iahoh Kadosh, with his Kadeshim, was a god of ascetic virtue, albeit
the Septuaginta terms them, as well as the galli -- the perfected priests --
[[tetelesmenous]], the initiated and the consecrated.*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Movers," p.
683.
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NAZIREATES.
The great Sod of the Kadeshim,
translated in Psalm lxxxix. 7, by "assembly of the saints," was
anything but a mystery of the "sanctified" in the sense given to the
latter word by Webster.
The Nazireate sect existed
long before the laws of Moses, and originated among people most inimical to the
"chosen" ones of Israel, viz., the people of Galilee, the ancient
olla-podrida of idolatrous nations, where was built Nazara, the present
Nazareth. It is in Nazara that the ancient Nazoria or Nazireates held their
"Mysteries of Life" or "assemblies," as the word now stands
in the translation,* which were but the secret mysteries of initiation,**
utterly distinct in their practical form from the popular Mysteries which were
held at Byblus in honor of Adonis. While the true initiates of the ostracised
Galilee were worshipping the true God and enjoying transcendent visions, what
were the "chosen" ones about? Ezekiel tells it to us (chap. viii)
when, in describing what he saw, he says that the form of a hand took him by a
lock of his head and transported him from Chaldea unto Jerusalem. "And
there stood seventy men of the senators of the house of Israel. . . . 'Son of
man, hast thou seen what the ancients . . . do in the dark?' " inquires
the "Lord." "At the door of the house of the Lord . . . behold
there sat women weeping for Tammuz" (Adonis). We really cannot suppose
that the Pagans have ever surpassed the "chosen" people in certain
shameful abominations of which their own prophets accuse them so profusely. To
admit this truth, one hardly needs even to be a Hebrew scholar; let him read the
Bible in English and meditate over the language of the "holy"
prophets.
This accounts for the hatred
of the later Nazarenes for the orthodox Jews -- followers of the exoteric
Mosaic Law -- who are ever taunted by this sect with being the worshippers of
Iurbo-Adunai, or Lord Bacchus. Passing under the disguise of Adoni-Iachoh
(original text, Isaiah lxi. 1), Iahoh and Lord Sabaoth, the Baal-Adonis, or
Bacchus, worshipped in the groves and public sods or Mysteries, under the
polishing hand of Ezra becomes finally the later-vowelled Adonai of the
Massorah -- the One and Supreme God of the Christians!
"Thou shalt not worship
the Sun who is named Adunai," says the Codex of the Nazarenes; "whose
name is also Kadush*** and El-El. This Adunai will elect to himself a nation and
congregate in crowds (his worship will be exoteric) . . . Jerusalem will become
the refuge and city of the Abortive, who shall perfect themselves (circumcise)
with a sword . . . and shall adore Adunai."****
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Codex Nazaraeus,"
ii., 305.
** See Lucian: "De Syria
Dea."
*** See Psalm lxxxix. 18.
**** "Codex
Nazaraeus," i. 47.
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The oldest Nazarenes, who were
the descendants of the Scripture nazars, and whose last prominent leader was
John the Baptist, although never very orthodox in the sight of the scribes and Pharisees
of Jerusalem were, nevertheless, respected and left unmolested. Even Herod
"feared the multitude" because they regarded John as a prophet
(Matthew xiv. 5). But the followers of Jesus evidently adhered to a sect which
became a still more exasperating thorn in their side. It appeared as a heresy
within another heresy; for while the nazars of the olden times, the "Sons
of the Prophets," were Chaldean kabalists, the adepts of the new
dissenting sect showed themselves reformers and innovators from the first. The
great similitude traced by some critics between the rites and observances of
the earliest Christians and those of the Essenes may be accounted for without
the slightest difficulty. The Essenes, as we remarked just now, were the
converts of Buddhist missionaries who had overrun Egypt, Greece, and even Judea
at one time, since the reign of Asoka the zealous propagandist; and while it is
evidently to the Essenes that belongs the honor of having had the Nazarene
reformer, Jesus, as a pupil, still the latter is found disagreeing with his
early teachers on several questions of formal observance. He cannot strictly be
called an Essene, for reasons which we will indicate further on, neither was he
a nazar, or Nazaria of the older sect. What Jesus was, may be found in the
Codex Nazaraeus, in the unjust accusations of the Bardesanian Gnostics.
"Jesu is Nebu, the false
Messiah, the destroyer of the old orthodox religion," says the Codex.* He
is the founder of the sect of the new nazars, and, as the words clearly imply,
a follower of the Buddhist doctrine. In Hebrew the word naba [[Heb char]] means
to speak of inspiration; and [[Heb char]] is nebo, a god of wisdom. But Nebo is
also Mercury, and Mercury is Buddha in the Hindu monogram of planets. Moreover,
we find the Talmudists holding that Jesus was inspired by the genius of
Mercury.**
The Nazarene reformer had
undoubtedly belonged to one of these sects; though, perhaps, it would be next
to impossible to decide absolutely which. But what is self-evident is that he
preached the philosophy of Buddha-Sakyamuni. Denounced by the later prophets,
cursed by the Sanhedrim, the nazars -- they were confounded with others of that
name "who separated themselves unto that shame,"*** they were
secretly, if not openly persecuted by the orthodox synagogue. It be-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ibid.; Norberg:
"Onomasticon," 74.
** Alph. de Spire:
"Fortalicium Fidei," ii., 2.
*** Hosea ix. 10.
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NEW TESTAMENTS.
comes clear why Jesus was
treated with such contempt from the first, and deprecatingly called "the
Galilean." Nathaniel inquires -- "Can there any good thing come out
of Nazareth?" (John i. 46) at the very beginning of his career; and merely
because he knows him to be a nazar. Does not this clearly hint, that even the
older nazars were not really Hebrew religionists, but rather a class of
Chaldean theurgists? Besides, as the New Testament is noted for its
mistranslations and transparent falsifications of texts, we may justly suspect
that the word Nazareth was substituted for that of nasaria, or nozari. That it
originally read "Can any good thing come from a nozari, or Nazarene";
a follower of St. John the Baptist, with whom we see him associating from his
first appearance on the stage of action, after having been lost sight of for a
period of nearly twenty years. The blunders of the Old Testament are as nothing
to those of the gospels. Nothing shows better than these self-evident
contradictions the system of pious fraud upon which the super-structure of the
Messiahship rests. "This is Elias which was for to come," says
Matthew of John the Baptist, thus forcing an ancient kabalistic tradition into
the frame of evidence (xi. 14). But when addressing the Baptist himself, they
ask him (John i. 21), "Art thou Elias?" "And he saith I am
not"! Which knew best -- John or his biographer? And which is divine
revelation?
The motive of Jesus was
evidently like that of Gautama-Buddha, to benefit humanity at large by
producing a religious reform which should give it a religion of pure ethics;
the true knowledge of God and nature having remained until then solely in the
hands of the esoteric sects, and their adepts. As Jesus used oil and the
Essenes never used aught but pure water,* he cannot be called a strict Essene.
On the other hand, the Essenes were also "set apart"; they were
healers (assaya) and dwelt in the desert as all ascetics did.
But although he did not
abstain from wine he could have remained a Nazarene all the same. For in
chapter vi. of Numbers, we see that after the priest has waved a part of the
hair of a Nazorite for a wave-offering before the Lord, "after that a
Nazarene may drink wine" (v. 20). The bitter denunciation by the reformer
of the people who would be satisfied with nothing is worded in the following
exclamation: "John came neither eating nor drinking and they say: 'He hath
a devil.' . . . The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say: 'Behold
a man gluttonous and a wine-bibber.' " And yet he was an Essene and
Nazarene, for we not only find him sending a message to Herod, to say that he was
one of those who cast out demons, and who performed
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The Essenes considered
oil as a defilement," says Josephus: "Wars," ii., p. 7.
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cures, but actually calling
himself a prophet and declaring himself equal to the other prophets.*
The author of Sod shows
Matthew trying to connect the appellation of Nazarene with a prophecy,** and
inquires "Why then does Matthew state that the prophet said he should be
called Nazaria?" Simply "because he belonged to that sect, and a
prophecy would confirm his claims to the Messiahship. . . . Now it does not
appear that the prophets anywhere state that the Messiah will be called a
Nazarene."*** The fact alone that Matthew tries in the last verse of
chapter ii. to strengthen his claim that Jesus dwelt in Nazareth merely to
fulfil a prophecy, does more than weaken the argument, it upsets it entirely;
for the first two chapters have sufficiently been proved later forgeries.
Baptism is one of the oldest
rites and was practiced by all the nations in their Mysteries, as sacred ablutions.
Dunlap seems to derive the name of the nazars from nazah, sprinkling;
Bahak-Zivo is the genius who called the world into existence**** out of the
"dark water," say the Nazarenes; and Richardson's Persian, Arabic,
and English Lexicon asserts that the word Bahak means "raining." But
the Bahak-Zivo of the Nazarenes cannot be traced so easily to Bacchus, who
"was the rain-god," for the nazars were the greatest opponents of
Bacchus-worship. "Bacchus is brought up by the Hyades, the
rain-nymphs," says Preller;***** who shows, furthermore, that****** at the
conclusion of the religious Mysteries, the priests baptized (washed) their
monuments and anointed them with oil. All this is but a very indirect proof.
The Jordan baptism need not be shown a substitution for the exoteric Bacchic
rites and the libations in honor of Adonis or Adoni -- whom the Nazarenes
abhorred -- in order to prove it to have been a sect sprung from the
"Mysteries" of the "Secret Doctrine"; and their rites can
by no means be confounded with those of the Pagan populace, who had simply
fallen into the idolatrous and unreasoning faith of all plebeian multitudes.
John was the prophet of these Nazarenes, and in Galilee he was termed "the
Saviour," but he was not the founder of that sect which derived its
tradition from the remotest Chaldeo-Akkadian theurgy.
"The early plebeian
Israelites were Canaanites and Phoenicians, with
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Luke xiii. 32.
** Matthew ii. We must bear in
mind that the Gospel according to Matthew in the New Testament is not the
original Gospel of the apostle of that name. The authentic Evangel was for
centuries in the possession of the Nazarenes and the Ebionites, as we show
further on the admission of St. Jerome himself, who confesses that he had to
ask permission of the Nazarenes to translate it.
*** Dunlap: "Sod, the Son
of the Man."
**** "Codex
Nazaraeus," vol. ii., p. 233.
***** Preller: vol. i., p.
415.
****** Ibid., vol. i., p. 490.
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BAPTISM.
the same worship of the
Phallic gods -- Bacchus, Baal or Adon, Iacchos -- Iao or Jehovah"; but
even among them there had always been a class of initiated adepts. Later, the
character of this plebe was modified by Assyrian conquests; and, finally, the
Persian colonizations superimposed the Pharisean and Eastern ideas and usages,
from which the Old Testament and the Mosaic institutes were derived. The
Asmonean priest-kings promulgated the canon of the Old Testament in
contradistinction to the Apocrypha or Secret Books of the Alexandrian Jews --
kabalists.* Till John Hyrcanus they were Asideans (Chasidim) and Pharisees
(Parsees), but then they became Sadducees or Zadokites -- asserters of
sacerdotal rule as contradistinguished from rabbinical. The Pharisees were
lenient and intellectual, the Sadducees, bigoted and cruel.
Says the Codex: "John,
son of the Aba-Saba-Zacharia, conceived by his mother Anasabet in her hundredth
year, had baptized for forty-two years** when Jesu Messias came to the Jordan
to be baptized with John's baptism. . . . But he will pervert John's doctrine,
changing the baptism of the Jordan, and perverting the sayings of
justice."***
The baptism was changed from
water to that of the Holy Ghost, undoubtedly in consequence of the
ever-dominant idea of the Fathers to institute a reform, and make the
Christians distinct from St. John's Nazarenes, the Nabatheans and Ebionites, in
order to make room for new dogmas. Not only do the Synoptics tell us that Jesus
was baptizing the same as John, but John's own disciples complained of it,
though surely Jesus cannot be accused of following a purely Bacchic rite. The
parenthesis in verse 2d of John iv., " . . . though Jesus himself baptized
not," is so clumsy as to show upon its face that it is an interpolation,
Matthew makes John say that he that should come after him would not baptize
them with water "but with the Holy Ghost and fire." Mark, Luke, and
John corroborate these words. Water, fire, and spirit, or Holy Ghost, have all
their origin in India, as we will show.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The word Apocrypha was very
erroneously adopted as doubtful and spurious. The word means hidden and secret;
but that which is secret may be often more true than that which is revealed.
** The statement, if reliable,
would show that Jesus was between fifty and sixty years old when baptized; for
the Gospels make him but a few months younger than John. The kabalists say that
Jesus was over forty years old when first appearing at the gates of Jerusalem.
The present copy of the "Codex Nazaraeus" is dated in the year 1042,
but Dunlap finds in Irenaeus (2d century) quotations from and ample references
to this book. "The basis of the material common to Irenaeus and the 'Codex
Nazaraeus' must be at least as early as the first century," says the
author in his preface to "Sod, the Son of the Man," p. i.
*** "Codex
Nazaraeus," vol. i., p. 109; Dunlap: Ibid., xxiv.
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Now there is one very strange
peculiarity about this sentence. It is flatly denied in Acts xix. 2-5. Apollos,
a Jew of Alexandria, belonged to the sect of St. John's disciples; he had been
baptized, and instructed others in the doctrines of the Baptist. And yet when
Paul, cleverly profiting by his absence at Corinth, finds certain disciples of
Apollos' at Ephesus, and asks them whether they received the Holy Ghost, he is
naively answered, "We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy
Ghost!" "Unto what then were you baptized?" he inquires.
"Unto John's baptism," they say. Then Paul is made to repeat the
words attributed to John by the Synoptics; and these men "were baptized in
the name of the Lord Jesus," exhibiting, moreover, at the same instant,
the usual polyglot gift which accompanies the descent of the Holy Ghost.
How then? St. John the
Baptist, who is called the "precursor," that "the prophecy might
be fulfilled," the great prophet and martyr, whose words ought to have had
such an importance in the eyes of his disciples, announces the "Holy
Ghost" to his listeners; causes crowds to assemble on the shores of the
Jordan, where, at the great ceremony of Christ's baptism, the promised
"Holy Ghost" appears within the opened heavens, and the multitude
hears the voice, and yet there are disciples of St. John who have "never
so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost"!
Verily the disciples who wrote
the Codex Nazaraeus were right. Only it is not Jesus himself, but those who
came after him, and who concocted the Bible to suit themselves, that
"perverted John's doctrine, changed the baptism of the Jordan, and
perverted the sayings of justice."
It is useless to object that
the present Codex was written centuries after the direct apostles of John
preached. So were our Gospels. When this astounding interview of Paul with the
"Baptists" took place, Bardesanes had not yet appeared among them,
and the sect was not considered a "heresy." Moreover, we are enabled
to judge how little St. John's promise of the "Holy Ghost," and the
appearance of the "Ghost" himself, had affected his disicples, by the
displeasure shown by them toward the disciples of Jesus, and the kind of
rivalry manifested from the first. Nay, so little is John himself sure of the
identity of Jesus with the expected Messiah, that after the famous scene of the
baptism at the Jordan, and the oral assurance by the Holy Ghost Himself that
"This is my beloved Son" (Matthew iii. 17), we find "the Precursor,"
in Matthew xi., sending two of his disciples from his prison to inquire of
Jesus: "Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another"!!
This flagrant contradiction
alone ought to have long ago satisfied reasonable minds as to the putative
divine inspiration of the New Testa-
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NAZARIA.
ment. But we may offer another
question: If baptism is the sign of regeneration, and an ordinance instituted
by Jesus, why do not Christians now baptize as Jesus is here represented as
doing, "with the Holy Ghost and with fire," instead of following the
custom of the Nazarenes? In making these palpable interpolations, what possible
motive could Irenaeus have had except to cause people to believe that the
appellation of Nazarene, which Jesus bore, came only from his father's
residence at Nazareth, and not from his affiliation with the sect of Nazaria,
the healers?
This expedient of Irenaeus was
a most unfortunate one, for from time immemorial the prophets of old had been
thundering against the baptism of fire as practiced by their neighbors, which
imparted the "spirit of prophecy," or the Holy Ghost. But the case
was desperate; the Christians were universally called Nazoraens and Iessaens
(according to Epiphanius), and Christ simply ranked as a Jewish prophet and
healer -- so self-styled, so accepted by his own disciples, and so regarded by
their followers. In such a state of things there was no room for either a new
hierarchy or a new God-head; and since Irenaeus had undertaken the business of
manufacturing both, he had to put together such materials as were available,
and fill the gaps with his own fertile inventions.
To assure ourselves that Jesus
was a true Nazarene -- albeit with ideas of a new reform -- we must not search
for the proof in the translated Gospels, but in such original versions as are
accessible. Tischendorf, in his translation from the Greek of Luke iv. 34, has
it "Iesou Nazarene"; and in the Syriac it reads "Iasoua, thou
Nazaria." Thus, if we take in account all that is puzzling and
incomprehensible in the four Gospels, revised and corrected as they now stand,
we shall easily see for ourselves that the true, original Christianity, such as
was preached by Jesus, is to be found only in the so-called Syrian heresies.
Only from them can we extract any clear notions about what was primitive
Christianity. Such was the faith of Paul, when Tertullus the orator accused the
apostle before the governor Felix. What he complained of was that they had
found "that man a mover of sedition . . . a ringleader of the sect of the
Nazarenes";* and, while Paul denies every other accusation, he confesses
that "after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my
fathers."** This confession is a whole revelation. It shows: 1, that Paul
admitted belonging to the sect of the Nazarenes; 2, that he worshipped the God
of his fathers, not the trinitarian Christian God, of whom he knows nothing,
and who was not invented until after his death; and, 3, that this unlucky
confession satisfactorily explains why the treatise, Acts of the Apostles,
together with John's Revelation, which at one
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Acts xxiv. 5.
** Ibid., 14.
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period was utterly rejected,
were kept out of the canon of the New Testament for such a length of time.
At Byblos, the neophytes as
well as the hierophants were, after participating in the Mysteries, obliged to fast
and remain in solitude for some time. There was strict fasting and preparation
before as well as after the Bacchic, Adonian, and Eleusinian orgies; and
Herodotus hints, with fear and veneration about the LAKE of Bacchus, in which
"they (the priests) made at night exhibitions of his life and
sufferings."* In the Mithraic sacrifices, during the initiation, a
preliminary scene of death was simulated by the neophyte, and it preceded the
scene showing him himself "being born again by the rite of baptism."
A portion of this ceremony is still enacted in the present day by the Masons,
when the neophyte, as the Grand Master Hiram Abiff, lies dead, and is raised by
the strong grip of the lion's paw.
The priests were circumcised.
The neophyte could not be initiated without having been present at the solemn
Mysteries of the LAKE. The Nazarenes were baptized in the Jordan; and could not
be baptized elsewhere; they were also circumcised, and had to fast before as
well as after the purification by baptism. Jesus is said to have fasted in the
wilderness for forty days, immediately after his baptism. To the present day,
there is outside every temple in India, a lake, stream, or a reservoir full of
holy water, in which the Brahmans and the Hindu devotees bathe daily. Such places
of consecrated water are necessary to every temple. The bathing festivals, or
baptismal rites, occur twice every year; in October and April. Each lasts ten
days; and, as in ancient Egypt and Greece, the statues of their gods,
goddesses, and idols are immersed in water by the priests; the object of the
ceremony being to wash away from them the sins of their worshippers which they
have taken upon themselves, and which pollute them, until washed off by holy
water. During the Aratty, the bathing ceremony, the principal god of every
temple is carried in solemn procession to be baptized in the sea. The Brahman
priests, carrying the sacred images, are followed generally by the Maharajah --
barefoot, and nearly naked. Three times the priests enter the sea; the third
time they carry with them the whole of the images. Holding them up with prayers
repeated by the whole congregation, the Chief Priest plunges the statues of the
gods thrice in the name of the mystic trinity, into the water; after which they
are purified.** The Orphic hymn calls water the greatest purifier of men and
gods.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Herodotus," ii.,
p. 170.
** The Hindu High Pontiff --
the Chief of the Namburis, who lives in the Cochin Land, is generally present
during these festivals of "Holy Water" immersions. He travels
sometimes to very great distances to preside over the ceremony.
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BETHLEHEM.
Our Nazarene sect is known to
have existed some 150 years B.C., and to have lived on the banks of the Jordan,
and on the eastern shore of the Dead Sea, according to Pliny and Josephus.* But
in King's Gnostics, we find quoted another statement by Josephus from verse 13,
which says that the Essenes had been established on the shores of the Dead Sea
"for thousands of ages" before Pliny's time.**
According to Munk the term
"Galilean" is nearly synonymous with that of "Nazarene";
furthermore, he shows the relations of the former with the Gentiles as very
intimate. The populace had probably gradually adopted, in their constant
intercourse, certain rites and modes of worship of the Pagans; and the scorn
with which the Galileans were regarded by the orthodox Jews is attributed by
him to the same cause. Their friendly relations had certainly led them, at a
later period, to adopt the "Adonia," or the sacred rites over the
body of the lamented Adonis, as we find Jerome fairly lamenting this
circumstance. "Over Bethlehem," he says, "the grove of Thammuz,
that is of Adonis, was casting its shadow! And in the GROTTO where formerly the
infant Jesus cried, the lover of Venus was being mourned."***
It was after the rebellion of
Bar Cochba, that the Roman Emperor established the Mysteries of Adonis at the
Sacred Cave in Bethlehem; and who knows but this was the petra or rock-temple
on which the church was built? The Boar of Adonis was placed above the gate of
Jerusalem which looked toward Bethlehem.
Munk says that the
"Nazireate was an institution established before the laws of
Musah."**** This is evident; as we find this sect not only mentioned but
minutely described in Numbers (chap. vi.). In the commandment given in this
chapter to Moses by the "Lord," it is easy to recognize the rites and
laws of the Priests of Adonis.***** The abstinence and purity strictly
prescribed in both sects are identical. Both allowed
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Ant. Jud.,"
xiii., p. 9; xv., p., 10.
** King thinks it a great
exaggeration and is inclined to believe that these Essenes, who were most
undoubtedly Buddhist monks, were "merely a continuation of the
associations known as Sons of the Prophets." "The Gnostics and their
Remains," p. 22.
*** St. Jerome:
"Epistles," p. 49 (ad. Poulmam); see Dunlap's
"Spirit-History," p. 218.
**** "Munk," p. 169.
***** Bacchus and Ceres -- or
the mystical Wine and Bread, used during the Mysteries, become, in the
"Adonia," Adonis and Venus. Movers shows that "Iao is
Bacchus," p. 550; and his authority is Lydus de Mens (38-74); "Spir.
Hist.," p. 195. Iao is a Sun-god and the Jewish Jehovah; the intellectual
or Central Sun of the kabalists. See Julian in Proclus. But this
"Iao" is not the Mystery-god.
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their hair to grow long* as
the Hindu coenobites and fakirs do to this day, while other castes shave their
hair and abstain on certain days from wine. The prophet Elijah, a Nazarene, is
described in 2 Kings, and by Josephus as "a hairy man girt with a girdle
of leather."** And John the Baptist and Jesus are both represented as
wearing very long hair.*** John is "clothed with camel's hair" and
wearing a girdle of hide, and Jesus in a long garment "without any
seams" . . . "and very white, like snow," says Mark; the very
dress worn by the Nazarene Priests and the Pythagorean and Buddhist Essenes, as
described by Josephus.
If we carefully trace the
terms nazar, and nazaret, throughout the best known works of ancient writers,
we will meet them in connection with "Pagan" as well as Jewish
adepts. Thus, Alexander Polyhistor says of Pythagoras that he was a disciple of
the Assyrian Nazaret, whom some suppose to be Ezekiel. Diogenes Laertius states
most positively that Pythagoras, after being initiated into all the Mysteries
of the Greeks and barbarians, "went into Egypt and afterward visited the
Chaldeans and Magi"; and Apuleius maintains that it was Zoroaster who
instructed Pythagoras.
Were we to suggest that the
Hebrew nazars, the railing prophets of the "Lord," had been initiated
into the so-called Pagan mysteries, and belonged (or at least a majority of
them) to the same Lodge or circle of adepts as those who were considered
idolaters; that their "circle of prophets" was but a collateral
branch of a secret association, which we may well term
"international," what a visitation of Christian wrath would we not
incur! And still, the case looks strangely suspicious.
Let us first recall to our
mind that which Ammianus Marcellinus, and other historians relate of Darius Hystaspes.
The latter, penetrating into Upper India (Bactriana), learned pure rites, and
stellar and cosmical sciences from Brahmans, and communicated them to the Magi.
Now Hystaspes is shown in history to have crushed the Magi; and introduced --
or rather forced upon them -- the pure religion of Zoroaster, that of Ormazd.
How is it, then, that an inscription is found on the tomb
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Josephus: "Ant.
Jud.," iv., p. 4.
** Ibid., ix.; 2 Kings, i. 8.
*** In relation to the
well-known fact of Jesus wearing his hair long, and being always so
represented, it becomes quite startling to find how little the unknown Editor
of the "Acts" knew about the Apostle Paul, since he makes him say in
1 Corinthians xi. 14, "Doth not Nature itself teach you, that if a man
have long hair, it is a shame unto him?" Certainly Paul could never have
said such a thing! Therefore, if the passage is genuine, Paul knew nothing of
the prophet whose doctrines he had embraced and for which he died; and if false
-- how much more reliable is what remains?
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ZOROASTER.
of Darius, stating that he was
"teacher and hierophant of magic, or Magianism?" Evidently there must
be some historical mistake, and history confesses it. In this imbroglio of
names, Zoroaster, the teacher and instructor of Pythagoras, can be neither the
Zoroaster nor Zarathustra who instituted sun-worship among the Parsees; nor he
who appeared at the court of Gushtasp (Hystaspes) the alleged father of Darius;
nor, again, the Zoroaster who placed his magi above the kings themselves. The oldest
Zoroastrian scripture -- the Avesta -- does not betray the slightest traces of
the reformer having ever been acquainted with any of the nations that
subsequently adopted his mode of worship. He seems utterly ignorant of the
neighbors of Western Iran, the Medes, the Assyrians, the Persians, and others.
If we had no other evidences of the great antiquity of the Zoroastrian religion
than the discovery of the blunder committed by some scholars in our own
century, who regarded King Vistaspa (Gushtasp) as identical with the father of
Darius, whereas the Persian tradition points directly to Vistaspa as to the
last of the line of Kaianian princes who ruled in Bactriana, it ought to be
enough, for the Assyrian conquest of Bactriana took place 1,200 years B.C.*
Therefore, it is but natural
that we should see in the appellation of Zoroaster not a name but a generic
term, whose significance must be left to philologists to agree upon. Guru, in
Sanscrit, is a spiritual teacher; and as Zuruastara means in the same language
he who worships the sun, why is it impossible, that by some natural change of
language, due to the great number of different nations which were converted to
the sun-worship, the word guru-astara, the spiritual teacher of sun-worship, so
closely resembling the name of the founder of this religion, became gradually
transformed in its primal form of Zuryastara or Zoroaster? The opinion of the
kabalists is that there was but one Zarathustra and many guruastars or
spiritual teachers, and that one such guru, or rather huru-aster, as he is
called in the old manuscripts, was the instructor of Pythagoras. To philology
and our readers we leave the explanation for what it is worth. Personally we
believe in it, as we credit on this subject kabalistic tradition far more than
the explanation of scientists, no two of whom have been able to agree up to the
present year.
Aristotle states that
Zoroaster lived 6,000 years before Christ; Hermippus of Alexandria, who is said
to have read the genuine books of the Zoroastrians, although Alexander the
Great is accused of having destroyed
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Max Muller has sufficiently
proved the case in his lecture on the "Zend-Avesta." He calls
Gushtasp "the mythical pupil of Zoroaster." Mythical, perhaps, only
because the period in which he lived and learned with Zoroaster is too remote
to allow our modern science to speculate upon it with any certainty.
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them, shows Zoroaster as the
pupil of Azonak (Azon-ach, or the Azon-God) and as having lived 5,000 years before
the fall of Troy. Er or Eros, whose vision is related by Plato in the Republic,
is declared by Clement to have been Zordusth. While the Magus who dethroned
Cambyses was a Mede, and Darius proclaims that he put down the Magian rites to
establish those of Ormazd, Xanthus of Lydia declares Zoroaster to have been the
chief of the Magi!
Which of them is wrong? or are
they all right, and only the modern interpreters fail to explain the difference
between the Reformer and his apostles and followers? This blundering of our
commentators reminds us of that of Suetonius, who mistook the Christians for
one Christos, or Crestos, as he spells it, and assured his readers that
Claudius banished him for the disturbance he made among the Jews.
Finally, and to return again
to the nazars, Zaratus is mentioned by Pliny in the following words: "He
was Zoroaster and Nazaret." As Zoroaster is called princeps of the Magi,
and nazar signifies separated or consecrated, is it not a Hebrew rendering of
mag? Volney believes so. The Persian word Na-zaruan means millions of years,
and refers to the Chaldean "Ancient of Days." Hence the name of the
Nazars or Nazarenes, who were consecrated to the service of the Supreme one
God, the kabalistic En-Soph, or the Ancient of Days, the "Aged of the
aged."
But the word nazar may also be
found in India. In Hindustani nazar is sight, internal or supernatural vision;
nazar band-i means fascination, a mesmeric or magical spell; and nazaran is the
word for sightseeing or vision.
Professor Wilder thinks that
as the word Zeruana is nowhere to be found in the Avesta, but only in the later
Parsi books, it came from the Magians, who composed the Persian sacred caste in
the Sassan period, but were originally Assyrians. "Turan, of the
poets," he says, "I consider to be Aturia, or Assyria; and that Zohak
(Az-dahaka, Dei-okes, or Astyages), the Serpent-king, was Assyrian, Median, and
Babylonian -- when those countries were united."
This opinion does not,
however, in the least implicate our statement that the secret doctrines of the
Magi, of the pre-Vedic Buddhists, of the hierophants of the Egyptian Thoth or
Hermes, and of the adepts of whatever age and nationality, including the
Chaldean kabalists and the Jewish nazars, were identical from the beginning.
When we use the term Buddhists, we do not mean to imply by it either the
exoteric Buddhism instituted by the followers of Gautama-Buddha, nor the modern
Buddhistic religion, but the secret philosophy of Sakyamuni, which in its
essence is certainly identical with the ancient wisdom-religion of the
sanctuary, the pre-Vedic Brahmanism. The "schism" of Zoroaster, as it
is called, is a
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ZOROASTRIANS.
direct proof of it. For it was
no schism, strictly speaking, but merely a partially-public exposition of
strictly monotheistic religious truths, hitherto taught only in the
sanctuaries, and that he had learned from the Brahmans. Zoroaster, the primeval
institutor of sun-worship, cannot be called the founder of the dualistic
system; neither was he the first to teach the unity of God, for he taught but
what he had learned himself with the Brahmans. And that Zarathustra and his
followers, the Zoroastrians, "had been settled in India before they
immigrated into Persia," is also proved by Max Muller. "That the
Zoroastrians and their ancestors started from India," he says, "during
the Vaidik period, can be proved as distinctly as that the inhabitants of
Massilia started from Greece. . . . Many of the gods of the Zoroastrians come
out . . . as mere reflections and deflections of the primitive and authentic
gods of the Veda."*
If, now, we can prove -- and
we can do so on the evidence of the Kabala and the oldest traditions of the
wisdom-religion, the philosophy of the old sanctuaries -- that all these gods,
whether of the Zoroastrians or of the Veda, are but so many personated occult
powers of nature, the faithful servants of the adepts of secret wisdom -- Magic
-- we are on secure ground.
Thus, whether we say that
Kabalism and Gnosticism proceeded from Masdeanism or Zoroastrianism, it is all
the same, unless we meant the exoteric worship -- which we do not. Likewise,
and in this sense, we may echo King, the author of the Gnostics, and several
other archaeologists, and maintain that both the former proceeded from
Buddhism, at once the simplest and most satisfying of philosophies, and which
resulted in one of the purest religions of the world. It is only a matter of
chronology to decide which of these religions, differing but in external form,
is the oldest, therefore the least adulterated. But even this bears but very
indirectly, if at all, on the subject we treat of. Already some time before our
era, the adepts, except in India, had ceased to congregate in large
communities; but whether among the Essenes, or the Neo-platonists, or, again,
among the innumerable struggling sects born but to die, the same doctrines,
identical in substance and spirit, if not always in form, are encountered. By
Buddhism, therefore, we mean that religion signifying literally the doctrine of
wisdom, and which by many ages antedates the metaphysical philosophy of
Siddhartha Sakyamuni.
After nineteen centuries of
enforced eliminations from the canonical books of every sentence which might
put the investigator on the true path, it has become very difficult to show, to
the satisfaction of exact science, that the "Pagan" worshippers of
Adonis, their neighbors, the Naza-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Max Muller: "Zend
Avesta," 83.
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renes, and the Pythagorean
Essenes, the healing Therapeutes,* the Ebionites, and other sects, were all,
with very slight differences, followers of the ancient theurgic Mysteries. And
yet by analogy and a close study of the hidden sense of their rites and
customs, we can trace their kinship.
It was given to a contemporary
of Jesus to become the means of pointing out to posterity, by his
interpretation of the oldest literature of Israel, how deeply the kabalistic philosophy
agreed in its esoterism with that of the profoundest Greek thinkers. This
contemporary, an ardent disciple of Plato and Aristotle, was Philo Judaeus.
While explaining the Mosaic books according to a purely kabalistic method, he
is the famous Hebrew writer whom Kingsley calls the Father of New Platonism.
It is evident that Philo's
Therapeutes are a branch of the Essenes. Their name indicates it --
[[Essaioc]], Asaya, physician. Hence, the contradictions, forgeries, and other
desperate expedients to reconcile the prophecies of the Jewish canon with the
Galilean nativity and god-ship.
Luke, who was a physician, is
designated in the Syriac texts as Asaia, the Essaian or Essene. Josephus and
Philo Judaeus have sufficiently described this sect to leave no doubt in our
mind that the Nazarene Reformer, after having received his education in their
dwellings in the desert, and been duly initiated in the Mysteries, preferred
the free and independent life of a wandering Nazaria, and so separated or
inazarenized himself from them, thus becoming a travelling Therapeute, a
Nazaria, a healer. Every Therapeute, before quitting his community, had to do
the same. Both Jesus and St. John the Baptist preached the end of the Age;**
which proves their knowledge of the secret computation of the priests and
kabalists, who with the chiefs of the Essene communities alone had the secret
of the duration of the cycles. The latter were kabalists and theurgists;
"they had their mystic books, and predicted future events," says
Munk.***
Dunlap, whose personal
researches seem to have been quite successful in that direction, traces the
Essenes, Nazarenes, Dositheans, and some other sects as having all existed
before Christ: "They rejected pleasures, despised riches, loved one
another, and more than other sects, neg-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Philo: "De Vita.
Contemp."
** The real meaning of the
division into ages is esoteric and Buddhistic. So little did the uninitiated Christians
understand it that they accepted the words of Jesus literally and firmly
believed that he meant the end of the world. There had been many prophecies
about the forthcoming age. Virgil, in the fourth Eclogue, mentions the Metatron
-- a new offspring, with whom the iron age shall end and a golden one arise.
*** "Palestine," p.
525, et seq.
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UTTERANCES OF JESUS.
lected wedlock, deeming the
conquest of the passions to be virtuous,"* he says.
These are all virtues preached
by Jesus; and if we are to take the gospels as a standard of truth, Christ was
a metempsychosist "or re-incarnationist" -- again like these same
Essenes, whom we see were Pythagoreans in all their doctrine and habits.
Iamblichus asserts that the Samian philosopher spent a certain time at Carmel
with them.** In his discourses and sermons, Jesus always spoke in parables and
used metaphors with his audience. This habit was again that of the Essenians
and the Nazarenes; the Galileans who dwelt in cities and villages were never
known to use such allegorical language. Indeed, some of his disciples being
Galileans as well as himself, felt even surprised to find him using with the
people such a form of expression. "Why speakest thou unto them in
parables?"*** they often inquired. "Because, it is given unto you to
know the Mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given,"
was the reply, which was that of an initiate. "Therefore, I speak unto
them in parables; because, they seeing, see not, and hearing, they hear not,
neither do they understand." Moreover, we find Jesus expressing his
thoughts still clearer -- and in sentences which are purely Pythagorean --
when, during the Sermon on the Mount, he says:
"Give ye not that which
is sacred to the dogs,
Neither cast ye your pearls
before swine;
For the swine will tread them
under their feet
And the dogs will turn and
rend you."
Professor A. Wilder, the
editor of Taylor's Eleusinian Mysteries, observes "a like disposition on
the part of Jesus and Paul to classify their doctrines as esoteric and
exoteric, the Mysteries of the Kingdom of God 'for the apostles,' and 'parables'
for the multitude. 'We speak wisdom,' says Paul, 'among them that are perfect'
(or initiated)."****
In the Eleusinian and other
Mysteries the participants were always divided into two classes, the neophytes
and the perfect. The former were sometimes admitted to the preliminary
initiation: the dramatic performance of Ceres, or the soul, descending to
Hades.***** But it was
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Sod," vol. ii.,
Preface, p. xi.
** "Vit. Pythag."
Munk derives the name of the Iessaens or Essenes from the Syriac Asaya -- the
healers, or physicians, thus showing their identity with the Egyptian
Therapeutae. "Palestine," p. 515.
*** Matthew xiii. 10.
**** "Eleusinian
Mysteries," p. 15.
***** This descent to Hades
signified the inevitable fate of each soul to be united for a time with a
terrestrial body. This union, or dark prospect for the soul to find itself
[[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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given only to the
"perfect" to enjoy and learn the Mysteries of the divine Elysium, the
celestial abode of the blessed; this Elysium being unquestionably the same as
the "Kingdom of Heaven." To contradict or reject the above, would be
merely to shut one's eyes to the truth.
The narrative of the Apostle
Paul, in his second Epistle to the Corinthians (xii. 3, 4), has struck several
scholars, well versed in the descriptions of the mystical rites of the
initiation given by some classics, as alluding most undoubtedly to the final
Epopteia.* "I knew a certain man -- whether in body or outside of body, I
know not: God knoweth -- who was rapt into Paradise, and heard things ineffable
[[arreta pemato]], which it is not lawful for a man to repeat." These
words have rarely, so far as we know, been regarded by commentators as an
allusion to the beatific visions of an "initiated" seer. But the
phraseology is unequivocal. These things "which it is not lawful to
repeat," are hinted at in the same words, and the reason for it assigned,
is the same as that which we find repeatedly expressed by Plato, Proclus,
Iamblichus, Herodotus, and other classics. "We speak WISDOM only among
them who are PERFECT," says Paul; the plain and undeniable translation of
the sentence being: "We speak of the profounder (or final) esoteric
doctrines of the Mysteries (which were denominated wisdom) only among them who
are initiated."** So in relation to the "man who was rapt into
Paradise" -- and who was evidently Paul himself*** -- the Christian word
Paradise having replaced that of Elysium. To complete the proof, we might
recall the words of Plato, given elsewhere, which show that before an initiate
could see the gods in their purest light, he had to become liberated from his
body; i.e., to separate his astral soul from it.**** Apuleius also describes
his initiation into the Mysteries in the same way: "I approached the confines
of death; and, having trodden on the threshold of Proserpina, returned, having
been carried through all the elements. In the depths of midnight I saw the sun
glittering with a splendid light, together with the infernal and supernal gods,
and to these divinities approaching, I paid the tribute of devout
adoration."*****
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] imprisoned within the dark tenement of a body, was considered
by all the ancient philosophers and is even by the modern Buddhists, as a
punishment.
* "Eleusinian
Mysteries," p. 49, foot-note.
** "The profound or
esoteric doctrines of the ancients were denominated wisdom, and afterward
philosophy, and also the gnosis, or knowledge. They related to the human soul,
its divine parentage, its supposed degradation from its high estate by becoming
connected with "generation" or the physical world, its onward
progress and restoration to God by regenerations or . . . transmigrations."
Ibid, p. 2, foot-note.
*** Cyril of Jerusalem asserts
it. See vi. 10.
**** "Phaedrus," 64.
***** "The Golden
Ass," xi.
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 147 THE KABALISM OF THE
APOCALYPSE.
Thus, in common with
Pythagoras and other hierophant reformers, Jesus divided his teachings into
exoteric and esoteric. Following faithfully the Pythagoreo-Essenean ways, he
never sat at a meal without saying "grace." "The priest prays
before his meal," says Josephus, describing the Essenes. Jesus also
divided his followers into "neophytes," "brethren," and the
"perfect," if we may judge by the difference he made between them.
But his career at least as a public Rabbi, was of a too short duration to allow
him to establish a regular school of his own; and with the exception, perhaps,
of John, it does not seem that he had initiated any other apostle. The Gnostic
amulets and talismans are mostly the emblems of the apocalyptic allegories. The
"seven vowels" are closely related to the "seven seals";
and the mystic title Abraxas, partakes as much of the composition of Shem
Hamphirosh, "the holy word" or ineffable name, as the name called:
The word of God, that "no man knew but he himself,"* as John
expresses it.
It would be difficult to
escape from the well-adduced proofs that the Apocalypse is the production of an
initiated kabalist, when this Revelation presents whole passages taken from the
Books of Enoch and Daniel, which latter is in itself an abridged imitation of
the former; and when, furthermore, we ascertain that the Ophite Gnostics who
rejected the Old Testament entirely, as "emanating from an inferior being
(Jehovah)," accepted the most ancient prophets, such as Enoch, and deduced
the strongest support from this book for their religious tenets, the
demonstration becomes evident. We will show further how closely related are all
these doctrines. Besides, there is the history of Domitian's persecutions of magicians
and philosophers, which affords as good a proof as any that John was generally
considered a kabalist. As the apostle was included among the number, and,
moreover, conspicuous, the imperial edict banished him not only from Rome, but
even from the continent. It was not the Christians whom -- confounding them
with the Jews, as some historians will have it -- the emperor persecuted, but
the astrologers and kabalists.**
The accusations against Jesus of
practicing the magic of Egypt were numerous, and at one time universal, in the
towns where he was known. The Pharisees, as claimed in the Bible, had been the
first to fling it in his
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Apocalypse," xix.
12.
** See Suet. in "Vita.
Eutrop.," 7. It is neither cruelty, nor an insane indulgence in it, which
shows this emperor in history as passing his time in catching flies and
transpiercing them with a golden bodkin, but religious superstition. The Jewish
astrologers had predicted to him that he had provoked the wrath of Beelzebub,
the "Lord of the flies," and would perish miserably through the
revenge of the dark god of Ekron, and die like King Ahaziah, because he
persecuted the Jews.
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face, although Rabbi Wise
considers Jesus himself a Pharisee. The Talmud certainly points to James the
Just as one of that sect.* But these partisans are known to have always stoned
every prophet who denounced their evil ways, and it is not on this fact that we
base our assertion. These accused him of sorcery, and of driving out devils by Beelzebub,
their prince, with as much justice as later the Catholic clergy had to accuse
of the same more than one innocent martyr. But Justin Martyr states on better
authority that the men of his time who were not Jews asserted that the miracles
of Jesus were performed by magical art -- [[magike phantasia]] -- the very
expression used by the skeptics of those days to designate the feats of
thaumaturgy accomplished in the Pagan temples. "They even ventured to call
him a magician and a deceiver of the people," complains the martyr.** In
the Gospel of Nicodemus (the Acta Pilate), the Jews bring the same accusation
before Pilate. "Did we not tell thee he was a magician?"*** Celsus
speaks of the same charge, and as a Neo-platonist believes in it.**** The
Talmudic literature is full of the most minute particulars, and their greatest
accusation is that "Jesus could fly as easily in the air as others could
walk."***** St. Austin asserted that it was generally believed that he had
been initiated in Egypt, and that he wrote books concerning magic, which he
delivered to John.****** There was a work called Magia Jesu Christi, which was
attributed to Jesus******* himself. In the Clementine Recognitions the charge
is brought against Jesus that he did not perform his miracles as a Jewish
prophet, but as a magician, i.e., an initiate of the "heathen"
temples.********
It was usual then, as it is
now, among the intolerant clergy of opposing religions, as well as among the
lower classes of society, and even among those patricians who, for various
reasons had been excluded from any participation of the Mysteries, to accuse,
sometimes, the highest hierophants and adepts of sorcery and black magic. So
Apuleius, who
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* We believe that it was the
Sadducees and not the Pharisees who crucified Jesus. They were Zadokites --
partisans of the house of Zadok, or the sacerdotal family. In the
"Acts" the apostles were said to be persecuted by the Sadducees, but
never by the Pharisees. In fact, the latter never persecuted any one. They had
the scribes, rabbis, and learned men in their numbers, and were not, like the
Sadducees, jealous of their order.
** "Dial.," p. 69.
*** Fabricius: "Cod.
Apoc., N. T.," i., 243; Tischendorf: "Evang. Ap.," p. 214.
**** Origen: "Cont.
Cels.," II.
***** Rabbi Iochan:
"Mag.," 51.
****** "Origen," II.
******* Cf. "August de
Consans. Evang.," i., 9; Fabric.: "Cod. Ap. N. T.," i., p. 305,
ff.
******** "Recog.,"
i. 58; cf., p. 40.
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MAGICIAN.
had been initiated, was
likewise accused of witchcraft, and of carrying about him the figure of a
skeleton -- a potent agent, as it is asserted, in the operations of the black
art. But one of the best and most unquestionable proofs of our assertion may be
found in the so-called Museo Gregoriano. On the sarcophagus, which is panelled
with bas-reliefs representing the miracles of Christ,* may be seen the full
figure of Jesus, who, in the resurrection of Lazarus, appears beardless
"and equipped with a wand in the received guise of a necromancer (?)
whilst the corpse of Lazarus is swathed in bandages exactly as an Egyptian
mummy."
Had posterity been enabled to
have several such representations executed during the first century when the
figure, dress, and every-day habits of the Reformer were still fresh in the
memory of his contemporaries, perhaps the Christian world would be more
Christ-like; the dozens of contradictory, groundless, and utterly meaningless
speculations about the "Son of Man" would have been impossible; and
humanity would now have but one religion and one God. It is this absence of all
proof, the lack of the least positive clew about him whom Christianity has
deified, that has caused the present state of perplexity. No pictures of Christ
were possible until after the days of Constantine, when the Jewish element was
nearly eliminated among the followers of the new religion. The Jews, apostles,
and disciples, whom the Zoroastrians and the Parsees had inoculated with a holy
horror of any form of images, would have considered it a sacrilegious blasphemy
to represent in any way or shape their master. The only authorized image of
Jesus, even in the days of Tertullian, was an allegorical representation of the
"Good Shepherd,"** which was no portrait, but the figure of a man
with a jackal-head, like Anubis.*** On this gem, as seen in the collection of
Gnostic amulets, the Good Shepherd bears upon his shoulders the lost lamb. He
seems to have a human head upon his neck; but, as King correctly observes,
"it only seems so to the uninitiated eye." On closer inspection, he
becomes the double-headed Anubis, having one head human, the other a jackal's,
whilst his girdle assumes the form of a serpent rearing aloft its crested head.
"This figure," adds the author of the Gnostics, etc., "had two
meanings -- one obvious for the vulgar; the other mystical, and recognizable by
the initiated alone. It was perhaps the signet of some chief
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* King's "Gnostics,"
p. 145; the author places this sarcophagus among the earliest productions of
that art which inundated later the world with mosaics and engravings,
representing the events and personages of the "New Testament."
** "De Pudicitia."
See "The Gnostics and their Remains," p. 144.
*** Ibid., plate i., p. 200.
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teacher or apostle."*
This affords a fresh proof that the Gnostics and early orthodox (?) Christians
were not so wide apart in their secret doctrine. King deduces from a quotation
from Epiphanius, that even as late as 400 A.D. it was considered an atrocious
sin to attempt to represent the bodily appearance of Christ. Epiphanius**
brings it as an idolatrous charge against the Carpocratians that "they
kept painted portraits, and even gold and silver images, and in other
materials, which they pretended to be portraits of Jesus, and made by Pilate
after the likeness of Christ. . . . These they keep in secret, along with
Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, and setting them all up together, they
worship and offer sacrifices unto them after the Gentiles' fashion."
What would the pious
Epiphanius say were he to resuscitate and step into St. Peter's Cathedral at Rome!
Ambrosius seems also very desperate at the idea -- that some persons fully
credited the statement of Lampridius that Alexander Severus had in his private
chapel an image of Christ among other great philosophers. "That the Pagans
should have preserved the likeness of Christ," he exclaims, "but the
disciples have neglected to do so, is a notion the mind shudders to entertain,
much less to believe."
All this points undeniably to
the fact, that except a handful of self-styled Christians who subsequently won
the day, all the civilized portion of the Pagans who knew of Jesus honored him
as a philosopher, an adept whom they placed on the same level with Pythagoras
and Apollonius. Whence such a veneration on their part for a man, were he
simply, as represented by the Synoptics, a poor, unknown Jewish carpenter from
Nazareth? As an incarnated God there is no single record of him on this earth
capable of withstanding the critical examination of science; as one of the
greatest reformers, an inveterate enemy of every theological dogmatism, a
persecutor of bigotry, a teacher of one of the most sublime codes of ethics,
Jesus is one of the grandest and most clearly-defined figures on the panorama
of human history. His age may, with every day, be receding farther and farther
back into the gloomy and hazy mists of the past; and his theology -- based on
human fancy and supported by untenable dogmas may, nay, must with every day
lose more of its unmerited prestige; alone the grand figure of the philosopher
and moral reformer instead of growing paler will become with every century more
pronounced and more clearly defined. It will reign supreme and universal only
on that day when the whole of humanity recognizes but one
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This gem is in the
collection of the author of "The Gnostics and their Remains." See p.
201.
** "Heresies,"
xxvii.
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NAZARENES.
father -- the UNKNOWN ONE
above -- and one brother -- the whole of mankind below.
In a pretended letter of
Lentulus, a senator and a distinguished historian, to the Roman senate, there
is a description of the personal appearance of Jesus. The letter itself,
written in horrid Latin, is pronounced a bare-faced forgery; but we find
therein an expression which suggests many thoughts. Albeit a forgery it is
evident that whosoever invented it has nevertheless tried to follow tradition
as closely as possible. The hair of Jesus is represented in it as "wavy
and curling . . . flowing down upon his shoulders," and as "having a
parting in the middle of the head after the fashion of the Nazarenes."
This last sentence shows: 1. That there was such a tradition, based on the
biblical description of John the Baptist, the Nazaria, and the custom of this
sect. 2. Had Lentulus been the author of this letter, it is difficult to
believe that Paul should never have heard of it; and had he known its contents,
he would never have pronounced it a shame for men to wear their hair long,*
thus shaming his Lord and Christ-God. 3. If Jesus did wear his hair long and
"parted in the middle of the forehead, after the fashion of the Nazarenes
(as well as John, the only one of his apostles who followed it), then we have
one good reason more to say that Jesus must have belonged to the sect of the
Nazarenes, and been called NASARIA for this reason and not because he was an
inhabitant of Nazareth; for they never wore their hair long. The Nazarite, who
separated himself unto the Lord, allowed "no razor to come upon his
head." "He shall be holy, and shall let the locks of the hair of his
head grow," says Numbers (vi. 5). Samson was a Nazarite, i.e., vowed to
the service of God, and in his hair was his strength. "No razor shall come
upon his head; the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb"
(Judges xiii. 5). But the final and most reasonable conclusion to be inferred
from this is that Jesus, who was so opposed to all the orthodox Jewish
practices, would not have allowed his hair to grow had he not belonged to this
sect, which in the days of John the Baptist had already become a heresy in the
eyes of the Sanhedrim. The Talmud, speaking of the Nazaria, or the Nazarenes
(who had abandoned the world like Hindu yogis or hermits) calls them a sect of
physicians, of wandering exorcists; as also does Jervis. "They went about
the country, living on alms and performing cures."** Epiphanius says that
the Nazarenes come next in heresy to the Corinthians whether having existed
"before them or after them, nevertheless synchronous," and then adds
that "all Christians at that time were equally called Nazarenes"!***
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 1 Cor. xi. 14.
** See the "Israelite
Indeed," vol. ii., p. 238; "Treatise Nazir."
*** "Epiph. ed.
Petar," vol. i., p. 117.
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In the very first remark made
by Jesus about John the Baptist, we find him stating that he is "Elias,
which was for to come." This assertion, if it is not a later interpolation
for the sake of having a prophecy fulfilled, means again that Jesus was a
kabalist; unless indeed we have to adopt the doctrine of the French spiritists
and suspect him of believing in reincarnation. Except the kabalistic sects of
the Essenes, the Nazarenes, the disciples of Simeon Ben Iochai, and Hillel,
neither the orthodox Jews, nor the Galileans, believed or knew anything about
the doctrine of permutation. And the Sadducees rejected even that of the
resurrection.
"But the author of this
restitutionis was Mosah, our master, upon whom be peace! Who was the revolutio
(transmigration) of Seth and Hebel, that he might cover the nudity of his
Father Adam -- Primus," says the Kabala.* Thus, Jesus hinting that John
was the revolutio, or transmigration of Elias, seems to prove beyond any doubt
the school to which he belonged.
Until the present day
uninitiated Kabalists and Masons believe permutation to be synonymous with
transmigration and metempsychosis. But they are as much mistaken in regard to
the doctrine of the true Kabalists as to that of the Buddhists. True, the Sohar
says in one place, "All souls are subject to transmigration . . . men do
not know the ways of the Holy One, blessed be He; they do not know that they
are brought before the tribunal, both before they enter this world and after
they quit it," and the Pharisees also held this doctrine, as Josephus
shows (Antiquities, xviii. 13). Also the doctrine of Gilgul, held to the
strange theory of the "Whirling of the Soul," which taught that the
bodies of Jews buried far away from the Holy Land, still preserve a particle of
soul which can neither rest nor quit them, until it reaches the soil of the
"Promised Land." And this "whirling" process was thought to
be accomplished by the soul being conveyed back through an actual evolution of
species; transmigrating from the minutest insect up to the largest animal. But
this was an exoteric doctrine. We refer the reader to the Kabbala Denudata of
Henry Khunrath; his language, however obscure, may yet throw some light upon
the subject.
But this doctrine of
permutation, or revolutio, must not be understood as a belief in reincarnation.
That Moses was considered the transmigration of Abel and Seth, does not imply
that the kabalists -- those who were initiated at least -- believed that the
identical spirit of either of Adam's sons reappeared under the corporeal form
of Moses. It only shows what was the mode of expression they used when hinting
at one of the profoundest mysteries of the Oriental Gnosis, one of the most
majestic arti-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Kabbala
Denudata," ii., 155; "Vallis Regia," Paris edition.
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BECOMES INCARNATE.
cles of faith of the Secret
Wisdom. It was purposely veiled so as to half conceal and half reveal the truth.
It implied that Moses, like certain other god-like men, was believed to have
reached the highest of all states on earth: -- the rarest of all psychological
phenomena, the perfect union of the immortal spirit with the terrestrial duad
had occurred. The trinity was complete. A god was incarnate. But how rare such
incarnations!
That expression, "Ye are
gods," which, to our biblical students, is a mere abstraction, has for the
kabalists a vital significance. Each immortal spirit that sheds its radiance upon
a human being is a god -- the Microcosmos of the Macrocosmos, part and parcel
of the Unknown God, the First Cause of which it is a direct emanation. It is
possessed of all the attributes of its parent source. Among these attributes
are omniscience and omnipotence. Endowed with these, but yet unable to fully
manifest them while in the body, during which time they are obscured, veiled,
limited by the capabilities of physical nature, the thus divinely-inhabited man
may tower far above his kind, evince a god-like wisdom, and display deific
powers; for while the rest of mortals around him are but overshadowed by their
divine SELF, with every chance given to them to become immortal hereafter, but
no other security than their personal efforts to win the kingdom of heaven, the
so chosen man has already become an immortal while yet on earth. His prize is
secured. Henceforth he will live forever in eternal life. Not only he may have
"dominion"* over all the works of creation by employing the
"excellence" of the NAME (the ineffable one) but be higher in this
life, not, as Paul is made to say, "a little lower than the
angels."**
The ancients never entertained
the sacrilegious thought that such perfected entities were incarnations of the
One Supreme and for ever invisible God. No such profanation of the awful
Majesty entered into their conceptions. Moses and his antitypes and types were
to them but complete men, gods on earth, for their gods (divine spirits) had
entered unto their hallowed tabernacles, the purified physical bodies. The
disembodied spirits of the heroes and sages were termed gods by the ancients.
Hence, the accusation of polytheism and idolatry on the part of those who were
the first to anthropomorphize the holiest and purest abstractions of their
forefathers.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Psalms viii.
** This contradiction, which
is attributed to Paul in Hebrews, by making him say of Jesus in chapter i., 4:
"Being made so much better than the angels," and then immediately
stating in chapter ii. 9, "But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower
than the angels," shows how unscrupulously the writings of the apostles,
if they ever wrote any, were tampered with.
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The real and hidden sense of
this doctrine was known to all the initiates. The Tanaim imparted it to their
elect ones, the Isarim, in the solemn solitudes of crypts and deserted places.
It was one of the most esoteric and jealously guarded, for human nature was the
same then as it is now, and the sacerdotal caste as confident as now in the
supremacy of its knowledge, and ambitious of ascendancy over the weaker masses;
with the difference perhaps that its hierophants could prove the legitimacy of
their claims and the plausibility of their doctrines, whereas now, believers
must be content with blind faith.
While the kabalists called
this mysterious and rare occurrence of the union of spirit with the mortal
charge entrusted to its care, the "descent of the Angel Gabriel" (the
latter being a kind of generic name for it), the Messenger of Life, and the
angel Metatron; and while the Nazarenes termed the same Abel-Zivo,* the
Delegatus sent by the Lord of Celsitude, it was universally known as the
"Anointed Spirit."
Thus it is the acceptation of
this doctrine which caused the Gnostics to maintain that Jesus was a man
overshadowed by the Christos or Messenger of Life, and that his despairing cry
from the cross "Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani," was wrung from him at
the instant when he felt that this inspiring Presence had finally abandoned
him, for -- as some affirmed -- his faith had also abandoned him when on the
cross.
The early Nazarenes, who must
be numbered among the Gnostic sects, believing that Jesus was a prophet, held,
nevertheless, in relation to him the same doctrine of the divine
"overshadowing," of certain "men of God," sent for the
salvation of nations, and to recall them to the path of righteousness.
"The Divine mind is eternal," says the Codex,** "and it is pure
light, and poured out through splendid and immense space (pleroma). It is
Genetrix of the AEons. But one of them went to matter (chaos) stirring up
confused (turbulentos) movements; and by a certain portion of heavenly light
fashioned it, properly constituted for use and appearance, but the beginning of
every evil. The Demiurge (of matter) claimed divine honor.** Therefore Christus
("the anointed"), the prince of the AEons (powers), was sent
(expeditus), who taking on the person of a most devout Jew, Iesu, was to
conquer him; but who having laid it (the body) aside, departed on high."
We will explain further on the full significance of the name Christos and its
mystic meaning.
And now, in order to make such
passages as the above more intelligible, we will endeavor to define, as briefly
as possible, the dogmas in
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Codex Nazaraeus,"
i. 23.
** Ibid., preface, p. v.,
translated from Norberg.
*** "According to the
Nazarenes and Gnostics, the Demiurge, the creator of the material world, is not
the highest God." (See Dunlap: "Sod, the Son of the Man.")
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SUN OF GNOSTICISM.
which, with very trifling differences,
nearly all the Gnostic sects believed. It is in Ephesus that flourished in
those days the greatest college, wherein the abstruse Oriental speculations and
the Platonic philosophy were taught in conjunction. It was a focus of the
universal "secret" doctrines; the weird laboratory whence, fashioned
in elegant Grecian phraseology, sprang the quintessence of Buddhistic,
Zoroastrian, and Chaldean philosophy. Artemis, the gigantic concrete symbol of
theosophico-pantheistic abstractions, the great mother Multimamma, androgyne
and patroness of the "Ephesian writings," was conquered by Paul; but
although the zealous converts of the apostles pretended to burn all their books
on "curious arts," [[ta perierga]], enough of these remained for them
to study when their first zeal had cooled off. It is from Ephesus that spread
nearly all the Gnosis which antagonized so fiercely with the Irenaean dogmas;
and still it was Ephesus, with her numerous collateral branches of the great
college of the Essenes, which proved to be the hot-bed of all the kabalistic
speculations brought by the Tanaim from the captivity. "In Ephesus,"
says Matter, "the notions of the Jewish-Egyptian school, and the
semi-Persian speculations of the kabalists had then recently come to swell the vast
conflux of Grecian and Asiatic doctrines, so there is no wonder that teachers
should have sprung up there who strove to combine the religion newly preached
by the apostle with the ideas there so long established."
Had not the Christians
burdened themselves with the Revelations of a little nation, and accepted the
Jehovah of Moses, the Gnostic ideas would never have been termed heresies; once
relieved of their dogmatic exaggerations the world would have had a religious
system based on pure Platonic philosophy, and surely something would then have
been gained.
Now let us see what are the
greatest heresies of the Gnostics. We will select Basilides as the standard for
our comparisons, for all the founders of other Gnostic sects group round him,
like a cluster of stars borrowing light from their sun.
Basilides maintained that he
had all his doctrines from the Apostle Matthew, and from Peter through Glaucus,
the disciple of the latter.* According to Eusebius,** he published twenty-four
volumes of Interpretations upon the Gospels,*** all of which were burned, a
fact which makes us suppose that they contained more truthful matter than the
school of Irenaeus was prepared to deny. He asserted that the unknown,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Clemens: "Al.
Strom." vii., 7, § 106.
** H. E., iv. 7.
*** The gospels interpreted by
Basilides were not our present gospels, which, as it is proved by the greatest
authorities, were not in his days in existence. See "Supernatural Religion,"
vol. ii., chap. Basilides.
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eternal, and uncreated Father
having first brought forth Nous, or Mind, the latter emanated from itself --
the Logos. The Logos (the Word of John) emanated in its turn Phronesis, or the
Intelligences (Divine-human spirits). From Phronesis sprung Sophia, or feminine
wisdom, and Dynamis -- strength. These were the personified attributes of the
Mysterious godhead, the Gnostic quinternion, typifying the five spiritual, but
intelligible substances, personal virtues or beings external to the unknown
godhead. This is preeminently a kabalistic idea. It is still more Buddhistic.
The earliest system of the Buddhistic philosophy -- which preceded by far
Gautama-Buddha -- is based upon the uncreated substance of the
"Unknown," the A'di Buddha.* This eternal, infinite Monad possesses,
as proper to his own essence, five acts of wisdom. From these it, by five
separate acts of Dhyan, emitted five Dhyani Buddhas; these, like A'di Buddha,
are quiescent in their system (passive). Neither A'di, nor either of the five
Dhyani Buddhas, were ever incarnated, but seven of their emanations became
Avatars, i.e., were incarnated on this earth.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The five make mystically
ten. They are androgynes. "Having divided big body in two parts, the
Supreme Wisdom became male and female" ("Manu," book i., sloka
32). There are many early Buddhistic ideas to be found in Brahmanism.
The prevalent idea that the
last of the Buddhas, Gautama, is the ninth incarnation of Vishnu, or the ninth
Avatar, is disclaimed partially by the Brahmans, and wholly rejected by the
learned Buddhist theologians. The latter insist that the worship of Buddha
possesses a far higher claim to antiquity than any of the Brahmanical deities
of the Vedas, which they call secular literature. The Brahmans, they show, came
from other countries, and established their heresy on the already accepted
popular deities. They conquered the land by the sword, and succeeded in burying
truth, by building a theology of their own on the ruins of the more ancient one
of Buddha, which had prevailed for ages. They admit the divinity and spiritual
existence of some of the Vedantic gods; but as in the case of the Christian
angel-hierarchy they believe that all these deities are greatly subordinate,
even to the incarnated Buddhas. They do not even acknowledge the creation of
the physical universe. Spiritually and invisibly it has existed from all
eternity, and thus it was made merely visible to the human senses. When it
first appeared it was called forth from the realm of the invisible into the
visible by the impulse of A'di Buddha -- the "Essence." They reckon
twenty-two such visible appearances of the universe governed by Buddhas, and as
many destructions of it, by fire and water in regular successions. After the
last destruction by the flood, at the end of the precedent cycle -- (the exact
calculation, embracing several millions of years, is a secret cycle) the world,
during the present age of the Kali Yug -- Maha Bhadda Calpa -- has been ruled
successively by four Buddhas, the last of whom was Gautama, the "Holy
One." The fifth, Maitree-Buddha, is yet to come. This latter is the
expected kabalistic King Messiah, the Messenger of Light, and Sosiosh, the
Persian Saviour, who will come on a white horse. It is also the Christian Second
Advent. See "Apocalypse" of St. John.
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REVERENTIAL TOWARD THE DEITY.
Describing the Basilidean
system, Irenaeus, quoting the Gnostics, declares as follows:
"When the uncreated,
unnamed Father saw the corruption of mankind, he sent his first-born Nous, into
the world, in the form of Christ, for the redemption of all who believe in him,
out of the power of those who fabricated the world (the Demiurgus, and his six
sons, the planetary genii). He appeared amongst men as the man, Jesus, and
wrought miracles. This Christ did not die in person, but Simon the Cyrenian
suffered in his stead, to whom he lent his bodily form; for the Divine Power,
the Nous of the Eternal Father, is not corporeal, and cannot die. Whoso,
therefore, maintains that Christ has died, is still the bondsman of ignorance;
whoso denies the same, he is free, and hath understood the purpose of the
Father."*
So far, and taken in its
abstract sense, we do not see anything blasphemous in this system. It may be a
heresy against the theology of Irenaeus and Tertullian,** but there is
certainly nothing sacrilegious against the religious idea itself, and it will
seem to every impartial thinker far more consistent with divine reverence than
the anthropomorphism of actual Christianity. The Gnostics were called by the
orthodox Christians, Docetae, or Illusionists, for believing that Christ did
not, nor could, suffer death actually -- in physical body. The later
Brahmanical books contain, likewise, much that is repugnant to the reverential
feeling and idea of the Divinity; and as well as the Gnostics, the Brahmans
explain such legends as may shock the divine dignity of the Spiritual beings
called gods by attributing them to Maya or illusion.
A people brought up and
nurtured for countless ages among all the psychological phenomena of which the
civilized (!) nations read, but reject as incredible and worthless, cannot well
expect to have its religious system even understood -- let alone appreciated.
The profoundest and most transcendental speculations of the ancient
metaphysicians of India and other countries, are all based on that great Buddhistic
and Brahmanical principle underlying the whole of their religious metaphysics
-- illusion of the senses. Everything that is finite is illusion, all that
which is eternal and infinite is reality. Form, color, that which we hear and
feel, or see with our mortal eyes, exists only so far as it can be conveyed to
each of us through our senses. The universe for a man born blind does not exist
in either form or color, but it exists in its privation (in the Aristotelean
sense), and is a reality for the spiritual senses
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Irenaeus," i. 23.
** Tertullian reversed the
table himself by rejecting, later in life, the doctrines for which he fought
with such an acerbity and by becoming a Montanist.
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of the blind man. We all live
under the powerful dominion of phantasy. Alone the highest and invisible
originals emanated from the thought of the Unknown are real and permanent
beings, forms, and ideas; on earth, we see but their reflections; more or less
correct, and ever dependent on the physical and mental organization of the
person who beholds them.
Ages untold before our era,
the Hindu Mystic Kapila, who is considered by many scientists as a skeptic,
because they judge him with their habitual superficiality, magnificently
expressed this idea in the following terms:
"Man (physical man)
counts for so little, that hardly anything can demonstrate to him his proper
existence and that of nature. Perhaps, that which we regard as the universe,
and the divers beings which seem to compose it, have nothing real, and are but
the product of continued illusion -- maya -- of our senses."
And the modern Schopenhauer,
repeating this philosophical idea, 10,000 years old now, says: "Nature is
non-existent, per se. . . . Nature is the infinite illusion of our
senses." Kant, Schelling, and other metaphysicians have said the same, and
their school maintains the idea. The objects of sense being ever delusive and
fluctuating, cannot be a reality. Spirit alone is unchangeable, hence -- alone
is no illusion. This is pure Buddhist doctrine. The religion of the Gnosis
(knowledge), the most evident offshoot of Buddhism, was utterly based on this
metaphysical tenet. Christos suffered spiritually for us, and far more acutely
than did the illusionary Jesus while his body was being tortured on the Cross.
In the ideas of the
Christians, Christ is but another name for Jesus. The philosophy of the
Gnostics, the initiates, and hierophants understood it otherwise. The word
Christos, [[Christos]], like all Greek words, must be sought in its
philological origin -- the Sanscrit. In this latter language Kris means
sacred,* and the Hindu deity was named Chris-na (the pure or the sacred) from
that. On the other hand, the Greek Christos bears several meanings, as anointed
(pure oil, chrism) and others. In all languages, though the synonym of the word
means pure or sacred essence, it is the first emanation of the invisible
Godhead, manifesting itself tangibly in spirit. The Greek Logos, the Hebrew
Messiah, the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In his debate with Jacolliot
upon the right spelling of the Hindu Christna, Mr. Textor de Ravisi, an
ultramontane Catholic, tries to prove that the name of Christna ought to be
written Krishna, for, as the latter means black, and the statues of this deity
are generally black, the word is derived from the color. We refer the reader to
Jacolliot's answer in his recent work, "Christna et le Christ," for
the conclusive evidence that the name is not derived from the color.
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HERESIARCH.
Latin Verbum, and the Hindu
Viradj (the son) are identically the same; they represent an idea of collective
entities -- of flames detached from the one eternal centre of light.
"The man who accomplishes
pious but interested acts (with the sole object of his salvation) may reach the
ranks of the devas (saints);* but he who accomplishes, disinterestedly, the
same pious acts, finds himself ridden forever of the five elements" (of
matter). "Perceiving the Supreme Soul in all beings and all beings in the
Supreme Soul, in offering his own soul in sacrifice, he identifies himself with
the Being who shines in his own splendor" (Manu, book xii., slokas 90,
91).
Thus, Christos, as a unity, is
but an abstraction: a general idea representing the collective aggregation of
the numberless spirit-entities, which are the direct emanations of the
infinite, invisible, incomprehensible FIRST CAUSE -- the individual spirits of
men, erroneously called the souls. They are the divine sons of God, of which
some only overshadow mortal men -- but this the majority -- some remain forever
planetary spirits, and some -- the smaller and rare minority -- unite
themselves during life with some men. Such God-like beings as Gautama-Buddha,
Jesus, Tissoo, Christna, and a few others had united themselves with their
spirits permanently -- hence, they became gods on earth. Others, such as Moses,
Pythagoras, Apollonius, Plotinus, Confucius, Plato, Iamblichus, and some
Christian saints, having at intervals been so united, have taken rank in
history as demi-gods and leaders of mankind. When unburthened of their
terrestrial tabernacles, their freed souls, henceforth united forever with
their spirits, rejoin the whole shining host, which is bound together in one
spiritual solidarity of thought and deed, and called "the anointed."
Hence, the meaning of the Gnostics, who, by saying that "Christos"
suffered spiritually for humanity, implied that his Divine Spirit suffered
mostly.
Such, and far more elevating
were the ideas of Marcion, the great "Heresiarch" of the second
century, as he is termed by his opponents. He came to Rome toward the latter part
of the half-century, from A.D. 139-142, according to Tertullian, Irenaeus,
Clemens, and most of his modern commentators, such as Bunsen, Tischendorf,
Westcott, and many others. Credner and Schleiermacher** agree as to his high
and irreproachable personal character, his pure religious aspirations and
elevated views. His influence must have been powerful, as we find
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* There is no equivalent for
the word "miracle," in the Christian sense, among the Brahmans or
Buddhists. The only correct translation would be meipo, a wonder, something
remarkable; but not a violation of natural law. The "saints" only
produce meipo.
** "Beitrage," vol.
i., p. 40; Schleiermacher: "Sammil. Werke," viii.; "Einl. N.
T.," p. 64.
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Epiphanius writing more than
two centuries later that in his time the followers of Marcion were to be found
throughout the whole world.*
The danger must have been
pressing and great indeed, if we are to judge it to have been proportioned with
the opprobrious epithets and vituperation heaped upon Marcion by the
"Great African," that Patristic Cerberus, whom we find ever barking
at the door of the Irenaean dogmas.** We have but to open his celebrated
refutation of Marcion's Antitheses, to acquaint ourselves with the fine-fleur
of monkish abuse of the Christian school; an abuse so faithfully carried
through the middle ages, to be renewed again in our present day -- at the
Vatican. "Now, then, ye hounds, yelping at the God of Truth, whom the
apostles cast out, to all your questions. These are the bones of contention which
ye gnaw," etc.*** "The poverty of the Great African's arguments keeps
pace with his abuse," remarks the author of Supernatural Religion.****
"Their (the Father's) religious controversy bristles with misstatements,
and is turbid with pious abuse. Tertullian was a master of his style, and the
vehement vituperation with which he opens and often interlards his work against
'the impious and sacrilegious Marcion,' offers anything but a guarantee of fair
and legitimate criticism."
How firm these two Fathers --
Tertullian and Epiphanius -- were on their theological ground, may be inferred
from the curious fact that they intemperately both vehemently reproach
"the beast" (Marcion) "with erasing passages from the Gospel of
Luke which never were in Luke at all."***** "The lightness and
inaccuracy," adds the critic, "with which Tertullian proceeds, are
all the better illustrated by the fact that not only does he accuse Marcion
falsely, but he actually defines the motives for which he expunged a passage
which never existed; in the same chapter he also similarly accuses Marcion of
erasing (from Luke) the saying that Christ had not come to destroy the law and
the prophets, but to fulfill them, and he actually repeats the charge on two
other occasions.****** Epiphanius also commits the mistake of reproaching
Marcion with omitting from Luke what is only found in Matthew."*******
Having so far shown the amount
of reliance to be placed in the Patristic literature, and it being unanimously
conceded by the great majority of biblical critics that what the Fathers fought
for was not truth, but their own interpretations and unwarranted
assertions,******** we will now
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Epiph. Haera.,"
xlii., p. 1.
** Tertullian: "Adv. Marc.,"
ii. 5; cf. 9.
*** Ibid., ii. 5.
**** Vol. ii., p. 105.
***** Ibid., vol. ii., p. 100.
****** "Adv. Marc.,"
iv., 9, 36.
******* "Supernatural
Religion," p. 101; Matthew v. 17.
******** This author, vol. ii.,
p. 103, remarks with great justice of the "Heresiarch" Marcion,
"whose high personal character exerted so powerful an influence upon his
[[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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PRIMITIVE CHURCH.
proceed to state what were the
views of Marcion, whom Tertullian desired to annihilate as the most dangerous
heretic of his day. If we are to believe Hilgenfeld, one of the greatest German
biblical critics, then "From the critical standing-point one must . . .
consider the statements of the Fathers of the Church only as expressions of
their subjective view, which itself requires proof."*
We can do no better nor make a
more correct statement of facts concerning Marcion than by quoting what our
space permits from Supernatural Religion, the author of which bases his
assertions on the evidence of the greatest critics, as well as on his own researches.
He shows in the days of Marcion "two broad parties in the primitive
Church" -- one considering Christianity "a mere continuation of the
law, and dwarfing it into an Israelitish institution, a narrow sect of
Judaism"; the other representing the glad tidings "as the
introduction of a new system, applicable to all, and supplanting the Mosaic
dispensation of the law by a universal dispensation of grace." These two
parties, he adds, "were popularly represented in the early Church, by the
two apostles Peter and Paul, and their antagonism is faintly revealed in the
Epistle to the Galatians."**
[[Footnote(s)]]
----------------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] own time," that "it was the misfortune of Marcion to
live in an age when Christianity had passed out of the pure morality of its
infancy; when, untroubled by complicated questions of dogma, simple faith and
pious enthusiasm had been the one great bond of Christian brotherhood, into a
phase of ecclesiastical development in which religion was fast degenerating
into theology, and complicated doctrines were rapidly assuming the rampant
attitude which led to so much bitterness, persecution, and schism. In later
times Marcion might have been honored as a reformer, in his own he was
denounced as a heretic. Austere and ascetic in his opinions, he aimed at
superhuman purity, and, although his clerical adversaries might scoff at his
impracticable doctrines regarding marriage and the subjugation of the flesh, they
have had their parallels amongst those whom the Church has since most delighted
to honor, and, at least, the whole tendency of his system was markedly towards
the side of virtue." These statements are based upon Credner's
"Beitrage," i., p. 40; cf. Neander: "Allg. K. G.," ii., p.
792, f.; Schleiermacher, Milman, etc., etc.
* Justin's "Die
Evv.," p. 446, sup. B.
** But, on the other hand,
this antagonism is very strongly marked in the "Clementine Homilies,"
in which Peter unequivocally denies that Paul, whom he calls Simon the
Magician, has ever had a vision of Christ, and calls him "an enemy."
Canon Westcott says: "There can be no doubt that St. Paul is referred to
as 'the enemy' " ("On the Canon," p. 252, note 2; "Supernatural
Religion," vol. ii., p. 35). But this antagonism, which rages unto the
present day, we find even in St. Paul's "Epistles." What can be more
energetic than such like sentences: "Such are false apostles, deceitful
workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. . . . I suppose I
was not a whit behind the very chiefest apostle" (2 Corinthians, xi.).
"Paul, an apostle not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ and God
the Father, who raised him from the dead . . . but there be some that trouble
you, and would pervert the Gospel [Footnote continued on next page]
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Marcion, who recognised no
other Gospels than a few Epistles of Paul, who rejected totally the
anthropomorphism of the Old Testament, and drew a distinct line of demarcation
between the old Judaism and Christianity, viewed Jesus neither as a King,
Messiah of the Jews, nor the son of David, who was in any way connected with
the law or prophets, "but, a divine being sent to reveal to man a
spiritual religion, wholly new, and a God of goodness and grace hitherto
unknown." The "Lord
[[Footnote(s)]]
------------------------------------------------------------
[Footnote continued from
previous page] of Christ . . . false brethren. . . . When Peter came to Antioch
I withstood him to his face, because he was to be blamed. For before that
certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles, but when they were come
he withdrew, fearing them which were of the circumcision. And the other Jews
dissembled . . . insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their
dissimulation," etc., etc. (Galat. i and ii.). On the other hand, we find
Peter in the "Homilies," indulging in various complaints which,
although alleged to be addressed to Simon Magus, are evidently all direct
answers to the above-quoted sentences from the Pauline Epistles, and cannot
have anything to do with Simon. So, for instance, Peter said: "For some
among the Gentiles have rejected my lawful preaching, and accepted certain
lawless and foolish teaching of the hostile men (enemy)" -- Epist. of
Peter to James, § 2. He says further: "Simon (Paul) . . . who came before
me to the Gentiles . . . and I have followed him as light upon darkness, as
knowledge upon ignorance, as health upon disease" ("Homil.," ii.
17). Still further, he calls him Death and a deceiver (Ibid., ii. 18). He warns
the Gentiles that "our Lord and Prophet (?) (Jesus) announced that he
would send from among his followers, apostles to deceive. "Therefore,
above all, remember to avoid every apostle, or teacher, or prophet, who first
does not accurately compare his teaching with that of James, called the brother
of our Lord" (see the difference between Paul and James on faith, Epist.
to Hebrews, xi., xii., and Epist. of James, ii.). "Lest the Evil One
should send a false preacher . . . as he has sent to us Simon (?) preaching a
counterfeit of truth in the name of our Lord, and disseminating error"
("Hom." xi., 35; see above quotation from Gal. 1, 5). He then denies
Paul's assertion, in the following words: "If, therefore, our Jesus indeed
appeared in a vision to you, it was only as an irritated adversary. . . . But
how can any one through visions become wise in teaching? And if you say, 'it is
possible,' then I ask, wherefore did the Teacher remain for a whole year and
discourse to those who were attentive? And how can we believe your story that
he appeared to you? And in what manner did he appear to you, when you hold
opinions contrary to his teaching? . . . For you now set yourself up against
me, who am a firm rock, the foundation of the Church. If you were not an
opponent, you would not calumniate me, you would not revile my teaching . . .
(circumcision?) in order that, in declaring what I have myself heard from the
Lord, I may not be believed, as though I were condemned. . . . But if you say
that I am condemned, you blame God who revealed Christ to me." "This
last phrase," observes the author of "Supernatural Religion,"
" 'if you say that I am condemned,' is an evident allusion to Galat. ii,
11, 'I withstood him to the face, because he was condemned' "
("Supernatural Religion," p. 37). "There cannot be a
doubt," adds the just-quoted author, "that the Apostle Paul is
attacked in this religious romance as the great enemy of the true faith, under
the hated name of Simon the Magician, whom Peter follows everywhere for the
purpose of unmasking and confuting him" (p. 34). And if so, then we must
believe that it was St. Paul who broke both his legs in Rome when flying in the
air.
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God" of the Jews in his
eyes, the Creator (Demiurgos), was totally different and distinct from the
Deity who sent Jesus to reveal the divine truth and preach the glad tidings, to
bring reconciliation and salvation to all. The mission of Jesus -- according to
Marcion -- was to abrogate the Jewish "Lord," who "was opposed
to the God and Father of Jesus Christ as matter is to spirit, impurity to
purity."
Was Marcion so far wrong? Was
it blasphemy, or was it intuition, divine inspiration in him to express that
which every honest heart yearning for truth, more or less feels and
acknowledges? If in his sincere desire to establish a purely spiritual
religion, a universal faith based on unadulterated truth, he found it necessary
to make of Christianity an entirely new and separate system from that of
Judaism, did not Marcion have the very words of Christ for his authority?
"No man putteth a piece of new cloth into an old garment . . . for the
rent is made worse. . . . Neither do men put new wine into old bottles, else
the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish; but they
put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved." In what particular
does the jealous, wrathful, revengeful God of Israel resemble the unknown
deity, the God of mercy preached by Jesus; -- his Father who is in Heaven, and
the Father of all humanity? This Father alone is the God of spirit and purity,
and, to compare Him with the subordinate and capricious Sinaitic Deity is an error.
Did Jesus ever pronounce the name of Jehovah? Did he ever place his Father in
contrast with this severe and cruel Judge; his God of mercy, love, and justice,
with the Jewish genius of retaliation? Never! From that memorable day when he
preached his Sermon on the Mount, an immeasurable void opened between his God
and that other deity who fulminated his commands from that other mount --
Sinai. The language of Jesus is unequivocal; it implies not only rebellion but
defiance of the Mosaic "Lord God." "Ye have heard," he
tells us, "that it hath been said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a
tooth: but I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite
thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. Ye have heard that it hath
been said [by the same "Lord God" on Sinai]: Thou shalt love thy
neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you; Love your enemies, bless
them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which
despitefully use you, and persecute you" (Matthew v.).
And now, open Manu and read:
"Resignation, the action
of rendering good for evil, temperance, probity, purity, repression of the
senses, the knowledge of the Sastras (the holy books), that of the supreme
soul, truthfulness and abstinence from anger, such are the ten virtues in which
consists duty. . . . Those who
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study these ten precepts of
duty, and after having studied them conform their lives thereto, will reach to
the supreme condition" (Manu, book vi., sloka 92).
If Manu did not trace these
words many thousands of years before the era of Christianity, at least no voice
in the whole world will dare deny them a less antiquity than several centuries
B.C. The same in the case of the precepts of Buddhism.
If we turn to the Pratimokska
Sutra and other religious tracts of the Buddhists, we read the ten following
commandments:
1. Thou shalt not kill any
living creature.
2. Thou shalt not steal.
3. Thou shalt not break thy
vow of chastity.
4. Thou shalt not lie.
5. Thou shalt not betray the
secrets of others.
6. Thou shalt not wish for the
death of thy enemies.
7. Thou shalt not desire the
wealth of others.
8. Thou shalt not pronounce
injurious and foul words.
9. Thou shalt not indulge in
luxury (sleep on soft beds or be lazy).
10. Thou shalt not accept gold
or silver.*
"Good master, what shall
I do that I may have eternal life?" asks a man of Jesus. "Keep the
commandments." "Which?" "Thou shalt do no murder, Thou
shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false
witness,"** is the answer.
"What shall I do to
obtain possession of Bhodi? (knowledge of eternal truth)" asks a disciple
of his Buddhist master. "What way is there to become an Upasaka?"
"Keep the commandments." "What are they?" "Thou shalt
abstain all thy life from murder, theft, adultery, and lying," answers the
master.***
Identical injunctions are they
not? Divine injunctions, the living up to which would purify and exalt
humanity. But are they more divine when uttered through one mouth than another?
If it is god-like to return good for evil, does the enunciation of the precept
by a Nazarene give it any greater force than its enunciation by an Indian, or
Thibetan philosopher? We see that the Golden Rule was not original with Jesus;
that its birth-place was India. Do what we may, we cannot deny Sakya-Muni
Buddha a less remote antiquity than several centuries before the birth of
Jesus. In seeking a model for his system of ethics why should Jesus have gone
to the foot of the Himalayas rather than to the foot of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Pratimoksha
Sutra," Pali Burmese copy; see also "Lotus de la Bonne Loi,"
translated by Burnouf, p. 444.
** Matthew xix. 16-18.
*** "Pittakatayan,"
book iii., Pali Version.
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BACCHUS.
Sinai, but that the doctrines
of Manu and Gautama harmonized exactly with his own philosophy, while those of
Jehovah were to him abhorrent and terrifying? The Hindus taught to return good
for evil, but the Jehovistic command was: "An eye for an eye" and
"a tooth for a tooth."
Would Christians still
maintain the identity of the "Father" of Jesus and Jehovah, if
evidence sufficiently clear could be adduced that the "Lord God" was
no other than the Pagan Bacchus, Dionysos? Well, this identity of the Jehovah
at Mount Sinai with the god Bacchus is hardly disputable. The name [[char]] is
Yava or Iao, according to Theodoret, which is the secret name of the Phoenician
Mystery-god;* and it was actually adopted from the Chaldeans with whom it also
was the secret name of the creator. Wherever Bacchus was worshipped there was a
tradition of Nysa and a cave where he was reared. Beth-San or Scythopolis in
Palestine had that designation; so had a spot on Mount Parnassus. But Diodorus
declares that Nysa was between Phoenicia and Egypt; Euripides states that
Dionysos came to Greece from India; and Diodorus adds his testimony:
"Osiris was brought up in Nysa, in Arabia the Happy; he was the son of
Zeus, and was named from his father (nominative Zeus, genitive Dios) and the
place Dio-Nysos" -- the Zeus or Jove of Nysa. This identity of name or
title is very significant. In Greece Dionysos was second only to Zeus, and
Pindar says:
"So Father Zeus governs
all things, and Bacchus he governs also."
But outside of Greece Bacchus
was the all-powerful "Zagreus, the highest of gods." Moses seems to
have worshipped him personally and together with the populace at Mount Sinai;
unless we admit that he was an initiated priest, an adept, who knew how to lift
the veil which hangs behind all such exoteric worship, but kept the secret.
"And Moses built an altar, and called the name of it Jehovah-NISSI"!
or Iao-Nisi. What better evidence is required to show that the Sinaitic god was
indifferently Bacchus, Osiris, and Jehovah? Mr. Sharpe appends also his
testimony that the place where Osiris was born "was Mount Sinai, called by
the Egyptians Mount Nissa." The Brazen Serpent was a nis, [[Heb char]],
and the month of the Jewish Passover nisan.
If the Mosaic "Lord
God" was the only living God, and Jesus His only Son, how account for the
rebellious language of the latter? Without hesitation or qualification he
sweeps away the Jewish lex talionis and substitutes for it the law of charity
and self-denial. If the Old Testament
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Judges xiii. 18,
"And the angel of the Lord said unto him: Why askest thou after my name,
seeing it is SECRET?"
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is a divine revelation, how
can the New Testament be? Are we required to believe and worship a Deity who
contradicts himself every few hundred years? Was Moses inspired, or was Jesus
not the son of God? This is a dilemma from which the theologians are bond to
rescue us. It is from this very dilemma that the Gnostics endeavored to snatch
the budding Christianity.
Justice has been waiting
nineteen centuries for intelligent commentators to appreciate this difference
between the orthodox Tertullian and the Gnostic Marcion. The brutal violence,
unfairness, and bigotry of the "great African" repulse all who accept
his Christianity. "How can a god," inquired Marcion, "break his
own commandments? How could he consistently prohibit idolatry and
image-worship, and still cause Moses to set up the brazen serpent? How command:
Thou shalt not steal, and then order the Israelites to spoil the Egyptians of
their gold and silver?" Anticipating the results of modern criticism,
Marcion denies the applicability to Jesus of the so-called Messianic
prophecies. Writes the author of Supernatural Religion:* "The Emmanuel of
Isaiah is not Christ; the 'Virgin,' his mother, is simply a 'young woman,' an
alma of the temple; and the sufferings of the servant of God (Isaiah lii. 13 -
liii. 3) are not predictions of the death of Jesus."**
[[Footnote(s)]]
---------------------------------------------------------------
* Vol. ii., p. 106.
** Emmanuel was doubtless the
son of the prophet himself, as described in the sixth chapter; what was
predicted, can only be interpreted on that hypothesis. The prophet had also announced
to Ahaz the extinction of his line. "If ye will not believe, surely ye
shall not be established." Next comes the prediction of the placing of a
new prince on the throne -- Hezekiah of Bethlehem, said to have been Isaiah's
son-in-law, under whom the captives should return from the uttermost parts of
the earth. Assyria should be humbled, and peace overspread the Israelitish
country, compare Isaiah vii. 14-16; viii. 3, 4; ix. 6, 7; x. 12, 20, 21; xi.;
Micah v., 2-7. The popular party, the party of the prophets, always opposed to
the Zadokite priesthood, had resolved to set aside Ahaz and his time-serving
policy, which had let in Assyria upon Palestine, and to set up Hezekiah, a man
of their own, who should rebel against Assyria and overthrow the Assur-worship
and Baalim (2 Kings xv. 11). Though only the prophets hint this, it being cut
out from the historical books, it is noticeable that Ahaz offered his own child
to Moloch, also that he died at the age of thirty-six, and Hezekiah took the
throne at twenty-five, in full adult age.
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CHAPTER IV.
"Nothing better than
those MYSTERIES, by which, from a rough and fierce life, we
are polished to gentleness
(humanity, kindness), and softened." -- CICERO: de Legibus, ii., 14.
"Descend, O Soma, with
that stream with which thou lightest up the Sun. . . .
Soma, a Life Ocean spread
through All, thou fillest creative the Sun with beams." -- Rig-Veda, ii.,
143.
". . . the beautiful
Virgin ascends, with long hair, and she holds two ears in her hand, and sits on
a seat and feeds a BOY as yet little, and suckles him and gives him food."
-- AVENAR.
IT is alleged that the
Pentateuch was written by Moses, and yet it contains the account of his own
death (Deuteronomy xxxiv. 6); and in Genesis (xiv. 14), the name Dan is given
to a city, which Judges (xviii. 29), tells us was only called by that name at
that late day, it having previously been known as Laish. Well might Josiah have
rent his clothes when he had heard the words of the Book of the Law; for there
was no more of Moses in it than there is of Jesus in the Gospel according to
John.
We have one fair alternative
to offer our theologians, leaving them to choose for themselves, and promising
to abide by their decision. Only they will have to admit, either that Moses was
an impostor, or that his books are forgeries, written at different times and by
different persons; or, again, that they are full of fraudulent interpolations.
In either case the work loses all claims to be considered divine Revelation.
Here is the problem, which we quote from the Bible -- the word of the God of
Truth:
"And I appeared unto
Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my
name of JEHOVAH was I not known to them" (Exodus vi. 3), spake God unto
Moses.
A very startling bit of
information that, when, before arriving at the book of Exodus, we are told in
Genesis (xxii. 14) that "Abraham called the name of that place" --
where the patriarch had been preparing to cut the throat of his only-begotten
son -- "JEHOVAH-jireh"! (Jehovah sees.) Which is the inspired text?
-- both cannot be -- which the forgery?
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Now, if both Abraham and Moses
had not belonged to the same holy group, we might, perhaps, help theologians by
suggesting to them a convenient means of escape out of this dilemma. They ought
to call the reverend Jesuit Fathers -- especially those who have been
missionaries in India -- to their rescue. The latter would not be for a moment
disconcerted. They would coolly tell us that beyond doubt Abraham had heard the
name of Jehovah and borrowed it from Moses. Do they not maintain that it was
they who invented the Sanscrit, edited Manu, and composed the greater portion
of the Vedas?
Marcion maintained, with the
other Gnostics, the fallaciousness of the idea of an incarnate God, and
therefore denied the corporeal reality of the living body of Christ. His entity
was a mere illusion; it was not made of human flesh and blood, neither was it
born of a human mother, for his divine nature could not be polluted with any
contact with sinful flesh.* He accepted Paul as the only apostle preaching the
pure gospel of truth, and accused the other disciples of "depraving the
pure form of the gospel doctrines delivered to them by Jesus, mixing up matters
of the Law with the words of the Saviour."**
Finally we may add that modern
biblical criticism, which unfortunately became really active and serious only
toward the end of the last century, now generally admits that Marcion's text of
the only gospel he knew anything about -- that of Luke, is far superior and by
far more correct than that of our present Synoptics. We find in Supernatural
Religion the following (for every Christian) startling sentence: "We are,
therefore, indebted to Marcion for the correct version even of 'the Lord's
Prayer.' "***
If, leaving for the present
the prominent founders of Christian sects, we now turn to that of the Ophites,
which assumed a definite form about the time of Marcion and the Basilideans, we
may find in it the reason for the heresies of all others. Like all other
Gnostics, they rejected the Mosaic Bible entirely. Nevertheless, their
philosophy, apart from some deductions original with several of the most
important founders of the various branches of Gnosticism was not new. Passing
through the Chaldean kabalistic tradition, it gathered its materials in the
Hermetic books, and pursuing its flight still farther back for its metaphysical
speculations, we find it floundering among the tenets of Manu, and the earliest
Hindu ante-sacerdotal genesis. Many of our eminent antiquarians trace the
Gnostic philosophies right back to Buddhism, which does not impair in
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Tertullian: "Adv. Marci,"
iii. 8 ff.
** "Sup. Rel.," vol.
ii., p. 107; "Adv. Marci," iii. 2, § 2; cf. iii. 12, § 12.
*** "Sup. Relig.,"
vol. ii., p. 126.
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AND OPHITE TRINITIES.
the least either their or our
arguments. We repeat again, Buddhism is but the primitive source of Brahmanism.
It is not against the primitive Vedas that Gautama protests. It is against the
sacerdotal and official state religion of his country; and the Brahmans, who in
order to make room for and give authority to the castes, at a later period
crammed the ancient manuscripts with interpolated slokas, intended to prove
that the castes were predetermined by the Creator by the very fact that each
class of men was issued from a more or less noble limb of Brahma.
Gautama-Buddha's philosophy was that taught from the beginning of time in the
impenetrable secresy of the inner sanctuaries of the pagodas. We need not be
surprised, therefore, to find again, in all the fundamental dogmas of the
Gnostics, the metaphysical tenets of both Brahmanism and Buddhism. They held
that the Old Testament was the revelation of an inferior being, a subordinate
divinity, and did not contain a single sentence of their Sophia, the Divine
Wisdom. As to the New Testament, it had lost its purity when the compilers
became guilty of interpolations. The revelation of divine truth was sacrificed
by them to promote selfish ends and maintain quarrels. The accusation does not
seem so very improbable to one who is well aware of the constant strife between
the champions of circumcision and the "Law," and the apostles who had
given up Judaism.
The Gnostic Ophites taught the
doctrine of Emanations, so hateful to the defenders of the unity in the
trinity, and vice versa. The Unknown Deity with them had no name; but his first
female emanation was called Bythos or Depth.* It answered to the Shekinah of
the kabalists, the "Veil" which conceals the "Wisdom" in
the cranium of the highest of the three heads. As the Pythagorean Monad, this
nameless Wisdom was the Source of Light, and Ennoia or Mind, is Light itself.
The latter was also called the "Primitive Man," like the Adam Kadmon,
or ancient Adam of the Kabala. Indeed, if man was created after his likeness
and in the image of God, then this God was like his creature in shape and
figure -- hence, he is the "Primitive man." The first Manu, the one
evolved from Swayambhuva, "he who exists unrevealed in his own
glory," is also, in one sense, the primitive man, with the Hindus.
Thus the "nameless and
the unrevealed," Bythos, his female reflection, and Ennoia, the revealed
Mind proceeding from both, or their Son are the counterparts of the Chaldean
first triad as well as those of the Brahmanic Trimurti. We will compare: in all
the three systems we see
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* We give the systems
according to an old diagram preserved among some Kopts and the Druses of Mount
Lebanon. Irenaeus had perhaps some good reasons to disfigure their doctrines.
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THE GREAT FIRST CAUSE as the
ONE, the primordial germ, the unrevealed and grand ALL, existing through
himself. In the
INDIAN PANTHEON. Brahma-Zyaus.
THE CHALDEAN. Ilu, Kabalistic
En-Soph.
IN THE OPHITE. The Nameless,
or Secret Name.
Whenever the Eternal awakes
from its slumber and desires to manifest itself, it divides itself into male
and female. It then becomes in every system
THE DOUBLE-SEXED DEITY, The
universal Father and Mother.
IN INDIA. Brahma. Nara (male),
Nari (female).
IN CHALDEA. Eikon or En-Soph.
Anu (male), Anata (female).
IN THE OPHITE SYSTEM. Nameless
Spirit. Abrasax (male), Bythos (female).
From the union of the two
emanates a third, or creative Principle -- the SON, or the manifested Logos,
the product of the Divine Mind.
IN INDIA. Viradj, the Son.
IN CHALDEA. Bel, the Son.
OPHITE SYSTEM. Ophis (another
name for Ennoia), the Son.
Moreover, each of these
systems has a triple male trinity, each proceeding separately through itself from
one female Deity. So, for instance:
IN INDIA. The Trinity --
Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, are blended into ONE, who is Brahma (neuter gender),
creating and being created through the Virgin Nari (the mother of perpetual
fecundity).
IN CHALDEA. The trinity --
Anu, Bel, Hoa (or Sin, Samas, Bin), blend into ONE who is Anu (double-sexed)
through the Virgin Mylitta.
IN THE OPHITE SYSTEM. The
trinity consisted of the Mystery named Sige, Bythos, Ennoia. These become ONE
who is Abrasax, from the Virgin Sophia (or Pneuma), who herself is an emanation
of Bythos and the Mystery-god and emanates through them, Christos.
To place it still clearer, the
Babylonian System recognizes first -- the ONE (Ad, or Ad-ad), who is never
named, but only acknowledged in thought as the Hindu Swayambhuva. From this he
becomes manifest as Anu or Ana -- the one above all -- Monas. Next comes the
Demiurge called Bel or Elu, who is the active power of the Godhead. The third
is the principle of Wisdom, Hea or Hoa, who also rules the sea and the underworld.
Each of these has his divine consort, giving us Anata, Belta,
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"ONLY-BEGOTTEN" SONS.
and Davkina. These, however,
are only like the Saktis, and not especially remarked by theologists. But the
female principle is denoted by Mylitta, the Great Mother, called also Ishtar.
So with the three male gods, we have the Triad or Trimurti, and with Mylitta
added, the Arba or Four (Tetraktys of Pythagoras), which perfects and
potentializes all. Hence, the above-given modes of expression. The following
Chaldean diagram may serve as an illustration for all others:
Triad / Anu, Bel, Hoa. /
Mylitta -- Arba-il, or Four-fold God,
become, with the Christians,
Trinity / God the Father, God
the Son, God the Holy Ghost, / Mary, or mother of these three Gods since they
are one, or, the Christian Heavenly Tetraktys.
Hence, Hebron, the city of the
Kabeiri was called Kirjath-Arba, city of the Four. The Kabeiri were Axieros --
the noble Eros, Axiokersos, the worthy horned one, Axiokersa, Demeter and
Kadmiel, Hoa, etc.
The Pythagorean ten denoted
the Arba-Il or Divine Four, emblematized by the Hindu Lingham: Anu, 1; Bel, 2;
Hoa, 3, which makes 6. The triad and Mylitta as 4 make the ten.
Though he is termed the
"Primitive Man," Ennoia, who is like the Egyptian Pimander, the
"Power of the Thought Divine," the first intelligible manifestation
of the Divine Spirit in material form, he is like the "Only-Begotten"
Son of the "Unknown Father," of all other nations. He is the emblem
of the first appearance of the divine Presence in his own works of creation,
tangible and visible, and therefore comprehensible. The mystery-God, or the
ever-unrevealed Deity fecundates through His will Bythos, the unfathomable and
infinite depth that exists in silence (Sige) and darkness (for our intellect),
and that represents the abstract idea of all nature, the ever-producing Cosmos.
As neither the male nor female principle, blended into the idea of a
double-sexed Deity in ancient conceptions, could be comprehended by an ordinary
human intellect, the theology of every people had to create for its religion a
Logos, or manifested word, in some shape or other. With the Ophites and other
Gnostics who took their models direct from more ancient originals, the
unrevealed Bythos and her male counterpart produce Ennoia, and the three in
their turn produce Sophia,* thus completing the Tetraktys, which will emanate
Christos, the very essence of the Father Spirit. As
[[Footnote(s)]]
-----------------------------------------------------------
* Sophia is the highest
prototype of woman -- the first spiritual Eve. In the Bible the system is
reversed and the intervening emanation being omitted, Eve is degraded to simple
humanity.
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the unrevealed One, or
concealed Logos in its latent state, he has existed from all eternity in the
Arba-Il, the metaphysical abstraction; therefore, he is ONE with all others as
a unity, the latter (including all) being indifferently termed Ennoia, Sige
(silence), Bythos, etc. As the revealed one, he is Androgyne, Christos, and
Sophia (Divine Wisdom), who descend into the man Jesus. Both Father and Son are
shown by Irenaeus to have loved the beauty (formam) of the primitive woman,*
who is Bythos -- Depth -- as well as Sophia, and as having produced conjointly
Ophis and Sophia (double-sexed unity again), male and female wisdom, one being
considered as the unrevealed Holy Spirit, or elder Sophia -- the Pneuma -- the
intellectual "Mother of all things"; the other the revealed one, or
Ophis, typifying divine wisdom fallen into matter, or God-man -- Jesus, whom
the Gnostic Ophites represented by the serpent (Ophis).
Fecundated by the Divine Light
of the Father and Son, the highest spirit and Ennoia, Sophia produces in her turn
two other emanations -- one perfect Christos, the second imperfect
Sophia-Achamoth,** from [[Heb char]] hakhamoth (simple wisdom), who becomes the
mediatrix between the intellectual and material worlds.
Christos was the mediator and
guide between God (the Higher), and everything spiritual in man; Achamoth --
the younger Sophia -- held the same duty between the "Primitive man,"
Ennoia and matter. What was mysteriously meant by the general term, Christos,
we have just explained.
Delivering a sermon on the
"Month of Mary," we find the Rev. Dr. Preston, of New York City,
expressing the Christian idea of the female principle of the trinity better and
more clearly than we could, and substantially in the spirit of an ancient
"heathen" philosopher. He says that the "plan of the redemption
made it necessary that a mother should be found, and Mary stands pre-eminently
alone as the only instance when a creature was necessary to the consummation of
God's work." We will beg the right to contradict the reverend gentleman.
As shown above, thousands of years before our era it was found necessary by all
the "heathen" theogonies to find a female principle, a
"mother" for the triune male principle. Hence, Christianity does not
present the "only instance" of such a consummation of God's work --
albeit, as this work shows, there was more philosophy and less materialism, or
rather anthropomorphism, in it. But hear the reverend Doctor express
"heathen" thought in
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Irenaeus,"
book i., chap. 31-33.
** In King's
"Gnostics," we find the system a little incorrect. The author tells
us that he followed Bellermann's "Drei Programmen uber die Abraxas
Gemmen."
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FOR MARY'S ANSWER."
Christian ideas.
"He" (God), he says, "prepared her (Mary's) virginal and
celestial purity, for a mother defiled could not become the mother of the Most
High. The holy virgin, even in her childhood, was more pleasing than all the
Cherubim and Seraphim, and from infancy to the maturing maidenhood and
womanhood she grew more and more pure. By her very sanctity she reigned over
the heart of God. When the hour came, the whole court of heaven was hushed, and
the trinity listened for the answer of Mary, for without her consent the world
could not have been redeemed."
Does it not seem as if we were
reading Irenaeus explaining the Gnostic "Heresy, which taught that the
Father and Son loved the beauty (formam) of the celestial Virgin"? or the
Egyptian system, of Isis being both wife, sister, and mother of Osiris-Horus?
With the Gnostic philosophy there were but two, but the Christians have
improved and perfected the system by making it completely "heathen,"
for it is the Chaldean Anu -- Bel -- Hoa, merging into Mylitta. "Then
while this month (of Mary)," adds Dr. Preston, "begins in the paschal
season -- the month when nature decks herself with fruits and flowers, the
harbingers of a bright harvest -- let us, too, begin for a golden harvest. In
this month the dead come up out of the earth, figuring the resurrection; so,
when we are kneeling before the altar of the holy and immaculate Mary, let us
remember that there should come forth from us the bud of promise, the flower of
hope, and the imperishable fruit of sanctity."
This is precisely the
substratum of the Pagan thought, which, among other meanings, emblematized by
the rites of the resurrection of Osiris, Adonis, Bacchus, and other slaughtered
sun-gods, the resurrection of all nature in spring, the germination of seeds
that had been dead and sleeping during winter, and so were allegorically said
to be kept in the underworld (Hades). They are typified by the three days
passed in hell before his resurrection by Hercules, by Christ, and others.
This derivation, or rather
heresy, as it is called in Christianity, is simply the Brahmanic doctrine in
all its archaic purity. Vishnu, the second personage of the Hindu trinity, is
also the Logos, for he is made subsequently to incarnate himself in Christna.
And Lakmy (or Lakshmy) who, as in the case of Osiris and Isis, of En-Soph and
Sephira, and of Bythos and Ennoia, is both his wife, sister, and daughter,
through this endless correlation of male and female creative powers in the
abstruse metaphysics of the ancient philosophies -- is Sophia-Achamoth.
Christna is the mediator promised by Brahma to mankind, and represents the same
idea as the Gnostic Christos. And Lakmy, Vishnu's spiritual half, is the emblem
of physical nature, the universal mother of all the material and revealed
forms; the mediatrix and protector of nature, like Sophia-Achamoth, who is made
by the Gnostics the mediatrix between the Great
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Cause and Matter, as Christos
is the mediator between him and spiritual humanity.
This Brahmano-Gnostic tenet is
more logical, and more consistent with the allegory of Genesis and the fall of
man. When God curses the first couple, He is made to curse also the earth and
everything that is on it. The New Testament gives us a Redeemer for the first
sin of mankind, which was punished for having sinned; but there is not a word
said about a Saviour who would take off the unmerited curse from the earth and
the animals, which had never sinned at all. Thus the Gnostic allegory shows a
greater sense of both justice and logic than the Christian.
In the Ophite system, Sophia,
the Androgyne Wisdom, is also the female spirit, or the Hindu female Nari
(Narayana), moving on the face of the waters -- chaos, or future matter. She
vivifies it from afar, but not touching the abyss of darkness. She is unable to
do so, for Wisdom is purely intellectual, and cannot act directly on matter.
Therefore, Sophia is obliged to address herself to her Supreme Parent; but
although life proceeds primally from the Unseen Cause, and his Ennoia, neither
of them can, any more than herself, have anything to do with the lower chaos in
which matter assumes its definite shape. Thus, Sophia is obliged to employ on
the task her imperfect emanation, Sophia-Achamoth, the latter being of a mixed
nature, half spiritual and half material.
The only difference between
the Ophite cosmogony and that of the St. John Nazarenes is a change of names.
We find equally an identical system in the Kabala, the Book of Mystery (Liber
Mysterii).* All the three systems, especially that of the kabalists and the
Nazarenes, which were the models for the Ophite Cosmogony, belong to the pure
Oriental Gnosticism. The Codex Nazaraeus opens with: "The Supreme King of
Light, Mano, the great first one,"** etc., the latter being the emanation
of Ferho -- the unknown, formless LIFE. He is the chief of the AEons, from whom
proceed (or shoot forth) five refulgent rays of Divine light. Mano is Rex
Lucis, the Bythos-Ennoia of the Ophites. "Unus est Rex Lucis in suo regno,
nec ullus qui eo altior, nullus qui ejus similitudinem retulerit, nullus qui
sublatis oculis, viderit Coronam quae in ejus capite est." He is the
Manifested Light around the highest of the three kabalistic heads, the
concealed wisdom; from him emanate the three Lives. AEbel Zivo is the revealed
Logos, Christos the "Apostle Gabriel," and the first Legate or
messenger of light. If Bythos and Ennoia are the Nazarene Mano, then the
dual-natured, the semi-spiritual, semi-material Achamoth must be Fetahil when
viewed from her spiritual aspect; and if regarded in her grosser nature, she is
the Nazarene "Spiritus."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Idra Magna."
** "Codex
Nazaraeus," part i., p. 9.
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CHRISTIANS.
Fetahil,* who is the
reflection of his father, Lord Abatur, the third life -- as the elder Sophia is
also the third emanation -- is the "newest-man." Perceiving his
fruitless attempts to create a perfect material world, the "Spiritus"
calls to one of her progeny, the Karabtanos -- Ilda-Baoth -- who is without
sense or judgment ("blind matter"), to unite himself with her to
create something definite out of this confused (turbulentos) matter, which task
she is enabled to achieve only after having produced from this union with
Karabtanos the seven stellars. Like the six sons or genii of the Gnostic
Ilda-Baoth, they then frame the material world. The same story is repeated over
again in Sophia-Achamoth. Delegated by her purely spiritual parent, the elder
Sophia, to create the world of visible forms, she descended into chaos, and,
overpowered by the emanation of matter, lost her way. Still ambitious to create
a world of matter of her own, she busied herself hovering to and fro about the
dark abyss, and imparted life and motion to the inert elements, until she
became so hopelessly entangled in matter that, like Fetahil, she is represented
sitting immersed in mud, and unable to extricate herself from it; until, by the
contact of matter itself, she produces the Creator of the material world. He is
the Demiurgus, called by the Ophites Ilda-Baoth, and, as we will directly show,
the parent of the Jewish God in the opinion of some sects, and held by others
to be the "Lord God" Himself. It is at this point of the
kabalistic-gnostic cosmogony that begins the Mosaic Bible. Having accepted the
Jewish Old Testament as their standard, no wonder that the Christians were
forced by the exceptional position in which they were placed through their own
ignorance, to make the best of it.
The first groups of
Christians, whom Renan shows numbering but from seven to twelve men in each
church, belonged unquestionably to the poorest and most ignorant classes. They
had and could have no idea of the highly philosophical doctrines of the
Platonists and Gnostics, and evidently knew as little about their own newly-made-up
religion. To these, who if Jews, had been crushed under the tyrannical dominion
of the "law," as enforced by the elders of the synagogues, and if
Pagans had been always excluded, as the lower castes are until now in India,
from the religious mysteries, the God of the Jews and the "Father"
preached by Jesus were all one. The contentions which reigned from the first
years following the death of Jesus, between the two parties, the Pauline and
the Petrine -- were deplorable. What one did, the other deemed
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Codex
Nazaraeus," i., 181. Fetahil, sent to frame the world, finds himself
immersed in the abyss of mud, and soliloquizes in dismay until the Spiritus
(Sophia-Achamoth) unites herself completely with matter, and so creates the
material world.
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a sacred duty to undo. If the
Homilies are considered apocryphal, and cannot very well be accepted as an
infallible standard by which to measure the animosity which raged between the
two apostles, we have the Bible, and the proofs afforded therein are plentiful.
So hopelessly entangled seems
Irenaeus in his fruitless endeavors to describe, to all outward appearance at
least, the true doctrines of the many Gnostic sects of which he treats and to
present them at the same time as abominable "heresies," that he either
deliberately, or through ignorance, confounds all of them in such a way that
few metaphysicians would be able to disentangle them, without the Kabala and
the Codex as the true keys. Thus, for instance, he cannot even tell the
difference between the Sethianites and the Ophites, and tells us that they
called the "God of all," "Hominem," a MAN, and his mind the
SECOND man, or the "Son of man." So does Theodoret, who lived more
than two centuries after Irenaeus, and who makes a sad mess of the
chronological order in which the various sects succeeded each other.* Neither
the Sethianites, (a branch of the Jewish Nazarenes) nor the Ophites, a purely
Greek sect, have ever held anything of the kind. Irenaeus contradicts his own
words by describing in another place the doctrines of Cerinthus, the direct
disciple of Simon Magus. He says that Cerinthus taught that the world was not
created by the FIRST GOD, but by a virtue (virtus) or power, an AEon so distant
from the First Cause that he was even ignorant of HIM who is above all things.
This AEon subjected Jesus, he begot him physically through Joseph from one who
was not a virgin, but simply the wife of that Joseph, and Jesus was born like
all other men. Viewed from this physical aspect of his nature, Jesus was called
the "son of man." It is only after his baptism, that Christos, the
anointed, descended from the Princeliness of above, in the figure of a dove,
and then announced the UNKNOWN Father through Jesus.**
If, therefore, Jesus was
physically considered as a son of man, and spiritually as the Christos, who
overshadowed him, how then could the "GOD OF ALL," the "Unknown
Father," be called by the Gnostics Homo, a MAN, and his Mind, Ennoia, the
SECOND man, or Son of man? Neither in the Oriental Kabala, nor in Gnosticism,
was the "God of all" ever anthropomorphized. It is but the first, or
rather the second emanations, for Shekinah, Sephira, Depth, and other
first-manifested female virtues are also emanations, that are termed
"primitive men." Thus Adam Kadmon, Ennoia (or Sige), the logoi in
short, are the "only-begotten" ones but not the Sons of man, which
appellation properly belongs to
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Irenaeus," 37,
and Theodoret, quoted in the same page.
** Ibid., i, xxv.
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INTO HELL."
Christos the son of Sophia
(the elder) and of the primitive man who produces him through his own vivifying
light, which emanates from the source or cause of all, hence the cause of his
light also, the "Unknown Father." There is a great difference made in
the Gnostic metaphysics between the first unrevealed Logos and the "anointed,"
who is Christos. Ennoia may be termed, as Philo understands it, the Second God,
but he alone is the "Primitive and First man," and by no means the
Second one, as Theodoret and Irenaeus have it. It is but the inveterate desire
of the latter to connect Jesus in every possible way, even in the Haeresies,
with the Highest God, that led him into so many falsifications.
Such an identification with
the Unknown God, even of Christos, the anointed -- the AEon who overshadowed
him -- let alone of the man Jesus, never entered the head of the Gnostics nor
even of the direct apostles and of Paul, whatever later forgeries may have
added.
How daring and desperate were
many such deliberate falsifications was shown in the first attempts to compare
the original manuscripts with later ones. In Bishop Horseley's edition of Sir
Isaac Newton's works, several manuscripts on theological subjects were
cautiously withheld from publication. The article known as Christ's Descent
into Hell, which is found in the later Apostles' Creed, is not to be found in
the manuscripts of either the fourth or sixth centuries. It was an evident
interpolation copied from the fables of Bacchus and Hercules and enforced upon
Christendom as an article of faith. Concerning it the author of the preface to
the Catalogue of the Manuscripts of the King's Library (preface, p. xxi.)
remarks: "I wish that the insertion of the article of Christ's Descent
into Hell into the Apostles' Creed could be as well accounted for as the
insertion of the said verse" (First Epistle of John, v. 7).*
Now, this verse reads:
"For there are three that bear record in Heaven, the Father, the Word and
the Holy Ghost; and these three are one." This verse, which has been
"appointed to be read in churches," is now known to be spurious. It
is not to be found in any Greek manuscript," save one at Berlin, which was
transcribed from some interpolated paraphrase between the lines. In the first
and second editions of Erasmus, printed in 1516 and 1519, this allusion to
these three heavenly witnesses is omitted; and the text is not contained in any
Greek manuscript which was written earlier than the fifteenth century.** It was
not
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See preface to the
"Apocryphal New Testament," London, printed for W. Hone, Ludgate
Hill, 1820.
** "It is first cited by
Virgilius Tapsensis, a Latin writer of no credit, in the latter end of the
fifth century, and by him it is suspected to have been forged."
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mentioned by either of the
Greek ecclesiastical writers nor by the early Latin fathers, so anxious to get
at every proof in support of their trinity; and it was omitted by Luther in his
German version. Edward Gibbon was early in pointing out its spurious character.
Archbishop Newcome rejected it, and the Bishop of Lincoln expresses his
conviction that it is spurious.* There are twenty-eight Greek authors --
Irenaeus, Clemens, and Athanasius included, who neither quote nor mention it;
and seventeen Latin writers, numbering among them Augustine, Jerome, Ambrosius,
Cyprian, and Pope Eusebius, who appear utterly ignorant of it. "It is
evident that if the text of the heavenly witnesses had been known from the
beginning of Christianity the ancients would have eagerly seized it, inserted
it in their creeds, quoted it repeatedly against the heretics, and selected it
for the brightest ornament of every book that they wrote upon the subject of
the Trinity."**
Thus falls to the ground the
strongest trinitarian pillar. Another not less obvious forgery is quoted from
Sir Isaac Newton's words by the editor of the Apocryphal New Testament. Newton
observes "that what the Latins have done to this text (First Epistle of
John, v.), the Greeks have done to that of St. Paul (Timothy iii. 16). For, by
changing [[o]] into [[th]], the abbreviation of [[theos]] (God), in the Alexandrian
manuscript, from which their subsequent copies were made, they now read,
"Great is the mystery of godliness, GOD manifested in the flesh";
whereas all the churches, for the first four or five centuries, and the authors
of all the ancient versions, Jerome, as well as the rest, read: "Great is
the mystery of godliness WHICH WAS manifested in the flesh." Newton adds,
that now that the disputes over this forgery are over, they that read GOD made
manifest in the flesh, instead of the godliness which was manifested in the
flesh, think this passage "one of the most obvious and pertinent texts for
the business."
And now we ask again the
question: Who were the first Christians? Those who were readily converted by
the eloquent simplicity of Paul, who promised them, with the name of Jesus,
freedom from the narrow bonds of ecclesiasticism. They understood but one
thing; they were the "children of promise" (Galatians iv. 28). The
"allegory" of the Mosaic Bible was unveiled to them; the covenant
"from the Mount Sinai which gendereth to bondage" was Agar (Ibid.,
24), the old Jewish synagogue, and she was "in bondage with her
children" to Jerusalem, the new and the free, "the mother of us
all." On the one hand the synagogue and the law which persecuted every one
who dared to step across the narrow
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Elements of
Theology," vol. ii., p. 90, note.
** Parson's "Letters to
Travis," 8vo., p. 402.
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THE SADDUCEES.
path of bigotry and dogmatism;
on the other, Paganism* with its grand philosophical truths concealed from
sight; unveiling itself but to the few, and leaving the masses hopelessly
seeking to discover who was the god, among this overcrowded pantheon of deities
and sub-deities. To others, the apostle of circumcision, supported by all his
followers, was promising, if they obeyed the "law," a life hereafter,
and a resurrection of which they had no previous idea. At the same time he
never lost an occasion to contradict Paul without naming him, but indicating
him so clearly that it is next to impossible to doubt whom Peter meant. While
he may have converted some men, who whether they had believed in the Mosaic
resurrection promised by the Pharisees, or had fallen into the nihilistic
doctrines of the Sadducees, or had belonged to the polytheistic heathenism of
the Pagan rabble, had no future after death, nothing but a mournful blank, we
do not think that the work of contradiction, carried on so systematically by
the two apostles, had helped much their work of proselytism. With the educated
thinking classes they succeeded very little, as ecclesiastical history clearly
shows. Where was the truth; where the inspired word of God? On the one hand as
we have seen, they heard the apostle Paul explaining that of the two covenants,
"which things are an allegory," the old one from Mount Sinai,
"which gendereth unto bondage," was Agar the bondwoman; and Mount
Sinai itself answered to "Jerusalem," which now is "in
bondage" with her circumcised children; and the new covenant meant Jesus
Christ -- the "Jerusalem which is above and free"; and on the other
Peter, who was contradicting and even abusing him. Paul vehemently exclaims,
"Cast out the bondwoman and her son" (the old law and the synagogue).
"The son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The term
"Paganism" is properly used by many modern writers with hesitation.
Professor Alexander Wilder, in his edition of Payne Knight's "Symbolical
Language of Ancient Art and Mythology," says: "It ('Paganism') has
degenerated into slang, and is generally employed with more or less of an
opprobrious meaning. The correcter expression would have been 'the ancient
ethnical worships,' but it would be hardly understood in its true sense, and we
accordingly have adopted the term in popular use, but not disrespectfully. A
religion which can develop a Plato, an Epictetus, and an Anaxagoras, is not
gross, superficial, or totally unworthy of candid attention. Besides, many of
the rites and doctrines included in the Christian as well as in the Jewish
Institute, appeared first in the other systems. Zoroastrianism anticipated far
more than has been imagined. The cross, the priestly robes and symbols, the
sacraments, the Sabbath, the festivals and anniversaries, are all anterior to
the Christian era by thousands of years. The ancient worship, after it had been
excluded from its former shrines, and from the metropolitan towns, was
maintained for a long time by the inhabitants of humble localities. To this
fact it owes its later designation. From being kept up in the Pagi, or rural
districts, its votaries were denominated Pagans, or provincials."
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the free woman."
"Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free;
be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. . . . Behold, I Paul say unto
you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing!" (Gal. v.
2). What do we find Peter writing? Whom does he mean by saying, "These who
speak great swelling words of vanity. . . . While they promise them liberty,
they themselves are servants of corruption, for of whom a man is overcome, of
the same is he brought in bondage. . . . For if they have escaped the pollution
of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour, they are again
entangled therein, and overcome . . . it had been better for them not to have
known the way of righteousness, than after they have known it to turn from the
holy commandment delivered unto them" (Second Epistle).
Peter certainly cannot have
meant the Gnostics, for they had never seen "the holy commandment
delivered unto them"; Paul had. They never promised any one
"liberty" from bondage, but Paul had done so repeatedly. Moreover the
latter rejects the "old covenant," Agar the bondwoman; and Peter
holds fast to it. Paul warns the people against the powers and dignities (the
lower angels of the kabalists); and Peter, as will be shown further, respects
them and denounces those who do not. Peter preaches circumcision, and Paul
forbids it.
Later, when all these
extraordinary blunders, contradictions, dissensions and inventions were
forcibly crammed into a frame elaborately executed by the episcopal caste of
the new religion, and called Christianity; and the chaotic picture itself
cunningly preserved from too close scrutiny by a whole array of formidable
Church penances and anathemas, which kept the curious back under the false
pretense of sacrilege and profanation of divine mysteries; and millions of
people had been butchered in the name of the God of mercy -- then came the
Reformation. It certainly deserves its name in its fullest paradoxical sense.
It abandoned Peter and alleges to have chosen Paul for its only leader. And the
apostle who thundered against the old law of bondage; who left full liberty to
Christians to either observe the Sabbath or set it aside; who rejects
everything anterior to John the Baptist, is now the professed standard-bearer
of Protestantism, which holds to the old law more than the Jews, imprisons
those who view the Sabbath as Jesus and Paul did, and outvies the synagogue of
the first century in dogmatic intolerance!
But who then were the first
Christians, may still be asked? Doubtless the Ebionites; and in this we follow
the authority of the best critics. "There can be little doubt that the
author (of the Clementine Homilies) was a representative of Ebionitic
Gnosticism, which had once been the
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EBIONITES.
purest form of primitive
Christianity. . . ."* And who were the Ebionites? The pupils and followers
of the early Nazarenes, the kabalistic Gnostics. In the preface to the Codex
Nazaraeus, the translator says: "That also the Nazarenes did not reject .
. . the AEons is natural. For of the Ebionites who acknowledged them (the
AEons), these were the instructors."**
We find, moreover, Epiphanius,
the Christian Homer of The Heresies, telling us that "Ebion had the
opinion of the Nazarenes, the form of the Cerinthians (who fable that the world
was put together by angels), and the appellation of Christians."*** An
appellation certainly more correctly applied to them than to the orthodox
(so-called) Christians of the school of Irenaeus and the later Vatican. Renan
shows the Ebionites numbering among their sect all the surviving relatives of
Jesus. John the Baptist, his cousin and precursor, was the accepted Saviour of
the Nazarenes, and their prophet. His disciples dwelt on the other side of the
Jordan, and the scene of the baptism of the Jordan is clearly and beyond any question
proved by the author of Sod, the Son of the Man, to have been the site of the
Adonis-worship.**** "Over the Jordan and beyond the lake dwelt the
Nazarenes, a sect said to have existed already at the birth of Jesus, and to
have counted him among its number. They must have extended along the east of
the Jordan, and southeasterly among the Arabians (Galat. i. 17, 21; ii. 11),
and Sabaeans in the direction of Bosra; and again, they must have gone far
north over the Lebanon to Antioch, also to the northeast to the Nazarian
settlement in Beroea, where St. Jerome found them. In the desert the Mysteries
of Adonis may have still prevailed; in the mountains Aiai Adonai was still a
cry."*****
"Having been united
(conjunctus) to the Nazarenes, each (Ebionite) imparted to the other out of his
own wickedness, and decided that Christ was of the seed of a man," writes
Epiphanius.
And if they did, we must
suppose they knew more about their contemporary prophet than Epiphanius 400
years later. Theodoret, as shown elsewhere, describes the Nazarenes as Jews who
"honor the Anointed as a just man," and use the evangel called
"According to Peter." Jerome finds the authentic and original
evangel, written in Hebrew, by Matthew the apostle-publican, in the library
collected at Caesarea, by the martyr Pamphilius. "I received permission
from the Nazaraeans, who at Beroea of Syria used this (gospel) to translate
it," he
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Super. Relig.,"
vol. ii., p. 5.
** Norberg: Preface to
"Cod. Naz.," p. v.
*** Epiph.: "Contra
Ebionitas."
**** See preface, from page 1
to 34.
***** Ibid., p. 7, preface.
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writes toward the end of the
fourth century.* "In the evangel which the Nazarenes and Ebionites
use," adds Jerome, "which recently I translated from Hebrew into
Greek,** and which is called by most persons the genuine Gospel of
Matthew," etc.
That the apostles had received
a "secret doctrine" from Jesus, and that he himself taught one, is
evident from the following words of Jerome, who confessed it in an unguarded
moment. Writing to the Bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, he complains that
"a difficult work is enjoined, since this translation has been commanded
me by your Felicities, which St. Matthew himself, the Apostle and Evangelist,
DID NOT WISH TO BE OPENLY WRITTEN. For if it had not been SECRET, he (Matthew)
would have added to the evangel that which he gave forth was his; but he made
up this book sealed up in the Hebrew characters, which he put forth even in
such a way that the book, written in Hebrew letters and by the hand of himself,
might be possessed by the men most religious, who also, in the course of time,
received it from those who preceded them. But this very book they never gave to
any one to be transcribed, and its text they related some one way and some
another."*** And he adds further on the same page: "And it happened
that this book, having been published by a disciple of Manichaeus, named
Seleucus, who also wrote falsely The Acts of the Apostles, exhibited matter not
for edification, but for destruction; and that this book was approved in a
synod which the ears of the Church properly refused to listen to."****
He admits, himself, that the
book which he authenticates as being written "by the hand of
Matthew"; a book which, notwithstanding that
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Hieronymus: "De
Virus.," illust., cap. 3. "It is remarkable that, while all church
fathers say that Matthew wrote in Hebrew, the whole of them use the Greek text
as the genuine apostolic writing, without mentioning what relation the Hebrew
Matthew has to our Greek one! It had many peculiar additions which are wanting
in our evangel." (Olshausen: "Nachweis der Echtheit der sammtlichen
Schriften des Neuen Test.," p. 32; Dunlap: "Sod, the Son of the
Man," p. 44.)
** Hieronymus: "Commen.
to Matthew," book ii., ch. xii., 13. Jerome adds that it was written in
the Chaldaic language, but with Hebrew letters.
*** "St. Jerome,"
v., 445; "Sod, the Son of the Man," p. 46.
**** This accounts also for
the rejection of the works of Justin Martyr, who used only this "Gospel
according to the Hebrews," as also did most probably Titian, his disciple.
At what late period was fully established the divinity of Christ we can judge
by the mere fact that even in the fourth century Eusebius did not denounce this
book as spurious, but only classed it with such as the Apocalypse of John; and
Credner ("Zur Gesch. des Kan.," p. 120) shows Nicephorus inserting
it, together with the Revelation, in his "Stichometry," among the
Antilegomena. The Ebionites, the genuine primitive Christians, rejecting the
rest of the apostolic writings, made use only of this Gospel ("Adv.
Haer." i., 26), and the Ebionites, as Epiphanius declares, firmly
believed, with the Nazarenes, that Jesus was but a man "of the seed of a
man."
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he translated it twice, was
nearly unintelligible to him, for it was arcane or a secret. Nevertheless,
Jerome coolly sets down every commentary upon it, except his own, as heretical.
More than that, Jerome knew that this original Gospel of Matthew was the
expounder of the only true doctrine of Christ; and that it was the work of an
evangelist who had been the friend and companion of Jesus. He knew that if of
the two Gospels, the Hebrew in question and the Greek belonging to our present
Scripture, one was spurious, hence heretical, it was not that of the Nazarenes;
and yet, knowing all this, Jerome becomes more zealous than ever in his
persecutions of the "Haeretics." Why? Because to accept it was
equivalent to reading the death-sentence of the established Church. The Gospel
according to the Hebrews was but too well known to have been the only one
accepted for four centuries by the Jewish Christians, the Nazarenes and the
Ebionites. And neither of the latter accepted the divinity of Christ.
If the commentaries of Jerome
on the Prophets, his famous Vulgate, and numerous polemical treatises are all
as trustworthy as this version of the Gospel according to Matthew, then we have
a divine revelation indeed.
Why wonder at the unfathomable
mysteries of the Christian religion, since it is perfectly human? Have we not a
letter written by one of the most respected Fathers of the Church to this same
Jerome, which shows better than whole volumes their traditionary policy? This
is what Saint Gregory of Nazianzen wrote to his friend and confidant Saint
Jerome: "Nothing can impose better on a people than verbiage; the less
they understand the more they admire. Our fathers and doctors have often said,
not what they thought, but what circumstances and necessity forced them
to."
But to return to our
Sophia-Achamoth and the belief of the genuine, primitive Christians.
After having produced
Ilda-Baoth, Ilda from [[Gk char]], a child, and Baoth from [[Gk char]], the
egg, or [[Gk char]], Baoth, a waste, a desolation, Sophia-Achamoth suffered so
much from the contact with matter, that after extraordinary struggles she
escapes at last out of the muddy chaos. Although unacquainted with the pleroma,
the region of her mother, she reached the middle space and succeeded in shaking
off the material parts which have stuck to her spiritual nature; after which
she immediately built a strong barrier between the world of intelligences
(spirits) and the world of matter. Ilda-Baoth, is thus the "son of
darkness," the creator of our sinful world (the physical portion of it).
He follows the example of Bythos and produces from himself six stellar spirits
(sons). They are all in his own image, and reflections one of the other, which
become darker
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as they successively recede
from their father. With the latter, they all inhabit seven regions disposed
like a ladder, beginning under the middle space, the region of their mother, Sophia-Achamoth,
and ending with our earth, the seventh region. Thus they are the genii of the
seven planetary spheres of which the lowest is the region of our earth (the
sphere which surrounds it, our aether). The respective names of these genii of
the spheres are Iove (Jehovah), Sabaoth, Adonai, Eloi, Ouraios, Astaphaios.*
The first four, as every one knows, are the mystic names of the Jewish
"Lord God,"** he being, as C. W. King expresses it, "thus
degraded by the Ophites into the appellations of the subordinates of the
Creator; the two last names are those of the genii of fire and water."
Ilda-Baoth, whom several sects
regarded as the God of Moses, was not a pure spirit; he was ambitious and
proud, and rejecting the spiritual light of the middle space offered him by his
mother Sophia-Achamoth, he set himself to create a world of his own. Aided by
his sons, the six planetary genii, he fabricated man, but this one proved a
failure. It was a monster; soulless, ignorant, and crawling on all fours on the
ground like a material beast. Ilda-Baoth was forced to implore the help of his
spiritual mother. She communicated to him a ray of her divine light, and so
animated man and endowed him with a soul. And now began the animosity of
Ilda-Baoth toward his own creature. Following the impulse of the divine light,
man soared higher and higher in his aspirations; very soon he began presenting
not the image of his Creator Ilda-Baoth but rather that of the Supreme Being,
the "primitive man," Ennoia. Then the Derniurgus was filled with rage
and envy; and fixing his jealous eye on the abyss of matter, his looks
envenomed with passion were suddenly reflected in it as in a mirror; the
reflection became animate, and there arose out of the abyss Satan, serpent,
Ophiomorphos -- "the embodiment of envy and of cunning. He is the union of
all that is most base in matter, with the hate, envy, and craft of a spiritual
intelligence."***
After that, always in spite at
the perfection of man, Ilda-Baoth created the three kingdoms of nature, the
mineral, vegetable, and animal, with all evil instincts and properties.
Impotent to annihilate the Tree of Knowledge, which grows in his sphere as in
every one of the planetary regions, but bent upon detaching "man"
from his spiritual protectress, Ilda-Baoth forbade him to eat of its fruit, for
fear it should reveal to mankind
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See King's
"Gnostics," p. 31.
** This Iove, Iao, or Jehovah
is quite distinct from the God of the Mysteries, IAO, held sacred by all the
nations of antiquity. We will show the difference presently.
*** King's
"Gnostics."
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ILDA-BAOTH.
the mysteries of the superior
world. But Sophia-Achamoth, who loved and protected the man whom she had
animated, sent her own genius Ophis, in the form of a serpent to induce man to
transgress the selfish and unjust command. And "man" suddenly became
capable of comprehending the mysteries of creation.
Ilda-Baoth revenged himself by
punishing the first pair, for man, through his knowledge, had already provided
for himself a companion out of his spiritual and material half. He imprisoned
man and woman in a dungeon of matter, in the body so unworthy of his nature,
wherein man is still enthralled. But Achamoth protected him still. She
established between her celestial region and "man," a current of
divine light, and kept constantly supplying him with this spiritual
illumination.
Then follow allegories
embodying the idea of dualism, or the struggle between good and evil, spirit
and matter, which is found in every cosmoogony, and the source of which is
again to be sought in India. The types and antitypes represent the heroes of
this Gnostic Pantheon, borrowed from the most ancient mythopoeic ages. But, in
these personages, Ophis and Ophiomorphos, Sophia and Sophia-Achamoth,
Adam-Kadmon, and Adam, the planetary genii and the divine AEons, we can also
recognize very easily the models of our biblical copies -- the euhemerized
patriarchs. The archangels, angels, virtues and powers, are all found, under
other names, in the Vedas and the Buddhistic system. The Avestic Supreme Being,
Zero-ana, or "Boundless Time," is the type of all these Gnostic and
kabalistic "Depths," "Crowns," and even of the Chaldean
En-Soph. The six Amshaspands, created through the "Word" of Ormazd,
the "First-Born," have their reflections in Bythos and his emanations,
and the antitype of Ormazd -- Ahriman and his devs also enter into the
composition of Ilda-Baoth and his six material, though not wholly evil,
planetary genii.
Achamoth, afflicted with the
evils which befall humanity, notwithstanding her protection, beseeches the
celestial mother Sophia -- her antitype-- to prevail on the unknown DEPTH to
send down Christos (the son and emanation of the "Celestial Virgin")
to the help of perishing humanity. Ilda-Baoth and his six sons of matter are
shutting out the divine light from mankind. Man must be saved. Ilda-Baoth had
already sent his own agent, John the Baptist, from the race of Seth, whom he
protects -- as a prophet to his people; but only a small portion listened to
him -- the Nazarenes, the opponents of the Jews, on account of their
worshipping Iurbo-Adunai.* Achamoth had assured her son, Ilda-Baoth, that the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Iurbo and Adunai, according
to the Ophites, are names of Iao-Jehovah, one of the emanations of Ilda-Baoth.
"Iurbo is called by the Abortions (the Jews) Adunai" ("Codex
Nazaraeus," vol. iii., p. 73).
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reign of Christos would be
only temporal, and thus induced him to send the forerunner, or precursor.
Besides that, she made him cause the birth of the man Jesus from the Virgin
Mary, her own type on earth, "for the creation of a material personage
could only be the work of the Demiurgus, not falling within the province of a
higher power. As soon as Jesus was born, Christos, the perfect, uniting himself
with Sophia (wisdom and spirituality), descended through the seven planetary
regions, assuming in each an analogous form, and concealing his true nature
from their genii, while he attracted into himself the sparks of divine light
which they retained in their essence. Thus, Christos entered into the man Jesus
at the moment of his baptism in the Jordan. From that time Jesus began to work
miracles; before that, he had been completely ignorant of his mission."*
Ilda-Baoth, discovering that
Christos was bringing to an end his own kingdom of matter, stirred up the Jews
against him, and Jesus was put to death.** When on the Cross, Christos and
Sophia left his body and returned to their own sphere. The material body of the
man Jesus was abandoned to the earth, but he himself was given a body made up
of aether (astral soul). "Thenceforward he consisted of merely soul and
spirit, which was the reason why the disciples did not recognize him after the
resurrection. In this spiritual state of a simulacrum, Jesus remained on earth
for eighteen months after he had risen. During this last sojourn, he received
from Sophia that perfect knowledge, that true Gnosis, which he communicated to
the very few among the apostles who were capable of receiving the same."
"Thence, ascending up into
the middle space, he sits on the right hand of Ilda-Baoth, but unperceived by
him, and there collects all the souls which shall have been purified by the
knowledge of Christ. When he has collected all the spiritual light that exists
in matter, out of Ilda-Baoth's empire, the redemption will be accomplished and
the world will be destroyed. Such is the meaning of the re-absorption of all
the spiritual light into the pleroma or fulness, whence it originally
descended."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* King: "The Gnostics and
their Remains," p. 31.
** In the "Gospel of
Nicodemus," Ilda-Baoth is called Satan by the pious and anonymous author;
-- evidently, one of the final flings at the half-crushed enemy. "As for
me," says Satan, excusing himself to the prince of hell, "I tempted
him (Jesus), and stirred up my old people, the Jews, against him" (chap.
xv. 9). Of all examples of Christian ingratitude this seems almost the most
conspicuous. The poor Jews are first robbed of their sacred books, and then, in
a spurious "Gospel," are insulted by the representation of Satan
claiming them as his "old people." If they were his people, and at
the same time are "God's chosen people," then the name of this God
must be written Satan and not Jehovah. This is logic, but we doubt if it can be
regarded as complimentary to the "Lord God of Israel."
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THEOGONY.
The foregoing is from the
description given by Theodoret and adopted by King in his Gnostics, with
additions from Epiphanius and Irenaeus. But the former gives a very imperfect
version, concocted partly from the descriptions of Irenaeus, and partly from
his own knowledge of the later Ophites, who, toward the end of the third
century, had blended already with several other sects. Irenaeus also confounds
them very frequently, and the real theogony of the Ophites is given by none of
them correctly. With the exception of a change in names, the above-given
theogony is that of all the Gnostics, and also of the Nazarenes. Ophis is but
the successor of the Egyptian Chnuphis, the Good Serpent with a lion's
radiating head, and was held from days of the highest antiquity as an emblem of
wisdom, or Thauth, the instructor and Saviour of humanity, the "Son of
God." "Oh men, live soberly . . . win your immortality" exclaims
Hermes, the thrice-great Trismegistus. "Instructor and guide of humanity,
I will lead you on to salvation." Thus the oldest sectarians regarded
Ophis, the Agathodaemon, as identical with Christos; the serpent being the
emblem of celestial wisdom and eternity, and, in the present case, the antitype
of the Egyptian Chnuphis-serpent. These Gnostics, the earliest of our Christian
era, held: "That the supreme AEon, having emitted other AEons out of
himself, one of them, a female, Prunnikos (concupiscence), descended into the
chaos, whence, unable to escape, she remained suspended in the mid-space, being
too clogged by matter to return above, and not falling lower where there was
nothing in affinity with her nature. She then produced her son Ilda-Baoth, the
God of the Jews, who, in his turn, produced seven AEons, or angels,* who
created the seven heavens."
In this plurality of heavens
the Christians believed from the first, for we find Paul teaching of their
existence, and speaking of a man "caught up to the third heaven" (2
Corin., xiii.). "From these seven angels Ilda-Baoth shut up all that was
above him, lest they should know of anything superior to himself.** They then
created man in the image of their Father,*** but prone and crawling on the
earth like a worm. But the heavenly mother, Prunnikos, wishing to deprive Ilda-Baoth
of the power
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This is the Nazarene system;
the Spiritus, after uniting herself with Karabtanos (matter, turbulent and
senseless), brings forth seven badly-disposed stellars, in the Orcus;
"Seven Figures," which she bore "witless" ("Codex
Nazaraeus," i., p. 118). Justin Martyr evidently adopts this idea, for he
tells us of "the sacred prophets, who say that one and the same spirit is
divided into seven spirits" (pneumata). "Justin ad Graecos";
"Sod," vol. ii., p. 52. In the Apocalypse the Holy Spirit is
subdivided into "seven spirits before the throne," from the Persian
Mithraic mode of classifying.
** This certainly looks like
the "jealous God" of the Jews.
*** It is the Elohim (plural)
who create Adam, and do not wish man to become "as one of US."
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with which she had unwittingly
endowed him, infused into man a celestial spark -- the spirit. Immediately man
rose upon his feet, soared in mind beyond the limits of the seven spheres, and
glorified the Supreme Father, Him that is above Ilda-Baoth. Hence, the latter,
full of jealousy, cast down his eyes upon the lowest stratum of matter, and
begot a potency in the form of a serpent, whom they (the Ophites) call his son.
Eve, obeying him as the son of God, was persuaded to eat of the Tree of
Knowledge.* It is a self-evident fact that the serpent of the Genesis, who
appears suddenly and without any preliminary introduction, must have been the
antitype of the Persian Arch-Devs, whose head is Ash-Mogh, the "two-footed
serpent of lies." If the Bible-serpent had been deprived of his limbs
before he had tempted woman unto sin, why should God specify as a punishment
that he should go "upon his belly"? Nobody supposes that he walked
upon the extremity of his tail.
This controversy about the
supremacy of Jehovah, between the Presbyters and Fathers on the one hand, and
the Gnostics, the Nazarenes, and all the sects declared heterodox, as a last
resort, on the other, lasted till the days of Constantine, and later. That the
peculiar ideas of the Gnostics about the genealogy of Jehovah, or the proper
place that had to be assigned, in the Christian-Gnostic Pantheon, to the God of
the Jews, were at first deemed neither blasphemous nor heterodox is evident in
the difference of opinions held on this question by Clemens of Alexandria, for
instance, and Tertullian. The former, who seems to have known of Basilides
better than anybody else, saw nothing heterodox or blamable in the mystical and
transcendental views of the new Reformer. "In his eyes," remarks the
author of The Gnostics, speaking of Clemens, "Basilides was not a heretic,
i.e., an innovator as regards the doctrines of the Christian Church, but a mere
theosophic philosopher, who sought to express ancient truths under new forms,
and perhaps to combine them with the new faith, the truth of which he could
admit without necessarily renouncing the old, exactly as is the case with the
learned Hindus of our day."**
Not so with Irenaeus and
Tertullian.*** The principal works of the latter against the Heretics, were
written after his separation from the Catholic Church, when he had ranged
himself among the zealous followers of Montanus; and teem with unfairness and
bigoted prejudice.****
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Theodoret:
"Haeret."; King's "Gnostics."
** "Gnostics and their
Remains," p. 78.
*** Some persons hold that he
was Bishop of Rome; others, of Carthage.
**** His polemical work
addressed against the so-called orthodox Church -- the Catholic --
notwithstanding its bitterness and usual style of vituperation, is far more
fair, considering that the "great African" is said to have been
expelled from the Church of
[[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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BASILIDES.
He has exaggerated every
Gnostic opinion to a monstrous absurdity, and his arguments are not based on
coercive reasoning but simply on the blind stubbornness of a partisan fanatic.
Discussing Basilides, the "pious, god-like, theosophic philosopher,"
as Clemens of Alexandria thought him, Tertullian exclaims: "After this,
Basilides, the heretic, broke loose.* He asserted that there is a Supreme God,
by name Abraxas, by whom Mind was created, whom the Greeks call Nous. From her
emanated the Word; from the Word, Providence; from Providence, Virtue and
Wisdom; from these two again, Virtues, Principalities,** and Powers were made;
thence infinite productions and emissions of angels. Among the lowest angels,
indeed, and those that made this world, he sets last of all the god of the
Jews, whom he denies to be God himself, affirming that he is but one of the
angels."***
It would be equally useless to
refer to the direct apostles of Christ, and show them as holding in their
controversies that Jesus never made any difference between his
"Father" and the "Lord-God" of Moses. For the Clementine
Homilies, in which occur the greatest argumentations upon the subject, as shown
in the disputations alleged to have taken place between Peter and Simon the
Magician, are now also proved to have been falsely attributed to Clement the
Roman. This work, if written by an Ebionite -- as the author of Supernatural
Religion declares in common with some other commentators**** -- must have been
written either far later than the Pauline period, generally assigned to it, or
the dispute
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] Rome. If we believe St. Jerome, it is but the envy and the
unmerited calumnies of the early Roman clergy against Tertullian which forced
him to renounce the Catholic Church and become a Montanist. However, were the
unlimited admiration of St. Cyprian, who terms Tertullian "The
Master," and his estimate of him merited, we would see less error and
paganism in the Church of Rome. The expression of Vincent of Lerius, "that
every word of Tertullian was a sentence, and every sentence a triumph over
error," does not seem very happy when we think of the respect paid to
Tertullian by the Church of Rome, notwithstanding his partial apostasy and the
errors in which the latter still abides and has even enforced upon the world as
infallible dogmas.
* Were not the views of the
Phrygian Bishop Montanus, also deemed a HERESY by the Church of Rome? It is
quite extraordinary to see how easily the Vatican encourages the abuse of one
heretic Tertullian, against another heretic Basilides, when the abuse happens
to further her own object.
** Does not Paul himself speak
of "Principalities and Powers in heavenly places" (Ephesians iii. 10;
i. 21), and confess that there be gods many and Lords many (Kurioi)? And
angels, powers (Dunameis), and Principalities? (See 1 Corinthians, viii. 5; and
Epistle to Romans, viii. 38.)
*** Tertullian:
"Praescript."
**** Baur; Credner;
Hilgenfeld; Kirchhofer; Lechler; Nicolas; Ritschl; Schwegler; Westcott, and
Zeller; see "Supernatural Religion," vol. ii., p. 2.
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about the identity of Jehovah
with God, the "Father of Jesus," have been distorted by later
interpolations. This disputation is in its very essence antagonistic to the
early doctrines of the Ebionites. The latter, as demonstrated by Epiphanius and
Theodoret, were the direct followers of the Nazarene sect* (the Sabians), the
"Disciples of John." He says, unequivocally, that the Ebionites
believed in the AEons (emanations), that the Nazarenes were their instructors,
and that "each imparted to the other out of his own wickedness."
Therefore, holding the same beliefs as the Nazarenes did, an Ebionite would not
have given even so much chance to the doctrine supported by Peter in the
Homilies. The old Nazarenes, as well as the later ones, whose views are
embodied in the Codex Nazaraseus, never called Jehovah otherwise than Adonai,
Iurbo, the God of the Abortive** (the orthodox Jews). They kept their beliefs
and religious tenets so secret that even Epiphanius, writing as early as the
end of the fourth century,*** confesses his ignorance as to their real
doctrine. "Dropping the name of Jesus," says the Bishop of Salamis,
"they neither call themselves Iessaens, nor continue to hold the name of
the Jews, nor name themselves Christians, but Nazarenes . . . The resurrection
of the dead is confessed by them . . . but concerning Christ, I cannot say
whether they think him a mere man, or as the truth is, confess that he was born
through the Holy Pneuma from the Virgin."****
While Simon Magus argues in
the Homilies from the standpoint of every Gnostic (Nazarenes and Ebionites
included), Peter, as a true apostle of circumcision, holds to the old Law and,
as a matter of course, seeks to blend his belief in the divinity of Christ with
his old Faith in the "Lord God" and ex-protector of the "chosen
people." As the author of Supernatural Religion shows, the Epitome,*****
"a blending of the other two, probably intended to purge them from
heretical doctrine"****** and, together with a great majority of critics,
assigns to the Homilies, a date not earlier than the end of the third century,
we may well infer that they must differ widely with their original, if there
ever was one. Simon the Magician proves throughout the whole work that the
Demiurgus,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Epiphanius: "Contra
Ebionitas."
** The Ophites, for instance,
made of Adonai the third son of Ilda-Baoth, a malignant genius, and, like his
other five brothers, a constant enemy and adversary of man, whose divine and
immortal spirit gave man the means of becoming the rival of these genii.
*** The Bishop of Salamis died
A. D. 403.
**** "Epiphanius,"
i., 122, 123.
***** The
"Clementines" are composed of three parts -- to wit: the Homilies,
the Recognitions, and an Epitome.
****** "Supernatural
Religion," vol. ii., p. 2.
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ESOTERICALLY.
the Architect of the World, is
not the highest Deity; and he bases his assertions upon the words of Jesus
himself, who states repeatedly that "no man knew the Father." Peter
is made in the Homilies to repudiate, with a great show of indignation, the
assertion that the Patriarchs were not deemed worthy to know the Father; to
which Simon objects again by quoting the words of Jesus, who thanks the
"Lord of Heaven and earth that what was concealed from the wise" he
has "revealed to babes," proving very logically that according to
these very words the Patriarchs could not have known the "Father." Then
Peter argues, in his turn, that the expression, "what is concealed from
the wise," etc., referred to the concealed mysteries of the creation.*
This argumentation of Peter,
therefore, had it even emanated from the apostle himself, instead of being a
"religious romance," as the author of Supernatural Religion calls it,
would prove nothing whatever in favor of the identity of the God of the Jews,
with the "Father" of Jesus. At best it would only demonstrate that
Peter had remained from first to last "an apostle of circumcision," a
Jew faithful to his old law, and a defender of the Old Testament. This
conversation proves, moreover, the weakness of the cause he defends, for we see
in the apostle a man who, although in most intimate relations with Jesus, can
furnish us nothing in the way of direct proof that he ever thought of teaching
that the all-wise and all-good Paternity he preached was the morose and
revengeful thunderer of Mount Sinai. But what the Homilies do prove, is again
our assertion that there was a secret doctrine preached by Jesus to the few who
were deemed worthy to become its recipients and custodians. "And Peter
said: 'We remember that our Lord and teacher, as commanding, said to us, guard
the mysteries for me, and the sons of my house. Wherefore also he explained to
his disciples, privately, the mysteries of the kingdoms of the heavens.'
"**
If we now recall the fact that
a portion of the Mysteries of the "Pagans" consisted of the
aporrheta, or secret discourses; that the secret Logia or discourses of Jesus
contained in the original Gospel according to Matthew, the meaning and
interpretation of which St. Jerome confessed to be "a difficult task"
for him to achieve, were of the same nature; and if we remember, further, that
to some of the interior or final Mysteries only a very select few were
admitted; and that finally it was from the number of the latter that were taken
all the ministers of the holy "Pagan" rites, we will then clearly
understand this expression of Jesus quoted by Peter: "Guard the Mysteries for
me and the sons of my
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Homilies,"
xviii., 1-15.
** "Clementine
Homilies"; "Supernatural Religion," vol. ii.
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house," i.e., of my
doctrine. And, if we understand it rightly, we cannot avoid thinking that this
"secret" doctrine of Jesus, even the technical expressions of which
are but so many duplications of the Gnostic and Neo-platonic mystic phraseology
-- that this doctrine, we say, was based on the same transcendental philosophy
of Oriental Gnosis as the rest of the religions of those and earliest days.
That none of the later Christian sects, despite their boasting, were the
inheritors of it, is evident from the contradictions, blunders, and clumsy
repatching of the mistakes of every preceding century by the discoveries of the
succeeding one. These mistakes, in a number of manuscripts claimed to be
authentic, are sometimes so ridiculous as to bear on their face the evidence of
being pious forgeries. Thus, for instance, the utter ignorance of some
patristic champions of the very gospels they claimed to defend. We have
mentioned the accusation against Marcion by Tertullian and Epiphanius of
mutilating the Gospel ascribed to Luke, and erasing from it that which is now
proved to have never been in that Gospel at all. Finally, the method adopted by
Jesus of speaking in parables, in which he only followed the example of his
sect, is attributed in the Homilies to a prophecy of Isaiah! Peter is made to
remark: "For Isaiah said: 'I will open my mouth in parables, and I will
utter things that have been kept secret from the foundation of the world.'
" This erroneous reference to Isaiah of a sentence given in Psalms
lxxviii. 2, is found not only in the apocryphal Homilies, but also in the
Sinaitic Codex. Commenting on the fact in the Supernatural Religion, the author
states that "Porphyry, in the third century, twitted Christians with this
erroneous ascription by their inspired evangelist to Isaiah of a passage from a
Psalm, and reduced the Fathers to great straits."* Eusebius and Jerome
tried to get out of the difficulty by ascribing the mistake to an
"ignorant scribe"; and Jerome even went to the length of asserting
that the name of Isaiah never stood after the above sentence in any of the old
codices, but that the name of Asaph was found in its place, only "ignorant
men had removed it."** To this, the author again observes that "the
fact is that the reading 'Asaph' for 'Isaiah' is not found in any manuscript
extant; and, although 'Isaiah' has disappeared from all but a few obscure
codices, it cannot be denied that the name anciently stood in the text. In the
Sinaitic Codex, which is probably the earliest manuscript extant . . . and
which is assigned to the fourth century," he adds, "the prophet
Isaiah stands in the text by the first hand, but is erased by the second."**
It is a most suggestive fact
that there is not a word in the so-called
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Supernatural
Religion," p. 11.
** Hieron.: "Opp.,"
vii., p. 270, ff.; "Supernatural Religion," p. 11.
*** Ibid.
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GOD.
sacred Scriptures to show that
Jesus was actually regarded as a God by his disciples. Neither before nor after
his death did they pay him divine honors. Their relation to him was only that
of disciples and "master"; by which name they addressed him, as the
followers of Pythagoras and Plato addressed their respective masters before
them. Whatever words may have been put into the mouths of Jesus, Peter, John,
Paul, and others, there is not a single act of adoration recorded on their
part, nor did Jesus himself ever declare his identity with his Father. He
accused the Pharisees of stoning their prophets, not of deicide. He termed
himself the son of God, but took care to assert repeatedly that they were all
the children of God, who was the Heavenly Father of all. In preaching this, he
but repeated a doctrine taught ages earlier by Hermes, Plato, and other
philosophers. Strange contradiction! Jesus, whom we are asked to worship as the
one living God, is found, immediately after his Resurrection, saying to Mary
Magdalene: "I am not yet ascended to my Father; but go to my brethren, and
say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your
God!" (John xx. 17.)
Does this look like
identifying himself with his Father? "My Father and your Father, my God
and your God," implies, on his part, a desire to be considered on a
perfect equality with his brethren -- nothing more. Theodoret writes: "The
haeretics agree with us respecting the beginning of all things. . . . But they
say there is not one Christ (God), but one above, and the other below. And this
last formerly dwelt in many; but the Jesus, they at one time say is from God,
at another they call him a SPIRIT."* This spirit is the Christos, the
messenger of life, who is sometimes called the Angel Gabriel (in Hebrew, the
mighty one of God), and who took with the Gnostics the place of the Logos,
while the Holy Spirit was considered Life.** With the sect of the Nazarenes,
though, the Spiritus, or Holy Ghost, had less honor. While nearly every Gnostic
sect considered it a Female Power, whether they called it Binah, [[Heb char]],
Sophia, the Divine Intellect, with the Nazarene sect it was the Female
Spiritus, the astral light, the genetrix of all things of matter, the chaos in
its evil aspect, made turbido by the Demiurge. At the creation of man, "it
was light on the side of the FATHER, and it was light (material light) on the
side of the MOTHER. And this is the 'two-fold man,' "*** says the Sohar.
"That day (the last one) will perish the seven badly-disposed stellars,
also the sons of man, who have confessed the Spiritus, the Messias (false), the
Deus, and the MOTHER of the SPIRITUS shall perish." ****
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Theodoret: "Haeret.
Fab.," ii., vii.
** See "Irenaeus,"
I., xii., p. 86.
*** "Auszuge aus dem Sohar,"
p. 12.
**** "Cod. Naz.,"
vol. ii., p. 149.
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Jesus enforced and illustrated
his doctrines with signs and wonders; and if we lay aside the claims advanced
on his behalf by his deifiers, he did but what other kabalists did; and only
they at that epoch, when, for two centuries the sources of prophecy had been
completely dried up, and from this stagnation of public "miracles"
had originated the skepticism of the unbelieving sect of the Sadducees.
Describing the "heresies" of those days, Theodoret, who has no idea
of the hidden meaning of the word Christos, the anointed messenger, complains
that they (the Gnostics) assert that this Messenger or Delegatus changes his
body from time to time, "and goes into other bodies, and at each time is
differently Manifested. And these (the overshadowed prophets) use incantations
and invocations of various demons and baptisms in the confession of their
principles. . . . They embrace astrology and magic, and the mathematical
error," (?) he says.*
This "mathematical
error," of which the pious writer complains, led subsequently to the
rediscovery of the heliocentric system, erroneous as it may still be, and
forgotten since the days of another "magician" who taught it --
Pythagoras. Thus, the wonders of healing and the thaums of Jesus, which he
imparted to his followers, show that they were learning, in their daily
communication with him, the theory and practice of the new ethics, day by day,
and in the familiar intercourse of intimate friendship. Their faith was
progressively developed, like that of all neophytes, simultaneously with the
increase of knowledge. We must bear in mind that Josephus, who certainly must
have been well-informed on the subject, calls the skill of expelling demons
"a science." This growth of faith is conspicuously shown in the case
of Peter, who, from having lacked enough faith to support him while he could
walk on the water from the boat to his Master, at last became so expert a
thaumaturgist, that Simon Magus is said to have offered him money to teach him
the secret of healing, and other wonders. And Philip is shown to have become an
AEthrobat as good as Abaris of Pythagorean memory, but less expert than Simon
Magus.
Neither in the Homilies nor
any other early work of the apostles, is there anything to show that either of
his friends and followers regarded Jesus as anything more than a prophet. The
idea is as clearly established in the Clementines. Except that too much room is
afforded to Peter to establish the identity of the Mosaic God with the Father
of Jesus, the whole work is devoted to Monotheism. The author seems as bitter
against Polytheism as against the claim to the divinity of Christ.** He seems
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Theodoret: "Haeret.
Fab.," ii., vii.
** "Homilies," xvi.,
15 ff.; ii., 12; iii., 57-59; x., 19. Schliemann: "Die Clementinem,"
p. 134 ff; "Supernatural Religion," vol. ii., p. 349.
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INSPIRATION.
to be utterly ignorant of the
Logos, and his speculation is confined to Sophia, the Gnostic wisdom. There is
no trace in it of a hypostatic trinity, but the same overshadowing of the
Gnostic "wisdom (Christos and Sophia) is attributed in the case of Jesus
as it is in those of Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses.*
These personages are all placed on one level, and called 'true prophets,' and
the seven pillars of the world." More than that, Peter vehemently denies
the fall of Adam, and with him, the doctrine of atonement, as taught by
Christian theology, utterly falls to the ground, for he combats it as a
blasphemy.** Peter's theory of sin is that of the Jewish kabalists, and even,
in a certain way, Platonic. Adam not only never sinned, but, "as a true
prophet, possessed of the Spirit of God, which afterwards was in Jesus, could
not sin."*** In short, the whole of the work exhibits the belief of the
author in the kabalistic doctrine of permutation. The Kabala teaches the doctrine
of transmigration of the spirit.**** "Mosah is the revolutio of Seth and
Hebel."*****
"Tell me who it is who
brings about the re-birth (the revolutio)?" is asked of the wise Hermes.
"God's Son, the only man, through the will of God," is the answer of
the "heathen."******
"God's son" is the
immortal spirit assigned to every human being. It is this divine entity which
is the "only man," for the casket which contains our soul, and the
soul itself, are but half-entities, and without its overshadowing both body and
astral soul, the two are but an animal duad. It requires a trinity to form the
complete "man," and allow him to remain immortal at every
"re-birth," or revolutio, throughout the subsequent and ascending
spheres, every one of which brings him nearer to the refulgent realm of eternal
and absolute light.
"God's FIRST-BORN, who is
the 'holy Veil,' the 'Light of Lights,' it is he who sends the revolutio of the
Delegatus, for he is the First Power," says the kabalist.*******
"The pneuma (spirit) and
the dunamis (power), which is from the God, it is right to consider nothing
else than the Logos, who is also (?) First-begotten to the God," argues a
Christian.*****
"Angels and powers are in
heaven!" says Justin, thus bringing forth a purely kabalistic doctrine.
The Christians adopted it from the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Homilies," iii.,
20 f; ii., 16-18, etc.
** Ibid., iii., 20 ff.
*** Schliemann: "Die
Clementinem," pp. 130-176; quoted also in "Supernatural
Religion," p. 342.
**** We will speak of this
doctrine further on.
***** "Kabbala
Denudata," vol. ii., p. 155; "Vallis Regia."
****** "Hermes," X.,
iv., 21-23.
******* Idra Magna:
"Kabbala Denudata."
******** Justin Martyr:
"Apol.," vol. ii., p. 74.
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Sohar and the heretical sects,
and if Jesus mentioned them, it was not in the official synagogues that he
learned the theory, but directly in the kabalistic teachings. In the Mosaic
books, very little mention is made of them, and Moses, who holds direct
communications with the "Lord God," troubles himself very little
about them. The doctrine was a secret one, and deemed by the orthodox synagogue
heretical. Josephus calls the Essenes heretics, saying: "Those admitted
among the Essenes must swear to communicate their doctrines to no one any
otherwise than as he received them himself, and equally to preserve the books
belonging to their sect, and the names of the angels.* The Sadducees did not
believe in angels, neither did the uninitiated Gentiles, who limited their
Olympus to gods and demi-gods, or "spirits." Alone, the kabalists and
theurgists hold to that doctrine from time immemorial, and, as a consequence,
Plato, and Philo Judaeus after him, followed first by the Gnostics, and then by
the Christians.
Thus, if Josephus never wrote
the famous interpolation forged by Eusebius, concerning Jesus, on the other hand,
he has described in the Essenes all the principal features that we find
prominent in the Nazarene. When praying, they sought solitude.** "When
thou prayest, enter into thy closet . . . and pray to thy Father which is in
secret" (Matthew vi. 6). "Everything spoken by them (Essenes) is
stronger than an oath. Swearing is shunned by them" (Josephus II., viii.,
6). "But I say unto you, swear not at all . . . but let your communication
be yea, yea; nay, nay" (Matthew v. 34-37).
The Nazarenes, as well as the Essenes
and the Therapeutae, believed more in their own interpretations of the
"hidden sense" of the more ancient Scriptures, than in the later laws
of Moses. Jesus, as we have shown before, felt but little veneration for the
commandments of his predecessor, with whom Irenaeus is so anxious to connect
him.
The Essenes "enter into
the houses of those whom they never saw previously, as if they were their
intimate friends" (Josephus II., viii., 4). Such was undeniably the custom
of Jesus and his disciples.
Epiphanius, who places the
Ebionite "heresy" on one level with that of the Nazarenes, also
remarks that the Nazaraioi come next to the Cerinthians,*** so much vituperated
against by Irenaeus.****
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Josephus: "Wars,"
II., chap. 8, sec. 7.
** See Josephus; Philo; Munk
(35). Eusebius mentions their semneion, where they perform the mysteries of a
retired life ("Ecclesiastic History," lib. ii., ch. 17).
*** "Epiphanius,"
ed. Petau, i., p. 117.
**** Cerinthus is the same
Gnostic -- a contemporary of John the Evangelist -- of whom Ireraeus invented
the following anecdote: "There are those who heard him (Polycarp) say that
John, the disciple of the Lord, going to bathe at Ephesus, and
[[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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NABATHEANS.
Munk, in his work on
Palestine, affirms that there were 4,000 Essenes living in the desert; that
they had their mystical books, and predicted the future.* The Nabatheans, with
very little difference indeed, adhered to the same belief as the Nazarenes and
the Sabeans, and all of them honored John the Baptist more than his successor
Jesus. The Persian Iezidi say that they originally came to Syria from Busrah.
They use baptism, and believe in seven archangels, though paying at the same
time reverence to Satan. Their prophet Iezed, who flourished long prior to
Mahomet,** taught that God will send a messenger, and that the latter would
reveal to him a book which is already written in heaven from the eternity.***
The Nabatheans inhabited the Lebanon, as their descendants do to the present
day, and their religion was from its origin purely kabalistic. Maimonides
speaks of them as if he identified them with the Sabeans. "I will mention
to thee the writings . . . respecting the belief and institutions of the
Sabeans," he says. "The most famous is the book The Agriculture of
the Nabathaeans, which has been translated by Ibn Waho-hijah. This book is full
of heathenish foolishness. . . . It speaks of the preparations of TALISMANS,
the drawing down of the powers of the SPIRITS, MAGIC, DEMONS, and ghouls, which
make their abode in the desert."**** There are traditions among the tribes
living scattered about beyond the Jordan, as there are many such also among the
descendants of the Samaritans at Damascus, Gaza, and at Naplosa (the ancient
Shechem). Many of these tribes have, notwithstanding the persecutions of
eighteen centuries, retained the faith of their fathers in its primitive
simplicity. It is there that we have to go for traditions based on historical
truths, however disfigured by exaggeration and inaccuracy, and compare them
with the religious legends of the Fathers, which they call revelation. Eusebius
states that before the siege of Jerusalem the small Christian community --
comprising members of whom many, if not all, knew Jesus and his apostles personally
-- took refuge in the little town of Pella, on the opposite shore of the
Jordan. Surely these simple people, separated for centuries from the rest of
the world, ought to have preserved their traditions fresher than any other
nations! It is in Palestine that we have to search for the clearest waters of
Christianity, let alone its source. The first Christians, after the death of
Jesus, all joined together for a time, whether
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] perceiving Cerinthus within, rushed forth from the bath-house .
. . crying out, 'Let us fly, lest the bath-house fall down, Cerinthus, the
enemy of the truth, being within it' " (Irenaeus: "Adv. Haer.,"
iii. 3, § 4).
* Munk: "Palestine,"
p. 525; "Sod, the Son of the Man."
** "Haxthausen," p.
229.
*** "Shahrastani";
Dr. D. Chwolsohn: "Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus," ii., p. 625.
**** Maimonides, quoted in Dr.
D. Chwolsohn: "Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus," ii., p. 458.
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they were Ebionites,
Nazarenes, Gnostics, or others. They had no Christian dogmas in those days, and
their Christianity consisted in believing Jesus to be a prophet, this belief
varying from seeing in him simply a "just man,"* or a holy, inspired
prophet, a vehicle used by Christos and Sophia to manifest themselves through.
These all united together in opposition to the synagogue and the tyrannical
technicalities of the Pharisees, until the primitive group separated in two
distinct branches -- which, we may correctly term the Christian kabalists of
the Jewish Tanaim school, and the Christian kabalists of the Platonic Gnosis.**
The former were represented by the party composed of the followers of Peter,
and John, the author of the Apocalypse; the latter ranged with the Pauline
Christianity, blending itself, at the end of the second century, with the
Platonic philosophy, and engulfing, still later, the Gnostic sects, whose
symbols and misunderstood mysticism overflowed the Church of Rome.
Amid this jumble of
contradictions, what Christian is secure in confessing himself such? In the old
Syriac Gospel according to Luke (iii. 22), the Holy Spirit is said to have
descended in the likeness of a dove. "Jesua, full of the sacred Spirit,
returned from Jordan, and the Spirit led him into the desert" (old Syriac,
Luke iv. 1, Tremellius). "The difficulty," says Dunlap, "was
that the Gospels declared that John the Baptist saw the Spirit (the Power of
God) descend upon Jesus after he had reached manhood, and if the Spirit then
first descended upon him, there was some ground for the opinion of the Ebionites
and Nazarenes who denied his preceding existence, and refused him the
attributes of the LOGOS. The Gnostics, on the other hand, objected to the
flesh, but conceded the Logos."***
John's Apocalypsis, and the
explanations of sincere Christian bishops, like Synesius, who, to the last,
adhered to the Platonic doctrines, make us think that the wisest and safest way
is to hold to that sincere primitive faith which seems to have actuated the
above-named bishop. This best, sincerest, and most unfortunate of Christians,
addressing the "Unknown," exclaims: "Oh Father of the Worlds . .
. Father of the AEons . . . Artificer of the Gods, it is holy to praise!"
But Synesius had Hypatia for instructor, and this is why we find him confessing
in all sincerity his opinions and profession of faith. "The rabble desires
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Ye have condemned and
killed the just," says James in his epistle to the twelve tribes.
** Porphyry makes a
distinction between what he calls "the Antique or Oriental
philosophy," and the properly Grecian system, that of the Neo-platonists.
King says that all these religions and systems are branches of one antique and
common religion, the Asiatic or Buddhistic ("Gnostics and their Remains,"
p. 1).
*** "Sod, the Son of the
Man."
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"INFANT-MASSACRE."
nothing better than to be
deceived. . . . As regards myself, therefore, I will always be a philosopher
with myself, but I must be priest with the people."
"Holy is God the Father
of all being, holy is God, whose wisdom is carried out into execution by his
own Powers! . . . Holy art Thou, who through the Word had created all!
Therefore, I believe in Thee, and bear testimony, and go into the LIFE and
LIGHT."* Thus speaks Hermes Trismegistus, the heathen divine. What
Christian bishop could have said better than that?
The apparent discrepancy of
the four gospels as a whole, does not prevent every narrative given in the New
Testament -- however much disfigured -- having a ground-work of truth. To this,
are cunningly adapted details made to fit the later exigencies of the Church.
So, propped up partially by indirect evidence, still more by blind faith, they
have become, with time, articles of faith. Even the fictitious massacre of the
"Innocents" by King Herod has a certain foundation to it, in its
allegorical sense. Apart from the now-discovered fact that the whole story of
such a massacre of the Innocents is bodily taken from the Hindu Bagaved-gitta,
and Brahmanical traditions, the legend refers, moreover, allegorically, to an
historical fact. King Herod is the type of Kansa, the tyrant of Madura, the
maternal uncle of Christna, to whom astrologers predicted that a son of his
niece Devaki would deprive him of his throne. Therefore he gives orders to kill
the male child that is born to her; but Christna escapes his fury through the
protection of Mahadeva (the great God) who causes the child to be carried away
to another city, out of Kansa's reach. After that, in order to be sure and kill
the right boy, on whom he failed to lay his murderous hands, Kansa has all the
male newborn infants within his kingdom killed. Christna is also worshipped by
the gopas (the shepherds) of the land.
Though this ancient Indian
legend bears a very suspicious resemblance to the more modern biblical romance,
Gaffarel and others attribute the origin of the latter to the persecutions
during the Herodian reign of the kabalists and the Wise men, who had not
remained strictly orthodox. The latter, as well as the prophets, were nicknamed
the "Innocents," and the "Babes," on account of their
holiness. As in the case of certain degrees of modern Masonry, the adepts
reckoned their grade of initiation by a symbolic age. Thus Saul who, when
chosen king, was "a choice and goodly man," and "from his
shoulders upward was higher than any of the people," is described in Catholic
versions, as "child of one year when he began to reign," which, in
its literal sense, is a palpa-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Hermes
Trismegistus," pp. 86, 87, 90.
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ble absurdity. But in 1 Samuel
x., his anointing by Samuel and initiation are described; and at verse 6th,
Samuel uses this significant language: " . . . the Spirit of the Lord will
come upon thee and thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be turned into
another man." The phrase above quoted is thus made plain -- he had
received one degree of initiation and was symbolically described as "a
child one year old." The Catholic Bible, from which the text is quoted,
with charming candor says in a foot-note: "It is extremely difficult to
explain" (meaning that Saul was a child of one year). But undaunted by any
difficulty the Editor, nevertheless, does take upon himself to explain it, and
adds: "A child of one year. That is, he was good and like an innocent
child." An interpretation as ingenious as it is pious; and which if it
does no good can certainly do no harm.*
If the explanation of the
kabalists is rejected, then the whole subject falls into confusion; worse still
-- for it becomes a direct plagiarism from the Hindu legend. All the
commentators have agreed that a literal massacre of young children is nowhere
mentioned in history; and that, moreover, an occurrence like that would have
made such a bloody page in Roman annals that the record of it would have been
preserved for us by every author of the day. Herod himself was subject to the
Roman law; and undoubtedly he would have paid the penalty of such a monstrous
crime, with his own life. But if, on the one hand, we have not the slightest
trace of this fable in history, on the other, we find in the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is the correct
interpretation of the Bible allegories that makes the Catholic clergy so
wrathful with the Protestants who freely scrutinize the Bible. How bitter this
feeling has become, we can judge by the following words of the Reverend Father
Parker of Hyde Park, New York, who, lecturing in St. Teresa's Catholic Church,
on the 10th of December, 1876, said: "To whom does the Protestant Church
owe its possession of the Bible, which they wish to place in the hands of every
ignorant person and child? To monkish hands, that laboriously transcribed it
before the age of printing. Protestantism has produced dissension in Church,
rebellions and outbreaks in State, unsoundness in social life, and will never
be satisfied short of the downfall of the Bible! Protestants must admit that
the Roman Church has done more to scatter Christianity and extirpate idolatry
than all their sects. From one pulpit it is said that there is no hell, and
from another that there is immediate and unmitigated damnation. One says that Jesus
Christ was only a man; another that you must be plunged bodily into water to be
baptized, and refuses the rites to infants. Most of them have no prescribed
form of worship, no sacred vestments, and their doctrines are as undefined as
their service is informal. The founder of Protestantism, Martin Luther, was the
worst man in Europe. The advent of the Reformation was the signal for civil
war, and from that time to this the world has been in a restless state, uneasy
in regard to Governments, and every day becoming more skeptical. The ultimate
tendency of Protestantism is clearly nothing less than the destruction of all
respect for the Bible, and the disruption of government and society." Very
plain talk this. The Protestants might easily return the compliment.
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ABOUT JESUS.
official complaints of the
Synagogue abundant evidence of the persecution of the initiates. The Talmud
also corroborates it.
The Jewish version of the
birth of Jesus is recorded in the Sepher-Toldos Jeshu in the following words:
"Mary having become the
mother of a Son, named Jehosuah, and the boy growing up, she entrusted him to
the care of the Rabbi Elhanan, and the child progressed in knowledge, for he
was well gifted with spirit and understanding.
"Rabbi Jehosuah, son of
Perachiah, continued the education of Jehosuah (Jesus) after Elhanan, and
initiated him in the secret knowledge"; but the King, Janneus, having
given orders to slay all the initiates, Jehosuah Ben Perachiah, fled to
Alexandria, in Egypt, taking the boy with him.
While in Alexandria, continues
the story, they were received in the house of a rich and learned lady
(personified Egypt). Young Jesus found her beautiful, notwithstanding "a
defect in her eyes," and declared so to his master. Upon hearing this, the
latter became so angry that his pupil should find in the land of bondage anything
good, that "he cursed him and drove the young man from his presence."
Then follow a series of adventures told in allegorical language, which show
that Jesus supplemented his initiation in the Jewish Kabala with an additional
acquisition of the secret wisdom of Egypt. When the persecution ceased, they
both returned to Judea.*
The real grievances against
Jesus are stated by the learned author of Tela Ignea Satanae (the fiery darts
of Satan) to be two in number: 1st, that he had discovered the great Mysteries
of their Temple, by having been initiated in Egypt; and 2d, that he had
profaned them by exposing them to the vulgar, who misunderstood and disfigured
them. This is what they say:**
"There exists, in the
sanctuary of the living God, a cubical stone, on which are sculptured the holy
characters, the combination of which gives the explanation of the attributes
and powers of the incommunicable name. This explanation is the secret key of
all the occult sciences and forces in nature. It is what the Hebrews call the
Scham hamphorash. This stone is watched by two lions of gold, who roar as soon
as it is approached.*** The gates of the temple were never lost sight of, and
the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Eliphas Levi ascribes this
narrative to the Talmudist authors of "Sota" and
"Sanhedrin," p. 19, book of "Jechiel."
** This fragment is translated
from the original Hebrew by Eliphas Levi in his "La Science des
Esprits."
*** Those who know anything of
the rites of the Hebrews must recognize in these lions the gigantic figures of
the Cherubim, whose symbolical monstrosity was well calculated to frighten and
put to flight the profane.
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door of the sanctuary opened
but once a year, to admit the High Priest alone. But Jesus, who had learned in
Egypt the 'great secrets' at the initiation, forged for himself invisible keys,
and thus was enabled to penetrate into the sanctuary unseen. . . . He copied
the characters on the cubical stone, and hid them in his thigh;* after which,
emerging from the temple, he went abroad and began astounding people with his
miracles. The dead were raised at his command, the leprous and the obsessed
were healed. He forced the stones which lay buried for ages at the bottom of
the sea to rise to the surface until they formed a mountain, from the top of
which he preached." The Sepher Toldos states further that, unable to
displace the cubical stone of the sanctuary, Jesus fabricated one of clay,
which he showed to the nations and passed it off for the true cubical stone of
Israel.
This allegory, like the rest
of them in such books, is written "inside and outside" -- it has its
secret meaning, and ought to be read two ways. The kabalistic books explain its
mystical meaning. Further, the same Talmudist says, in substance, the
following: Jesus was thrown in prison,** and kept there forty days; then flogged
as a seditious rebel; then stoned as a blasphemer in a place called Lud, and
finally allowed to expire upon a cross. "All this," explains Levi,
"because he revealed to the people the truths which they (the Pharisees)
wished to bury for their own use. He had divined the occult theology of Israel,
had compared it with the wisdom of Egypt, and found thereby the reason for a
universal religious synthesis."***
However cautious one ought to
be in accepting anything about Jesus from Jewish sources, it must be confessed
that in some things they seem to be more correct in their statements (whenever
their direct interest in stating facts is not concerned) than our good but too
jealous Fathers. One thing is certain, James, the "Brother of the
Lord," is silent about the resurrection. He terms Jesus nowhere "Son
of God," nor even Christ-God. Once only, speaking of Jesus, he calls him
the "Lord of Glory," but so do the Nazarenes when writing about their
prophet Iohanan bar Zacharia, or John, son of Zacharias (St. John Baptist).
Their favorite expressions about their prophet are the same as those used by
James when speaking of Jesus. A man "of the seed of a man,"
"Messenger of Life," of light, "my Lord Apostle,"
"King sprung of Light," and so on. "Have not the faith of our Lord
JESUS Christ, the Lord of Glory," etc.,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Arnobius tells the same
story of Jesus, and narrates how he was accused of having robbed the sanctuary of
the secret names of the Holy One, by means of which knowledge he performed all
the miracles.
** This is a translation of
Eliphas Levi.
*** "La Science des
Esprits," p. 37.
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OF HIM.
says James in his epistle (ii.
1), presumably addressing Christ as GOD. "Peace to thee, my Lord, JOHN Abo
Sabo, Lord of Glory!" says the Codex Nazaraeus (ii., 19), known to address
but a prophet. "Ye have condemned and killed the Just," says James
(v. 6). "Iohanan (John) is the Just one, he comes in the way of
justice," says Matthew (xxi. 32, Syriac text).
James does not even call Jesus
Messiah, in the sense given to the title by the Christians, but alludes to the
kabalistic "King Messiah," who is Lord of Sabaoth* (v. 4), and
repeats several times that the "Lord" will come, but identifies the
latter nowhere with Jesus. "Be patient, therefore, brethren, unto the
coming of the Lord . . . be patient, for the coming of the Lord draweth
nigh" (v. 7, 8). And he adds: "Take, my brethren, the prophet (Jesus)
who has spoken in the name of the Lord for an example of suffering, affliction,
and of patience." Though in the present version the word
"prophet" stands in the plural, yet this is a deliberate
falsification of the original, the purpose of which is too evident. James,
immediately after having cited the "prophets" as an example, adds:
"Behold . . . ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end
of the Lord" -- thus combining the examples of these two admirable
characters, and placing them on a perfect equality. But we have more to adduce
in support of our argument. Did not Jesus himself glorify the prophet of the
Jordan? "What went ye out for to see? A prophet? Yea, I say unto you, and
more than a prophet. . . . Verily, I say unto you, among them that are born of
women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist."
And of whom was he who spoke
thus born? It is but the Roman Catholics who have changed Mary, the mother of
Jesus, into a goddess. In the eyes of all other Christians she was a woman,
whether his own birth was immaculate or otherwise. According to strict logic,
then, Jesus confessed John greater than himself. Note how completely this
matter is disposed of by the language employed by the Angel Gabriel when
addressing Mary: "Blessed art thou among women." These words are
unequivocal. He does not adore her as the Mother of God, nor does he call her
goddess; he does not even address her as "Virgin," but he calls her
woman, and only distinguishes her above other women as having had better
fortune, through her purity.
The Nazarenes were known as
Baptists, Sabians, and John's Christians. Their belief was that the Messiah was
not the Son of God, but simply a prophet who would follow John. "Johanan,
the Son of the Abo Sabo Zachariah, shall say to himself, 'Whoever will believe
in my justice
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Israelite
Indeed," vol. iii., p. 61.
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and my BAPTISM shall be joined
to my association; he shall share with me the seat which is the abode of life,
of the supreme Mano, and of living fire' " (Codex Nazaraeus, ii., p. 115).
Origen remarks "there are some who said of John (the Baptist) that he was
the anointed" (Christus).* The Angel Rasiel of the kabalists is the Angel
Gabriel of the Nazarenes, and it is the latter who is chosen of all the
celestial hierarchy by the Christians to become the messenger of the
'annunciation.' "The genius sent by the 'Lord of Celsitude' is AEbel Zivo,
whose name is also called GABRIEL Legatus."** Paul must have had the sect
of the Nazarenes in mind when he said: "And last of all he (Jesus) was
seen of me also, as of one born out of due time" (1 Corinth., xv. 8), thus
reminding his listeners of the expression usual to the Nazarenes, who termed
the Jews "the abortions, or born out of time." Paul prides himself of
belonging to a haeresy.***
When the metaphysical
conceptions of the Gnostics, who saw in Jesus the Logos and the anointed, began
to gain ground, the earliest Christians separated from the Nazarenes, who
accused Jesus of perverting the doctrines of John, and changing the baptism of
the Jordan.**** "Directly," says Milman, "as it (the Gospel) got
beyond the borders of Palestine, and the name of 'Christ' had acquired sanctity
and veneration in the Eastern cities, he became a kind of metaphysical
impersonation, while the religion lost its purely moral cast and assumed the
character of a speculative theogony."***** The only half-original document
that has reached us from the primitive apostolic days, is the Logia of Matthew.
The real, genuine doctrine has remained in the hands of the Nazarenes, in this
Gospel of Matthew containing the "secret doctrine," the "Sayings
of Jesus," mentioned by Papias. These sayings were, no doubt, of the same
nature as the small manuscripts placed in the hands of the neophytes, who were
candidates for the Initiations into the Mysteries, and which contained the
Aporrheta, the revelations of some important rites and symbols. For why should
Matthew take such precautions to make them "secret" were it
otherwise?
Primitive Christianity had its
grip, pass-words, and degrees of initiation. The innumerable Gnostic gems and
amulets are weighty proofs of it. It is a whole symbolical science. The
kabalists were the first to embellish the universal Logos,****** with such
terms as "Light of Light," the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Origen," vol.
ii., p. 150.
** "Codex
Nazaraeus," vol. i., p. 23.
*** "In the way these
call heresy I worship" (Acts xxiv. 14).
**** "Codex
Nazaraeus," vol. ii., p. 109.
***** "Milman," p.
200.
****** Dunlap says in
"Sod, the Son of the Man": "Mr. Hall, of India, informs us that
he has seen Sanscrit philosophical treatises in which the Logos continually
occurs," p. 39, foot-note.
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BORROWED CHRISTIAN TERMS.
Messenger of LIFE and LIGHT,*
and we find these expressions adopted in toto by the Christians, with the
addition of nearly all the Gnostic terms such as Pleroma (fulness), Archons,
AEons, etc. As to the "First-Born," the First, and the
"Only-Begotten," these are as old as the world. Origen shows the word
"Logos" as existing among the Brachmanes. "The Brachmanes say
that the God is Light, not such as one sees, nor such as the sun and fire; but
they have the God LOGOS, not the articulate, the Logos of the Gnosis, through
whom the highest MYSTERIES of the Gnosis are seen by the wise."** The Acts
and the fourth Gospel teem with Gnostic expressions. The kabalistic:
"God's first-born emanated from the Most High," together with that
which is the "Spirit of the Anointing"; and again "they called
him the anointed of the Highest,"*** are reproduced in Spirit and
substance by the author of the Gospel according to John. "That was the
true light," and "the light shineth in darkness." "And the
WORD was made flesh." "And his fulness (pleroma) have all we
received," etc. (John i. et seq.).
The "Christ," then,
and the "Logos" existed ages before Christianity; the Oriental Gnosis
was studied long before the days of Moses, and we have to seek for the origin
of all these in the archaic periods of the primeval Asiatic philosophy. Peter's
second Epistle and Jude's fragment, preserved in the New Testament, show by
their phraseology that they belong to the kabalistic Oriental Gnosis, for they
use the same expressions as did the Christian Gnostics who built a part of
their system from the Oriental Kabala. "Presumptuous are they (the
Ophites), self-willed, they are not afraid to speak evil of DIGNITIES,"
says Peter (2d Epistle ii. 10), the original model for the later abusive
Tertullian and Irenaeus.**** "Likewise (even as Sodom and Gomorrah) also
these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise DOMINION and speak evil of
DIGNITIES," says Jude, repeating the very words of Peter, and thereby
expressions consecrated in the Kabala. Dominion is the "Empire," the
tenth of the kabalistic sephiroth.***** The Powers and Dignities are the
subordinate
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See John i.
** Origen:
"Philosophumena," xxiv.
*** Kleuker: "Natur und
Ursprung der Emanationslehre bei den Kabbalisten," pp. 10, 11; see
"Libri Mysterii."
**** "These as natural
brute beasts." "The dog has turned to its own vomit again; and the
sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire" (22).
***** The types of the
creation, or the attributes of the Supreme Being, are through the emanations of
Adam Kadmon; these are: "The Crown, Wisdom, Prudence, Magnificence,
Severity, Beauty, Victory, Glory, Foundation, Empire. Wisdom is called Jeh;
Prudence, Jehovah; Severity, Elohim; Magnificence, El; Victory and Glory,
SABAOTH; Empire or Dominion, ADONAI." Thus when the Nazarenes and other
Gnostics of the more Platonic tendency twitted the Jews as "abortions who
worship
[[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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genii of the Archangels and
Angels of the Sohar.* These emanations are the very life and soul of the Kabala
and Zoroastrianism; and the Talmud itself, in its present state, is all
borrowed from the Zendavesta. Therefore, by adopting the views of Peter, Jude,
and other Jewish apostles, the Christians have become but a dissenting sect of the
Persians, for they do not even interpret the meaning of all such Powers as the
true kabalists do. Paul's warning his converts against the worshipping of
angels, shows how well he appreciated, even so early as his period, the dangers
of borrowing from a metaphysical doctrine the philosophy of which could be
rightly interpreted but by its well-learned adherents, the Magi and the Jewish
Tanaim. "Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and
worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen,
vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind,"** is a sentence laid right at the
door of Peter and his champions. In the Talmud, Michael is Prince of Water, who
has seven inferior spirits subordinate to him. He is the patron, the guardian
angel of the Jews, as Daniel informs us (v. 21), and the Greek Ophites, who
identified him with their Ophiomorphos, the personified creation of the envy
and malice of Ilda-Baoth, the Demiurgus (Creator of the material world), and
undertook to prove that he was also Samuel, the Hebrew prince of the evil
spirits, or Persian devs, were naturally regarded by the Jews as blasphemers.
But did Jesus ever sanction this belief in angels except in so far as hinting
that they were the messengers and subordinates of God? And here the origin of
the later splits between Christian beliefs is directly traceable to these two
early contradictory views.
Paul, believing in all such
occult powers in the world "unseen," but ever "present,"
says: "Ye walked according to the AEon of this world, according to the
Archon (Ilda-Baoth, the Demiurge) that has the domination of the air," and
"We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the dominations, the
powers; the lords of darkness, the mischievousness of spirits in the upper
regions." This sentence, "Ye were dead in sin and error," for
"ye walked according to the Archon," or Ilda-Baoth, the God and
creator of matter of the Ophites, shows unequivocally that: 1st, Paul,
notwithstanding some dissensions with the more important doctrines of the
Gnostics, shared more or less their cosmogonical views on the emanations; and
2d, that he was fully aware that this Demi-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] their god Iurbo, Adunai," we need not wonder at the wrath
of those who had accepted the old Mosaic system, but at that of Peter and Jude
who claim to be followers of Jesus and dissent from the views of him who was
also a Nazarene.
* According to the
"Kabala," Empire or Dominion is "the consuming fire, and his
wife is the Temple or the Church."
** Colossians ii. 18.
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"POWERS," "DOMINIONS," ETC., EXPLAINED.
urge, whose Jewish name was
Jehovah, was not the God preached by Jesus. And now, if we compare the doctrine
of Paul with the religious views of Peter and Jude, we find that, not only did
they worship Michael, the Archangel, but that also they reverenced SATAN,
because the latter was also, before his fall, an angel! This they do quite
openly, and abuse the Gnostics* for speaking "evil" of him. No one
can deny the following: Peter, when denouncing those who are not afraid to
speak evil of "dignities," adds immediately, "Whereas angels,
which are greater in power and might, bring not railing accusations against
them (the dignities) before the Lord" (ii. 11). Who are the dignities?
Jude, in his general epistle, makes the word as clear as day. The dignities are
the DEVILS!! Complaining of the disrespect shown by the Gnostics to the powers
and dominions, Jude argues in the very words of Peter: "And yet, Michael,
the Archangel, when contending with the devil, he disputed about the body of
Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord
rebuke thee" (i. 9). Is this plain enough? If not, then we have the Kabala
to prove who were the dignities.
Considering that Deuteronomy
tells us that the "Lord" Himself buried Moses in a valley of Moab
(xxxiv. 6), "and no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day," this
biblical lapsus inguae of Jude gives a strong coloring to the assertions of
some of the Gnostics. They claimed but what was secretly taught by the Jewish
kabalists themselves; to wit: that the highest supreme God was unknown and
invisible; "the King of Light is a closed eye"; that Ilda-Baoth, the
Jewish second Adam, was the real Demiurge; and that Iao, Adonai, Sabaoth, and
Eloi were the quaternary emanation which formed the unity of the God of the
Hebrews -- Jehovah. Moreover, the latter was also called Michael and Samael by
them, and regarded but as an angel, several removes from the Godhead. In
holding to such a belief, the Gnostics countenanced the teachings of the
greatest of the Jewish doctors, Hillel, and other Babylonian divines. Josephus
shows the great deference of the official Synagogue in Jerusalem to the wisdom
of the schools of Central Asia. The colleges of Sora, Pumbiditha, and Nahaidea
were considered the headquarters of esoteric and theological learning by all
the schools of Palestine. The Chaldean version of the Pentateuch, made by the
well-known Babylonian divine, Onkelos, was regarded as the most authoritative
of all; and it is according to this learned Rabbi that Hillel and other Tanaim
after him held that the Being who appeared to Moses in the burning bush, on
Mount Sinai, and who finally buried him, was the angel of the Lord,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is more likely that both
abused Paul, who preached against this belief; and that the Gnostics were only
a pretext. (See Peter's second Epistle.)
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Memro, and not the Lord
Himself; and that he whom the Hebrews of the Old Testament mistook for Iahoh was
but His messenger, one of His sons, or emanations. All this establishes but one
logical conclusion -- namely, that the Gnostics were by far the superiors of
the disciples, in point of education and general information; even in a
knowledge of the religious tenets of the Jews themselves. While they were
perfectly well-versed in the Chaldean wisdom, the well-meaning, pious, but
fanatical as well as ignorant disciples, unable to fully understand or grasp
the religious spirit of their own system, were driven in their disputations to
such convincing logic as the use of "brute beasts," "sows,"
"dogs," and other epithets so freely bestowed by Peter.
Since then, the epidemic has
reached the apex of the sacerdotal hierarchy. From the day when the founder of
Christianity uttered the warning, that he who shall say to his brother,
"Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell-fire," all who have passed as
its leaders, beginning with the ragged fishermen of Galilee, and ending with
the jewelled pontiffs, have seemed to vie with each other in the invention of
opprobrious epithets for their opponents. So we find Luther passing a final
sentence on the Catholics, and exclaiming that "The Papists are all asses,
put them in whatever form you like; whether they are boiled, roasted, baked,
fried, skinned, hashed, they will be always the same asses." Calvin called
the victims he persecuted, and occasionally burned, "malicious barking
dogs, full of bestiality and insolence, base corrupters of the sacred
writings," etc. Dr. Warburton terms the Popish religion "an impious
farce," and Monseigneur Dupanloup asserts that the Protestant Sabbath
service is the "Devil's mass," and all clergymen are "thieves
and ministers of the Devil."
The same spirit of incomplete
inquiry and ignorance has led the Christian Church to bestow on its most holy
apostles, titles assumed by their most desperate opponents, the
"Haeretics" and Gnostics. So we find, for instance, Paul termed the
vase of election "Vas Electionis," a title chosen by Manes,* the
greatest heretic of his day in the eyes of the Church, Manes meaning, in the
Babylonian language, the chosen vessel or receptacle.**
So with the Virgin Mary. They
were so little gifted with originality, that they copied from the Egyptian and
Hindu religions their several
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The true name of Manes --
who was a Persian by birth -- was Cubricus. (See Epiph. "Life of
Manes," Haeret. lxv.) He was flayed alive at the instance of the Magi, by
the Persian King Varanes I. Plutarch says that Manes or Manis means Masses or
ANOINTED. The vessel, or vase of election, is, therefore, the vessel full of
that light of God, which he pours on one he has selected for his interpreter.
** See King's
"Gnostics," p. 38.
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VIRGIN-MOTHERS COMPARED.
apostrophes to their
respective Virgin-mothers. The juxtaposition of a few examples will make this
clear.
HINDU. Litany of our Lady
Nari: Virgin (Also Devanaki.)
1. Holy Nari -- Mariama,
Mother of perpetual fecundity.
2. Mother of an incarnated God
-- Vishnu (Devanaki).
3. Mother of Christna.
4. Eternal Virginity --
Kanyabava.
5. Mother -- Pure Essence,
Akasa.
6. Virgin most chaste --
Kanya.
7. Mother Taumatra, of the
five virtues or elements.
8. Virgin Trigana (of the
three elements, power or richness, love, and mercy.)
9. Mirror of Supreme
Conscience -- Ahancara.
10. Wise Mother -- Saraswati.
11. Virgin of the white Lotos,
Pedma or Kamala.
12. Womb of Gold -- Hyrania.
13. Celestial Light --
Lakshmi.
14. Ditto.
15. Queen of Heaven, and of
the universe -- Sakti.
16. Mother soul of all beings
-- Paramatma.
17. Devanaki is conceived
without sin, and immaculate herself. (According to the Brahmanic fancy.)
EGYPTIAN. Litany of our Lady
Isis: Virgin.
1. Holy Isis, universal mother
-- Muth.
2. Mother of Gods -- Athyr.
3. Mother of Horus.
4. Virgo generatrix -- Neith.
5. Mother-soul of the universe
-- Anouke.
6. Virgin sacred earth --
Isis.
7. Mother of all the virtues
-- Thmei, with the same qualities.
8. Illustrious Isis, most
powerful, merciful, just. (Book of the Dead.)
9. Mirror of Justice and Truth
-- Thmei.
10. Mysterious mother of the
world -- Buto (secret wisdom).
11. Sacred Lotus.
12. Sistrum of Gold.
13. Astarte (Syrian), Astaroth
(Jewish).
14. Argua of the Moon.
15. Queen of Heaven, and of
the universe -- Sati.
16. Model of all mothers --
Athor.
17. Isis is a Virgin Mother.
ROMAN CATHOLIC. Litany of our
Lady of Loretto: Virgin.
1. Holy Mary, mother of divine
grace.
2. Mother of God.
3. Mother of Christ.
4 . Virgin of Virgins.
5. Mother of Divine Grace.
6. Virgin most chaste.
7. Mother most pure.
Mother undefiled.
Mother inviolate.
Mother most amiable.
Mother most admirable.
8. Virgin most powerful.
Virgin most merciful.
Virgin most faithful.
9. Mirror of Justice.
10. Seat of Wisdom.
11. Mystical Rose.
12. House of Gold.
13. Morning Star.
14. Ark of the Covenant.
15. Queen of Heaven.
16. Mater Dolorosa.
17. Mary conceived without
sin. (In accordance with later orders.)
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If the Virgin Mary has her
nuns, who are consecrated to her and bound to live in chastity, so had Isis her
nuns in Egypt, as Vesta had hers at Rome, and the Hindu Nari, "mother of
the world" hers. The virgins consecrated to her cultus -- the Devadasi of
the temples, who were the nuns of the days of old -- lived in great chastity,
and were objects of the most extraordinary veneration, as the holy women of the
goddess. Would the missionaries and some travellers reproachfully point to the
modern Devadasis, or Nautch-girls? For all response, we would beg them to
consult the official reports of the last quarter century, cited in chapter II.,
as to certain discoveries made at the razing of convents, in Austria and Italy.
Thousands of infants' skulls were exhumed from ponds, subterranean vaults, and
gardens of convents. Nothing to match this was ever found in heathen lands.
Christian theology, getting
the doctrine of the archangels and angels directly from the Oriental Kabala, of
which the Mosaic Bible is but an allegorical screen, ought at least to remember
the hierarchy invented by the former for these personified emanations. The
hosts of the Cherubim and Seraphim, with which we generally see the Catholic
Madonnas surrounded in their pictures, belong, together with the Elohim and
Beni Elohim of the Hebrews, to the third kabalistic world, Jezirah. This world
is but one remove higher than Asiah, the fourth and lowest world, in which
dwell the grossest and most material beings -- the klippoth, who delight in
evil and mischief, and whose chief is Belial!
Explaining, in his way, of
course, the various "heresies" of the first two centuries, Irenaeus
says: "Our Haeretics hold . . . that PROPATOR is known but to the
only-begotten son, that is to the mind" (the nous). It was the
Valentinians, the followers of the "profoundest doctor of the
Gnosis," Valentinus, who held that "there was a perfect AION, who
existed before Bythos, or Buthon (the Depth), called Propator. This is again
kabalistic, for in the Sohar of Simon Ben Iochai, we read the following:
"Senior occultatus est et absconditus; Microprosopus manifestus est, et
non manifestus" (Rosenroth: The Sohar Liber Mysteries, iv., 1).
In the religious metaphysics
of the Hebrews, the Highest One is an abstraction; he is "without form or
being," "with no likeness with anything else."* And even Philo
calls the Creator, the Logos who stands next God, "the SECOND God."
"The second God who is his WISDOM."** God is NOTHING, he is nameless,
and therefore called Ain-Soph -- the word Ain meaning nothing.*** But if,
according to the older Jews, Jehovah is the God, and He manifested Himself
several times to Moses and the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Franck: "Die
Kabbala," p. 126.
** Philo: "Quaest. et
Solut."
*** See Franck: "Die
Kabbala," p. 153 ff.
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WRITTEN BY JOHN.
prophets, and the Christian
Church anathematized the Gnostics who denied the fact -- how comes it, then,
that we read in the fourth gospel that "No man hath seen God AT ANY TIME,
but the only-begotten Son . . . he hath declared him"? The very words of
the Gnostics, in spirit and substance. This sentence of St. John -- or rather
whoever wrote the gospel now bearing his name -- floors all the Petrine
arguments against Simon Magus, without appeal. The words are repeated and
emphasized in chapter vi.: "Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he
which is of God, he (Jesus) hath seen the Father" (46) -- the very
objection brought forward by Simon in the Homilies. These words prove that either
the author of the fourth evangel had no idea of the existence of the Homilies,
or that he was not John, the friend and companion of Peter, whom he contradicts
point-blank with this emphatic assertion. Be it as it may, this sentence, like
many more that might be profitably cited, blends Christianity completely with
the Oriental Gnosis, and hence with the KABALA.
While the doctrines, ethical
code, and observances of the Christian religion were all appropriated from
Brahmanism and Buddhism, its ceremonials, vestments, and pageantry were taken
bodily from Lamaism. The Romish monastery and nunnery are almost servile copies
of similar religious houses in Thibet and Mongolia, and interested explorers of
Buddhist lands, when obliged to mention the unwelcome fact, have had no other
alternative left them but, with an anachronism unsurpassed in recklessness, to
charge the offense of plagiarism upon the religious system their own mother
Church had despoiled. This makeshift has served its purpose and had its day.
The time has at last come when this page of history must be written.
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CHAPTER V.
"Learn to know all, but
keep thyself unknown." -- GNOSTIC MAXIM.
"There is one God supreme
over all gods, diviner than mortals,
Whose form is not like unto
man's, and as unlike his nature;
But vain mortals imagine that
gods like themselves are begotten
With human sensations, and
voice, and corporeal members." -- XENOPHANES: Clem. Al. Strom., v. 14, §
110.
"TYCHIADES. -- Can you
tell me the reason, Philocles, why most men desire to lye, and delight not only
to speak fictions themselves, but give busie attention to others who do?
"PHILOCLES. -- There be
many reasons, Tychiades, which compell some to speak lyes, because they see
'tis profitable." -- A Dialogue of Lucian.
"SPARTAN. -- Is it to
thee, or to God, that I must confess?
"PRIEST. -- To God.
"SPARTAN. -- Then, MAN,
stand back!" -- PLUTARCH: Remarkable Lacedemonian Sayings.
WE will now give attention to
some of the most important Mysteries of the Kabala, and trace their relations
to the philosophical myths of various nations.
In the oldest Oriental Kabala,
the Deity is represented as three circles in one, shrouded in a certain smoke
or chaotic exhalation. In the preface to the Sohar, which transforms the three
primordial circles into THREE HEADS, over these is described an exhalation or
smoke, neither black nor white, but colorless, and circumscribed within a
circle. This is the unknown Essence.* The origin of the Jewish image may,
perhaps, be traced to Hermes' Pimander, the Egyptian Logos, who appears within
a cloud of a humid nature, with a smoke escaping from it.** In the Sohar the highest
God is, as we have shown in the preceding chapter, and as in the case of the
Hindu and Buddhist philosophies, a pure abstraction, whose objective existence
is denied by the latter. It is Hakama, the "SUPREME WISDOM, that cannot be
understood by reflection," and that lies within and without the CRANIUM of
LONG FACE*** (Sephira), the uppermost of the three "Heads." It is the
"boundless and the infinite En-Soph," the No-Thing.
The "three Heads,"
superposed above each other, are evidently taken from the three mystic
triangles of the Hindus, which also superpose each other. The highest
"head" contains the Trinity in Chaos, out of which springs the
manifested trinity. En-Soph, the unrevealed forever, who is
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Kabbala
Denudata"; preface to the "Sohar," ii., p. 242.
** See Champollion's
"Egypte."
*** "Idra Rabba,"
vi., p. 58.
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THE CREATOR.
boundless and unconditioned,
cannot create, and therefore it seems to us a great error to attribute to him a
"creative thought," as is commonly done by the interpreters. In every
cosmogony this supreme Essence is passive; if boundless, infinite, and
unconditioned, it can have no thought nor idea. It acts not as the result of
volition, but in obedience to its own nature, and according to the fatality of
the law of which it is itself the embodiment. Thus, with the Hebrew kabalists,
En-Soph is non-existent [[Heb char]], for it is incomprehensible to our finite
intellects, and therefore cannot exist to our minds. Its first emanation was
Sephira, the crown [[Heb char]]. When the time for an active period had come,
then was produced a natural expansion of this Divine essence from within
outwardly, obedient to eternal and immutable law; and from this eternal and
infinite light (which to us is darkness) was emitted a spiritual substance.*
This was the First Sephiroth, containing in herself the other nine [[Heb char]]
Sephiroth, or intelligences. In their totality and unity they represent the
archetypal man, Adam Kadmon, the [[protogonos]], who in his individuality or
unity is yet dual, or bisexual, the Greek Didumos, for he is the prototype of
all humanity. Thus we obtain three trinities, each contained in a
"head." In the first head, or face (the three-faced Hindu Trimurti),
we find Sephira, the first androgyne, at the apex of the upper triangle,
emitting Hackama, or Wisdom, a masculine and active potency -- also called Jah,
[[Heb char]] -- and Binah, [[Heb char]], or Intelligence, a female and passive
potency, also represented by the name Jehovah [[Heb char]]. These three form
the first trinity or "face" of the Sephiroth. This triad emanated
Hesed, [[Heb char]], or Mercy, a masculine active potency, also called El, from
which emanated Geburah [[Heb char]], or Justice, also called Eloha, a feminine
passive potency; from the union of these two was produced Tiphereth [[Heb
char]], Beauty, Clemency, the Spiritual Sun, known by the divine name Elohim;
and the second triad, "face," or "head," was formed. These
emanating, in their turn, the masculine potency Netzah, [[Heb char]], Firmness,
or Jehovah Sabaoth, who issued the feminine passive potency Hod, [[Heb char]],
Splendor, or Elohim Sabaoth; the two produced Jesod, [[Heb char]], Foundation,
who is the mighty living one El-Chai, thus yielding the third trinity or "head."
The tenth Sephiroth is rather a duad, and is represented on the diagrams as the
lowest circle. It is Malchuth or Kingdom, [[Heb char]], and Shekinah [[Heb
char]], also called Adonai, and Cherubim among the angelic hosts. The first
"Head" is called the Intellectual world; the second "Head"
is the Sensuous, or the world of Perception, and the third is the Material or
Physical world.
"Before he gave any shape
to the universe," says the Kabala, "before
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Idra Suta:
"Sohar," ii.
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he produced any form, he was
alone without any form and resemblance to anything else. Who, then, can
comprehend him, how he was before the creation, since he was formless? Hence,
it is forbidden to represent him by any form, similitude, or even by his sacred
name, by a single letter, or a single point. . . . The Aged of the Aged, the
Unknown of the Unknown, has a form, and yet no form. He has a form whereby the
universe is preserved, and yet has no form, because he cannot be comprehended.
When he first assumed a form (in Sephira, his first emanation), he caused nine
splendid lights to emanate from it."*
And now we will turn to the
Hindu esoteric Cosmogony and definition of "Him who is, and yet is
not."
"From him who is,** from
this immortal Principle which exists in our minds but cannot be perceived by
the senses, is born Purusha, the Divine male and female, who became Narayana,
or the Divine Spirit moving on the water."
Swayambhuva, the unknown
essence of the Brahmans, is identical with En-Soph, the unknown essence of the
kabalists. As with the latter, the ineffable name could not be pronounced by
the Hindus, under the penalty of death. In the ancient primitive trinity of
India, that which may be certainly considered as pre-Vedic, the germ which
fecundates the mother-principle, the mundane egg, or the universal womb, is
called Nara, the Spirit, or the Holy Ghost, which emanates from the primordial
essence. It is like Sephira, the oldest emanation, called the primordial point,
and the White Head, for it is the point of divine light appearing from within
the fathomless and boundless darkness. In Manu it is "NARA, or the Spirit
of God, which moves on Ayana (Chaos, or place of motion), and is called
NARAYANA, or moving on the waters."*** In Hermes, the Egyptian, we read:
"In the beginning of the time there was naught in the chaos." But
when the "verbum," issuing from the void like a "colorless
smoke," makes its appearance, then "this verbum moved on the humid
principle."**** And in Genesis we find: "And darkness was upon the
face of the deep (chaos). And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the
waters." In the Kabala, the emanation of the primordial passive principle
(Sephira), by dividing itself into two parts, active and passive, emits
Chochma-Wisdom and Binah-Jehovah, and in conjunction with these two acolytes,
which complete the trinity, becomes the Creator of the abstract Universe; the
physical world being the production of later and still more material
powers.***** In the Hindu Cosmogony, Swayambhuva emits
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Idra Suta:
"Sohar," iii., p. 288 a.
** Ego sum qui sum (see
"Bible").
*** See "Institutes of
Manu," translated by Sir William Jones.
**** Champollion.
***** We are fully aware that
some Christian kabalists term En-Soph the "Crown,"
[[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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FUNDAMENTALLY IDENTICAL.
Nara and Nari, its bisexual
emanation, and dividing its parts into two halves, male and female, these
fecundate the mundane egg, within which develops Brahma, or rather Viradj, the
Creator. "The starting-point of the Egyptian mythology," says
Champollion, "is a triad . . . namely, Kneph, Neith, and Phtah; and Ammon,
the male, the father; Muth, the female and mother; and Khons, the son."
The ten Sephiroth are copies
taken from the ten Pradjapatis created by Viradj, called the "Lords of all
beings," and answering to the biblical Patriarchs.
Justin Martyr explains some of
the "heresies" of the day, but in a very unsatisfactory manner. He
shows, however, the identity of all the world-religions at their
starting-points. The first beginning opens invariably with the unknown and
passive deity, producing from himself a
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] identify him with Sephira; call En-Soph "an emanation from
God," and make the ten Sephiroth comprise "En-Soph" as a unity.
They also very erroneously reverse the first two emanations of Sephira --
Chochma and Binah. The greatest kabalists have always held Chochma (Wisdom) as
a male and active intelligence, Jah [[Heb char]], and placed it under the No. 2
on the right side of the triangle, whose apex is the crown, while Binah
(Intelligence) or [[Heb char]], is under No. 3 on the left hand. But the
latter, being represented by its divine name as Jehovah [[Heb char]], very
naturally showed the God of Israel as only a third emanation, as well as a
feminine, passive principle. Hence when the time came for the Talmudists to
transform their multifarious deities into one living God, they resorted to
their Masoretic points and combined to transform Jehovah into Adonai, "the
Lord." This, under the persecution of the Mediaeval kabalists by the
Church, also forced some of the former to change their female Sephiroth into
male, and vice versa, so as to avoid being accused of disrespect and blasphemy
to Jehovah; whose name, moreover, by mutual and secret agreement they accepted
as a substitute for Jah, or the mystery name IAO. Alone the initiated knew of
it, but later it gave rise to a great confusion among the uninitiated. It would
be worth while -- were it not for lack of space -- to quote a few of the many
passages in the oldest Jewish authorities, such as Rabbi Akiba, and the
"Sohar," which corroborate our assertion. Chochma-Wisdom is a male
principle everywhere, and Binah-Jehovah, a female potency. The writings of Irenaeus,
Theodoret, and Epiphanius, teeming with accusations against the Gnostics and
"Haeresies," repeatedly show Simon Magus and Cerinthus making of
Binah the feminine divine Spirit which inspired Simon. Binah is Sophia, and the
Sophia of the Gnostics is surely not a male potency, but simply the feminine
Wisdom, or Intelligence. (See any ancient "Arbor Kabbalistica," or
Tree of the Sephiroth.) Eliphas Levi, in the "Rituel de la Haute
Magie," vol. i., pp. 223 and 231, places Chochma as No. 2 and as a male Sephiroth
on the right hand of the Tree. In the "Kabala" the three male
Sephiroth -- Chochma, Chesed, Netsah -- are known as the Pillar of Mercy; and
the three feminine on the left, namely, Binah, Geburah, Hod, are named the
Pillar of Judgment; while the four Sephiroth of the centre -- Kether,
Tiphereth, Jesod, and Malchuth -- are called the Middle Pillar. And, as
Mackenzie, in the "Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia," shows, "there is
an analogy in these three pillars to the three Pillars of Wisdom, Strength, and
Beauty in a Craft Lodge of Masonry, while the En-Soph forms the mysterious
blazing star, or mystic light of the East" (p. 407).
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certain active power or
virtue, "Rational," which is sometimes called WISDOM, sometimes the
SON, very often God, Angel, Lord, and LOGOS.* The latter is sometimes applied
to the very first emanation, but in several systems it proceeds from the first
androgyne or double ray produced at the beginning by the unseen. Philo depicts
this wisdom as male and female. But though its first manifestation had a
beginning, for it proceeded from Oulom** (Aion, time), the highest of the
AEons, when emitted from the Fathers, it had remained with him before all
creations, for it is part of him.*** Therefore, Philo Judaeus calls Adam Kadmon
"mind" (the Ennoia of Bythos in the Gnostic system). "The mind,
let it be named Adam."****
Strictly speaking, it is
difficult to view the Jewish Book of Genesis otherwise than as a chip from the
trunk of the mundane tree of universal Cosmogony, rendered in Oriental
allegories. As cycle succeeded cycle, and one nation after another came upon
the world's stage to play its brief part in the majestic drama of human life,
each new people evolved from ancestral traditions its own religion, giving it a
local color, and stamping it with its individual characteristics. While each of
these religions had its distinguishing traits, by which, were there no other
archaic vestiges, the physical and psychological status of its creators could
be estimated, all preserved a common likeness to one prototype. This parent
cult was none other than the primitive "wisdom-religion." The
Israelitish Scriptures are no exception. Their national history -- if they can
claim any autonomy before the return from Babylon, and were anything more than
migratory septs of Hindu pariahs, cannot be carried back a day beyond Moses;
and if this ex-Egyptian priest must, from theological necessity, be transformed
into a Hebrew patriarch, we must insist that the Jewish nation was lifted with
that smiling infant out of the bulrushes of Lake Moeris. Abraham, their alleged
father, belongs to the universal mythology. Most likely he is but one of the
numerous aliases of Zeruan (Saturn), the king of the golden age, who is also
called the old man (emblem of time).***** It is now demonstrated by
Assyriologists that in the old Chaldean books Abraham is called Zeru-an, or
Zerb-an -- meaning one very rich in gold and silver, and a mighty prince.******
He is also called Zarouan and Zarman -- a decrepit old man.*******
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Justin: "Cum.
Trypho," p. 284.
** A division indicative of
time.
*** Sanchoniathon calls time
the oldest AEon, Protogonos, the "first-born."
**** Philo Judaeus: "Cain
and his Birth," p. xvii.
***** Azrael, angel of death, is
also Israel. Ab-ram means father of elevation, high-placed father, for Saturn
is the highest or outmost planet.
****** See Genesis xiii. 2.
******* Saturn is generally
represented as a very old man, with a sickle in his hand.
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XISUTHRUS.
The ancient Babylonian legend
is that Xisuthrus (Hasisadra of the Tablets, or Xisuthrus) sailed with his ark
to Armenia, and his son Sim became supreme king. Pliny says that Sim was called
Zeruan; and Sim is Shem. In Hebrew, his name writes [heb char], Shem -- a sign.
Assyria is held by the ethnologists to be the land of Shem, and Egypt called
that of Ham, Shem, in the tenth chapter of Genesis is made the father of all
the children of Eber, of Elam (Oulam or Eilam), and Ashur (Assur or Assyria).
The "nephelim," or fallen men, Gebers, mighty men spoken of in
Genesis (vi. 4), come from Oulam, "men of Shem." Even Ophir, which is
evidently to be sought for in the India of the days of Hiram, is made a
descendant of Shem. The records are purposely mixed up to make them fit into
the frame of the Mosaic Bible. But Genesis, from its first verse down to the
last, has naught to do with the "chosen people"; it belongs to the
world's history. Its appropriation by the Jewish authors in the days of the
so-called restoration of the destroyed books of the Israelites, by Ezra, proves
nothing, and, until now, has been self-propped on an alleged divine revelation.
It is simply a compilation of the universal legends of the universal humanity.
Bunsen says that in the "Chaldean tribe immediately connected with
Abraham, we find reminiscences of dates disfigured and misunderstood, as
genealogies of single men, or indications of epochs. The Abrahamic
recollections go back at least three millennia beyond the grandfather of
Jacob."*
Alexander Polyhistor says that
Abraham was born at Kamarina or Uria, a city of soothsayers, and invented
astronomy. Josephus claims the same for Terah, Abraham's father. The tower of
Babel was built as much by the direct descendants of Shem as by those of the
"accursed" Ham and Canaan, for the people in those days were
"one," and the "whole earth was of one language"; and Babel
was simply an astrological tower, and its builders were astrologers and adepts
of the primitive Wisdom-Religion, or, again, what we term Secret Doctrine.
The Berosian Sibyl says:
Before the Tower, Zeru-an, Titan, and Yapetosthe governed the earth, Zeru-an
wished to be supreme, but his two brothers resisted, when their sister, Astlik,
intervened and appeased them. It was agreed that Zeru-an should rule, but his
male children should be put to death; and strong Titans were appointed to carry
this into effect.
Sar (circle, saros) is the
Babylonian god of the sky. He is also Assaros or Asshur (the son of Shem), and
Zero -- Zero-ana, the chakkra, or wheel, boundless time. Hence, as the first
step taken by Zoroaster, while founding his new religion, was to change the
most sacred deities
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Bunsen: "Egypt's Place
in Universal History," vol. v., p. 85.
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of the Sanscrit Veda into
names of evil spirits, in his Zend Scriptures, and even to reject a number of
them, we find no traces in the Avesta of Chakkra -- the symbolic circle of the
sky.
Elam, another of the sons of
Shem, is Oulam [[Heb char]] and refers to an order or cycle of events. In
Ecclesiastes iii. 11, it is termed "world." In Ezekiel xxvi. 20,
"of old time." In Genesis iii. 22, the word stands as
"forever"; and in chapter ix. 16, "eternal." Finally, the
term is completely defined in Genesis vi. 4, in the following words:
"There were nephelim (giants, fallen men, or Titans) on the earth."
The word is synonymous with AEon, [[aion]]. In Proverbs viii. 23, it reads:
"I was effused from Oulam, from Ras" (wisdom). By this sentence, the
wise king-kabalist refers to one of the mysteries of the human spirit -- the
immortal crown of the man-trinity. While it ought to read as above, and be
interpreted kabalistically to mean that the I (or my eternal, immortal Ego),
the spiritual entity, was effused from the boundless and nameless eternity,
through the creative wisdom of the unknown God, it reads in the canonical
translation: "The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before
his works of old"! which is unintelligible nonsense, without the
kabalistic interpretation. When Solomon is made to say that I was "from
the beginning . . . while, as yet, he (the Supreme Deity) had not made the
earth nor the highest part of the dust of the world . . . I was there,"
and "when he appointed the foundations of the earth . . . then I was by
him, as one brought up with him," what can the kabalist mean by the
"I," but his own divine spirit, a drop effused from that eternal
fountain of light and wisdom -- the universal spirit of the Deity?
The thread of glory emitted by
En-Soph from the highest of the three kabalistic heads, through which "all
things shine with light," the thread which makes its exit through Adam
Primus, is the individual spirit of every man. "I was daily his
(En-Soph's) delight, rejoicing always before him . . . and my delights were
with the sons of men," adds Solomon, in the same chapter of the Proverbs.
The immortal spirit delights in the sons of men, who, without this spirit, are
but dualities (physical body and astral soul, or that life-principle which
animates even the lowest of the animal kingdom). But, we have seen that the
doctrine teaches that this spirit cannot unite itself with that man in whom
matter and the grossest propensities of his animal soul will be ever crowding
it out. Therefore, Solomon, who is made to speak under the inspiration of his
own spirit, that possesses him for the time being, utters the following words
of wisdom: "Hearken unto me, my son" (the dual man), "blessed
are they who keep my ways. . . . Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching
daily at my gates. . . . For whoso findeth me, findeth life, and shall obtain
favor of the Lord. . . . But he that
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AEON.
sinneth against me wrongeth
his own soul . . . and loves death" (Proverbs vii. 1-36).
This chapter, as interpreted,
is made by some theologians, like everything else, to apply to Christ, the
"Son of God," who states repeatedly, that he who follows him obtains
eternal life, and conquers death. But even in its distorted translation it can
be demonstrated that it referred to anything but to the alleged Saviour. Were
we to accept it in this sense, then, the Christian theology would have to
return, nolens volens, to Averroism and Buddhism; to the doctrine of emanation,
in short; for Solomon says: "I was effused" from Oulam and Rasit,
both of which are a part of the Deity; and thus Christ would not be as their
doctrine claims, God himself, but only an emanation of Him, like the Christos
of the Gnostics. Hence, the meaning of the personified Gnostic AEon, the word
signifying cycles or determined periods in the eternity and at the same time,
representing a hierarchy of celestial beings -- spirits. Thus Christ is
sometimes termed the "Eternal AEon." But the word "eternal"
is erroneous in relation to the AEons. Eternal is that which has neither
beginning nor end; but the "Emanations" or AEons, although having
lived as absorbed in the divine essence from the eternity, when once
individually emanated, must be said to have a beginning. They may be therefore
endless in this spiritual life, never eternal.
These endless emanations of
the one First Cause, all of which were gradually transformed by the popular
fancy into distinct gods, spirits, angels, and demons, were so little considered
immortal, that all were assigned a limited existence. And this belief, common
to all the peoples of antiquity, to the Chaldean Magi as well as to the
Egyptians and even in our day held by the Brahmanists and Buddhists, most
triumphantly evidences the monotheism of the ancient religious systems. This
doctrine calls the life-period of all the inferior divinities, "one day of
Parabrahma." After a cycle of fourteen milliards, three hundred and
twenty-millions of human years -- the tradition says -- the trinity itself,
with all the lesser divinities, will be annihilated, together with the
universe, and cease to exist. Then another universe will gradually emerge from
the pralaya (dissolution), and men on earth will be enabled to comprehend
SWAYAMBHUVA as he is. Alone, this primal cause will exist forever, in all his
glory, filling the infinite space. What better proof could be adduced of the
deep reverential feeling with which the "heathen" regard the one
Supreme eternal cause of all things visible and invisible.
This is again the source from
which the ancient kabalists derived identical doctrines. If the Christians
understood Genesis in their own way, and, if accepting the texts literally,
they enforced upon the uneducated masses the belief in a creation of our world
out of nothing; and
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moreover assigned to it a
beginning, it is surely not the Tanaim, the sole expounders of the hidden
meaning contained in the Bible, who are to be blamed. No more than any other
philosophers had they ever believed either in spontaneous, limited, or ex
nihilo creations. The Kabala has survived to show that their philosophy was
precisely that of the modern Nepal Buddhists, the Svabhavikas. They believed in
the eternity and the indestructibility of matter, and hence in many prior
creations and destructions of worlds, before our own. "There were old
worlds which perished."* "From this we see that the Holy One, blessed
be His name, had successively created and destroyed sundry worlds, before he
created the present world; and when he created this world he said: 'This
pleases me; the previous ones did not please me.' "** Moreover, they
believed, again like the Svabhavikas, now termed Atheists, that every thing
proceeds (is created) from its own nature and that once that the first impulse
is given by that Creative Force inherent in the "Self-created substance,"
or Sephira, everything evolves out of itself, following its pattern, the more
spiritual prototype which precedes it in the scale of infinite creation.
"The indivisible point which has no limit, and cannot be comprehended (for
it is absolute), expanded from within, and formed a brightness which served as
a garment (a veil) to the indivisible points. . . . It, too, expanded from
within. . . . Thus, everything originated through a constant upheaving
agitation, and thus finally the world originated."***
In the later Zoroastrian
books, after that Darius had restored both the worship of Ormazd and added to
it the purer Magianism of the primitive Secret Wisdom -- [[Heb chars]], of
which, as the inscription tells us, he was himself a hierophant, we see again
reappearing the Zeru-ana, or boundless time, represented by the Brahmans in the
chakkra, or a circle; that we see figuring on the uplifted finger of the
principal deities. Further on, we will show the relation in which it stands to
the Pythagorean, mystical numbers -- the first and the last -- which is a zero
(0), and to the greatest of the Mystery-Gods IAO. The identity of this symbol
alone, in all the old religions, is sufficient to show their common descent
from one primitive Faith.**** This term of "boundless time," which
can be applied but to the ONE who has neither beginning nor end, is
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Idra Suta:
"Sohar," iii., p. 292 b.
** Bereshith Rabba:
"Parsha," ix.
*** "Sohar," i., p.
20 a.
**** "The Sanscrit
s," says Max Muller, "is represented by the z and h. Thus the
geographical name 'hapta hendu,' which occurs in the 'Avesta,' becomes
intelligible, if we retranslate the z and h into the Sanscrit s. For 'Sapta
Sindhu,' or the seven rivers, is the old Vaidic name for India itself"
("Chips," vol. i., p. 81). The "Avesta" is the spirit of
the "Vedas" -- the esoteric meaning made partially known.
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AND ITS DERIVATIVES.
called by the Zoroastrians
Zeruana-Akarene, because he has always existed. "His glory," they
say, is too exalted, his light too resplendent for either human intellect or
mortal eyes to grasp and see. His primal emanation is eternal light which, from
having been previously concealed in darkness, was called out to manifest
itself, and thus was formed Ormazd, "the King of Life." He is the
first-born of boundless time, but like his own antitype, or preexisting
spiritual idea, has lived within primitive darkness from all eternity. His
Logos created the pure intellectual world. After the lapse of three grand
cycles* he created the material world in six periods. The six Amshaspands, or
primitive spiritual men, whom Ormazd created in his own image, are the
mediators between this world and himself. Mithras is an emanation of the Logos
and the chief of the twenty-eight izeds, who are the tutelary angels over the
spiritual portion of mankind -- the souls of men. The Ferouers are infinite in
number. They are the ideas or rather the ideal conceptions of things which
formed themselves in the mind of Ormazd or Ahuramazda before he willed them to
assume a concrete form. They are what Aristotle terms "privations" of
forms and substances. The religion of Zarathustra, as he is always called in
the Avesta, is one from which the ancient Jews have the most borrowed. In one
of the Yashts, Ahuramazda, the Supreme, gives to the seer as one of his sacred
names, Ahmi, "I am"; and in another place, ahmi yat ahmi, "I am
that I am," as Jehovah is alleged to have given it to Moses.
This Cosmogony, adopted with a
change of names in the Rabbinical Kabala, found its way, later, with some
additional speculations of Manes, the half-Magus, half-Platonist, into the
great body of Gnosticism. The real doctrines of the Basilideans, Valentinians,
and the Marcionites cannot be correctly ascertained in the prejudiced and
calumnious writings of the Fathers of the Church; but rather in what remains of
the works of the Bardesanesians, known as the Nazarenes. It is next to
impossible, now that all their manuscripts and books are destroyed, to assign
to any of these sects its due part in dissenting views. But there are a few men
still living who have preserved books and direct traditions about the Ophites,
although they care little to impart them to the world. Among the unknown sects
of Mount Lebanon and Palestine the truth has been concealed for more than a
thousand years. And their diagram of the Ophite scheme differs with the
description of it given by Origen and hence with the diagram of Matter.**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* What is generally understood
in the "Avesta" system as a thousand years, means, in the esoteric
doctrine, a cycle of a duration known but to the initiates and which has an
allegorical sense.
** Matter: "Histoire
Critique du Gnosticisme," pl. x.
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The kabalistic trinity is one
of the models of the Christian one. "The ANCIENT whose name be sanctified,
is with three heads, but which make only one."* Tria capita exsculpa sunt,
unum intra alterum, et alterum supra alterum. "Three heads are inserted in
one another, and one over the other. The first head is the Concealed Wisdom
(Sapientia Abscondita). Under this head is the ANCIENT (Pythagorean Monad), the
most hidden of mysteries; a head which is no head (caput quod non est caput);
no one can know what that is in this head. No intellect is able to comprehend
this wisdom.** This Senior Sanctissimus is surrounded by the three heads. He is
the eternal LIGHT of the wisdom; and the wisdom is the source from which all
the manifestations have begun. These three heads, included in ONE HEAD (which
is no head); and these three are bent down (overshadow) SHORT-FACE (the son)
and through them all things shine with light."*** "En-Soph emits a
thread from El or Al (the highest God of the Trinity), and the light follows
the thread and enters, and passing through makes its exit through Adam Primus
(Kadmon), who is concealed until the plan for arranging (statum dispositionis)
is ready; it threads through him from his head to his feet; and in him (in the
concealed Adam) is the figure of A MAN."****
"Whoso wishes to have an
insight into the sacred unity, let him consider a flame rising from a burning
coal or a burning lamp. He will see first a two-fold light -- a bright white,
and a black or blue light; the white light is above, and ascends in a direct
light, while the blue, or dark light, is below, and seems as the chair of the
former, yet both are so intimately connected together that they constitute only
one flame. The seat, however, formed by the blue or dark light, is again
connected with the burning matter which is under it again. The white light
never changes its color, it always remains white; but various shades are
observed in the lower light, whilst the lowest light, moreover, takes two
directions; above, it is connected with the white light, and below with the
burning matter. Now, this is constantly consuming itself, and perpetually
ascends to the upper light, and thus everything merges into a single
unity."*****
Such were the ancient ideas of
the trinity in the unity, as an abstraction. Man, who is the microcosmos of the
macrocosmos, or of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Idra Suta:
"Sohar," iii., p. 288.
** Ibid., sect. ii.
*** Ibid., vii.
**** Jam vero quoniam hoc in
loco recondita est illa plane non utuntur, et tantum de parte lucis ejus
particepant quae demittitur et ingreditur intra filum Ain Soph protensum e
Persona [[Heb char]] (Al-God) deorum: intratque et perrumpit et transit per
Adam primum occultum usque in statum dispositionis transitque per eum a capite
usque ad pedes ejus: et in eo est figura hominis ("Kabbala Denudata,"
ii., p. 246).
***** "Sohar," i.,
p. 51 a.
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archetypal heavenly man, Adam Kadmon,
is likewise a trinity; for he is body, soul, and spirit.
"All that is created by
the 'Ancient of the Ancients' can live and exist only by a male and a
female," says the Sohar.* He alone, to whom no one can say,
"Thou," for he is the spirit of the WHITE-HEAD in whom the
"THREE HEADS" are united, is uncreated. Out of the subtile fire, on
one side of the White Head, and of the "subtile air," on the other,
emanates Shekinah, his veil (the femininized Holy Ghost). "This air,"
says Idra Rabba, "is the most occult (occultissimus) attribute of the
Ancient of the Days.** The Ancienter of the Ancienter is the Concealed of the
Concealed.*** All things are Himself, and Himself is concealed on every
way.**** The cranium of the WHITE-HEAD has no beginning, but its end has a
shining reflection and a roundness which is our universe."
"They regard," says
Klenker, "the first-born as man and wife, in so far as his light includes
in itself all other lights, and in so far as his spirit of life or breath of
life includes all other life spirits in itself."***** The kabalistic
Shekinah answers to the Ophite Sophia. Properly speaking, Adam Kadmon is the
Bythos, but in this emanation-system, where everything is calculated to perplex
and place an obstacle to inquiry, he is the Source of Light, the first
"primitive man," and at the same time Ennoia, the Thought of Bythos,
the Depth, for he is Pimander.
The Gnostics, as well as the
Nazarenes, allegorizing on the personification, said that the First and Second
man loved the beauty of Sophia, (Sephira) the first woman, and thus the Father
and the Son fecundated the heavenly "Woman" and, from primal darkness
procreated the visible light (Sephira is the Invisible, or Spiritual Light),
"whom they called the ANOINTED CHRISTUM, or King Messiah."****** This
Christus is the Adam of Dust before his fall, with the spirit of the Adonai,
his Father, and Shekinah Adonai, his mother, upon him; for Adam Primus is Adon,
Adonai, or Adonis. The primal existence manifests itself by its wisdom, and
produces the Intelligible LOGOS (all visible creation). This wisdom was
venerated by the Ophites under the form of a serpent. So far we see that the
first and second life are the two Adams, or the first and the second man. In
the former lies Eva, or the yet unborn spiritual Eve, and she is within Adam
Primus, for she is a part of himself, who is androgyne. The Eva of dust, she
who will be called in
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Book iii., p. 290.
** "Idra Rabba," §§
541, 542.
*** Ibid., iii., p. 36.
**** Ibid., p. 171.
***** "Nat. und Urspr. d.
Emanationslehre b. d. Kabbalisten," p. ii.
****** "Irenaeus,"
p. 637.
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Genesis "the mother of
all that live," is within Adam the Second. And now, from the moment of its
first manifestation, the LORD MANO, the Unintelligible Wisdom, disappears from
the scene of action. It will manifest itself only as Shekinah, the GRACE; for
the CORONA is "the innermost Light of all Lights," and hence it is
darkness's own substance.*
In the Kabala, Shekinah is the
ninth emanation of Sephira, which contains the whole of the ten Sephiroth
within herself. She belongs to the third triad and is produced together with
Malchuth or "Kingdom," of which she is the female counterpart.
Otherwise she is held to be higher than any of these; for she is the
"Divine Glory," the "veil," or "garment," of
En-Soph. The Jews, whenever she is mentioned in the Targum, say that she is the
glory of Jehovah, which dwelt in the tabernacle, manifesting herself like a
visible cloud; the "Glory" rested over the Mercy-Seat in the Sanctum
Sanctorum.
In the Nazarene or Bardesanian
System, which may be termed the Kabala within the Kabala, the Ancient of Days
-- Antiquus Altus, who is the Father of the Demiurgus of the universe, is
called the Third Life, or Abatur; and he is the Father of Fetahil, who is the
architect of the visible universe, which he calls into existence by the powers
of his genii, at the order of the "Greatest"; the Abatur answering to
the "Father" of Jesus in the later Christian theology. These two
superior Lives then, are the crown within which dwells the greatest Ferho.
"Before any creature came into existence the Lord Ferho existed."**
This one is the First Life, formless and invisible; in whom the living Spirit
of LIFE exists, the Highest GRACE. The two are ONE from eternity, for they are
the Light and the CAUSE of the Light. Therefore, they answer to the kabalistic
concealed wisdom, and to the concealed Shekinah -- the Holy Ghost. "This
light, which is manifested, is the garment of the Heavenly Concealed,"
says Idra Suta. And the "heavenly man" is the superior Adam. "No
one knows his paths except Macroprosopus" (Long-face) -- the Superior
active god.*** "Not as I am written will I be read; in this world my name
will be written Jehovah and read Adonai,"**** say the Rabbins, very
correctly. Adonai is the Adam Kadmon; he is FATHER and MOTHER both. By this
double mediatorship the Spirit of the "Ancient of the Ancient"
descends upon the Microprosopus (Short-face) or the Adam of Eden. And the
"Lord God breathes into his nostrils the breath of life."
When the woman separates
herself from her androgyne, and becomes
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Idra Suta," ix.;
"Kabbala Denudata"; see Pythagoras: "Monad."
** "Codex
Nazaraeus," i., p. 145.
*** "Idra Rabba," viii.,
pp. 107-109.
**** "Auszuge aus dem
Sohar," p. 11.
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NAZARENE IDEAS.
a distinct individuality, the
first story is repeated over again. Both the Father and Son, the two Adams,
love her beauty; and then follows the allegory of the temptation and fall. It
is in the Kabala, as in the Ophite system, in which both the Ophis and the Ophiomorphos
are emanations emblematized as serpents, the former representing Eternity,
Wisdom, and Spirit (as in the Chaldean Magism of Aspic-worship and
Wisdom-Doctrine in the olden times), and the latter Cunning, Envy, and Matter.
Both spirit and matter are serpents; and Adam Kadmon becomes the Ophis who
tempts himself -- man and woman -- to taste of the "Tree of Good and
Evil," in order to teach them the mysteries of spiritual wisdom. Light
tempts Darkness, and Darkness attracts Light, for Darkness is matter, and
"the Highest Light shines not in its Tenebrae." With knowledge comes
the temptation of the Ophiomorphos, and he prevails. The dualism of every
existing religion is shown forth by the fall. "I have gotten a man from
the Lord," exclaims Eve, when the Dualism, Cain and Abel -- evil and good
-- is born. "And the Adam knew Hua, his woman (astu), and she became
pregnant and bore Kin, and she said: [[Heb chars]]: Kiniti ais Yava. -- I have
gained or obtained a husband, even Yava -- Is, Ais -- man." "Cum
arbore peccati Deus creavit seculum."
And now we will compare this
system with that of the Jewish Gnostics -- the Nazarenes, as well as with other
philosophies.
The ISH AMON, the pleroma, or
the boundless circle within which lie "all forms," is the THOUGHT of
the power divine; it works in SILENCE, and suddenly light is begotten by
darkness; it is called the SECOND life; and this one produces, or generates the
THIRD. This third light is "the FATHER of all things that live," as
EUA is the "mother of all that live." He is the Creator who calls
inert matter into life, through his vivifying spirit, and, therefore, is called
the ancient of the world. Abatur is the Father who creates the first Adam, who
creates in his turn the second. Abatur opens a gate and walks to the dark water
(chaos), and looking down into it, the darkness reflects the image of Himself .
. . and lo! a SON is formed -- the Logos or Demiurge; Fetahil, who is the
builder of the material world, is called into existence. According to the
Gnostic dogma, this was the Metatron, the Archangel Gabriel, or messenger of
life; or, as the biblical allegory has it, the androgynous Adam-Kadmon again,
the SON, who, with his Father's spirit, produces the ANOINTED, or Adam before
his fall.
When Swayambhuva, the "Lord
who exists through himself," feels impelled to manifest himself, he is
thus described in the Hindu sacred books.
Having been impelled to
produce various beings from his own divine
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substance, he first manifested
the waters which developed within themselves a productive seed.
The seed became a germ bright
as gold, blazing like the luminary with a thousand beams; and in that egg he
was born himself, in the form of BRAHMA, the great principle of all the beings
(Manu, book i., slokas 8, 9).
The Egyptian Kneph, or
Chnuphis, Divine Wisdom, represented by a serpent, produces an egg from his
mouth, from which issues Phtha. In this case Phtha represents the universal
germ, as well as Brahma, who is of the neuter gender, when the final a has a
diaresis on it;* otherwise it becomes simply one of the names of the Deity. The
former was the model of the THREE LIVES of the Nazarenes, as that of the
kabalistic "Faces," PHARAZUPHA, which, in its turn, furnished the
model for the Christian Trinity of Irenaeus and his followers. The egg was the
primitive matter which served as a material for the building of the visible
universe; it contained, as well as the Gnostic Pleroma, the kabalistic
Shekinah, the man and wife, the spirit and life, "whose light includes all
other lights" or life-spirits. This first manifestation was symbolized by
a serpent, which is at first divine wisdom, but, falling into generation,
becomes polluted. Phtha is the heavenly man, the Egyptian Adam-Kadmon, or
Christ, who, in conjunction with the female Holy Ghost, the ZOE, produces the
five elements, air, water, fire, earth, and ether; the latter being a servile
copy from the Buddhist A'd, and his five Dhyana Buddhas, as we have shown in
the preceding chapter. The Hindu Swayambhuva-Nara, develops from himself the
mother-principle, enclosed within his own divine essence -- Nari, the immortal
Virgin, who, when impregnated by his spirit, becomes Tanmatra, the mother of
the five elements -- air, water, fire, earth, and ether. Thus may be shown how
from the Hindu cosmogony all others proceed.
Knorr von Rosenroth, busying
himself with the interpretation of the Kabala, argues that, "In this first
state (of secret wisdom), the infinite God Himself can be understood as
'Father' (of the new covenant). But the Light being let down by the Infinite
through a canal into the 'primal Adam,' or Messiah, and joined with him, can be
applied to the name SON. And the influx emitted down from him (the Son) to the
lower parts (of the universe), can be applied to the character of the Holy
Ghost."** Sophia-Achamoth, the half-spiritual, half-material LIFE, which
vivifies the inert matter in the depths of chaos, is the Holy Ghost of the
Gnostics, and the Spiritus (female) of the Nazarenes. She is -- be it re-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* He is the universal and spiritual
germ of all things.
** "Ad. Kabb. Chr.,"
p. 6.
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MYTHS.
membered -- the sister of
Christos, the perfect emanation, and both are children or emanations of Sophia,
the purely spiritual and intellectual daughter of Bythos, the Depth. For the
elder Sophia is Shekinah, the Face of God, "God's Shekinah, which is his
image."*
"The Son Zeus-Belus, or
Sol-Mithra is an image of the Father, an emanation from the Supreme
Light," says Movers. "He passed for Creator."**
"Philosophers say the
first air is anima mundi. But the garment (Shekinah) is higher than the first
air, since it is joined closer to the En-Soph, the Boundless."*** Thus
Sophia is Shekinah, and Sophia-Achamoth the anima mundi, the astral light of
the kabalists, which contains the spiritual and material germs of all that is.
For the Sophia-Achamoth, like Eve, of whom she is the prototype, is "the
mother of all that live."
There are three trinities in
the Nazarene system as well as in the Hindu philosophy of the ante and early
Vedic period. While we see the few translators of the Kabala, the Nazarene
Codex, and other abstruse works, hopelessly floundering amid the interminable
pantheon of names, unable to agree as to a system in which to classify them,
for the one hypothesis contradicts and overturns the other, we can but wonder
at all this trouble, which could be so easily overcome. But even now, when the
translation, and even the perusal of the ancient Sanscrit has become so easy as
a point of comparison, they would never think it possible that every philosophy
-- whether Semitic, Hamitic, or Turanian, as they call it, has its key in the
Hindu sacred works. Still facts are there, and facts are not easily destroyed.
Thus, while we find the Hindu trimurti triply manifested as
Nara (or Para-Pouroucha),
Agni, Brahma, the Father,
Nari (Mariama), Vaya, Vishnu,
the Mother,
Viradj (Brahma), Surya, Siva,
the Son,
and the Egyptian trinity as
follows:
Kneph (or Amon), Osiris, Ra
(Horus), the Father,
Maut (or Mut), Isis, Isis, the
Mother,
Khons, Horus, Malouli, the
Son;****
the Nazarene System runs,
Ferho (Ish-Amon), Mano,
Abatur, the Father,
Chaos (dark water), Spiritus
(female), Netubto, the Mother,
Fetahil, Ledhaio, Lord Jordan,
the Son.
The first is the concealed or
non-manifested trinity -- a pure abstraction. The other the active or the one
revealed in the results of creation,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Sohar," p. 93.
** "Movers," p. 265.
*** "Kabbala
Denudata," vol. ii., p. 236.
**** Champollion, Junior:
"Lettres."
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proceeding out of the former
-- its spiritual prototype. The third is the mutilated image of both the
others, crystallized in the form of human dogmas, which vary according to the
exuberance of the national materialistic fancy.
The Supreme Lord of splendor
and of light, luminous and refulgent, before which no other existed, is called
Corona (the crown); Lord Ferho, the unrevealed life which existed in the former
from eternity; and Lord Jordan -- the spirit, the living water of grace.* He is
the one through whom alone we can be saved; and thus he answers to the
Shekinah, the spiritual garment of En-Soph, or the Holy Ghost. These three constitute
the trinity abscondito. The second trinity is composed of the three lives. The
first is the similitude of Lord Ferho, through whom he has proceeded forth; and
the second Ferho is the King of Light -- MANO (Rex Lucis). He is the heavenly
life and light, and older than the Architect of heaven and earth.** The second
life is Ish Amon (Pleroma), the vase of election, containing the visible
thought of the Iordanus Maximus -- the type (or its intelligible reflection),
the prototype of the living water, who is the "spiritual Jordan."***
Third life, which is produced by the other two, is ABATUR (Ab, the Parent or
Father). This is the mysterious and decrepit "Aged of the Aged," the
"Ancient Senem sui obtegentem et grandaevum mundi." This latter third
Life is the Father of the Demiurge Fetahil, the Creator of the world, whom the
Ophites call Ilda-Baoth,**** though Fetahil is the only-begotten one, the
reflection of the Father, Abatur, who begets him by looking into the "dark
water"; ***** but the Lord Mano, "the Lord of loftiness, the Lord of
all genii," is higher than the Father, in this kabalistic Codex -- one is
purely spiritual, the other material. So, for instance, while Abatur's
"only begotten" one is the genius Fetahil, the Creator of the physical
world, Lord Mano, the "Lord of Celsitude," who is the son of Him, who
is "the Father of all who preach the Gospel," produces also an
"only-begotten" one, the Lord Lehdaio, "a just Lord." He is
the Christos, the anointed, who pours out the "grace" of the
Invisible Jordan, the Spirit of the Highest Crown.
In the Arcanum, "in the
assembly of splendor, lighted by MANO, to whom the scintillas of splendor owe
their origin," the genii who live in light "rose, they went to the
visible Jordan, and flowing water . . . they assembled for a counsel . . . and
called forth the Only-Begotten Son
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Codex Nazaraeus,"
vol. ii., pp. 47-57.
** Ibid., vol. i., p. 145.
*** Ibid., vol. ii., p. 211.
**** Ibid., vol. i., p. 308.
***** Sophia-Achamoth also
begets her son Ilda-Baoth, the Demiurge, by looking into chaos or matter, and
by coming in contact with it.
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EXPLAINED.
of an imperishable image, and
who cannot be conceived by reflection, Lebdaio, the just Lord, and sprung from
Lebdaio, the just lord, whom the life had produced by his word."*
Mano is the chief of the seven
AEons, who are Mano (Rex Lucis), Aiar Zivo, Ignis Vivus, Lux, Vita, Aqua Viva
(the living water of baptism, the genius of the Jordan), and Ipsa Vita, the
chief of the six genii, which form with him the mystic seven. The Nazarene Mano
is simply the copy of the Hindu first Manu -- the emanation of Manu Swayambhuva
-- from whom evolve in succession the six other Manus, types of the subsequent
races of men. We find them all represented by the apostle-kabalist John in the
"seven lamps of fire" burning before the throne, which are the seven
spirits of God,"** and in the seven angels bearing the seven vials. Again
in Fetahil we recognize the original of the Christian doctrine.
In the Revelation of Joannes
Theologos it is said: "I turned and saw in the midst of the seven
candlesticks one like unto the Son of man . . . his head and his hairs were
white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire . . .
and his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace" (i. 13,
14, 15). John here repeats, as is well known, the words of Daniel and Ezekiel.
"The Ancient of Days . . . whose hair was white as pure wool . . .
etc." And "the appearance of a man . . . above the throne . . . and
the appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about."*** The fire
being "the glory of the Lord." Fetahil is son of the man, the Third
Life, and his upper part is represented as white as snow, while standing near
the throne of the living fire he has the appearance of a flame.
All these
"apocalyptic" visions are based on the description of the "white
head" of the Sohar, in whom the kabalistic trinity is united. The white
head, "which conceals in its cranium the spirit," and which is
environed by subtile fire. The "appearance of a man" is that of Adam
Kadmon, through which passes the thread of light represented by the fire.
Fetahil is the Vir Novissimus (the newest man), the son of Abatur,**** the
latter being the "man," or the third life,***** now the third
personage of the trinity. John sees "one like unto the son of man,"
holding in his right hand seven stars, and standing between "seven golden
candlesticks" (Revelation i.). Fetahil takes his "stand on
high," according to the will of his father, "the highest AEon who has
seven sceptres," and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Codex Nazaraeus,"
vol. ii., p. 109. See "Sod, the Son of the Man," for translation.
** Revelation iv. 5.
*** Ezekiel.
**** "Codex
Nazaraeus," vol. ii., p. 127.
***** The first androgyne duad
being considered a unit in all the secret computations, is, therefore, the Holy
Ghost.
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seven genii, who
astronomically represent the seven planets or stars. He stands "shining in
the garment of the Lord's, resplendent by the agency of the genii."* He is
the Son of his Father, Life, and his mother, Spirit, or Light.** The Logos is
represented in the Gospel according to John as one in whom was "Life, and
the life was the light of men" (i. 4). Fetahil is the Demiurge, and his
father created the visible universe of matter through him.*** In the Epistle of
Paul to the Ephesians (iii. 9), God is said to have "created all things by
Jesus." In the Codex the Parent-LIFE says: "Arise, go, our son
first-begotten, ordained for all creatures."**** "As the living
father hath sent me," says Christ, "God sent his only-begotten son
that we might live."***** Finally, having performed his work on earth,
Fetahil reascends to his father Abatur. "Et qui, relicto quem procreavit
mundo, ad Abatur suum patrem contendit,"****** "My father sent me . .
. I go to the Father," repeats Jesus.
Laying aside the theological
disputes of Christianity which try to blend together the Jewish Creator of the
first chapter of Genesis with the "Father" of the New Testament,
Jesus states repeatedly of his Father that "He is in secret." Surely
he would not have so termed the ever-present "Lord God" of the Mosaic
books, who showed Himself to Moses and the Patriarchs, and finally allowed all
the elders of Israel to look on Himself.******* When Jesus is made to speak of
the temple at Jerusalem as of his "Father's house," he does not mean
the physical building, which he maintains he can destroy and then again rebuild
in three days, but of the temple of Solomon; the wise kabalist, who indicates
in his Proverbs that every man is the temple of God, or of his own divine spirit.
This term of the "Father who is in secret," we find used as much in
the Kabala as in the Codex Nazaraeus, and elsewhere. No one has ever seen the
wisdom concealed in the "Cranium," and no one has beheld the
"Depth" (Bythos). Simon, the Magician, preached "one Father
unknown to all."********
We can trace this appellation
of a "secret" God still farther back. In the Kabala the
"Son" of the concealed Father who dwells in light and glory, is the
"Anointed," the Seir-Anpin, who unites in himself all the Sephiroth,
he is Christos, or the Heavenly man. It is through Christ that the Pneuma, or
the Holy Ghost, creates "all things"
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Codex Nazaraeus,"
vol. iii., p. 59.
** Ibid., vol. i., p. 285.
*** Ibid., vol. i., p. 309,
**** Ibid., vol. i., p. 287.
See "Sod, the Son of the Man," p. 101.
***** John iv. 9.
****** "Codex
Nazaraeus," vol. ii., p. 123.
******* "Then went up
Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel. And they
saw the God of Israel," Exodus xxiv. 9, 10.
******** Irenaeus:
"Clementine Homilies," I., xxii., p. 118.
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AND SERAPHIM?
(Ephesians iii. 9), and
produces the four elements, air, water, fire, and earth. This assertion is
unquestionable, for we find Irenaeus basing on this fact his best argument for
the necessity of there being four gospels. There can be neither more nor fewer
than four -- he argues. "For as there are four quarters of the world, and
four general winds [[(Katholica Pneumata)]] . . . it is right that she (the
Church) should have four pillars. From which it is manifest that the Word, the
maker of all, he who sitteth upon the Cherubim . . . as David says,
supplicating his advent, 'Thou that sittest between the Cherubim, shine forth!'
For the Cherubim also are four-faced and their faces are symbols of the working
of the Son of God."*
We will not stop to discuss at
length the special holiness of the four-faced Cherubim, although we might,
perhaps, show their origin in all the ancient pagodas of India, in the vehans
(or vehicles) of their chief gods; as likewise we might easily attribute the
respect paid to them to the kabalistic wisdom, which, nevertheless, the Church
rejects with great horror. But, we cannot resist the temptation to remind the
reader that he may easily ascertain the several significances attributed to
these Cherubs by reading the Kabala. "When the souls are to leave their
abode," says the Sohar, holding to the doctrine of the pre-existence of
souls in the world of emanations, "each soul separately appears before the
Holy King, dressed in a sublime form, with the features in which it is to
appear in this world. It is from this sublime form that the image
proceeds" (Sohar, iii., p. 104 ab). Then it goes on to say that the types
or forms of these faces "are four in number -- those of the angel or man,
of the lion, the bull, and the eagle." Furthermore, we may well express
our wonder that Irenaeus should not have re-enforced his argument for the four
gospels -- by citing the whole Pantheon of the four-armed Hindu gods!
Ezekiel in representing his
four animals, now called Cherubim, as types of the four symbolical beings,
which, in his visions support the throne of Jehovah, had not far to go for his
models. The Chaldeo-Babylonian protecting genii were familiar to him; the Sed,
Alap or Kirub (Cherubim), the bull, with the human face; the Nirgal,
human-headed lion; Oustour the Sphinx-man; and the Nathga, with its eagle's
head. The religion of the masters -- the idolatrous Babylonians and Assyrians
-- was transferred almost bodily into the revealed Scripture of the Captives,
and from thence came into Christianity.
Already, we find Ezekiel
addressed by the likeness of the glory of the Lord, "as Son of man."
This peculiar title is used repeatedly
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Adv. Haes.,"
III., ii., 18.
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throughout the whole book of
this prophet, which is as kabalistic as the "roll of a book" which
the "Glory" causes him to eat. It is written within and without; and
its real meaning is identical with that of the Apocalypse. It appears strange
that so much stress should be laid on this peculiar appellation, said to have
been applied by Jesus to himself, when, in the symbolical or kabalistic
language, a prophet is so addressed. It is as extraordinary to see Irenaeus
indulging in such graphic descriptions of Jesus as to show him, "the maker
of all, sitting upon a Cherubim," unless he identifies him with Shekinah,
whose usual place was among the Charoubs of the Mercy Seat. We also know that
the Cherubim and Seraphim are titles of the "Old Serpent" (the
orthodox Devil) the Seraphs being the burning or fiery serpents, in kabalistic
symbolism. The ten emanations of Adam Kadmon, called the Sephiroth, have all
emblems and titles corresponding to each. So, for instance, the last two are
Victory, or Jehovah-Sabaoth, whose symbol is the right column of Solomon, the
Pillar Jachin; while GLORY is the left Pillar, or Boaz, and its name is
"the Old Serpent," and also "Seraphim and Cherubim."*
The "Son of man" is
an appellation which could not be assumed by any one but a kabalist. Except, as
shown above, in the Old Testament, it is used but by one prophet -- Ezekiel,
the kabalist. In their mysterious and mutual relations, the AEons or Sephiroth
are represented in the Kabala by a great number of circles, and sometimes by
the figure of a MAN, which is symbolically formed out of such circles. This man
is Seir-Anpin, and the 243 numbers of which his figure consists relate to the
different orders of the celestial hierarchy. The original idea of this figure,
or rather the model, may have been taken from the Hindu Brahma, and the various
castes typified by the several parts of his body, as King suggests in his
Gnostics. In one of the grandest and most beautiful cave-temples at Ellora,
Nasak, dedicated to Vishvakarma, son of Brahma, is a representation of this God
and his attributes. To one acquainted with Ezekiel's description of the
"likeness of four living creatures," every one of which had four
faces and the hands of a man under its wings, etc.,** this figure at Ellora
must certainly appear absolutely biblical. Brahma is called the father of
"man," as well as Jupiter and other highest gods.
It is in the Buddhistic
representations of Mount Meru, called by the Burmese Mye-nmo, and by the
Siamese Sineru, that we find one of the originals of the Adam Kadmon,
Seir-Anpin, the "heavenly man," and of all the AEons, Sephiroth,
Powers, Dominions, Thrones, Virtues, and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See King's
"Gnostics."
** Ezekiel i.-ii.
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SEPHIROTH.
Dignities of the Kabala.
Between two pillars, which are connected by an arch, the key-stone of the
latter is represented by a crescent. This is the domain in which dwells the
Supreme Wisdom of A'di Buddha, the Supreme and invisible Deity. Beneath this
highest central point comes the circle of the direct emanation of the Unknown
-- the circle of Brahma with some Hindus, of the first avatar of Buddha,
according to others. This answers to Adam Kadmon and the ten Sephiroth. Nine of
the emanations are encircled by the tenth, and occasionally represented by
pagodas, each of which bears a name which expresses one of the chief attributes
of the manifested Deity. Then below come the seven stages, or heavenly spheres,
each sphere being encircled by a sea. These are the celestial mansions of the
devatas, or gods, each losing somewhat in holiness and purity as it approaches
the earth. Then comes Meru itself, formed of numberless circles within three
large ones, typifying the trinity of man; and for one acquainted with the
numerical value of the letters in biblical names, like that of the "Great
Beast," or that of Mithra [[Mithras abraxas]], and others, it is an easy
matter to establish the identity of the Meru-gods with the emanations or
Sephiroth of the kabalists. Also the genii of the Nazarenes, with their special
missions, are all found on this most ancient mythos, a most perfect
representation of the symbolism of the "secret doctrine," as taught
in archaic ages.
King gives a few hints --
though doubtless too insufficient to teach anything important, for they are
based upon the calculations of Bishop Newton* -- as to this mode of finding out
mysteries in the value of letters. However, we find this great archaeologist,
who has devoted so much time and labor to the study of Gnostic gems,
corroborating our assertion. He shows that the entire theory is Hindu, and
points out that the durga, or female counterpart of each Asiatic god, is what
the kabalists term active Virtue** in the celestial hierarchy, a term which the
Christian Fathers adopted and repeated, without fully appreciating, and the
meaning of which the later theology has utterly disfigured. But to return to
Meru.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Gnostics and their
Remains."
** "Although this science
is commonly supposed to be peculiar to the Jewish Talmudists, there is no doubt
that they borrowed the idea from a foreign source, and that from the Chaldeans,
the founders of magic art," says King, in the "Gnostics." The
titles Iao and Abraxas, etc., instead of being recent Gnostic figments, were
indeed holy names, borrowed from the most ancient formulae of the East. Pliny
must allude to them when he mentions the virtues ascribed by the Magi to
amethysts engraved with the names of the sun and moon, names not expressed in
either the Greek or Latin tongues. In the "Eternal Sun," the
"Abraxas," the "Adonai," of these gems, we recognize the
very amulets ridiculed by the philosophic Pliny ("Gnostics," pp. 79,
80); Virtutes (miracles) as employed by Irenaeus.
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The whole is surrounded by the
Maha Samut, or the great sea -- the astral light and ether of the kabalists and
scientists; and within the central circles appears "the likeness of a
man." He is the Achadoth of the Nazarenes, the twofold unity, or the
androgyne man; the heavenly incarnation, and a perfect representation of
Seir-Anpin (short-face), the son, of Arich Anpin (long-face).* This likeness is
now represented in many lamaseries by Gautama-Buddha, the last of the
incarnated avatars. Still lower, under the Meru, is the dwelling of the great
Naga, who is called Rajah Naga, the king-serpent -- the serpent of Genesis, the
Gnostic Ophis -- and the goddess of the earth, Bhumay Nari, or Yama, who waits upon
the great dragon, for she is Eve, "the mother of all that live."
Still lower is the eighth sphere, the infernal regions. The uppermost regions
of Brahma are surrounded by the sun, moon, and planets, the seven stellars of
the Nazarenes, and just as they are described in the Codex.
"The seven
impostor-Daemons who deceive the sons of Adam. The name of one is Sol; of
another Spiritus Venereus, Astro; of the third Nebu, Mercurius a false Messiah;
. . . the name of a fourth is Sin Luna; the fifth is Kiun, Saturnus; the sixth,
Bel-Zeus; the seventh, Nerig-Mars."** Then there are "Seven Lives
procreated," seven good Stellars, "which are from Cabar Zio, and are
those bright ones who shine in their own form and splendor that pours from on
high. . . . At the gate of the HOUSE OF LIFE the throne is fitly placed for the
Lord of Splendor, and there are THREE habitations."*** The habitations of
the Trimurti, the Hindu trinity, are placed beneath the key-stone -- the golden
crescent, in the representation of Meru. "And there was under his feet (of
the God of Israel) as it were a paved work of a sapphire-stone" (Exodus
xxiv. 10). Under the crescent is the heaven of Brahma, all paved with
sapphires. The paradise of Indra is resplendent with a thousand suns; that of Siva
(Saturn), is in the northeast; his throne is formed of lapis-lazuli and the
floor of heaven is of fervid gold. "When he sits on the throne he blazes
with fire up to the loins." At Hurdwar, during the fair, in which he is
more than ever Mahadeva, the highest god, the attributes and emblems sacred to
the Jewish "Lord God," may be recognized one by one in those of Siva.
The Binlang stone,**** sacred to this Hindu deity, is an unhewn stone like the
Beth-el, consecrated by the Patriarch Jacob, and set up by him "for a
pillar," and like the latter
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* So called to distinguish the
short-face, who is exterior, "from the venerable sacred ancient" (the
"Idra Rabba," iii., 36; v 54). Seir-Anpin is the "image of the
Father." "He that hath seen me hath seen my Father" (John xiv.
9).
** "Codex
Nazaraeus," vol. iii., p. 57.
*** Ibid., vol. iii., p. 61.
**** This stone, of a
sponge-like surface, is found in Narmada and seldom to be seen in other places.
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DESCRIBES SIVA.
Binlang is anointed. We need
hardly remind the student that the linga, the emblem sacred to Siva and whose
temples are modelled after this form, is identical in shape, meaning, and
purpose with the "pillars" set up by the several patriarchs to mark
their adoration of the Lord God. In fact, one of these patriarchal lithoi might
even now be carried in the Sivaitic processions of Calcutta, without its Hebrew
derivation being suspected. The four arms of Siva are often represented with
appendages like wings; he has three eyes and a fourth in the crescent, obtained
by him at the churning of the ocean, as Pancha Mukhti Siva has four heads.
In this god we recognize the
description given by Ezekiel, in the first chapter of his book, of his vision,
in which he beholds the "likeness of a man" in the four living
creatures, who had "four faces, four wings," who had one pair of
"straight feet . . . which sparkled like the color of burnished brass . .
. and their rings were full of eyes round about them four." It is the
throne and heaven of Siva that the prophet describes in saying " . . . and
there was the likeness of a throne as the appearance of a sapphire stone . . .
and I saw as the color of amber (gold) as the appearance of fire around about .
. . from his loins even upward, and from the appearance of his loins even
downward, I saw as it were the appearance of fire" (Ezekiel i. 27).
"And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace"
(Revelation i. 15). "As for their faces . . . one had the face of a
cherub, and the face of a lion . . . they also had the face of an ox and the
face of an eagle" (Ezekiel i. 10, x. 14). This fourfold appearance which
we find in the two cherubims of gold on the two ends of the ark; these symbolic
four faces being adopted, moreover, later, one by each evangelist, as may be
easily ascertained from the pictures of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,*
prefixed to their respective gospels in the Roman Vulgate and Greek Bibles.
"Taaut, the great god of
the Phoenicians," says Sanchoniathon, "to express the character of
Saturn or Kronos, made his image having four eyes . . . two before, two behind,
open and closed, and four wings, two expanded, two folded. The eyes denote that
the god sees in sleep, and sleeps in waking; the position of the wings that he
flies in rest, and rests in flying."
The identity of Saturn with
Siva is corroborated still more when we consider the emblem of the latter, the
damara, which is an hour-glass, to show the progress of time, represented by
this god in his capacity of a destroyer. The bull Nardi, the vehan of Siva and
the most sacred em-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* John has an eagle near him;
Luke, a bull; Mark, a lion; and Matthew, an angel -- the kabalistic quaternary
of the Egyptian Tarot.
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blem of this god, is
reproduced in the Egyptian Apis; and in the bull created by Ormazd and killed
by Ahriman. The religion of Zoroaster, all based upon the "secret
doctrine," is found held by the people of Eritene; it was the religion of
the Persians when they conquered the Assyrians. From thence it is easy to trace
the introduction of this emblem of LIFE represented by the Bull, in every
religious system. The college of the Magians had accepted it with the change of
dynasty;* Daniel is described as a Rabbi, the chief of the Babylonian
astrologers and Magi;** therefore we see the Assyrian little bulls and the
attributes of Siva reappearing under a hardly modified form in the cherubs of
the Talmudistic Jews, as we have traced the bull Apis in the sphinxes or
cherubs of the Mosaic Ark; and as we find it several thousand years later in
the company of one of the Christian evangelists, Luke.
Whoever has lived in India
long enough to acquaint himself even superficially with the native deities,
must detect the similarity between Jehovah and other gods besides Siva. As
Saturn, the latter was always held in great respect by the Talmudists. He was
held in reverence by the Alexandrian kabalists as the direct inspirer of the
law and the prophets; one of the names of Saturn was Israel, and we will show,
in time, his identity in a certain way with Abram, which Movers and others
hinted at long since. Thus it cannot be wondered at if Valentinus, Basilides,
and the Ophite Gnostics placed the dwelling of their Ilda-Baoth, also a
destroyer as well as a creator, in the planet Saturn; for it was he who gave
the law in the wilderness and spoke through the prophets. If more proof should
be required we will show it in the testimony of the canonical Bible itself. In
Amos the "Lord" pours vials of wrath upon the people of Israel. He
rejects their burnt-offerings and will not listen to their prayers, but inquires
of Amos, "have ye offered unto me sacrifices and offerings in the
wilderness forty years, O house of Israel?" "But ye have borne the
tabernacles of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of your god"
(v. 25, 26). Who are Moloch and Chiun but Baal -- Saturn -- Siva, and Chiun,
Kivan, the same Saturn whose star the Israelites had made to themselves? There
seems no escape in this case; all these deities are identical.
The same in the case of the
numerous Logoi. While the Zoroastrian Sosiosh is framed on that of the tenth
Brahmanical Avatar, and the fifth Buddha of the followers of Gautama; and we
find the former, after having passed part and parcel into the kabalistic system
of king Messiah, reflected in the Apostle Gabriel of the Nazarenes, and AEbel-Zivo,
the Legatus, sent on earth by the Lord of Celsitude and Light; all of these --
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Matter, upon the
subject.
** Consult Book of Daniel,
iv., v.
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THE APOCALYPSE.
Hindu and Persian, Buddhist
and Jewish, the Christos of the Gnostics and the Philonean Logos -- are found
combined in "the Word made flesh" of the fourth Gospel. Christianity
includes all these systems, patched and arranged to meet the occasion. Do we
take up the Avesta -- we find there the dual system so prevalent in the
Christian scheme. The struggle between Ahriman,* Darkness, and Ormazd, Light,
has been going on in the world continually since the beginning of time. When
the worst arrives and Ahriman will seem to have conquered the world and
corrupted all mankind, then will appear the Saviour of mankind, Sosiosh. He
will come seated upon a white horse and followed by an army of good genii
equally mounted on milk-white steeds.** And this we find faithfully copied in
the Revelation: "I saw heaven opened, and beheld a white horse; and he
that sat upon him was called faithful and true. . . . And the armies which were
in heaven followed him upon white horses" (Revelation xix. 11, 14).
Sosiosh himself is but a later Persian permutation of the Hindu Vishnu. The
figure of this god may be found unto this day representing him as the Saviour,
the "Preserver" (the preserving spirit of God), in the temple of
Rama. The picture shows him in his tenth incarnation -- the Kalki avatar, which
is yet to come -- as an armed warrior mounted upon a white horse. Waving over
his head the sword destruction, he holds in his other hand a discus, made up of
rings encircled in one another, an emblem of the revolving cycles or great
ages,*** for Vishnu will thus appear but at the end of the Kaliyug, answering
to the end of the world expected by our Adventists. "And out of his mouth
goeth a sharp sword . . . on his head were many crowns" (Revelation xix.
12). Vishnu is often represented with several crowns superposed on his head.
"And I saw an angel standing on the Sun" (17). The white horse is the
horse of the Sun.**** Sosiosh, the Persian Saviour, is also born of a
virgin,***** and at the end of days he will come as a Redeemer to regenerate
the world, but he will be preceded by two prophets, who will come to announce
him.****** Hence the Jews who had Moses and Elias, are now waiting for the
Messiah. "Then comes the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ahriman, the production of
Zoroaster, is so called in hatred of the Arias or Aryas, the Brahmans against
whose dominion the Zoroastrians had revolted. Although an Arya (a noble, a
sage) himself, Zoroaster, as in the case of the Devas whom he disgraced from
gods to the position of devils, hesitated not to designate this type of the
spirit of evil under the name of his enemies, the Brahman-Aryas. The whole
struggle of Ahura-mazd and Ahriman is but the allegory of the great religious
and political war between Brahmanism and Zoroastrianism.
** "Nork," ii., 146.
*** Rev. Mr. Maurice takes it
also to mean the cycles.
**** "Duncker," ii.,
363; Spiegel's "Avesta," i., 32, 34.
***** See the "Book of
Dehesh," 47.
****** See King's translation
of the "Zend Avesta," in his "Gnostics," p. 9.
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general resurrection, when the
good will immediately enter into this happy abode -- the regenerated earth; and
Ahriman and his angels (the devils),* and the wicked, be purified by immersion
in a lake of molten metal. . . . Henceforward, all will enjoy unchangeable
happiness, and, headed by Sosiosh, ever sing the praises of the Eternal
One."** The above is a perfect repetition of Vishnu in his tenth avatar,
for he will then throw the wicked into the infernal abodes in which, after
purifying themselves, they will be pardoned -- even those devils which rebelled
against Brahma, and were hurled into the bottomless pit by Siva,*** as also the
"blessed ones" will go to dwell with the gods, over the Mount Meru.
Having thus traced the
similarity of views respecting the Logos, Metatron, and Mediator, as found in
the Kabala and the Codex of the Christian Nazarenes and Gnostics, the reader is
prepared to appreciate the audacity of the Patristic scheme to reduce a purely
metaphysical figure into concrete form, and make it appear as if the finger of
prophecy had from time immemorial been pointing down the vista of ages to Jesus
as the coming Messiah. A theomythos intended to symbolize the coming day, near
the close of the great cycle, when the "glad tidings" from heaven
should proclaim the universal brotherhood and common faith of humanity, the day
of regeneration -- was violently distorted into an accomplished fact.
"Why callest thou me
good? there is none good but one, that is God," says Jesus. Is this the
language of a God? of the second person in the Trinity, who is identical with
the First? And if this Messiah, or Holy Ghost of the Gnostic and Pagan
Trinities, had come in his person, what did he mean by distinguishing between
himself the "Son of man," and the Holy Ghost? "And whosoever
shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but unto
him that blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven," he
says.**** And how account for the marvellous identity of this very language,
with the precepts enunciated, centuries before, by the Kabalists and the
"Pagan" initiates? The following are a few instances out of many.
"No one of the gods, no
man or Lord, can be good, but only God alone," says Hermes.*****
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The daevas or devils of the
Iranians contrast with the devas or deities of India.
** "Nork," ii., 146.
*** The Bishop of Ephesus, 218
A.D.; Eusebius: "H. E." iii., 31. Origen stoutly maintained the
doctrine of eternal punishment to be erroneous. He held that at the second
advent of Christ even the devils among the damned would be forgiven. The eternal
damnation is a later Christian thought.
**** Luke xii. 10.
***** "Hermes
Trismegistus," vi. 55.
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MAN.
"To be a good man is
impossible, God alone possesses this privilege," repeats Plato, with a
slight variation.*
Six centuries before Christ,
the Chinese philosopher Confucius said that his doctrine was simple and easy to
comprehend (Lun-yu, chap. 5, § 15). To which one of his disciples added:
"The doctrine of our Master consists in having an invariable correctness
of heart, and in doing toward others as we would that they should do to
us."**
"Jesus of Nazareth, a man
approved of God among you by miracles,"*** exclaims Peter, long after the
scene of Calvary. "There was a man sent from God, whose name was
John,"**** says the fourth Gospel, thus placing the Baptist on an equality
with Jesus. John the Baptist, in one of the most solemn acts of his life, that
of baptizing Christ, thinks not that he is going to baptize a God, but uses the
word man. "This is he of whom I said, after me cometh a man."*****
Speaking of himself, Jesus says, "You seek to kill me, a man that hath told
you the truth, which I have heard of God.****** Even the blind man of
Jerusalem, healed by the great thaumaturgist, full of gratitude and admiration
for his benefactor, in narrating the miracle does not call Jesus God, but
simply says, ". . . a man that is called Jesus, made clay."*******
We do not close the list for
lack of other instances and proofs, but simply because what we now say has been
repeated and demonstrated by others, many times before us. But there is no more
incurable evil than blind and unreasoning fanaticism. Few are the men who, like
Dr. Priestley, have the courage to write, "We find nothing like divinity
ascribed to Christ before Justin Martyr (A. D. 141), who, from being a
philosopher, became a Christian."********
Mahomet appeared nearly six
hundred years********* after the presumed deicide. The Graeco-Roman world was
still convulsed with religious dissensions, withstanding all the past imperial
edicts and forcible Christianization. While the Council of Trent was disputing
about the Vulgate, the unity of God quietly superseded the trinity, and soon
the Mahometans outnumbered the Christians. Why? Because their prophet never
sought to identify himself with Allah. Otherwise, it is safe to say, he would
not have lived to see his religion flourish. Till the present day Mahometanism
has made and is now making more proselytes than Christianity. Buddha Siddhartha
came as a simple mortal, centuries before Christ. The religious ethics of this
faith are now found to far exceed
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Plato Protogoras;
"Cory," p. 274.
** Panthier: "La
Chine," ii., 375; "Sod, the Son of the Man," p. 97.
*** Acts ii. 22.
**** John i. 6.
***** Ibid., 30.
****** John viii. 40.
******* Ibid., ix. 11.
******** Priestley:
"History of Early Christianity," p. 2, sect. 2.
********* Mahomet was born in
571 A. D.
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in moral beauty anything ever
dreamed of by the Tertullians and Augustines.
The true spirit of
Christianity can alone be fully found in Buddhism; partially, it shows itself
in other "heathen" religions. Buddha never made of himself a god, nor
was he deified by his followers. The Buddhists are now known to far outnumber
Christians; they are enumerated at nearly 500,000,000. While cases of
conversion among Buddhists, Brahmanists, Mahometans, and Jews become so rare as
to show how sterile are the attempts of our missionaries, atheism and
materialism spread their gangrenous ulcers and gnaw every day deeper at the
very heart of Christianity. There are no atheists among heathen populations,
and those few among the Buddhists and Brahmans who have become infected with
materialism may always be found to belong to large cities densely thronged with
Europeans, and only among educated classes. Truly says Bishop Kidder:
"Were a wise man to choose his religion from those who profess it, perhaps
Christianity would be the last religion he would choose!"
In an able little pamphlet
from the pen of the popular lecturer, J. M. Peebles, M.D., the author quotes,
from the London Athenaeum, an article in which are described the welfare and
civilization of the inhabitants of Yarkand and Kashgar, "who seem virtuous
and happy." "Gracious Heavens!" fervently exclaims the honest
author, who himself was once a Universalist clergyman, "Grant to keep
Christian missionaries away from 'happy' and heathen Tartary!"*
From the earliest days of
Christianity, when Paul upbraided the Church of Corinth for a crime "as is
not so much as named among the Gentiles -- that one should have his father's
wife"; and for their making a pretext of the "Lord's Supper" for
debauch and drunkenness (1 Corinthians, v. 1), the profession of the name of
Christ has ever been more a pretext than the evidence of holy feeling. However,
a correct form of this verse is: "Everywhere the lewd practice among you
is heard about, such a lewd practice as is nowhere among the heathen nations --
even the having or marrying of the father's wife." The Persian influence
would seem to be indicated in this language. The practice existed "nowhere
among the nations," except in Persia, where it was esteemed especially
meritorious. Hence, too, the Jewish stories of Abraham marrying his sister,
Nahor, his niece, Amram his father's sister, and Judah his son's widow, whose
children appear to have been legitimate. The Aryan tribes esteemed endogamic
marriages, while the Tartars and all barbarous nations required all alliances
to be exogamous.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* J. M. Peebles: "Jesus
-- Man, Myth, or God?"
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KALAVATTI.
There was but one apostle of
Jesus worthy of that name, and that was Paul. However disfigured were his
Epistles by dogmatic hands before being admitted into the Canon, his conception
of the great and divine figure of the philosopher who died for his idea can
still be traced in his addresses to the various Gentile nations. Only, he who
would understand him better yet must study the Philonean Logos reflecting now
and then the Hindu Sabda (logos) of the Mimansa school.
As to the other apostles,
those whose names are prefixed to the Gospels -- we cannot well believe in
their veracity when we find them attributing to their Master miracles surrounded
by circumstances, recorded, if not in the oldest books of India, at least in
such as antedated Christianity, and in the very phraseology of the traditions.
Who, in his days of simple and blind credulity, but marvelled at the touching
narrative given in the Gospels according to Mark and Luke of the resurrection
of the daughter of Jairus? Who has ever doubted its originality? And yet the
story is copied entirely from the Hari-Purana, and is recorded among the
miracles attributed to Christna. We translate it from the French version:
"The King Angashuna
caused the betrothal of his daughter, the beautiful Kalavatti, with the young
son of Vamadeva, the powerful King of Antarvedi, named Govinda, to be
celebrated with great pomp.
"But as Kalavatti was amusing
herself in the groves with her companions, she was stung by a serpent and died.
Angashuna tore his clothes, covered himself with ashes, and cursed the day when
he was born.
"Suddenly, a great rumor
spread through the palace, and the following cries were heard, a thousand times
repeated: 'Pacya pitaram; pacya gurum!' 'The Father, the Master!' Then Christna
approached, smiling, leaning on the arm of Ardjuna. . . . 'Master!' cried
Angashuna, casting himself at his feet, and sprinkling them with his tears,
'See my poor daughter!' and he showed him the body of Kalavatti, stretched upon
a mat. . . .
" 'Why do you weep?'
replied Christna, in a gentle voice. 'Do you not see that she is sleeping?
Listen to the sound of her breathing, like the sigh of the night wind which
rustles the leaves of the trees. See, her cheeks resuming their color, her
eyes, whose lids tremble as if they were about to open; her lips quiver as if
about to speak; she is sleeping, I tell you; and hold! see, she moves,
Kalavatti! Rise and walk!'
"Hardly had Christna
spoken, when the breathing, warmth, movement, and life returned little by
little, into the corpse, and the young girl, obeying the injunction of the
demi-god, rose from her couch and
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rejoined her companions. But
the crowd marvelled and cried out: 'This is a god, since death is no more for
him than sleep!' "*
All such parables are enforced
upon Christians, with the addition of dogmas which, in their extraordinary
character, leave far behind them the wildest conceptions of heathenism. The
Christians, in order to believe in a Deity, have found it necessary to kill their
God, that they themselves should live!
And now, the Supreme, unknown
one, the Father of grace and mercy, and his celestial hierarchy are managed by
the Church as though they were so many theatrical stars and supernumeraries
under salary! Six centuries before the Christian era, Xenophanes had disposed
of such anthropomorphism by an immortal satire, recorded and preserved by
Clement of Alexandria.
"There is one God
Supreme. . . . . . . . .
Whose form is not like unto
man's, and as unlike his nature;
But vain mortals imagine that
gods like themselves are begotten
With human sensations, and
voice, and corporeal members;
So if oxen or lions had hands
and could work in man's fashion
And trace out with chisel or
brush their conception of Godhead
Then would horses depict gods
like horses, and oxen like oxen,
Each kind the Divine with its
own form and nature endowing."**
And hear Vyasa -- the
poet-pantheist of India, who, for all the scientists can prove, may have lived,
as Jacolliot has it, some fifteen thousand years ago -- discoursing on Maya,
the illusion of the senses:
"All religious dogmas
only serve to obscure the intelligence of man. . . . Worship of divinities,
under the allegories of which, is hidden respect for natural laws, drives away
truth to the profit of the basest superstitions" (Vyasa Maya).
It was given to Christianity
to paint us God Almighty after the model of the kabalistic abstraction of the
"Ancient of Days." From old frescos on cathedral ceilings; Catholic
missals, and other icons and images, we now find him depicted by the poetic
brush of Gustave Dore. The awful, unknown majesty of Him, whom no
"heathen" dared to reproduce in concrete form, is figuring in our own
century in Dore's Illustrated Bible. Treading upon clouds that float in mid-air,
darkness and chaos behind him and the world beneath his feet, a majestic old
man stands, his left hand gathering his flowing robes about him, and his right
raised in the gesture of command. He has spoken the Word, and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Translated from the
"Hari-Purana," by Jacolliot: "Christna, et le Christ."
** Clement: "Al.
Strom.," v. 14, § 110; translation given in "Supernatural
Religion," vol. i, p. 77.
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HEAVEN.
from his towering person
streams an effulgence of Light -- the Shekinah. As a poetic conception, the
composition does honor to the artist, but does it honor God? Better, the chaos
behind Him, than the figure itself; for there, at least, we have a solemn
mystery. For our part, we prefer the silence of the ancient heathens. With such
a gross, anthropomorphic, and, as we conceive, blasphemous representation of
the First Cause, who can feel surprised at any iconographic extravagance in the
representation of the Christian Christ, the apostles, and the putative Saints?
With the Catholics St. Peter becomes quite naturally the janitor of Heaven, and
sits at the door of the celestial kingdom -- a ticket-taker to the Trinity!
In a religious disturbance
which recently occurred in one of the Spanish-American provinces, there were
found upon the bodies of some of the killed, passports signed by the Bishop of
the Diocese and addressed to St. Peter; bidding him "admit the bearer as a
true son of the Church." It was subsequently ascertained that these unique
documents were issued by the Catholic prelate just before his deluded
parishioners went into the fight at the instigation of their priests.
In their immoderate desire to
find evidence for the authenticity of the New Testament, the best men, the most
erudite scholars even among Protestant divines, but too often fall into
deplorable traps. We cannot believe that such a learned commentator as Canon
Westcott could have left himself in ignorance as to Talmudistic and purely
kabalistic writings. How then is it that we find him quoting, with such serene
assurance as presenting "striking analogies to the Gospel of St.
John," passages from the work of The Pastor of Hermas, which are complete
sentences from the kabalistic literature? "The view which Hermas gives of
Christ's nature and work is no less harmonious with apostolic doctrine, and it
offers striking analogies to the Gospel of St. John. . . . He (Jesus) is a rock
higher than the mountains, able to hold the whole world, ancient, and yet
having a new gate! . . . He is older than creation, so that he took counsel
with the Father about the creation which he made. . . . No one shall enter in
unto him otherwise than by his Son."*
Now while -- as the author of
Supernatural Religion well proves --
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This work, "The Pastor
of Hermas," is no longer extant, but appears only in the
"Stichometry" of Nicephorus; it is now considered an apocrypha. But,
in the days of Irenaeus, it was quoted as Holy Scripture (see "Sup.
Religion," vol. i., p. 257) by the Fathers, held to be divinely inspired,
and publicly read in the churches (Iraenus: "Adv. Haer.," iv., 20).
When Tertullian became a Montanist he rejected it, after having asserted its
divinity (Tertullian: "De Orat.," p. 12).
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there is nothing in this which
looks like a corroboration of the doctrine taught in the fourth gospel, he
omits to state that nearly everything expressed by the pseudo-Hermas in
relation to his parabolic conversation with the "Lord" is a plain
quotation, with repeated variations, from the Sohar and other kabalistic books.
We may as well compare, so as to leave the reader in no difficulty to judge for
himself.
"God," says Hermas,
"planted the vineyard, that is, He created the people and gave them to His
Son; and the Son . . . himself cleansed their sins, etc."; i.e., the Son
washed them in his blood, in commemoration of which Christians drink wine at
the communion. In the Kabala it is shown that the Aged of the Aged, or
"Long-Face," plants a vineyard, the latter typifying mankind; and a
vine, meaning Life. The Spirit of "King Messiah" is, therefore, shown
as washing his garments in the wine from above, from the creation of the
world.* Adam, or A-Dam is "blood." The life of the flesh is in the
blood (nephesh -- soul), Leviticus xvii. And Adam-Kadmon is the Only-Begotten.
Noah also plants a vineyard -- the allegorical hot-bed of future humanity. As a
consequence of the adoption of the same allegory, we find it reproduced in the
Nazarene Codex. Seven vines are procreated, which spring from Iukabar Ziva, and
Ferho (or Parcha) Raba waters them.** When the blessed will ascend among the
creatures of Light, they shall see Iavar-Zivo, Lord of LIFE, and the First
VINE!*** These kabalistic metaphors are thus naturally repeated in the Gospel
according to John (xv. 1): "I am the true vine, and my Father is the
husbandman." In Genesis (xlix.), the dying Jacob is made to say, "The
sceptre shall not depart from Judah (the lion's whelp), nor a lawgiver from
between his feet, until Shiloh (Siloh) comes. . . . Binding his colt unto the
vine, and his ass's colt unto the choice vine, he washed his garments in wine,
and his clothes in the blood of grapes." Shiloh is "King
Messiah," as well as the Shiloh in Ephraim, which was to be made the
capital and the place of the sanctuary. In The Targum of Onkelos, the
Babylonian, the words of Jacob read: "Until the King Messiah shall
come." The prophecy has failed in the Christian as well as in the
kabalistico-Jewish sense. The sceptre has departed from Judah, whether the
Messiah has already or will come, unless we believe, with the kabalists, that
Moses was the first Messiah, who transferred his soul to Joshua -- Jesus.****
Says Hermas: "And, in the
middle of the plain, he showed me a great white rock, which had risen out of
the plain, and the rock was
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Sohar," xl., p.
10.
** "Codex
Nazaraeus," vol. iii., pp. 60, 61.
*** Ibid., vol. ii., p. 281;
vol. iii., p. 59.
**** We must remind the
reader, in this connection, that Joshua and Jesus are one and the same name. In
the Slavonian Bibles Joshua reads -- Iessus (or Jesus), Navin.
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MESSIAH.
higher than the mountains,
rectangular, so as to be able to hold the whole world; but that rock was old,
having a gate hewn out of it, and the hewing out of the gate seemed to me to be
recent." In the Sohar, we find: "To 40,000 superior worlds the white
of the skull of His Head (of the most Sacred Ancient in absconditus) is
extended.* . . . When Seir (the first reflection and image of his Father, the
Ancient of the Ancient) will, through the mystery of the seventy names of
Metatron, descend into Iezirah (the third world), he will open a new gate. . .
. The Spiritus Decisorius will cut and divide the garment (Shekinah) into two
parts.** . . . At the coming of King Messiah, from the sacred cubical stone of
the Temple a white light will be arising during forty days. This will expand,
until it encloses the whole world. . . . At that time King Messiah will allow
himself to be revealed, and will be seen coming out of the gate of the garden
of Odan (Eden). 'He will be revealed in the land Galil.'*** . . . When 'he has
made satisfaction for the sins of Israel, he will lead them on through a new
gate to the seat of judgment.'**** At the Gate of the House of Life, the throne
is prepared for the Lord of Splendor."*****
Further on, the commentator
introduces the following quotation: "This rock and this gate are the Son
of God. 'How, Lord,' I said, 'is the rock old and the gate new?' 'Listen,' He
said, 'and understand, thou ignorant man. The Son of God is older than all of
his creation, so that he was a Councillor with the Father in His works of
creation; and for this is he old.' "******
Now, these two assertions are
not only purely kabalistic, without even so much as a change of expression, but
Brahmanical and Pagan likewise. "Vidi virum excellentem coeli terraeque
conditore natu majorem. . . . I have seen the most excellent (superior) MAN,
who is older by birth than the maker of heaven and earth," says the
kabalistic Codex.******* The Eleusinian Dionysus, whose particular name was
Iacchos (Iaccho, Iahoh)******** -- the God from whom the liberation of souls
was expected -- was considered older than the Demiurge. At the mysteries of the
Anthesteria at the lakes (the Limnae), after the usual baptism by purification
of water, the Mystae were made to pass through to another door (gate), and one
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Idra Rabba," vol.
iii., § 41; the "Sohar."
** "Kabbala
Denudata," vol. ii., p. 230; the "Book of the Babylonian
Companions," p. 35.
*** "Sohar Ex.," p.
11.
**** "Midrash Hashirim";
"Rabbi Akaba"; "Midrash Koheleth," vol. ii., p. 45.
***** "Codex
Nazaraeus," vol. iii., p. 60.
****** "On the
Canon," p. 178 ff.
******* Vol. ii., p. 57;
Norberg's "Onomasticon"; "Sod, the Son of the Man," p. 103.
******** "Preller,"
vol. i., p. 484; K. O. Muller: "History of Greek Literature," p. 238;
"Movers," p. 553.
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particularly for that purpose,
which was called "the gate of Dionysus," and that of "the
purified."
In the Sohar, the kabalists
are told that the work-master, the Demiurge, said to the Lord: "Let us
make man after our image."* In the original texts of the first chapter of
Genesis, it stands: "And the Elohim (translated as the Supreme God), who
are the highest gods or powers, said: Let us make man in our (?) image, after
our likeness." In the Vedas, Brahma holds counsel with Parabrahma, as to
the best mode to proceed to create the world.
Canon Westcott, quoting
Hermas, shows him asking: "And why is the gate new, Lord? I said.
'Because,' he replied, 'he was manifested at the last of the days of the
dispensation; for this cause the gate was made new, in order that they who
shall be saved might enter by it into the Kingdom of God.' "** There are
two peculiarities worthy of note in this passage. To begin with, it attributes
to "the Lord" a false statement of the same character as that so
emphasized by the Apostle John, and which brought, at a later period, the whole
of the orthodox Christians, who accepted the apostolic allegories as literal,
to such inconvenient straits. Jesus, as Messiah, was not manifested at the last
of the days; for the latter are yet to come, notwithstanding a number of
divinely-inspired prophecies, followed by disappointed hopes, as a result, to
testify to his immediate coming. The belief that the "last times" had
come, was natural, when once the coming of King Messiah had been acknowledged. The
second peculiarity is found in the fact that the prophecy could have been
accepted at all, when even its approximate determination is a direct
contradiction of Mark, who makes Jesus distinctly state that neither the
angels, nor the Son himself, know of that day or that hour.*** We might add
that, as the belief undeniably originated with the Apocalypse, it ought to be a
self-evident proof that it belonged to the calculations peculiar to the
kabalists and the Pagan sanctuaries. It was the secret computation of a cycle,
which, according to their reckoning, was ending toward the latter part of the
first century. It may also be held as a corroborative proof, that the Gospel
according to Mark, as well as that ascribed to John, and the Apocalypse, were
written by men, of whom neither was sufficiently acquainted with the other. The
Logos was first definitely called petra (rock) by Philo; the word, moreover, as
we have shown elsewhere, means, in Chaldaic and Phoenician,
"interpreter." Justin Martyr calls him, throughout his works,
"angel," and makes a clear distinction between the Logos and God the
Creator.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Sohar," vol. i.,
fol. 25.
** "Simil.," vol.
ix., p. 12; "Supernatural Religion," vol. i., p. 257.
*** Mark xiii. 32.
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"The Word of God is His
Son . . . and he is also called Angel and Apostle, for he declares whatever we
ought to know (interprets), and is sent to declare whatever is
disclosed."*
"Adan Inferior is
distributed into its own paths, into thirty-two sides of paths, yet it is not
known to any one but Seir. But no one knows the SUPERIOR ADAN nor His paths,
except that Long Face" -- the Supreme God.** Seir is the Nazarene
"genius," who is called AEbel Zivo; and Gabriel Legatus -- also
"Apostle Gabriel."*** The Nazarenes held with the kabalists that even
the Messiah who was to come did not know the "Superior Adan," the
concealed Deity; no one except the Supreme God; thus showing that above the
Supreme Intelligible Deity, there is one still more secret and unrevealed.
Seir-Anpin is the third God, while "Logos," according to Philo
Judaeus, is the second one.**** This is distinctly shown in the Codex.
"The false Messiah shall say: "I am Deus, son of Deus; my Father sent
me here. . . . I am the first Legate, I am AEbel Zivo, I am come from on high!
But distrust him; for he will not be AEbel Zivo. AEbel Zivo will not permit
himself to be seen in this age."***** Hence the belief of some Gnostics
that it was not AEbel Zivo (Archangel Gabriel) who "overshadowed"
Mary, but Ilda-Baoth, who formed the material body of Jesus; Christos uniting
himself with him only at the moment of baptism in the Jordan.
Can we doubt Nork's assertion
that "the Bereshith Rabba, the oldest part of the Midrash Rabboth, was
known to the Church Fathers in a Greek translation"?******
But if, on the one hand, they
were sufficiently acquainted with the different religious systems of their
neighbors to have enabled them to build a new religion alleged to be distinct
from all others, their ignorance of the Old Testament itself, let alone the
more complicated questions of Grecian metaphysics, is now found to have been
deplorable. "So, for instance, in Matthew xxvii. 9 f., the passage from
Zechariah xi. 12, 13, is attributed to Jeremiah," says the author of
Supernatural Religion. "In Mark i. 2, a quotation from Malachi iii. 1, is
as-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Apolog.," vol.
i., p. 63.
** "Idra Rabba," x.,
p. 177.
*** "Codex
Nazaraeus," vol. i., p. 23.
**** Philo says that the Logos
is the interpreter of the highest God, and argues, "that he must be the
God of us imperfect beings" ("Leg. Alleg.," iii., § 73).
According to his opinion man was not made in the likeness of the most High God,
the Father of all, but in that of the second God who is his word -- Logos"
(Philo: "Fragments," 1; ex. Euseb. "Praepar. Evang.," vii.,
13).
***** "Codex
Nazaraeus," p. 57; "Sod, the Son of the Man," p. 59.
****** "Hundert und ein
Frage," p. xvii.; Dunlap: "Sod, the Son of the Man," p. 87; the
author, who quotes Nork, says that parts of the "Midrashim" and the
"Targum" of Onkelos, antedate the "New Testament."
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cribed to Isaiah. In 1
Corinthians, ii. 9, a passage is quoted as Holy Scripture, which is not found
in the Old Testament at all, but which is taken, as Origen and Jerome state,
from an apocryphal work, The Revelation of Elias (Origen: Tract. xxxv.), and
the passage is similarly quoted by the so-called Epistle of Clement to the
Corinthians (xxxiv.). How reliable are the pious Fathers in their explanations
of divers heresies may be illustrated in the case of Epiphanius, who mistook
the Pythagorean sacred Tetrad, called in the Valentinian Gnosis, Kol-Arbas, for
a heretic leader.* What with the involuntary blunders, and deliberate
falsifications of the teachings of those who differed in views with them; the
canonization of the mythological Aura Placida (gentle breeze), into a pair of
Christian martyrs -- St. Aura and St. Placida;** the deification of a spear and
a cloak, under the names of SS. Longimus and Amphibolus;*** and the Patristic
quotations from prophets, of what was never in those prophets at all; one may
well ask in blank amazement whether the so-called religion of Christ has ever
been other than an incoherent dream, since the death of the Great Master.
So malicious do we find the
holy Fathers in their unrelenting persecution of pretended
"haeresies,"**** that we see them telling, without hesitation the
most preposterous untruths, and inventing entire narratives, the better to
impress their own otherwise unsupported arguments upon ignorance. If the
mistake in relation to the tetrad had at first originated as a simple
consequence of an unpremeditated blunder of Hippolytus, the explanations of
Epiphanius and others who fell into the same absurd error***** have a less
innocent look. When Hippolytus gravely denounces the great heresy of the
Tetrad, Kol-Arbas, and states that the imaginary Gnostic leader is,
"Kolarbasus, who endeavors to explain
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Writing upon Ptolemaeus and
Heracleon, the author of "Supernatural Religion" (vol. ii., p. 217)
says that "the inaccuracy of the Fathers keeps pace with their want of
critical judgment," and then proceeds to illustrate this particularly
ridiculous blunder committed by Epiphanius, in common with Hippolytus,
Tertullian, and Philostrius. "Mistaking a passage of Irenaeus, 'Adv.
Haer.,' i., p. 14, regarding the Sacred Tetrad (Kol-Arbas), Hippolytus supposes
Irenaeus to refer to another heretic leader." He at once treats the Tetrad
as such a leader named "Colarbasus," and after dealing (vi., 4) with
the doctrines of Secundus, and Ptolemaeus, and Heracleon, he proposes, §5, to
show, "what are the opinions held by Marcus and Colarbasus," these
two being, according to him, the successors of the school of Valentinus (cf. Bunsen:
"Hippolytus, U. S. Zeit.," p. 54 f.; "Ref. Omn. Haer.,"
iv., § 13).
** See Godf. Higgins:
"Anacalypsis."
*** Inman: "Ancient Pagan
and Modern Christian Symbolism," p. 84.
**** Meaning -- holding up of
different views.
***** "This absurd
mistake," remarks the author of "Supernatural Religion," vol.
ii., p. 218, "shows how little these writers knew of the Gnostics of whom
they wrote, and how the one ignorantly follows the other."
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EPIPHANIUS.
religion by measures and
numbers,"* we may simply smile. But when Epiphanius, with abundant
indignation, elaborates upon the theme, "which is Heresy XV.," and
pretending to be thoroughly acquainted with the subject, adds: "A certain
Heracleon follows after Colarbasus, which is Heresy XVI.,"** then he lays
himself open to the charge of deliberate falsification.
If this zealous Christian can
boast so unblushingly of having caused "by his information seventy women,
even of rank, to be sent into exile, through the seductions of some in whose
number he had himself been drawn into joining their sect," he has left us
a fair standard by which to judge him. C. W. King remarks, very aptly, on this
point, that "it may reasonably be suspected that this worthy renegade had
in this case saved himself from the fate of his fellow-religionists by turning
evidence against them, on the opening of the persecution."***
And thus, one by one, perished
the Gnostics, the only heirs to whose share had fallen a few stray crumbs of
the unadulterated truth of primitive Christianity. All was confusion and turmoil
during these first centuries, till the moment when all these contradictory
dogmas were finally forced upon the Christian world, and examination was
forbidden. For long ages it was made a sacrilege, punishable with severe
penalties, often death, to seek to comprehend that which the Church had so
conveniently elevated to the rank of divine mystery. But since biblical critics
have taken upon themselves to "set the house in order," the cases
have become reversed. Pagan creditors now come from every part of the globe to
claim their own, and Christian theology begins to be suspected of complete
bankruptcy. Such is the sad result of the fanaticism of the
"orthodox" sects, who, to borrow an expression of the author of
"The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," never were, like the
Gnostics, "the most polite, the most learned, and most wealthy of the
Christian name." And, if not all of them "smelt garlic," as
Renan will have it, on the other hand, none of these Christian saints have ever
shrunk from spilling their neighbor's blood, if the views of the latter did not
agree with their own.
And so all our philosophers
were swept away by the ignorant and superstitious masses. The Philaletheians,
the lovers of truth, and their eclectic school, perished; and there, where the
young Hypatia had taught the highest philosophical doctrines; and where
Ammonius Saccas had explained that "the whole which Christ had in view was
to reinstate and restore to its primitive integrity the wisdom of the ancients
-- to reduce
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Ref. Omn. Haer.,"
iv., §13.
** Epiph.: "Haer.,"
xxxvi., § 1, p. 262 (quoted in "Supernatural Religion"). See
Volkmar's "Die Colarbasus-gnosis" in Niedner's "Zeitschr. Hist.
Theol."
*** "Gnostics and their
Remains," p. 182 f., note 3.
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within bounds the universally
prevailing dominion of superstition . . . and to exterminate the various errors
that had found their way into the different popular religions"* -- there,
we say, freely raved the [[hoipolloi]] of Christianity. No more precepts from
the mouth of the "God-taught philosopher," but others expounded by
the incarnation of a most cruel, fiendish superstition.
"If thy father,"
wrote St. Jerome, "lies down across thy threshold, if thy mother uncovers
to thine eyes the bosom which suckled thee, trample on thy father's lifeless
body, trample on thy mother's bosom, and, with eyes unmoistened and dry, fly to
the Lord who calleth thee"! !
This sentence is equalled, if
not outrivalled, by this other, pronounced in a like spirit. It emanates from
another father of the early Church, the eloquent Tertullian, who hopes to see
all the "philosophers" in the gehenna fire of Hell. "What shall
be the magnitude of that scene! . . . How shall I laugh! How shall I rejoice!
How shall I triumph when I see so many illustrious kings who were said to have
mounted into heaven, groaning with Jupiter, their god, in the lowest darkness
of hell! Then shall the soldiers who have persecuted the name of Christ burn in
more cruel fire than any they had kindled for the saints!"**
These murderous expressions illustrate
the spirit of Christianity till this day. But do they illustrate the teachings
of Christ? By no means. As Eliphas Levi says, "The God in the name of whom
we would trample on our mother's bosom we must see in the hereafter, a hell
gaping widely at his feet, and an exterminating sword in his hand. . . . Moloch
burned children but a few seconds; it was reserved to the disciples of a god
who is alleged to have died to redeem humanity on the cross, to create a new
Moloch whose burning stake is eternal!"***
That this spirit of true
Christian love has safely crossed nineteen centuries and rages now in America,
is fully instanced in the case of the rabid Moody, the revivalist, who
exclaims: "I have a son, and no one but God knows how I love him; but I would
see those beautiful eyes dug out of his head to-night, rather than see him grow
up to manhood and go down to the grave without Christ and without hope!!"
To this an American paper, of
Chicago, very justly responds: "This is the spirit of the inquisition, which
we are told is dead. If Moody in his zeal would 'dig out' the eyes of his
darling son, to what lengths may he not go with the sons of others, whom he may
love less? It is the spirit of Loyola, gibbering in the nineteenth century, and
prevented from lighting the fagot flame and heating red-hot the instruments of
torture only by the arm of law."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Mosheim.
** Tertullian:
"Despectae," ch. xxx.
*** Mosheim: "Eccles.
Hist.," c. v., § 5.
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CHAPTER VI.
"The curtains of Yesterday
drop down, the curtains of To-morrow roll up; but Yesterday and Tomorrow both
are." -- Sartor Resartus: Natural Supernaturalism.
"May we not then be
permitted to examine the authenticity of the Bible? which since the second
century has been put forth as the criterion of scientific truth? To maintain
itself in a position so exalted, it must challenge human criticism." --
Conflict between Religion and Science.
"One kiss of Nara upon
the lips of Nari and all Nature wakes." -- VINA SNATI (A Hindu Poet).
WE must not forget that the
Christian Church owes its present canonical Gospels, and hence its whole
religious dogmatism, to the Sortes Sanctorum. Unable to agree as to which were
the most divinely-inspired of the numerous gospels extant in its time, the
mysterious Council of Nicea concluded to leave the decision of the puzzling
question to miraculous intervention. This Nicean Council may well be called
mysterious. There was a mystery, first, in the mystical number of its 318
bishops, on which Barnabas (viii. 11, 12, 13) lays such a stress; added to
this, there is no agreement among ancient writers as to the time and place of
its assembly, nor even as to the bishop who presided. Notwithstanding the
grandiloquent eulogium of Constantine,* Sabinus, the Bishop of Heraclea,
affirms that "except Constantine, the emperor, and Eusebius Pamphilus,
these bishops were a set of illiterate, simple creatures, that understood
nothing"; which is equivalent to saying that they were a set of fools.
Such was apparently the opinion entertained of them by Pappus, who tells us of
the bit of magic resorted to to decide which were the true gospels. In his
Synodicon to that Council Pappus says, having "promiscuously put all the
books that were referred to the Council for determination under a
communion-table in a church, they (the bishops) besought the Lord that the
inspired writings might get upon the table, while the spurious ones remained
underneath, and it happened accordingly." But we are not told who kept the
keys of the council chamber over night!
On the authority of
ecclesiastical eye-witnesses, therefore, we are at liberty to say that the
Christian world owes its "Word of God" to a
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Socrates; "Scol. Eccl. Hist.,"
b. I., c. ix.
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method of divination, for
resorting to which the Church subsequently condemned unfortunate victims as
conjurers, enchanters, magicians, witches, and vaticinators, and burnt them by
thousands! In treating of this truly divine phenomenon of the self-sorting
manuscripts, the Fathers of the Church say that God himself presides over the
Sortes. As we have shown elsewhere, Augustine confesses that he himself used
this sort of divination. But opinions, like revealed religions, are liable to
change. That which for nearly fifteen hundred years was imposed on Christendom
as a book, of which every word was written under the direct supervision of the
Holy Ghost; of which not a syllable, nor a comma could be changed without
sacrilege, is now being retranslated, revised, corrected, and clipped of whole
verses, in some cases of entire chapters. And yet, as soon as the new edition
is out, its doctors would have us accept it as a new "Revelation" of
the nineteenth century, with the alternative of being held as an infidel. Thus,
we see that, no more within than without its precincts, is the infallible
Church to be trusted more than would be reasonably convenient. The forefathers
of our modern divines found authority for the Sortes in the verse where it is
said: "The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of
the Lord";* and now, their direct heirs hold that "the whole
disposing thereof is of the Devil." Perhaps, they are unconsciously
beginning to endorse the doctrine of the Syrian Bardesanes, that the actions of
God, as well as of man, are subject to necessity?
It was no doubt, also,
according to strict "necessity" that the Neoplatonists were so
summarily dealt with by the Christian mob. In those days, the doctrines of the
Hindu naturalists and antediluvian Pyrrhonists were forgotten, if they ever had
been known at all, to any but a few philosophers; and Mr. Darwin, with his
modern discoveries, had not even been mentioned in the prophesies. In this case
the law of the survival of the fittest was reversed; the Neo-platonists were
doomed to destruction from the day when they openly sided with Aristotle.
At the beginning of the fourth
century crowds began gathering at the door of the academy where the learned and
unfortunate Hypatia expounded the doctrines of the divine Plato and Plotinus,
and thereby impeded the progress of Christian proselytism. She too successfully
dispelled the mist hanging over the religious "mysteries" invented by
the Fathers, not to be considered dangerous. This alone would have been
sufficient to imperil both herself and her followers. It was precisely the
teachings
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Proverbs," chap.
xvi., p. 33. In ancient Egypt and Greece, and among Israelites, small sticks
and balls called the "sacred divining lots" were used for this kind
of oracle in the temples. According to the figures which were formed by the
accidental juxtaposition of the latter, the priest interpreted the will of the
gods.
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MURDERED.
of this Pagan philosopher,
which had been so freely borrowed by the Christians to give a finishing touch
to their otherwise incomprehensible scheme, that had seduced so many into
joining the new religion; and now the Platonic light began shining so
inconveniently bright upon the pious patchwork, as to allow every one to see
whence the "revealed" doctrines were derived. But there was a still
greater peril. Hypatia had studied under Plutarch, the head of the Athenian
school, and had learned all the secrets of theurgy. While she lived to instruct
the multitude, no divine miracles could be produced before one who could
divulge the natural causes by which they took place. Her doom was sealed by
Cyril, whose eloquence she eclipsed, and whose authority, built on degrading
superstitions, had to yield before hers, which was erected on the rock of
immutable natural law. It is more than curious that Cave, the author of the
Lives of the Fathers, should find it incredible that Cyril sanctioned her
murder on account of his "general character." A saint who will sell
the gold and silver vessels of his church, and then, after spending the money,
lie at his trial, as he did, may well be suspected of anything. Besides, in
this case, the Church had to fight for her life, to say nothing of her future
supremacy. Alone, the hated and erudite Pagan scholars, and the no less learned
Gnostics, held in their doctrines the hitherto concealed wires of all these
theological marionettes. Once the curtain should be lifted, the connection
between the old Pagan and the new Christian religions would be exposed; and
then, what would have become of the Mysteries into which it is sin and
blasphemy to pry? With such a coincidence of the astronomical allegories of
various Pagan myths with the dates adopted by Christianity for the nativity,
crucifixion, and resurrection, and such an identity of rites and ceremonies,
what would have been the fate of the new religion, had not the Church, under
the pretext of serving Christ, got rid of the too-well-informed philosophers?
To guess what, if the coup d'etat had then failed, might have been the
prevailing religion in our own century would indeed, be a hard task. But, in
all probability, the state of things which made of the middle ages a period of
intellectual darkness, which degraded the nations of the Occident, and lowered
the European of those days almost to the level of a Papuan savage -- could not
have occurred.
The fears of the Christians
were but too well founded, and their pious zeal and prophetic insight was
rewarded from the very first. In the demolition of the Serapeum, after the
bloody riot between the Christian mob and the Pagan worshippers had ended with the
interference of the emperor, a Latin cross, of a perfect Christian shape, was
discovered hewn upon the granite slabs of the adytum. This was a lucky
discovery, indeed; and the monks did not fail to claim that the cross had
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been hallowed by the Pagans in
a "spirit of prophecy." At least, Sozomen, with an air of triumph,
records the fact.* But, archeology and symbolism, those tireless and implacable
enemies of clerical false pretences, have found in the hieroglyphics of the
legend running around the design, at least a partial interpretation of its
meaning.
According to King and other numismatists
and archaeologists, the cross was placed there as the symbol of eternal life.
Such a Tau, or Egyptian cross, was used in the Bacchic and Eleusinian
Mysteries. Symbol of the dual generative power, it was laid upon the breast of
the initiate, after his "new birth" was accomplished, and the Mystae
had returned from their baptism in the sea. It was a mystic sign that his
spiritual birth had regenerated and united his astral soul with his divine
spirit, and that he was ready to ascend in spirit to the blessed abodes of
light and glory -- the Eleusinia. The Tau was a magic talisman at the same time
as a religious emblem. It was adopted by the Christians through the Gnostics
and kabalists, who used it largely, as their numerous gems testify, and who had
the Tau (or handled cross) from the Egyptians, and the Latin cross from the
Buddhist missionaries, who brought it from India, where it can be found until
now, two or three centuries B.C. The Assyrians, Egyptians, ancient Americans,
Hindus, and Romans had it in various, but very slight modifications of shape.
Till very late in the mediaeval ages, it was considered a potent spell against
epilepsy and demoniacal possession; and the "signet of the living
God," brought down in St. John's vision by the angel ascending from the
east to "seal the servants of our God in their foreheads," was but
the same mystic Tau -- the Egyptian cross. In the painted glass of St. Dionysus
(France), this angel is represented as stamping this sign on the forehead of
the elect; the legend reads, SIGNVM TAY. In King's Gnostics, the author reminds
us that "this mark is commonly borne by St. Anthony, an Egyptian
recluse."** What the real meaning of the Tau was, is explained to us by
the Christian St. John, the Egyptian Hermes, and the Hindu Brahmans. It is but
too evident that, with the apostle, at least, it meant the "Ineffable
Name," as he calls this "signet of the living God," a few
chapters further on,*** the "Father's name written in their
foreheads."
The Brahmatma, the chief of
the Hindu initiates, had on his headgear two keys, symbol of the revealed
mystery of life and death, placed
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Another untrustworthy,
untruthful, and ignorant writer, and ecclesiastical historian of the fifth
century. His alleged history of the strife between the Pagans, Neoplatonics,
and the Christians of Alexandria and Constantinople, which extends from the
year 324 to 439, dedicated by him to Theodosius, the younger, is full of
deliberate falsifications. Edition of "Reading," Cantab, 1720, fol.
Translated. Plon freres, Paris.
** "Gems of the Orthodox
Christians," vol. i., p. 135.
*** Revelation xiv. 1.
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TALISMAN.
cross-like; and, in some
Buddhist pagodas of Tartary and Mongolia, the entrance of a chamber within the
temple, generally containing the staircase which leads to the inner daghoba,*
and the porticos of some Prachida** are ornamented with a cross formed of two
fishes, and as found on some of the zodiacs of the Buddhists. We should not
wonder at all at learning that the sacred device in the tombs in the Catacombs,
at Rome, the "Vesica piscis," was derived from the said Buddhist
zodiacal sign. How general must have been that geometrical figure in the
world-symbols, may be inferred from the fact that there is a Masonic tradition
that Solomon's temple was built on three foundations, forming the "triple
Tau," or three crosses.
In its mystical sense, the
Egyptian cross owes its origin, as an emblem, to the realization by the
earliest philosophy of an androgynous dualism of every manifestation in nature,
which proceeds from the abstract ideal of a likewise androgynous deity, while
the Christian emblem is simply due to chance. Had the Mosaic law prevailed,
Jesus should have been lapidated.*** The crucifix was an instrument of torture,
and utterly common among Romans as it was unknown among Semitic nations. It was
called the "Tree of Infamy." It is but later that it was adopted as a
Christian symbol; but, during the first two decades, the apostles looked upon
it with horror.**** It is certainly not the Christian Cross that John had in
mind when speaking of the "signet of the living God," but the mystic
Tau -- the Tetragrammaton, or mighty name, which, on the most ancient
kabalistic talismans, was represented by the four Hebrew letters composing the
Holy Word.
The famous Lady Ellenborough,
known among the Arabs of Damascus, and in the desert, after her last marriage,
as Hanoum Medjouye, had a talisman in her possession, presented to her by a
Druze from Mount Lebanon. It was recognized by a certain sign on its left
corner, to belong to that class of gems which is known in Palestine as a
"Messianic" amulet, of the second or third century, B. C. It is a
green stone of a pentagonal form; at the bottom is engraved a fish; higher,
Solomon's seal;*****
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Daghoba is a small temple of
globular form, in which are preserved the relics of Gautama.
** Prachidas are buildings of
all sizes and forms, like our mausoleums, and are sacred to votive offerings to
the dead.
*** The Talmudistic records
claim that, after having been hung, he was lapidated and buried under the water
at the junction of two streams. "Mishna Sanhedrin," vol. vi., p. 4;
"Talmud," of Babylon, same article, 43 a, 67 a.
**** "Coptic Legends of
the Crucifixion," MSS. xi.
***** The engraving represents
the talisman as of twice the natural size. We are at a loss to understand why
King, in his "Gnostic Gems," represents Solomon's seal as a
five-pointed star, whereas it is six-pointed, and is the signet of Vishnu, in
India.
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and still higher, the four
Chaldaic letters -- Jod, He, Vau, He, IAHO, which form the name of the Deity.
These are arranged in quite an unusual way, running from below upward, in
reversed order, and forming the Egyptian Tau. Around these there is a legend
which, as the gem is not our property, we are not at liberty to give. The Tau,
in its mystical sense, as well as the crux ansata, is the Tree of Life.
It is well known, that the
earliest Christian emblems -- before it was ever attempted to represent the
bodily appearance of Jesus -- were the Lamb, the Good Shepherd, and the Fish.
The origin of the latter emblem, which has so puzzled the archaeologists, thus
becomes comprehensible. The whole secret lies in the easily-ascertained fact
that, while in the Kabala, the King Messiah is called "Interpreter,"
or Revealer of the mystery, and shown to be the fifth emanation, in the Talmud
-- for reasons we will now explain -- the Messiah is very often designated as
"DAG," or the Fish. This is an inheritance from the Chaldees, and
relates -- as the very name indicates -- to the Babylonian Dagon, the man-fish,
who was the instructor and interpreter of the people, to whom he appeared.
Abarbanel explains the name, by stating that the sign of his (Messiah's) coming
"is the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in the sign Pisces."*
Therefore, as the Christians were intent upon identifying their Christos with
the Messiah of the Old Testament, they adopted it so readily as to forget that
its true origin might be traced still farther back than the Babylonian Dagon.
How eagerly and closely the ideal of Jesus was united, by the early Christians,
with every imaginable kabalistic and Pagan tenet, may be inferred from the
language of Clemens, of Alexandria, addressed to his brother co-religionists.
[[Diagram]]
When they were debating upon
the choice of the most appropriate symbol to remind them of Jesus, Clemens
advised them in the following words: "Let the engraving upon the gem of
your ring be either a dove, or a ship running before the wind (the Argha), or a
fish." Was the good father, when writing this sentence, laboring under the
recollection of Joshua, son of Nun (called Jesus in the Greek and Slavonian
versions); or had he forgotten the real interpretation of these Pagan symbols?
[[Footnote(s)]]
--------------------------------------------------
* King ("Gnostics")
gives the figure of a Christian symbol, very common during the middle ages, of
three fishes interlaced into a triangle, and having the FIVE letters (a most
sacred Pythagorean number) [[I. CH. THUS.]] engraved on it. The number five relates
to the same kabalistic computation.
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LEGEND.
Joshua, son of Nun, or Nave (Navis),
could have with perfect propriety adopted the image of a ship, or even of a
fish, for Joshua means Jesus, son of the fish-god; but it was really too
hazardous to connect the emblems of Venus, Astarte, and all the Hindu goddesses
-- the argha, dove, and fish -- with the "immaculate" birth of their
god! This looks very much as if in the early days of Christianity but little
difference was made between Christ, Bacchus, Apollo, and the Hindu Christna,
the incarnation of Vishnu, with whose first avatar this symbol of the fish
originated.
In the Hari-purana, in the
Bagaved-gitta, as well as in several other books, the god Vishnu is shown as
having assumed the form of a fish with a human head, in order to reclaim the
Vedas lost during the deluge. Having enabled Visvamitra to escape with all his
tribe in the ark, Vishnu, pitying weak and ignorant humanity, remained with
them for some time. It was this god who taught them to build houses, cultivate
the land, and to thank the unknown Deity whom he represented, by building
temples and instituting a regular worship; and, as he remained half-fish,
half-man, all the time, at every sunset he used to return to the ocean, wherein
he passed the night.
"It is he," says the
sacred book, "who taught men, after the diluvium, all that was necessary
for their happiness.
"One day he plunged into
the water and returned no more, for the earth had covered itself again with
vegetation, fruit, and cattle.
"But he had taught the
Brahmas the secret of all things" (Hari-purana).
So far, we see in this
narrative the double of the story given by the Babylonian Berosus about Oannes,
the fish-man, who is no other than Vishnu -- unless, indeed, we have to believe
that it was Chaldea which civilized India!
We say again, we desire to
give nothing on our sole authority. Therefore we cite Jacolliot, who, however
criticised and contradicted on other points, and however loose he may be in the
matter of chronology (though even in this he is nearer right than those
scientists who would have all Hindu books written since the Council of Nicea),
at least cannot be denied the reputation of a good Sanscrit scholar. And he
says, while analyzing the word Oan, or Oannes, that O in Sanscrit is an
interjection expressing an invocation, as O, Swayambhuva! O, God! etc.; and An
is a radical, signifying in Sanscrit a spirit, a being; and, we presume, what
the Greeks meant by the word Daemon, a semi-god.
"What an extraordinary
antiquity," he remarks, "this fable of Vishnu, disguised as a fish,
gives to the sacred books of the Hindus; especially in presence of the fact
that the Vedas and Manu reckon more than twenty-five thousand years of
existence, as proved by the most serious as the
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most authentic documents. Few
peoples, says the learned Halled, have their annals more authentic or serious
than the Hindus."*
We may, perhaps, throw additional
light upon the puzzling question of the fish-symbol by reminding the reader
that according to Genesis the first created of living beings, the first type of
animal life, was the fish. "And the Elohim said: 'Let the waters bring
forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life' . . . and God created
great whales . . . and the morning and the evening were the fifth day."
Jonah is swallowed by a big fish, and is cast out again three days later. This
the Christians regard as a premonition of the three days' sepulture of Jesus
which preceded his resurrection -- though the statement of the three days is as
fanciful as much of the rest, and adopted to fit the well-known threat to
destroy the temple and rebuild it again in three days. Between his burial and alleged
resurrection there intervened but one day -- the Jewish Sabbath -- as he was
buried on Friday evening and rose to life at dawn on Sunday. However, whatever
other circumstance may be regarded as a prophecy, the story of Jonah cannot be
made to answer the purpose.
"Big Fish" is Cetus,
the latinized form of Keto -- [[Ketos]] and keto is Dagon, Poseidon, the female
gender of it being Keton Atar-gatis -- the Syrian goddess, and Venus, of
Askalon. The figure or bust of Der-Keto or Astarte was generally represented on
the prow of the ships. Jonah (the Greek Iona, or dove sacred to Venus) fled to
Jaffa, where the god Dagon, the man-fish, was worshipped, and dared not go to
Nineveh, where the dove was revered. Hence, some commentators believe that when
Jonah was thrown overboard and was swallowed by a fish, we must understand that
he was picked up by one of these vessels, on the prow of which was the figure
of Keto. But the kabalists have another legend, to this effect: They say that
Jonah was a run-away priest from the temple of the goddess where the dove was
worshipped, and desired to abolish idolatry and institute monotheistic worship.
That, caught near Jaffa, he was held prisoner by the devotees of Dagon in one
of the prison-cells of the temple, and that it is the strange form of the cell
which gave rise to the allegory. In the collection of Mose de Garcia, a
Portuguese kabalist, there is a drawing representing the interior of the temple
of Dagon. In the middle stands an immense idol, the upper portion of whose body
is human, and the lower fish-like. Between the belly and the tail is an
aperture which can be closed like the door of a closet. In it the transgressors
against the local deity were shut up until further disposal. The drawing in
question was made from an old tablet covered with curious drawings and
inscriptions in old Phoenician characters, describing this Venetian
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "La Genese de
l'Humanite," p. 9.
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VISHNU.
oubliette of biblical days.
The tablet itself was found in an excavation a few miles from Jaffa. Considering
the extraordinary tendency of Oriental nations for puns and allegories, is it
not barely possible that the "big fish" by which Jonah was swallowed
was simply the cell within the belly of Dagon?
It is significant that this
double appellation of "Messiah" and "Dag" (fish), of the
Talmudists, should so well apply to the Hindu Vishnu, the
"Preserving" Spirit, and the second personage of the Brahmanic
trinity. This deity, having already manifested itself, is still regarded as the
future Saviour of humanity, and is the selected Redeemer, who will appear at
its tenth incarnation or avatar, like the Messiah of the Jews, to lead the
blessed onward, and restore to them the primitive Vedas. At his first avatar,
Vishnu is alleged to have appeared to humanity, in form like a fish. In the
temple of Rama, there is a representation of this god which answers perfectly
to that of Dagon, as given by Berosus. He has the body of a man issuing from
the mouth of a fish, and holds in his hands the lost Veda. Vishnu, moreover, is
the water-god, in one sense, the Logos of the Parabrahm, for as the three
persons of the manifested god-head constantly interchange their attributes, we
see him in the same temple represented as reclining on the seven-headed
serpent, Ananta (eternity), and moving, like the Spirit of God, on the face of
the primeval waters.
Vishnu is evidently the Adam
Kadmon of the kabalists, for Adam is the Logos or the first Anointed, as Adam
Second is the King Messiah.
Lakmy, or Lakshmi, the passive
or feminine counterpart of Vishnu, the creator and the preserver, is also
called Ada Maya. She is the "Mother of the World," Damatri, the Venus
Aphrodite of the Greeks: also Isis and Eve. While Venus is born from the
sea-foam, Lakmy springs out from the water at the churning of the sea; when
born, she is so beautiful that all the gods fall in love with her. The Jews,
borrowing their types wherever they could get them, made their first woman
after the pattern of Lakmy. It is curious that Viracocha, the Supreme Being in
Peru, means, literally translated, "foam of the sea."
Eugene Burnouf, the great
authority of the French school, announces his opinion in the same spirit:
"We must learn one day," he observes, "that all ancient
traditions disfigured by emigration and legend, belong to the history of
India." Such is the opinion of Colebrooke, Inman, King, Jacolliot, and
many other Orientalists.
We have said above, that,
according to the secret computation peculiar to the students of the hidden
science, Messiah is the fifth emanation, or potency. In the Jewish Kabala,
where the ten Sephiroth emanate from Adam Kadmon (placed below the crown), he
comes fifth. So in
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the Gnostic system; so in the
Buddhistic, in which the fifth Buddha -- Maitree, will appear at his last
advent to save mankind before the final destruction of the world. If Vishnu is
represented in his forthcoming and last appearance as the tenth avatar or
incarnation, it is only because every unit held as an androgyne manifests
itself doubly. The Buddhists who reject this dual-sexed incarnation reckon but
five. Thus, while Vishnu is to make his last appearance in his tenth, Buddha is
said to do the same in his fifth incarnation.*
The better to illustrate the
idea, and show how completely the real meaning of the avatars, known only to
the students of the secret doctrine was misunderstood by the ignorant masses,
we elsewhere give the diagrams of the Hindu and Chaldeo-Kabalistic avatars and
emanations.** This basic and true fundamental stone of the secret cycles, shows
on its very face, that far from taking their revealed Vedas and Bible
literally, the Brahman-pundits, and the Tanaim -- the scientists and
philosophers of the pre-Christian epochs -- speculated on the creation and
development of the world quite in a Darwinian way, both anticipating him and
his school in the natural selection of species, gradual development, and
transformation.
We advise every one tempted to
enter an indignant protest against this affirmation to read more carefully the
books of Manu, even in the incomplete translation of Sir William Jones, and the
more or less careless one of Jacolliot. If we compare the Sanchoniathon
Phoenician Cosmogony, and the record of Berosus with the Bhagavatta and Manu,
we will find enunciated exactly the same principles as those now offered as the
latest developments of modern science. We have quoted from the Chaldean and
Phoenician records in our first volume; we will now glance at the Hindu books.
"When this world had
issued out of darkness, the subtile elementary principles produced the vegetal seed
which animated first the plants; from the plants, life passed into fantastical
bodies which were born in the ilus of the waters; then, through a series of
forms and various animals, it reached MAN."***
"He (man, before becoming
such) will pass successively through plants, worms, insects, fish, serpents,
tortoises, cattle, and wild animals; such is the inferior degree."
"Such, from Brahma down
to the vegetables, are declared the transmigrations which take place in this
world."****
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The kabalistic Sephiroth are
also ten in number, or five pairs.
** An avatar is a descent from
on high upon earth of the Deity in some manifest shape.
*** "Bhagavatta."
**** "Manu," books
i. and xii.
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VYASA.
In the Sanchoniathonian
Cosmogony, men are also evolved out of the ilus of the chaos,* and the same
evolution and transformation of species are shown.
And now we will leave the
rostrum to Mr. Darwin: "I believe that animals have descended from at most
only four or five progenitors."**
Again: "I should infer
from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this
earth, have descended from some one primordial form.*** . . . I view all
beings, not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few
beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was
deposited."****
In short, they lived in the
Sanchoniathonian chaos, and in the ilus of Manu. Vyasa and Kapila go still
farther than Darwin and Manu. "They see in Brahma but the name of the
universal germ; they deny the existence of a First Cause; and pretend that
everything in nature found itself developed only in consequence of material and
fatal forces," says Jacolliot.*****
Correct as may be this latter
quotation from Kapila, it demands a few words of explanation. Jacolliot repeatedly
compares Kapila and Veda Vyasa with Pyrrho and Littre. We have nothing against
such a comparison with the Greek philosopher, but we must decidedly object to
any with the French Comtist; we find it an unmerited fling at the memory of the
great Aryan sage. Nowhere does this prolific writer state the repudiation by
either ancient or modern Brahmans of God -- the "unknown," universal
Spirit; nor does any other Orientalist accuse the Hindus of the same, however
perverted the general deductions of our savants about Buddhistic atheism. On
the contrary, Jacolliot states more than once that the learned Pundits and
educated Brahmans have never shared the popular superstitions; and affirms
their unshaken belief in the unity of God and the soul's immortality, although
most assuredly neither Kapila, nor the initiated Brahmans, nor the followers of
the Vedanta school would ever admit the existence of an anthropomorphic
creator, a "First Cause" in the Christian sense. Jacolliot, in his
Indo-European and African Traditions, is the first to make an onslaught on
Professor Muller, for remarking that the Hindu gods were "masks without
actors . . . names without being, and not beings without names."******
Quoting, in support of his argument, numerous verses from the sacred Hindu
books, he adds: "Is it possible to refuse to the author of these stanzas a
definite and clear conception of the divine force, of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Cory's "Ancient
Fragments."
** "Origin of Species,"
first edition, p. 484.
*** Ibid., p. 484.
**** Ibid., pp. 488, 489.
***** "La Genese de
l'Humanite," p. 339.
****** "Traditions
Indo-Europeennes et Africaines," p. 291.
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the Unique Being, master and
Sovereign of the Universe? . . . Were the altars then built to a
metaphor?"*
The latter argument is perfectly
just, so far as Max Muller's negation is concerned. But we doubt whether the
French rationalist understands Kapila's and Vyasa's philosophy better than the
German philologist does the "theological twaddle," as the latter
terms the Atharva-Veda. Professor Muller and Jacolliot may have ever so great
claims to erudition, and be ever so familiar with Sanscrit and other ancient
Oriental languages, but both lack the key to the thousand and one mysteries of
the old secret doctrine and its philosophy. Only, while the German philologist
does not even take the trouble to look into this magical and "theological
twaddle," we find the French Indianis never losing an opportunity to
investigate. Moreover, he honestly admits his incompetency to ever fathom this
ocean of mystical learning. In its existence he not only firmly believes, but
throughout his works he incessantly calls the attention of science to its
unmistakable traces at every step in India. Still, though the learned Pundits
and Brahmans -- his "revered masters" of the pagodas of Villenoor and
Chelambrum in the Carnatic,** as it seems, positively refused to reveal to him
the mysteries of the magical part of the Agrouchada-Parikshai,*** and of
Brahmatma's triangle,**** he persists in the honest declaration that everything
is possible in Hindu metaphysics, even to the Kapila and Vyasa systems having
been hitherto misunderstood.
M. Jacolliot weakens his
assertion immediately afterward with the following contradiction:
"We were one day
inquiring of a Brahman of the pagoda of Chelambrum, who belonged to the
skeptical school of the naturalists of Vyasa, whether he believed in the
existence of God. He answered us, smiling: 'Aham eva param Brahma' -- I am
myself a god.
" 'What do you mean by
that?'
" 'I mean that every being
on earth, however humble, is an immortal portion of the immortal matter.'
"*****
The answer is one which would
suggest itself to every ancient philosopher, Kabalist and Gnostic, of the early
days. It contains the very spirit of the delphic and kabalistic commandment,
for esoteric philosophy solved, ages ago, the problem of what man was, is, and
will be. If persons
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Traditions
Indo-Europeennes et Africaines," pp. 294, 295.
** "Les Fils de
Dieu," p. 32.
*** "Le Spiritisme dans
le Monde," p. 78 and others.
**** "Les Fils de
Dieu," p. 272. While not at all astonished that Brahmans should have
refused to satisfy M. Jacolliot's curiosity, we must add that the meaning of
this sign is known to the superiors of every Buddhist lamasery, not alone to
the Brahmans.
***** "La Genese de
l'Humanite," p. 339.
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believing the Bible verse
which teaches that the "Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life," reject at the same time
the idea that every atom of this dust, as every particle of this "living
soul," contains "God" within itself, then we pity the logic of
that Christian. He forgets the verses which precede the one in question. God
blesses equally every beast of the field and every living creature, in the
water as in the air, and He endows them all with life, which is a breath of His
own Spirit, and the soul of the animal. Humanity is the Adam Kadmon of the
"Unknown," His microcosm, and His only representative on earth, and
every man is a god on earth.
We would ask this French
scholar, who seems so familiar with every sloka of the books of Manu, and other
Vedic writers, the meaning of this sentence so well known to him:
"Plants and vegetation
reveal a multitude of forms because of their precedent actions; they are
surrounded by darkness, but are nevertheless endowed with an interior soul, and
feel equally pleasure and pain" (Manu, book i.).
If the Hindu philosophy teach
the presence of a degree of soul in the lowest forms of vegetable life, and
even in every atom in space, how is it possible that it should deny the same
immortal principle to man? And if it once admit the immortal spirit in man, how
can it logically deny the existence of the parent source -- I will not say the
first, but the eternal Cause? Neither rationalists nor sensualists, who do not
comprehend Indian metaphysics, should estimate the ignorance of Hindu
metaphysicians by their own.
The grand cycle, as we have
heretofore remarked, includes the progress of mankind from its germ in the
primordial man of spiritual form to the deepest depth of degradation he can
reach -- each successive step in the descent being accompanied by a greater
strength and grossness of the physical form than its precursor -- and ends with
the Flood. But while the grand cycle, or age, is running its course, seven
minor cycles are passed, each marking the evolution of a new race out of the
preceding one, on a new world. And each of these races, or grand types of
humanity, breaks up into subdivisions of families, and they again into nations
and tribes, as we see the earth's inhabitants subdivided to-day into Mongols,
Caucasians, Indians, etc.
Before proceeding to show by
diagrams the close resemblance between the esoteric philosophies of all the
ancient peoples, however geographically remote from each other, it will be
useful to briefly explain the real ideas which underlie all those symbols and
allegorical representations and have hitherto so puzzled the uninitiated
commentators. Better than anything, it may show that religion and science were
closer knit than twins
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in days of old; that they were
one in two and two in one from the very moment of their conception. With
mutually convertible attributes, science was spiritual and religion was
scientific. Like the androgyne man of the first chapter of Genesis --
"male and female," passive and active; created in the image of the
Elohim. Omniscience developed omnipotency, the latter called for the exercise
of the former, and thus the giant had dominion given him over all the four
kingdoms of the world. But, like the second Adam, these androgynes were doomed
to "fall and lose their powers" as soon as the two halves of the
duality separated. The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge gives death without the
fruit of the Tree of Life. Man must know himself before he can hope to know the
ultimate genesis even of beings and powers less developed in their inner nature
than himself. So with religion and science; united two in one they were
infallible, for the spiritual intuition was there to supply the limitations of
physical senses. Separated, exact science rejects the help of the inner voice,
while religion becomes merely dogmatic theology -- each is but a corpse without
a soul.
The esoteric doctrine, then,
teaches, like Buddhism and Brahmanism, and even the persecuted Kabala, that the
one infinite and unknown Essence exist from all eternity, and in regular and
harmonious successions is either passive or active. In the poetical phraseology
of Manu these conditions are called the "day" and the
"night" of Brahma. The latter is either "awake" or
"asleep." The Svabhavikas, or philosophers of the oldest school of
Buddhism (which still exists in Nepaul), speculate but upon the active
condition of this "essence," which they call Svabhavat, and deem it
foolish to theorize upon the abstract and "unknowable" power in its
passive condition. Hence they are called atheists by both Christian theology
and modern scientists; for neither of the two are able to understand the
profound logic of their philosophy. The former will allow of no other God than
the personified secondary powers which have blindly worked out the visible
universe, and which became with them the anthropomorphic God of the Christians
-- the Jehovah, roaring amid thunder and lightning. In its turn, rationalistic
science greets the Buddhists and the Svabhavikas as the "positivists"
of the archaic ages. If we take a one-sided view of the philosophy of the
latter, our materialists may be right in their own way. The Buddhists maintain
that there is no Creator but an infinitude of creative powers, which
collectively form the one eternal substance, the essence of which is
inscrutable -- hence not a subject for speculation for any true philosopher.
Socrates invariably refused to argue upon the mystery of universal being, yet
no one would ever have thought of charging him with atheism, except those who
were bent upon his destruction. Upon inaugurating an active period, says the
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SERIES.
Secret Doctrine, an expansion
of this Divine essence, from within outwardly, occurs in obedience to eternal
and immutable law, and the phenomenal or visible universe is the ultimate
result of the long chain of cosmical forces thus progressively set in motion.
In like manner, when the passive condition is resumed, a contraction of the
Divine essence takes place, and the previous work of creation is gradually and
progressively undone. The visible universe becomes disintegrated, its material
dispersed; and "darkness," solitary and alone, broods once more over
the face of the "deep." To use a metaphor which will convey the idea
still more clearly, an outbreathing of the "unknown essence" produces
the world; and an inhalation causes it to disappear. This process has been
going on from all eternity, and our present universe is but one of an infinite
series which had no beginning and will have no end.
Thus we are enabled to build
our theories solely on the visible manifestations of the Deity, on its objective
natural phenomena. To apply to these creative principles the term God is
puerile and absurd. One might as well call by the name of Benvenuto Cellini the
fire which fuses the metal, or the air that cools it when it is run in the
mould. If the inner and ever-concealed spiritual, and to our minds abstract,
Essence within these forces can ever be connected with the creation of the
physical universe, it is but in the sense given to it by Plato. IT may be
termed, at best, the framer of the abstract universe which developed gradually
in the Divine Thought within which it had lain dormant.
In Chapter VIII. we will
attempt to show the esoteric meaning of Genesis, and its complete agreement
with the ideas of other nations. The six days of creation will be found to have
a meaning little suspected by the multitude of commentators, who have exercised
their abilities to the full extent in attempting to reconcile them by turns
with Christian theology and un-Christian geology. Disfigured as the Old
Testament is, yet in its symbolism is preserved enough of the original in its
principal features to show the family likeness to the cosmogonies of older
nations than the Jews.
We here give the diagrams of
the Hindu and the Chaldeo-Jewish cosmogonies. The antiquity of the diagram of
the former may be inferred from the fact that many of the Brahmanical pagodas
are designed and built on this figure, called the "Sri-Iantara."* And
yet we find the highest honors paid to it by the Jewish and mediaeval
kabalists, who call it "Solomon's seal." It will be quite an easy
matter to trace it to its origin, once we are reminded of the history of the
king-kabalist and his transaction with King Hiram and Ophir -- the country of
peacocks, gold, and ivory -- for which land we have to search in old India.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Journal of the
Royal Asiatic Society," vol. xiii., p. 79.
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[[Diagram between pages]]
EXPLANATION OF THE TWO
DIAGRAMS
REPRESENTING THE CHAOTIC AND
THE FORMATIVE PERIODS, BEFORE AND AFTER OUR UNIVERSE BEGAN TO BE EVOLVED.
FROM THE ESOTERIC BRAHMANICAL,
BUDDHISTIC, AND CHALDEAN STANDPOINTS, WHICH AGREE IN EVERY RESPECT WITH THE
EVOLUTIONARY THEORY OF MODERN SCIENCE.
[[Column 1]]
THE HINDU DOCTRINE.
The Upper Triangle
Contains the Ineffable Name.
It is the AUM -- to be pronounced only mentally, under penalty of death. The
Unrevealed Para-Brahma, the Passive-Principle; the absolute and unconditioned
"mukta," which cannot enter into the condition of a Creator, as the
latter, in order to think, will, and plan, must be bound and conditioned
(baddha); hence, in one sense, be a finite being. "THIS (Para-Brahma) was
absorbed in the non-being, imperceptible, without any distinct attribute,
non-existent for our senses. He was absorbed in his (to us) eternal (to
himself) periodical, sleep," for it was one of the "Nights of
Brahma." Therefore he is not the First but the Eternal Cause. He is the
Soul of Souls, whom no being can comprehend in this state. But "he who
studies the secret Mantras and comprehends the Vach" (the Spirit or hidden
voice of the Mantras, the active manifestation of the latent Force) will learn
to understand him in his "revealed" aspect.
[[Column 2]]
THE CHALDEAN DOCTRINE.
The Upper Triangle
Contains the Ineffable Name.
It is En-Soph, the Boundless, the Infinite, whose name is known to no one but
the initiated, and could not be pronounced aloud under the penalty of death.
No more than Para-Brahma can
En-Soph create, for he is in the same condition of non-being as the former; he
is [[Heb char]] non-existent so long as he lies in his latent or passive state
within Oulom (the boundless and termless time); as such he is not the Creator
of the visible universe, neither is he the Aur (Light). He will become the
latter when the period of creation shall have compelled him to expand the Force
within himself, according to the Law of which he is the embodiment and essence.
"Whosoever acquaints
himself with [[heb char]] the Mercaba and the lahgash (secret speech or
incantation),* will learn the secret of secrets."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Lahgash
is nearly identical in meaning
with Vach, the hidden power of the Mantras.
----------
Both "THIS" and
En-Soph, in their first manifestation of Light, emerging from within Darkness, may
be summarized in the Svabhavat, the Eternal and the uncreated Self-existing
Substance which produces all; while everything which is of its essence produces
itself out of its own nature.
[[Column 1 continued]]
The Space Around the Upper
Triangle.
When the "Night of
Brahma" was ended, and the time came for the Self-Existent to manifest
Itself by revelation, it made its glory visible by sending forth from its
Essence an active Power, which, female at first, subsequently becomes [[Column
continues on next page]]
[[Column 2 continued]]
The Space Around the Upper
Triangle.
When the active period had
arrived, En-Soph sent forth from within his own eternal essence, Sephira, the
active Power, called the Primordial Point, and the Crown, Keter. It is only
through her that the "Un-bounded Wisdom" could [[Column continues on
next page]]
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SYSTEMS.
[[Column 1 continued]]
androgyne. It is Aditi, the
"Infinite,"* the Boundless, or rather the "Unbounded."
Aditi is the "mother" of all the gods, and Aditi is the Father and
the Son.** "Who will give us back to the great Aditi, that I may see
father and mother?"*** It is in conjunction with the latter female, Force,
that the Divine but latent Thought produces the great "Deep" --
water. "Water is born from a transformation of light . . . and from a
modification of the water is born the earth," says Manu (book i.).
"Ye are born of Aditi
from the water, you who are born of the earth, hear ye all my call."****
In this water (or primeval
chaos) the "Infinite" androgyne, which, with the Eternal Cause, forms
the first abstract Triad, rendered by AUM, deposited the germ of universal
life. It is the Mundane Egg, in which took place the gestation of Purusha, or
the manifested Brahma. The germ which fecundated the Mother Principle (the
water) is called Nara, the Divine Spirit or Holy Ghost,***** and the waters
themselves, are an emanation of the former, Nari, while the Spirit which
brooded over it is called Narayana.******
"In that egg, the great
Power sat inactive a whole year of the Creator, at the close of which, by his
thought alone, he caused the egg to divide itself."******* The upper half
became heaven, the lower, the [[Column continues on next page]]
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In "Rig-Veda
Sanhita" the meaning is given by Max Muller as the Absolute, "for it
is derived from 'diti,' bond, and the negative particle A."
** "Hymns to the
Maruts," I., 89, 10.
*** Ibid., I., 24, 1.
**** Ibid., X., 63, 2.
***** Thus is it that we find in
all the philosophical theogonies, the Holy Ghost female. The numerous sects of
the Gnostics had Sophia; the Jewish kabalists and Talmudists, Shekinah (the
garment of the Highest), which descended between the two cherubim upon the
Mercy Seat; and we find even Jesus made to say, in an old text, "My
Mother, the Holy Ghost, took me."
"The waters are called
nara, because they were the production of Nara, the Spirit of God"
("Institutes of Manu," i. 10).
****** Narayana, or that which
moves on the waters.
******* "Manu,"
sloka 12.
-----------
[[Column 2 continued]]
give a concrete form to his
abstract Thought. Two sides of the upper triangle, the right side and the base,
are composed of unbroken lines; the third, the left side, is dotted. It is
through the latter that emerges Sephira. Spreading in every direction, she
finally encompasses the whole triangle. In this emanation of the female active
principle from the left side of the mystic triangle, is foreshadowed the
creation of Eve from Adam's left rib. Adam is the Microcosm of the Macrocosm,
and is created in the image of the Elohim. In the Tree of Life [[Heb char]] the
triple triad is disposed in such a manner that the three male Sephiroth are on
the right, the three female on the left, and the four uniting principles in the
centre. From the Invisible Dew falling from the Higher "Head" Sephira
creates primeval water, or chaos taking shape. It is the first step toward the
solidification of Spirit, which through various modifications will produce earth.*
"It requires earth and water to make a living soul," says Moses.
When Sephira emerges like an
active power from within the latent Deity, she is [[Column continues on next
page]]
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* George Smith gives the first
verses of the Akkadian Genesis as found in the Cuneiform Texts on the
"Lateres Coctiles." There, also, we find Anu, the passive deity or
En-Soph, Bel, the Creator, the Spirit of God (Sephira) moving on the face of
the waters, hence water itself, and Hea the Universal Soul or wisdom of the
three combined.
The first eight verses read
thus:
1. When above, were not raised
the heavens;
2. and below on the earth a
plant had not grown up.
3. The abyss had not broken
its boundaries.
4. The chaos (or water) Tiamat
(the sea) was the producing mother of the whole of them. (This is the Cosmical
Aditi and Sephira.)
5. Those waters at the
beginning were ordained but
6. a tree had not grown, a
flower had not unfolded.
7. When the gods had not
sprung up, any one of them;
8. a plant had not grown, and
order did not exist.
This was the chaotic or
ante-genesis period.
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[[Column 1 continued]]
earth (both yet in their
ideal, not their manifested form).
Thus, this second triad, only
another name for the first one (never pronounced aloud), and which is the real
pre-Vedic and primordial secret Trimurti, consisted of
Nara, Father-Heaven,
Nari, Mother-Earth,
Viradj, the Son -- or
Universe.
The Trimurti, comprising
Brahma, the Creator, Vishnu, the Preserver, and Siva, the Destroyer and
Regenerator, belongs to a later period. It is an anthropomorphic afterthought,
invented for the more popular comprehension of the uninitiated masses. The
Dikshita, the initiate, knew better. Thus, also, the profound allegory under
the colors of a ridiculous fable, given in the Aytareya Brahmana,* which
resulted in the representations in some temples of Brahm-Nara, assuming the
form of a bull, and his daughter, Aditi-Nari, that of a heifer, contains the
same metaphysical idea as the "fall of man," or that of the Spirit
into generation -- matter. The All-pervading Divine Spirit embodied under the
symbols of Heaven, the Sun, and Heat (fire) -- the correlation of cosmic forces
-- fecundates Matter or Nature, the daughter of Spirit. And Para-Brahma himself
has to submit to and bear the penance of the curses of the other gods (Elohim)
for such an incest. (See corresponding column.) According to the immutable,
and, therefore, fatal law, both Nara and Nari are mutually Father and Mother,
as well as Father and Daughter.** Matter, through infinite transformation, is
the gradual product of Spirit. The unification of one Eternal Supreme Cause
required such a correlation; and if nature be [[Column continues on next page]]
[[Footnote(s)]]
--------------------------------------------------
*See Haug's "Aytareya
Brahmanam," of the Rig-Veda.
** The same transformations
are found in the cosmogony of every important nation. Thus, we see in the
Egyptian mythology, Isis and Osiris, sister and brother, man and wife; and
Horus, the Son of both, becoming the husband of his mother, Isis, and producing
a son, Malouli.
----------
[[Column 2 continued]]
female; when she assumes the
office of a creator, she becomes a male; hence, she is androgyne. She is the
"Father and Mother Aditi," of the Hindu Cosmogony. After brooding
over the "Deep," the Spirit of God" produces its own image in
the water, the Universal Womb, symbolized in Manu by the Golden Egg. In the
kabalistic Cosmogony, Heaven and Earth are personified by Adam Kadmon and the
second Adam. The first Ineffable Triad, contained in the abstract idea of the
"Three Heads," was a "mystery name." It was composed of
En-Soph, Sephira, and Adam Kadmon, the Protogonos, the latter being identical
with the former, when bisexual.* In every triad there is a male, a female, and
an androgyne. Adam-Sephira is the Crown (Keter). It sets itself to the work of
creation, by first producing Chochmah, Male Wisdom, a masculine active potency,
represented by [[Heb char]], jah, or the Wheels of Creation, [[Heb char]], from
which proceeds Binah, Intelligence, female and passive potency, which is
Jehovah, [[Heb char]], whom we find in the Bible figuring as the Supreme. But
this Jehovah is not the kabalistic Jodcheva. The binary is the fundamental
corner-stone of Gnosis. As the binary is the Unity multiplying itself and
self-creating, the kabalists show the "Unknown" passive En-Soph, as
emanating from himself, Sephira, which, becoming visible light, is said to
produce Adam Kadmon. But, in the hidden sense, Sephira and Adam are one and the
same light, only latent and active, invisible and visible. The second Adam, as
the human tetragram, produces in his turn Eve, out of his side. It is this
second triad, with which the kabalists have hitherto dealt, hardly hinting at
the Supreme and Ineffable One, and never committing anything to writing. All
knowledge concerning the latter was imparted orally. It is the second Adam,
then, who is the unity represented by Jod, emblem of the kabalistic male
principle, and, at the same time, he is Chochmah, Wisdom, while Binah or
Jehovah is Eve; the first [[Column continues on next page]]
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* When a female power, she is
Sephira; when male, he is Adam Kadmon; for, as the former contains in herself
the other nine Sephiroth, so, in their totality, the latter, including Sephira,
is embodied in the Archetypal Kadmon, the [[protogonos]].
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[[Column 1 continued]]
the product or effect of that
Cause, in its turn it has to be fecundated by the same divine Ray which
produced nature itself. The most absurd cosmogonical allegories, if analyzed
without prejudice, will be found built on strict and logical necessarianism.
"Being was born from
not-being," says a verse in the Rig-Veda.* The first being had to become
androgyne and finite, by the very fact of its creation as a being. And thus
even the sacred Trimurti, containing Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva will have an end
when the "night" of Para-Brahma succeeds the present "day,"
or period of universal activity.
The second, or rather the
first, triad -- as the highest one is a pure abstraction -- is the intellectual
world. The Vach which surrounds it is a more definite transformation of Aditi.
Besides its occult significance in the secret Mantram, Vach is personified as
the active power of Brahma proceeding from him. In the Vedas she is made to
speak of herself as the supreme and universal soul. "I bore the Father on
the head of the universal mind, and my origin is in the midst of the ocean; and
therefore do I pervade all beings. . . . Originating all beings, I pass like
the breeze (Holy Ghost). I am above this heaven, beyond this earth; and what is
the Great One that am I."** Literally, Vach is speech, the power of
awakening, through the metrical arrangement contained in the number and
syllables of the Mantras,*** corresponding powers in the invisible world. In
the sacrificial Mysteries Vach stirs up the Brahma (Brahma jinvati), or the
power lying latent at the bottom of every magical operation. It existed from
eternity as the Yajna (its latent form), lying dormant in Brahma from
"no-beginning," and proceeded forth from him as Vach (the active
power). It is the key to the "Trai- [[Column continues on next page]]
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Mandala I., Sukta 166, Max
Muller.
** "Asiatic
Researches," vol. viii., pp. 402, 403; Colebrooke's translation.
*** As in the Pythagorean
numerical system every number on earth, or the world of the effects,
corresponds to its invisible prototype in the world of causes.
----------
[[Column 2 continued]]
Chochmah issuing from Keter,
or the androgyne, Adam Kadmon, and the second, Binah, from Chochmah. If we
combine with Jod the three letters which form the name of Eve, we will have the
divine tetragram pronounced IEVO-HEVAH, Adam and Eve, [[Heb char]], Jehovah,
male and female, or the idealization of humanity embodied in the first man.
Thus is it that we can prove that, while the Jewish kabalists, in common with
their initiated masters, the Chaldeans and the Hindus, adored the Supreme and
Unknown God, in the sacred silence of their sanctuaries, the ignorant masses of
every nation were left to adore something which was certainly less than the
Eternal Substance of the Buddhists, the so-called Atheists. As Brahma, the
deity manifested in the mythical Manu, or the first man (born of Swayambhuva, or
the Self-existent), is finite, so Jehovah, embodied in Adam and Eve, is but a
human god. He is the symbol of humanity, a mixture of good with a portion of
unavoidable evil; of spirit fallen into matter. In worshipping Jehovah, we
simply worship nature, as embodied in man, half-spiritual and half-material, at
best: we are Pantheists, when not fetich worshippers, like the idolatrous Jews,
who sacrificed on high places, in groves, to the personified male and female
principle, ignorant of IAO, the Supreme "Secret Name" of the
Mysteries.
Shekinah is the Hindu Vach,
and praised in the same terms as the latter. Though shown in the kabalistic
Tree of Life as proceeding from the ninth Sephiroth, yet Shekinah is the
"veil" of En-Soph, and the "garment" of Jehovah. The
"veil," for it succeeded for long ages in concealing the real supreme
God, the universal Spirit, and masking Jehovah, the exoteric deity, made the
Christians accept him as the "father" of the initiated Jesus. Yet the
kabalists, as well as the Hindu Dikshita, know the power of the Shekinah or
Vach, and call it the "secret wisdom," [[Heb char]].
The triangle played a
prominent part in the religious symbolism of every great nation; for everywhere
it represented the three great principles -- spirit, force, and matter; or the
active (male), passive (female), and the dual or correlative principle which
partakes of both and binds the two together. It was the Arba or mystic [[Column
continues on next page]]
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[[Column 1 continued]]
vidya," the thrice sacred
science which teaches the Yajus (the sacrificial Mysteries).*
Having done with the unrevealed
triad, and the first triad of the Sephiroth, called the "intellectual
world," little remains to be said. In the great geometrical figure which
has the double triangle in it, the central circle represents the world within
the universe. The double triangle belongs to one of the most important, if it
is not in itself the most important, of the mystic figures in India. It is the
emblem of the Trimurti three in one. The triangle with its apex upward
indicates the male principle, downward the female; the two typifying, at the
same time, spirit and matter. This world within the infinite universe is the
microcosm within the macrocosm, as in the Jewish Kabala. It is the symbol of
the womb of the universe, the terrestrial egg, whose archetype is the golden mundane
egg. It is from within this spiritual bosom of mother nature that proceed all
the great saviours of the universe -- the avatars of the invisible Deity.
"Of him who is and yet is
not, from the not-being, Eternal Cause, is born the being Pouroucha," says
Manu, the legislator. Pouroucha is the "divine male," the second god,
and the avatar, or the Logos of Para-Brahma and his divine son, who in his turn
produced Viradj, the son, or the ideal type of the universe. "Viradj
begins the work of creation by producing the ten Pradjapati, 'the lords of all
beings.' "
According to the doctrine of
Manu, the universe is subjected to a periodical and never-ending succession of
creations and dissolutions, which periods of creation are named Manvantara.
"It is the germ (which
the Divine Spirit produced from its own substance) which never perishes in the
being, for it becomes the soul of Being, and at the period of pralaya
(dissolution) it returns to absorb itself again into the Divine Spirit, which
itself rests from all eternity [[Column continues on next page]]
[[Footnote(s)]]
--------------------------------------------------
* See initial chap., vol. i.,
word Yajna.
----------
[[Column 2 continued]]
"four,"* the
mystery-gods, the Kabeiri, summarized in the unity of one supreme Deity. It is
found in the Egyptian pyramids, whose equal sides tower up until lost in one
crowning point. In the kabalistic diagram the central circle of the Brahmanical
figure is replaced by the cross; the celestial perpendicular and the terrestrial
horizontal base line.** But the idea is the same: Adam Kadmon is the type of
humanity as a collective totality within the unity of the creative God and the
universal spirit. [[Column continues on next page]]
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Eve is the trinity of
nature, and Adam the unity of spirit; the former the created material
principle, the latter the ideal organ of the creative principle, or, in other
words, this androgyne is both the principle and the Logos, for [[Heb char]] is
the male, and [[Heb char]] the female; and, as Levi expresses it, this first
letter of the holy language, Aleph, represents a man pointing with one hand
toward the sky, and with the other toward the ground. It is the macrocosm and the
microcosm at the same time, and explains the double triangle of the Masons and
the five-pointed star. While the male is active the female principle is
passive, for it is SPIRIT and MATTER, the latter word meaning mother in nearly
every language. The columns of Soloman's temple, Jachin and Boaz, are the
emblems of the androgyne; they are also respectively male and female, white and
black, square and round; the male a unity, the female a binary. In the later
kabalistic treatises, the active principle is pictured by the sword [[Heb
char]], the passive by the sheath [[Heb char]]. See "Dogme et Rituel de la
Haute Magie," vol. i.
** The vertical line being the
male principle, and the horizontal the female, out of the union of the two at
the intersection point is formed the CROSS; the oldest symbol in the Egyptian
history of gods. It is the key of Heaven in the rosy fingers of Neith, the
celestial virgin, who opens the gate at dawn for the exit of her
first-begotten, the radiant sun. It is the Stauros of the Gnostics, and the
philosophical cross of the high-grade Masons. We find this symbol ornamenting
the tee of the umbrella-shaped oldest pagodas in Thibet, China, and India, as
we find it in the hand of Isis, in the shape of the "handled cross."
In one of the Chaitya caves, at Ajunta, it surmounts the three umbrellas in
stone, and forms the centre of the vault.
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[[Column 1 continued]]
within Swayambhuva, the
'Self-Existent' " (Institute of Manu, book i.).
As we have shown, neither the
Svabhavikas, Buddhist philosophers -- nor the Brahmans believe in a creation of
the universe ex nihilo, but both believe in the Prakriti, the indestructibility
of matter.
The evolution of species, and
the successive appearance of various new types is very distinctly shown in
Manu.
"From earth, heat, and
water, are born all creatures, whether animate or inanimate, produced by the
germ which the Divine Spirit drew from its own substance. Thus has Brahma
established the series of transformations from the plant up to man, and from
man up to the primordial essence. . . . Among them each succeeding being (or
element) acquires the quality of the preceding; and in as many degrees as each
of them is advanced, with so many properties is it said to be endowed"
(Manu, book i., sloka 20).*
This, we believe, is the
veritable theory of the modern evolutionists.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "When this world had
emerged from obscurity, the subtile elementary principles produced the
vegetable germ which at first animated the plants; from the plants, life passed
through the fantastic organisms which were born in the ilus (boue) of the
waters; then through a series of forms and different animals, it at length
reached man" ("Manu," book i.; and "Bhagavatta").
Manu is a convertible type,
which can by no means be explained as a personage. Manu means sometimes
humanity, sometimes man. The Manu who emanated from the uncreated Swayambhuva
is, without doubt, the type of Adam Kadmon. The Manu who is progenitor of the
other six Manus is evidently identical with the Rishis, or seven primeval sages
who are the forefathers of the post-diluvian races. He is -- as we shall show
in Chapter VIII. -- Noah, and his six sons, or subsequent generations are the
originals of the post-diluvian and mythical patriarchs of the Bible.
----------
[[Column 2 continued]]
"Of him who is formless,
the non-existent (also the eternal, but not First Cause), is born the heavenly
man." But after he created the form of the heavenly man [[Heb char]], he
"used it as a vehicle wherein to descend," says the Kabala. Thus Adam
Kadmon is the avatar of the concealed power. After that the heavenly Adam
creates or engenders by the combined power of the Sephiroth, the earthly Adam.
The work of creation is also begun by Sephira in the creation of the ten
Sephiroth (who are the Pradjapatis of the Kabala, for they are likewise the
Lords of all beings).
The Sohar asserts the same.
According to the kabalistic doctrine there were old worlds (see Idra Suta:
Sohar, iii., p. 292b). Everything will return some day to that from which it
first proceeded. "All things of which this world consists, spirit as well
as body, will return to their principal, and the roots from which they
proceeded" (Sohar, ii., 218b). The kabalists also maintain the
indestructibility of matter, albeit their doctrine is shrouded still more
carefully than that of the Hindus. The creation is eternal, and the universe is
the "garment," or "the veil of God" -- Shekinah; and the
latter is immortal and eternal as Him within whom it has ever existed. Every
world is made after the pattern of its predecessor, and each more gross and
material than the preceding one. In the Kabala all were called sparks. Finally,
our present grossly materialistic world was formed.
In the Chaldean account of the
period which preceded the Genesis of our world, Berosus speaks of a time when
there existed nothing but darkness, and an abyss of waters, filled with hideous
monsters, "produced of a two-fold principle. . . . These were creatures in
which were combined the limbs of every species of animals. In addition to these
fishes, reptiles, serpents, with other monstrous animals, which assumed each
other's shape and countenance."*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Cory's "Ancient
Fragments."
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In the first book of Manu, we
read: "Know that the sum of 1,000 divine ages, composes the totality of
one day of Brahma; and that one night is equal to that day." One thousand
divine ages is equal to 4,320,000,000 of human years, in the Brahmanical
calculations.
"At the expiration of
each night, Brahma, who has been asleep, awakes, and through the sole energy of
the motion causes to emanate from himself the spirit, which in its essence is,
and yet is not."
"Prompted by the desire
to create, the Spirit (first of the emanations) operates the creation and gives
birth to ether, which the sages consider as having the faculty of transmitting
sound.
"Ether begets air whose
property is tangible, and which is necessary to life.
"Through a transformation
of the air, light is produced.
"From air and light,
which begets heat, water is formed, and the water is the womb of all the living
germs."
Throughout the whole immense
period of progressive creation, covering 4,320,000,000 years, ether, air, water
and fire (heat), are constantly forming matter under the never-ceasing impulse
of the Spirit, or the unrevealed God who fills up the whole creation, for he is
in all, and all is in him. This computation, which was secret and which is
hardly hinted at even now, led Higgins into the error of dividing every ten
ages into 6,000 years. Had he added a few more ciphers to his sums he might have
come nearer to a correct explanation of the neroses, or secret cycles.*
In the Sepher Jezireh, the
kabalistic Book of Creation, the author has evidently repeated the words of
Manu. In it, the Divine Substance is represented as having alone existed from
the eternity, boundless and absolute; and emitted from itself the Spirit.
"One is the Spirit of the living God, blessed be His Name, who liveth for
ever! Voice, Spirit, and Word, this is the Holy Spirit";** and this is the
kabalistic abstract Trinity, so unceremoniously anthropomorphized by the
Fathers. From this triple ONE emanated the whole Cosmos. First from ONE
emanated number TWO, or Air, the creative element; and then number THREE,
Water, proceeded from the air; Ether or Fire complete the mystic four, the
Arba-il.*** "When the Concealed of the Concealed wanted to reveal Himself,
he first made a point (primordial point, or the first Sephira, air or Holy
Ghost), shaped it into a sacred form (the ten Sephiroth, or the Heavenly man),
and covered it with a rich and splendid garment, that is the world."****
"He maketh the wind His messengers, flaming Fire his
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Vol. I., chap. i., pp.
33, 34, of this work.
** "Sepher Jezireh,"
chap. i., Mishna ixth.
*** Ibid.
**** "Sohar," i., 2
a.
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servants," says the
Jezireh, showing the cosmical character of the later euhemerized angels,* and
that the Spirit permeates every minutest atom of the Cosmos.**
When the cycle of creation is
run down, the energy of the manifested word is weakening. He alone, the
Unconceivable, is unchangeable (ever latent), but the Creative Force, though
also eternal, as it has been in the former from "no beginning," yet
must be subject to periodical cycles of activity and rest; as it had a
beginning in one of its aspects, when it first emanated, therefore must also
have an end. Thus, the evening succeeds the day, and the night of the deity
approaches. Brahma is gradually falling asleep. In one of the books of Sohar,
we read the following:
"As Moses was keeping a
vigil on Mount Sinai, in company with the Deity, who was concealed from his
sight by a cloud, he felt a great fear overcome him and suddenly asked: 'Lord,
where art Thou . . . sleepest thou, O Lord?' And the Spirit answered him: 'I
never sleep; were I to fall asleep for a moment before my time, all the
Creation would crumble into dissolution in one instant.' " And
Vamadeva-Modely describes the "Night of Brahma," or the second period
of the Divine Unknown existence, thus:
"Strange noises are
heard, proceeding from every point. . . . These are the precursors of the Night
of Brahma; dusk rises at the horizon and the Sun passes away behind the
thirtieth degree of Macara (sign of the zodiac), and will reach no more the
sign of the Minas (zodiacal pisces, or fish). The gurus of the pagodas appointed
to watch the ras-chakr (Zodiac), may now break their circle and instruments,
for they are henceforth useless.
"Gradually light pales,
heat diminishes, uninhabitable spots multiply on the earth, the air becomes
more and more rarefied; the springs of waters dry up, the great rivers see
their waves exhausted, the ocean shows its sandy bottom, and plants die. Men
and animals decrease in size daily. Life and motion lose their force, planets
can hardly gravitate in space; they are extinguished one by one, like a lamp
which the hand of the chokra (servant) neglects to replenish. Sourya (the Sun)
flickers and goes out, matter falls into dissolution (pralaya), and Brahma
merges back into Dyaus, the Unrevealed God, and his task being accomplished, he
falls asleep. Another day is passed, night sets in and continues until the
future dawn.
[[Footnote(s)]]
--------------------------------------------------
* "Sepher Jezireh,"
Mishna ix., 10.
** It is interesting to recall
Hebrews i. 7, in connection with this passage. "Who maketh his angels
(messengers) spirits, and his ministers (servants, those who minister) a flame
of fire." The resemblance is too striking for us to avoid the conclusion
that the author of "Hebrews" was as familiar with the
"Kabala" as adepts usually are.
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"And now again re-enter into
the golden egg of His Thought, the germs of all that exist, as the divine Manu
tells us. During His peaceful rest, the animated beings, endowed with the
principles of action, cease their functions, and all feeling (manas) becomes
dormant. When they are all absorbed in the SUPREME SOUL, this Soul of all the
beings sleeps in complete repose, till the day when it resumes its form, and
awakes again from its primitive darkness."*
If we now examine the ten
mythical avatars of Vishnu, we find them recorded in the following progression:
1. Matsya-Avatar: as a fish.
It will also be his tenth and last avatar, at the end of the Kali-yug.
2. Kurm-Avatar: as a tortoise.
3. Varaha: as a boar.
4. Nara-Sing: as a man-lion;
last animal stage.
5. Vamuna: as a dwarf; first
step toward the human form.
6. Parasu-Rama: as a hero, but
yet an imperfect man.
7. Rama-Chandra: as the hero
of Ramayana. Physically a perfect man; his next of kin, friend and ally
Hanouma, the monkey-god. The monkey endowed with speech.**
8. Christna-Avatar: the Son of
the Virgin Devanaguy (or Devaki) one formed by God, or rather by the manifested
Deity Vishnu, who is identical with Adam Kadmon.*** Christna is also called
Kaneya, the Son of the Virgin.
9. Gautama-Buddha, Siddhartha,
or Sakya-muni. (The Buddhists reject this doctrine of their Buddha being an
incarnation of Vishnu.)
10. This avatar has not yet
occurred. It is expected in the future, like the Christian Advent, the idea of
which was undoubtedly copied from the Hindu. When Vishnu appears for the last
time he will come as a "Saviour." According to the opinion of some
Brahmans he will appear himself under the form of the horse Kalki. Others
maintain that he will be mounting it. This horse is the envelope of the spirit
of evil, and Vishnu will mount it, invisible to all, till he has conquered it
for the last time. The "Kalki-Avataram," or the last incarnation,
divides
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The Sons of God";
"The India of the Brahmans," p. 230.
** May it not be that Hanouma
is the representative of that link of beings half-man, half-monkeys, which,
according to the theories of Messrs. Hovelacque and Schleicher, were arrested
in their development, and fell, so to say, into a retrogressive evolution?
*** The Primal or Ultimate
Essence has no name in India. It is indicated sometimes as "That" and
"This." "This (universe) was not originally anything. There was
neither heaven, nor earth, nor atmosphere. That being non-existent resolved
'Let me be.' " (Original Sanscrit Text.) Dr. Muir, vol. v., p. 366.
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Brahmanism into two sects.
That of the Vaihnava refuses to recognize the incarnations of their god Vishnu
in animal forms literally. They claim that these must be understood as
allegorical.
In this diagram of avatars we
see traced the gradual evolution and transformation of all species out of the
ante-Silurian mud of Darwin and the ilus of Sanchoniathon and Berosus.
Beginning with the Azoic time, corresponding to the ilus in which Brahma
implants the creative germ, we pass through the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic times,
covered by the first and second incarnations as the fish and tortoise; and the
Cenozoic, which is embraced by the incarnations in the animal and semi-human
forms of the boar and man-lion; and we come to the fifth and crowning
geological period, designated as the "era of mind, or age of man,"
whose symbol in the Hindu mythology is the dwarf -- the first attempt of nature
at the creation of man. In this diagram we should follow the main idea, not
judge the degree of knowledge of the ancient philosophers by the literal acceptance
of the popular form in which it is presented to us in the grand epical poem of
Maha-Bharata and its chapter the Bagaved-gitta.
Even the four ages of the
Hindu chronology contain a far more philosophical idea than appears on the
surface. It defines them according to both the psychological or mental and the
physical states of man during their period. Crita-yug, the golden age, the
"age of joy," or spiritual innocence of man; Treta-yug, the age of
silver, or that of fire -- the period of supremacy of man and of giants and of
the sons of God; Dwapara-yug, the age of bronze -- a mixture already of purity
and impurity (spirit and matter) the age of doubt; and at last our own, the
Kali-yug, or age of iron, of darkness, misery, and sorrow. In this age, Vishnu
had to incarnate himself in Christna, in order to save humanity from the
goddess Kali, consort of Siva, the all-annihilating -- the goddess of death,
destruction, and human misery. Kali is the best emblem to represent the
"fall of man"; the falling of spirit into the degradation of matter,
with all its terrific results. We have to rid ourselves of Kali before we can
ever reach "Moksha," or Nirvana, the abode of blessed Peace and
Spirit.
With the Buddhists the last
incarnation is the fifth. When Maitree-Buddha comes, then our present world
will be destroyed; and a new and a better one will replace it. The four arms of
every Hindu Deity are the emblems of the four preceding manifestations of our
earth from its invisible state, while its head typifies the fifth and last
Kalki-Avatar, when this would be destroyed, and the power of Budh -- Wisdom
(with the Hindus, of Brahma), will be again called into requisition to manifest
itself -- as a Logos -- to create the future world.
In this diagram, the male gods
typify Spirit in its deific attributes
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while their female counterparts
-- the Sakti, represent the active energies of these attributes. The Durga
(active virtue), is a subtile, invisible force, which answers to Shekinah --
the garment of En-Soph. She is the Sakti through which the passive
"Eternal" calls forth the visible universe from its first ideal
conception. Every one of the three personages of the exoteric Trimurti are
shown as using their Sakti as a Vehan (vehicle). Each of them is for the time
being the form which sits upon the mysterious wagon of Ezekiel.
Nor do we see less clearly
carried out in this succession of avatars, the truly philosophical idea of a
simultaneous spiritual and physical evolution of creatures and man. From a fish
the progress of this dual transformation carries on the physical form through
the shape of a tortoise, a boar, and a man-lion; and then, appearing in the
dwarf of humanity, it shows Parasu Rama physically, a perfect, spiritually, an
undeveloped entity, until it carries mankind personified by one god-like man,
to the apex of physical and spiritual perfection -- a god on earth. In Christna
and the other Saviours of the world we see the philosophical idea of the
progressive dual development understood and as clearly expressed in the Sohar.
The "Heavenly man," who is the Protogonos, Tikkun, the first-born of
God, or the universal Form and Idea, engenders Adam. Hence the latter is
god-born in humanity, and endowed with the attributes of all the ten Sephiroth.
These are: Wisdom, Intelligence, Justice, Love, Beauty, Splendor, Firmness,
etc. They make him the Foundation or basis, "the mighty living one,"
[[Heb char]], and the crown of creation, thus placing him as the Alpha and
Omega to reign over the "kingdom" -- Malchuth. "Man is both the
import and the highest degree of creation," says the Sohar. "As soon
as man was created, everything was complete, including the upper and nether
worlds, for everything is comprised in man. He unites in himself all
forms" (iii., p. 48 a).
But this does not relate to
our degenerated mankind; it is only occasionally that men are born who are the
types of what man should be, and yet is not. The first races of men were
spiritual, and their protoplastic bodies were not composed of the gross and
material substances of which we see them composed now-a-day. The first men were
created with all the faculties of the Deity, and powers far transcending those
of the angelic host; for they were the direct emanations of Adam Kadmon, the
primitive man, the Macrocosm; while the present humanity is several degrees
removed even from the earthly Adam, who was the Microcosm, or "the little
world." Seir Anpin, the mystical figure of the Man, consists of 243
numbers, and we see in the circles which follow each other that it is the
angels which emanated from the "Primitive
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Man," not the Sephiroth
from angels. Hence, man was intended from the first to be a being of both a
progressive and retrogressive nature. Beginning at the apex of the divine
cycle, he gradually began receding from the centre of Light, acquiring at every
new and lower sphere of being (worlds each inhabited by a different race of
human beings) a more solid physical form and losing a portion of his divine
faculties.
In the "fall of
Adam" we must see, not the personal transgression of man, but simply the
law of the dual evolution. Adam, or "Man," begins his career of
existences by dwelling in the garden of Eden, "dressed in the celestial
garment, which is a garment of heavenly light" (Sohar, ii., 229 b); but
when expelled he is "clothed" by God, or the eternal law of Evolution
or necessarianism, with coats of skin. But even on this earth of material
degradation -- in which the divine spark (Soul, a corruscation of the Spirit)
was to begin its physical progression in a series of imprisonments from a stone
up to a man's body -- if he but exercise his WILL and call his deity to his
help, man can transcend the powers of the angel. "Know ye not that we
shall judge angels?" asks Paul (1 Corinthians, vi. 3). The real man is the
Soul (Spirit), teaches the Sohar. "The mystery of the earthly man is after
the mystery of the heavenly man . . . the wise can read the mysteries in the
human face" (ii., 76 a).
This is still another of the
many sentences by which Paul must be recognized as an initiate. For reasons
fully explained, we give far more credit for genuineness to certain Epistles of
the apostles, now dismissed as apocryphal, than to many suspicious portions of
the Acts. And we find corroboration of this view in the Epistle of Paul to
Seneca. In this message Paul styles Seneca "my respected master,"
while Seneca terms the apostle simply "brother."
No more than the true religion
of Judaic philosophy can be judged by the absurdities of the exoteric Bible,
have we any right to form an opinion of Brahmanism and Buddhism by their
nonsensical and sometimes disgusting popular forms. If we only search for the
true essence of the philosophy of both Manu and the Kabala, we will find that
Vishnu is, as well as Adam Kadmon, the expression of the universe itself; and
that his incarnations are but concrete and various embodiments of the
manifestations of this "Stupendous Whole." "I am the Soul, O,
Arjuna. I am the Soul which exists in the heart of all beings; and I am the
beginning and the middle, and also the end of existing things," says
Vishnu to his disciple, in Bagaved-gitta (ch. x., p. 71).
"I am Alpha and Omega,
the beginning and the end. . . . I am the first and the last," says Jesus
to John (Rev. i. 6, 17).
Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva are a
trinity in a unity, and, like the
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Christian trinity, they are
mutually convertible. In the esoteric doctrine they are one and the same
manifestation of him "whose name is too sacred to be pronounced, and whose
power is too majestic and infinite to be imagined." Thus by describing the
avatars of one, all others are included in the allegory, with a change of form
but not of substance. It is out of such manifestations that emanated the many
worlds that were, and that will emanate the one -- which is to come.
Coleman, followed in it by
other Orientalists, presents the seventh avatar of Vishnu in the most
caricatured way.* Apart from the fact that the Ramayana is one of the grandest
epic poems in the world -- the source and origin of Homer's inspiration -- this
avatar conceals one of the most scientific problems of our modern day. The
learned Brahmans of India never understood the allegory of the famous war
between men, giants, and monkeys, otherwise than in the light of the
transformation of species. It is our firm belief that were European
academicians to seek for information from some learned native Brahmans, instead
of unanimously and incontinently rejecting their authority, and were they, like
Jacolliot -- against whom they have nearly all arrayed themselves -- to seek
for light in the oldest documents scattered about the country in pagodas, they
might learn strange but not useless lessons. Let any one inquire of an educated
Brahman the reason for the respect shown to monkeys -- the origin of which
feeling is indicated in the story of the valorous feats of Hanouma, the
generalissimo and faithful ally of the hero of Ramayana,** and he would soon be
disabused of the erroneous idea that the Hindus accord deific honors to a monkey-god.
He would, perhaps, learn -- were the Brahman to judge him worthy of an
explanation -- that the Hindu sees in the ape but what Manu desired he should:
the transformation of species most directly connected with that of the human
family -- a bastard branch engrafted on their own stock before the final
perfection of the latter.*** He might learn, further, that in the eyes of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Coleman's "Hindu
Mythology."
** The siege and subsequent
surrender of Lanca (Isle of Ceylon) to Rama is placed by the Hindu chronology
-- based upon the Zodiac -- at 7,500 to 8,000 years B.C., and the following or
eighth incarnation of Vishnu at 4,800 B.C. (from the book of the Historical
Zodiacs of the Brahmans).
*** A Hanoverian scientist has
recently published a work entitled Ueber die Auflosung der Arten dinck
Naturliche Zucht Wahl, in which he shows, with great ingenuity, that Darwin was
wholly mistaken in tracing man back to the ape. On the contrary, he maintains
that it is the ape which has evolved from man. That, in the beginning, mankind
were, morally and physically, the types and prototypes of our present race and
of human dignity, by their beauty of form, regularity of feature, cranial
development, nobility of sentiments, heroic impulses, and grandeur of ideal
conceptions. This is a purely Brahmanic, Buddhistic, and kabalistic philosophy.
His book is copiously illus-
[[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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JAINS.
educated "heathen"
the spiritual or inner man is one thing, and his terrestrial, physical casket
another. That physical nature, the great combination of physical correlations
of forces ever creeping on toward perfection, has to avail herself of the
material at hand; she models and remodels as she proceeds, and finishing her
crowning work in man, presents him alone as a fit tabernacle for the
overshadowing of the Divine spirit. But the latter circumstance does not give
man the right of life and death over the animals lower than himself in the
scale of nature, or the right to torture them. Quite the reverse. Besides being
endowed with a soul -- of which every animal, and even plant, is more or less
possessed -- man has his immortal rational soul, or nous, which ought to make
him at least equal in magnanimity to the elephant, who treads so carefully,
lest he should crush weaker creatures than himself. It is this feeling which
prompts Brahman and Buddhist alike to construct hospitals for sick animals, and
even insects, and to prepare refuges wherein they may finish their days. It is
this same feeling, again, which causes the Jain sectarian to sacrifice one-half
of his life-time to brushing away from his path the helpless, crawling insects,
rather than recklessly deprive the smallest of life; and it is again from this
sense of highest benevolence and charity toward the weaker, however abject the
creature may be, that they honor one of the natural modifications of their own
dual nature, and that later the popular belief in metempsychosis arose. No
trace of the latter is to be found in the Vedas; and the true interpretation of
the doctrine, discussed at length in Manu and the Buddhistic sacred books,
having been confined from the first to the learned sacerdotal castes, the false
and foolish popular ideas concerning it need occasion no surprise.
Upon those who, in the remains
of antiquity, see evidence that modern times can lay small claim to
originality, it is common to charge a disposition to exaggerate and distort
facts. But the candid reader will scarcely aver that the above is an example in
point. There were evolutionists before the day when the mythical Noah is made,
in the Bible, to float in his ark; and the ancient scientists were better
informed, and had their theories more logically defined than the modern evolutionists.
Plato, Anaxagoras, Pythagoras,
the Eleatic schools of Greece, as well as the old Chaldean sacerdotal colleges,
all taught the doctrine of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] trated with diagrams, tables, etc. He says that the gradual
debasement and degradation of man, morally and physically, can be readily
traced throughout the ethnological transformations down to our times. And, as
one portion has already degenerated into apes, so the civilized man of the
present day will at last, under the action of the inevitable law of necessity,
be also succeeded by like descendants. If we may judge of the future by the
actual present, it certainly does seem possible that so unspiritual and
materialistic a body as our physical scientists should end as simia rather than
as seraphs.
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dual evolution; the doctrine
of the transmigration of souls referring only to the progress of man from world
to world, after death here. Every philosophy worthy of the name, taught that
the spirit of man, if not the soul, was preexistent. "The Essenes,"
says Josephus, "believed that the souls were immortal, and that they
descended from the ethereal spaces to be chained to bodies."* In his turn,
Philo Judaeus says, the "air is full of them (of souls); those which are
nearest the earth, descending to be tied to mortal bodies, [[palindromousin
authis]], return to other bodies, being desirous to live in them."** In
the Sohar, the soul is made to plead her freedom before God: "Lord of the
Universe! I am happy in this world, and do not wish to go into another world,
where I shall be a handmaid, and be exposed to all kinds of
pollutions."*** The doctrine of fatal necessity, the everlasting immutable
Law, is asserted in the answer of the Deity: "Against thy will thou
becomest an embryo, and against thy will thou art born."**** Light would
be incomprehensible without darkness, to make it manifest by contrast; good
would be no good without evil, to show the priceless nature of the boon; and
so, personal virtue could claim no merit, unless it had passed through the
furnace of temptation. Nothing is eternal and unchangeable, save the Concealed
Deity. Nothing that is finite -- whether because it had a beginning, or must
have an end -- can remain stationary. It must either progress or recede; and a
soul which thirsts after a reunion with its spirit, which alone confers upon it
immortality, must purify itself through cyclic transmigrations, onward toward
the only Land of Bliss and Eternal Rest, called in the Sohar, "The Palace
of Love," [[Heb char]]; in the Hindu religion, "Moksha"; among
the Gnostics, the "Pleroma of eternal Light"; and by the Buddhists,
Nirvana. The Christian calls it the "Kingdom of Heaven," and claims
to have alone found the truth, whereas he has but invented a new name for a
doctrine which is coeval with man.
The proof that the
transmigration of the soul does not relate to man's condition on this earth
after death, is found in the Sohar, notwithstanding the many incorrect
renderings of its translators. "All souls which have alienated themselves
in heaven from the Holy One -- blessed be His Name -- have thrown themselves
into an abyss at their very existence, and have anticipated the time when they
are to descend on earth.***** . . .
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "De Bel. Jud.,"
vol. ii., 12.
** "De Somniis," p.
455 d.
*** "Sohar," vol.
ii., p. 96.
**** "Mishna"
"Aboth," vol. iv., p. 29; Mackenzie's "Royal Masonic
Cyclopaedia," p. 413.
***** "Sohar," vol.
iii, p. 61 b.
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ENTITY.
Come and see when the soul
reaches the abode of Love. . . . The soul could not bear this light, but for
the luminous mantle which she puts on. For, just as the soul, when sent to this
earth, puts on an earthly garment to preserve herself here, so she receives
above a shining garment, in order to be able to look without injury into the
mirror, whose light proceeds from the Lord of Light."* Moreover, the Sohar
teaches that the soul cannot reach the abode of bliss, unless she has received
the "holy kiss," or the re-union of the soul with the substance from
which she emanated -- spirit. All souls are dual, and, while the latter is a
feminine principle, the spirit is masculine. While imprisoned in body, man is a
trinity, unless his pollution is such as to have caused his divorce from the
spirit. "Woe to the soul which prefers to her divine husband (spirit), the
earthly wedlock with her terrestrial body," records a text of the Book of
the Keys.**
These ideas on the
transmigrations and the trinity of man, were held by many of the early
Christian Fathers. It is the jumble made by the translators of the New Testament
and ancient philosophical treatises between soul and spirit, that has
occasioned the many misunderstandings. It is also one of the many reasons why
Buddha, Plotinus, and so many other initiates are now accused of having longed
for the total extinction of their souls -- "absorption unto the
Deity," or "reunion with the universal soul," meaning, according
to modern ideas, annihilation. The animal soul must, of course, be
disintegrated of its particles, before it is able to link its purer essence
forever with the immortal spirit. But the translators of both the Acts and the
Epistles, who laid the foundation of the Kingdom of Heaven, and the modern
commentators on the Buddhist Sutra of the Foundation of the Kingdom of
Righteousness, have muddled the sense of the great apostle of Christianity, as
of the great reformer of India. The former have smothered the word
[[psuchikos]], so that no reader imagines it to have any relation with soul;
and with this confusion of soul and spirit together, Bible readers get only a
perverted sense of anything on the subject; and the interpreters of the latter
have failed to understand the meaning and object of the Buddhist four degrees
of Dhyana.
In the writings of Paul, the
entity of man is divided into a trine -- flesh, psychical existence or soul,
and the overshadowing and at the same time interior entity or SPIRIT. His
phraseology is very definite, when he teaches the anastasis, or the
continuation of life of those who have died. He maintains that there is a
psychical body which is sown in the corruptible, and a spiritual body that is
raised in incorruptible sub-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ibid., vol. i., p. 65b.
** Hermetic work.
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stance. "The first man is
of the earth earthy, the second man from heaven." Even James (iii. 15)
identifies the soul by saying that its "wisdom descendeth not from the
above but is terrestrial, psychical, demoniacal" (see Greek text). Plato,
speaking of the Soul (psuche), observes that "when she allies herself to
the nous (divine substance, a god, as psuche is a goddess), she does everything
aright and felicitously; but the case is otherwise when she attaches herself to
Annoia." What Plato calls nous, Paul terms the Spirit; and Jesus makes the
heart what Paul says of the flesh. The natural condition of mankind was called
in Greek [[apostasia]]; the new condition [[anastasis]]. In Adam came the
former (death), in Christ the latter (resurrection), for it is he who first
publicly taught mankind the "Noble Path" to Eternal life, as Gautama
pointed the same Path to Nirvana. To accomplish both ends there was but one
way, according to the teachings of both. "Poverty, chastity, contemplation
or inner prayer; contempt for wealth and the illusive joys of this world."
"Enter on this Path and
put an end to sorrow; verily the Path has been preached by me, who have found
out how to quench the darts of grief. You yourselves must make the effort; the
Buddhas are only preachers. The thoughtful who enter the Path are freed from
the bondage of the Deceiver (Mara)."*
"Enter ye in at the
strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to
destruction. . . . Follow me. . . . Every one that heareth these sayings and
doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man" (Matthew vii. and
viii.). "I can of mine own self do nothing" (John v. 30). "The
care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word"
(Matthew xiii. 22), say the Christians; and it is only by shaking off all
delusions that the Buddhist enters on the "Path" which will lead him
"away from the restless tossing waves of the ocean of life," and take
him "to the calm City of Peace, to the real joy and rest of Nirvana."
The Greek philosophers are
alike made misty instead of mystic by their too learned translators. The
Egyptians revered the Divine Spirit, the One-Only One, as NOUT. It is most
evident that it is from that word that Anaxagoras borrowed his denominative
nous, or, as he calls it, [[Nous autokrates]] -- the Mind or Spirit
self-potent, the [[archetes kineseos]]. "All things," says he,
"were in chaos; then came Nous and introduced order." He also
denominated this Nous the One that ruled the many. In his idea Nous was God;
and the Logos was man, the emanation of the former. The external powers
perceived phenomena; the nous alone recog-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Dhamma-pada,"
slokas 276 et seq.
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nized noumena or subjective
things. This is purely Buddhistic and esoteric.
Here Socrates took his clew
and followed it, and Plato after him, with the whole world of interior
knowledge. Where the old Ionico-Italian world culminated in Anaxagoras, the new
world began with Socrates and Plato. Pythagoras made the Soul a self-moving
unit, with three elements, the nous, the phren and the thumos; the latter two,
shared with the brutes; the former only, being his essential self. So the
charge that he taught transmigration is refuted; he taught no more than
Gautama-Buddha ever did, whatever the popular superstition of the Hindu rabble
made of it after his death. Whether Pythagoras borrowed from Buddha, or Buddha
from somebody else, matters not; the esoteric doctrine is the same.
The Platonic School is even
more distinct in enunciating all this.
The real selfhood was at the
basis of all. Socrates therefore taught that he had a daimonion, a spiritual
something which put him in the road to wisdom. He himself knew nothing, but
this put him in the way to learn all.
Plato followed him with a full
investigation of the principles of being. There was an Agathon, Supreme God,
who produced in his own mind a paradeigma of all things.
He taught that in man was
"the immortal principle of the soul," a mortal body, and a
"separate mortal kind of soul," which was placed in a separate
receptacle of the body from the other; the immortal part was in the head
(Timaeus xix., xx.) the other in the trunk (xliv.).
Nothing is plainer than that
Plato regarded the interior man as constituted of two parts -- one always the
same, formed of the same entity as Deity, and one mortal and corruptible.
"Plato and
Pythagoras," says Plutarch, "distribute the soul into two parts, the
rational (noetic) and irrational (agnoia); that that part of the soul of man
which is rational, is eternal; for though it be not God, yet it is the product
of an eternal deity, but that part of the soul which is divested of reason
(agnoia) dies."
"Man," says Plutarch,
"is compound; and they are mistaken who think him to be compounded of two
parts only. For they imagine that the understanding is a part of the soul, but
they err in this no less than those who make the soul to be a part of the body,
for the understanding (nous) as far exceeds the soul, as the soul is better and
diviner than the body. Now this composition of the soul ([[psuche]]) with the
understanding ([[nous]]) makes reason; and with the body, passion; of which the
one is the beginning or principle of pleasure and pain, and the other of virtue
and vice. Of these three parts conjoined and compacted together, the earth
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has given the body, the moon
the soul, and the sun the understanding to the generation of man.
"Now of the deaths we
die, the one makes man two of three, and the other, one of (out of) two. The
former is in the region and jurisdiction of Demeter, whence the name given to
the Mysteries [[telein]] resembled that given to death, [[teleutan]]. The
Athenians also heretofore called the deceased sacred to Demeter. As for the
other death it is in the moon or region of Persephone. And as with the one the
terrestrial, so with the other the celestial Hermes doth dwell. This suddenly
and with violence plucks the soul from the body; but Proserpina mildly and in a
long time disjoins the understanding from the soul. For this reason she is
called Monogenes, only-begotten, or rather begetting one alone; for the better
part of man becomes alone when it is separated by her. Now both the one and the
other happens thus according to nature. It is ordained by Faith that every
soul, whether with or without understanding ([[nous]]), when gone out of the
body, should wander for a time, though not all for the same, in the region
lying between the earth and moon. For those that have been unjust and dissolute
suffer there the punishment due to their offences; but the good and virtuous
are there detained till they are purified, and have, by expiation, purged out
of them all the infections they might have contracted from the contagion of the
body, as if from foul health, living in the mildest part of the air, called the
Meadows of Hades, where they must remain for a certain prefixed and appointed
time. And then, as if they were returning from a wandering pilgrimage or long
exile into their country, they have a taste of joy, such as they principally
receive who are initiated into Sacred Mysteries, mixed with trouble,
admiration, and each one's proper and peculiar hope."
The daemonium of Socrates was
this [[nous]], mind, spirit, or understanding of the divine in it. "The
[[nous]] of Socrates," says Plutarch, "was pure and mixed itself with
the body no more than necessity required. . . . Every soul hath some portion of
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[[Vous]], reason, a man cannot
be a man without it; but as much of each soul as is mixed with flesh and
appetite is changed and through pain or pleasure becomes irrational. Every soul
doth not mix herself after one sort; some plunge themselves into the body, and
so, in this life their whole frame is corrupted by appetite and passion; others
are mixed as to some part, but the purer part [nous] still remains without the
body. It is not drawn down into the body, but it swims above and touches
(overshadows) the extremest part of the man's head; it is like a cord to hold
up and direct the subsiding part of the soul, as long as it proves obedient and
is not overcome by the appetites of the flesh. The part that is plunged into
the body is called soul. But the incorruptible part is called the nous and the
vulgar think it is within them,
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MAN'S SOUL.
as they likewise imagine the
image reflected from a glass to be in that glass. But the more intelligent, who
know it to be without, call it a Daemon" (a god, a spirit).
"The soul, like to a
dream, flies quick away, which it does not immediately, as soon as it is
separated from the body, but afterward, when it is alone and divided from the
understanding (nous). . . . The soul being moulded and formed by the
understanding (nous), and itself moulding and forming the body, by embracing it
on every side, receives from it an impression and form; so that although it be
separated both from the understanding and the body, it nevertheless so retains
still its figure and resemblance for a long time, that it may, with good right,
be called its image.
"And of these souls the
moon is the element, because souls resolve into her, as the bodies of the
deceased do into earth. Those, indeed, who have been virtuous and honest,
living a quiet and philosophical life, without embroiling themselves in
troublesome affairs, are quickly resolved; because, being left by the nous,
understanding, and no longer using the corporeal passions, they incontinently
vanish away."
We find even Irenaeus, that
untiring and mortal enemy of every Grecian and "heathen" heresy,
explain his belief in the trinity of man. The perfect man, according to his
views, consists of flesh, soul, and spirit. ". . . carne, anima, spiritu,
altero quidem figurante, spiritu, altero quod formatur, carne. Id vero quod
inter haec est duo, est anima, quae aliquando subsequens spiritum elevatur ab
eo, aliquando autem consentiens carni in terrenas concupiscentias"
(Irenaeus v., 1).
And Origen, in his Sixth
Epistle to the Romans, says: "There is a threefold partition of man, the
body or flesh, the lowest part of our nature, on which the old serpent by original
sin inscribed the law of sin, and by which we are tempted to vile things, and
as oft as we are overcome by temptations are joined fast to the Devil; the
spirit, in or by which we express the likeness of the divine nature in which
the very Best Creator, from the archetype of his own mind, engraved with his
finger (that is, his spirit), the eternal law of honesty; by this we are joined
(conglutinated) to God and made one with God. In the third, the soul mediates
between these, which, as in a factious republic, cannot but join with one party
or the other, is solicited this way and that and is at liberty to choose the
side to which it will adhere. If, renouncing the flesh, it betakes itself to
the party of the spirit it will itself become spiritual, but if it cast itself
down to the cupidities of the flesh it will degenerate itself into body."
Plato (in Laws x.) defines
soul as "the motion that is able to move itself." "Soul is the
most ancient of all things, and the commencement
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of motion." "Soul
was generated prior to body, and body is posterior and secondary, as being,
according to nature, ruled over by the ruling soul." "The soul which
administers all things that are moved in every way, administers likewise the
heavens."
"Soul then leads
everything in heaven, and on earth, and in the sea, by its movements -- the
names of which are, to will, to consider, to take care of, to consult, to form
opinions true and false, to be in a state of joy, sorrow, confidence, fear,
hate, love, together with all such primary movements as are allied to these . .
. being a goddess herself, she ever takes as an ally NOUS, a god, and
disciplines all things correctly and happily; but when with Annoia -- not nous
-- it works out everything the contrary."
In this language, as in the
Buddhist texts, the negative is treated as essential existence. Annihilation comes
under a similar exegesis. The positive state, is essential being but no
manifestation as such. When the spirit, in Buddhistic parlance, entered
nirvana, it lost objective existence but retained subjective. To objective
minds this is becoming absolute nothing; to subjective, NO-thing, nothing to be
displayed to sense.
These rather lengthy
quotations are necessary for our purpose. Better than anything else, they show
the agreement between the oldest "Pagan" philosophies -- not
"assisted by the light of divine revelation," to use the curious
expression of Laboulaye in relation to Buddha -- and the early Christianity of
some Fathers. Both Pagan philosophy and Christianity, however, owe their
elevated ideas on the soul and spirit of man and the unknown Deity to Buddhism
and the Hindu Manu. No wonder that the Manicheans maintained that Jesus was a
permutation of Gautama; that Buddha, Christ, and Mani were one and the same
person,* for the teachings of the former two were identical. It was the
doctrine of old India that Jesus held to when preaching the complete
renunciation of the world and its vanities in order to reach the kingdom of
Heaven, Nirvana, where "men neither marry nor are given in marriage, but
live like the angels."
It is the philosophy of
Siddhartha-Buddha again that Pythagoras expounded, when asserting that the ego
([[nous]]) was eternal with God, and that the soul only passed through various
stages (Hindu Rupa-locas) to arrive at the divine excellence; meanwhile the
thumos returned to the earth, and even the phren was eliminated. Thus the
metempsychosis was only a succession of disciplines through refuge-heavens
(called by the Buddhists Zion),** to work off the exterior mind, to rid the
nous of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Neander: "History of
the Church," vol. i., p. 817.
** It is from the highest Zion
that Maitree-Buddha, the Saviour to come, will descend on earth; and it is also
from Zion that comes the Christian Deliverer (see Romans xi. 26).
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OF DHYANA.
phren, or soul, the Buddhist
"Winyanaskandaya," that principle that lives from Karma and the
Skandhas (groups). It is the latter, the metaphysical personations of the
"deeds" of man, whether good or bad, which, after the death of his
body, incarnate themselves, so to say, and form their many invisible but never-dying
compounds into a new body, or rather into an ethereal being, the double of what
man was morally. It is the astral body of the kabalist and the "incarnated
deeds" which form the new sentient self as his Ahancara (the ego,
self-consciousness), given to him by the sovereign Master (the breath of God)
can never perish, for it is immortal per se as a spirit; hence the sufferings
of the newly-born self till he rids himself of every earthly thought, desire,
and passion.
We now see that the "four
mysteries" of the Buddhist doctrine have been as little understood and
appreciated as the "wisdom" hinted at by Paul, and spoken "among
them that are perfect" (initiated), the "mystery-wisdom" which
"none of the Archons of this world knew."* The fourth degree of the
Buddhist Dhyana, the fruit of Samadhi, which leads to the utmost perfection, to
Viconddham, a term correctly rendered by Burnouf in the verb
"perfected,"** is wholly misunderstood by others, as well as in
himself. Defining the condition of Dhyana, St. Hilaire argues thus:
"Finally, having attained
the fourth degree, the ascetic possesses no more this feeling of beatitude,
however obscure it may be . . . he has also lost all memory . . . he has
reached impassibility, as near a neighbor of Nirvana as can be. . . . However,
this absolute impassibility does not hinder the ascetic from acquiring, at this
very moment, omniscience and the magical power; a flagrant contradiction, about
which the Buddhists no more disturb themselves than about so many
others."***
And why should they, when
these contradictions are, in fact, no contradictions at all? It ill behooves us
to speak of contradictions in other peoples' religions, when those of our own
have bred, besides the three great conflicting bodies of Romanism,
Protestantism, and the Eastern Church, a thousand and one most curious smaller
sects. However it may be, we have here a term applied to one and the same thing
by the Buddhist holy "mendicants" and Paul, the Apostle. When the
latter says: "If so be that I might attain the resurrection from among the
dead [the Nirvana], not as though I had already attained, or were already
perfect" (initiated),**** he uses an expression common among the initiated
Buddhists. When a Buddhist ascetic has reached the "fourth degree,"
he is considered a rahat. He produces every kind of phenomena by the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 1 Corinth. ii. 6, 7, 8.
** "Lotus de la Bonne
Loi," p. 806.
*** "Du Bouddhisme,"
95.
**** Philippians iii. 11-14.
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sole power of his freed
spirit. A rahat, say the Buddhists, is one who has acquired the power of flying
in the air, becoming invisible, commanding the elements, and working all manner
of wonders, commonly, and as erroneously, called meipo (miracles). He is a
perfect man, a demi-god. A god he will become when he reaches Nirvana; for, like
the initiates of both Testaments, the worshippers of Buddha know that they
"are gods."
"Genuine Buddhism,
overleaping the barrier between finite and infinite mind, urges its followers
to aspire, by their own efforts, to that divine perfectibility of which it
teaches that man is capable, and by attaining which man becomes a god,"
says Brian Houghton Hodgson.*
Dreary and sad were the ways,
and blood-covered the tortuous paths by which the world of the Christians was
driven to embrace the Irenaean and Eusebian Christianity. And yet, unless we
accept the views of the ancient Pagans, what claim has our generation to having
solved any of the mysteries of the "kingdom of heaven"? What more
does the most pious and learned of Christians know of the future destiny and
progress of our immortal spirits than the heathen philosopher of old, or the
modern "Pagan" beyond the Himalaya? Can he even boast that he knows
as much, although he works in the full blaze of "divine" revelation?
We have seen a Buddhist holding to the religion of his fathers, both in theory
and practice; and, however blind may be his faith, however absurd his notions
on some particular doctrinal points, later engraftings of an ambitious clergy,
yet in practical works his Buddhism is far more Christ-like in deed and spirit
than the average life of our Christian priests and ministers. The fact alone
that his religion commands him to "honor his own faith, but never slander
that of other people,"** is sufficient. It places the Buddhist lama immeasurably
higher than any priest or clergyman who deems it his sacred duty to curse the
"heathen" to his face, and sentence him and his religion to
"eternal damnation." Christianity becomes every day more a religion
of pure emotionalism. The doctrine of Buddha is entirely based on practical
works. A general love of all beings, human and animal, is its nucleus. A man
who knows that unless he toils for himself he has to starve, and understands
that he has no scapegoat to carry the burden of his iniquities for him, is ten times
as likely to become a better man than one who is taught that murder, theft, and
profligacy can be washed in one instant as white as snow, if he but believes in
a God who, to borrow an expression of Volney, "once took food upon earth,
and is now himself the food of his people."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The Mahavansa,"
vol. i., Introduction.
** The Five Articles of Faith.
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CHAPTER VII.
"Of the tenets of the
Druzes, nothing authentic has ever come to light; the popular belief amongst
their neighbors is, that they adore an idol in the form of a calf." -- KING:
The Gnostics and their Remains.
"O ye Lords of Truth
without fault, who are forever cycling for eternity . . . save me from the
annihilation of this Region of the Two Truths." -- Egyptian Ritual of the
Dead.
"Pythagoras correctly
regarded the 'Ineffable Name' of God . . . as the Key to the Mysteries of the
universe." -- PANCOAST: Blue and Red Light.
IN the next two chapters we
shall notice the most important of the Christian secret sects -- the so-called
"Heresies" which sprang into existence between the first and fourth
centuries of our era.
Glancing rapidly at the
Ophites and Nazareans, we shall pass to their scions which yet exist in Syria
and Palestine, under the name of Druzes of Mount Lebanon; and near Basra or Bassorah,
in Persia, under that of Mendaeans, or Disciples of St. John. All these sects
have an immediate connection with our subject, for they are of kabalistic
parentage and have once held to the secret "Wisdom Religion,"
recognizing as the One Supreme, the Mystery-God of the Ineffable Name. Noticing
these numerous secret societies of the past, we will bring them into direct
comparison with several of the modern. We will conclude with a brief survey of
the Jesuits, and of that venerable nightmare of the Roman Catholic Church --
modern Freemasonry. All of these modern as well as ancient fraternities --
present Freemasonry excepted -- were and are more or less connected with magic
-- practically, as well as theoretically; and, every one of them -- Freemasonry
not excepted -- was and still is accused of demonolatry, blasphemy, and
licentiousness.
Our object is not to write the
history of either of them; but only to compare these sorely-abused communities
with the Christian sects, past and present, and then, taking historical facts
for our guidance, to defend the secret science as well as the men who are its
students and champions against any unjust imputation.
One by one the tide of time
engulfed the sects of the early centuries, until of the whole number only one
survived in its primitive integrity. That one still exists, still teaches the
doctrine of its founder, still exemplifies its faith in works of power. The
quicksands which swallowed up
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every other outgrowth of the
religious agitation of the times of Jesus, with its records, relics, and
traditions, proved firm ground for this. Driven from their native land, its
members found refuge in Persia, and to-day the anxious traveller may converse
with the direct descendants of the "Disciples of John," who listened,
on the Jordan's shore, to the "man sent from God," and were baptized
and believed. This curious people, numbering 30,000 or more, are miscalled
"Christians of St. John," but in fact should be known by their old
name of Nazareans, or their new one of Mendaeans.
To term them Christians, is
wholly unwarranted. They neither believe in Jesus as Christ, nor accept his
atonement, nor adhere to his Church, nor revere its "Holy
Scriptures." Neither do they worship the Jehovah-God of the Jews and
Christians, a circumstance which of course proves that their founder, John the
Baptist, did not worship him either. And if not, what right has he to a place
in the Bible, or in the portrait-gallery of Christian saints? Still further, if
Ferho was his God, and he was "a man sent by God," he must have been
sent by Lord Ferho, and in his name baptized and preached? Now, if Jesus was
baptized by John, the inference is that he was baptized according to his own
faith; therefore, Jesus too, was a believer in Ferho, or Faho, as they call
him; a conclusion that seems the more warranted by his silence as to the name
of his "Father." And why should the hypothesis that Faho is but one
of the many corruptions of Fho or Fo, as the Thibetans and Chinese call Buddha,
appear ridiculous? In the North of Nepaul, Buddha is more often called Fo than
Buddha. The Book of Mahawansa shows how early the work of Buddhistic
proselytism began in Nepaul; and history teaches that Buddhist monks crowded
into Syria* and Babylon in the
[[Footnote(s)]]
--------------------------------------------------
* Not only did the Buddhist
missionaries make their way to the Mesopotamian Valley, but they even went so
far west as Ireland. The Rev. Dr. Lundy, in his work on "Monumental
Christianity," referring to an Irish Round Tower, observes: "Henry
O'Brien explains this Round Tower Crucifixion as that of Buddha; the animals as
the elephant and the bull, sacred to Buddha, and into which his soul entered
after death; the two figures standing beside the cross as Buddha's virgin
mother, and Kama his favorite disciple. The whole picture bears a close likeness
to the Crucifixion, in the cemetery of Pope Julius, except the animals, which
are conclusive proof that it cannot be Christian. It came ultimately from the
far East to Ireland, with the Phoenician colonists, who erected the Round
Towers as symbols of the life-giving and preserving power of man and nature,
and how that universal life is produced through suffering and death."
When a Protestant clergyman is
thus forced to confess the pre-Christian existence of the crucifix in Ireland,
its Buddhistic character, and the penetration of the missionaries of that faith
even to that then remote portion of the earth, we need not wonder that in the
minds of the Nazarean contemporaries of Jesus and their descendants, he
[[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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OTHER SECTS.
century preceding our era, and
that Buddhasp (Bodhisatva) the alleged Chaldean, was the founder of Sabism or
baptism.*
What the actual Baptists,
el-Mogtasila, or Nazareans, do believe, is fully set forth in other places, for
they are the very Nazarenes of whom we have spoken so much, and from whose
Codex we have quoted. Persecuted and threatened with annihilation, they took
refuge in the Nestorian body, and so allowed themselves to be arbitrarily
classed as Christians, but as soon as opportunity offered, they separated, and
now, for several centuries have not even nominally deserved the appellation.
That they are, nevertheless, so called by ecclesiastical writers, is perhaps
not very difficult to comprehend. They know too much of early Christianity to
be left outside the pale, to bear witness against it with their traditions, without
the stigma of heresy and backsliding being fastened upon them to weaken
confidence in what they might say.
But where else can science
find so good a field for biblical research as among this too neglected people?
No doubt of their inheritance of the Baptist's doctrine; their traditions are
without a break. What they teach now, their forefathers taught at every epoch
where they appear in history. They are the disciples of that John who is said
to have foretold the advent of Jesus, baptized him, and declared that the
latchet of his shoe he (John) was not worthy to unloose. As they two -- the
Messenger and the Messiah -- stood in the Jordan, and the elder was
consecrating the younger -- his own cousin, too, humanly speaking -- the
heavens opened and God Himself, in the shape of a dove, descended in a glory
upon his "Beloved Son"! How then, if this tale be true, can we
account for the strange infidelity which we find among these surviving
Nazareans? So far from believing Jesus the Only Begotten Son of God, they
actually told the Persian missionaries, who, in the seventeenth century, first
discovered them to Europeans, that the Christ of the New Testament was "a
false teacher," and that the Jewish system, as well as that of Jesus (?),
came from the realm of darkness! Who knows better than they? Where can more
competent living witnesses be found? Christian eccle-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] should not have been associated with that universally known
emblem in the character of a Redeemer.
In noticing this admission of
Dr. Lundy, Mr. Charles Sotheran remarked, in a lecture before the American
Philological Society, that both legends and archaeological remains unite in
proving beyond question "that Ireland, like every other nation, once
listened to the propagandists of Siddhartha-Buddha."
* "The religion of
multiplied baptisms, the scion of the still existent sect named the 'Christians
of St. John,' or Mendaecans, whom the Arabs call el-Mogtasila and Baptists. The
Aramean verb seba, origin of the name Sabian, is a synonym of [[Baptizm]]"
(Renan: "Vie de Jesus").
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siastics would force upon us
an anointed Saviour heralded by John, and the disciples of this very Baptist,
from the earliest centuries, have stigmatized this ideal personage as an impostor,
and his putative Father, Jehovah, "a spurious God," the Ilda-Baoth of
the Ophites! Unlucky for Christianity will be the day when some fearless and
honest scholar shall persuade their elders to let him translate the contents of
their secret books and compile their hoary traditions! It is a strange delusion
that makes some writers think that the Nazareans have no other sacred
literature, no other literary relics than four doctrinal works, and that
curious volume full of astrology and magic which they are bound to peruse at
the sunset hour, on every Sol's day (Sunday).
This search after truth leads
us, indeed, into devious ways. Many are the obstacles that ecclesiastical
cunning has placed in the way of our finding the primal source of religious
ideas. Christianity is on trial, and has been, ever since science felt strong
enough to act as Public Prosecutor. A portion of the case we are drafting in
this book. What of truth is there in this Theology? Through what sects has it
been transmitted? Whence was it primarily derived? To answer, we must trace the
history of the World Religion, alike through the secret Christian sects as
through those of other great religious subdivisions of the race; for the Secret
Doctrine is the Truth, and that religion is nearest divine that has contained
it with least adulteration.
Our search takes us hither and
thither, but never aimlessly do we bring sects widely separated in
chronological order, into critical juxtaposition. There is one purpose in our
work to be kept constantly in view -- the analysis of religious beliefs, and
the definition of their descent from the past to the present. What has most
blocked the way is Roman Catholicism; and not until the secret principles of
this religion are uncovered can we comprehend the iron staff upon which it
leans to steady its now tottering steps.
We will begin with the
Ophites, Nazareans, and the modern Druzes. The personal views of the author, as
they will be presented in the diagrams, will be most decidedly at variance with
the prejudiced speculations of Irenaeus, Theodoret, and Epiphanius (the sainted
renegade, who sold his brethren), inasmuch as they will reflect the ideas of
certain kabalists in close relations with the mysterious Druzes of Mount
Lebanon. The Syrian okhals, or Spiritualists, as they are sometimes termed, are
in possession of a great many ancient manuscripts and gems, bearing upon our
present subject.
The first scheme -- that of
the Ophites -- from the very start, as we have shown, varies from the
description given by the Fathers, inasmuch as it makes Bythos or depth, a
female emanation, and assigns her a place
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AND DRUZES.
answering to that of Pleroma,
only in a far superior region; whereas, the Fathers assure us that the Gnostics
gave the name of Bythos to the First Cause. As in the kabalistic system, it
represents the boundless and infinite void within which is concealed in
darkness the Unknown Primal motor of all. It envelops HIM like a veil: in short
we recognize again the "Shekinah" of the En-Soph. Alone, the name of
[[IAO]], Iao, marks the upper centre, or rather the presumed spot where the
Unknown One may be supposed to dwell. Around the Iao, runs the legend, [[CEMEC
EILAM ABRASAX]]. "The eternal Sun-Abrasax" (the Central Spiritual Sun
of all the kabalists, represented in some diagrams of the latter by the circle
of Tiphereth).
From this region of
unfathomable Depth, issues forth a circle formed of spirals; which, in the
language of symbolism, means a grand cycle, [[kuklos]], composed of smaller
ones. Coiled within, so as to follow the spirals, lies the serpent -- emblem of
wisdom and eternity -- the Dual Androgyne: the cycle representing Ennoia or the
Divine mind, and the Serpent -- the Agathodaimon, Ophis -- the Shadow of the
Light. Both were the Logoi of the Ophites; or the unity as Logos manifesting
itself as a double principle of good and evil; for, according to their views,
these two principles are immutable, and existed from all eternity, as they will
ever continue to exist.
This symbol accounts for the
adoration by this sect of the Serpent, as the Saviour, coiled either around the
Sacramental loaf or a Tau. As a unity, Ennoia and Ophis are the Logos; when
separated, one is the Tree of Life (Spiritual); the other, the Tree of
Knowledge of Good and Evil. Therefore, we find Ophis urging the first human
couple -- the material production of Ilda-Baoth, but which owed its spiritual
principle to Sophia-Achamoth -- to eat of the forbidden fruit, although Ophis
represents Divine Wisdom.
The Serpent, the Tree of
Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Tree of Life, are all symbols transplanted
from the soil of India. The Arasa-Maram, the banyan tree, so sacred with the
Hindus, since Vishnu, during one of his incarnations, reposed under its mighty
shade, and there taught humanity philosophy and sciences, is called the Tree of
Knowledge and the Tree of Life. Under the protective umbrage of this king of
the forests, the Gurus teach their pupils their first lessons on immortality
and initiate them in the mysteries of life and death. The Java-ALEIM of the
Sacerdotal College are said, in the Chaldean tradition, to have taught the sons
of men to become like one of them. To the present day Foh-tchou,* who lives in
his Foh-Maeyu, or temple of Buddha, on the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Foh-Tchou, literally, in
Chinese, meaning Buddha's lord, or the teacher of the doctrines of Buddha --
Foh.
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top of "Kouin-long-sang,"*
the great mountain, produces his greatest religious miracles under a tree
called in Chinese Sung-Ming-Shu, or the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life,
for ignorance is death, and knowledge alone gives immortality. This marvellous
display takes place every three years, when an immense concourse of Chinese
Buddhists assemble in pilgrimage at the holy place.
Ilda-Baoth, the "Son of
Darkness," and the creator of the material world, was made to inhabit the
planet Saturn, which identifies him still more with the Jewish Jehovah, who was
Saturn himself, according to the Ophites, and is by them denied his Sinaitic
name. From Ilda-Baoth emanate six spirits, who respectively dwell with their
father in the seven planets. These are Saba -- or Mars; Adonai -- Sol, or the
Sun;** Ievo -- the Moon; Eloi -- Jupiter; Astaphoi -- Mercury (spirit of
water); and Ouraios -- Venus, spirit of fire.***
In their functions and
description as given, these seven planets are identical with the Hindu
Sapta-Loca, the seven places or spheres, or the superior and inferior worlds;
for they represent the kabalistic seven spheres. With the Ophites, they belong
to the lower spheres. The monograms of these Gnostic planets are also
Buddhistic, the latter differing, albeit slightly, from those of the usual
astrological "houses." In the explanatory notes which accompany the
diagram, the names of Cirenthius (the disciple of Simon Magus), of Menander,
and of certain other Gnostics, whose names are not to be met with in the Patristic
writings, are often mentioned; such as Parcha (Ferho), for instance.****
The author of the diagram
claims, moreover, for his sect, the greatest antiquity, bringing forward, as a
proof, that their "forefathers" were the builders of all the
"Dracontia" temples, even of those beyond "the great
waters." He asserts that the "Just One," who was the mouth-piece
of the Eternal AEon (Christos), himself sent his disciples into the world,
placing them under the double protection of Sige (Silence, the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* This mountain is situated
south-west of China, almost between China and Thibet.
** SOL, being situated, on the
diagram, exactly in the centre of the solar system (of which the Ophites appear
to have been cognizant) -- hence, under the direct vertical ray of the Higher
Spiritual Sun -- showers his brightness on all other planets.
*** Speaking of Venus,
Placidus, the astrologer, always maintained that "her bluish lustre
denotes heat." As to Mercury, it was a strange fancy of the Ophites to
represent him as a spirit of water, when astrologically considered he is as
"a cold, dry, earthy, and melancholy star."
**** The name which Norberg
translates, in his Onomasticon to the "Codex Nazaraeus," as Ferho,
stands, in the original, Parcha Rabba. In the "Life of Manes," given
by Epiphanius, in his "Haer.," lxvi., is mentioned a certain priest
of Mithras, a friend of the great Haeresiarch Manes, named Parchus.
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COMPARED.
Logos), and Ophis, the
Agathodaemon. The author alludes no doubt, to the favorite expression of Jesus,
"be wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." On the diagram, Ophis
is represented as the Egyptian Cnuphis or Kneph, called Dracontiae. He appears
as a serpent standing erect on its tail, with a lion's head, crowned and
radiated, and bearing on the point of each ray one of the seven Greek vowels --
symbol of the seven celestial spheres. This figure is quite familiar to those
who are acquainted with the Gnostic gems,* and is borrowed from the Egyptian
Hermetic books. The description given in the Revelation, of one "like unto
the Son of Man," with his seven stars, and who is the Logos, is another
form of Ophis.
The Nazarene diagram, except
in a change of names, is identical with that of the Gnostics, who evidently
borrowed their ideas from it, adding a few appellations from the Basilidean and
Valentinian systems. To avoid repetition, we will now simply present the two in
parallel.
Thus, we find that, in the
Nazarene Cosmogony, the names of their powers and genii stand in the following
relations to those of the Gnostics:
[[Column 1]]
NAZARENE.
First Trinity.
Lord FERHO -- the Life which
is no Life -- the Supreme God. The Cause which produces the Light, or the Logos
in abscondito. The water of Jordanus Maximus -- the water of Life, or Ajar, the
feminine principle. Unity in a Trinity, enclosed within the ISH AMON.
Second Trinity.
(The manifestation of the
first.)
1. Lord MANO -- the King of
Life and Light -- Rex Lucis. First LIFE, or the primitive man.
2. Lord Jordan --
manifestation or emanation of Jordan Maximus -- the waters of grace. Second
LIFE.
3. The Superior Father --
Abatur. Third LIFE.
This Trinity produces also a
duad -- Lord Ledhoio, and Fetahil, the genius (the former, a perfect emanation,
the latter, imperfect). [[Column continued on next page]]
-------------
[[Column 2]]
GNOSTIC-OPHITE.
First Unity in a Trinity.
IAO -- the Ineffable Name of
the Unknown Deity -- Abraxas, and the "Eternal Spiritual Sun." Unity
enclosed within the Depth, Bythos, feminine principle -- the boundless circle,
within which lie all ideal forms. From this Unity emanates the
Second Trinity.
(Idem.)
1. Ennoia -- mind.
2. Ophis, the Agathodaemon.
3. Sophia Androgyne -- wisdom;
who, in her turn -- fecundated with the Divine Light -- produces
Christos and Sophia-Achamoth
(one perfect, the other imperfect), as an emanation.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Its description is found in
one of the magic books of the Egyptian King Nechepsos, and its use prescribed
on green jasper stones, as a potent amulet. Galen mentions it in his work,
"De Simp. Med.," c. ix.
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[[Column 1 continued]]
Lord Jordan -- "the Lord
of all Jordans," manifests NETUBTO (Faith without Works).*
------------
[[Column 2 continued]]
Sophia-Achamoth emanates
Ilda-Baoth -- the Demiurge, who produces material and soulless creation.
"Works without Faith" (or grace).*
Moreover, the Ophite seven
planetary genii, who emanated one from the other, are found again in the
Nazarene religion, under the name of the "seven impostor-daemons," or
stellars, who "will deceive all the sons of Adam." These are Sol;
Spiritus Venereus (Holy Spirit, in her material aspect),** the mother of the
"seven badly-disposed stellars," answering to the Gnostic Achamoth;
Nebu, or Mercury, "a false Messiah, who will deprave the ancient worship
of God";*** SIN (or Luna, or Shuril); KIUN (Kivan, or Saturn);
Bel-Jupiter; and the seventh, Nerig, Mars (Codex Nazaraeus, p. 57).
The Christos of the Gnostics
is the chief of the seven AEons, St. John's seven spirits of God; the Nazarenes
have also their seven genii or good Eons, whose chief is Rex Lucis, MANO, their
Christos. The Sapta Rishis, the seven sages of India, inhabit the Sapta-Poura,
or the seven celestial cities.
What less or more do we find
in the Universal Ecclesia, until the days of the Reformation, and in the Roman
Popish Church after the separation? We have compared the relative value of the
Hindu Cosmogony; the Chaldeo, Zoroastrian, Jewish Kabala; and that of the
so-termed Haeretics. A correct diagram of the Judaico-CHRISTIAN religion, to
enforce which on the heathen who have furnished it, are expended such great
sums every year, would still better prove the identity of the two; but we lack
space and are also spared the necessity of proving what is already thoroughly
demonstrated.
In the Ophite gems of King
(Gnostics), we find the name of Iao repeated, and often confounded with that of
Ievo, while the latter simply represents one of the genii antagonistic to
Abraxas. In order that these names may not be taken as identical with the name
of the Jewish Jehovah we will at once explain this word. It seems to us
surpassingly strange that so many learned archaeologists should have so little
insisted that there was more than one Jehovah, and disclaimed that the name
origin-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Consider those two
diametrically-opposed doctrines -- the Catholic and the Protestant; the one
preached by Paul, the semi-Platonist, and the other by James, the orthodox
Talmudist.
** The material, bad side of
Sophia-Achamoth, who emanates from herself Ilda-Baoth and his six sons.
*** See Norberg's translation
of "Codex Nazaraeus," Preface. This proves once more the
identification of Jesus with Gautama-Buddha, in the minds of the Nazarene
Gnostics, as Nebu or Mercury is the planet sacred to the Buddhas.
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SOLOMON MOSAIC JEWS.
ated with Moses. Iao is
certainly a title of the Supreme Being, and belongs partially to the Ineffable
Name; but it neither originated with nor was it the sole property of the Jews.
Even if it had pleased Moses to bestow the name upon the tutelar
"Spirit," the alleged protector and national deity of the
"Chosen people of Israel," there is yet no possible reason why other
nationalities should receive Him as the Highest and One-living God. But we deny
the assumption altogether. Besides, there is the fact that Yaho or Iao was a
"mystery name" from the beginning, [[Heb char]] and [[Heb char]]
never came into use before King David. Anterior to his time, few or no proper
names were compounded with iah or jah. It looks rather as though David, being a
sojourner among the Tyrians and Philistines (2 Samuel), brought thence the name
of Jehovah. He made Zadok high-priest, from whom came the Zadokites or
Sadducees. He lived and ruled first at Hebron [[heb char]], Habir-on or
Kabeir-town, where the rites of the four (mystery-gods) were celebrated.
Neither David nor Solomon recognized either Moses or the law of Moses. They
aspired to build a temple to [[Heb char]], like the structures erected by Hiram
to Hercules and Venus, Adon and Astarte.
Says Furst: "The very
ancient name of God, Yaho, written in the Greek [[Iao]], appears, apart from
its derivation, to have been an old mystic name of the Supreme deity of the
Shemites. (Hence it was told to Moses when initiated at HOR-EB -- the cave,
under the direction of Jethro, the Kenite or Cainite priest of Midian.) In an
old religion of the Chaldeans, whose remains are to be found amongst the
Neo-platonists, the highest divinity enthroned above the seven heavens,
representing the Spiritual Light-Principle (nous)* and also conceived as
Derniurgus,** was called [[Iao]] [[heb char]], who was, like the Hebrew Yaho,
mysterious and unmentionable, and whose name was communicated to the initiated.
The Phoenicians had a Supreme God whose name was trilateral and secret, and he
was [[Iao]]."***
But while Furst insists that
the name has a Semitic origin, there are other scholars who trace it farther
than he does, and look back beyond the classification of the Caucasians.
In Sanscrit we have Jah and
Jaya, or Jaa and Ja-ga, and this throws light on the origin of the famous
festival of the car of Jaga-nath, commonly called Jaggernath. Javhe means
"he who is," and Dr. Spiegel traces even the Persian name of God,
"Ahura," to the root ah,**** which
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Nous, the designation given
by Anaxagoras to the Supreme Deity, was taken from Egypt, where he was styled
NOUT.
** By very few though, for the
creators of the material universe were always considered as subordinate deities
to the Most High God.
*** Lydus, 1. c., Ledrenus, 1.
c.
**** "Eran das Land zwischen
dem Indus und Tigris."
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in Sanscrit is pronounced as,
to breathe, and asu, became, therefore, in time, synonymous with
"Spirit."* Rawlinson strongly supports the opinion of an Aryan or
Vedic influence on the early Babylonian mythology. We have given, a few pages
back, the strongest possible proofs of the identity of Vishnu with Dag-on. The
same may be adduced for the title of [[Iao]], and its Sanscrit root traced in
every country. JU or Jovis is the oldest Latin name for God. "As male he
is Ju-piter, or Ju, the father, pitar being Sanscrit for father; as feminine,
Ju-no or Ju, the comforter -- [[Heb char]] being the Phoenician word for rest
and comfort."** Professor Max Muller shows that although
"Dyaus," sky, does not occur as a masculine in the ordinary Sanscrit,
yet it does occur in the Veda, "and thus bears witness to the early Aryan
worship of Dyaus, the Greek Zeus" (The Veda).
To grasp the real and
primitive sense of the term [[IAO]], and the reason of its becoming the
designation for the most mysterious of all deities, we must search for its
origin in the figurative phraseology of all the primitive people. We must first
of all go to the most ancient sources for our information. In one of the Books
of Hermes, for instance, we find him saying that the number TEN is the mother
of the soul, and that the life and light are therein united. For "the
number 1 (one) is born from the spirit, and the number 10 (ten) from
matter";*** "the unity has made the TEN, the TEN the unity."****
The kabalistic gematria -- one
of the methods for extracting the hidden meaning from letters, words, and sentences
-- is arithmetical. It consists in applying to the letters of a word the sense
they bear as numbers, in outward shape as well as in their individual sense.
Moreover, by the Themura (another method used by the kabalists) any word could
be made to yield its mystery out of its anagram. Thus, we find the author of
Sepher Jezira saying, one or two centuries before our era:***** "ONE, the
spirit of the Alahim of Lives."****** So again, in the oldest kabalistic
diagrams, the ten Sephiroth are represented as wheels or circles, and Adam
Kadmon, the primitive man, as an upright pillar. "Wheels and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Asi means, moreover,
"Thou art," in Sanscrit, and also "sword," "Asi,"
without the accent on the first vowel.
** Professor A. Wilder.
*** These sacred anagrams were
called "Zeruph."
**** "Book of Numbers, or
Book of the Keys."
***** The "Jezira,"
or book of the creation, was written by Rabbi Akiba, who was the teacher and
instructor of Simeon Ben Iochai, who was called the prince of the kabalists,
and wrote the "Sohar." Franck asserts that "Jezira" was
written one century B.C. ("Die Kabbala," 65), but other and as
competent judges make it far older. At all events, it is now proved that Simeon
Ben Iochai lived before the second destruction of the temple.
****** "Jezira," p.
8.
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NAME.
seraphim and the holy
creatures" (chioth), says Rabbi Akiba.* In another system of the same
branch of the symbolical Kabala, called Athbach -- which arranges the letters
of the alphabet by pairs in three rows -- all the couples in the first row bear
the numerical value ten; and in the system of Simeon Ben-Shetah,** the
uppermost couple -- the most sacred of all, is preceded by the Pythagorean
cipher, one and a nought, or zero -- 10.
If we can once appreciate the
fact that, among all the peoples of the highest antiquity, the most natural
conception of the First Cause manifesting itself in its creatures, and that to
this they could not but ascribe the creation of all, was that of an androgyne
deity; that the male principle was considered the vivifying invisible spirit,
and the female, mother nature; we shall be enabled to understand how that
mysterious cause came at first to be represented (in the picture-writings,
perhaps) as the combination of the Alpha and Omega of numbers, a decimal, then
as IAO, a trilateral name, containing in itself a deep allegory.
IAO, in such a case, would --
etymologically considered -- mean the "Breath of Life," generated or
springing forth between an upright male and an egg-shaped female principle of nature;
for, in Sanscrit, as means "to be," "to live or exist"; and
originally it meant "to breathe." "From it," says Max
Muller, "in its original sense of breathing, the Hindus formed 'asu,'
breath, and 'asura,' the name of God, whether it meant the breathing one or the
giver of breath."*** It certainly meant the latter. In Hebrew,
"Ah" and "Iah" mean life. Cornelius Agrippa, in his
treatise on the Preeminence of Woman, shows that "the word Eve suggests
comparison with the mystic symbols of the kabalists, the name of the woman
having affinity with the ineffable Tetragrammaton, the most sacred name of the
divinity." Ancient names were always consonant with the things they
represented. In relation to the mysterious name of the Deity in question, the
hitherto inexplicable hint of the kabalists as to the efficacy of the letter H,
"which Abram took away from his wife Sarah" and "put into the
middle of his own name," becomes clear.
It may perhaps be argued, by
way of objection, that it is not ascertained as yet at what period of antiquity
the nought occurs for the first time in Indian manuscripts or inscriptions. Be
that as it may, the case presents circumstantial evidence of too strong a
character not to carry a conviction of probability with it. According to Max Muller
"the two words 'cipher' and 'zero,' which are in reality but one . . . are
sufficient
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ibid. See the constancy with
which Ezekiel sticks in his vision to the "wheels" of the "living
creatures" (ch. 1., passim).
** He was an Alexandrian
Neo-platonic under the first of the Ptolemies.
*** "Chips," vol. i.
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to prove that our figures are
borrowed from the Arabs."* Cipher is the Arabic "cifron," and
means empty, a translation of the Sanscrit name of the nought
"synya," he says. The Arabs had their figures from Hindustan, and
never claimed the discovery for themselves.** As to the Pythagoreans, we need
but turn to the ancient manuscripts of Boethius's Geometry, composed in the
sixth century, to find in the Pythagorean numerals*** the 1 and the nought, as
the first and final cipher. And Porphyry, who quotes from the Pythagorean
Moderatus,**** says that the numerals of Pythagoras were "hieroglyphical
symbols, by means whereof he explained ideas concerning the nature of
things."
Now, if the most ancient
Indian manuscripts show as yet no trace of decimal notation in them, Max Muller
states very clearly that until now he has found but nine letters (the initials
of the Sanscrit numerals) in them -- on the other hand we have records as
ancient to supply the wanted proof. We speak of the sculptures and the sacred
imagery in the most ancient temples of the far East. Pythagoras derived his
knowledge from India; and we find Professor Max Muller corroborating this
statement, at least so far as allowing the Neo-Pythagoreans to have been the
first teachers of "ciphering" among the Greeks and Romans; that
"they, at Alexandria, or in Syria, became acquainted with the Indian
figures, and adapted them to the Pythagorean abacus" (our figures). This
cautious allowance implies that Pythagoras himself was acquainted with but nine
figures. So that we might reasonably answer that although we possess no certain
proof that the decimal notation was known to Pythagoras, who lived on the very
close of the archaic ages,***** we yet have sufficient evidence to show that
the full numbers, as given by Boethius, were known to the Pythagoreans, even
before Alexandria was built.****** This evidence we find in Aristotle, who says
that "some philosophers hold that ideas and numbers are of the same
nature, and amount to TEN in all."******* This, we believe, will be
sufficient to show that the decimal notation was known among them at least as
early as four centuries B.C., for Aristotle does not seem to treat the question
as an innovation of the "Neo-Pythagoreans."
Besides, as we have remarked
above, the representations of the archaic deities, on the walls of the temples,
are of themselves quite suggestive enough. So, for instance, Vishnu is
represented in the Kurmavatara (his second avatar) as a tortoise sustaining a circular
pillar, on which the semblance of himself (Maya, or the illusion) sits with all
his attributes.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Max Muller's "Our
Figures."
** Ibid.
*** See King's "Gnostics
and their Remains," plate xiii.
**** "Vita
Pythagor."
***** 608 B. C.
****** This city was built 332
B. C.
******* "Metaph.,"
vii. F.
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OF THE HEBREWS.
While one hand holds a flower,
another a club, the third a shell, the fourth, generally the upper one, or at
the right -- holds on his forefinger, extended as the cipher 1, the chakra, or
discus, which resembles a ring, or a wheel, and might be taken for the nought.
In his first avatar, the Matsyavatam, when emerging from the fish's mouth, he
is represented in the same position.* The ten-armed Durga of Bengal; the ten-headed
Ravana, the giant; Parvati -- as Durga, Indra, and Indrani, are found with this
attribute, which is a perfect representation of the May-pole.**
The holiest of the temples
among the Hindus, are those of Jaggarnath. This deity is worshipped equally by
all the sects of India, and Jaggarnath is named "The Lord of the
World." He is the god of the Mysteries, and his temples, which are most
numerous in Bengal, are all of a pyramidal form.
There is no other deity which
affords such a variety of etymologies as Iaho, nor a name which can be so
variously pronounced. It is only by associating it with the Masoretic points
that the later Rabbins succeeded in making Jehovah read "Adonai" --
or Lord. Philo Byblus spells it in Greek letters [[IEUO]] -- IEVO. Theodoret says
that the Samaritans pronounced it Iabe (Yahva) and the Jews Yaho; which would
make it as we have shown I-ah-O. Diodorus states that "among the Jews they
relate that Moses called the God [[Iao]]." It is on the authority of the
Bible itself, therefore, that we maintain that before his initiation by Jethro,
his father-in-law, Moses had never known the word Iaho. The future Deity of the
sons of Israel calls out from the burning bush and gives His name as "I am
that I am," and specifies carefully that He is the "Lord God of the
Hebrews" (Exod. iii. 18), not of the other nations. Judging him by his own
acts, throughout the Jewish records, we doubt whether Christ himself, had he
appeared in the days of the Exodus, would have been welcomed by the irascible
Sinaitic Deity. However, "The Lord God," who becomes, on His own
confession, Jehovah only in the 6th chapter of Exodus (verse 3) finds his
veracity put to a startling test in Genesis xxii. 14, in which revealed passage
Abraham builds an altar to Jehovah-jireh.
It would seem, therefore, but
natural to make a difference between the mystery-God [[Iao]], adopted from the
highest antiquity by all who participated in the esoteric knowledge of the
priests, and his phonetic counterparts, whom we find treated with so little
reverence by the Ophites and other Gnostics. Once having burdened themselves
like the Azazel of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See drawings from the Temple
of Rama, Coleman's "Mythology of the Hindus." New York: J. W. Bouton,
Publisher.
** See Hargrave Jennings:
"Rosicrucians," p. 252.
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wilderness with the sins and
iniquities of the Jewish nation, it now appears hard for the Christians to have
to confess that those whom they thought fit to consider the "chosen
people" of God -- their sole predecessors in monotheism -- were, till a very
late period, as idolatrous and polytheistic as their neighbors. The shrewd
Talmudists have escaped the accusation for long centuries by screening
themselves behind the Masoretic invention. But, as in everything else, truth
was at last brought to light. We know now that Ihoh [[Heb char]] must be read
Iahoh and Iah, not Jehovah. Iah of the Hebrews is plainly the Iacchos (Bacchus)
of the Mysteries; the God "from whom the liberation of souls was expected
-- Dionysus, Iacchos, Iahoh, Iah."* Aristotle then was right when he said:
"Joh [[Heb char]] was Oromasdes and Ahriman Pluto, for the God of heaven,
Ahura-mazda, rides on a chariot which the Horse of the Sun follows."** And
Dunlap quotes Psalm lxviii. 4, which reads:
"Praise him by his name
Iach ([[Heb char]]),
Who rides upon the heavens, as
on a horse,"
and then shows that "the
Arabs represented Iauk (Iach) by a horse. The Horse of the Sun
(Dionysus)."*** Iah is a softening of Iach, "he explains." [[Heb
char]] ch and [[Heb char]] h interchange; so s softens to h. The Hebrews
express the idea of LIFE both by a ch and an h; as chiach, to be, hiah, to be;
Iach, God of Life, Iah, "I am."**** Well then may we repeat these
lines of Ausonius:
"Ogugia calls me Bacchus;
Egypt thinks me Osiris;
The Musians name me Ph'anax;
the Indi consider me Dionysus;
The Roman Mysteries call me
Liber; the Arabian race Adonis!"
And the chosen people Adoni
and Jehovah -- we may add.
How little the philosophy of
the old secret doctrine was understood, is illustrated in the atrocious persecutions
of the Templars by the Church, and in the accusation of their worshipping the
Devil under the shape of the goat -- Baphomet! Without going into the old
Masonic mysteries, there is not a Mason -- of those we mean who do know
something -- but has an idea of the true relation that Baphomet bore to Azaze,
the scapegoat of the wilderness,***** whose character and meaning are entirely
per-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* K. O. Muller: "History
of Greek Literature," p. 283; "Movers," pp. 547-553; Dunlap:
"Sod, the Mysteries of Adoni," p. 21.
** See "Universal
History," vol. v., p. 301.
*** "Spirit. Hist.,"
pp. 64, 67, 78.
**** "Sod, the Mysteries
of Adoni," p. 21.
***** See Leviticus xvi. 8,
10, and other verses relating to the biblical goat in the original texts.
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verted in the Christian
translations. "This terrible and venerable name of God," says Lanci,*
librarian to the Vatican, "through the pen of biblical glossers, has been
a devil, a mountain, a wilderness, and a he-goat." In Mackenzie's Royal
Masonic Cyclopaedia, the author very correctly remarks that "this word
should be divided into Azaz and El," for "it signifies God of
Victory, but is here used in the sense of author of Death, in contrast to
Jehovah, the author of Life; the latter received a dead goat as an offering."**
The Hindu Trinity is composed of three personages, which are convertible into
one. The Trimurti is one, and in its abstraction indivisible, and yet we see a
metaphysical division taking place from the first, and while Brahma, though
collectively representing the three, remains behind the scenes, Vishnu is the
Life-Giver, the Creator, and the Preserver, and Siva is the Destroyer, and the
Death-giving deity. "Death to the Life-Giver, life to the Death-dealer.
The symbolical antithesis is grand and beautiful," says Gliddon.***
"Deus est Daemon inversus" of the kabalists now becomes clear. It is
but the intense and cruel desire to crush out the last vestige of the old
philosophies by perverting their meaning, for fear that their own dogmas should
not be rightly fathered on them, which impels the Catholic Church to carry on
such a systematic persecution in regard to Gnostics, Kabalists, and even the
comparatively innocent Masons.
Alas, alas! How little has the
divine seed, scattered broadcast by the hand of the meek Judean philosopher,
thrived or brought forth fruit.
He, who himself had shunned
hypocrisy, warned against public prayer, showing such contempt for any useless
exhibition of the same, could he but cast his sorrowful glance on the earth,
from the regions of eternal bliss, would see that this seed fell neither on
sterile rock nor by the way-side. Nay, it took deep root in the most prolific
soil; one enriched even to plethora with lies and human gore!
"For, if the truth of God
hath more abounded, through my lie unto his glory; why yet am I also judged as
a sinner?" naively inquires Paul, the best and sincerest of all the
apostles. And he then adds: "Let us do evil, that good may come!"
(Romans iii. 7, 8). This is a confession which we are asked to believe as having
been a direct inspiration from God! It explains, if it does not excuse, the
maxim adopted later by the Church that "it is an act of virtue to deceive
and lie, when by such means the interests of the Church might be
promoted."**** A maxim
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Sagra Scrittura,"
and "Paralipomeni."
** Article "Goat,"
p. 257.
*** "Types of
Mankind," p. 600; "Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia."
**** "Ecclesiastical
History," vol. i., pp. 381, 382. Read the whole quotations to appreciate
the doctrine in full.
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applied in its fullest sense
by that accomplished professor in forgery, the Armenian Eusebius; or yet, that
innocent-looking bible-kaleidoscopist -- Irenaeus. And these men were followed
by a whole army of pious assassins, who, in the meanwhile, had improved upon
the system of deceit, by proclaiming that it was lawful even to kill, when by
murder they could enforce the new religion. Theophilus, "that perpetual
enemy of peace and virtue," as the famous bishop was called; Cyril,
Athanasius, the murderer of Arius, and a host of other canonized
"Saints," were all but too worthy successors of Saint Constantine,
who drowned his wife in boiling water; butchered his little nephew; murdered,
with his own pious hand, two of his brothers-in-law; killed his own son Crispus,
bled to death several men and women, and smothered in a well an old monk.
However, we are told by Eusebius that this Christian Emperor was rewarded by a
vision of Christ himself, bearing his cross, who instructed him to march to
other triumphs, inasmuch as he would always protect him!
It is under the shade of the
Imperial standard, with its famous sign, "In hoc signo vinces," that
"visionary" Christianity, which had crept on since the days of
Irenaenus, arrogantly proclaimed its rights in the full blaze of the sun. The
Labarum had most probably furnished the model for the true cross, which was
"miraculously," and agreeably to the Imperial will, found a few years
later. Nothing short of such a remarkable vision, impiously doubted by some severe
critics -- Dr. Lardner for one -- and a fresh miracle to match, could have
resulted in the finding of a cross where there had never before been one.
Still, we have either to believe the phenomenon or dispute it at the risk of
being treated as infidels; and this, notwithstanding that upon a careful
computation we would find that the fragments of the "true Cross" had
multiplied themselves even more miraculously than the five loaves in the
invisible bakery, and the two fishes. In all cases like this, where miracles can
be so conveniently called in, there is no room for dull fact. History must step
out that fiction may step in.
If the alleged founder of the
Christian religion is now, after the lapse of nineteen centuries, preached --
more or less unsuccessfully however -- in every corner of the globe, we are at
liberty to think that the doctrines attributed to him would astonish and dismay
him more than any one else. A system of deliberate falsification was adopted
from the first. How determined Irenaeus was to crush truth and build up a
Church of his own on the mangled remains of the seven primitive churches
mentioned in the Revelation, may be inferred from his quarrel with Ptolemaeus.
And this is again a case of evidence against which no blind faith can prevail.
Ecclesiastical history assures us that Christ's
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GOD?
ministry was but of three years'
duration. There is a decided discrepancy on this point between the first three
synoptics and the fourth gospel; but it was left for Irenaeus to show to
Christian posterity that so early as A.D. 180 -- the probable time when this
Father wrote his works against heresies -- even such pillars of the Church as
himself either knew nothing certain about it, or deliberately lied and
falsified dates to support their own views. So anxious was the worthy Father to
meet every possible objection against his plans, that no falsehood, no
sophistry, was too much for him. How are we to understand the following; and
who is the falsifier in this case? The argument of Ptolemaeus was that Jesus
was too young to have taught anything of much importance; adding that "Christ
preached for one year only, and then suffered in the twelfth month." In
this Ptolemaeus was very little at variance with the gospels. But Irenaeus,
carried by his object far beyond the limits of prudence, from a mere
discrepancy between one and three years, makes it ten and even twenty years!
"Destroying his (Christ's) whole work, and robbing him of that age which
is both necessary and more honorable than any other; that more advanced age, I
mean, during which also, as a teacher, he excelled all others." And then,
having no certain data to furnish, he throws himself back on tradition, and
claims that Christ had preached for over TEN years! (book ii., c. 22, pp. 4,
5). In another place he makes Jesus fifty years old.
But we must proceed in our
work of showing the various origins of Christianity, as also the sources from
which Jesus derived his own ideas of God and humanity.
The Koinobi lived in Egypt,
where Jesus passed his early youth. They were usually confounded with the
Therapeutae, who were a branch of this widely-spread society. Such is the
opinion of Godfrey Higgins and De Rebold. After the downfall of the principal
sanctuaries, which had already begun in the days of Plato, the many different
sects, such as the Gymnosophists and the Magi -- from whom Clearchus very
erroneously derives the former -- the Pythagoreans, the Sufis, and the Reshees
of Kashmere, instituted a kind of international and universal Freemasonry,
among their esoteric societies. "These Rashees," says Higgins,
"are the Essenians, Carmelites, or Nazarites of the temple."*
"That occult science known by ancient priests under the name of
regenerating fire," says Father Rebold, " . . . a science that for
more than 3,000 years was the peculiar possession of the Indian and Egyptian
priesthood, into the knowledge of which Moses was initiated at Heliopolis,
where he was educated; and Jesus among the Essenian priests of Egypt or Judea;
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Anacalypsis."
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and by which these two great
reformers, particularly the latter, wrought many of the miracles mentioned in
the Scriptures."*
Plato states that the mystic
Magian religion, known under the name of Machagistia, is the most uncorrupted
form of worship in things divine. Later, the Mysteries of the Chaldean
sanctuaries were added to it by one of the Zoroasters and Darius Hystaspes. The
latter completed and perfected it still more with the help of the knowledge
obtained by him from the learned ascetics of India, whose rites were identical
with those of the initiated Magi.** Ammian, in his history of Julian's Persian
expedition, gives the story by stating that one day Hystaspes, as he was boldly
penetrating into the unknown regions of Upper India, had come upon a certain
wooded solitude, the tranquil recesses of which were "occupied by those
exalted sages, the Brachmanes (or Shamans). Instructed by their teaching in the
science of the motions of the world and of the heavenly bodies, and in pure
religious rites . . . he transfused them into the creed of the Magi. The
latter, coupling these doctrines with their own peculiar science of foretelling
the future, have handed down the whole through their descendants to succeeding
ages."*** It is from these descendants that the Sufis, chiefly composed of
Persians and Syrians, acquired their proficient knowledge in astrology, medicine,
and the esoteric doctrine of the ages. "The Sufi doctrine," says C.
W. King, "involved the grand idea of one universal creed which could be
secretly held under any profession of an outward faith; and, in fact, took
virtually the same view of religious systems as that in which the ancient
philosophers had regarded such matters."**** The mysterious Druzes of
Mount Lebanon are the descendants of all these. Solitary Copts, earnest
students scattered hither and thither throughout the sandy solitudes of Egypt,
Arabia, Petraea, Palestine, and the impenetrable forests of Abyssinia, though
rarely met with, may sometimes be seen. Many and various are the nationalities
to which belong the disciples of that mysterious school, and many the
side-shoots of that
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Quoted in the "Seers of
the Ages," by J. M. Peebles.
** We hold to the idea --
which becomes self-evident when the Zoroastrian imbroglio is considered -- that
there were, even in the days of Darius, two distinct sacerdotal castes of Magi:
the initiated and those who were allowed to officiate in the popular rites
only. We see the same in the Eleusinian Mysteries. Belonging to every temple
there were attached the "hierophants" of the inner sanctuary, and the
secular clergy who were not even instructed in the Mysteries. It is against the
absurdities and superstitions of the latter that Darius revolted, and
"crushed them," for the inscription of his tomb shows that he was a
"hierophant" and a Magian himself. It is also but the exoteric rites
of this class of Magi which descended to posterity, for the great secresy in
which were preserved the "Mysteries" of the true Chaldean Magi was
never violated, however much guess-work may have been expended on them.
*** xxiii., 6.
**** "The Gnostics and
their Remains," p. 185.
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EGYPT.
one primitive stock. The
secresy preserved by these sub-lodges, as well as by the one and supreme great
lodge, has ever been proportionate to the activity of religious persecutions;
and now, in the face of the growing materialism, their very existence is
becoming a mystery.*
But it must not be inferred,
on that account, that such a mysterious brotherhood is but a fiction, not even
a name, though it remains unknown to this day. Whether its affiliates are
called by an Egyptian, Hindu, or Persian name, it matters not. Persons
belonging to one of these sub-brotherhoods have been met by trustworthy, and
not unknown persons, besides the present writer, who states a few facts
concerning them, by the special permission of one who has a right to give it.
In a recent and very valuable work on secret societies, K. R. H. Mackenzie's
Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia, we find the learned author himself, an honorary
member of the Canongate Kilwinning Lodge, No. 2 (Scotland), and a Mason not likely
to be imposed upon, stating the following, under the head, Hermetic Brothers of
Egypt:
"An occult fraternity,
which has endured from very ancient times, having a hierarchy of officers,
secret signs, and passwords, and a peculiar method of instruction in science,
religion, and philosophy. . . . If we may believe those who, at the present
time, profess to belong to it, the philosopher's stone, the elixir of life, the
art of invisibility, and the power of communication directly with the
ultramundane life, are parts of the inheritance they possess. The writer has
met with only three persons who maintained the actual existence of this body of
religious philosophers, and who hinted that they themselves were actually
members. There was no reason to doubt the good faith of these individuals --
apparently unknown to each other, and men of moderate competence, blameless
lives, austere manners, and almost ascetic in their habits.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* These are truths which
cannot fail to impress themselves upon the minds of earnest thinkers. While the
Ebionites, Nazarites, Hemerobaptists, Lampseans, Sabians, and the many other
earliest sects which wavered later between the varying dogmatisms suggested to
them by the esoteric and misunderstood parables of the Nazarene teacher, whom
they justly regarded as a prophet, there were men, for whose names we would
vainly search history, who preserved the secret doctrines of Jesus as pure and
unadulterated as they had been received. And still, even all these
above-mentioned and conflicting sects were far more orthodox in their
Christianity, or rather Christism, than the Churches of Constantine and Rome.
"It was a strange fate that befell these unfortunate people" (the Ebionites),
says Lord Amberley, "when, overwhelmed by the flood of heathenism that had
swept into the Church, they were condemned as heretics. Yet, there is no
evidence that they had ever swerved from the doctrines of Jesus, or of the
disciples who knew him in his lifetime. . . . Jesus himself was circumcised . .
. reverenced the temple at Jerusalem as 'a house of prayer for all nations.' .
. . But the torrent of progress swept past the Ebionites, and left them
stranded on the shore" ("An Analysis of Religious Beliefs," by
Viscount Amberley, vol. i., p. 446).
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They all appeared to be men of
forty to forty-five years of age, and evidently of vast erudition . . . their
knowledge of languages not to be doubted. . . . They never remained long in any
one country, but passed away without creating notice."*
Another of such
sub-brotherhoods is the sect of the Pitris, in India. Known by name, now that
Jacolliot has brought it into public notice, it yet is more arcane, perhaps,
than the brotherhood that Mr. Mackenzie names the "Hermetic
Brothers." What Jacolliot learned of it, was from fragmentary manuscripts
delivered to him by Brahmans, who had their reasons for doing so, we must
believe. The Agrouchada Parikshai gives certain details about the association,
as it was in days of old, and, when explaining mystic rites and magical
incantations, explains nothing at all, so that the mystic L'om, L'Rhum,
Sh'hrum, and Sho-rim Ramaya-Namaha, remain, for the mystified writer, as much a
puzzle as ever. To do him justice, though, he fully admits the fact, and does
not enter upon useless speculations.
Whoever desires to assure
himself that there now exists a religion which has baffled, for centuries, the
impudent inquisitiveness of missionaries, and the persevering inquiry of
science, let him violate, if he can, the seclusion of the Syrian Druzes. He
will find them numbering over 80,000 warriors, scattered from the plain east of
Damascus to the western coast. They covet no proselytes, shun notoriety, keep
friendly -- as far as possible -- with both Christians and Mahometans, respect
the religion of every other sect or people, but will never disclose their own
secrets. Vainly do the missionaries stigmatize them as infidels, idolaters,
brigands, and thieves. Neither threat, bribe, nor any other consideration will
induce a Druze to become a convert to dogmatic Christianity. We have heard of
two in fifty years, and both have finished their careers in prison, for
drunkenness and theft. They proved to be "real Druzes,"** said one
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* What will, perhaps, still more
astonish American readers, is the fact that, in the United States, a mystical
fraternity now exists, which claims an intimate relationship with one of the
oldest and most powerful of Eastern Brotherhoods. It is known as the
Brotherhood of Luxor, and its faithful members have the custody of very
important secrets of science. Its ramifications extend widely throughout the
great Republic of the West. Though this brotherhood has been long and hard at
work, the secret of its existence has been jealously guarded. Mackenzie
describes it as having "a Rosicrucian basis, and numbering many
members" ("Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia," p. 461). But, in this,
the author is mistaken; it has no Rosicrucian basis. The name Luxor is
primarily derived from the ancient Beloochistan city of Looksur, which lies
between Bela and Kedgee, and also gave its name to the Egyptian city.
** These people do not accept
the name of Druzes, but regard the appellation as an insult. They call
themselves the "disciples of Hamsa," their Messiah, who came to them,
in the tenth century, from the "Land of the Word of God," and,
together with his disciple, Mochtana Boha-eddin, committed this Word to
writing, and entrusted it [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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of their chiefs, in discussing
the subject. There never was a case of an initiated Druze becoming a Christian.
As to the uninitiated, they are never allowed to even see the sacred writings,
and none of them have the remotest idea where these are kept. There are
missionaries in Syria who boast of having in their possession a few copies. The
volumes alleged to be the correct expositions from these secret books (such as
the translation by Petis de la Croix, in 1701, from the works presented by
Nasr-Allah to the French king), are nothing more than a compilation of
"secrets," known more or less to every inhabitant of the southern
ranges of Lebanon and Anti-Libanus. They were the work of an apostate Dervish,
who was expelled from the sect Hanafi, for improper conduct -- the embezzlement
of the money of widows and orphans. The Expose de la Religion des Druzes, in
two volumes, by Sylvestre de Sacy (1828), is another net-work of hypotheses. A
copy of this work was to be found, in 1870, on the window-sill of one of their
principal Holowey, or place of religious meeting. To the inquisitive question
of an English traveller, as to their rites, the Okhal,* a venerable old man,
who spoke English as well as French, opened the volume of de Sacy, and,
offering it to his interlocutor, remarked, with a benevolent smile: "Read
this instructive and truthful book; I could explain to you neither better nor
more correctly the secrets of God and our blessed Hamsa, than it does."
The traveller understood the hint.
Mackenzie says they settled at
Lebanon about the tenth century, and "seem to be a mixture of Kurds,
Mardi-Arabs, and other semi-civilized tribes. Their religion is compounded of
Judaism, Christianity, and Mahometanism. They have a regular order of
priesthood and a kind of hierarchy . . . there is a regular system of passwords
and signs. . . . Twelve month's probation, to which either sex is admitted,
preceded initiation."
We quote the above only to
show how little even persons as trustworthy as Mr. Mackenzie really know of
these mystics.
Mosheim, who knows as much, or
we should rather say as little, as any others, is entitled to the merit of
candidly admitting that "their religion is peculiar to themselves, and is
involved in some mystery." We should say it was -- rather!
That their religion exhibits
traces of Magianism and Gnosticism is natural, as the whole of the Ophite
esoteric philosophy is at the bottom of it. But the characteristic dogma of the
Druzes is the absolute unity
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] to the care of a few initiates, with the injunction of the
greatest secresy. They are usually called Unitarians.
* The Okhal (from the Arabic
akl -- intelligence or wisdom) are the initiated, or wise men of this sect.
They hold, in their mysteries, the same position as the hierophant of old, in
the Eleusinian and others.
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of God. He is the essence of
life, and although incomprehensible and invisible, is to be known through
occasional manifestations in human form.* Like the Hindus they hold that he was
incarnated more than once on earth. Hamsa was the precursor of the last
manifestation to be (the tenth avatar)** not the inheritor of Hakem, who is yet
to come. Hamsa was the personification of the "Universal Wisdom."
Bohaeddin in his writings calls him Messiah. The whole number of his disciples,
or those who at different ages of the world have imparted wisdom to mankind,
which the latter as invariably have forgotten and rejected in course of time,
is one hundred and sixty-four (164, the kabalistic s d k). Therefore, their
stages or degrees of promotion after initiation are five; the first three
degrees are typified by the "three feet of the candlestick of the inner
Sanctuary, which holds the light of the five elements"; the last two
degrees, the most important and terrifying in their solemn grandeur belonging
to the highest orders; and the whole five degrees emblematically represent the
said five mystic Elements. The "three feet are the holy Application, the
Opening, and the Phantom," says one of their books; on man's inner and
outer soul, and his body, a phantom, a passing shadow. The body, or matter, is
also called the "Rival," for "he is the minister of sin, the
Devil ever creating dissensions between the Heavenly Intelligence (spirit) and
the soul, which he tempts incessantly." Their ideas on transmigration are
Pythagorean and kabalistic. The spirit, or Temeami (the divine soul), was in Elijah
and John the Baptist; and the soul of Jesus was that of H'amsa; that is to say,
of the same degree of purity and sanctity. Until their resurrection, by which
they understand the day when the spiritual bodies of men will be absorbed into
God's own essence and being (the Nirvana of the Hindus), the souls of men will
keep their astral forms, except the few chosen ones who, from the moment of
their separation from their bodies, begin to exist as pure spirits. The life of
man they divide into soul, body, and intelligence, or mind. It is the latter
which imparts and communicates to the soul the divine spark from its H'amsa
(Christos).
They have seven great
commandments which are imparted equally to all the uninitiated; and yet, even
these well-known articles of faith have been so mixed up in the accounts of
outside writers, that, in one of the best Cyclopaedias of America (Appleton's),
they are garbled after the fashion that may be seen in the comparative
tabulation below; the spurious and the true order parallel:
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This is the doctrine of the
Gnostics who held Christos to be the personal immortal Spirit of man.
** The ten Messiahs or avatars
remind again of the five Buddhistic and ten Brahmanical avatars of Buddha and
Christna.
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LEBANON.
[[Column 1]]
CORRECT VERSION OF THE
COMMANDMENTS AS IMPARTED ORALLY BY THE TEACHERS.*
1. The unity of God, or the
infinite oneness of Deity.
2. The essential excellence of
Truth.
3. Toleration; right given to
all men and women to freely express their opinions on religious matters, and
make the latter subservient to reason.
4. Respect to all men and
women according to their character and conduct.
5. Entire submission to God's
decrees.
6. Chastity of body, mind, and
soul.
7. Mutual help under all
conditions.
-----------
[[Column 2]]
GARBLED VERSION REPORTED BY
THE CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES AND GIVEN IN PRETENDED EXPOSITIONS.**
1. (2) " 'Truth in
words,' meaning in practice, only truth to the religion and to the initiated;
it is lawful to act and to speak falsehood to men of another creed."***
2. (7) "Mutual help,
watchfulness, and protection."
3. (?) "To renounce all
other religions."****
4. (?) "To be separate
from infidels of every kind, not externally but only in heart."*****
5. (1) "Recognize God's
eternal unity."
6. (5) "Satisfied with
God's acts."
7. (5) "Resigned to God's
will."
As will be seen, the only
expose in the above is that of the great ignorance, perhaps malice, of the
writers who, like Sylvestre de Sacy, undertake to enlighten the world upon
matters concerning which they know nothing.
"Chastity, honesty,
meekness, and mercy," are thus the four theological virtues of all Druzes,
besides several others demanded from the initiates: "murder, theft,
cruelty, covetousness, slander," the five sins, to which several other
sins are added in the sacred tablets, but which we must abstain from giving.
The morality of the Druzes is strict and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See, farther on, a letter from
an "Initiate."
** In this column the first
numbers are those given in the article on the Druzes in the "New American
Cyclopaedia" (Appleton's), vol. vi., p. 631. The numbers in parentheses
show the sequence in which the commandments would stand were they given
correctly.
*** This pernicious doctrine
belongs to the old policy of the Catholic Church, but is certainly false as
regards the Druzes. They maintain that it is right and lawful to withhold the
truth about their own tenets, no one outside their own sect having a right to
pry into their religion. The okhals never countenance deliberate falsehood in
any form, although the laymen have many a time got rid of the spies sent by the
Christians to discover their secrets, by deceiving them with sham initiations.
(See the letter of Prof. Rawson to the author, p. 313.)
**** This commandment does not
exist in the Lebanon teaching.
***** There is no such
commandment, but the practice thereof exists by mutual agreement, as in the
days of the Gnostic persecution.
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uncompromising. Nothing can
tempt one of these Lebanon Unitarians to go astray from what he is taught to
consider his duty. Their ritual being unknown to outsiders, their would-be
historians have hitherto denied them one. Their "Thursday meetings"
are open to all, but no interloper has ever participated in the rites of initiation
which take place occasionally on Fridays in the greatest secresy. Women are
admitted to them as well as men, and they play a part of great importance at
the initiation of men. The probation, unless some extraordinary exception is
made, is long and severe. Once, in a certain period of time, a solemn ceremony
takes place, during which all the elders and the initiates of the highest two
degrees start out for a pilgrimage of several days to a certain place in the
mountains. They meet within the safe precincts of a monastery said to have been
erected during the earliest times of the Christian era. Outwardly one sees but
old ruins of a once grand edifice, used, says the legend, by some Gnostic sects
as a place of worship during the religious persecutions. The ruins above
ground, however, are but a convenient mask; the subterranean chapel, halls, and
cells, covering an area of ground far greater than the upper building; while
the richness of ornamentation, the beauty of the ancient sculptures, and the
gold and silver vessels in this sacred resort, appear like "a dream of
glory," according to the expression of an initiate. As the lamaseries of
Mongolia and Thibet are visited upon grand occasions by the holy shadow of
"Lord Buddha," so here, during the ceremonial, appears the
resplendent ethereal form of Hamsa, the Blessed, which instructs the faithful.
The most extraordinary feats of what would be termed magic take place during
the several nights that the convocation lasts; and one of the greatest
mysteries -- faithful copy of the past -- is accomplished within the discreet
bosom of our mother earth; not an echo, nor the faintest sound, not a glimmer
of light betrays without the grand secret of the initiates.
Hamsa, like Jesus, was a
mortal man, and yet "Hamsa" and "Christos" are synonymous
terms as to their inner and hidden meaning. Both are symbols of the Nous, the
divine and higher soul of man -- his spirit. The doctrine taught by the Druzes
on that particular question of the duality of spiritual man, consisting of one soul
mortal, and another immortal, is identical with that of the Gnostics, the older
Greek philosophers, and other initiates.
Outside the East we have met
one initiate (and only one), who, for some reasons best known to himself, does
not make a secret of his initiation into the Brotherhood of Lebanon. It is the
learned traveller and artist, Professor A. L. Rawson, of New York City. This
gentleman has passed many years in the East, four times visited Palestine, and
has trav-
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INITIATE.
elled to Mecca. It is safe to
say that he has a priceless store of facts about the beginnings of the Christian
Church, which none but one who had had free access to repositories closed
against the ordinary traveller could have collected. Professor Rawson, with the
true devotion of a man of science, noted down every important discovery he made
in the Palestinian libraries, and every precious fact orally communicated to
him by the mystics he encountered, and some day they will see the light. He has
most obligingly sent us the following communication, which, as the reader will
perceive, fully corroborates what is above written from our personal experience
about the strange fraternity incorrectly styled the Druzes:
"34 BOND ST., NEW YORK,
June 6, 1877.
". . . Your note, asking
me to give you an account of my initiation into a secret order among the people
commonly known as Druzes, in Mount Lebanon, was received this morning. I took,
as you are fully aware, an obligation at that time to conceal within my own
memory the greater part of the 'mysteries,' with the most interesting parts of
the 'instructions'; so that what is left may not be of any service to the
public. Such information as I can rightfully give, you are welcome to have and
use as you may have occasion.
"The probation in my case
was, by special dispensation, made one month, during which time I was 'shadowed'
by a priest, who served as my cook, guide, interpreter, and general servant,
that he might be able to testify to the fact of my having strictly conformed to
the rules in diet, ablutions, and other matters. He was also my instructor in
the text of the ritual, which we recited from time to time for practice, in
dialogue or in song, as it may have been. Whenever we happened to be near a
Druze village, on a Thursday, we attended the 'open' meetings, where men and
women assembled for instruction and worship, and to expose to the world
generally their religious practices. I was never present at a Friday 'close'
meeting before my initiation, nor do I believe any one else, man or woman, ever
was, except by collusion with a priest, and that is not probable, for a false
priest forfeits his life. The practical jokers among them sometimes 'fool' a
too curious 'Frank' by a sham initiation, especially if such a one is suspected
of having some connection with the missionaries at Beirut or elsewhere.
"The initiates include
both women and men, and the ceremonies are of so peculiar a nature that both
sexes are required to assist in the ritual and 'work.' The 'furniture' of the
'prayer-house' and of the 'vision-chamber' is simple, and except for
convenience may consist of but a strip of carpet. In the 'Gray Hall' (the place
is never named, and is underground, not far from Bayt-ed-Deen) there are some
rich decorations and valuable pieces of ancient furniture, the work of Arab
silversmiths five or six centuries ago, inscribed and dated. The day of
initiation must be a continual fast from daylight to sunset in winter, or six
o'clock in summer, and the ceremony is from beginning to end a series of trials
and temptations, calculated to test the endurance of the candidate under physical
and mental pressure. It is seldom that any but the young man or woman succeeds
in 'winning' all the 'prizes,' since nature will sometimes exert itself in
spite of the most stubborn will, and the neophyte fail of passing some of the
tests. In such a case the probation is extended another year, when another
trial is had.
"Among other tests of the
neophyte's self-control are the following: Choice pieces
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of cooked meat, savory soup,
pilau, and other appetizing dishes, with sherbet, coffee, wine, and water, are
set, as if accidentally, in his way, and he is left alone for a time with the
tempting things. To a hungry and fainting soul the trial is severe. But a more
difficult ordeal is when the seven priestesses retire, all but one, the
youngest and prettiest, and the door is closed and barred on the outside, after
warning the candidate that he will be left to his 'reflections,' for half an
hour. Wearied by the long-continued ceremonial, weak with hunger, parched with
thirst, and a sweet reaction coming after the tremendous strain to keep his
animal nature in subjection, this moment of privacy and of temptation is
brimful of peril. The beautiful young vestal, timidly approaching, and with
glances which lend a double magnetic allurement to her words, begs him in low
tones to 'bless her.' Woe to him if he does! A hundred eyes see him from secret
peep-holes, and only to the ignorant neophyte is there the appearance of
concealment and opportunity.
"There is no infidelity,
idolatry, or other really bad feature in the system. They have the relics of
what was once a grand form of nature-worship, which has been contracted under a
despotism into a secret order, hidden from the light of day, and exposed only
in the smoky glare of a few burning lamps, in some damp cave or chapel under
ground. The chief tenets of their religious teachings are comprised in seven
'tablets,' which are these, to state them in general terms:
"1. The unity of God, or
the infinite oneness of deity.
"2. The essential
excellence of truth.
"3. The law of toleration
as to all men and women in opinion.
"4. Respect for all men
and women as to character and conduct.
"5. Entire submission to
God's decrees as to fate.
"6. Chastity of body and
mind and soul.
"7. Mutual help under all
conditions.
"These tenets are not
printed or written. Another set is printed or written to mislead the unwary,
but with these we are not concerned.
"The chief results of the
initiation seemed to be a kind of mental illusion or sleep-waking, in which the
neophyte saw, or thought he saw, the images of people who were known to be
absent, and in some cases thousands of miles away. I thought (or perhaps it was
my mind at work) I saw friends and relatives that I knew at the time were in
New York State, while I was then in Lebanon. How these results were produced I
cannot say. They appeared in a dark room, when the 'guide' was talking, the
'company' singing in the next 'chamber,' and near the close of the day, when I
was tired out with fasting, walking, talking, singing, robing, unrobing, seeing
a great many people in various conditions as to dress and undress, and with great
mental strain in resisting certain physical manifestations that result from the
appetites when they overcome the will, and in paying close attention to the
passing scenes, hoping to remember them -- so that I may have been unfit to
judge of any new and surprising phenomena, and more especially of those
apparently magical appearances which have always excited my suspicion and
distrust. I know the various uses of the magic-lantern, and other apparatus,
and took care to examine the room where the 'visions' appeared to me the same
evening, and the next day, and several times afterwards, and knew that, in my
case, there was no use made of any machinery or other means besides the voice
of the 'guide and instructor.' On several occasions afterward, when at a great
distance from the 'chamber,' the same or similar visions were produced, as, for
instance, in Hornstein's Hotel at Jerusalem. A daughter-in-law of a well-known
Jewish merchant in Jerusalem is an initiated 'sister,' and can produce the
visions almost at will on any one who will
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LODGE" AND ITS BRANCHES.
live strictly according to the
rules of the Order for a few weeks, more or less, according to their nature, as
gross or refined, etc.
"I am quite safe in
saying that the initiation is so peculiar that it could not be printed so as to
instruct one who had not been 'worked' through the 'chamber.' So it would be
even more impossible to make an expose of them than of the Freemasons. The real
secrets are acted and not spoken, and require several initiated persons to
assist in the work.
"It is not necessary for
me to say how some of the notions of that people seem to perpetuate certain
beliefs of the ancient Greeks -- as, for instance, the idea that a man has two
souls, and many others -- for you probably were made familiar with them in your
passage through the 'upper' and 'lower chamber.' If I am mistaken in supposing
you an 'initiate,' please excuse me. I am aware that the closest friends often
conceal that 'sacred secret' from each other; and even husband and wife may
live -- as I was informed in Dayr-el-Kamar was the fact in one family there --
for twenty years together and yet neither know anything of the initiation of
the other. You, undoubtedly, have good reasons for keeping your own counsel,
"Yours truly,
"A. L. RAWSON."
Before we close the subject we
may add that if a stranger ask for admission to a "Thursday" meeting
he will never be refused. Only, if he is a Christian, the okhal will open a
Bible and read from it; and if a Mahometan, he will hear a few chapters of the
Koran, and the ceremony will end with this. They will wait until he is gone,
and then, shutting well the doors of their convent, take to their own rites and
books, passing for this purpose into their subterranean sanctuaries. "The
Druzes remain, even more than the Jews, a peculiar people," says Colonel
Churchill,* one of the few fair and strictly impartial writers. "They
marry within their own race; they are rarely if ever converted; they adhere
tenaciously to their traditions, and they baffle all efforts to discover their
cherished secrets. . . . The bad name of that caliph whom they claim as their
founder is fairly compensated by the pure lives of many whom they honor as
saints, and by the heroism of their feudal leaders."
And yet the Druzes may be said
to belong to one of the least esoteric of secret societies. There are others
far more powerful and learned, the existence of which is not even suspected in
Europe. There are many branches belonging to the great "Mother Lodge"
which, mixed up with certain communities, may be termed secret sects within
other sects. One of them is the sect commonly known as that of Laghana-Sastra.
It reckons several thousand adepts who are scattered about in small groups in
the south of the Dekkan, India. In the popular superstition, this sect is
dreaded on account of its great reputation for magic and sorcery. The Brahmans
accuse its members of atheism and sacrilege, for none of them
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Mount Lebanon,"
vol. 3. London, 1853.
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will consent to recognize the
authority of either the Vedas or Manu, except so far as they conform to the
versions in their possession, and which they maintain are professedly the only
original texts; the Laghana-Sastra have neither temples nor priests, but, twice
a month, every member of the community has to absent himself from home for
three days. Popular rumor, originated among their women, ascribes such absences
to pilgrimages performed to their places of fortnightly resort. In some
secluded mountainous spots, unknown and inaccessible to other sects, hidden far
from sight among the luxurious vegetation of India, they keep their bungalows,
which look like small fortresses, encircled as they are by lofty and thick
walls. These, in their turn, are surrounded by the sacred trees called
assonata, and in Tamul arassa maram. These are the "sacred groves,"
the originals of those of Egypt and Greece, whose initiates also built their
temples within such "groves" inaccessible to the profane.*
It will not be found without
interest to see what Mr. John Yarker, Jr., has to say on some modern secret
societies among the Orientals. "The nearest resemblance to the Brahmanical
Mysteries, is probably found in the very ancient 'Paths' of the Dervishes,
which are usually governed by twelve officers, the oldest 'Court'
superintending the others by right of seniority. Here the master of the 'Court'
is called 'Sheik,' and has his deputies, 'Caliphs,' or successors, of which
there may be many (as, for instance, in the brevet degree of a Master Mason).
The order is divided into at least four columns, pillars, or degrees. The first
step is that of 'Humanity,' which supposes attention to the written law, and
'annihilation in the Sheik.' The second is that of the 'Path,' in which the
'Murid,' or disciple, attains spiritual powers and 'self-annihilation' into the
'Peer' or founder of the 'Path.' The third stage is called 'Knowledge,' and the
'Murid' is supposed to become inspired, called 'annihilation into the Prophet.'
The fourth stage leads him even to God, when he becomes a part of the Deity and
sees Him in all things. The first and second stages have received modern subdivisions,
as 'Integrity,' 'Virtue,' 'Temperance,' 'Benevolence.' After this the Sheik
confers upon him the grade of 'Caliph,' or Honorary Master, for in their
mystical language, 'the man must die before the saint can be born.' It will be
seen that this kind of mysticism is applicable to Christ as founder of a
'Path.' "
To this statement, the author
adds the following on the Bektash Dervishes, who "often initiated the
Janizaries. They wear a small marble cube spotted with blood. Their ceremony is
as follows: Before reception a year's probation is required, during which false
secrets are
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Every temple in India is
surrounded by such belts of sacred trees. And like the Koum-boum of Kansu (Mongolia)
no one but an initiate has a right to approach them.
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BEKTASH DERVISHES.
given to test the candidate;
he has two godfathers and is divested of all metals and even clothing; from the
wool of a sheep a cord is made for his neck, and a girdle for his loins; he is
led into the centre of a square room, presented as a slave, and seated upon a
large stone with twelve escallops; his arms are crossed upon his breast, his
body inclined forward, his right toes extended over his left foot; after
various prayers he is placed in a particular manner, with his hand in a
peculiar way in that of the Sheik, who repeats a verse from the Koran: 'Those
who on giving thee their hand swear to thee an oath, swear it to God, the hand
of God is placed in their hand; whoever violates this oath, will do so to his
hurt, and to whoever remains faithful God will give a magnificent reward.'
Placing the hand below the chin is their sign, perhaps in memory of their vow.
All use the double triangles. The Brahmans inscribe the angles with their
trinity, and they possess also the Masonic sign of distress as used in France."*
From the very day when the
first mystic found the means of communication between this world and the worlds
of the invisible host, between the sphere of matter and that of pure spirit, he
concluded that to abandon this mysterious science to the profanation of the
rabble was to lose it. An abuse of it might lead mankind to speedy destruction;
it was like surrounding a group of children with explosive batteries, and
furnishing them with matches. The first self-made adept initiated but a select
few, and kept silence with the multitudes. He recognized his God and felt the
great Being within himself. The "Atman," the Self,** the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* John Yarker, Jr.:
"Notes on the Scientific and Religious Mysteries of Antiquity," etc.
** This "Self,"
which the Greek philosophers called Augoeides, the "Shining One," is
impressively and beautifully described in Max Muller's "Veda."
Showing the "Veda" to be the first book of the Aryan nations, the professor
adds that "we have in it a period of the intellectual life of man to which
there is no parallel in any other part of the world. In the hymns of the
"Veda" we see man left to himself to solve the riddle of this world.
. . . He invokes the gods around him, he praises, he worships them. But still
with all these gods . . . beneath him, and above him, the early poet seems ill
at rest within himself. There, too, in his own breast, he has discovered a
power that is never mute when he prays, never absent when he fears and
trembles. It seems to inspire his prayers, and yet to listen to them; it seems
to live in him, and yet to support him and all around him. The only name he can
find for this mysterious power is 'Brahman'; for brahman meant originally
force, will, wish, and the propulsive power of creation. But this impersonal
brahman, too, as soon as it is named, grows into something strange and divine.
It ends by being one of many gods, one of the great triad, worshipped to the
present day. And still the thought within him has no real name; that power
which is nothing but itself, which supports the gods, the heavens, and every
living being, floats before his mind, conceived but not expressed. At last he
calls it 'Atman,' for Atman, originally breath or spirit, comes to mean Self,
[[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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mighty Lord and Protector, once
that man knew him as the "I am," the "Ego Sum," the
"Ahmi," showed his full power to him who could recognize the
"still small voice." From the days of the primitive man described by
the first Vedic poet, down to our modern age, there has not been a philosopher
worthy of that name, who did not carry in the silent sanctuary of his heart the
grand and mysterious truth. If initiated, he learnt it as a sacred science; if
otherwise, then, like Socrates repeating to himself, as well as to his
fellow-men, the noble injunction, "O man, know thyself," he succeeded
in recognizing his God within himself. "Ye are gods," the
king-psalmist tells us, and we find Jesus reminding the scribes that the
expression, "Ye are gods," was addressed to other mortal men,
claiming for himself the same privilege without any blasphemy.* And, as a
faithful echo, Paul, while asserting that we are all "the temple of the
living God,"** cautiously adds, that after all these things are only for
the "wise," and it is "unlawful" to speak of them.
Therefore, we must accept the
reminder, and simply remark that even in the tortured and barbarous phraseology
of the Codex Nazaraeus, we detect throughout the same idea. Like an
undercurrent, rapid and clear, it runs without mixing its crystalline purity
with the muddy and heavy waves of dogmatism. We find it in the Codex, as well
as in the Vedas, in the Avesta, as in the Abhidharma, and in Kapila's Sankhya
Sutras not less than in the Fourth Gospel. We cannot attain the "Kingdom
of Heaven," unless we unite ourselves indissolubly with our Rex Lucis, the
Lord of Splendor and of Light, our Immortal God. We must first conquer
immortality and "take the Kingdom of Heaven by violence," offered to
our material selves. "The first man is of the earth earthy; the second man
is from heaven. . . . Behold, I show you a mystery," says Paul (1
Corinthians, xv. 47). In the religion of Sakya-Muni, which learned commentators
have delighted so much of late to set down as purely nihilistic, the doctrine
of immortality is very clearly defined, notwithstanding the European or rather
Christian ideas about Nirvana. In the sacred Jaina books, of Patuna, the dying
Gautama-
[[Footnote(s)]]
--------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] and Self alone; Self, whether Divine or human; Self, whether
creating or suffering; Self, whether one or all; but always Self, independent
and free. 'Who has seen the first-born,' says the poet, when he who had no
bones (i.e., form) bore him that had bones? Where was the life, the blood, the
Self of the world? Who went to ask this from any one who knew it?"
("Rig-Veda," i., 164, 4). This idea of a divine Self, once expressed,
everything else must acknowledge its supremacy; "Self is the Lord of all
things, Self is the King of all things. As all the spokes of a wheel are
contained in the nave and the circumference, all things are contained in this
Self; all Selves are contained in this Self. Brahman itself is but Self"
(Ibid., p. 478; "Khandogya-upanishad," viii., 3, 3, 4); "Chips
from a German Workshop," vol. i., p. 69.
* John x. 34, 35.
** 2 Corinthians, vi. 16.
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BUDDHISM.
Buddha is thus addressed:
"Arise into Nirvi (Nirvana) from this decrepit body into which thou hast
been sent. Ascend into thy former abode, O blessed Avatar!" This seems to
us the very opposite of Nihilism. If Gautama is invited to reascend into his
"former abode," and this abode is Nirvana, then it is incontestable
that Buddhistic philosophy does not teach final annihilation. As Jesus is
alleged to have appeared to his disciples after death, so to the present day is
Gautama believed to descend from Nirvana. And if he has an existence there,
then this state cannot be a synonym for annihilation.
Gautama, no less than all
other great reformers, had a doctrine for his "elect" and another for
the outside masses, though the main object of his reform consisted in
initiating all, so far as it was permissible and prudent to do, without
distinction of castes or wealth, to the great truths hitherto kept so secret by
the selfish Brahmanical class. Gautama-Buddha it was whom we see the first in
the world's history, moved by that generous feeling which locks the whole
humanity within one embrace, inviting the "poor," the
"lame," and the "blind" to the King's festival table, from
which he excluded those who had hitherto sat alone, in haughty seclusion. It
was he, who, with a bold hand, first opened the door of the sanctuary to the
pariah, the fallen one, and all those "afflicted by men" clothed in
gold and purple, often far less worthy than the outcast to whom their finger
was scornfully pointing. All this did Siddhartha six centuries before another
reformer, as noble and as loving, though less favored by opportunity, in
another land. If both, aware of the great danger of furnishing an uncultivated
populace with the double-edged weapon of knowledge which gives power, left the
innermost corner of the sanctuary in the profoundest shade, who, that is
acquainted with human nature, can blame them for it? But while one was actuated
by prudence, the other was forced into such a course. Gautama left the esoteric
and most dangerous portion of the "secret knowledge" untouched, and
lived to the ripe old age of eighty, with the certainty of having taught the
essential truths, and having converted to them one-third of the world; Jesus
promised his disciples the knowledge which confers upon man the power of
producing far greater miracles than he ever did himself, and he died, leaving
but a few faithful men, only half way to knowledge, to struggle with the world
to which they could impart but what they half-knew themselves. Later, their
followers disfigured truth still more than they themselves had done.
It is not true that Gautama
never taught anything concerning a future life, or that he denied the
immortality of the soul. Ask any intelligent Buddhist his ideas on Nirvana, and
he will unquestionably express himself, as the well-known Wong-Chin-Fu, the
Chinese orator, now
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travelling in this country,
did in a recent conversation with us about Niepang (Nirvana). "This
condition," he remarked, "we all understand to mean a final reunion
with God, coincident with the perfection of the human spirit by its ultimate
disembarrassment of matter. It is the very opposite of personal
annihilation."
Nirvana means the certitude of
personal immortality in Spirit, not in Soul, which, as a finite emanation, must
certainly disintegrate its particles a compound of human sensations, passions,
and yearning for some objective kind of existence, before the immortal spirit
of the Ego is quite freed, and henceforth secure against further transmigration
in any form. And how can man ever reach this state so long as the Upadana, that
state of longing for life, more life, does not disappear from the sentient
being, from the Ahancara clothed, however, in a sublimated body? It is the
"Upadana" or the intense desire which produces WILL, and it is will which
develops force, and the latter generates matter, or an object having form. Thus
the disembodied Ego, through this sole undying desire in him, unconsciously
furnishes the conditions of his successive self-procreations in various forms,
which depend on his mental state and Karma, the good or bad deeds of his
preceding existence, commonly called "merit and demerit." This is why
the "Master" recommended to his mendicants the cultivation of the
four degrees of Dhyana, the noble "Path of the Four Truths," i.e.,
that gradual acquirement of stoical indifference for either life or death; that
state of spiritual self-contemplation during which man utterly loses sight of
his physical and dual individuality, composed of soul and body; and uniting
himself with his third and higher immortal self the real and heavenly man
merges, so to say, into the divine Essence, whence his own spirit proceeded
like a spark from the common hearth. Thus the Arhat, the holy mendicant, can
reach Nirvana while yet on earth; and his spirit, totally freed from the
trammels of the "psychical, terrestrial, devilish wisdom," as James
calls it, and being in its own nature omniscient and omnipotent, can on earth,
through the sole power of his thought, produce the greatest of phenomena.
"It is the missionaries
in China and India, who first started this falsehood about Niepang, or Niepana
(Nirvana)," says Wong-Chin-Fu. Who can deny the truth of this accusation
after reading the works of the Abbe Dubois, for instance? A missionary who
passes forty years of his life in India, and then writes that the
"Buddhists admit of no other God but the body of man, and have no other
object but the satisfaction of their senses," utters an untruth which can
be proved on the testimony of the laws of the Talapoins of Siam and Birmah;
laws, which prevail unto this very day and which sentence a sahan, or punghi (a
learned man; from the Sanscrit pundit), as well as a simple Talapoin, to death
by
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EASTERN MYSTICS.
decapitation, for the crime of
unchastity. No foreigner can be admitted into their Kyums, or Viharas
(monasteries); and yet there are French writers, otherwise impartial and fair,
who, speaking of the great severity of the rules to which the Buddhist monks
are subjected in these communities, and without possessing one single fact to
corroborate their skepticism, bluntly say, that "notwithstanding the great
laudations bestowed upon them (Talapoins) by certain travellers, merely on the
strength of appearances, I do not believe at all in their chastity."*
Fortunately for the Buddhist talapoins,
lamas, sahans, upasampadas,** and even samenairas,*** they have popular records
and facts for themselves, which are weightier than the unsupported personal
opinion of a Frenchman, born in Catholic lands, whom we can hardly blame for
having lost all faith in clerical virtue. When a Buddhist monk becomes guilty
(which does not happen once in a century, perhaps) of criminal conversation, he
has neither a congregation of tender-hearted members, whom he can move to tears
by an eloquent confession of his guilt, nor a Jesus, on whose overburdened,
long-suffering bosom are flung, as in a common Christian dust-box, all the
impurities of the race. No Buddhist transgressor can comfort himself with
visions of a Vatican, within whose sin-encompassing walls black is turned into
white, murderers into sinless saints, and golden or silvery lotions can be
bought at the confessional to cleanse the tardy penitent of greater or lesser
offenses against God and man.
Except a few impartial
archaeologists, who trace a direct Buddhistic element in Gnosticism, as in all
those early short-lived sects we know of very few authors, who, in writing upon
primitive Christianity, have accorded to the question its due importance. Have
we not facts enough to, at least, suggest some interest in that direction? Do
we not learn that, as early as in the days of Plato, there were
"Brachmans" -- read Buddhist, Samaneans, Saman, or Shaman
missionaries -- in Greece, and that, at one time, they had overflowed the
country? Does not Pliny show them established on the shores of the Dead Sea,
for "thousands of ages"? After making every necessary allowance for
the exaggeration, we still have several centuries B.C. left as a margin. And is
it possible that their influence should not have left deeper traces in all
these sects than is generally thought? We know that the Jaina sect claims
Buddhism as derived from its tenets -- that Buddhism existed before Siddhartha,
better known as Gautama-Buddha. The Hindu Brahmans who, by the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Jacolliot: "Voyage au
Pays des Elephants."
** Buddhist chief priests at
Ceylon.
*** Samenaira is one who
studies to obtain the high office of a Oepasampala. He is a disciple and is
looked upon as a son by the chief priest. We suspect that the Catholic
seminarist must look to the Buddhists for the parentage of his title.
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European Orientalists, are
denied the right of knowing anything about their own country, or understanding
their own language and records better than those who have never been in India,
on the same principle as the Jews are forbidden, by the Christian theologians,
to interpret their own Scriptures -- the Brahmans, we say, have authentic
records. And these show the incarnation from the Virgin Avany of the first
Buddha -- divine light -- as having taken place more than some thousands of
years B.C., on the island of Ceylon. The Brahmans reject the claim that it was
an avatar of Vishnu, but admit the appearance of a reformer of Brahmanism at
that time. The story of the Virgin Avany and her divine son, Sakyamuni, is
recorded in one of the sacred books of the Cinghalese Buddhists -- the
Nirdhasa; and the Brahmanic chronology fixes the great Buddhistic revolution
and religious war, and the subsequent spread of Sakya-muni's doctrine in
Thibet, China, Japan, and other places at 4,620 years B.C.*
It is clear that
Gautama-Buddha, the son of the King of Kapilavastu, and the descendant of the
first Sakya, through his father, who was of the Kshatriya, or warrior-caste,
did not invent his philosophy. Philanthropist by nature, his ideas were developed
and matured while under the tuition of Tir-thankara, the famous guru of the
Jaina sect. The latter claim the present Buddhism as a diverging branch of
their own philosophy, and themselves, as the only followers of the first Buddha
who were allowed to remain in India, after the expulsion of all other
Buddhists, probably because they had made a compromise, and admitted some of
the Brahmanic notions. It is, to say the least, curious, that three dissenting
and inimical religions, like Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Jainism, should agree so
perfectly in their traditions and chronology, as to Buddhism, and that our
scientists should give a hearing but to their own unwarranted speculations and
hypotheses. If the birth of Gautama may, with some show of reason, be placed at
about 600 B. C., then the preceding Buddhas ought to have some place allowed
them in chronology. The Buddhas are not gods, but simply individuals
overshadowed by the spirit of Buddha -- the divine ray. Or is it because,
unable to extricate themselves from the difficulty by the help of their own
researches only, our Orientalists prefer to obliterate and deny the whole,
rather than accord to the Hindus the right of knowing something of their own
religion and history? Strange way of discovering truths!
The common argument adduced
against the Jaina claim, of having been the source of the restoration of
ancient Buddhism, that the principal
[[Footnote(s)]]
------------------------------------------------------
* Jacolliot declares, in his
"Fils de Dieu," that he copied these dates from the "Book of the
Historical Zodiacs," preserved in the pagoda of Vilenur.
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INDIA.
tenet of the latter religion
is opposed to the belief of the Jainas, is not a sound one. Buddhists, say our
Orientalists, deny the existence of a Supreme Being; the Jainas admit one, but
protest against the assumption that the "He" can ever interfere in
the regulation of the universe. We have shown in the preceding chapter that the
Buddhists do not deny any such thing. But if any disinterested scholar could
study carefully the Jaina literature, in their thousands of books preserved --
or shall we say hidden -- in Rajpootana, Jusselmere, at Patun, and other
places;* and especially if he could but gain access to the oldest of their
sacred volumes, he would find a perfect identity of philosophical thought, if
not of popular rites, between the Jainas and the Buddhists. The Adi-Buddha and
Adinatha (or Adiswara) are identical in essence and purpose. And now, if we
trace the Jainas back, with their claims to the ownership of the oldest
cave-temples (those superb specimens of Indian architecture and sculpture), and
their records of an almost incredible antiquity, we can hardly refuse to view
them in the light which they claim for themselves. We must admit, that in all
probability they are the only true descendants of the primitive owners of old
India, dispossessed by those conquering and mysterious hordes of white-skinned
Brahmans whom, in the twilight of history, we see appearing at the first as
wanderers in the valleys of Jumna and Ganges. The books of the Srawacs -- the
only descendants of the Arhatas or earliest Jainas, the naked forest-hermits of
the days of old, might throw some light, perhaps, on many a puzzling question.
But will our European scholars, so long as they pursue their own policy, ever
have access to the right volumes? We have our doubts about this. Ask any
trustworthy Hindu how the missionaries have dealt with those manuscripts which
unluckily fell into their hands, and then see if we can blame the natives for
trying to save from desecration the "gods of their fathers."
To maintain their ground
Irenaeus and his school had to fight hard with the Gnostics. Such, also, was
the lot of Eusebius, who found himself hopelessly perplexed to know how the
Essenes should be disposed of. The ways and customs of Jesus and his apostles
exhibited too close a resemblance to this sect to allow the fact to pass
unexplained. Eusebius tried to make people believe that the Essenes were the
first Christians. His efforts were thwarted by Philo Judaeus, who wrote his
historical account of the Essenes and described them with the minutest care,
long before there had appeared a single Christian in Palestine. But, if there
were no Christians, there were Christians long before the era of Christianity;
and the Essenes belonged to the latter as well as to all other initi-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* We were told that there were
nearly 20,000 of such books.
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ated brotherhoods, without
even mentioning the Christnites of India. Lepsius shows that the word Nofre
means Chrestos, "good," and that one of the titles of Osiris,
"Onnofre," must be translated "the goodness of God made
manifest."* "The worship of Christ was not universal at this early
date," explains Mackenzie, "by which I mean that Christolatry had not
been introduced; but the worship of Chrestos -- the Good Principle -- had
preceded it by many centuries, and even survived the general adoption of
Christianity, as shown on monuments still in existence. . . . Again, we have an
inscription which is pre-Christian on an epitaphial tablet (Spon. Misc. Erud.,
Ant., x. xviii. 2). [[Uachinthe Larisaion Demosie Eros Chreste Chaire]], and de
Rossi (Roma Sotteranea, tome i. tav. xxi.) gives us another example from the
catacombs -- 'AElia Chreste, in Pace.' "** And, Kris, as Jacolliot shows,
means in Sanscrit "sacred."
The meritorious stratagems of the
trustworthy Eusebius thus proved lost labor. He was triumphantly detected by
Basnage, who, says Gibbon, "examined with the utmost critical accuracy the
curious treatise of Philo, which describes the Therapeutae," and found
that "by proving it was composed as early as the time of Augustus, he has
demonstrated, in spite of Eusebius and a crowd of modern Catholics, that the
Therapeutae were neither Christians nor monks."
As a last word, the Christian
Gnostics sprang into existence toward the beginning of the second century, and
just at the time when the Essenes most mysteriously faded away, which indicated
that they were the identical Essenes, and moreover pure Christists, viz.: they
believed and were those who best understood what one of their own brethren had
preached. In insisting that the letter Iota, mentioned by Jesus in Matthew (v.
18), indicated a secret doctrine in relation to the ten aeons, it is sufficient
to demonstrate to a kabalist that Jesus belonged to the Free-masonry of those
days; for I, which is Iota in Greek, has other names in other languages; and
is, as it was among the Gnostics of those days, a pass-word, meaning the
SCEPTRE of the FATHER, in Eastern brotherhoods which exist to this very day.
But in the early centuries
these facts, if known, were purposely ignored, and not only withheld from
public notice as much as possible, but vehemently denied whenever the question
was forced upon discussion. The denunciations of the Fathers were rendered
bitter in proportion to the truth of the claim which they endeavored to refute.
"It comes to this,"
writes Irenaeus, complaining of the Gnostics,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Lepsius:
"Konigsbuch," b. 11, tal. i. dyn. 5, h. p. in 1 Peter ii. 3, Jesus is
called "the Lord Crestos."
** Mackenzie: "Royal
Masonic Cyclopaedia," p. 207.
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MIRACULOUS-CONCEPTION MYTH.
"they neither consent to
Scripture nor tradition."* And why should we wonder at that, when even the
commentators of the nineteenth century, with nothing but fragments of the
Gnostic manuscripts to compare with the voluminous writings of their
calumniators, have been enabled to detect fraud on nearly every page? How much
more must the polished and learned Gnostics, with all their advantages of
personal observation and knowledge of fact, have realized the stupendous scheme
of fraud that was being consummated before their very eyes! Why should they
accuse Celsus of maintaining that their religion was all based on the
speculations of Plato, with the difference that his doctrines were far more
pure and rational than theirs, when we find Sprengel, seventeen centuries
later, writing the following? -- "Not only did they (the Christians) think
to discover the dogmas of Plato in the books of Moses, but, moreover, they
fancied that, by introducing Platonism into Christianity, they would elevate the
dignity of this religion and make it more popular among the nations."**
They introduced it so well,
that not only was the Platonic philosophy selected as a basis for the trinity,
but even the legends and mythical stories which had been current among the
admirers of the great philosopher -- as a time-honored custom required in the
eyes of his posterity such an allegorical homage to every hero worthy of
deification -- were revamped and used by the Christians. Without going so far
as India, did they not have a ready model for the "miraculous
conception," in the legend about Periktione, Plato's mother? In her case
it was also maintained by popular tradition that she had immaculately conceived
him, and that the god Apollo was his father. Even the annunciation by an angel
to Joseph "in a dream," the Christians copied from the message of
Apollo to Ariston, Periktione's husband, that the child to be born from her was
the offspring of that god. So, too, Romulus was said to be the son of Mars, by
the virgin Rhea Sylvia.
It is generally held by all
the symbolical writers that the Ophites were found guilty of practicing the
most licentious rites during their religious meetings. The same accusation was
brought against the Manichaeans, the Carpocratians, the Paulicians, the Albigenses
-- in short, against every Gnostic sect which had the temerity to claim the
right to think for itself. In our modern days, the 160 American sects and the
125 sects of England are not so often troubled with such accusations; times are
changed, and even the once all-powerful clergy have to either bridle their
tongues or prove their slanderous accusations.
We have carefully looked over
the works of such authors as Payne
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Adv. Haer.,"
iii., 2, § 2.
** Sprengel: "Histoire de
la Medecine."
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Knight, C. W. King, and Olshausen,
which treat of our subject; we have reviewed the bulky volumes of Irenaeus,
Tertullian, Sozomen, Theodoret; and in none but those of Epiphanius have we
found any accusation based upon direct evidence of an eye-witness. "They
say"; "Some say"; "We have heard" -- such are the
general and indefinite terms used by the patristic accusers. Alone Epiphanius,
whose works are invariably referred to in all such cases, seems to chuckle with
delight whenever he couches a lance. We do not mean to take upon ourselves to
defend the sects which inundated Europe at the eleventh century, and which
brought to light the most wonderful creeds; we limit our defense merely to
those Christian sects whose theories were usually grouped under the generic
name of Gnosticism. These are those which appeared immediately after the
alleged crucifixion, and lasted till they were nearly exterminated under the
rigorous execution of the Constantinian law. The greatest guilt of these were
their syncretistic views, for at no other period of the world's history had
truth a poorer prospect of triumph than in those days of forgery, lying, and
deliberate falsification of facts.
But before we are forced to
believe the accusations, may we not be permitted to inquire into the historical
characters of their accusers? Let us begin by asking, upon what ground does the
Church of Rome build her claim of supremacy for her doctrines over those of the
Gnostics? Apostolic succession, undoubtedly. The succession traditionally
instituted by the direct Apostle Peter. But what if this prove a fiction?
Clearly, the whole superstructure supported upon this one imaginary stilt would
fall in a tremendous crash. And when we do inquire carefully, we find that we
must take the word of Irenaeus alone for it -- of Irenaeus, who did not furnish
one single valid proof of the claim which he so audaciously advanced, and who
resorted for that to endless forgeries. He gives authority neither for his
dates nor his assertions. This Smyrniote worthy has not even the brutal but sincere
faith of Tertullian, for he contradicts himself at every step, and supports his
claims solely on acute sophistry. Though he was undoubtedly a man of the
shrewdest intellect and great learning, he fears not, in some of his assertions
and arguments, to even appear an idiot in the eyes of posterity, so long as he
can "carry the situation." Twitted and cornered at every step by his
not less acute and learned adversaries, the Gnostics, he boldly shields himself
behind blind faith, and in answer to their merciless logic falls upon imaginary
tradition invented by himself. Reber wittily remarks: "As we read his
misapplications of words and sentences, we would conclude that he was a lunatic
if we did not know that he was something else."*
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Christ of Paul,"
p. 188.
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So boldly mendacious does this
"holy Father" prove himself in many instances, that he is even
contradicted by Eusebius, more cautious if not more truthful than himself. He
is driven to that necessity in the face of unimpeachable evidence. So, for
instance, Irenaeus asserts that Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, was a direct
hearer of St. John;* and Eusebius is compelled to show that Papias never
pretended to such a claim, but simply stated that he had received his doctrine
from those who had known John.**
In one point, the Gnostics had
the best of Irenaeus. They drove him, through mere fear of inconsistency, to
the recognition of their kabalistic doctrine of atonement; unable to grasp it
in its allegorical meaning, Irenaeus presented, with Christian theology as we
find it in its present state of "original sin versus Adam," a
doctrine which would have filled Peter with pious horror if he had been still
alive.
The next champion for the
propagation of Apostolic Succession, is Eusebius himself. Is the word of this
Armenian Father any better than that of Irenaeus? Let us see what the most
competent critics say of him. And before we turn to modern critics at all, we
might remind the reader of the scurrilous terms in which Eusebius is attacked
by George Syncellus, the Vice-Patriarch of Constantinople (eighth century), for
his audacious falsification of the Egyptian Chronology. The opinion of
Socrates, an historian of the fifth century, is no more flattering. He
fearlessly charges Eusebius with perverting historical dates, in order to
please the Emperor Constantine. In his chronographic work, before proceeding to
falsify the synchronistic tables himself, in order to impart to Scriptural
chronology a more trustworthy appearance, Syncellus covers Eusebius with the
choicest of monkish Billingsgate. Baron Bunsen has verified the justness if not
justified the politeness of this abusive reprehension. His elaborate researches
in the rectification of the Egyptian List of Chronology, by Manetho, led him to
confess that throughout his work, the Bishop of Caesarea "had undertaken,
in a very unscrupulous and arbitrary spirit, to mutilate history."
"Eusebius," he says, "is the originator of that systematic
theory of synchronisms which has so often subsequently maimed and mutilated
history in its procrustean bed."*** To this the author of the Intellectual
Development of Europe adds: "Among those who have been the most guilty of
this offense, the name of the celebrated Eusebius, the Bishop of Caesarea . . .
should be designated!"****
It will not be amiss to remind
the reader that it is the same Eusebius who is charged with the interpolation
of the famous paragraph concerning
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Adv. Haer.," v.
33, § 4.
** Eusebius: "Hist.
Eccles.," iii., p. 39.
*** Bunsen: "Egypt,"
vol. i., p. 200.
**** "Intellectual
Development of Europe," p. 147.
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Jesus,* which was so
miraculously found, in his time, in the writings of Josephus, the sentence in
question having till that time remained perfectly unknown. Renan, in his Life
of Jesus, expresses a contrary opinion. "I believe," says he,
"the passage respecting Jesus to be authentic. It is perfectly in the
style of Josephus; and, if this historian had made mention of Jesus, it is thus
that he must have spoken of him."
Begging this eminent scholar's
pardon, we must again contradict him. Laying aside his cautious "if,"
we will merely show that though the short paragraph may possibly be genuine,
and "perfectly in the style of Josephus," its several parentheses are
most palpably later forgeries; and "if" Josephus had made any mention
of Christ at all, it is not thus that he would "have spoken of him."
The whole paragraph consists of but a few lines, and reads: "At this time
was Iasous, a 'WISE MAN,'** if, at least, it is right to call him a man!
([[andra]]) for he was a doer of surprising works, and a teacher of such men as
receive 'the truths' with pleasure. . . . This was the ANOINTED (!!). And, on
an accusation by the first men among us, having been condemned by Pilate to the
cross, they did not stop loving him who loved them. For he appeared to them on
the third day alive, and the divine prophets having said these and many other
wonderful things concerning him."
This paragraph (of sixteen
lines in the original) has two unequivocal assertions and one qualification.
The latter is expressed in the following sentence: "If, at least, it is
right to call him a man." The unequivocal assertions are contained in
"This is the ANOINTED," and in that Jesus "appeared to them on
the third day alive." History shows us Josephus as a thorough,
uncompromising, stiff-necked, orthodox Jew, though he wrote for "the
Pagans." It is well to observe the false position in which these sentences
would have placed a true-born Jew, if they had really emanated from him. Their
"Messiah" was then and is still expected. The Messiah is the
Anointed, and vice versa. And Josephus is made to admit that the "first
men" among them have accused and crucified their Messiah and Anointed!! No
need to comment any further upon such a preposterous incongruity,*** even
though supported by so ripe a scholar as Renan.
As to that patristic
fire-brand, Tertullian, whom des Mousseaux apotheosizes in company with his
other demi-gods, he is regarded by Reuss, Baur, and Schweigler, in quite a
different light. The untrustworthiness of statement and inaccuracy of
Tertullian, says the author
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Antiquities,"
lib. xviii., cap. 3.
** Wise man always meant with
the ancients a kabalist. It means astrologer and magician. "Israelite
Indeed," vol. iii., p. 206. Hakim is a physician.
*** Dr. Lardner rejects it as
spurious, and gives nine reasons for rejecting it.
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PATRISTIC FIRE-BRAND.
of Supernatural Religion, are
often apparent. Reuss characterizes his Christianism as "apre, insolent,
brutal, ferrailleur." It is without unction and without charity, sometimes
even without loyalty, when he finds himself confronted with opposition.
"If," remarks this author, "in the second century all parties
except certain Gnostics were intolerant, Tertullian was the most intolerant of
all!"
The work begun by the early
Fathers was achieved by the sophomorical Augustine. His supra-transcendental
speculations on the Trinity; his imaginary dialogues with the Father, Son, and
the Holy Spirit, and the disclosures and covert allusions about his ex-brethren,
the Manicheans, have led the world to load Gnosticism with opprobrium, and have
thrown into a deep shadow the insulted majesty of the one God, worshipped in
reverential silence by every "heathen."
And thus is it that the whole
pyramid of Roman Catholic dogmas rests not upon Proof, but upon assumption. The
Gnostics had cornered the Fathers too cleverly, and the only salvation of the
latter was a resort to forgery. For nearly four centuries, the great historians
nearly cotemporary with Jesus had not taken the slightest notice either of his
life or death. Christians wondered at such an unaccountable omission of what
the Church considered the greatest events in the world's history. Eusebius
saved the battle of the day. Such are the men who have slandered the Gnostics.
The first and most unimportant
sect we hear of is that of the Nicolaitans, of whom John, in the Apocalypse,
makes the voice in his vision say that he hates their doctrine.* These
Nicolaitans were the followers, however, of Nicolas of Antioch, one of the
"seven" chosen by the "twelve" to make distribution from
the common fund to the proselytes at Jerusalem (Acts ii. 44, 45, vi. 1-5),
hardly more than a few weeks, or perhaps months, after the Crucifixion;** and a
man "of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom" (verse 3).
Thus it would appear that the "Holy Ghost and wisdom" from on high,
were no more a shield against the accusation of "haeresy" than though
they had never overshadowed the "chosen ones" of the apostles.
It would be but too easy to
detect what kind of heresy it was that offended, even had we not other and more
authentic sources of information in the kabalistic writings. The accusation and
the precise nature of the "abomination" are stated in the second
chapter of the book of Revelation, verses 14, 15. The sin was merely --
marriage. John was a
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Revelation i and ii.
** Philip, the first martyr, was
one of the seven, and he was stoned about the year A.D. 34.
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"virgin"; several of
the Fathers assert the fact on the authority of tradition. Even Paul, the most
liberal and high-minded of them all, finds it difficult to reconcile the
position of a married man with that of a faithful servant of God. There is also
"a difference between a wife and a virgin."* The latter cares
"for the things of the Lord," and the former only for "how she
may please her husband." "If any man think that he behaveth uncomely
towards his virgin . . . let them marry. Nevertheless, he that standeth
steadfast in his heart, and hath power over his own will, and hath so decreed .
. . that he will keep his virgin, doeth well." So that he who marries
"doeth well . . . but he that giveth her not in marriage doeth
better." "Art thou loosed from a wife?" he asks, "seek not
a wife" (27). And remarking that according to his judgment, both will be
happier if they do not marry, he adds, as a weighty conclusion: "And I
think also that I have the spirit of God" (40). Far from this spirit of
tolerance are the words of John. According to his vision there are "but
the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed from the
earth," and "these are they which were not defiled with women; for
they were virgins."** This seems conclusive; for except Paul there is not
one of these primitive Nazari, there "set apart" and vowed to God,
who seemed to make a great difference between "sin" within the
relationship of legal marriage, and the "abomination" of adultery.
With such views and such
narrow-mindedness, it was but natural that these fanatics should have begun by
casting this iniquity as a slur in the faces of brethren, and then
"bearing on progressively" with their accusations. As we have already
shown, it is only Epiphanius whom we find giving such minute details as to the
Masonic "grips" and other signs of recognition among the Gnostics. He
had once belonged to their number, and therefore it was easy for him to furnish
particulars. Only how far the worthy Bishop is to be relied upon is a very
grave question. One need fathom human nature but very superficially to find
that there seldom was yet a traitor, a renegade, who, in a moment of danger
turned "State's evidence," who would not lie as remorselessly as he
betrayed. Men never forgive or relent toward those whom they injure. We hate
our victims in proportion to the harm we do them. This is a truth as old as the
world. On the other hand, it is preposterous to believe that such persons as
the Gnostics, who, according to Gibbon, were the wealthiest, proudest, most
polite, as well as the most learned "of the Christian name," were
guilty of the disgusting, libidinous actions of which Epiphanius delights to
accuse them. Were they even like that "set of tatterde-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 1 Corinthians, vii. 34.
** Revelation xiv. 3, 4.
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"HOLY KISSES" UNORTHODOX.
malions, almost naked, with
fierce looks," that Lucian describes as Paul's followers,* we would
hesitate to believe such an infamous story. How much less probable then that
men who were Platonists, as well as Christians, should have ever been guilty of
such preposterous rites.
Payne Knight seems never to
suspect the testimony of Epiphanius. He argues that "if we make allowance
for the willing exaggerations of religious hatred, and consequent popular
prejudice, the general conviction that these sectarians had rites and practices
of a licentious character appears too strong to be entirely disregarded."
If he draws an honest line of demarcation between the Gnostics of the first
three centuries and those mediaeval sects whose doctrines "rather closely
resembled modern communism," we have nothing to say. Only, we would beg
every critic to remember that if the Templars were accused of that most
"abominable crime" of applying the "holy kiss" to the root
of Baphomet's tail,** St. Augustine is also suspected, and on very good grounds,
too, of having allowed his community to go somewhat astray from the primitive
way of administering the "holy kiss" at the feast of the Eucharist.
The holy Bishop seems quite too anxious as to certain details of the ladies'
toilet for the "kiss" to be of a strictly orthodox nature.***
Wherever there lurks a true and sincere religious feeling, there is no room for
worldly details.
Considering the extraordinary
dislike exhibited from the first by Christians to all manner of cleanliness, we
cannot enough wonder at such a strange solicitude on the part of the holy
Bishop for his female parishioners, unless, indeed, we have to excuse it on the
ground of a lingering reminiscence of Manichean rites!
It would be hard, indeed, to
blame any writer for entertaining such suspicions of immorality as those above
noticed, when the records of many historians are at hand to help us to make an
impartial investigation. "Haeretics" are accused of crimes in which
the Church has more or less openly indulged even down to the beginning of our
century. In 1233 Pope Gregory IX. issued two bulls against the Stedingers
"for various heathen and magical practices,"**** and the latter, as a
matter of course, were exterminated in the name of Christ and his Holy Mother.
In 1282 a parish priest of Inverkeithing, named John, performed rites on Easter
day by far worse than "magical." Collecting a crowd of young girls,
he forced them to enter into "divine ecstasies" and Bacchanalian
fury, danc-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Philopatris, in Taylor's
"Diegesis," p. 376.
** King's "Gnostics and
their Remains."
*** "Aug. Serm.,"
clii. See Payne Knight's "Mystic Theology of the Ancients," p. 107.
**** Baronius: "Annales
Ecclesiastici," t. xxi., p. 89.
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ing the old Amazonian
circle-dance around the figure of the heathen "god of the gardens."
Notwithstanding that upon the complaint of some of his parishioners he was
cited before his bishop, he retained his benefice because he proved that such
was the common usage of the country.* The Waldenses, those "earliest
Protestants," were accused of the most unnatural horrors; burned,
butchered, and exterminated for calumnies heaped upon them by their accusers.
Meanwhile the latter, in open triumph, forming their heathen processions of
"Corpus Christi," with emblems modelled on those of Baal-Peor and
"Osiris," and every city in Southern France carrying, in yearly
processions on Easter days, loaves and cakes fashioned like the so-much-decried
emblems of the Hindu Sivites and Vishnites, as late as 1825!**
Deprived of their old means
for slandering Christian sects whose religious views differ from their own, it
is now the turn of the "heathen," Hindus, Chinese, and Japanese, to
share with the ancient religions the honor of having cast in their teeth
denunciations of their "libidinous religions."
Without going far for proofs
of equal if not surpassing immorality, we would remind Roman Catholic writers
of certain bas-reliefs on the doors of St. Peter's Cathedral. They are as
brazen-faced as the door itself; but less so than any author, who, knowing all
this, feigns to ignore historical facts. A long succession of Popes have
reposed their pastoral eyes upon these brazen pictures of the vilest obscenity,
through those many centuries, without ever finding the slightest necessity for
removing them. Quite the contrary; for we might name certain Popes and
Cardinals who made it a life-long study to copy these heathen suggestions of
"nature-gods," in practice as well as in theory.
In Polish Podolia there was
some years ago, in a Roman Catholic Church, a statue of Christ, in black
marble. It was reputed to perform miracles on certain days, such as having its
hair and beard grow in the sight of the public, and indulging in other less
innocent wonders. This show was finally prohibited by the Russian Government.
When in 1585 the Protestants took Embrun (Department of the Upper Alps), they
found in the churches of this town relics of such a character, that, as the
Chronicle expresses it "old Huguenot soldiers were seen to blush, several
weeks after, at the bare mention of the discovery." In a corner of the
Church of St. Fiacre, near Monceaux, in France, there was -- and it still is
there, if we mistake not -- a seat called "the chair of St. Fiacre,"
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Chron. de
Lanercost," ed. Stevenson, p. 109.
** Dulaure: "Histoire
Abregee des Differents Cultes," vol. ii., p. 285; Martezzi: "Pagani e
Christiani," p. 78.
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REFUTED.
which had the reputation of
conferring fecundity upon barren women. A rock in the vicinity of Athens, not
far from the so-called "Tomb of Socrates," is said to be possessed of
the same virtue. When, some twenty years since, the Queen Amelia, perhaps in a
merry moment, was said to have tried the experiment, there was no end of most
insulting abuse heaped upon her, by a Catholic Padre, on his way through Syra
to some mission. The Queen, he declared, was a "superstitious
heretic!" " an abominable witch!" "Jezebel using magic
arts." Much more the zealous missionary would doubtless have added, had he
not found himself, right in the middle of his vituperations, landed in a pool
of mud, outside the window. The virtuous elocutionist was forced to this
unusual transit by the strong arm of a Greek officer, who happened to enter the
room at the right moment.
There never was a great
religious reform that was not pure at the beginning. The first followers of
Buddha, as well as the disciples of Jesus, were all men of the highest
morality. The aversion felt by the reformers of all ages to vice under any
shape, is proved in the cases of Sakya-muni, Pythagoras, Plato, Jesus, St.
Paul, Ammonius Sakkas. The great Gnostic leaders -- if less successful -- were
not less virtuous in practice nor less morally pure. Marcion, Basilides,*
Valentinus, were renowned for their ascetic lives. The Nicolaitans, who, if
they did not belong to the great body of the Ophites, were numbered among the
small sects which were absorbed in it at the beginning of the second century,
owe their origin, as we have shown, to Nicolas of Antioch, "a man of
honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom." How absurd the idea that
such men would have instituted "libidinous rites." As well accuse
Jesus of having promoted the similar rites which we find practiced so
extensively by the mediaeval orthodox Christians behind the secure shelter of
monastic walls.
If, however, we are asked to
credit such an accusation against the Gnostics, an accusation transferred with
tenfold acrimony, centuries later, to the unfortunate heads of the Templars,
why should we not believe the same of the orthodox Christians? Minucius Felix
states that "the first Christians were accused by the world of inducing,
during the ceremony of the "Perfect Passover," each neophyte, on his
admission, to plunge a knife into an infant concealed under a heap of flour;
the body then serving for a banquet to the whole congregation. After they had
become the dominant party, they (the Christians) transferred this charge to
their own dissenters."**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Basilides is termed by
Tertullian a Platonist.
** C. W. King: "The
Gnostics and their Remains," p. 197, foot-note 1.
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The real crime of heterodoxy
is plainly stated by John in his Epistles and Gospel. "He that confesseth
not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh . . . is a deceiver and an
antichrist" (2 Epistle 7). In his previous Epistle, he teaches his flock
that there are two trinities (7, 8) -- in short, the Nazarene system.
The inference to be drawn from
all this is, that the made-up and dogmatic Christianity of the Constantinian
period is simply an offspring of the numerous conflicting sects, half-castes
themselves, born of Pagan parents. Each of these could claim representatives
converted to the so-called orthodox body of Christians. And, as every
newly-born dogma had to be carried out by the majority of votes, every sect
colored the main substance with its own hue, till the moment when the emperor
enforced this revealed olla-podrida, of which he evidently did not himself
understand a word, upon an unwilling world as the religion of Christ. Wearied
in the vain attempt to sound this fathomless bog of international speculations,
unable to appreciate a religion based on the pure spirituality of an ideal
conception, Christendom gave itself up to the adoration of brutal force as
represented by a Church backed up by Constantine. Since then, among the
thousand rites, dogmas, and ceremonies copied from Paganism, the Church can
claim but one invention as thoroughly original with her -- namely, the doctrine
of eternal damnation, and one custom, that of the anathema. The Pagans rejected
both with horror. "An execration is a fearful and grievous thing,"
says Plutarch. "Wherefore, the priestess at Athens was commended for
refusing to curse Alkibiades (for desecration of the Mysteries) when the people
required her to do it; for, she said, that she was a priestess of prayers and
not of curses."*
"Deep researches would
show," says Renan, "that nearly everything in Christianity is mere
baggage brought from the Pagan Mysteries. The primitive Christian worship is
nothing but a mystery. The whole interior police of the Church, the degrees of
initiation, the command of silence, and a crowd of phrases in the
ecclesiastical language, have no other origin. . . . The revolution which
overthrew Paganism seems at first glance . . . an absolute rupture with the
past . . . but the popular faith saved its most familiar symbols from
shipwreck. Christianity introduced, at first, so little change into the habits
of private and social life, that with great numbers in the fourth and fifth
centuries it remains uncertain whether they were Pagans or Christians; many
seem even to have pursued an irresolute course between the two worships."
Speaking further of Art, which formed an essential part of the ancient
religion, he says that "it had to break with scarce one of its traditions.
Primitive Christian art is
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Plutarch: "Roman
Questions," p. 44.
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HIS CENTURY.
really nothing but Pagan art
in its decay, or in its lower departments. The Good Shepherd of the catacombs
in Rome is a copy from the Aristeus, or from the Apollo Nomius, which figure in
the same posture on the Pagan sarcophagi, and still carries the flute of Pan in
the midst of the four half-naked seasons. On the Christian tombs of the
Cemetery of St. Calixtus, Orpheus charms the animals. Elsewhere, the Christ as
Jupiter-Pluto, and Mary as Proserpina, receive the souls that Mercury, wearing
the broad-brimmed hat and carrying in his hand the rod of the soul-guide
(psychopompos), brings to them, in presence of the three fates. Pegasus, the
symbol of the apotheosis; Psyche, the symbol of the immortal soul; Heaven,
personified by an old man, the river Jordan; and Victory, figure on a host of
Christian monuments."
As we have elsewhere shown,
the primitive Christian community was composed of small groups scattered about
and organized in secret societies, with passwords, grips, and signs. To avoid
the relentless persecutions of their enemies, they were obliged to seek safety
and hold meetings in deserted catacombs, the fastnesses of mountains, and other
safe retreats. Like disabilities were naturally encountered by each religious
reform at its inception. From the very first appearance of Jesus and his twelve
disciples, we see them congregating apart, having secure refuges in the
wilderness, and among friends in Bethany, and elsewhere. Were Christianity not
composed of "secret communities," from the start, history would have
more facts to record of its founder and disciples than it has.
How little Jesus had impressed
his personality upon his own century, is calculated to astound the inquirer.
Renan shows that Philo, who died toward the year 50, and who was born many
years earlier than Jesus, living all the while in Palestine while the
"glad tidings" were being preached all over the country, according to
the Gospels, had never heard of him! Josephus, the historian, who was born three
or four years after the death of Jesus, mentions his execution in a short
sentence, and even those few words were altered "by a Christian
hand," says the author of the Life of Jesus. Writing at the close of the
first century, when Paul, the learned propagandist, is said to have founded so
many churches, and Peter is alleged to have established the apostolic
succession, which the Irenaeo-Eusebian chronology shows to have already
included three bishops of Rome,* Josephus, the painstaking enumerator and
careful historian of even the most unimportant sects, entirely ignores the
existence of a Christian sect. Suetonius, secretary of Adrian, writing in the
first quarter of the second century, knows so little of Jesus or his history as
to say that the Emperor Claudius "banished all the Jews, who were
continually
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Linus, Anacletus, and
Clement.
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making disturbances, at the
instigation of one Crestus" meaning Christ, we must suppose.* The Emperor
Adrian himself, writing still later, was so little impressed with the tenets or
importance of the new sect, that in a letter to Servianus he shows that he
believes the Christians to be worshippers of Serapis.** "In the second
century," says C. W. King, "the syncretistic sects that had sprung up
in Alexandria, the very hot-bed of Gnosticism, found out in Serapis a prophetic
type of Christ as the Lord and Creator of all, and Judge of the living and the
dead."*** Thus, while the "Pagan" philosophers had never viewed
Serapis, or rather the abstract idea which was embodied in him, as otherwise
than a representation of the Anima Mundi, the Christians anthropomorphized the
"Son of God" and his "Father," finding no better model for
him than the idol of a Pagan myth! "There can be no doubt," remarks
the same author, "that the head of Serapis, marked, as the face is, by a
grave and pensive majesty, supplied the first idea for the conventional
portraits of the Saviour."****
In the notes taken by a
traveller -- whose episode with the monks on Mount Athos we have mentioned elsewhere
-- we find that, during his early life, Jesus had frequent intercourse with the
Essenes belonging to the Pythagorean school, and known as the Koinobi. We
believe it rather hazardous on the part of Renan to assert so dogmatically, as
he does, that Jesus "ignored the very name of Buddha, of Zoroaster, of
Plato"; that he had never read a Greek nor a Buddhistic book,
"although he had more than one element in him, which, unawares to himself,
proceeded from Buddhism, Parsism, and the Greek wisdom."***** This is
conceding half a miracle, and allowing as much to chance and coincidence. It is
an abuse of privilege, when an author, who claims to write historical facts,
draws convenient deductions from hypothetical premises, and then calls it a
biography -- a Life of Jesus. No more than any other compiler of legends
concerning the problematical history of the Nazarene prophet, has Renan one
inch of secure foothold upon which to maintain himself; nor can any one else
assert a claim to the contrary, except on inferential evidence. And yet, while
Renan has not one solitary fact to show that Jesus had never studied the
metaphysical tenets of Buddhism and Parsism, or heard of the philosophy of
Plato, his oppo-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Life of
Claudius," sect. 25.
** "Vita Saturnini
Vopiscus."
*** "The Gnostics and
their Remains," p. 68.
**** In Payne Knight's
"Ancient Art and Mythology," Serapis is represented as wearing his
hair long, "formally turned back and disposed in ringlets falling down
upon his breast and shoulders like that of women. His whole person, too, is
always enveloped in drapery reaching to his feet" (§ cxlv.). This is the
conventional picture of Christ.
***** "Vie de
Jesus," p. 405.
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DEITY.
nents have the best reasons in
the world to suspect the contrary. When they find that -- 1, all his sayings
are in a Pythagorean spirit, when not verbatim repetitions; 2, his code of
ethics is purely Buddhistic; 3, his mode of action and walk in life, Essenean;
and 4, his mystical mode of expression, his parables, and his ways, those of an
initiate, whether Grecian, Chaldean, or, Magian (for the "Perfect,"
who spoke the hidden wisdom, were of the same school of archaic learning the
world over), it is difficult to escape from the logical conclusion that he
belonged to that same body of initiates. It is a poor compliment paid the
Supreme, this forcing upon Him four gospels, in which, contradictory as they
often are, there is not a single narrative, sentence, or peculiar expression,
whose parallel may not be found in some older doctrine or philosophy. Surely,
the Almighty -- were it but to spare future generations their present
perplexity -- might have brought down with Him, at His first and only
incarnation on earth, something original -- something that would trace a
distinct line of demarcation between Himself and the score or so of incarnate
Pagan gods, who had been born of virgins, had all been saviours, and were
either killed, or otherwise sacrificed themselves for humanity.
Too much has already been
conceded to the emotional side of the story. What the world needs is a less
exalted, but more faithful view of a personage, in whose favor nearly half of
Christendom has dethroned the Almighty. It is not the erudite, world-famous
scholar, whom we question for what we find in his Vie de Jesus, nor is it one
of his historical statements. We simply challenge a few unwarranted and
untenable assertions that have found their way past the emotional narrator,
into the otherwise beautiful pages of the work -- a life built altogether on
mere probabilities, and yet that of one who, if accepted as an historical
personage, has far greater claims upon our love and veneration, fallible as he
is with all his greatness, than if we figure him as an omnipotent God. It is
but in the latter character that Jesus must be regarded by every reverential
mind as a failure.
Notwithstanding the paucity of
old philosophical works now extant, we could find no end of instances of
perfect identity between Pythagorean, Hindu, and New Testament sayings. There
is no lack of proofs upon this point. What is needed is a Christian public that
will examine what will be offered, and show common honesty in rendering its
verdict. Bigotry has had its day, and done its worst. "We need not be
frightened," says Professor Muller, "if we discover traces of truth,
traces even of Christian truth, among the sages and lawgivers of other
nations."
After reading the following
philosophical aphorisms, who can believe that Jesus and Paul had never read the
Grecian and Indian philosophers?
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[[Column 1]]
SENTENCES FROM SEXTUS, THE
PYTHAGOREAN, AND OTHER HEATHEN.
1. "Possess not
treasures, but those things which no one can take from you."
2. "It is better for a
part of the body which contains purulent matter, and threatens to infect the
whole, to be burnt, than to continue so in another state (life)."
3. "You have in yourself something
similar to God, and therefore use yourself as the temple of God."
4. "The greatest honor
which can be paid to God, is to know and imitate his perfection."
5. "What I do not wish
men to do to me, I also wish not to do to men" (Analects of Confucius, p.
76; See Max Muller's The Works of Confucius).
6. "The moon shines even
in the house of the wicked" (Manu).
7. "They who give, have
things given to them; those who withhold, have things taken from them"
(Ibid.).
8. "Purity of mind alone
sees God" (Ibid.) -- still a popular saying in India.
---------
[[Column 2]]
VERSES FROM THE NEW
TESTAMENT.*
1. "Lay not up for
yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where
thieves break through and steal" (Matthew vi. 19).
2. "And if thy hand
offend thee, cut it off; it is better for thee to enter unto life maimed, than
go to hell," etc. (Mark ix. 43).
3. "Know ye not ye are
the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" (1
Corinthians, iii. 16).
4. "That ye may be the children
of your Father, which is in Heaven, be ye perfect even as your Father is
perfect" (Matthew v. 45-48).
5. "Do ye unto others as
ye would that others should do to you."
6. "He maketh his sun to
rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the
unjust" (Matthew v. 45).
7. "Whosoever hath, to
him shall be given . . . but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken
away" (Matthew xiii. 12).
8. "Blessed are the pure
in heart, for they shall see God" (Matthew v. 8).
---------
Plato did not conceal the fact
that he derived his best philosophical doctrines from Pythagoras, and that
himself was merely the first to reduce them to systematic order, occasionally
interweaving with them metaphysical speculations of his own. But Pythagoras himself
got his recondite doctrines, first from the descendants of Mochus, and later,
from the Brahmans of India. He was also initiated into the Mysteries among the
hierophants of Thebes, the Persian and Chaldean Magi. Thus, step by step do we
trace the origin of most of our Christian doctrines to Middle Asia. Drop out
from Christianity the personality of Jesus, so sublime, because of its
unparalleled simplicity, and what remains? History and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Pirke Aboth";
a Collection of Proverbs and Sentences of the old Jewish Teachers, in which
many New Testament sayings are found.
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COPIED FROM BUDDHA.
comparative theology echo back
the melancholy answer, "A crumbling skeleton formed of the oldest Pagan
myths!"
While the mythical birth and life
of Jesus are a faithful copy of those of the Brahmanical Christna, his
historical character of a religious reformer in Palestine is the true type of
Buddha in India. In more than one respect their great resemblance in
philanthropic and spiritual aspirations, as well as external circumstances is
truly striking. Though the son of a king, while Jesus was but a carpenter,
Buddha was not of the high Brahmanical caste by birth. Like Jesus, he felt
dissatisfied with the dogmatic spirit of the religion of his country, the
intolerance and hypocrisy of the priesthood, their outward show of devotion,
and their useless ceremonials and prayers. As Buddha broke violently through
the traditional laws and rules of the Brahmans, so did Jesus declare war
against the Pharisees, and the proud Sadducees. What the Nazarene did as a
consequence of his humble birth and position, Buddha did as a voluntary
penance. He travelled about as a beggar; and -- again like Jesus -- later in
life he sought by preference the companionship of publicans and sinners. Each
aimed at a social as well as at a religious reform; and giving a death-blow to
the old religions of his countries, each became the founder of a new one.
"The reform of
Buddha," says Max Muller, "had originally much more of a social than
of a religious character. The most important element of Buddhist reform has
always been its social and moral code, not its metaphysical theories. That
moral code is one of the most perfect which the world has ever known . . . and
he whose meditations had been how to deliver the soul of man from misery and
the fear of death, had delivered the people of India from a degrading thraldom
and from priestly tyranny." Further, the lecturer adds that were it
otherwise, "Buddha might have taught whatever philosophy he pleased, and
we should hardly have heard his name. The people would not have minded him, and
his system would only have been a drop in the ocean of philosophic speculation
by which India was deluged at all times."*
The same with Jesus. While Philo,
whom Renan calls Jesus's elder brother, Hillel, Shammai, and Gamaliel, are
hardly mentioned -- Jesus has become a God! And still, pure and divine as was
the moral code taught by Christ, it never could have borne comparison with that
of Buddha, but for the tragedy of Calvary. That which helped forward the
deification of Jesus was his dramatic death, the voluntary sacrifice of his
life, alleged to have been made for the sake of mankind, and the later
convenient dogma of the atonement, invented by the Christians. In
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Buddhism," p.
217.
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India, where life is valued as
of no account, the crucifixion would have produced little effect, if any. In a
country where -- as all the Indianists are well aware -- religious fanatics set
themselves to dying by inches, in penances lasting for years; where the most
fearful macerations are self-inflicted by fakirs; where young and delicate
widows, in a spirit of bravado against the government, as much as out of
religious fanaticism, mount the funeral pile with a smile on their face; where,
to quote the words of the great lecturer, "Men in the prime of life throw
themselves under the car of Juggernath, to be crushed to death by the idol they
believe in; where the plaintiff who cannot get redress starves himself to death
at the door of his judge; where the philosopher who thinks he has learned all
which this world can teach him, and who longs for absorption into the Deity,
quietly steps into the Ganges, in order to arrive at the other shore of
existence,"* in such a country even a voluntary crucifixion would have
passed unnoticed. In Judea, and even among braver nations than the Jews -- the
Romans and the Greeks -- where every one clung more or less to life, and most
people would have fought for it with desperation, the tragical end of the great
Reformer was calculated to produce a profound impression. The names of even
such minor heroes as Mutius Scaevola, Horatius Cocles, the mother of the
Gracchi, and others, have descended to posterity; and, during our school-days,
as well as later in life, their histories have awakened our sympathy and
commanded a reverential admiration. But, can we ever forget the scornful smile
of certain Hindus, at Benares, when an English lady, the wife of a clergyman,
tried to impress them with the greatness of the sacrifice of Jesus, in giving
his life for us? Then, for the first time the idea struck us how much the
pathos of the great drama of Calvary had to do with subsequent events in the
foundation of Christianity. Even the imaginative Renan was moved by this feeling
to write in the last chapter of his Vie de Jesus, a few pages of singular and
sympathetic beauty.**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Max Muller: "Christ and
other Masters"; "Chips," vol. i.
** The "Life of
Jesus" by Strauss, which Renan calls "un livre, commode, exact,
spirituel et consciencieux" (a handy, exact, witty, and conscientious
book), rude and iconoclastic as it is, is nevertheless in many ways preferable
to the "Vie de Jesus," of the French author. Laying aside the
intrinsic and historical value of the two works -- with which we have nothing
to do, we now simply point to Renan's distorted outline-sketch of Jesus. We
cannot think what led Renan into such an erroneous delineation of character.
Few of those who, while rejecting the divinity of the Nazarene prophet, still
believe that he is no myth, can read the work without experiencing an uneasy,
and even angry feeling at such a psychological mutilation. He makes of Jesus a
sort of sentimental ninny, a theatrical simpleton, enamored of his own poetical
divagations and speeches, wanting every one to adore him, and finally caught in
the snares of his enemies. Such was not Jesus, the Jewish philanthropist, the
adept and mystic of a
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APOLLONIUS COMPARED.
Apollonius, a contemporary of
Jesus of Nazareth, was, like him, an enthusiastic founder of a new spiritual
school. Perhaps less metaphysical and more practical than Jesus, less tender
and perfect in his nature, he nevertheless inculcated the same quintessence of
spirituality, and the same high moral truths. His great mistake was to confine
them too closely to the higher classes of society. While to the poor and the
humble Jesus preached "Peace on earth and good will to men,"
Apollonius was the friend of kings, and moved with the aristocracy. He was born
among the latter, and himself a man of wealth, while the "Son of
man," representing the people, "had not where to lay his head";
nevertheless, the two "miracle-workers" exhibited striking similarity
of purpose. Still earlier than Apollonius had appeared Simon Magus, called
"the great Power of God." His "miracles" are both more
wonderful, more varied, and better attested than those either of the apostles
or of the Galilean philosopher himself. Materialism denies the fact in both
cases, but history affirms. Apollonius followed both; and how great and
renowned were his miraculous works in comparison with those of the alleged
founder of Christianity as the kabalists claim, we have history again, and
Justin Martyr, to corroborate.*
Like Buddha and Jesus,
Apollonius was the uncompromising enemy of all outward show of piety, all
display of useless religious ceremonies and hypocrisy. If, like the Christian
Saviour, the sage of Tyana had by preference sought the companionship of the
poor and humble; and if instead of dying comfortably, at over one hundred years
of age, he had been a voluntary martyr, proclaiming divine Truth from a
cross,** his
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] school now forgotten by the Christians and the Church -- if it ever was
known to her; the hero, who preferred even to risk death, rather than withhold
some truths which he believed would benefit humanity. We prefer Strauss who
openly names him an impostor and a pretender, occasionally calling in doubt his
very existence; but who at least spares him that ridiculous color of
sentimentalism in which Renan paints him.
* See Chap. iii., p. 97.
** In a recent work, called
the "World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors" (by Mr. Kersey Graves) which
attracted our notice by its title, we were indeed startled as we were
forewarned on the title-page we should be by historical evidences to be found
neither in history nor tradition. Apollonius, who is represented in it as one
of these sixteen "saviours," is shown by the author as finally
"crucified . . . having risen from the dead . . . appearing to his
disciples after his resurrection, and" -- like Christ again --
"convincing a Tommy (?) Didymus" by getting him to feel the print of
the nails on his hands and feet (see note, p. 268). To begin with, neither
Philostratus, the biographer of Apollonius, nor history says any such thing.
Though the precise time of his death is unknown, no disciple of Apollonius ever
said that he was either crucified, or appeared to them. So much for one
"Saviour." After that we are told that Gautama-Buddha, whose life and
death have been so minutely described by several authorities, Barthelemy St.
Hilaire included -- was also "crucified by his enemies near the foot of
the
[[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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blood might have proved as
efficacious for the subsequent dissemination of spiritual doctrines as that of
the Christian Messiah.
The calumnies set afloat
against Apollonius, were as numerous as they were false. So late as eighteen
centuries after his death he was defamed by Bishop Douglas in his work against
miracles. In this the Right Reverend bishop crushed himself against historical
facts. If we study the question with a dispassionate mind, we will soon
perceive that the ethics of Gautama-Buddha, Plato, Apollonius, Jesus, Ammonius
Sakkas, and his disciples, were all based on the same mystic philosophy. That
all worshipped one God, whether they considered Him as the "Father"
of humanity, who lives in man as man lives in Him, or as the Incomprehensible Creative
Principle; all led God-like lives. Ammonius, speaking of his philosophy, taught
that their school dated from the days of Hermes, who brought his wisdom from
India. It was the same mystical contemplation throughout, as that of the Yogin:
the communion of the Brahman with his own luminous Self -- the
"Atman." And this Hindu term is again kabalistic, par excellence. Who
is "Self"? is asked in the Rig-Veda; "Self is the Lord of all
things . . . all things are contained in this Self; all selves are contained in
this Self. Brahman itself is but Self,"* is the answer. Says Idra Rabba:
"All things are Himself, and Himself is concealed on every side."***
The "Adam Kadmon of the kabalists contains in himself all the souls of the
Israelites, and he is himself in every soul," says the Sohar.**** The
groundwork of the Eclectic School was thus identical with the doctrines of the
Yogin, the Hindu mys-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] Nepal mountains" (see p. 107); while the Buddhist books,
history, and scientific research tell us, through the lips of Max Muller and a
host of Orientalists, that "Gautama-Buddha, (Sakya-muni) died near the
Ganges. . . . He had nearly reached the city of Kusinagara, when his vital
strength began to fail. He halted in a forest, and while sitting under a sal
tree he gave up the ghost" (Max Muller: "Chips from a German
Workshop," vol. i., p. 213). The references of Mr. Graves to Higgins and
Sir W. Jones, in some of his hazardous speculations, prove nothing. Max Muller
shows some antiquated authorities writing elaborate books " . . . in order
to prove that Buddha had been in reality the Thoth of the Egyptians; that he
was Mercury, or Wodan, or Zoroaster, or Pythagoras. . . . Even Sir W. Jones . .
. identified Buddha first with Odin and afterwards with Shishak." We are
in the nineteenth century, not in the eighteenth; and though to write books on
the authority of the earliest Orientalists may in one sense be viewed as a mark
of respect for old age, it is not always safe to try the experiment in our
times. Hence this highly instructive volume lacks one important feature which
would have made it still more interesting. The author should have added after
Prometheus the "Roman," and Alcides the Egyptian god (p. 266) a
seventeenth "crucified Saviour" to the list, "Venus, god of the
war," introduced to an admiring world by Mr. Artemus Ward the
"showman"!
*
"Khandogya-upanishad," viii., 3, 4; Max Muller: "Veda."
** "Idra Rabba," x.,
117.
*** Introd. in
"Sohar," pp. 305-312.
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HILAIRE ON THE TWO CHRISTS.
tics, and the earlier Buddhism
of the disciples of Gautama. And when Jesus assured his disciples that
"the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it seeth Him
not, neither knoweth Him," dwells with and in them, who "are in Him
and He in them,"* he but expounded the same tenet that we find running
through every philosophy worthy of that name.
Laboulaye, the learned and
skeptical French savant, does not believe a word of the miraculous portion of
Buddha's life; nevertheless, he has the candor to speak of Gautama as being
only second to Christ in the great purity of his ethics and personal morality.
For both of these opinions he is respectfully rebuked by des Mousseaux. Vexed
at this scientific contradiction of his accusations of demonolatry against
Gautama-Buddha, he assures his readers that "ce savant distingue n'a point
etudie cette question."**
"I do not hesitate to
say," remarks in his turn Barthelemy St. Hilaire, "that, except
Christ alone, there is not among the founders of religions, a figure either more
pure or more touching than that of Buddha. His life is spotless. His constant
heroism equals his convictions. . . . He is the perfect model of all the
virtues he preaches; his abnegation, his charity, his unalterable sweetness of
disposition, do not fail him for one instant. He abandoned, at the age of
twenty-nine, his father's court to become a monk and a beggar . . . and when he
dies in the arms of his disciples, it is with the serenity of a sage who
practiced virtue all his life, and who dies convinced of having found the
truth."*** This deserved panegyric is no stronger than the one which
Laboulaye himself pronounced, and which occasioned des Mousseaux's wrath.
"It is more than difficult," adds the former, "to understand how
men not assisted by revelation could have soared so high and approached so near
the truth."**** Curious that there should be so many lofty souls "not
assisted by revelation"!
And why should any one feel
surprised that Gautama could die with philosophical serenity? As the kabalists
justly say, "Death does not exist, and man never steps outside of
universal life. Those whom we think dead live still in us, as we live in them.
. . . The more one lives for his kind, the less need he fear to die."*****
And, we might add, that he who lives for humanity does even more than him who
dies for it.
The Ineffable name, in the
search for which so many kabalists -- unacquainted with any Oriental or even
European adept -- vainly consume their knowledge and lives, dwells latent in
the heart of every man. This
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* John xiv.
** "Les Hauts Phenomenes
de la Magie," p. 74.
*** Barthelemy St. Hilaire:
"Le Buddha et sa Religion," Paris, 1860.
**** "Journal des
Debats," Avril, 1853.
***** "Dogme et Rituel de
la Haute Magie."
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mirific name which, according
to the most ancient oracles, "rushes into the infinite worlds [[achoimeto
srophaligni]]," can be obtained in a twofold way: by regular initiation,
and through the "small voice" which Elijah heard in the cave of
Horeb, the mount of God. And "when Elijah heard it he wrapped his face in
his mantle and stood in the entering of the cave. And behold there came the
voice."
When Apollonius of Tyana
desired to hear the "small voice," he used to wrap himself up
entirely in a mantle of fine wool, on which he placed both his feet, after
having performed certain magnetic passes, and pronounced not the
"name" but an invocation well known to every adept. Then he drew the
mantle over his head and face, and his translucid or astral spirit was free. On
ordinary occasions he wore wool no more than the priests of the temples. The
possession of the secret combination of the "name" gave the
hierophant supreme power over every being, human or otherwise, inferior to
himself in soul-strength. Hence, when Max Muller tells us of the Quiche
"Hidden majesty which was never to be opened by human hands," the
kabalist perfectly understands what was meant by the expression, and is not at
all surprised to hear even this most erudite philologist exclaim: "What it
was we do not know!"
We cannot too often repeat
that it is only through the doctrines of the more ancient philosophies that the
religion preached by Jesus may be understood. It is through Pythagoras,
Confucius, and Plato, that we can comprehend the idea which underlies the term
"Father" in the New Testament. Plato's ideal of the Deity, whom he
terms the one everlasting, invisible God, the Fashioner and Father of all
things,* is rather the "Father" of Jesus. It is this Divine Being of
whom the Grecian sage says that He can neither be envious nor the originator of
evil, for He can produce nothing but what is good and just,** is certainly not
the Mosaic Jehovah, the "jealous God," but the God of Jesus, who
"alone is good." He extols His all-embracing, divine power,*** and
His omnipotence, but at the same time intimates that, as He is unchangeable, He
can never desire to change his laws, i.e., to extirpate evil from the world
through a miracle.**** He is omniscient, and nothing escapes His watchful
eye.***** His justice, which we find embodied in the law of compensation and
retribution, will leave no crime without punishment, no virtue without its
reward;****** and therefore he declares that the only way to honor God is to
cultivate moral purity. He utterly rejects not only the anthropomorphic
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Timaeus";
"Tolit.," 269, E.
** "Timaeus," 29;
"Phaedrus," 182, 247; "Repub.," ii., 379, B.
*** "Laws," iv.,
715, E.; x., 901, C.
**** "Repub.," ii.,
381; "Thaet.," 176, A.
***** "Laws," x.,
901, D.
****** "Laws," iv.,
716, A.; "Repub.," x., 613, A.
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HUC.
idea that God could have a
material body,* but "rejects with disgust those fables which ascribe
passions, quarrels, and crimes of all sorts to the minor gods."** He
indignantly denies that God allows Himself to be propitiated, or rather bribed,
by prayers and sacrifices.***
The Phaedrus of Plato displays
all that man once was, and that which he may yet become again. "Before
man's spirit sank into sensuality and was embodied with it through the loss of
his wings, he lived among the gods in the airy [spiritual] world where everything
is true and pure." In the Timaeus he says that "there was a time when
mankind did not perpetuate itself, but lived as pure spirits." In the
future world, says Jesus, "they neither marry nor are given in
marriage," but "live as the angels of God in Heaven."
The researches of Laboulaye,
Anquetil Duperron, Colebrooke, Barthelemy St. Hilaire, Max Muller, Spiegel,
Burnouf, Wilson, and so many other linguists, have brought some of the truth to
light. And now that the difficulties of the Sanscrit, the Thibetan, the
Singhalese, the Zend, the Pehlevi, the Chinese, and even of the Burmese, are
partially conquered, and the Vedas, and the Zend-Avesta, the Buddhist texts,
and even Kapila's Sutras are translated, a door is thrown wide open, which,
once passed, must close forever behind any speculative or ignorant calumniators
of the old religions. Even till the present time, the clergy have, to use the
words of Max Muller -- "generally appealed to the deviltries and orgies of
heathen worship . . . but they have seldom, if ever, endeavored to discover the
true and original character of the strange forms of faith and worship which
they call the work of the devil."**** When we read the true history of
Buddha and Buddhism, by Muller, and the enthusiastic opinions of both expressed
by Barthelemy St. Hilaire, and Laboulaye; and when, finally, a Popish
missionary, an eye-witness, and one who least of all can be accused of
partiality to the Buddhists -- the Abbe Huc, we mean -- finds occasion for
nothing but admiration for the high individual character of these
"devil-worshippers"; we must consider Sakya-muni's philosophy as
something more than the religion of fetishism and atheism, which the Catholics
would have us believe it. Huc was a missionary and it was his first duty to
regard Buddhism as no better than an outgrowth of the worship of Satan. The
poor Abbe was struck off the list of missionaries at Rome,***** after his
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Phaedrus," 246,
C.
** E. Zeller: "Plato and
the Old Academy."
*** "Laws," x., 905,
D.
**** Max Muller:
"Buddhism," April, 1862.
***** Of the Abbe Huc, Max
Muller thus wrote in his "Chips from a German Workshop," vol. i., p.
187: "The late Abbe Huc pointed out the similarities between the Buddhist
and Roman Catholic ceremonials with such a naivete, that, to his surprise, he
found his delightful 'Travels in Thibet' placed on the 'Index.' 'One cannot
fail
[[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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book of travels was published.
This illustrates how little we may expect to learn the truth about the religions
of other people, through missionaries, when their accounts are first revised by
the superior ecclesiastical authorities, and the former severely punished for
telling the truth.
When these men who have been
and still are often termed "the obscene ascetics," the devotees of
different sects of India in short, generally termed "Yogi," were
asked by Marco Polo, "how it comes that they are not ashamed to go stark
naked as they do?" they answered the inquirer of the thirteenth century as
a missionary of the nineteenth was answered. "We go naked," they say,
"because naked we came into the world, and we desire to have nothing about
us that is of this world. Moreover, we have no sin of the flesh to be conscious
of, and therefore, we are not ashamed of our nakedness any more than you are to
show your hand or your face. You who are conscious of the sins of the flesh, do
well to have shame, and to cover your nakedness."*
One could make a curious list
of the excuses and explanations of the clergy to account for similarities daily
discovered between Romanism and heathen religions. Yet the summary would
invariably lead to one sweeping claim: The doctrines of Christianity were
plagiarized by the Pagans the world over! Plato and his older Academy stole the
ideas from the Christian revelation -- said the Alexandrian Fathers!! The
Brahmans and Manu borrowed from the Jesuit missionaries, and the Bhagaved-gita
was the production of Father Calmet, who transformed Christ and John into
Christna and Arjuna to fit the Hindu mind!! The trifling fact that Buddhism and
Platonism both antedated Christianity, and the Vedas had already degenerated
into Brahmanism before the days of Moses, makes no difference. The same with
regard to Apollonius of Tyana. Although his thaumaturgical powers could not be
denied in the face of the testimony of emperors, their courts, and the
populations of several cities; and although few of these had ever heard of the
Nazarene prophet whose "miracles" had been witnessed by a few
apostles only, whose very individualities remain to this day a problem in
history, yet Apollonius has to be accepted as the "monkey of Christ."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] being struck,' he writes, 'with their great resemblance with
the Catholicism. The bishop's crosier, the mitre, the dalmatic, the round hat
that the great lamas wear in travel . . . the mass, the double choir, the
psalmody, the exorcisms, the censer with five chains to it, opening and shutting
at will, the blessings of the lamas, who extend their right hands over the head
of the faithful ones, the rosary, the celibacy of the clergy, the penances and
retreats, the cultus of the Saints, the fasting, the processions, the litanies,
the holy water; such are the similarities of the Buddhists with ourselves.' He
might have added tonsure, relics, and the confessional."
* "Crawford's Mission to
Siam," p. 182.
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PRIESTS.
If of really pious, good, and
honest men, many are yet found among the Catholic, Greek, and Protestant
clergy, whose sincere faith has the best of their reasoning powers, and who
having never been among heathen populations, are unjust only through ignorance,
it is not so with the missionaries. The invariable subterfuge of the latter is
to attribute to demonolatry the really Christ-like life of the Hindu and
Buddhist ascetics and many of the lamas. Years of sojourn among
"heathen" nations, in China, Tartary, Thibet, and Hindustan have
furnished them with ample evidence how unjustly the so-called idolators have
been slandered. The missionaries have not even the excuse of sincere faith to
give the world that they mislead; and, with very few exceptions, one may boldly
paraphrase the remark made by Garibaldi, and say that: "A priest knows
himself to be an impostor, unless he be a fool, or have been taught to lie from
boyhood."
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CHAPTER VIII.
"Christian and Catholic
sons may accuse their fathers of the crime of heresy . . . although they may
know that their parents will be burnt with fire and put to death for it. . . .
And not only may they refuse them food, if they attempt to turn them from the
Catholic faith, BUT THEY MAY ALSO JUSTLY KILL THEM." -- Jesuit Precept (F.
STEPHEN FAGUNDEZ, in Proecepta Decalogi. Lugduni, 1640).
"Most Wise. -- What hour
is it?
"Respect. K. S. Warden.
-- It is the first hour of the day, the time when the veil of the temple was
rent asunder, when darkness and consternation were spread over the earth --
when the light was darkened -- when the implements of Masonry were broken --
when the flaming star disappeared -- when the cubic stone was broken -- when
the 'WORD' was lost." -- Magna est Veritas et Praevalebit.
[[Diagram]] -- JAH-BUH-LUN.
THE greatest of the kabalistic
works of the Hebrews -- Sohar [[Heb char]] -- was compiled by Rabbi Simeon
Ben-Iochai. According to some critics, this was done years before the Christian
era; according to others only after the destruction of the temple. However, it
was completed only by the son of Simeon, Rabbi Eleazar, and his secretary,
Rabbi Abba; for the work is so immense and the subjects treated so abstruse
that even the whole life of this Rabbi, called the Prince of kabalists, did not
suffice for the task. On account of its being known that he was in possession
of this knowledge, and of the Mercaba, which insured the reception of the
"Word," his very life was endangered, and he had to fly to the
wilderness, where he lived in a cave for twelve years, surrounded by faithful
disciples, and finally died there amid signs and wonders.*
But voluminous as is the work,
and containing as it does the main points of the secret and oral tradition, it
still does not embrace it all. It
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Many are the marvels
recorded as having taken place at his death, or we should rather say his
translation; for he did not die as others do, but having suddenly disappeared, while
a dazzling light filled the cavern with glory, his body was again seen upon its
subsidence. When this heavenly light gave place to the habitual semi-darkness
of the gloomy cave -- then only, says Ginsburg, "the disciples of Israel
perceived that the lamp of Israel was extinguished." His biographers tell
us that there were voices heard from Heaven during the preparation for his
funeral and at his interment. When the coffin was lowered down into the deep
cave excavated for it, a flame broke out from it, and a voice mighty and
majestic pronounced these words in the air: "This is he who caused the
earth to quake, and the kingdoms to shake!"
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SIMEON.
is well known that this
venerable kabalist never imparted the most important points of his doctrine
otherwise than orally, and to a very limited number of friends and disciples,
including his only son. Therefore, without the final initiation into the
Mercaba the study of the Kabala will be ever incomplete, and the Mercaba can be
taught only in "darkness, in a deserted place, and after many and terrific
trials." Since the death of Simeon Ben-Iochai this hidden doctrine has
remained an inviolate secret for the outside world. Delivered only as a
mystery, it was communicated to the candidate orally, "face to face and
mouth to ear."
This Masonic commandment,
"mouth to ear, and the word at low breath," is an inheritance from
the Tanaim and the old Pagan Mysteries. Its modern use must certainly be due to
the indiscretion of some renegade kabalist, though the "word" itself
is but a "substitute" for the "lost word," and is a
comparatively modern invention, as we will further show. The real sentence has
remained forever in the sole possession of the adepts of various countries of
the Eastern and Western hemispheres. Only a limited number among the chiefs of
the Templars, and some Rosicrucians of the seventeenth century, always in close
relations with Arabian alchemists and initiates, could really boast of its
possession. From the seventh to the fifteenth centuries there was no one who
could claim it in Europe; and although there had been alchemists before the
days of Paracelsus, he was the first who had passed through the true
initiation, that last ceremony which conferred on the adept the power of
travelling toward the "burning bush" over the holy ground, and to
"burn the golden calf in the fire, grind it to powder, and strow it upon
the water." Verily, then, this magic water, and the "lost word,"
resuscitated more than one of the pre-Mosaic Adonirams, Gedaliahs, and Hiram
Abiffs. The real word now substituted by Mac Benac and Mah was used ages before
its pseudo-magical effect was tried on the "widow's sons" of the last
two centuries. Who was, in fact, the first operative Mason of any consequence?
Elias Ashmole, the last of the Rosicrucians and alchemists. Admitted to the
freedom of the Operative Masons' Company in London, in 1646, he died in 1692.
At that time Masonry was not what it became later; it was neither a political
nor a Christian institution, but a true secret organization, which admitted
into the ties of fellowship all men anxious to obtain the priceless boon of
liberty of conscience, and avoid clerical persecution.* Not until about thirty
years after his death did what is now termed modern Freemasonry see the light.
It was born on the 24th day of June, 1717, in the Apple-tree Tavern, Charles
Street, Covent Garden, London. And it was then, as we are told in Anderson's
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Plot: "Natural History
of Staffordshire." Published in 1666.
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Constitutions, that the only
four lodges in the south of England elected Anthony Sayer first Grand Master of
Masons. Notwithstanding its great youth, this grand lodge has ever claimed the
acknowledgment of its supremacy by the whole body of the fraternity throughout
the whole world, as the Latin inscription on the plate put beneath the
corner-stone of Freemasons' Hall, London, in 1775, would tell to those who
could see it. But of this more anon.
In Die Kabbala, by Franck, the
author, following its "esoteric ravings," as he expresses it, gives
us, in addition to the translations, his commentaries. Speaking of his
predecessors, he says that Simeon Ben-Iochai mentions repeatedly what the
"companions" have taught in the older works. And the author cites one
"Ieba, the old, and Hamnuna, the old."* But what the two
"old" ones mean, or who they were, in fact, he tells us not, for he
does not know himself.
Among the venerable sect of
the Tanaim, or rather the Tananim, the wise men, there were those who taught
the secrets practically and initiated some disciples into the grand and final
Mystery. But the Mishna Hagiga, 2d section, say that the table of contents of
the Mercaba "must only be delivered to wise old ones."** The Gemara
is still more dogmatic. "The more important secrets of the Mysteries were
not even revealed to all priests. Alone the initiates had them divulged."
And so we find the same great secresy prevalent in every ancient religion.
But, as we see, neither the
Sohar nor any other kabalistic volume contains merely Jewish wisdom. The
doctrine itself being the result of whole millenniums of thought, is therefore
the joint property of adepts of every nation under the sun. Nevertheless, the
Sohar teaches practical occultism more than any other work on that subject; not
as it is translated though, and commented upon by its various critics, but with
the secret signs on its margins. These signs contain the hidden instructions,
apart from the metaphysical interpretations and apparent absurdities so fully
credited by Josephus, who was never initiated, and gave out the dead letter as
he had received it.***
The real practical magic
contained in the Sohar and other kabalistic works, is only of use to those who
read it within. The Christian apos-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Die Kabbala," 75;
"Sod," vol. ii.
** "Die Kabbala,"
47.
*** He relates how Rabbi
Eleazar, in the presence of Vespasian and his officers, expelled demons from
several men by merely applying to the nose of the demoniac one of the number of
roots recommended by King Solomon! The distinguished historian assures us that
the Rabbi drew out the devils through the nostrils of the patients in the name
of Solomon and by the power of the incantations composed by the king-kabalist.
Josephus: "Antiquities," VIII., ii., 5.
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INITIATION ALLEGORIES.
tles -- at least, those who
are said to have produced "miracles" at will* -- had to be acquainted
with this science. It ill-behooves a Christian to look with horror or derision
upon "magic" gems, amulets, and other talismans against the
"evil eye," which serve as charms to exercise a mysterious influence,
either on the possessor, or the person whom the magician desires to control.
There are still extant a number of such charmed amulets in public and private
collections of antiquities. Illustrations of convex gems, with mysterious
legends -- the meaning of which baffles all scientific inquiry -- are given by
many collectors. King shows several such in his Gnostics, and he describes a
white carnelian (chalcedony), covered on both sides with interminable legends,
to interpret which would ever prove a failure; yes, in every case, perhaps, but
that of a Hermetic student or an adept. But we refer the reader to his
interesting work, and the talismans described in his plates, to show that even
the "Seer of Patmos" himself was well-versed in this kabalistic
science of talismans and gems. St. John clearly alludes to the potent
"white carnelian" -- a gem well-known among adepts, as the "alba
petra," or the stone of initiation, on which the word "prize" is
generally found engraved, as it was given to the candidate who had successfully
passed through all the preliminary trials of a neophyte. The fact is, that no
less than the Book of Job, the whole Revelation, is simply an allegorical
narrative of the Mysteries and initiation therein of a candidate, who is John
himself. No high Mason, well versed in the different degrees, can fail to see
it. The numbers seven, twelve, and others are all so many lights thrown over
the obscurity of the work. Paracelsus maintained the same some centuries ago.
And when we find the "one like unto the Son of man" saying (chap. ii.
17): "To him that overcometh, will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and
will give him a WHITE STONE, and in the stone a new name written" -- the
word -- which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it, what Master Mason can
doubt but it refers to the last head-line of this chapter?
In the pre-Christian Mithraic
Mysteries, the candidate who fearlessly overcame the "twelve
Tortures," which preceded the final initiation, received a small round
cake or wafer of unleavened bread, symbolizing, in one of its meanings, the
solar disk and known as the heavenly bread or "manna," and having
figures traced on it. A lamb, or a bull was killed, and with the blood the
candidate had to be sprinkled, as in the case of the Emperor Julian's
initiation. The seven rules or mysteries
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* There are unconscious
miracles produced sometimes, which, like the phenomena now called
"Spiritual," are caused through natural cosmic powers, mesmerism,
electricity, and the invisible beings who are always at work around us, whether
they be human or elementary spirits.
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were then delivered to the
"newly-born" that are represented in the Revelation as the seven
seals which are opened "in order" (see chap. v. and vi.). There can
be no doubt that the Seer of Patmos referred to this ceremony.
The origin of the Roman
Catholic amulets and "relics" blessed by the Pope, is the same as
that of the "Ephesian Spell," or magical characters engraved either
on a stone or drawn on a piece of parchment; the Jewish amulets with verses out
of the Law, and called phylacteria, [[Phulakteria]], and the Mahometan charms
with verses of the Koran. All these were used as protective magic spells; and
worn by the believers on their persons. Epiphanius, the worthy ex-Marcosian,
who speaks of these charms when used by the Manicheans as amulets, that is to
say, things worn round the neck (Periapta), and "incantations and
such-like trickery," cannot well throw a slur upon the
"trickery" of the Pagans and Gnostics, without including the Roman
Catholic and Popish amulets.
But consistency is a virtue
which we fear is losing, under Jesuit influence, the slight hold it may ever
have had on the Church. That crafty, learned, conscienceless, terrible soul of
Jesuitism, within the body of Romanism, is slowly but surely possessing itself
of the whole prestige and spiritual power that clings to it. For the better
exemplification of our theme it will be necessary to contrast the moral
principles of the ancient Tanaim and Theurgists with those professed by the
modern Jesuits, who practically control Romanism to-day, and are the hidden
enemy that would-be reformers must encounter and overcome. Throughout the whole
of antiquity, where, in what land, can we find anything like this Order or
anything even approaching it? We owe a place to the Jesuits in this chapter on
secret societies, for more than any other they are a secret body, and have a
far closer connection with actual Masonry -- in France and Germany at least --
than people are generally aware of. The cry of an outraged public morality was
raised against this Order from its very birth.* Barely fifteen years had
elapsed after the bull approving its constitution was promulgated, when its
members began to be driven away from one place to the other. Portugal and the
Low Countries got rid of them, in 1578; France in 1594; Venice in 1606; Naples
in 1622. From St. Petersburg they were expelled in 1815, and from all Russia in
1820.
It was a promising child from
its very teens. What it grew up to be every one knows well. The Jesuits have
done more moral harm in this world than all the fiendish armies of the mythical
Satan. Whatever extravagance may seem to be involved in this remark, will
disappear when
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It dates from 1540; and in
1555 a general outcry was raised against them in some parts of Portugal, Spain,
and other countries.
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REPORT UPON JESUITS.
our readers in America, who
now know little about them, are made acquainted with their principles
(principia) and rules as they appear in various works written by the Jesuits
themselves. We beg leave to remind the public that every one of the statements which
follow in quotation marks are extracted from authenticated manuscripts, or
folios printed by this distinguished body. Many are copied from the large
Quarto* published by the authority of, and verified and collated by the
Commissioners of the French Parliament. The statements therein were collected
and presented to the King, in order that, as the "Arrest du Parlement du 5
Mars, 1762," expresses it, "the elder son of the Church might be made
aware of the perversity of this doctrine. . . . A doctrine authorizing Theft,
Lying, Perjury, Impurity, every Passion and Crime, teaching Homicide,
Parricide, and Regicide, overthrowing religion in order to substitute for it
superstition, by favoring Sorcery, Blasphemy, Irreligion, and Idolatry . . .
etc." Let us then examine the ideas on magic of the Jesuits. Writing on
this subject in his secret instructions, Anthony Escobart** says:
"It is lawful . . . to
make use of the science acquired through the assistance of the Devil, provided
the preservation and use of that knowledge do not depend upon the Devil, for
the knowledge is good in itself, and the sin by which it was acquired has gone
by."*** Hence, why should not a Jesuit cheat the Devil as well as he
cheats every layman?
"Astrologers and
soothsayers are either bound, or are not bound, to restore the reward of their
divination, if the event does not come to pass. I own," remarks the good
Father Escobar, "that the former opinion does not at all please me,
because, when the astrologer or diviner has exerted all the diligence in the
diabolic art which is essential to his purpose, he has fulfilled his duty,
whatever may be the result. As the physician . . . is not bound to restore his
fee . . . if his patient should die; so neither is the astrologer bound to
restore his charge . . . ex-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Extracts from this
"Arret" were compiled into a work in 4 vols., 12mo., which appeared
at Paris, in 1762, and was known as "Extraits des Assertions, etc." In
a work entitled "Reponse aux Assertions," an attempt was made by the
Jesuits to throw discredit upon the facts collected by the Commissioners of the
French Parliament in 1762, as for the most part malicious fabrications.
"To ascertain the validity of this impeachment," says the author of
"The Principles of the Jesuits," "the libraries of the two
universities of the British Museum and of Sion College have been searched for
the authors cited; and in every instance where the volume was found, the
correctness of the citation established."
** "Theologiae
Moralis," Tomus iv., Lugduni, 1663.
*** Tom. iv., lib. xxviii.,
sect. 1, de Praecept I., c. 20, n. 184.
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cept where he has used no
effort, or was ignorant of his diabolic art; because, when he has used his
endeavors he has not deceived."*
Further, we find the following
on astrology: "If any one affirms, through conjecture founded upon the
influence of the stars and the character, disposition of a man, that he will be
a soldier, an ecclesiastic, or a bishop, this divination may be devoid of all
sin; because the stars and the disposition of the man may have the power of
inclining the human will to a certain lot or rank, but not of constraining
it."**
Busembaum and Lacroix, in
Theologia Moralis,*** say, "Palmistry may be considered lawful, if from
the lines and divisions of the hands it can ascertain the disposition of the
body, and conjecture, with probability, the propensities and affections of the
soul."****
This noble fraternity, which
many preachers have of late so vehemently denied to have ever been a secret
one, has been sufficiently proved as such. Their constitutions were translated
into Latin by the Jesuit Polancus, and printed in the college of the Society at
Rome, in 1558. "They were jealously kept secret, the greater part of the
Jesuits themselves knowing only extracts from them.***** They were never
produced to the light until 1761, when they were published by order of the
French Parliament in 1761, 1762, in the famous process of Father
Lavalette." The degrees of the Order are: I. Novices; II. Lay Brothers, or
temporal Coadjutors; III. Scholastics; IV. Spiritual Coadjutors; V. Professed
of Three Vows; VI. Professed of Five Vows. "There is also a secret class,
known only to the General and a few faithful Jesuits, which, perhaps more than
any other, contributed to the dreaded and mysterious power of the Order,"
says Niccolini. The Jesuits reckon it among the greatest achievements of their
Order that Loyola supported, by a special memorial to the Pope, a petition for
the reorganization of that abominable and abhorred instrument of wholesale
butchery -- the infamous tribunal of the Inquisition.
This Order of Jesuits is now
all-powerful in Rome. They have been reinstalled in the Congregation of
Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, in the Department of the Secretary of
State, and in the Ministry of Foreign
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ibid., sect. 2, de Praecept
I., Probl. 113, n. 586.
** Richard Arsdekin,
"Theologia Tripartita," Coloniae, 1744, Tom. ii., Pars. ii., Tr. 5,
c. 1, § 2, n. 4.
*** "Theologia Moralis
nunc pluribus partibus aucta, a R. P. Claudio Lacroix, Societatis Jesu."
Coloniae, 1757 (Ed. Mus. Brit.).
**** Tom. ii., lib. iii.,
Pars. 1, Fr. 1, c. 1, dub. 2, resol. viii. What a pity that the counsel for the
defense had not bethought them to cite this orthodox legalization of
"cheating by palmistry or otherwise," at the recent
religio-scientific prosecution of the medium Slade, in London.
***** Niccolini: "History
of the Jesuits."
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THE ORDER.
Affairs. The Pontifical
Government was for years previous to Victor Emanuel's occupation of Rome
entirely in their hands. The Society now numbers 8,584 members. But we must see
what are their chief rules. By what is seen above, in becoming acquainted with
their mode of action, we may ascertain what the whole Catholic body is likely
to be. Says Mackenzie: "The Order has secret signs and passwords,
according to the degrees to which the members belong, and as they wear no
particular dress, it is very difficult to recognize them, unless they reveal
themselves as members of the Order; for they may appear as Protestants or Catholics,
democrats or aristocrats, infidels or bigots, according to the special mission
with which they are entrusted. Their spies are everywhere, of all apparent
ranks of society, and they may appear learned and wise, or simple or foolish,
as their instructions run. There are Jesuits of both sexes, and all ages, and
it is a well-known fact that members of the Order, of high family and delicate
nurture, are acting as menial servants in Protestant families, and doing other
things of a similar nature in aid of the Society's purposes. We cannot be too
much on our guard, for the whole Society, being founded on a law of
unhesitating obedience, can bring its force on any given point with unerring
and fatal accuracy."*
The Jesuits maintain that
"the Society of Jesus is not of human invention, but it proceeded from him
whose name it bears. For Jesus himself described that rule of life which the
Society follows, first by his example, and afterwards by his words."**
Let, then, all pious
Christians listen and acquaint themselves with this alleged "rule of
life" and precepts of their God, as exemplified by the Jesuits. Peter
Alagona (St. Thomae Aquinatis Summae Theologiae Compendium) says: "By the
command of God it is lawful to kill an innocent person, to steal, or commit . .
. (Ex mandato Dei licet occidere innocentem, furari, fornicari); because he is
the Lord of life and death, and all things, and it is due to him thus to fulfil
his command" (Ex prima secundae, Quaest., 94).
"A man of a religious
order, who for a short time lays aside his habit for a sinful purpose, is free
from heinous sin, and does not incur the penalty of excommunication" (Lib.
iii., sec. 2., Probl. 44, D. 212).***
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia,"
p. 369.
** Imago: "Primi Saeculi
Societatis Jesu," lib. 1., c. 3., p. 64.
*** Anthony Escobar:
"Universae Theologiae Moralis receptiore, absque lite sententiae,"
etc., Tomus i., Lugduni, 1652 (Ed. Bibl. Acad. Cant.). "Idem sentio, e
breve illud tempus ad unius horae spatium traho. Religiosus itaque habitum
demittens assignato hoc temporis interstitio, non incurrit excommunicationem,
etiamsi dimittat non solum ex causa, turpi, scilicet fornicandi, aut clam
aliquid abripiendi, set etiam ut incognitus ineat lupanar." Probl. 44, n.
213.
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John Baptist Taberna (Synopsis
Theologiae Practicae), propounds the following question: "Is a judge bound
to restore the bribe which he has received for passing sentence?" Answer:
"If he has received the bribe for passing an -unjust sentence, it is
probable that he may keep it. . . . This opinion is maintained and defended by
fifty-eight doctors"* (Jesuits).
We must abstain at present
from proceeding further. So disgustingly licentious, hypocritical, and
demoralizing are nearly all of these precepts, that it was found impossible to
put many of them in print, except in the Latin language.** We will return to
some of the more decent as we proceed, for the sake of comparison. But what are
we to think of the future of the Catholic world, if it is to be controlled in
word and deed by this villainous society? And that it is to be so, we can
hardly doubt, as we find the Cardinal Archbishop of Cambrai loudly proclaiming
the same to all the faithful? His pastoral has made a certain noise in France;
and yet, as two centuries have rolled away since the expose of these infamous
principles, the Jesuits have had ample time to lie so successfully in denying
the just charges, that most Catholics will never believe such a thing. The
infallible Pope, Clement XIV. (Ganganelli), suppressed them on the 23d of July,
1773, and yet they came to life again; and another equally infallible Pope,
Pius VII., reestablished them on the 7th of August, 1814.
But we will hear what
Monseigneur of Cambrai is swift to proclaim in 1876. We quote from a secular
paper:
"Among other things, he
maintains that Clericalism, Ultramontanism, and Jesuitism are one and the same
thing -- that is to say, Catholicism -- and that the distinctions between them
have been created by the enemies of religion. There was a time, he says, when a
certain theological opinion was commonly professed in France concerning the
authority of the Pope. It was restricted to our nation, and was of recent
origin. The civil power during a century and a half imposed official
instruction. Those who profess these opinions were called Gallicans, and those
who protested were called Ultramontanes, because they had their doctrinal
centre beyond the Alps, at Rome. To-day the distinction between the two schools
is no longer admissible. Theological Gallicanism can no longer exist, since this
opinion has ceased to be tolerated by the Church. It has been solemnly
condemned, past all return, by the OEcumenical Council of the Vatican. One
cannot now be Catholic without being Ultramontane -- and Jesuit."***
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Pars. 11, Tra. 2, c. 31.
** See "The Principles of
the Jesuits, Developed in a Collection of Extracts from their own
Authors." London, 1839.
*** From the Pastoral of the
Archbishop of Cambrai.
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PERJURY CONDONED.
This settles the question. We
leave inferences for the present, and proceed to compare some of the practices
and precepts of the Jesuits, with those of individual mystics and organized
castes and societies of the ancient time. Thus the fair-minded reader may be
placed in a position to judge between them as to the tendency of their
doctrines to benefit or degrade humanity.
Rabbi Jehoshua Ben Chananea,
who died about A. D. 72, openly declared that he had performed
"miracles" by means of the Book of Sepher Jezireh, and challenged
every skeptic.* Franck, quoting from the Babylonian Talmud, names two other
thaumaturgists, Rabbis Chanina and Oshoi.**
Simon Magus was doubtless a
pupil of the Tanaim of Samaria, the reputation which he left behind, together
with the title given to him of "the Great Power of God," testifies
strongly in favor of the ability of his teachers. The calumnies so zealously
disseminated against him by the unknown authors and compilers of the Acts and
other writings, could not cripple the truth to such an extent as to conceal the
fact that no Christian could rival him in thaumaturgic deeds. The story told
about his falling during an aerial flight, breaking both his legs, and then
committing suicide, is ridiculous. Instead of praying mentally that it should
so happen, why did not the apostles pray rather that they should be allowed to
outdo Simon in wonders and miracles, for then they might have proved their case
far more easily than they did, and so converted thousands to Christianity.
Posterity has heard but one side of the story. Were the disciples of Simon to
have a chance, we might find, perhaps, that it was Peter who broke both his
legs, had we not known that this apostle was too prudent ever to venture
himself in Rome. On the confession of several ecclesiastical writers, no
apostle ever performed such "supernatural wonders." Of course pious
people will say this only the more proves that it was the "Devil" who
worked through Simon.
Simon was accused of blasphemy
against the Holy Ghost, because he introduced it as the "Holy Spiritus,
the Mens (Intelligence), or the mother of all." But we find the same
expression used in the Book of Enoch, in which, in contradistinction to the
"Son of Man," he says "Son of the Woman." In the Codex of
the Nazarenes, and in the Sohar, as well in the Books of Hermes, the expression
is usual; and even in the apocryphal Evangelium of the Hebrews we read that
Jesus himself admitted the sex of the Holy Ghost by using the expression,
"My mother, the Holy Pneuma."
But what is the heresy of
Simon, or what the blasphemies of all the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Jerusalem Talmud,
Synhedrin," c. 7, etc.
** "Franck," pp. 55,
56.
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heretics, in comparison with
that of the same Jesuits who have now so completely mastered the Pope,
ecclesiastical Rome, and the entire Catholic world? Listen again to their
profession of faith.
"Do what your conscience
tells you to be good and commanded: if, through invincible error, you believe
lying or blasphemy to be commanded by God, blaspheme."*
"Omit to do what your
conscience tells you is forbidden: omit the worship of God, if you invincibly
believe it to be prohibited by God."**
"There is an implied law
. . . obey an invincibly erroneous dictate of conscience. As often as you
believe invincibly that a lie is commanded -- lie."***
"Let us suppose a
Catholic to believe invincibly that the worship of images is forbidden: in such
a case our Lord Jesus Christ will be obliged to say to him, 'Depart from me
thou cursed . . . because thou hast worshipped mine image.' So, neither, is
there any absurdity in supposing that Christ may say, 'Come thou blessed . . .
because thou hast lied, believing invincibly, that in such a case I commanded
the lie.'"****
Does not this -- but no! words
fail to do justice to the emotions that these astonishing precepts must awaken
in the breast of every honest person. Let silence, resulting from invincible
disgust, be our only adequate tribute to such unparalleled moral obliquity.
The popular feeling in Venice
(1606), when the Jesuits were driven out from that city, expressed itself most
forcibly. Great crowds had accompanied the exiles to the sea-shore, and the
farewell cry which resounded after them over the waves, was, "Ande in
malora!" (Get away! and woe be to you.) "That cry was echoed
throughout the two following centuries"; says Michelet, who gives this
statement, "in Bohemia in 1618 . . . in India in 1623 . . . and throughout
all Christendom in 1773."
In what particular was then
Simon Magus a blasphemer, if he only did that which his conscience invincibly
told him was true? And in what particular were ever the "Heretics,"
or even infidels of the worst kind more reprehensible than the Jesuits -- those
of Caen,***** for instance -- who say the following:
"The Christian religion
is . . . evidently credible, but not evidently true. It is evidently credible;
for it is evident that whoever embraces
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Charles Antony Casnedi:
"Crisis Theologica," Ulyssipone, 1711. Tome i., Disp. 6, Sect. 2, §
1, n. 59.
** Ibid.
*** Ibid., § 2, n. 78.
**** Ibid., Sect. 5, § 1, n.
165.
***** "Thesis propugnata
in regio Soc. Jes. Collegio celeberrimae Academiae Cadomensis, die Veneris, 30
Jan., 1693." Cadomi, 1693.
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FOR JESUITISM.
it is prudent. It is not
evidently true; for it either teaches obscurely or the things which it teaches
are obscure. And they who affirm that the Christian religion is evidently true,
are obliged to confess that it is evidently false."
"Infer from hence --
"1. That it is not
evident that there is now any true religion in the world.
"2. That it is not
evident that of all religions existing upon the earth, the Christian religion
is the most true; for have you travelled over all countries of the world, or do
you know that others have? . . .
. . . . . . . .
"4. That it is not
evident that the predictions of the prophets were given by inspiration of God;
for what refutation will you bring against me, if I deny that they were true
prophecies, or assert that they were only conjectures?
"5. That it is not
evident that the miracles were real, which are recorded to have been wrought by
Christ; although no one can prudently deny them (Position 6).
"Neither is an avowed
belief in Jesus Christ, in the Trinity, in all the articles of Faith, and in
the Decalogue, necessary to Christians. The only explicit belief which was
necessary to the former (Jews) and is necessary to the latter (Christians) is
1, of God; 2, of a rewarding God" (Position 8).
Hence, it is also more than
"evident" that there are moments in the life of the greatest liar
when he may utter some truths. It is in this case so perfectly exemplified by
the "good Fathers," that we can see more clearly than ever whence
proceeded the solemn condemnations at the OEcumenical Council of 1870, of
certain "heresies," and the enforcement of other articles of faith in
which none believed less than those who inspired the Pope to issue them.
History has yet perhaps to learn that the octogenarian Pope, intoxicated with
the fumes of his newly-enforced infallibility, was but the faithful echo of the
Jesuits. "An old man is raised trembling upon the pavois of the
Vatican"; says Michelet, "every thing becomes absorbed and confined
in him. . . . For fifteen centuries Christendom had submitted to the spiritual
yoke of the Church. . . . But that yoke was not sufficient for them; they
wanted the whole world to bend under the hand of one master. Here my own words
are too weak; I shall borrow those of others. They (the Jesuits) wanted (this
is the accusation flung in their faces by the Bishop of Paris in the full
Council of Trent) faire de l'epouse de Jesus Christ une prostituee aux volontes
d'un homme."*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Michelet and Quinet of the
College of France: "The Jesuits."
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They have succeeded. The
Church is henceforth an inert tool, and the Pope a poor weak instrument in the
hands of this Order. But for how long Until the end comes, well may sincere
Christians remember the prophetic lamentations of the thrice-great Trismegistus
over his own country: "Alas, alas, my son, a day will come when the sacred
hieroglyphics will become but idols. The world will mistake the emblems of
science for gods, and accuse grand Egypt of having worshipped hell-monsters.
But those who will calumniate us thus, will themselves worship Death instead of
Life, folly in place of wisdom; they will denounce love and fecundity, fill
their temples with dead men's bones, as relics, and waste their youth in
solitude and tears. Their virgins will be widows (nuns) before being wives, and
consume themselves in grief; because men will have despised and profaned the
sacred mysteries of Isis."*
How correct this prophecy has
proved we find in the following Jesuit precept, which again we extract from the
Report of the Commissioners to the Parliament of Paris:
"The more true opinion
is, that all inanimate and irrational things may be legitimately
worshipped," says Father Gabriel Vasquez, treating of Idolatry. "If
the doctrine which we have established be rightly understood, not only may a
painted image and every holy thing, set forth by public authority for the
worship of God, be properly adored with God as the image of Himself, but also
any other thing of this world, whether it be inanimate and irrational, or in
its nature rational."**
"Why may we not adore and
worship with God, apart from danger, anything whatsoever of this world; for God
is in it according to His essence . . . [This is precisely what the Pantheist
and Hindu philosophy maintains.] and preserves it continually by His power; and
when we bow down ourselves before it and impress it with a kiss, we present
ourselves before God, the author of it, with the whole soul, as unto the
prototype of the image [follow instances of relics, etc.] . . . . To this we
may add that, since everything of this world is the work of God, and God is
always abiding and working in it, we may more readily conceive Him to be in it
than a saint in the vesture which belonged to him. And, therefore, without
regarding in any way the dignity of the thing created, to direct our thoughts
to God, while we give to the creature the sign and mark of submission by a kiss
or prostration, is neither vain nor superstitious, but an act of the purest
religion."***
A precept this, which, whether
or not doing honor to the Christian Church, may at least be profitably quoted
by any Hindu, Japanese, or
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Champollion: "Hermes
Trismegistus," xxvii.
** "De Cultu Adorationis
Libri Tres.," Lib. iii., Disp. i., c. 2.
*** Ibid.
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FULFILLED.
other heathen when rebuked for
his worship of idols. We purposely quote it for the benefit of our respected
"heathen" friends who will see these lines.
The prophecy of Hermes is less
equivocal than either of the alleged prophecies of Isaiah, which have furnished
a pretext for saying that the gods of all the nations were demons. Only, facts
are stronger, sometimes, than the strongest faith. All that the Jews learned,
they had from older nations than themselves. The Chaldean Magi were their
masters in the secret doctrine, and it was during the Babylonian captivity that
they learned its metaphysical as well as practical tenets. Pliny mentions three
schools of Magi: one that he shows to have been founded at an unknown antiquity;
the other established by Osthanes and Zoroaster; the third by Moses and
Jambres. And all the knowledge possessed by these different schools, whether
Magian, Egyptian, or Jewish, was derived from India, or rather from both sides
of the Himalayas. Many a lost secret lies buried under wastes of sand, in the
Gobi Desert of Eastern Turkestan, and the wise men of Khotan have preserved
strange traditions and knowledge of alchemy.
Baron Bunsen shows that the
origin of the ancient prayers and hymns of the Egyptian Book of the Dead is
anterior to Menes, and belongs, probably, to the pre-Menite Dynasty of Abydos,
between 3100 and 4500 B.C. The learned Egyptologist makes the era of Menes, or
National Empire, as not later than 3059 B.C., and demonstrates that "the system
of Osirian worship and mythology was already formed"* before this era of
Menes.
We find in the hymns of this
scientifically-established pre-Edenic epoch (for Bunsen carries us back several
centuries beyond the year of the creation of the world, 4004 B.C., as fixed by
biblical chronology) precise lessons of morality, identical in substance, and
nearly so in form of expression, with those preached by Jesus in his Sermon on
the Mount. We give the authority of the most eminent Egyptologists and hierologists
for our statement. "The inscriptions of the twelfth Dynasty are filled
with ritualistic formulae," says Bunsen. Extracts from the Hermetic books
are found on monuments of the earliest dynasties, and "on those of the
twelfth (dynasty) portions of an earlier ritual are by no means uncommon. . . .
To feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, bury the dead
. . . formed the first duty of a pious man. . . . The doctrine of the
immortality of the soul is as old as this period" (Tablet, Brit. Mus.,
562).**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Egypt's Place in
Universal History," vol. v., p. 94.
** Ibid., vol. v., p. 129.
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And far older, perhaps. It
dates from the time when the soul was an objective being, hence when it could
hardly be denied by itself; when humanity was a spiritual race and death
existed not. Toward the decline of the cycle of life, the ethereal man-spirit
then fell into the sweet slumber of temporary unconsciousness in one sphere,
only to find himself awakening in the still brighter light of a higher one. But
while the spiritual man is ever striving to ascend higher and higher toward its
source of being, passing through the cycles and spheres of individual life,
physical man had to descend with the great cycle of universal creation until it
found itself clothed with the terrestrial garments. Thenceforth the soul was
too deeply buried under physical clothing to reassert its existence, except in
the cases of those more spiritual natures, which, with every cycle, became more
rare. And yet none of the pre-historical nations ever thought of denying either
the existence or the immortality of the inner man, the real "self."
Only, we must bear in mind the teachings of the old philosophies: the spirit
alone is immortal -- the soul, per se, is neither eternal nor divine. When
linked too closely with the physical brain of its terrestrial casket, it
gradually becomes a finite mind, a simple animal and sentient life-principle,
the nephesh of the Hebrew Bible.*
The doctrine of man's triune
nature is as clearly defined in the Hermetic books as it is in Plato's system,
or again in that of the Buddhist and Brahmanical philosophies. And this is one
of the most important as well as least understood of the doctrines of Hermetic
science. The Egyptian Mysteries, so imperfectly known by the world, and only
through
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "And God created . . .
every nephesh (life) that moveth" (Gen. i. 21), meaning animals; and
(Genesis ii. 7) it is said: "And man became a nephesh" (living soul);
which shows that the word nephesh was indifferently applied to immortal man and
to mortal beast. "And surely your blood of your nepheshim (lives) will I
require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man"
(Gen. ix. 5). "Escape for nepheshe" (escape for thy life is
translated) (Gen. xix. 17). "Let us not kill him," reads the English
version (Gen. xxxvii. 21). "Let us not kill his nephesh," is the
Hebrew text. "Nephesh for nephesh," says Leviticus (xvii. 8).
"He that killeth any man shall surely be put to death." "He that
smiteth the nephesh of a man" (Levit. xxiv. 17); and from verse 18 and
following it reads: "And he that killeth a beast (nephesh) shall make it
good. . . . Beast for beast," whereas the original text has it
"nephesh for nephesh."
1 Kings i. 12; ii. 23; iii.
11; xix. 2, 3, all have nephesh for life and soul. "Then shall thy
nepheshah for (his) nepheshu," explains the prophet in 1 Kings xx. 39.
Truly, unless we read the
"Old Testament" kabalistically and comprehend the hidden meaning
thereof, it is very little we can learn from it as regards the soul's
immortality. The common people among Hebrews had not the slightest idea of soul
and spirit, and made no difference between life, blood, and soul, calling the
latter the "breath of life." And King James's translators have made
such a jumble of it that no one but a kabalist can restore the Bible to its
original form.
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KILL HUSBANDS.
the few brief allusions to
them in the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, taught the greatest virtues. They
unveiled to the aspirant in the "higher" mysteries of initiation that
which many of our modern Hermetic students vainly search for in the kabalistic
books, and which no obscure teachings of the Church, under the guidance of the
Order of Jesuits, will ever be able to unveil. To compare, then, the ancient
secret societies of the hierophants with the artificially-produced
hallucinations of those few followers of Loyola, who were, perchance, sincere
at the beginning of their career, is to insult the former. And yet, in justice
to them, we are compelled to do so.
One of the most unconquerable
obstacles to initiation, with the Egyptians as with the Greeks, was any degree
of murder. One of the greatest titles to admission in the Order of Jesuits is a
murder in defence of Jesuitism. "Children may kill their parents if they
compel them to abandon the Catholic faith."
"Christian and Catholic
sons," says Stephen Fagundez, "may accuse their fathers of the crime
of heresy if they wish to turn them from the faith, although they may know that
their parents will be burned with fire, and put to death for it, as Tolet
teaches. . . . And not only may they refuse them food . . . but they may also
justly kill them."*
It is well known that Nero,
the Emperor, had never dared seek initiation into the Mysteries on account of the
murder of Agrippina!
Under Section XIV. of the
Principles of the Jesuits, we find on Homicide the following Christian
principles inculcated by Father Henry Henriquez, in Summae Theologiae Moralis.
Tomus 1, Venetiis, 1600 (Ed. Coll. Sion): "If an adulterer, even though he
should be an ecclesiastic . . . being attacked by the husband, kills his
aggressor . . . he is not considered irregular: non ridetur irregularis"
(Lib. XIV., de Irregularitae, c. 10, § 3).
"If a father were
obnoxious to the State (being in banishment), and to the society at large, and
there were no other means of averting such an injury, then I should approve of
this" (for a son to kill his father), says Sec. XV., on Parricide and
Homicide.**
"It will be lawful for an
ecclesiastic, or one of the religious order, to kill a calumniator who
threatens to spread atrocious accusations against himself or his
religion,"*** is the rule set forth by the Jesuit Francis Amicus.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In "Praecepta Decalogi
" (Edit. of Sion Library), Tom. i., lib. iv., c. 2, n. 7, 8.
** Opinion of John de
Dicastille, Sect. xv., "De Justitia et Jure," etc., cens. pp. 319,
320.
*** "Cursus
Theologici," Tomus v., Duaci, 1642, Disp. 36, Sect. 5, n. 118.
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So far, good. We are informed
by the highest authorities what a man in the Catholic communion may do that the
common law and public morality stamp as criminal, and still continue in the
odor of Jesuitical sanctity. Now suppose we again turn the medal and see what
principles were inculcated by Pagan Egyptian moralists before the world was blessed
with these modern improvements in ethics.
In Egypt every city of
importance was separated from its burial place by a sacred lake. The same
ceremony of judgment which the Book of the Dead describes as taking place in
the world of Spirit, took place on earth during the burial of the mummy.
Forty-two judges or assessors assembled on the shore and judged the departed
"soul" according to its actions when in the body, and it was only
upon a unanimous approval of this post-mortem jury that the boatman, who represented
the Spirit of Death, could convey the justified defunct's body to its last
resting-place. After that the priests returned within the sacred precincts and
instructed the neophytes upon the probable solemn drama which was then taking
place in the invisible realm whither the soul had fled. The immortality of the
spirit was strongly inculcated by the Al-om-jah.* In the Crata Repoa** the
following is described as the seven degrees of the initiation.
After a preliminary trial at
Thebes, where the neophyte had to pass through many trials, called the
"Twelve Tortures," he was commanded to govern his passions and never
lose for a moment the idea of his God. Then as a symbol of the wanderings of
the unpurified soul, he had to ascend several ladders and wander in darkness in
a cave with many doors, all of which were locked. When he had overcome the
dreadful trials, he received the degree of Pastopkoris, the second and third
degrees being called the Neocoris, and the Melanephoris. Brought into a vast
subterranean chamber thickly furnished with mummies lying in state, he was
placed in presence of the coffin which contained the mutilated body of Osiris
covered with blood. This was the hall called "Gates of Death," and it
is most certainly to this mystery that the passages in the Book of Job
(xxxviii. 17) and other portions of the Bible allude when these gates are
spoken of.*** In chapter x., we give the esoteric interpretation of the
"Book of Job," which is the poem of initiation par excellence.
"Have the gates of death
been opened to thee?
Hast thou seen the doors of
the shadow of death?"
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Name of the highest Egyptian
hierophants.
** "Crata Repoa, or the
Mysteries of the Ancient Egyptian Priests."
*** See Matthew xvi. 18, where
it is mistranslated "the gates of Hell."
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FESTIVALS.
asks the "Lord" --
i.e., the Al-om-jah, the Initiator -- of Job, alluding to this third degree of
initiation.
When the neophyte had
conquered the terrors of this trial, he was conducted to the "Hall of
Spirits," to be judged by them. Among the rules in which he was
instructed, he was commanded "never to either desire or seek revenge; to
be always ready to help a brother in danger, even unto the risk of his own
life; to bury every dead body; to honor his parents above all; respect old age
and protect those weaker than himself; and finally, to ever bear in mind the
hour of death, and that of resurrection, in a new and imperishable body."*
Purity and chastity were highly recommended, and adultery threatened with
death.
Then the Egyptian neophyte was
made a Kristophores. In this degree the mystery-name of IAO was communicated to
him. The fifth degree was that of Balahala, and he was instructed by Horus, in
alchemy, the "word" being chemia. In the sixth, the priestly dance in
the circle was taught him, in which he was instructed in astronomy, for it
represented the course of the planets. In the seventh degree, he was initiated
into the final Mysteries. After a final probation in a building set apart for
it, the Astronomus, as he was now called, emerged from these sacred apartments
called Manneras, and received a cross -- the Tau, which, at death, had to be
laid upon his breast. He was a hierophant.
We have read above the rules
of these holy initiates of the Christian Society of Jesus. Compare them with those
enforced upon the Pagan postulant, and Christian (!) morality with that
inculcated in those mysteries of the Pagans upon which all the thunders of an
avenging Deity are invoked by the Church. Had the latter no mysteries of its
own? Or were they in any wise purer, nobler, or more inciting to a holy,
virtuous life? Let us hear what Niccolini has to say, in his able History of
the Jesuits, of the modern mysteries of the Christian cloister.**
"In most monasteries, and
more particularly in those of the Capuchins and reformed (reformati), there
begins at Christmas a series of feasts, which continues till Lent. All sorts of
games are played, the most splendid banquets are given, and in the small towns,
above all, the refectory of the convent is the best place of amusement for the
greater number of the inhabitants. At carnivals, two or three very magnificent
entertainments take place; the board so profusely spread that one might imagine
that Copia had here poured forth the whole contents of her horn. It must be remembered
that these two orders live by alms.*** The sombre
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Humberto Malhandrini:
"Ritual of Initiations," p. 105. Venice, 1657.
** Pages 43, 44, note f.
Niccolini of Rome, author of "The History of the Pontificate of Pius
IX."; "The Life of Father Gavazzi," etc.
*** And begged in the name of
Him who had nowhere to lay his head!
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silence of the cloister is
replaced by a confused sound of merry-making, and its gloomy vaults now echo
with other songs than those of the psalmist. A ball enlivens and terminates the
feast; and, to render it still more animated, and perhaps to show how
completely their vow of chastity has eradicated all their carnal appetite, some
of the young monks appear coquettishly dressed in the garb of the fair sex, and
begin the dance, along with others, transformed into gay cavaliers. To describe
the scandalous scene which ensues would be but to disgust my readers. I will
only say that I have myself often been a spectator at such saturnalia."
The cycle is moving down, and,
as it descends, the physical and bestial nature of man develops more and more
at the expense of the Spiritual Self.* With what disgust may we not turn from
this religious farce called modern Christianity, to the noble faiths of old!
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In "Egypt's Place in
Universal History," Bunsen gives the cycle of 21,000 years, which he
adopts to facilitate the chronological calculations for the reconstruction of
the universal history of mankind. He shows that this cycle "for the nutation
of the ecliptic," arrived at its apex in the year 1240 of our era. He
says:
"The cycle divides itself
into two halves of 10,500 (or twice 5,250) years each.
"The beginning of the
first half:
The highest point will be . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19,760 B. C.
The lowest . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9,260
Consequently the middle of the
descending line (beginning of second quarter) will be . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . .14,510
The middle of the ascending
line (beginning of fourth quarter) 4,010
"The new cycle, which
began in 1240 of our era, will come to the end of its first quarter in 4010
A.D."
The Baron explains that
"in round numbers, the most favorable epochs for our hemisphere since the
great catastrophe in Middle Asia (Deluge 10,000 years B.C.) are: "the
4,000 years before, and the 4,000 years after Christ; and the beginning of the
first epoch, of which alone we can judge, as it alone is complete before us, coincides
exactly with the beginnings of national history, or (what is identical) with
the beginning of our consciousness of continuous existence" ("Egypt's
Place in Universal History," Key, p. 102).
"Our consciousness" must
mean, we suppose, the consciousness of scientists, who accept nothing on faith,
but much on unverified hypotheses. We do not say this with reference to the
above-quoted author, earnest scholar and noble champion that he is, of freedom
in the Christian Church, but generally. Baron Bunsen has well found for himself
that a man cannot remain an honest scientist and please the clerical party.
Even the little concessions he made in favor of the antiquity of mankind,
brought on him, in 1859, the most insolent denunciations, such as "We lose
all faith in the author's judgment . . . he has yet to learn the very first
principles of historical criticisms . . . extravagant and unscientific
exaggeration," and so on -- the pious vituperator closing his learned
denunciations by assuring the public that Baron Bunsen "cannot even
construct a Greek sentence ("Quarterly Review," 1859; see also
"Egypt's Place in Universal History," chap. on Egyptological Works
and English Reviews). But we do regret that Baron Bunsen had no better
opportunity to examine the "Kabala" and the Brahmanical books of the
Zodiacs.
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RITUAL.
In the Egyptian Funeral Ritual
found among the hymns of the Book of the Dead, and which is termed by Bunsen
"that precious and mysterious book," we read an address of the
deceased, in the character of Horus, detailing all that he has done for his
father Osiris. Among other things the deity says:
"30. I have given thee
thy Spirit.
31. I have given thee thy
Soul.
32. I have given thee thy
force (body)," etc.
In another place the entity,
addressed as "Father" by the disembodied soul, is shown to mean the
"spirit" of man; for the verse says: "I have made my soul come
and speak with his Father," its Spirit.*
The Egyptians regarded their
Ritual as essentially a Divine inspiration; in short, as modern Hindus do the
Vedas, and modern Jews their Mosaic books. Bunsen and Lepsius show that the
term Hermetic means inspired; for it is Thoth, the Deity itself, that speaks
and reveals to his elect among men the will of God and the arcana of divine
things. Portions of them are expressly stated "to have been written by the
very finger of Thoth himself"; to have been the work and composition of
the great God.** "At a later period their Hermetic character is still more
distinctly recognized, and on a coffin of the 26th Dynasty, Horus announces to
the deceased that Thoth himself has brought him the books of his divine words,
or Hermetic writings."***
Since we are aware that Moses
was an Egyptian priest, or at least that he was learned in all their wisdom, we
need not be astonished that he should write in Deuteronomy (ix. 10). "And
the Lord delivered unto me two tables of stones written with the finger of
GOD"; or to find in Exodus xxxi., "And he (the Lord) gave unto Moses
. . . two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God."
In the Egyptian notions, as in
those of all other faiths founded on philosophy, man was not merely, as with
the Christians, a union of soul and body; he was a trinity when spirit was
added to it. Besides, that doctrine made him consist of kha -- body; khaba --
astral form, or shadow; ka -- animal soul or life-principle; ba -- the higher
soul; and akh -- terrestrial intelligence. They had also a sixth principle
named Sah -- or mummy; but the functions of this one commenced only after the
death of the body. After due purification, during which the soul, separated
from its body, continued to revisit the latter in its mummified condition,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The Funeral Ritual of
the Deeds of Horus."
** Bunsen: "Egypt's Place
in Universal History," vol. v., p. 133.
*** Lepsius:
"Abth.," iii.; Bl., 276; Bunsen, 134.
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this astral soul "became
a God," for it was finally absorbed into "the Soul of the
world." It became transformed into one of the creative deities, "the
god of Phtah,"* the Demiurgos, a generic name for the creators of the world,
rendered in the Bible as the Elohim. In the Ritual the good or purified soul,
"in conjunction with its higher or uncreated spirit, is more or less the
victim of the dark influence of the dragon Apophis. If it has attained the
final knowledge of the heavenly and the infernal mysteries -- the gnosis, i.e.,
complete reunion with the spirit, it will triumph over its enemies; if not the
soul could not escape its second death. It is 'the lake that burneth with fire
and brimstone' (elements), into which those that are cast undergo a 'second
death' "** (Apocalypse). This death is the gradual dissolution of the
astral form into its primal elements, alluded to several times already in the
course of this work. But this awful fate can be avoided by the knowledge of the
"Mysterious Name" -- the "Word,"*** say the kabalists.
And what then was the penalty
attached to the neglect of it? When man leads a naturally pure, virtuous life,
there is none whatever; except delay in the world of spirits, until he finds
himself sufficiently purified to receive it from his Spiritual
"Lord," one of the mighty Host. But if otherwise, the
"soul," as a half animal principle, becomes paralyzed, and grows
unconscious of its subjective half -- the Lord -- and in proportion to the
sensuous development of the brain and nerves, sooner or later, it finally loses
sight of its divine mission on earth. Like the Vourdalak, or Vampire, of the
Servian tale, the brain feeds and lives and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In the eighty-first chapter
of the "Ritual" the soul is called the germ of lights and in the
seventy-ninth the Demiurgos, or one of the creators.
** "Ritual," vi, 44;
Champollion: "Manifestations to the Light"; Lepsius: "Book of
the Dead"; Bunsen: "Egypt's Place in Universal History."
*** We cannot help quoting a
remark by Baron Bunsen in relation to the "Word" being identical with
the "Ineffable Name" of the Masons and the kabalists. While
explaining the "Ritual," some of the details of which "resemble
rather the enchantments of a magician than solemn rites, although a hidden and
mystical meaning must have been attached to them" (the honest admission of
this much, at least, is worth something), the author observes: "The
mystery of names, the knowledge of which was a sovereign virtue, and which, at
a later period, degenerated into the rank heresy (?) of the Gnostics and the
magic of enchanters, appears to have existed not only in Egypt but elsewhere.
Traces of it are found in the 'Cabala' . . . it prevailed in the Greek and
Asiatic mythology" ("Egypt's Place, etc.," p. 147).
We then see the
representatives of Science agreeing upon this one point, at least. The
initiates of all countries had the same "mystery name." And now it
remains with the scholars to prove that every adept, hierophant, magician, or
enchanter (Moses and Aaron included) as well as every kabalist, from the
institution of the Mysteries down to the present age, has been either a knave
or a fool, for believing in the efficacy of this name.
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WOMEN.
grows in strength and power at
the expense of its spiritual parent. Then the already half-unconscious soul,
now fully intoxicated by the fumes of earthly life, becomes senseless, beyond
hope of redemption. It is powerless to discern the splendor of its higher
spirit, to hear the warning voice of its "guardian Angel," and its
"God." It aims but at the development and fuller comprehension of
natural, earthly life; and thus, can discover but the mysteries of physical
nature. Its grief and fear, hope and joy, are all closely blended with its
terrestrial existence. It ignores all that cannot be demonstrated by either its
organs of action, or sensation. It begins by becoming virtually dead; it dies
at last completely. It is annihilated. Such a catastrophe may often happen long
years before the final separation of the life-principle from the body. When
death arrives, its iron and clammy grasp finds work with life as usual; but
there is no more a soul to liberate. The whole essence of the latter has been
already absorbed by the vital system of the physical man. Grim death frees but a
spiritual corpse; at best an idiot. Unable either to soar higher or awaken from
lethargy, it is soon dissolved in the elements of the terrestrial atmosphere.
Seers, righteous men, who had
attained to the highest science of the inner man and the knowledge of truth,
have, like Marcus Antoninus, received instructions "from the gods,"
in sleep and otherwise. Helped by the purer spirits, those that dwell in
"regions of eternal bliss," they have watched the process and warned
mankind repeatedly. Skepticism may sneer; faith, based on knowledge and
spiritual science, believes and affirms.
Our present cycle is
preeminently one of such soul-deaths. We elbow soulless men and women at every
step in life. Neither can we wonder, in the present state of things, at the
gigantic failure of Hegel's and Schelling's last efforts at some metaphysical
construction of a system. When facts, palpable and tangible facts of phenomenal
Spiritualism happen daily and hourly, and yet are denied by the majority of
"civilized" nations, little chance is there for the acceptance of
purely abstract metaphysics by the ever-growing crowd of materialists.
In the book called by
Champollion La Manifestation a la Lumiere, there is a chapter on the Ritual
which is full of mysterious dialogues, with addresses to various
"Powers" by the soul. Among these dialogues there is one which is
more than expressive of the potentiality of the "Word." The scene is
laid in the "Hall of the Two Truths." The "Door," the
"Hall of Truth," and even the various parts of the gate, address the
soul which presents itself for admission. They all forbid it entrance unless it
tells them their mystery, or mystic names. What student of the Secret Doctrines
can fail to recognize in these names an iden-
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tity of meaning and purpose
with those to be met with in the Vedas, the later works of the Brahmans, and
the Kabala?
Magicians, Kabalists, Mystics,
Neo-platonists and Theurgists of Alexandria, who so surpassed the Christians in
their achievements in the secret science; Brahmans or Samaneans (Shamans) of
old; and modern Brahmans, Buddhists, and Lamaists, have all claimed that a
certain power attaches to these various names, pertaining to one ineffable
Word. We have shown from personal experience how deeply the belief is rooted to
this day in the popular mind all over Russia,* that the Word works
"miracles" and is at the bottom of every magical feat. Kabalists
mysteriously connect Faith with it. So did the apostles, basing their
assertions on the words of Jesus, who is made to say: "If ye have faith as
a grain of mustard seed . . . nothing shall be impossible unto you," and
Paul, repeating the words of Moses, tells that "the WORD is nigh thee,
even in thy mouth, and in thy heart; that is, the word of faith" (Romans
x. 8). But who, except the initiates, can boast of comprehending its full
significance?
In our days it is as it was in
olden times, to believe in the biblical "miracles" requires faith;
but to be enabled to produce them one's self demands a knowledge of the
esoteric meaning of the "word." "If Christ," say Dr. Farrar
and Canon Westcott, "wrought no miracles, then the gospels are
untrustworthy." But even supposing that he did work them, would that prove
that gospels written by others than himself are any more trustworthy? And if
not, to what purpose is the argument? Besides, such a line of reasoning would
warrant the analogy that miracles performed by other religionists than
Christians ought to make their gospels trustworthy. Does not this imply at
least an equality between the Christian Scriptures and the Buddhist sacred
books? For these equally abound with phenomena of the most astounding
character. Moreover, the Christians have no longer genuine miracles produced
through their priests, for they have lost the Word. But many a Buddhist Lama or
Siamese Talapoin -- unless all travellers have conspired to lie -- has been and
now is able to duplicate every phenomenon described in the New Testament, and
even do more, without any pretence of suspension of natural law or divine
intervention either. In fact, Christianity proves that it is as dead in faith
as it is dead in works, while Buddhism is full of vitality and supported by
practical proofs.
The best argument in favor of
the genuineness of Buddhist "miracles" lies in the fact that Catholic
missionaries, instead of denying them or treating them as simple jugglery -- as
some Protestant missionaries do,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Chap. I., pp. 42, 43,
note, of this volume.
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TALAPOINS.
have often found themselves in
such straits as to be forced to adopt the forlorn alternative of laying the
whole on the back of the Devil. And so belittled do the Jesuits feel themselves
in the presence of these genuine servants of God, that with an unparalleled
cunning, they concluded to act in the case of the Talapoins and Buddhists as
Mahomet is said to have acted with the mountain. "And seeing that it would
not move toward him, the Prophet moved himself toward the mountain."
Finding that they could not catch the Siamese with the birdlime of their
pernicious doctrines in Christian garb, they disguised themselves, and for
centuries appeared among the poor, ignorant people as Talapoins, until exposed.
They have even voted and adopted a resolution forthwith, which has now all the
force of an ancient article of faith. "Naaman, the Syrian," say the
Jesuits of Caen, "did not dissemble his faith when he bowed the knee with
the king in the house of Rimmon; neither do the Fathers of the Society of Jesus
dissemble, when they adopt the institute and the habit of the Talapoins of
Siam" (nec dissimulant Patres S. J. Talapoinorum Siamensium institutum
vestemque affectantes. -- Position 9, 30 Jan., 1693).
The potency contained in the
Mantras and the Vach of the Brahmans is as much believed in at this day as it
was in the early Vedic period. The "Ineffable Name" of every country
and religion relates to that which the Masons affirm to be the mysterious
characters emblematic of the nine names or attributes by which the Deity was
known to the initiates. The Omnific Word traced by Enoch on the two deltas of
purest gold, on which he engraved two of the mysterious characters, is perhaps
better known to the poor, uneducated "heathen" than to the highly
accomplished Grand High Priests and Grand Z.'s of the Supreme Chapters of
Europe and America. Only why the companions of the Royal Arch should so
bitterly and constantly lament its loss, is more than we can understand. This
word of M. M. is, as they will tell themselves, entirely composed of
consonants. Hence, we doubt whether any of them could ever have mastered its
pronunciation, had it even been "brought to light from the secret vault,"
instead of its several corruptions. However, it is to the land of Mizraim that
the grandson of Ham is credited with having carried the sacred delta of the
Patriarch Enoch. Therefore, it is in Egypt, and in the East alone that the
mysterious "Word" must be sought.
But now that so many of the
most important secrets of Masonry have been divulged by friend and foe, may we
not say, without suspicion of malice or ill-feeling, that since the sad
catastrophe of the Templars, no "Lodge" in Europe, still less in America,
has ever known anything worth concealing. Reluctant to be misunderstood, we say
no Lodge,
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leaving a few chosen brethren
entirely out of question. The frantic denunciations of the Craft by Catholic
and Protestant writers appear simply ridiculous, as also the affirmation of the
Abbe Barruel that everything "betrays our Freemasons as the descendants of
those proscribed Knights" Templars of 1314. The Memoirs of Jacobinism by
this Abbe, an eye-witness to the horrors of the first Revolution, is devoted in
great measure to the Rosicrucians and other Masonic fraternities. The fact
alone that he traces the modern Masons to the Templars, and points them out as
secret assassins, trained to political murder, shows how little he knew of
them, but how ardently he desired, at the same time, to find in these societies
convenient scape-goats for the crimes and sins of another secret society which,
since its existence, has harbored more than one dangerous political assassin --
the Society of Jesus.
The accusations against Masons
have been mostly half guess-work, half-unquenchable malice and predetermined
vilification. Nothing conclusive and certain of a criminal character has been
directly proven against them. Even their abduction of Morgan has remained a
matter of conjecture. The case was used at the time as a political convenience
by huckstering politicians. When an unrecognizable corpse was found in Niagara
River, one of the chiefs of this unscrupulous class, being informed that the
identity was exceedingly questionable, unguardedly exposed the whole plot by
saying: "Well, no matter, he's a good enough Morgan until after the
election!" On the other hand, we find the Order of the Jesuits not only
permitting, in certain cases, but actually teaching and inciting to "High
treason and Regicide."*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "The Principles of
the Jesuits, Developed in a Collection of Extracts from their own
Authors," London: J. G. and F. Rivington, St. Paul's Churchyard, and
Waterloo Place, Pall Mall; H. Wix, 41 New Bridge Street, Blackfriars; J.
Leslie, Queen Street, etc., 1839. Section xvii., "High Treason and
Regicide," containing thirty-four extracts from the same number of
authorities (of the Society of Jesus) upon the question, among others the
opinion thereof of the famous Robert Bellarmine. So Emmanuel Sa says: "The
rebellion of an ecclesiastic against a king, is not a crime of high treason,
because he is not subject to the king" ("Confessarium Aphorismi Verbo
Clericus," Ed. Coloniae, 1615, Ed. Coll. Sion). "The people,"
says John Bridgewater, "are not only permitted, but they are required and
their duty demands, that at the mandate of the Vicar of Christ, who is the
sovereign pastor over all nations of the earth, the faith which they had
previously made with such princes should not be kept" ("Concertatio Ecclesiae
Catholicae in Anglia adversus Calvino Papistas," Resp. fol. 348).
In "De Rege et Regis
Institutione, Libri Tres," 1640 (Edit. Mus. Brit.), John Mariana goes even
farther: "If the circumstances will permit," he says, "it will
be lawful to destroy with the sword the prince who is declared a public enemy.
. . . I shall never consider that man to have done wrong, who, favouring the
public wishes, should attempt to kill him," and "to put them to death
is not only lawful, but a laud- [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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APPROVES POISONING.
A series of Lectures upon
Freemasonry and its dangers, as delivered in 1862, by James Burton Robertson,
Professor of Modern History in the Dublin University, are lying before us. In
them the lecturer quotes profusely as his authorities the said Abbe (Barruel, a
natural enemy of the Masons, who cannot be caught at the confessional), and
Robison, a well-known apostate-Mason of 1798. As usual with every party,
whether belonging to the Masonic or anti-Masonic side, the traitor from the
opposing camp is welcomed with praise and encouragement, and great care is taken
to whitewash him. However convenient for certain political reasons the
celebrated Committee of the Anti-Masonic Convention of 1830 (U. S. of America)
may have found it to adopt this most Jesuitical proposition of Puffendorf that
"oaths oblige not when they are absurd and impertinent," and that
other which teaches that "an oath obliges not if God does not accept
it,"* yet no truly honest man would accept such sophistry. We sincerely
believe that the better portion of humanity will ever bear in mind that there
exists a moral code of honor far more binding than an oath, whether on the
Bible, Koran, or Veda. The Essenes never swore on anything at all, but their
"ayes" and "nays" were as good and far better than an oath.
Besides, it seems surpassingly strange to find nations that call themselves
Christian instituting customs in civil and ecclesiastical courts diametrically
opposed to the command of their God,* who distinctly forbids any swearing at
all, "neither by heaven . . .
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] able and glorious action." Est tamen salutaris cogitatio,
ut sit principibus persuasum si rempublicam oppresserint, si vitiis et
faeditate intolerandi erunt, ea conditione vivere, ut non jure tantum, sed cum
laude et gloria perimi possint" (Lib. i., c. 6, p. 61).
But the most delicate piece of
Christian teaching is found in the precept of this Jesuit when he argues upon
the best and surest way of killing kings and statesmen. "In my own
opinion," he says, "deleterious drugs should not be given to an
enemy, neither should a deadly poison be mixed with his food or in his cup . .
. Yet it will indeed be lawful to use this method in the case in question (that
he who should kill the tyrant would be highly esteemed, both in favor and in
praise," for "it is a glorious thing to exterminate this pestilent
and mischievous race from the community of men), not to constrain the person
who is to be killed to take of himself the poison which, inwardly received,
would deprive him of life, but to cause it to be outwardly applied by another
without his intervention; as, when there is so much strength in the poison,
that if spread upon a seat or on the clothes it would be sufficiently powerful
to cause death" (Ibid., lib. i., c. f., p. 67). "It was thus that
Squire attempted the life of Queen Elizabeth, at the instigation of the Jesuit
Walpole." -- Pasquier: "Catechisme des Jesuites" (1677, p. 350,
etc.), and "Rapin" (fol., Lond., 1733, vol. ii., book xvii., p. 148).
* Puffendorf: "Droit de
la Nat.," book iv., ch. 1.
** "Again, ye have heard
that it hath been said by them of old time, thou shalt not forswear thyself. .
. . But I say unto you, swear not at all," etc. "But let your communication
be yea, yea; nay, nay; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil"
(Matthew v. 33, 34, 37).
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nor by the earth . . . nor by
the head." It seems to us that to maintain that "an oath obliges not
if God does not accept it," besides being an absurdity -- as no man
living, whether he be fallible or infallible, can learn anything of God's
secret thoughts -- is anti-Christian in the full sense of the word.* The
argument is brought forward only because it is convenient and answers the
object. Oaths will never be binding till each man will fully understand that
humanity is the highest manifestation on earth of the Unseen Supreme Deity, and
each man an incarnation of his God; and when the sense of personal
responsibility will be so developed in him that he will consider forswearing
the greatest possible insult to himself, as well as to humanity. No oath is now
binding, unless taken by one who, without any oath at all, would solemnly keep
his simple promise of honor. Therefore, to bring forward as authorities such
men as Barruel or Robison is simply obtaining the public confidence under false
pretenses. It is not the "spirit of Masonic malice whose heart coins
slanders like a mint," but far more that of the Catholic clergy and their
champions; and a man who would reconcile the two ideas of honor and perjury, in
any case whatever, is not to be trusted himself.
Loud is the claim of the
nineteenth century to preeminence in civilization over the ancients, and still
more clamorous that of the churches and their sycophants that Christianity has
redeemed the world from barbarism and idolatry. How little both are warranted,
we have tried to prove in these two volumes. The light of Christianity has only
served to show how much more hypocrisy and vice its teachings have begotten in
the world since its advent, and how immensely superior were the ancients over
us in every point of honor.** The clergy, by teaching the helplessness of man,
his utter dependence on Providence, and the doctrine of atonement, have crushed
in their faithful followers every atom of self-reliance and self-respect. So
true is this, that it is becoming an axiom that the most honorable men are to
be found among atheists and the so-called "infidels." We hear from
Hipparchus that in the days of heathenism "the shame and disgrace that
justly attended the violation of his oath threw the poor wretch into a fit of
madness and despair, so that he cut his throat and perished by his own hands,
and his memory was so abhorred after his death that his body lay upon the shore
of the island of Samos, and had no other burial than the sands of the
sea."*** But in our own
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Barbeyrac, in his notes on
Puffendorf, shows that the Peruvians used no oath, but a simple averment before
the Inca, and were never found perjuring themselves.
** We beg the reader to
remember that we do not mean by Christianity the teachings of Christ, but those
of his alleged servants -- the clergy.
*** Dr. Anderson's
"Defence," quoted by John Yarker in his "Notes on the Scientific
and Religious Mysteries of Antiquity."
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THE SECRET WISDOM?
century we find ninety-six
delegates to the United States Anti-Masonic Convention, every one doubtless a
member of some Protestant Church, and claiming the respect due to men of honor
and gentlemen, offering the most Jesuitical arguments against the validity of a
Masonic oath. The Committee, pretending to quote the authority of "the
most distinguished guides in the philosophy of morals, and claiming the most
ample support of the inspired* . . . who wrote before Freemasonry
existed," resolved that, as an oath was "a transaction between man on
one part and the Almighty Judge on the other," and the Masons were all
infidels and "unfit for civil trust," therefore their oaths had to be
considered illegal and not binding.**
But we will return to these
Lectures of Robertson and his charges against Masonry. The greatest accusation
brought against the latter is that Masons reject a personal God (this on the
authority of Barruel and Robison), and that they claim to be in possession of a
"secret to make men better and happier than Christ, his apostles and his Church
have made them." Were the latter accusation but half true, it might yet
allow the consoling hope that they had really found that secret by breaking off
entirely from the mythical Christ of the Church and the official Jehovah. But
both the accusations are simply as malicious as they are absurd and untrue; as
we shall presently see.
Let it not be imagined that we
are influenced by personal feeling in any of our reflections upon Masonry. So
far from this being the case we unhesitatingly proclaim our highest respect for
the original purposes of the Order and some of our most valued friends are
within its membership. We say naught against Masonry as it should be, but
denounce it as, thanks to the intriguing clergy, both Catholic and Protestant,
it now begins to be. Professedly the most absolute of democracies, it is
practically the appanage of aristocracy, wealth, and personal ambition.
Professedly the teacher of true ethics, it is debased into a propaganda of
anthropomorphic theology. The half-naked apprentice, brought before the master
during the initiation of the first degree, is taught that at the door of the
lodge every social distinction is laid aside, and the poorest brother is the
peer of every other, though a reigning sovereign or an imperial prince. In
practice, the Craft turns lickspittle in every monarchical country, to any
regal scion who may deign, for the sake of using it as a political tool, to put
on the once symbolical lambskin.
How far gone is the Masonic
Fraternity in this direction, we can judge
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Epiphanius included, we must
think, after that, in violation of his oath, he had sent over seventy persons
into exile, who belonged to the secret society he betrayed.
** United States Anti-Masonic
Convention: "Obligation of Masonic Oaths," speech delivered by Mr.
Hopkins, of New York.
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from the words of one of its
highest authorities. John Yarker, Junior, of England; Past Grand Warden of the
Grand Lodge of Greece; Grand Master of the Rite of Swedenborg; also Grand
Master of the Ancient and Primitive Rite of Masonry, and Heaven only knows what
else,* says that Masonry could lose nothing by "the adoption of a higher
(not pecuniary) standard of membership and morality, with exclusion from the
'purple' of all who inculcate frauds, sham, historical degrees, and other
immoral abuses" (page 158). And again, on page 157: "As the Masonic
Fraternity is now governed, the Craft is fast becoming the paradise of the bon
vivant; of the 'charitable' hypocrite, who forgets the version of St. Paul, and
decorates his breast with the 'charity jewel' (having by this judicious
expenditure obtained the 'purple' he metes out judgment to other brethren of
greater ability and morality but less means); the manufacturer of paltry
Masonic tinsel; the rascally merchant who swindles in hundreds, and even
thousands, by appealing to the tender consciences of those few who do regard
their O. B.'s; and the Masonic 'Emperors' and other charlatans who make power
or money out of the aristocratic pretensions which they have tacked on to our institution
-- ad captandum vulgus."
We have no wish to make a
pretence of exposing secrets long since hawked about the world by perjured
Masons. Everything vital, whether in symbolical representations, rites, or
passwords, as used in modern Freemasonry, is known in the Eastern fraternities;
though there seems to be no intercourse or connection between them. If Medea is
described by Ovid as having "arm, breast, and knee made bare, left foot
slipshod"; and Virgil, speaking of Dido, shows this "Queen herself . .
. now resolute on death, having one foot bare, etc.,"** why doubt that
there are in the East real "Patriarchs of the sacred Vedas,"
explaining the esotericism of pure Hindu theology and Brahmanism quite as
thoroughly as European "Patriarchs"?
But, if there are a few Masons
who, from study of kabalistic and other rare works, and coming in personal
communication with "Brothers" from the far-away East, have learned
something of esoteric Masonry, it is not the case with the hundreds of American
Lodges. While engaged on this chapter, we have received most unexpectedly,
through the kindness of a friend, a copy of Mr. Yarker's volume, from which
passages are quoted above. It is brimful of learning and, what is more, of
knowledge, as it
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* John Yarker, Junr.:
"Notes on the Scientific and Religious Mysteries of Antiquity; the Gnosis
and Secret Schools of the Middle Ages; Modern Rosicrucianism; and the various
Rites and Degrees of Free and Accepted Masonry." London, 1872.
** Ibid., p. 151.
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PAGAN?
seems to us. It is especially
valuable at this moment, since it corroborates, in many particulars, what we
have said in this work. Thus, we read in it the following:
"We think we have
sufficiently established the fact of the connection of Freemasonry with other
speculative rites of antiquity, as well as the antiquity and purity of the old
English Templar-Rite of seven degrees, and the spurious derivation of many of
the other rites therefrom."*
Such high Masons need not be
told, though Craftsmen in general do, that the time has come to remodel
Masonry, and restore those ancient landmarks, borrowed from the early
sodalities, which the eighteenth century founders of speculative Freemasonry
meant to have incorporated in the fraternity. There are no longer any secrets
left unpublished; the Order is degenerating into a convenience for selfish men
to use, and bad men to debase.
It is but recently that a
majority of the Supreme Councils of the Ancient and Accepted Rite assembled at
Lausanne, justly revolting against such a blasphemous belief as that in a
personal Deity, invested with all human attributes, pronounced the following
words: "Freemasonry proclaims, as it has proclaimed from its origin, the
existence of a creative principle, under the name of the great Architect of the
universe." Against this, a small minority has protested, urging that
"belief in a creative principle is not the belief in God, which
Freemasonry requires of every candidate before he can pass its very
threshold."
This confession does not sound
like the rejection of a personal God. Could we have had the slightest doubt
upon the subject, it would be thoroughly dispelled by the words of General
Albert Pike,** perhaps the greatest authority of the day, among American
Masons, who raises himself most violently against this innovation. We cannot do
better than quote his words:
"This Principe Createur
is no new phrase -- it is but an old term revived. Our adversaries, numerous
and formidable, will say, and will have the right to say, that our Principe
Createur is identical with the Principe Genateur of the Indians and Egyptians,
and may fitly be symbolized as it was symbolized anciently, by the Lingae. . .
. To accept this, in lieu of a personal God, is TO ABANDON CHRISTIANITY, and
the worship of Jehovah, and return to wallow in the styes of Paganism."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* John Yarker: "Notes,
etc.," p. 150.
** Proceedings of the Supreme
Council of Sovereign Grand Inspectors-General of the Thirty-third and Last
Degree, etc., etc. Held at the city of New York, August 15, 1876," pp. 54,
55.
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And are those of Jesuitism,
then, so much cleaner? "Our adversaries, numerous and formidable."
That sentence says all. Who these so formidable enemies are, is useless to
inquire. They are the Roman Catholics, and some of the Reformed Presbyterians.
To read what the two factions respectively write, we may well ask which
adversary is the more afraid of the other. But, what shall it profit any one to
organize against a fraternity that does not even dare to have a belief of its
own for fear of giving offense? And pray, how, if Masonic oaths mean anything,
and Masonic penalties are regarded as more than burlesque, can any adversaries,
numerous or few, feeble or strong, know what goes on inside the lodge, or
penetrate beyond that "brother terrible, or the tiler, who guards, with a
drawn sword, the portals of the lodge"? Is, then, this "brother
terrible" no more formidable than Offenbach's General Boum, with his
smoking pistol, jingling spurs, and towering panache? Of what use the millions
of men that make up this great fraternity, the world over, if they cannot be so
cemented together as to bid defiance to all adversaries? Can it be that the
"mystic tie" is but a rope of sand, and Masonry but a toy to feed the
vanity of a few leaders who rejoice in ribbons and regalia? Is its authority as
false as its antiquity? It seems so, indeed; and yet, as "even the fleas
have smaller fleas to bite 'em," there are Catholic alarmists, even here,
who pretend to fear Masonry!
And yet, these same Catholics,
in all the serenity of their traditional impudence, publicly threaten America,
with its 500,000 Masons, and 34,000,000 Protestants, with a union of Church and
State under the direction of Rome! The danger which threatens the free
institutions of this republic, we are told, will come from "the principles
of Protestantism logically developed." The present Secretary of the Navy
-- the Hon. R. W. Thompson, of Indiana, having actually dared, in his own free
Protestant country, to publish a book recently on Papacy and the Civil Power,
in which his language is as moderate as it is gentlemanly and fair, a Roman
Catholic priest, at Washington, D. C. -- the very seat of Government --
denounces him with violence. What is better, a representative member of the
Society of Jesus, Father F. X. Weninger, D. D., pours upon his devoted head a
vial of wrath that seems to have been brought direct from the Vatican cellars.
"The assertions," he says, "which Mr. Thompson makes on the
necessary antagonism between the Catholic Church and free institutions, are
characterized by pitiful ignorance and blind audacity. He is reckless of logic,
of history, of common sense, of charity; and presents himself before the loyal
American people as a narrow-minded bigot. No scholar would venture to repeat
the stale calumnies which have so often been refuted. . . . In answer to his
accu-
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sations against the Church as
the enemy of liberty, I tell him that, if ever this country should become a
Catholic country, that is, if Catholics should ever be in the majority, and
have the control of political power, then he would see the principles of our
Constitution carried out to the fullest extent; he would see that these States
would be in very deed United. He would behold a people living in peace and
harmony; joined in the bonds of one faith, their hearts beating in unison with
love of their fatherland, with charity and forbearance toward all, and
respecting the rights and consciences even of their slanderers."
In behalf of this
"Society of Jesus," he advises Mr. Thompson to send his book to the
Czar, Alexander II., and to Frederick William, Emperor of Germany. He may
expect from them, as a token of their sympathy, the orders of St. Andrew and of
the Black Eagle. "From clear-minded, self-thinking, patriotic Americans,
he cannot expect anything but the decoration of their contempt. As long as American
hearts will beat in American bosoms, and the blood of their fathers shall flow
in their veins, such efforts as Thompson's shall not succeed. True, genuine
Americans will protect the Catholic Church in this country and will finally
join it." After that, having thus, as he seems to think, left the corpse
of his impious antagonist upon the field, he marches off emptying the dregs of
his exhausted bottle after the following fashion: "We leave the volume,
whose argument we have killed, as a carcass to be devoured by those Texan
buzzards -- those stinking birds -- we mean that kind of men who love to feed
on corruption, calumnies, and lies, and are attracted by the stench of
them."
This last sentence is worthy
to be added as an appendix to the Discorsi del Somma Pontifice Pio IX., by Don
Pasquale di Franciscis, immortalized in the contempt of Mr. Gladstone. -- Tel
maitre tel Valet!
Moral: This will teach
fair-minded, sober, and gentlemanly writers that even so well-bred an
antagonist as Mr. Thompson has shown himself in his book, cannot hope to escape
the only available weapon in the Catholic armory -- Billingsgate. The whole
argument of the author shows that while forcible, he intends to be fair; but he
might as well have attacked with a Tertullianistic violence, for his treatment
would not have been worse. It will doubtless afford him some consolation to be
placed in the same category with schismatic and infidel emperors and kings.
While Americans, including
Masons, are now warned to prepare themselves to join the Holy Apostolic and
Roman Catholic Church, we are glad to know that there are some as loyal and
respected as any in Masonry who support our views. Conspicuous among them is
our venerable friend, Mr. Leon Hyneman, P. M., and a member of the Grand Lodge
of Pennsylvania. For eight or nine years he was editor of the Masonic
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Mirror and Keystone, and is an
author of repute. He assures us personally that for over thirty years he has
combated the design to erect into a Masonic dogma, belief in a personal God. In
his work, Ancient York and London Grand Lodges, he says (p. 169): "Masonry,
instead of unfolding professionally with the intellectual advancement of
scientific knowledge and general intelligence, has departed from the original
aims of the fraternity, and is apparently inclining towards a sectarian
society. That is plainly to be seen . . . in the persistent determination not
to expunge the sectarian innovations interpolated in the Ritual. . . . It would
appear that the Masonic fraternity of this country are as indifferent to
ancient landmarks and usages of Masonry, as the Masons of the past century,
under the London Grand Lodge were." It was this conviction which prompted
him, in 1856, when Jacques Etienne Marconis de Negre, Grand Hierophant of the
Rite of Memphis, came to America and tendered him the Grand Mastership of the
Rite in the United States, and the Ancient and Accepted Rite offered him an
Honorary 33d -- to refuse both.
The Temple was the last
European secret organization which, as a body, had in its possession some of
the mysteries of the East. True, there were in the past century (and perhaps
still are) isolated "Brothers" faithfully and secretly working under
the direction of Eastern Brotherhoods. But these, when they did belong to
European societies, invariably joined them for objects unknown to the
Fraternity, though at the same time for the benefit of the latter. It is
through them that modern Masons have all they know of importance; and the
similarity now found between the Speculative Rites of antiquity, the mysteries
of the Essenes, Gnostics, and the Hindus, and the highest and oldest of the
Masonic degrees well prove the fact. If these mysterious brothers became
possessed of the secrets of the societies, they could never reciprocate the
confidence, though in their hands these secrets were safer, perhaps, than in
the keeping of European Masons. When certain of the latter were found worthy of
becoming affiliates of the Orient, they were secretly instructed and initiated,
but the others were none the wiser for that.
No one could ever lay hands on
the Rosicrucians, and notwithstanding the alleged discoveries of "secret
chambers," vellums called "T," and of fossil knights with
ever-burning lamps, this ancient association and its true aims are to this day
a mystery. Pretended Templars and sham Rose-Croix, with a few genuine kabalists,
were occasionally burned, and some unlucky Theosophists and alchemists sought
and put to the torture; delusive confessions even were wrung from them by the
most ferocious means, but yet, the true Society remains to-day as it has ever
been, unknown to all, especially to its cruelest enemy -- the Church.
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HATCHED IN A JESUIT COLLEGE.
As to the modern Knights
Templar and those Masonic Lodges which now claim a direct descent from the
ancient Templars, their persecution by the Church was a farce from the
beginning. They have not, nor have they ever had any secrets, dangerous to the
Church. Quite the contrary; for we find J. G. Findel saying that the Scottish
degrees, or the Templar system, only dates from 1735-1740, and "following
its Catholic tendency, took up its chief residence in the Jesuit College of
Clermont, in Paris, and hence was called the Clermont system." The present
Swedish system has also something of the Templar element in it, but free from
Jesuits and interference with politics; however, it asserts that it has Molay's
Testament in the original, for a Count Beaujeu, a nephew of Molay, never heard
of elsewhere -- says Findel -- transplanted Templarism into Freemasonry, and
thus procured for his uncle's ashes a mysterious sepulchre. It is sufficient to
prove this a Masonic fable that on this pretended monument the day of Molay's
funeral is represented as March 11, 1313, while the day of his death was March
19, 1313. This spurious production, which is neither genuine Templarism, nor
genuine Freemasonry, has never taken firm root in Germany. But the case is
otherwise in France.
Writing upon this subject, we
must hear what Wilcke has to say of these pretensions:
"The present Knight
Templars of Paris will have it, that they are direct descendants from the
ancient Knights, and endeavor to prove this by documents, interior regulations,
and secret doctrines. Foraisse says the Fraternity of Freemasons was founded in
Egypt, Moses communicating the secret teaching to the Israelites, Jesus to the
Apostles, and thence it found its way to the Knight Templars. Such inventions
are necessary . . . to the assertion that the Parisian Templars are the
offspring of the ancient order. All these asseverations, unsupported by
history, were fabricated in the High Chapter of Clermont (Jesuits), and
preserved by the Parisian Templars as a legacy left them by those political
revolutionists, the Stuarts and the Jesuits." Hence we find the Bishops
Gregoire* and Munter** supporting them.
Connecting the modern with the
ancient Templars, we can at best, therefore, allow them an adoption of certain rites
and ceremonies of purely ecclesiastical character after they had been cunningly
inoculated into that grand and antique Order by the clergy. Since this
desecration, it gradually lost its primitive and simple character, and went
fast to its final ruin. Founded in 1118 by the Knights Hugh de Payens and
Geoffrey
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Histoire des sectes
religieuses," vol. ii., pp. 392-428.
** "Notitia codicis
graeci evangelium Johannis variatum continentis," Havaniae, 1828.
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de St. Omer, nominally for the
protection of the pilgrims, its true aim was the restoration of the primitive
secret worship. The true version of the history of Jesus, and the early
Christianity was imparted to Hugh de Payens, by the Grand-Pontiff of the Order
of the Temple (of the Nazarene or Johanite sect), one named Theocletes, after
which it was learned by some Knights in Palestine, from the higher and more
intellectual members of the St. John sect, who were initiated into its
mysteries.* Freedom of intellectual thought and the restoration of one and
universal religion was their secret object. Sworn to the vow of obedience,
poverty, and chastity, they were at first the true Knights of John the Baptist,
crying in the wilderness and living on wild honey and locusts. Such is the
tradition and the true kabalistic version.
It is a mistake to state that
the Order became only later anti-Catholic. It was so from the beginning, and
the red cross on the white mantle, the vestment of the Order, had the same
significance as with the initiates in every other country. It pointed to the
four quarters of the compass, and was the emblem of the universe.** When,
later, the Brotherhood was transformed into a Lodge, the Templars had, in order
to avoid persecution, to perform their own ceremonies in the greatest secresy,
generally in the hall of the chapter, more frequently in isolated caves or
country houses built amidst woods, while the ecclesiastical form of worship was
carried on publicly in the chapels belonging to the Order.
Though of the accusations
brought against them by order of Philip IV., many were infamously false, the
main charges were certainly correct, from the stand-point of what is considered
by the Church, heresy. The present-day Templars, adhering strictly as they do
to the Bible, can hardly claim descent from those who did not believe in
Christ, as God-man, or as the Saviour of the world; who rejected the miracle of
his birth, and those performed by himself; who did not believe in
transubstantiation, the saints, holy relics, purgatory, etc. The Christ Jesus
was, in their opinion, a false prophet, but the man Jesus a Brother. They
regarded John the Baptist as their patron, but never viewed him in the light in
which he is presented in the Bible. They reverenced the doc-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This is the reason why unto
this day the fanatical and kabalistic members of the Nazarenes of Basra
(Persia), have a tradition of the glory, wealth, and power of their
"Brothers," agents, or messengers as they term them in Malta and
Europe. There are some few remaining yet, they say, who will sooner or later
restore the doctrine of their Prophet Iohanan (St. John), the son of Lord
Jordan, and eliminate from the hearts of humanity every other false teaching.
** The two great pagodas of
Madura and Benares, are built in the form of a cross, each wing being equal in
extent (See Mauri: "Indian Antiquities," vol. iii., pp. 360-376).
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MALTA.
trines of alchemy, astrology,
magic, kabalistic talismans, and adhered to the secret teachings of their
chiefs in the East. "In the last century," says Findel, "when
Freemasonry erroneously supposed herself the daughter of Templarism, great
pains were taken to regard the Order of Knights-Templars as innocent. . . . For
this purpose not only legends and unrecorded events were fabricated, but pains
were taken to repress the truth. The Masonic admirers of the Knights-Templars
bought up the whole of the documents of the lawsuit published by Moldenwaher,
because they proved the culpability of the Order."*
This culpability consisted in
their "heresy" against the Roman Catholic Church. While the real
"Brothers" died an ignominious death, the spurious Order which tried
to step into their shoes became exclusively a branch of the Jesuits under the
immediate tutelage of the latter. True-hearted, honest Masons, ought to reject
with horror any connection, let alone descent from these.
"The Knights of St. John
of Jerusalem," writes Commander Gourdin,** "sometimes called the
Knights Hospitallers, and the Knights of Malta, were not Freemasons. On the
contrary, they seem to have been inimical to Freemasonry, for in 1740, the
Grand Master of the Order of Malta caused the Bull of Pope Clement XII. to be
published in that island, and forbade the meetings of the Freemasons. On this
occasion several Knights and many citizens left the island; and in 1741, the
Inquisition persecuted the Freemasons at Malta. The Grand Master proscribed
their assemblies under severe penalties, and six Knights were banished from the
island in perpetuity for having assisted at a meeting. In fact, unlike the
Templars, they had not even a secret form of reception. Reghellini says that he
was unable to procure a copy of the secret Ritual of the Knights of Malta. The
reason is obvious -- there was none!"
And yet American Templarism
comprises three degrees. 1, Knight of the Red Cross; 2, Knight Templar; and 3,
Knight of Malta. It was introduced from France into the United States, in 1808,
and the first Grand Encampment General was organized on June 20, 1816, with
Governor De Witt Clinton, of New York, as Grand Master.
This inheritance of the Jesuits
should hardly be boasted of. If the Knights Templar desire to make good their
claims, they must choose between a descent from the "heretical,"
anti-Christian, kabalistic, primitive Templars, or connect themselves with the
Jesuits, and nail
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Findel: "History of
Freemasonry," Appendix.
** "A Sketch of the
Knight Templars and the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem," by Richard
Woof, F.S.A., Commander of the Order of Masonic Knight Templars.
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their tesselated carpets
directly on the platform of ultra-Catholicism! Otherwise, their claims become a
mere pretense.
So impossible does it become
for the originators of the ecclesiastical pseudo-order of Templars, invented,
according to Dupuy, in France, by the adherents of the Stuarts, to avoid being
considered a branch of the Order of the Jesuits, that we are not surprised to
see an anonymous author, rightly suspected of belonging to the Jesuit Chapter
at Clermont, publishing a work in 1751, in Brussels, on the lawsuit of the
Knights Templar. In this volume, in sundry mutilated notes, additions, and
commentaries, he represents the innocence of the Templars of the accusation of
"heresy," thus robbing them of the greatest title to respect and
admiration that these early free-thinkers and martyrs have won!
This last pseudo-order was
constituted at Paris, on the 4th of November, 1804, by virtue of a forged
Constitution, and ever since it has "contaminated genuine
Freemasonry," as the highest Masons themselves tell us. La Charte de
transmission (tabula aurea Larmenii) presents the outward appearance of such
extreme antiquity "that Gregoire confesses that if all the other relics of
the Parisian treasury of the Order had not silenced his doubts as to their
ancient descent, the sight of this charter would at the very first glance have
persuaded him."* The first Grand Master of this spurious Order was a
physician of Paris, Dr. Fahre-Palaprat, who assumed the name of Bernard
Raymond.
Count Ramsay, a Jesuit, was
the first to start the idea of the Templars being joined to the Knights of
Malta. Therefore, we read from his pen the following:
"Our forefathers (! ! !),
the Crusaders, assembled in the Holy Land from all Christendom, wished to unite
in a fraternity embracing all nations, that when bound together, heart and
soul, for mutual improvement, they might, in the course of time, represent one
single intellectual people."
This is why the Templars are
made to join the St. John's Knights, and the latter got into the craft of
Masonry known as St. John's Masons.
In the Sceau Rompu, in 1745, we
find, therefore, the following most impudent falsehood, worthy of the Sons of
Loyola: "The lodges were dedicated to St. John, because the Knights-Masons
had in the holy wars in Palestine joined the Knights of St. John."
In 1743, the Kadosh degree was
invented at Lyons (so writes Thory, at least), and "it represents the
revenge of the Templars." And here we find Findel saying that "the
Order of Knights Templars had been abolished in 1311, and to that epoch they
were obliged to have recourse
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Findel: "History of
Freemasonry," Appendix.
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PRINCE POISONED.
when, after the banishment of
several Knights from Malta, in 1740, because they were Freemasons, it was no
longer possible to keep up a connection with the Order of St. John, or Knights
of Malta, then in the plenitude of their power under the sovereignty of the
Pope."
Turning to Clavel, one of the
best Masonic authorities, we read: "It is clear that the erection of the
French Order of the Knight Templars is not more ancient than the year 1804, and
that it cannot lay any legitimate claim to being the continuation of the
so-called society of 'la petite Resurrection des Templiers,' nor this latter,
either, extend back to the ancient Order of the Knights Templars."
Therefore, we see these pseudo-Templars, under the guidance of the worthy
Father Jesuits, forging in Paris, 1806, the famous charter of Larmenius. Twenty
years later, this nefast and subterranean body, guiding the hand of assassins,
directed it toward one of the best and greatest princes in Europe, whose mysterious
death, unfortunately for the interests of truth and justice, has never been --
for political reasons -- investigated and proclaimed to the world as it ought
to have been. It is this prince, a Freemason himself, who was the last
depository of the secrets of the true Knights Templar. For long centuries these
had remained unknown and unsuspected. Holding their meetings once every
thirteen years, at Malta, and their Grand Master advising the European brothers
of the place of rendezvous but a few hours in advance, these representatives of
the once mightiest and most glorious body of Knights assembled on the fixed
day, from various points of the earth. Thirteen in number, in commemoration of
the year of the death of Jacques Molay (1313), the now Eastern brothers, among
whom were crowned heads, planned together the future religious and political
fate of the nations; while the Popish Knights, their murderous and bastard
successors, slept soundly in their beds, without a dream disturbing their
guilty consciences.
"And yet," says
Rebold, "notwithstanding the confusion they had created (1736-72), the
Jesuits had accomplished but one of their designs, viz.: denaturalyzing and
bringing into disrepute the Masonic Institution. Having succeeded, as they believed,
in destroying it in one form, they were determined to use it in another. With
this determination, they arranged the systems styled 'Clerkship of the
Templars,' an amalgamation of the different histories, events, and
characteristics of the crusades mixed with the reveries of the alchemists. In
this combination Catholicism governed all, and the whole fabrication moved upon
wheels, representing the great object for which the Society of Jesus was
organized."*
Hence, the rites and symbols
of Masonry which though "Pagan" in
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* "General History of
Freemasonry," p. 218.
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origin, are all applied to and
all flavor of Christianity. A Mason has to declare his belief in a personal
God, Jehovah, and in the Encampment degrees also in Christ, before he can be
accepted in the Lodge, while the Johanite Templars believed in the unknown and
invisible Principle, whence proceeded the Creative Powers misnamed gods, and
held to the Nazarene version of Ben-Panther being the sinful father of Jesus,
who thus proclaimed himself "the son of god and of humanity."* This
also accounts for the fearful oaths of the Masons taken on the Bible, and for
their lectures servilely agreeing with the Patriarcho-Biblical Chronology. In
the American Order of Rose Croix, for instance, when the neophyte approaches
the altar, the "Sir Knights are called to order, and the captain of the
guard makes his proclamation." "To the glory of the sublime architect
of the universe (Jehovah-Binah?), under the auspices of the Sovereign Sanctuary
of Ancient and Primitive Freemasonry," etc., etc. Then the Knight Orator
strikes 1 and tells the neophyte that the antique legends of Masonry date back
FORTY centuries; claiming no greater antiquity for the oldest of them than 622
A.M., at which time he says Noah was born. Under the circumstances this will be
regarded as a liberal concession to chronological preferences. After that
Masons** are apprised that it was about the year 2188 B.C., that Mizraim led
colonies into Egypt, and laid the foundation of the Kingdom of Egypt, which
kingdom lasted 1,663 years (! ! !). Strange chronology, which, if it piously
conforms with that of the Bible, disagrees entirely with that of history. The
mythical nine names of the Deity, imported into Egypt, according
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Gaffarel's version;
Eliphas Levi's "La Science des Esprits"; Mackenzie's "Royal
Masonic Cyclopaedia"; "Sepher Toldos Jeshu"; and other
kabalistical and Rabbinical works. The story given is this. A virgin named
Mariam, betrothed to a young man of the name of Iohanan, was outraged by
another man named Ben Panther or Joseph Panther, says "Sepher Toldos
Jeshu." "Her betrothed, learning of her misfortune, left her, at the
same time forgiving her. The child born was Jesus, named Joshua. Adopted by his
uncle Rabbi Jehosuah, he was initiated into the secret doctrine by Rabbi
Elhanan, a kabalist, and then by the Egyptian priests, who consecrated him High
Pontiff of the Universal Secret Doctrine, on account of his great mystic
qualities. Upon his return into Judea his learning and powers excited the
jealousy of the Rabbis, and they publicly reproached him with his origin and
insulted his mother. Hence the words attributed to Jesus at Cana: 'Woman, what
have I to do with thee?' (See John ii. 4.) His disciples having rebuked him
with his unkindness to his mother, Jesus repented, and having learned from them
the particulars of the sad story, he declared that "My mother has not
sinned, she has not lost her innocence; she is immaculate and yet she is a mother.
. . . As for myself I have no father, in this world, I am the Son of God and of
humanity"! Sublime words of confidence and trust in the unseen Power, but
how fatal to the millions upon millions of men murdered because of these very
words being so thoroughly misunderstood!
** We speak of the American
Chapter of Rose Croix.
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ADEPTS NOT POSSESSED BY MASONS.
to the Masons, only in the
twenty-second century B.C., are found on monuments reckoned twice as old by the
best Egyptologists. Nevertheless we must take at the same time into
consideration, that the Masons are themselves ignorant of these names.
The simple truth is that
modern Masonry is a sadly different thing from what the once universal secret
fraternity was in the days when the Brahma-worshippers of the AUM, exchanged
grips and passwords with the devotees of TUM, and the adepts of every country
under the sun were "Brothers."
What was then that mysterious
name, that mighty "word" through whose potency the Hindu as well as
the Chaldean and Egyptian initiate performed his wonders? In chapter cxv. of
the Egyptian Funeral Ritual, entitled "The chapter of coming out to the
Heaven . . . and of knowing the Spirits of An" (Heliopolis), Horus says:
"I knew the Spirits of An. The greatly glorious does not pass over it . .
. unless the gods give me the WORD." In another hymn the soul,
transformed, exclaims: "Make road for me to Rusta. I am the Great One,
dressed as the Great One. I have come! I have come! Delicious to me are the
kings of Osiris. I am creating the water (through the power of the Word). . . .
Have I not seen the hidden secrets . . . I have given truth to the Sun. I am
clear. I am adored for my purity" (cxvii. -- cxix. The chapters of the
going into and coming out from the Rusta). In another place the mummy's roll
expresses the following: "I am the Great God (spirit) existing of myself,
the creator of His Name. . . . I know the name of this Great God that is
there."
Jesus is accused by his
enemies of having wrought miracles, and shown by his own apostles to have
expelled demons by the power of the INEFFABLE NAME. The former firmly believed
that he had stolen it in the Sanctuary. "And he cast the spirits with his
word . . . and healed all that were sick" (Matthew xviii. 16). When the
Jewish rulers ask Peter (Acts iv. 7): "By what power, or by what name,
have ye done this?" Peter replies, "By the NAME of Jesus Christ of
Nazareth." But does this mean the name of Christ, as the interpreters
would make us believe; or does it signify, "'by the NAME which was in the
possession of Jesus of Nazareth," the initiate, who was accused by the
Jews to have learned it but who had it really through initiation? Besides, he
states repeatedly that all that he does he does in "His Father's
Name," not in his own.
But who of the modern Masons
has ever heard it pronounced? In their own Ritual, they confess that they never
have. The "Sir Orator" tells the "Sir Knight," that the
passwords which he received in the preceding degrees are all "so many
corruptions" of the true name
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of God engraved on the
triangle; and that therefore they have adopted a "substitute" for it.
Such also is the case in the Blue Lodge, where the Master, representing King Solomon,
agrees with King Hiram that the Word * * * "shall be used as a substitute
for the Master's word, until wiser ages shall discover the true one." What
Senior Deacon, of all the thousands who have assisted in bringing candidates
from darkness to light; or what Master who has whispered this mystic
"word" into the ears of supposititious Hiram Abiffs, while holding
them on the five points of fellowship, has suspected the real meaning of even
this substitute, which they impart "at low breath"? How few new-made
Master Masons but go away imagining that it has some occult connection with the
"marrow in the bone." What do they know of that mystical personage
known to some adepts as the "venerable MAH," or of the mysterious
Eastern Brothers who obey him, whose name is abbreviated in the first syllable
of the three which compose the Masonic substitute -- The MAH, who lives at this
very day in a spot unknown to all but initiates, and the approaches to which
are through trackless wildernesses, untrodden by Jesuit or missionary foot, for
it is beset by dangers fit to appall the most courageous explorers? And yet,
for generations this meaningless jingle of vowels and consonants has been
repeated in noviciate ears, as though it possessed even so much potency as
would deflect from its course a thistledown floating in the air! Like
Christianity, Freemasonry is a corpse from which the spirit long ago fled.
In this connection, place may
well be given to a letter from Mr. Charles Sotheran, Corresponding Secretary of
the New York Liberal Club, which was received by us on the day after the date
it bears. Mr. Sotheran is known as a writer and lecturer on antiquarian,
mystical, and other subjects. In Masonry, he has taken so many of the degrees
as to be a competent authority as regards the Craft. He is 32 [[design]] A. and
P. R., and P. R., 94 [[design]] Memphis, K. R[[design]], K. Kadosh, M. M. 104,
Eng., etc. He is also an initiate of the modern English Brotherhood of the
Rosie Cross and other secret societies, and Masonic editor of the New York
Advocate. Following is the letter, which we place before the Masons as we
desire that they should see what one of their own number has to say:
"NEW YORK PRESS CLUB,
January 11th, 1877.
"In response to your
letter, I willingly furnish the information desired with respect to the
antiquity and present condition of Freemasonry. This I do the more cheerfully
since we belong to the same secret societies, and you can thus better
appreciate the necessity for the reserve which at times I shall be obliged to
exhibit. You rightly refer to the fact that Freemasonry, no less than the
effete theologies of the day, has its fabulous history to narrate. Clogged up
as the Order has been by the rubbish and drift of absurd biblical legends, it
is no wonder that its usefulness has been impaired and its
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STRICTURES UPON MASONRY.
work as a civilizer hampered.
Fortunately the great anti-Masonic excitement that raged in the United States
during a portion of this century, forced a considerable band of workers to
delve into the true origin of the Craft, and bring about a healthier state of
things. The agitation in America also spread to Europe and the literary efforts
of Masonic authors on both sides of the Atlantic, such as Rebold, Findel,
Hyneman, Mitchell, Mackenzie, Hughan, Yarker and others well-known to the
fraternity, is now a matter of history. One effect of their labors has been, in
a great measure, to bring the history of Masonry into an open daylight, where
even its teachings, jurisprudence, and ritual are no longer secret from those
of the 'profane,' who have the wit to read as they run.
"You are correct in
saying that the Bible is the 'great light' of European and American Masonry. In
consequence of this the theistic conception of God and the biblical cosmogony
have been ever considered two of its great corner-stones. Its chronology seems
also to have been based upon the same pseudo-revelation. Thus Dr. Dalcho, in
one of his treatises asserts that the principles of the Masonic Order were
presented at and coeval with the creation. It is therefore not astonishing that
such a pundit should go on to state that God was the first Grand Master, Adam
the second, and the last named initiated Eve into the Great Mystery, as I
suppose many a Priestess of Cybele and 'Lady' Kadosh were afterward. The Rev.
Dr. Oliver, another Masonic authority, gravely records what may be termed the
minutes of a Lodge where Moses presided as Grand Master, Joshua as Deputy Grand
Master, and Aholiab and Bezaleel as Grand Wardens! The temple at Jerusalem,
which recent archaeologists have shown to be a structure with nothing like the
pretended antiquity of its erection, and incorrectly called after a monarch
whose name proves his mystical character, Sol-Om-On (the name of the sun in
three languages), plays, as you correctly observe, a considerable share in
Masonic mystery. Such fables as these, and the traditional Masonic colonization
of ancient Egypt, have given the Craft the credit of an illustrious origin to
which it has no right, and before whose forty centuries of legendary history,
the mythologies of Greece and Rome fade into insignificance. The Egyptian,
Chaldean, and other theories necessary to each fabricator of 'high degrees'
have also each had their short period of prominence. The last 'axe to grind'
has consecutively been the fruitful mother of unproductiveness.
"We both agree that all
the ancient priesthoods had their esoteric doctrines and secret ceremonies.
From the Essenic brotherhood, an evolution of the Hindu Gymnosophists,
doubtless proceeded the Solidarities of Greece and Rome as described by
so-called 'Pagan' writers. Founded on these and copying them in the matter of
ritual, signs, grips, passwords, etc., were developed the mediaeval guilds.
Like the present livery companies of London, the relics of the English
trade-guilds, the operative Masons were but a guild of workmen with higher
pretensions. From the French name 'Macon,' derived from 'Mas,' an old Norman
noun meaning 'a house,' comes our English 'Mason,' a house builder. As the
London companies alluded to present now and again the Freedom of the 'Liveries'
to outsiders, so we find the trade-guilds of Masons doing the same. Thus the
founder of the Ashmolean Museum was made free of the Masons at Warrington, in
Lancashire, England, on the 16th October, 1646. The entrance of such men as
Elias Ashmole into the Operative Fraternity paved the way for the great
'Masonic Revolution of 1717,' when SPECULATIVE Masonry came into existence. The
Constitutions of 1723 and 1738, by the Masonic impostor Anderson, were written
up for the newly-fledged and first Grand Lodge of 'Free and Accepted Masons' of
England, from which body all others over the world hail to-day.
"These bogus
constitutions, written by Anderson, were compiled about then, and in order to
palm off his miserable rubbish yclept history, on the Craft, he had the
audacity to state that nearly all the documents relating to Masonry in England
had been destroyed by the 1717 reformers. Happily, in the British Museum,
Bodleian Library, and other public institutions, Rebold, Hughan and others have
discovered sufficient evidence in the shape of old Operative Masonic charges to
disprove this statement.
"The same writers, I
think, have conclusively upset the tenability of two other documents palmed
upon Masonry, namely, the spurious charter of Cologne of 1535, and the forged
questions, supposed to have been written by Leylande, the antiquary,
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from a MS. of King Henry VI.
of England. In the last named, Pythagoras is referred to as having -- 'formed a
great lodge, at Crotona, and made many Masons, some of whom travelled into
France, and there made many, from whence, in process of time, the art passed
into England.' Sir Christopher Wren, architect of St. Paul's Cathedral, London,
often called the 'Grand Master of Freemasons,' was simply the Master or
President of the London Operative Masons Company. If such a tissue of fable
could interweave itself into the history of the Grand Lodges which now have
charge of the first three symbolical degrees, it is hardly astonishing that the
same fate should befall nearly all of the High Masonic Degrees which have been
aptly termed 'an incoherent medley of opposite principles.'
"It is curious to note
too that most of the bodies which work these, such as the Ancient and Accepted
Scottish Rite, the Rite of Avignon, the Order of the Temple, Fessler's Rite,
the 'Grand Council of the Emperors of the East and West -- Sovereign Prince
Masons,' etc., etc., are nearly all the offspring of the sons of Ignatius
Loyola. The Baron Hundt, Chevalier Ramsay, Tschoudy, Zinnendorf, and numerous
others who founded the grades in these rites, worked under instructions from
the General of the Jesuits. The nest where these high degrees were hatched, and
no Masonic rite is free from their baleful influence more or less, was the
Jesuit College of Clermont at Paris.
"That bastard foundling
of Freemasonry, the 'Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite,' which is unrecognized
by the Blue Lodges was the enunciation, primarily, of the brain of the Jesuit
Chevalier Ramsay. It was brought by him to England in 1736-38, to aid the cause
of the Catholic Stuarts. The rite in its present form of thirty-three degrees
was reorganized at the end of the eighteenth century by some half dozen Masonic
adventurers at Charleston, South Carolina. Two of these, Pirlet a tailor, and a
dancing master named Lacorne, were fitting predecessors for a later
resuscitation by a gentleman of the name of Gourgas, employed in the
aristocratic occupation of a ship's clerk, on a boat trading between New York
and Liverpool. Dr. Crucefix, alias Goss, the inventor of certain patent
medicines of an objectionable character, ran the institution in England. The
powers under which these worthies acted was a document claimed to have been
signed by Frederick the Great at Berlin, on May 1st, 1786, and by which were
revised the Masonic Constitution and Status of the High Degrees of the Ancient
and Accepted Rite. This paper was an impudent forgery and necessitated the
issuing of a protocol by the Grand Lodges of the Three Globes of Berlin, which
conclusively proved the whole arrangement to be false in every particular. On
claims supported by this supposititious document, the Ancient and Accepted Rite
have swindled their confiding brothers in the Americas and Europe out of
thousands of dollars, to the shame and discredit of humanity.
"The modern Templars,
whom you refer to in your letter, are but mere magpies in peacock's plumes. The
aim of the Masonic Templars is the sectarianization, or rather the
Christianizing of Masonry, a fraternity which is supposed to admit the Jew,
Parsee, Mahometan, Buddhist, in fact every religionist within its portals who
accepts the doctrine of a personal god, and spirit-immortality. According to
the belief of a section, if not all the Israelites, belonging to the Craft in
America -- Templarism is Jesuitism.
"It seems strange, now
that the belief in a personal God is becoming extinct, and that even the
theologian has transformed his deity into an indescribable nondescript, that
there are those who stand in the way of the general acceptation of the sublime
pantheism of the primeval Orientals, of Jacob Boehme, of Spinoza. Often in the
Grand Lodge and subordinate lodges of this and other jurisdictions, the old
doxology is sung, with its 'Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,' to the disgust
of Israelites and free-thinking brethren, who are thus unnecessarily insulted.
This could never occur in India, where the great light in a lodge may be the
Koran, the Zend-Avesta, or one of the Vedas. The sectarian Christian spirit in
Masonry must be put down. To-day there are German Grand Lodges which will not
allow Jews to be initiated, or Israelites from foreign countries to be accepted
as brethren within their jurisdiction. The French Masons have, however,
revolted against this tyranny, and the Grand Orient of France does now permit
the atheist and materialist to fellowship in the Craft. A standing rebuke upon
the claimed universality of Masonry is the fact that the French brethren are
now repudiated.
"Notwithstanding its many
faults -- and speculative Masonry is but human, and
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ALLEGORY.
therefore fallible -- there is
no institution that has done so much, and is yet capable of such great
undertakings in the future, for human, religious, and political improvement. In
the last century the Illuminati taught, 'peace with the cottage, war with the
palace,' throughout the length and breadth of Europe. In the last century the
United States was freed from the tyranny of the mother country by the action of
the Secret Societies more than is commonly imagined. Washington, Lafayette,
Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, were Masons. And in the nineteenth century it
was Grand Master Garibaldi, 33, who unified Italy, working in accordance with
the spirit of the faithful brotherhood, as the Masonic, or rather carbonari,
principles of 'liberty, equality, humanity, independence, unity,' taught for
years by brother Joseph Mazzini.
"Speculative Masonry has
much, too, within its ranks to do. One is to accept woman as a co-worker of man
in the struggle of life, as the Hungarian Masons have done lately by initiating
the Countess Haideck. Another important thing is also to recognize practically
the brotherhood of all humanity by refusing none on account of color, race,
position, or creed. The dark-skinned should not be only theoretically the
brother of the light. The colored Masons who have been duly and regularly
raised stand at every lodge-door in America craving admission, and they are
refused. And there is South America to be conquered to a participation in the
duties of humanity.
"If Masonry be, as
claimed, a progressive science and a school of pure religion, it should ever be
found in the advance guard of civilization, not in the rear. If it be but an empirical
effort, a crude attempt of humanity to solve some of the deepest problems of
the race, and no more, then it must give place to fitter successors, perchance
one of those that you and I know of, one that may have acted the prompter at
the side of the chiefs of the Order, during its greatest triumphs, whispering
to them as the daemon did in the ear of Socrates.
"Yours most Sincerely,
"CHARLES SOTHERAN."
Thus falls to ruins the grand
epic poem of Masons, sung by so many mysterious Knights as another revealed
gospel. As we see, the Temple of Solomon is being undermined and brought to the
ground by its own chief "Master Masons," of this century. But if,
following the ingenious exoteric description of the Bible, there are yet Masons
who persist in regarding it as once an actual structure, who, of the students
of the esoteric doctrine will ever consider this mythic temple otherwise than
an allegory, embodying the secret science? Whether or not there ever was a real
temple of that name, we may well leave to archaeologists to decide; but that
the detailed description thereof in 1 Kings is purely allegorical, no serious
scholar, proficient in the ancient as well as mediaeval jargon of the kabalists
and alchemists, can doubt. The building of the Temple of Solomon is the
symbolical representation of the gradual acquirement of the secret wisdom, or
magic; the erection and development of the spiritual from the earthly; the
manifestation of the power and splendor of the spirit in the physical world,
through the wisdom and genius of the builder. The latter, when he has become an
adept, is a mightier king than Solomon himself, the emblem of the sun or Light
himself -- the light of the real subjective world, shining in the darkness of
the objective universe. This is the "Temple" which can be reared
without the sound of the hammer, or any tool of iron being heard in the house
while it is "in building."
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In the East, this science is
called, in some places, the "seven-storied," in others, the
"nine-storied" Temple; every story answers allegorically to a degree
of knowledge acquired. Throughout the countries of the Orient, wherever magic
and the wisdom-religion are studied, its practitioners and students are known
among their craft as Builders -- for they build the temple of knowledge, of
secret science. Those of the adepts who are active, are styled practical or
operative Builders, while the students, or neophytes are classed as speculative
or theoretical. The former exemplify in works their control over the forces of
inanimate as well as animate nature; the latter are but perfecting themselves
in the rudiments of the sacred science. These terms were evidently borrowed at
the beginning by the unknown founders of the first Masonic guilds.
In the now popular jargon,
"Operative Masons" are understood to be the bricklayers and the
handicraftsmen, who composed the Craft down to Sir Christopher Wren's time; and
"Speculative Masons," all members of the Order, as now understood.
The sentence attributed to Jesus, "Thou art Peter . . . upon this rock I
will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it,"
disfigured, as it is, by mistranslation and misinterpretation, plainly
indicates its real meaning. We have shown the signification of Pater and Petra,
with the hierophants -- the interpretation traced on the tables of stone of the
final initiation, was handed by the initiator to the chosen future interpreter.
Having acquainted himself with its mysterious contents, which revealed to him
the mysteries of creation, the initiated became a builder himself, for he was
made acquainted with the dodecahedron, or the geometrical figure on which the
universe was built. To what he had learned in previous initiations of the use
of the rule and of architectural principles, was added a cross, the
perpendicular and horizontal lines of which were supposed to form the foundation
of the spiritual temple, by placing them across the junction, or central
primordial point, the element of all existences,* representing the first
concrete idea of deity. Henceforth he could, as a Master builder (see 1
Corinthians, iii. 10), erect a temple of wisdom on that rock of Petra, for
himself; and having laid a sure foundation, let "another build
thereon."
The Egyptian hierophant was
given a square head-dress, which he had to wear always, and a square (see
Mason's marks), without which he could never go abroad. The perfect Tau formed
of the perpendicular (descending male ray, or spirit) a horizontal line (or
matter, female ray), and the mundane circle was an attribute of Isis, and, it
is but at his death that the Egyptian cross was laid on the breast of his
mummy. These
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Pythagoras.
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TOW" OF LAMAS AND BRAHMAN-SANNYASI.
square hats are worn unto this
day by the Armenian priests. The claim that the cross is purely a Christian
symbol introduced after our era, is strange indeed, when we find Ezekiel
stamping the foreheads of the men of Judah, who feared the Lord (Ezekiel ix.
4), with the signa Thau, as it is translated in the Vulgate. In the ancient
Hebrew this sign was formed thus [[design]] but in the original Egyptian
hieroglyphics as a perfect Christian cross [[design]]. In the Revelation, also,
the "Alpha and Omega" (spirit and matter), the first and the last,
stamps the name of his Father in the foreheads of the elect.
And if our statements are
wrong, if Jesus was not an initiate, a Master-builder, or Master-Mason as it is
now called, how comes it, that on the most ancient cathedrals we find his
figure with Mason's marks about his person? In the Cathedral of Santa Croce,
Florence, over the main portal can be seen the figure of Christ holding a
perfect square in his hand.
The surviving
"Master-builders" of the operative craft of the true Temple, may go
literally half-naked and wander slipshod for ever -- now not for the sake of a
puerile ceremony, but because, like the "Son of man," they have not
where to lay their heads -- and yet be the only surviving possessors of the
"Word." Their "cable-tow" is the sacred triple cord of
certain Brahman-Sannyasi, or the string on which certain lamas hang their
yu-stone; but with these apparently valueless talismans, not one of them would
part for all the wealth of Solomon and Sheba. The seven-knotted bamboo stick of
the fakir can become as powerful as the rod of Moses "which was created
between the evenings, and on which was engraven and set forth the great and
glorious NAME, with which he was to do the wonders in Mizraim."
But these "operative
workmen" have no fear that their secrets will be disclosed by treacherous
ex-high priests of chapters, though their generation may have received them
through others than "Moses, Solomon, and Zerubbabel." Had Moses
Michael Hayes, the Israelite Brother who introduced Royal Arch Masonry into
this country (in December, 1778),* had a prophetic presentiment of future
treasons, he might have instituted more efficacious obligations than he has.
Truly, the grand omnific Royal
Arch word, "long lost but now found," has fulfilled its prophetic
promise. The password of that degree is no more "I AM THAT I AM." It
is now simply "I was but am no more!"
[[3 lines design]]
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The first Grand Chapter was
instituted at Philadelphia, in 1797.
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That we may not be accused of
vain boasting, we shall give the keys to several of the secret ciphers of the
most exclusive and important of the so-called higher Masonic degrees. If we
mistake not, these have never before been revealed to the outside world (except
that of the Royal Arch Masons, in 1830), but have been most jealously guarded
within the various Orders. We are under neither promise, obligation, nor oath;
and therefore violate no confidence. Our purpose is not to gratify an idle
curiosity; we wish merely to show Masons and the affiliates of all other
Western societies -- the Company of Jesus included -- that it is impossible for
them to be secure in the possession of any secrets that it is worth an Eastern
Brotherhood's while to discover. Inferentially, it may also show them that if
the latter can lift the masks of European societies, they are nevertheless
successful in wearing their own visors; for, if any one thing is universally
acknowledged, it is that the real secrets of not a single surviving ancient
brotherhood are in possession of the profane.
Some of these ciphers were
used by the Jesuits in their secret correspondence at the time of the Jacobin
conspiracy, and when Masonry (the alleged successor to the Temple) was employed
by the Church for political purposes.
Findel says (see his History
of Freemasonry, p. 253) that in the eighteenth century, "besides the
modern Knights Templar, we see the Jesuits . . . disfiguring the fair face of
Freemasonry. Many Masonic authors, who were fully cognizant of the period, and
knew exactly all the incidents occurring, positively assert that then and still
later the Jesuits exercised a pernicious influence, or at least endeavored to
do so, upon the fraternity." Of the Rosicrucian Order he remarks, upon the
authority of Prof. Woog, that its "aim at first . . . was nothing less
than the support and advancement of Catholicism. When this religion manifested
a determination entirely to repress liberty of thought . . . the Rosicrucians
enlarged their designs likewise to check, if possible, the progress of this
widely-spreading enlightenment."
In the Sincerus Renatus (the
truly converted) of S. Richter, of Berlin (1714), we note that laws were
communicated for the government of the "Golden Rosicrucians," which
"bear unmistakable evidences of Jesuitical intervention."
We will begin with the
cryptographs of the "Sovereign Princes Rose Croix," also styled
Knights of St. Andrew, Knights of the Eagle and Pelican, Heredom, Rosae Crucis,
Rosy Cross, Triple Cross, Perfect Brother, Prince Mason, and so on. The
"Heredom Rosy Cross" also claims a Templar origin, in 1314.*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Yarker's "Notes on
the Mysteries of Antiquity," p. 153.
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CIPHER OF THE
S [[design]] P [[design]] R
[[design]] C [[design]]
[[line of designs, above each
alphabet]]
a b c d e f g h ij k l m n
[[line of designs, above each
alphabet]]
o p q r s t uv w x y z &
CIPHER OF THE KNIGHT ROSE
CROIX OF HEREDOM
(of Kilwining).
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 - 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17
a b c d e f g h i j ba (or) k
kb kc kd ke kf kg kh
18 19 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
100 200 300 400 500
ki kj ck dk ek fk gk hk ik jk
l cl dl el fl
600 700 800 900 1000
gl hl il jl m
CIPHER OF THE KNIGHTS KADOSH.
(Also White and Black Eagle and
Grand Elected Knight Templar.)
70 2 3 12 15 20 30 33 38 9 10
40
a b c d e f g h i k l m
60 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 90 91
94 95
n o p q r s t u v x y z
The Knights Kadosh have
another cipher -- or rather hieroglyph -- which, in this case, is taken from
the Hebrew, possibly to be the more in keeping with the Bible Kadeshim of the
Temple.*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See 2 Kings, xxiii. 7,
Hebrew text, and English, the former especially. In the degree of Kadosh, a lecture
is given upon the descent of Masonry through Moses, Solomon, the Essenes, and
the Templars. Christian K. K.'s may get some light as to the kind of
"Temple" their ancestors would, in such a genealogical descent, have
been attached to, by consulting verse 13 of the same chapter as above quoted.
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HIEROGLYPH OF THE K [[design]]
KAD [[design]]
[[Design]].
As for the Royal Arch cipher,
it has been exposed before now, but we may as well present it slightly
amplified.
This cipher consists of
certain combinations of right angles, with or without points or dots. Following
is the basis of its Formation. [[Designs below]]
AB CD EF GH JL MN OP QR ST
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Now, the alphabet consists of
twenty-six letters, and these two signs being dissected, form thirteen distinct
characters, thus:
[[Design chars]]
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
A point placed within each
gives thirteen more, thus:
[[Design chars]]
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Making a total of twenty-six,
equal to the number of letters in the English alphabet.
There are two ways, at least,
of combining and using these characters for the purposes of secret
correspondence. One method is to call the first sign, [[design]] a; the same,
with a point, [[design]] b, etc. Another is to apply them, in their regular
course, to the first half of the alphabet, [[char]] a, [[char]] b, and so on,
to m; after which, repeat them with a dot, beginning with [[char]] n, [[char]]
o, etc., to [[char]] z.
The alphabet, according to the
first method, stands thus:
[[designs]]
a b c d e f g h i j k l m
[[Design chars]]
n o p q r s t u v w x y z
According to the second
method, thus:
[[Design chars]]
a b c d e f g h i j k l m
[[dsign chars]]
n o p q r s t u v w x y z
Besides these signs, the
French Masons, evidently under the tuition of their accomplished masters -- the
Jesuits, have perfected this cipher in all its details. So they have signs even
for commas, diphthongs, accents, dots, etc., and these are
[[Design chars]] etc.
[[char]]
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Let this suffice. We might, if
we chose, give the cipher alphabets with their keys, of another method of the
Royal Arch Masons, strongly resembling a certain Hindu character; of the G
[[design]] El [[design]] of the Mystic City; of a well-known form of the
Devanagari script of the (French) Sages of the Pyramids; and of the Sublime
Master of the Great Work, and others. But we refrain; only, be it understood,
for the reason that some of these alone of all the side branches of the
original Blue Lodge Freemasonry, contain the promise of a useful future. As for
the rest, they may and will go to the ash-heap of time. High Masons will
understand what we mean.
We must now give some proofs
of what we have stated, and demonstrate that the word Jehovah, if Masonry
adheres to it, will ever remain as a substitute, never be identical with the
lost mirific name. This is so well known to the kabalists, that in their
careful etymology of the [[char]] they show it beyond doubt to be only one of
the many substitutes for the real name, and composed of the two-fold name of
the first androgyne -- Adam and Eve, Jod (or Yodh), Vau and He-Va -- the female
serpent as a symbol of Divine Intelligence proceeding from the ONE-Generative
or Creative Spirit.* Thus, Jehovah is not the sacred name at all. Had Moses
given to Pharaoh the true "name," the latter would not have answered
as he did, for the Egyptian King-Initiates knew it as well as Moses, who had
learned it with them. The "name" was at that time the common property
of the adepts of all the nations in the world, and Pharaoh knew certainly the
"name" of the Highest God mentioned in the Book of the Dead. But
instead of that, Moses (if we accept the allegory of Exodus literally), gives
Pharaoh the name of Yeva, the expression or form of the Divine name used by all
the Targums as passed by Moses. Hence Pharaoh's reply: "And who is that
Yeva** that I should obey his voice?"
"Jehovah" dates only
from the Masoretic innovation. When the Rabbis, for fear that they should lose
the keys to their own doctrines, then written exclusively in consonants, began
to insert their vowel-points in their manuscripts, they were utterly ignorant
of the true pronunciation of the NAME. Hence, they gave it the sound of Adonah,
and made it read Ja-ho-vah. Thus the latter is simply a fancy, a perversion of
the Holy Name. And how could they know it? Alone, out of all their nation the
high priests had it in their possession, and respectively passed it to their
successors, as the Hindu Brahmatma does before his death. Once a year only, on
the day of atonement, the high priest was
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Eliphas Levi's
"Dogme et Rituel," Vol. i.
** Yeva is Heva, the feminine
counterpart of Jehovah-Binah.
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VEIL.
allowed to pronounce it in a
whisper. Passing behind the veil into the inner chamber of the sanctuary, the
Holy of Holies, with trembling lips and downcast eyes he called upon the
dreaded NAME. The bitter persecution of the kabalists, who received the
precious syllables after deserving the favor by a whole life of sanctity, was
due to a suspicion that they misused it. At the opening of this chapter we have
told the story of Simeon Ben-Iochai, one of the victims to this priceless
knowledge, and see how little he deserved his cruel treatment.
The Book of Jasher, a work --
as we are told by a very learned Hebrew divine, of New York -- composed in
Spain in the twelfth century as "a popular tale," and that had not
"the sanction of the Rabbinical College of Venice," is full of
kabalistical, alchemical, and magical allegories. Admitting so much, it must
still be said that there are few popular tales but are based on historical
truths. The Norsemen in Iceland, by Dr. G. W. Dasent, is also a collection of
popular tales, but they contain the key to the primitive religious worship of
that people. So with the Book of Jasher. It contains the whole of the Old
Testament in a condensed form, and as the Samaritans held, i.e., the five Books
of Moses, without the Prophets. Although rejected by the orthodox Rabbis, we
cannot help thinking that, as in the case of the apocryphal Gospels, which were
written earlier than the canonical ones, the Book of Jasher is the true
original from which the subsequent Bible was in part composed. Both the
apocryphal Gospels and Jasher, are a series of religious tales, in which
miracle is heaped upon miracle, and which narrate the popular legends as they
first originated, without any regard to either chronology or dogma. Still both
are corner-stones of the Mosaic and Christian religions. That there was a Book
of Jasher prior to the Mosaic Pentateuch is clear, for it is mentioned in
Joshua, Isaiah, and 2 Samuel.
Nowhere is the difference
between the Elohists and Jehovists so clearly shown as in Jasher. Jehovah is
here spoken of as the Ophites held him to be, a Son of Ilda-Baoth, or Saturn.
In this Book, the Egyptian Magi, when asked by Pharaoh "Who is he, of whom
Moses speaks as the I am?" reply that the God of Moses "we have
learned, is the Son of the Wise, the Son of ancient kings" (ch. lxxix.
45).* Now, those who assert that Jasher is a forgery of the twelfth century --
and we readily believe it -- should nevertheless explain the curious fact that,
while the above text is not to be found in the Bible, the answer to it is,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* We find a very suggestive
point in connection with this appellation of Jehovah, "Son of ancient
Kings," in the Jaina sect of Hindustan, known as the Sauryas. They admit
that Brahma is a Devata, but deny his creative power, and call him the
"Son of a King." See "Asiatic Researches," vol. ix., p.
279.
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and is, moreover, couched in
unequivocal terms. At Isaiah xix. 11, the "Lord God" complains of it
very wrathfully to the prophet, and says: "Surely the princes of Zoan are
fools, the counsel of the wise counsellors of Pharaoh is become brutish; how
say ye unto Pharaoh, I am the Son of the Wise, the Son of ancient kings?"
which is evidently a reply to the above. At Joshua x. 13, Jasher is referred to
in corroboration of the outrageous assertion that the sun stood still, and the
moon stayed until the people had avenged themselves. "Is not this written
in the Book of Jasher?" says the text. And at 2 Samuel, i. 19, the same
book is again quoted. "Behold," it says, "it is written in the
Book of Jasher." Clearly, Jasher must have existed; it must have been
regarded as authority; must have been older than Joshua; and, since the verse
in Isaiah unerringly points to the passage above quoted, we have at least as
much reason to accept the current edition of Jasher as a transcription,
excerpt, or compilation of the original work, as we have to revere the
Septuagint Pentateuch, as the primitive Hebraic sacred records.
At all events, Jehovah is not
the ancient of the ancient, or "aged of the aged," of the Sohar; for
we find him, in this book, counselling with God the Father as to the creation
of the world. "The work-master spoke to the Lord. Let us make man after
our image" (Sohar i., fol. 25). Jehovah is but the Metatron, and perhaps,
not even the highest, but only one of the AEons; for he whom Onkelos calls
Memro, the "Word," is not the exoteric Jehovah of the Bible, nor is
he Jahve [[Heb cha]] the Existing One.
It was the secresy of the
early kabalists, who were anxious to screen the real Mystery name of the
"Eternal" from profanation, and later the prudence which the
mediaeval alchemists and occultists were compelled to adopt to save their
lives, that caused the inextricable confusion of divine names. This is what led
the people to accept the Jehovah of the Bible as the name of the "One
living God." Every Jewish elder, prophet, and other man of any importance
knew the difference; but as the difference lay in the vocalization of the
"name," and its right pronunciation led to death, the common people
were ignorant of it, for no initiate would risk his life by teaching it to
them. Thus the Sinaitic deity came gradually to be regarded as identical with
"Him whose name is known but to the wise." When Capellus translates:
"Whosoever shall pronounce the name of Jehovah, shall suffer death,"
he makes two mistakes. The first is in adding the final letter h to the name,
if he wants this deity to be considered either male or androgynous, for the
letter makes the name feminine, as it really should be, considering it is one
of the names of Binah, the third emanation; his second error is in asserting
that the word nokeb means only to pronounce distinctly. It means to pronounce
cor-
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JEHOVAH.
rectly. Therefore, the
biblical name Jehovah may be considered simply a substitute, which, as
belonging to one of the "powers" got to be viewed as that of the
"Eternal." There is an evident mistake (one of the very many), in one
of the texts in Leviticus, which has been corrected by Cahen, and which proves
that the interdiction did not at all concern the name of the exoteric Jehovah,
whose numerous other names could also be pronounced without any penalty being
incurred.* In the vicious English version, the translation runs thus: "And
he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, shall surely be put to death,"
Levit. xxiv. 16. Cahen renders it far more correctly, thus: "And he that
blasphemeth the name of the Eternal shall die," etc. The
"Eternal" being something higher than the exoteric and personal
"Lord."**
As with the Gentile nations,
the symbols of the Israelites were ever bearing, directly or indirectly, upon
sun-worship. The exoteric Jehovah of the Bible is a dual god, like all the
other gods; and the fact that David -- who is entirely ignorant of Moses --
praises his "Lord," and assures him that the "Lord is a great
God, and a great King above all gods," may be of a very great importance
to the descendants of Jacob and David, but their national God concerns us in no
wise. We are quite ready to show the "Lord God" of Israel the same
respect as we do to Brahma, Zeus, or any other secondary deity. But we decline,
most emphatically, to recognize in him either the Deity worshipped by Moses, or
the "Father" of Jesus, or yet the "Ineffable Name" of the
kabalists. Jehovah is, perhaps, one of the Elohim, who was concerned in the
formation (which is not creation) of the universe, one of the architects who
built from pre-existing matter, but he never was the "Unknowable"
Cause that created "bara," in the night of the Eternity. These Elohim
first form and bless; then they curse and destroy; as one of these Powers,
Jehovah is therefore by turns beneficent and malevolent; at one moment he
punishes and then repents. He is the antitype of several of the patriarchs -- of
Esau and of Jacob, the allegorical twins, emblems of the ever manifest dual
principle in nature. So Jacob, who is Israel, is the left pillar -- the
feminine principle of Esau, who is the right pillar and the male principle.
When he wrestles with Malach-Iho, the Lord, it is the latter who becomes the
right pillar, and Jacob-Israel names God; although the Bible-interpreters have
endeavored to transform him into a mere "angel of the Lord" (Genesis
xxxii.), Jacob conquers him -- as matter will but too often conquer spirit --
but his thigh is put out of joint in the fight.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* As, for instance, Shaddai,
Elohim, Sabaoth, etc.
** Cahen's "Hebrew
Bible," iii., p. 117.
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The name of Israel has its
derivation from Isaral or Asar, the Sun-God, who is known as Suryal, Surya, and
Sur. Isra-el means "striving with God." The "sun rising upon
Jacob-Israel," is the Sun-God Isaral, fecundating matter or earth,
represented by the female-Jacob. As usual, the allegory has more than one
hidden meaning in the Kabala. Esau, AEsaou, Asu, is also the sun. Like the
"Lord," Esau fights with Jacob and prevails not. The God-Sun first
strives against, and then rises on him in covenant.
"And as he passed over
Penuel, the sun rose upon him, and he (Jacob) halted upon his thigh"
(Genesis xxxii. 31). Israel Jacob, opposed by his brother Esau, is Samael, and
"the names of Samael are Azazel and Satan" (the opposer).
If it will be argued that
Moses was unacquainted with the Hindu philosophy and, therefore, could not have
taken Siva, the regenerator and the destroyer, as his model for Jehovah, then
we must admit that there was some miraculous international intuition which
prompted every nation to choose for its exoteric national deity the dual type
we find in the "Lord God" of Israel. All these fables speak for themselves.
Siva, Jehovah, Osiris, are all the symbols of the active principle in nature
par excellence. They are the forces which preside at the formation or
regeneration of matter and its destruction. They are the types of Life and
Death, ever fecundating and decomposing under the never-ceasing influx of the
anima mundi, the Universal intellectual Soul, the invisible but ever-present
spirit which is behind the correlation of the blind forces. This spirit alone
is immutable, and therefore the forces of the universe, cause and effect, are
ever in perfect harmony with this one great Immutable Law. Spiritual Life is
the one primordial principle above; Physical Life is the primordial principle
below, but they are one under their dual aspect. When the Spirit is completely
untrammelled from the fetters of correlation, and its essence has become so
purified as to be re-united with its CAUSE, it may -- and yet who can tell
whether it really will -- have a glimpse of the Eternal Truth. Till then, let
us not build ourselves idols in our own image, and accept the shadows for the
Eternal Light.
The greatest mistake of the
age was to attempt a comparison of the relative merits of all the ancient
religions, and scoff at the doctrines of the Kabala and other superstitions.
But truth is stranger than
fiction; and this world-old adage finds its application in the case in hand.
The "wisdom" of the archaic ages or the "secret doctrine"
embodied in the Oriental Kabala, of which, as we have said, the Rabbinical is
but an abridgment, did not die out with the Philaletheans of the last Eclectic
school. The Gnosis lingers still on earth, and its votaries are many, albeit
unknown. Such secret
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ELSEWHERE.
brotherhoods have been
mentioned before Mackenzie's time, by more than one great author. If they have
been regarded as mere fictions of the novelist, that fact has only helped the
"brother-adepts" to keep their incognito the more easily. We have
personally known several of them who, to their great merriment had had the
story of their lodges, the communities in which they lived, and the wondrous
powers which they had exercised for many long years, laughed at and denied by
unsuspecting skeptics to their very faces. Some of these brothers belong to the
small groups of "travellers." Until the close of the happy
Louis-Philippian reign, they were pompously termed by the Parisian garcon and
trader the nobles etrangers, and as innocently believed to be
"Boyards," Valachian "Gospodars," Indian
"Nabobs," and Hungarian "Margraves," who had gathered at
the capital of the civilized world to admire its monuments and partake of its dissipations.
There are, however, some insane enough to connect the presence of certain of
these mysterious guests in Paris with the great political events that
subsequently took place. Such recall at least as very remarkable coincidences,
the breaking out of the Revolution of '93, and the earlier explosion of the
South Sea Bubble, soon after the appearance of "noble foreigners,"
who had convulsed all Paris for more or less longer periods, by either their
mystical doctrines or "supernatural gifts." The St. Germains and
Cagliostros of this century, having learned bitter lessons from the
vilifications and persecutions of the past, pursue different tactics
now-a-days.
But there are numbers of these
mystic brotherhoods which have naught to do with "civilized" countries;
and it is in their unknown communities that are concealed the skeletons of the
past. These "adepts" could, if they chose, lay claim to strange
ancestry, and exhibit verifiable documents that would explain many a mysterious
page in both sacred and profane history. Had the keys to the hieratic writings
and the secret of Egyptian and Hindu symbolism been known to the Christian
Fathers, they would not have allowed a single monument of old to stand
unmutilated. And yet, if we are well informed -- and we think we are -- there
was not one such in all Egypt, but the secret records of its hieroglyphics were
carefully registered by the sacerdotal caste. These records still exist, though
"not extant" for the general public, though perhaps the monuments may
have passed away for ever out of human sight.
Of forty-seven tombs of the
kings, near Gornore, recorded by the Egyptian priests on their sacred
registers, only seventeen were known to the public, according to Diodorus
Siculus, who visited the place about sixty years B.C. Notwithstanding this
historical evidence, we assert that the whole number exist to this day, and the
royal tomb discovered by
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Belzoni among the sandstone
mountains of Biban-el-Melook (Melech?) is but a feeble specimen of the rest. We
will add, furthermore, that the Arab-Christians, the monks, scattered around in
their poor, desolate convents on the borderland of the great Lybian Desert,
know of the existence of such unbetrayed relics. But they are Copts, sole
remnants of the true Egyptian race, and the Copt predominating over the
Christian monk in their natures, they keep silent; for what reason it is not
for us to tell. There are some who believe that their monkish attire is but a
blind, and that they have chosen these desolate homes among arid deserts and
surrounded by Mahometan tribes, for some ulterior purposes of their own. Be it
as it may, they are held in great esteem by the Greek monks of Palestine; and
there is a rumor current among the Christian pilgrims of Jerusalem, who throng
the Holy Sepulchre at every Easter, that the holy fire from heaven will never
descend so miraculously as when these monks of the desert are present to draw
it down by their prayers.*
"The kingdom of Heaven
suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force." Many are the
candidates at the doors of those who are supposed to know the path that leads
to the secret brotherhoods. The great majority are refused admittance, and
these turn away interpreting the refusal as an evidence of the non-existence of
any such secret society. Of the minority accepted, more than two-thirds fail
upon trial. The seventh rule of the ancient Rosicrucian brotherhoods, which is
universal among all true secret societies: "the Rosy-Crux becomes and is
not made," is more than the generality of men can bear to have applied to
them. But let no one suppose that of the candidates who fail, any will divulge
to the world even the trifle they may have learned, as some Masons do. None
know better than themselves how unlikely it is that a neophyte should ever talk
of what was imparted to him. Thus these societies will go on and hear themselves
denied without uttering a word until the day shall come for them to throw off
their reserve and show how completely they are masters of the situation.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Greek monks have this
"miracle" performed for the "faithful" every year on Easter
night. Thousands of pilgrims are there waiting with their tapers to light them
at this sacred fire, which at the precise hour and when needed, descends from
the chapel-vault and hovers about the sepulchre in tongues of fire until every
one of the thousand pilgrims has lighted his wax taper at it.
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CHAPTER IX.
"All things are governed
in the bosom of this triad." -- LYDUS: De Mensibus, 20.
"Thrice let the heaven be
turned on its perpetual axis." -- OVID: Fasti iv.
"And Balaam said unto
Balak, Build me here seven altars, and prepare me here seven oxen and seven
rams." -- Numbers xxiii. 1, 2.
"In seven days all
creatures who have offended me shall be destroyed by a deluge, but thou shalt
be secured in a vessel miraculously formed; take, therefore . . . and with
seven holy men, your respective wives, and pairs of all animals, enter the ark
without fear; then shalt thou know God face to face, and all thy questions
shall be answered." -- Bagavedgitta.
"And the Lord said, I
will destroy man . . . from the face of the earth. . . . But with thee will I
establish my covenant. . . . Come thou and all thy house into the ark. . . .
For yet seven days and I will cause it to rain upon the earth." -- Genesis
vi., vii.
"The Tetraktys was not
only principally honored because all symphonies are found to exist within it,
but also because it appears to contain the nature of all things." --
THEOS. OF SMYRNA: Mathem., p. 147.
OUR task will have been
ill-performed if the preceding chapters have not demonstrated that Judaism,
earlier and later Gnosticism, Christianity, and even Christian Masonry, have
all been erected upon identical cosmical myths, symbols, and allegories, whose
full comprehension is possible only to those who have inherited the key from
their inventors.
In the following pages we will
endeavor to show how much these have been misinterpreted by the
widely-different, yet intimately-related systems enumerated above, in fitting
them to their individual needs. Thus not only will a benefit be conferred upon
the student, but a long-deferred, and now much-needed act of justice will be
done to those earlier generations whose genius has laid the whole human race
under obligation. Let us begin by once more comparing the myths of the Bible
with those of the sacred books of other nations, to see which is the original,
which copies.
There are but two methods
which, correctly explained, can help us to this result. They are -- the Vedas,
Brahmanical literature and the Jewish Kabala. The former has, in a most
philosophical spirit, conceived these grandiose myths; the latter borrowing
them from the Chaldeans and Persians, shaped them into a history of the Jewish
nation, in which their spirit of philosophy was buried beyond the recognition
of all but
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the elect, and under a far
more absurd form than the Aryan had given them. The Bible of the Christian
Church is the latest receptacle of this scheme of disfigured allegories which
have been erected into an edifice of superstition, such as never entered into
the conceptions of those from whom the Church obtained her knowledge. The
abstract fictions of antiquity, which for ages had filled the popular fancy
with but flickering shadows and uncertain images, have in Christianity assumed
the shapes of real personages, and become accomplished facts. Allegory,
metamorphosed, becomes sacred history, and Pagan myth is taught to the people
as a revealed narrative of God's intercourse with His chosen people.
"The myths," says
Horace in his Ars Poetica, "have been invented by wise men to strengthen
the laws and teach moral truths." While Horace endeavored to make clear
the very spirit and essence of the ancient myths, Euhemerus pretended, on the
contrary, that "myths were the legendary history of kings and heroes,
transformed into gods by the admiration of the nations." It is the latter
method which was inferentially followed by Christians when they agreed upon the
acceptation of euhemerized patriarchs, and mistook them for men who had really
lived.
But, in opposition to this
pernicious theory, which has brought forth such bitter fruit, we have a long
series of the greatest philosophers the world has produced: Plato, Epicharmus,
Socrates, Empedocles, Plotinus, and Porphyry, Proclus, Damascenus, Origen, and
even Aristotle. The latter plainly stated this verity, by saying that a
tradition of the highest antiquity, transmitted to posterity under the form of
various myths, teaches us that the first principles of nature may be considered
as "gods," for the divine permeates all nature. All the rest, details
and personages, were added later for the clearer comprehension of the vulgar,
and but too often with the object of supporting laws invented in the common
interest.
Fairy tales do not exclusively
belong to nurseries; all mankind -- except those few who in all ages have
comprehended their hidden meaning and tried to open the eyes of the
superstitious -- have listened to such tales in one shape or the other and,
after transforming them into sacred symbols, called the product RELIGION!
We will try to systematize our
subject as much as the ever-recurring necessity to draw parallels between the
conflicting opinions that have been based on the same myths will permit. We
will begin by the book of Genesis, and seek for its hidden meaning in the
Brahmanical traditions and the Chaldeo-Judaic Kabala.
The first Scripture lesson
taught us in our infancy is that God created the world in six days, and rested
on the seventh. Hence, a peculiar sol-
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NUMBER SEVEN.
emnity is supposed to attach
to the seventh day, and the Christians, adopting the rigid observances of the
Jewish sabbath, have enforced it upon us with the substitution of the first,
instead of the seventh day of the week.
All systems of religious mysticism
are based on numerals. With Pythagoras, the Monas or unity, emanating the duad,
and thus forming the trinity, and the quaternary or Arba-il (the mystic four),
compose the number seven. The sacredness of numbers begins with the great First
-- the ONE, and ends only with the nought or zero -- symbol of the infinite and
boundless circle which represents the universe. All the intervening figures, in
whatever combination, or however multiplied, represent philosophical ideas,
from vague outlines down to a definitely-established scientific axiom, relating
either to a moral or a physical fact in nature. They are a key to the ancient
views on cosmogony, in its broad sense, including man and beings, and the
evolution of the human race, spiritually as well as physically.
The number seven is the most
sacred of all, and is, undoubtedly, of Hindu origin. Everything of importance
was calculated by and fitted into this number by the Aryan philosophers --
ideas as well as localities. Thus they have the
Sapta-Rishi, or seven sages,
typifying the seven diluvian primitive races (post-diluvian as some say).
Sapta-Loka, the seven inferior
and superior worlds, whence each of these Rishis proceeded, and whither he
returned in glory before reaching the final bliss of Moksha.*
Sapta-Kula, or seven castes --
the Brahmans assuming to represent the direct descendants of the highest of
them.**
Then, again, the Sapta-Pura
(seven holy cities); Sapta-Duipa (seven holy islands); Sapta-Samudra (the seven
holy seas); Sapta-Parvata (the seven holy mountains); Sapta-Arania (the seven
deserts); Sapta-Vruksha (the seven sacred trees); and so on.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Rishi are identical with
Manu. The ten Pragapati, sons of Viradj, called Maritchi, Atri, Angira,
Polastya, Poulaha, Kratu, Pratcheta, Vasishta, Brighu, and Narada, are
euhemerized Powers, the Hindu Sephiroth. These emanate the seven Rishi, or
Manus, the chief of whom issued himself from the "uncreated." He is
the Adam of earth, and signifies man. His "sons," the following six
Manus, represent each a new race of men, and in the total they are humanity
passing gradually through the primitive seven stages of evolution.
** In days of old, when the
Brahmans studied more than they do now the hidden sense of their philosophy,
they explained that each of these six distinct races which preceded ours had
disappeared. But now they pretend that a specimen was preserved which was not
destroyed with the rest, but reached the present seventh stage. Thus they, the
Brahmans are the specimens of the heavenly Manu, and issued from the mouth of
Brahma; while the Sudra was created from his foot.
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In the Chaldeo-Babylonian
incantation, this number reappears again as prominently as among the Hindus.
The number is dual in its attributes, i.e., holy in one of its aspects it
becomes nefast under other conditions. Thus the following incantation we find
traced on the Assyrian tablets, now so correctly interpreted.
"The evening of evil
omen, the region of the sky, which produces misfortune. . . .
"Message of pest.
"Deprecators of
Nin-Ki-gal.
"The seven gods of the
vast sky.
"The seven gods of the
vast earth.
"The seven gods of
blazing spheres.
"The seven gods of
celestial legion.
"The seven gods
maleficent.
"The seven phantoms --
bad.
"The seven phantoms of
maleficent flames. . . .
"Bad demon, bad alal, bad
gigim, bad telal . . . bad god, bad maskim.
"Spirit of seven heavens
remember . . . Spirit of seven earths remember . . . etc."
This number reappears likewise
on almost every page of Genesis, and throughout the Mosaic books, and we find it
conspicuous (see following chapter) in the Book of Job and the Oriental Kabala.
If the Hebrew Semitics adopted it so readily, we must infer that it was not
blindly, but with a thorough knowledge of its secret meaning; hence, that they
must have adopted the doctrines of their "heathen" neighbors as well.
It is but natural, therefore, that we should seek in heathen philosophy for the
interpretation of this number, which again reappeared in Christianity with its
seven sacraments, seven churches in Asia Minor, seven capital sins, seven
virtues (four cardinal and three theological), etc.
Have the seven prismatic
colors of the rainbow seen by Noah no other meaning than that of a covenant
between God and man to refresh the memory of the former? To the kabalist, at
least, they have a significance inseparable from the seven labors of magic, the
seven upper spheres, the seven notes of the musical scale, the seven numerals
of Pythagoras, the seven wonders of the world, the seven ages, and even the
seven steps of the Masons, which lead to the Holy of Holies, after passing the
flights of three and five.
Whence the identity then of
these enigmatical, ever-recurring numerals that are found in every page of the
Jewish Scriptures, as in every ola and sloka of Buddhistic and Brahmanical
books? Whence these numerals that are the soul of the Pythagorean and Platonic
thought, and that no unilluminated Orientalist nor biblical student has ever
been able to fathom?
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THE RIG-VEDA.
And yet they have a key ready
in their hand, did they but know how to use it. Nowhere is the mystical value
of human language and its effects on human action so perfectly understood as in
India, nor any better explained than by the authors of the oldest Brahmanas.
Ancient as their epoch is now found to be, they only try to express, in a more
concrete form, the abstract metaphysical speculations of their own ancestors.
Such is the respect of the
Brahmans for the sacrificial mysteries, that they hold that the world itself
sprang into creation as a consequence of a "sacrificial word"
pronounced by the First Cause. This word is the "Ineffable name" of
the kabalists, fully discussed in the last chapter.
The secret of the Vedas,
"Sacred Knowledge" though they may be, is impenetrable without the
help of the Brahmanas. Properly speaking, the Vedas (which are written in verse
and comprised in four books) constitute that portion called the Mantra, or
magical prayer, and the Brahmanas (which are in prose) contain their key. While
the Mantra part is alone holy, the Brahmana portion contains all the
theological exegesis, and the speculations and explanations of the sacerdotal.
Our Orientalists, we repeat, will make no substantial progress toward a
comprehension of Vedic literature until they place a proper valuation upon
works now despised by them; as, for instance, the Aitareya and Kaushitaki Brahmanas,
which belong to the Rig-Veda.
Zoroaster was called a
Manthran, or speaker of Mantras, and, according to Haug, one of the earliest
names for the Sacred Scriptures of the Parsis was Manthra-spenta. The power and
significance of the Brahman who acts as the Hotri-priest at the Soma-Sacrifice,
consists in his possession and full knowledge of the uses of the sacred word or
speech -- Vach. The latter is personified in Sara-isvati, the wife of Brahma,
who is the goddess of the sacred or "Secret Knowledge." She is
usually depicted as riding upon a peacock with its tail all spread. The eyes
upon the feathers of the bird's tail, symbolize the sleepless eyes that see all
things. To one who has the ambition of becoming an adept of the "Secret
doctrines," they are a reminder that he must have the hundred eyes of
Argus to see and comprehend all things.
And this is why we say that it
is not possible to solve fully the deep problems underlying the Brahmanical and
Buddhistic sacred books without having a perfect comprehension of the esoteric
meaning of the Pythagorean numerals. The greatest power of this Vach, or Sacred
Speech, is developed according to the form which is given to the Mantra by the
officiating Hotri, and this form consists wholly in the numbers and syllables
of the sacred metre. If pronounced slowly and in a certain rhythm, one effect
is produced; if quickly and with another rhythm, there is a different result.
"Each metre," says Haug, "is the invisible master of
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something visible in this
world; it is, as it were, its exponent and ideal. This great significance of
the metrical speech is derived from the number of syllables of which it
consists, for each thing has (just as in the Pythagorean system) a certain
numerical proportion. All these things, metres (chhandas), stomas, and
prishthas, are liable to be as eternal and divine as the words themselves they
contain. The earliest Hindu divines did not only believe in a primitive
revelation of the words of the sacred texts, but even in that of the various
forms. These forms, along with their contents, the everlasting Veda-words, are
symbols expressive of things of the invisible world, and in several respects
comparable to the Platonic ideas."
This testimony from an
unwilling witness shows again the identity between the ancient religions as to
their secret doctrine. The Gayatri metre, for example, consists of thrice eight
syllables, and is considered the most sacred of metres. It is the metre of
Agni, the fire-god, and becomes at times the emblem of Brahma himself, the
chief creator, and "fashioner of man" in his own image. Now Pythagoras
says that "The number eight, or the Octad, is the first cube, that is to
say, squared in all senses, as a die, proceeding from its base two, or even
number; so is man four-square or perfect." Of course few, except the
Pythagoreans and kabalists, can fully comprehend this idea; but the
illustration will assist in pointing out the close kinship of the numerals with
the Vedic Mantras. The chief problems of every theology lie concealed beneath
this imagery of fire and the varying rhythm of its flames. The burning bush of
the Bible, the Zoroastrian and other sacred fires, Plato's universal soul, and
the Rosicrucian doctrines of both soul and body of man being evolved out of
fire, the reasoning and immortal element which permeates all things, and which,
according to Herakleitus, Hippocrates, and Parmenides, is God, have all the
same meaning.
Each metre in the Brahmanas
corresponds to a number, and as shown by Haug, as it stands in the sacred
volumes, is a prototype of some visible form on earth, and its effects are either
good or evil. The "sacred speech" can save, but it can kill as well;
its many meanings and faculties are well known but to the Dikshita (the adept),
who has been initiated into many mysteries, and whose "spiritual
birth" is completely achieved; the Vach of the mantra is a spoken power,
which awakes another corresponding and still more occult power, each
allegorically personified by some god in the world of spirits, and, according
as it is used, responded to either by the gods or the Rakshasas (bad spirits).
In the Brahmanical and Buddhist ideas, a curse, a blessing, a vow, a desire, an
idle thought, can each assume a visible shape and so manifest itself
objectively to the eyes of its author, or to him that it concerns.
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THE VEDAS AND BIBLE.
Every sin becomes incarnated,
so to say, and like an avenging fiend persecutes its perpetrator.
There are words which have a
destructive quality in their very syllables, as though objective things; for
every sound awakens a corresponding one in the invisible world of spirit, and
the repercussion produces either a good or bad effect. Harmonious rhythm, a
melody vibrating softly in the atmosphere, creates a beneficent and sweet
influence around, and acts most powerfully on the psychological as well as
physical natures of every living thing on earth; it reacts even on inanimate
objects, for matter is still spirit in its essence, invisible as it may seem to
our grosser senses.
So with the numerals. Turn
wherever we will, from the Prophets to the Apocalypse, and we will see the
biblical writers constantly using the numbers three, four, seven, and twelve.
And yet we have known some
partisans of the Bible who maintained that the Vedas were copied from the
Mosaic books!* The Vedas, which are written in Sanscrit, a language whose
grammatical rules and forms, as Max Muller and other scholars confess, were completely
established long before the days when the great wave of emigration bore it from
Asia all over the Occident, are there to proclaim their parentage of every
philosophy, and every religious institution developed later among Semitic
peoples. And which of the numerals most frequently occur in the Sanscrit
chants, those sublime hymns to creation, to the unity of God, and the countless
manifestations of His power? ONE, THREE, and SEVEN. Read the hymn by
Dirghatamas.
"TO HIM WHO REPRESENTS
ALL THE GODS."
"The God here present,
our blessed patron, our sacrificer, has a brother who spreads himself in
mid-air. There exists a third Brother whom we sprinkle with our libations. . .
. It is he whom I have seen master of men and armed with seven rays."**
And again:
"Seven Bridles aid in
guiding a car which has but ONE wheel, and which is drawn by a single horse
that shines with seven rays. The wheel has three limbs, an immortal wheel,
never-wearying, whence hang all the worlds."
"Sometimes seven horses
drag a car of seven wheels, and seven personages mount it, accompanied by seven
fecund nymphs of the water."
And the following again, in
honor of the fire-god -- Agni, who is so clearly shown but a spirit subordinate
to the ONE God.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* To avoid discussion we adopt
the palaeographical conclusions arrived at by Martin Haug and some other
cautious scholars. Personally we credit the statements of the Brahmans and
those of Halled, the translator of the "Sastras."
** The god Heptaktis.
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"Ever ONE, although
having three forms of double nature (androgynous) -- he rises! and the priests
offer to God, in the act of sacrifice, their prayers which reach the heavens,
borne aloft by Agni."
Is this a coincidence, or,
rather, as reason tells us, the result of the derivation of many national cults
from one primitive, universal religion? A mystery for the uninitiated, the
unveiling of the most sublime (because correct and true) psychological and
physiological problems for the initiate. Revelations of the personal spirit of
man which is divine because that spirit is not only the emanation of the ONE
Supreme God, but is the only God man is able, in his weakness and helplessness,
to comprehend -- to feel within himself. This truth the Vedic poet clearly
confesses, when saying:
"The Lord, Master of the
universe and full of wisdom, has entered with me (into me) -- weak and ignorant
-- and has formed me of himself in that place* where the spirits obtain, by the
help of Science, the peaceful enjoyment of the fruit, as sweet as
ambrosia."
Whether we call this fruit
"an apple" from the Tree of Knowledge, or the pippala of the Hindu
poet, it matters not. It is the fruit of esoteric wisdom. Our object is to show
the existence of a religious system in India for many thousands of years before
the exoteric fables of the Garden of Eden and the Deluge had been invented.
Hence the identity of doctrines. Instructed in them, each of the initiates of
other countries became, in his turn, the founder of some great school of
philosophy in the West.
Who of our Sanscrit scholars
has ever felt interested in discovering the real sense of the following hymns,
palpable as it is: "Pippala, the sweet fruit of that tree upon which come
spirits who love the science (?) and where the gods produce all marvels. This
is a mystery for him who knows not the Father of the world."
Or this one again:
"These stanzas bear at
their head a title which announces that they are consecrated to the Viswadevas
(that is to say, to all the gods). He who knows not the Being whom I sing in
all his manifestations, will comprehend nothing of my verses; those who do know
HIM are not strangers to this reunion."
This refers to the reunion and
parting of the immortal and mortal parts of man. "The immortal
Being," says the preceding stanza, "is in the cradle of the mortal Being.
The two eternal spirits go and come everywhere; only some men know the one
without knowing the other" (Dirghatamas).
Who can give a correct idea of
Him of whom the Rig-Veda says:
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The sanctuary of the
initiation.
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BEINGS WITHOUT NAMES.
"That which is One the
wise call it in divers manners." That One is sung by the Vedic poets in
all its manifestations in nature; and the books considered "childish and
foolish" teach how at will to call the beings of wisdom for our instruction.
They teach, as Porphyry says: "a liberation from all terrene concerns . .
. a flight of the alone to the ALONE."
Professor Max Muller, whose
every word is accepted by his school as philological gospel, is undoubtedly
right in one sense when in determining the nature of the Hindu gods, he calls
them "masks without an actor . . . names without being, not beings without
names."* For he but proves thereby the monotheism of the ancient Vedic
religion. But it seems to us more than dubious whether he or any scientist of
his school needed hope to fathom the old Aryan** thought, without an accurate
study of those very "masks." To the materialist, as to the scientist,
who for various reasons endeavors to work out the difficult problem of
compelling facts to agree with either their own hobbies or those of the Bible,
they may seem but the empty shells of phantoms. Yet such authorities will ever
be, as in the past, the unsafest of guides, except in matters of exact science.
The Bible patriarchs are as much "masks without actors," as the
pragapatis, and yet, if the living personage behind these masks is but an
abstract shadow there is an idea embodied in every one of them which belongs to
the philosophical and scientific theories of ancient wisdom.*** And who can
render better service in this work than the native Brahmans themselves, or the
kabalists?
To deny, point-blank, any
sound philosophy in the later Brahmanical speculations upon the Rig-Veda, is
equivalent to refusing to ever correctly understand the mother-religion itself,
which gave rise to them, and which is the expression of the inner thought of
the direct ancestors of these later authors of the Brahmanas. If learned
Europeans can so
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Comparative
Mythology."
** While having no intention
to enter at present upon a discussion as to the nomadic races of the
"Rhematic period," we reserve the right to question the full
propriety of terming that portion of the primitive people from whose traditions
the "Vedas" sprang into existence, Aryans. Some scientists find the
existence of these Aryans not only unproved by science, but the traditions of
Hindustan protesting against such an assumption.
*** Without the esoteric
explanation, the "Old Testament" becomes an absurd jumble of
meaningless tales -- nay, worse than that, it must rank high with immoral
books. It is curious that Professor Max Muller, such a profound scholar in
Comparative Mythology, should be found saying of the pragapatis and Hindu gods
that they are masks without actors; and of Abraham and other mythical
patriarchs that they were real living men; of Abraham especially, we are told
(see "Semitic Monotheism") that he "stands before us as a figure
second only to one in the whole history of the world."
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readily show that all the
Vedic gods are but empty masks, they must also be ready to demonstrate that the
Brahmanical authors were as incapable as themselves to discover these
"actors" anywhere. This done, not only the three other sacred books
which Max Muller says "do not deserve the name of Vedas," but the
Rig-Veda itself becomes a meaningless jumble of words; for what the
world-renowned and subtile intellect of the ancient Hindu sages failed to
understand, no modern scientist, however learned, can hope to fathom. Poor
Thomas Taylor was right in saying that "philology is not philosophy."
It is, to say the least,
illogical to admit that there is a hidden thought in the literary work of a
race perhaps ethnologically different from our own; and then, because it is
utterly unintelligible to us whose spiritual development during the several
thousand intervening years has bifurcated into quite a contrary direction --
deny that it has any sense in it at all. But this is precisely what, with all
due respect for erudition, Professor Max Muller and his school do in this
instance, at least. First of all, we are told that, albeit cautiously and with
some effort, yet we may still walk in the footsteps of these authors of the
Vedas. "We shall feel that we are brought face to face and mind to mind
with men yet intelligible to us after we have freed ourselves from our modern
conceits. We shall not succeed always; words, verses, nay whole hymns in the
Rig-Veda, will and must remain to us a dead letter. . . . For, with a few
exceptions . . . the whole world of the Vedic ideas is so entirely beyond our
own intellectual horizon, that instead of translating, we can as yet only guess
and combine."*
And yet, to leave us in no
possible doubt as to the true value of his words, the learned scholar, in
another passage, expresses his opinion on these same Vedas (with one exception)
thus: "The only important, the only real Veda, is the Rig-Veda -- the
other so-called Vedas deserve the name of Veda no more than the Talmud deserves
the name of Bible." Professor Muller rejects them as unworthy of the
attention of any one, and, as we understand it, on the ground that they contain
chiefly "sacrificial formulas, charms, and incantations."**
And now, a very natural
question: Are any of our scholars prepared to demonstrate that, so far, they
are intimately acquainted with the hidden sense of these perfectly absurd
"sacrificial formulas, charms, and incantations" and magic nonsense
of Atharva-Veda? We believe not, and our doubt is based on the confession of
Professor Muller himself, just quoted. If "the whole world of the Vedic
ideas [the Rig-Veda cannot
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The italics are our own.
"The Vedas," lecture by Max Muller, p. 75.
** "Chips," vol. i.,
p. 8.
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"ATHARVA VEDA."
be included alone in this
world, we suppose] is so entirely beyond our own [the scientists'] intellectual
horizon that, instead of translating, we can as yet only guess and
combine"; and the Yagur-Veda, Sama-Veda, and Atharva-Veda are
"childish and foolish";* and the Brahmanas, the Sutras Yaska, and
Sayana, "though nearest in time to the hymns of the Rig-Veda, indulge in
the most frivolous and ill-judged interpretations," how can either himself
or any other scholar form any adequate opinion of either of them? If, again,
the authors of the Brahmanas, the nearest in time to the Vedic hymns, were
already incompetent to offer anything better than "ill-judged
interpretations," then at what period of history, where, and by whom, were
written these grandiose poems, whose mystical sense has died with their
generations? Are we, then, so wrong in affirming that if sacred texts are found
in Egypt to have become -- even to the priestly scribes of 4,000 years ago --
wholly unintelligible,** and the Brahmanas offer but "childish and
foolish" interpretations of the Rig-Veda, at least as far back as that,
then, 1st, both the Egyptian and Hindu religious philosophies are of an untold
antiquity, far antedating ages cautiously assigned them by our students of
comparative mythology; and, 2d, the claims of ancient priests of Egypt and
modern Brahmans, as to their age, are, after all, correct.
We can never admit that the
three other Vedas are less worthy of their name than the Rig-hymns, or that the
Talmud and the Kabala are so inferior to the Bible. The very name of the Vedas
(the literal meaning of which is knowledge or wisdom) shows them to belong to
the literature of those men who, in every country, language, and age, have been
spoken of as "those who know." In Sanscrit the third person singular
is veda (he knows), and the plural is vida (they know). This word is synonymous
with the Greek [[Theosebeia]], which Plato uses when speaking of the wise --
the magicians; and with the Hebrew Hakamin, [[Hebrew char]] (wise men). Reject
the Talmud and its old predecessor the Kabala, and it will be simply impossible
ever to render correctly one word of that Bible so much extolled at their
expense. But then it is, perhaps, just what its partisans are working for. To
banish the Brahmanas is to fling away the key that unlocks the door of the
Rig-Veda. The literal interpretation of the Bible has already borne its fruits;
with the Vedas and the Sanscrit sacred books in general it will be just the
same, with this difference, that the absurd interpretation of the Bible has
received a time-honored right of eminent domain in the department of the
ridiculous; and will find its
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* We believe that we have
elsewhere given the contrary opinion, on the subject of
"Atharva-Veda," of Prof. Whitney, of Yale College.
** See Baron Bunsen's
"Egypt," vol. v.
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supporters, against light and
against proof. As to the "heathen" literature, after a few more years
of unsuccessful attempts at interpretation, its religious meaning will be
relegated to the limbo of exploded superstitions, and people will hear no more
of it.
We beg to be clearly
understood before we are blamed and criticised for the above remarks. The vast
learning of the celebrated Oxford professor can hardly be questioned by his
very enemies, yet we have a right to regret his precipitancy to condemn that
which he himself confesses "entirely beyond our own intellectual horizon."
Even in what he considers a ridiculous blunder on the part of the author of the
Brahmanas, other more spiritually-disposed persons may see quite the reverse.
"Who is the greatest of the gods? Who shall first be praised by our
songs?" says an ancient Rishi of the Rig-Veda; mistaking (as Prof. M.
imagines) the interrogative pronoun "Who" for some divine name. Says
the Professor: "A place is allotted in the sacrificial invocations to a
god 'Who,' and hymns addressed to him are called 'Whoish hymns.' " And is
a god "Who" less natural as a term than a god "I am"? or
"Whoish" hymns less reverential than "I-amish" psalms? And
who can prove that this is really a blunder, and not a premeditated expression?
Is it so impossible to believe that the strange term was precisely due to a
reverential awe which made the poet hesitate before giving a name, as form to
that which is justly considered as the highest abstraction of metaphysical
ideals -- God? Or that the same feeling made the commentator who came after him
to pause and so leave the work of anthropomorphizing the "Unknown,"
the "WHO," to future human conception? "These early poets
thought more for themselves -- than for others," remarks Max Muller
himself. "They sought rather, in their language, to be true to their own
thought than to please the imagination of their hearers."* Unfortunately
it is this very thought which awakes no responsive echo in the minds of our
philologists.
Farther, we read the sound
advice to students of the Rig-Veda hymns, to collect, collate, sift, and
reject. "Let him study the commentaries, the Sutras, the Brahmanas, and
even later works, in order to exhaust all the sources from which information
can be derived. He [the scholar] must not despise the traditions of the
Brahmans, even where their misconceptions . . . are palpable. . . . Not a
corner in the Brahmanas, the Sutras, Yaska, and Sayana, should be left
unexplored before we propose a rendering of our own. . . . When the scholar has
done his work, the poet and philosopher must take it up and finish it."**
Poor chance for a
"philosopher" to step into the shoes of a learned
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Chips," vol. i.;
"The Vedas."
** Max Muller: Lecture on
"The Vedas."
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HINDU SAVANTS.
philologist and presume to
correct his errors! We would like to see what sort of a reception the most
learned Hindu scholar in India would have from the educated public of Europe
and America, if he should undertake to correct a savant, after he had sifted,
accepted, rejected, explained, and declared what was good, and what
"absurd and childish" in the sacred books of his forefathers. That
which would finally be declared "Brahmanic misconceptions," by the
conclave of European and especially German savants, would be as little likely
to be reconsidered at the appeal of the most erudite pundit of Benares or
Ceylon, as the interpretation of Jewish Scripture by Maimonides and
Philo-Judaeus, by Christians after the Councils of the Church had accepted the
mistranslations and explanations of Irenaeus and Eusebius. What pundit, or
native philosopher of India should know his ancestral language, religion, or
philosophy as well as an Englishman or a German? Or why should a Hindu be more
suffered to expound Brahmanism, than a Rabbinical scholar to interpret Judaism
or the Isaian prophecies? Safer, and far more trustworthy translators can be
had nearer home. Nevertheless, let us still hope that we may find at last, even
though it be in the dim future, a European philosopher to sift the sacred books
of the wisdom-religion, and not be contradicted by every other of his class.
Meanwhile, unmindful of any
alleged authorities, let us try to sift for ourselves a few of these myths of
old. We will search for an explanation within the popular interpretation, and feel
our way with the help of the magic lamp of Trismegistus -- the mysterious
number seven. There must have been some reason why this figure was universally
accepted as a mystic calculation. With every ancient people, the Creator, or
Demiurge, was placed over the seventh heaven. "And were I to touch upon
the initiation into our sacred Mysteries," says Emperor Julian, the
kabalist, "which the Chaldean bacchised respecting the seven-rayed God,
lifting up the souls through Him, I should say things unknown, and very unknown
to the rabble, but well known to the blessed Theurgists."* In Lydus it is
said that "The Chaldeans call the God IAO, and SABAOTH he is often called,
as He who is over the seven orbits (heavens, or spheres), that is the Demiurge."**
One must consult the
Pythagoreans and Kabalists to learn the potentiality of this number.
Exoterically the seven rays of the solar spectrum are represented concretely in
the seven-rayed god Heptaktis. These seven rays epitomized into THREE primary
rays, namely, the red, blue, and yellow, form the solar trinity, and typify
respectively spirit-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Julian: "In
Matrem," p. 173; Julian: "Oratio," v., 172.
** Lyd.: "De
Mensibus," iv., 38-74; "Movers," p. 550; Dunlap:
"Saba," p. 3.
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matter and spirit-essence.
Science has also reduced of late the seven rays to three primary ones, thus
corroborating the scientific conception of the ancients of at least one of the
visible manifestations of the invisible deity, and the seven divided into a
quaternary and a trinity.
The Pythagoreans called the number
seven the vehicle of life, as it contained body and soul. They explained it by
saying, that the human body consisted of four principal elements, and that the
soul is triple, comprising reason, passion, and desire. The ineffable WORD was
considered the Seventh and highest of all, for there are six minor substitutes,
each belonging to a degree of initiation. The Jews borrowed their Sabbath from
the ancients, who called it Saturn's day and deemed it unlucky, and not the
latter from the Israelites when Christianized. The people of India, Arabia,
Syria, and Egypt observed weeks of seven days; and the Romans learned the
hebdomadal method from these foreign countries when they became subject to the
Empire. Still it was not until the fourth century that the Roman kalends,
nones, and ides were abandoned, and weeks substituted in their place; and the
astronomical names of the days, such as dies Solis (day of the Sun), dies Lunae
(day of the Moon), dies Martis (day of Mars); dies Mercurii (day of Mercury),
dies Jovis (day of Jupiter), dies Veneris (day of Venus), and dies Saturni (day
of Saturn), prove that it was not from the Jews that the week of seven days was
adopted. Before we examine this number kabalistically, we propose to analyse it
from the standpoint of the Judaico-Christian Sabbath.
When Moses instituted the yom
shaba, or Shebang (Shabbath), the allegory of the Lord God resting from his
work of creation on the seventh day was but a cloak, or, as the Sohar expresses
it, a screen, to hide the true meaning.
The Jews reckoned then, as
they do now, their days by number, as, day the first; day the second; and so
on; yom ahad; yom sheni; yom shelisho; yom rebis; yom shamishi; yom shishehi;
Yom SHABA.
"The Hebrew seven [[Heb
char]], consisting of three letters, S. B. O., has more than one meaning. First
of all, it means age or cycle, Shab-ang; Sabbath [[Heb char]] can be translated
old age, as well as rest, and in the old Coptic, Sabe means wisdom, learning.
Modern archaeologists have found that as in Hebrew Sab [[Heb char]] also means
gray-headed, and that therefore the Saba-day was the day on which the
"gray-headed men, or 'aged fathers' of a tribe, were in the habit of
assembling for councils or sacrifices."*
"Thus, the week of six
days and the seventh, the Saba or Sapta-day period, is of the highest
antiquity. The observance of the lunar festivals in India, shows that that
nation held hebdomadal meetings as well. With
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Westminster
Review": Septenary Institutions; "Stone Him to Death."
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CHRISTIAN SABBATH.
every new quarter the moon
brings changes in the atmosphere, hence certain changes are also produced
throughout the whole of our universe, of which the meteorological ones are the
most insignificant. On this day of the seventh and most powerful of the
prismatic days, the adepts of the "Secret Science" meet as they met
thousands of years ago, to become the agents of the occult powers of nature
(emanations of the working God), and commune with the invisible worlds. It is
in this observance of the seventh day by the old sages -- not as the resting
day of the Deity, but because they had penetrated into its occult power, that
lies the profound veneration of all the heathen philosophers for the number
seven which they term the "venerable," the sacred number. The Pythagorean
Tetraktis, revered by the Platonists, was the square placed below the triangle;
the latter, or the Trinity embodying the invisible Monad -- the unity, and
deemed too sacred to be pronounced except within the walls of a Sanctuary.
The ascetic observance of the
Christian Sabbath by Protestants is pure religious tyranny, and does more harm,
we fear, than good. It really dates only from the enactment (in 1678) of the
29th of Charles II., which prohibited any "tradesman, artificer, workman,
laborer, or other person," to "do or exercise any worldly labor,
etc., etc., upon the Lord's day." The Puritans carried this thing to
extremes, apparently to mark their hatred of Catholicism, both Roman and
Episcopal. That it was no part of the plan of Jesus that such a day should be
set apart, is evident not only from his words but acts. It was not observed by
the early Christians.
When Trypho, the Jew,
reproached the Christians for not having a Sabbath, what does the martyr answer
him? "The new law will have you keep a perpetual Sabbath. You, when you
have passed a day in idleness, think you are religious. The Lord is not pleased
with such things as these. If any be guilty of perjury or fraud, let him
reform; if he be an adulterer, let him repent; and he will then have kept the kind
of Sabbath truly pleasing to God. . . . The elements are never idle, and keep
no Sabbath. There was no need of the observance of Sabbaths before Moses,
neither now is there any need of them after Jesus Christ."
The Heptaktis is not the Supreme
Cause, but simply an emanation from Him -- the first visible manifestation of
the Unrevealed Power. "His Divine Breath, which, violently breaking forth,
condensed itself, shining with radiance until it evolved into Light, and so
became cognizant to external sense," says John Reuchlin.* This is the
emanation of the Highest, the Demiurge, a multiplicity in a unity, the Elohim,
whom we
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Di Verbo
Mirifico."
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see creating our world, or
rather fashioning it, in six days, and resting on the seventh. And who are
these Elohim but the euhemerized powers of nature, the faithful manifested
servants, the laws of Him who is immutable law and harmony Himself?
They remain over the seventh
heaven (or spiritual world), for it is they who, according to the kabalists,
formed in succession the six material worlds, or rather, attempts at worlds,
that preceded our own, which, they say, is the seventh. If, in laying aside the
metaphysico-spiritual conception, we give our attention but to the
religio-scientific problem of creation in "six days," over which our
best biblical scholars have vainly pondered so long, we might, perchance, be on
the way to the true idea underlying the allegory. The ancients were
philosophers, consistent in all things. Hence, they taught that each of these departed
worlds, having performed its physical evolution, and reached -- through birth,
growth, maturity, old age, and death -- the end of its cycle, had returned to
its primitive subjective form of a spiritual earth. Thereafter it had to serve
through all eternity as the dwelling of those who had lived on it as men, and
even animals, but were now spirits. This idea, were it even as incapable of
exact demonstration as that of our theologians relating to Paradise, is, at
least, a trifle more philosophical.
As well as man, and every
other living thing upon it, our planet has had its spiritual and physical
evolution. From an impalpable ideal thought under the creative Will of Him of
whom we know nothing, and but dimly conceive in imagination, this globe became
fluidic and semi-spiritual, then condensed itself more and more, until its
physical development -- matter, the tempting demon -- compelled it to try its
own creative faculty. Matter defied SPIRIT, and the earth, too, had its
"Fall." The allegorical curse under which it labors, is that it only
procreates, it does not create. Our physical planet is but the handmaiden, or
rather the maid-of-all-work, of the spirit, its master. "Cursed be the
ground . . . thorns and thistles shall it bring," the Elohim are made to
say. "In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children." The Elohim say this
both to the ground and the woman. And this curse will last until the minutest
particle of matter on earth shall have outlived its days, until every grain of
dust has, by gradual transformation through evolution, become a constituent
part of a "living soul," and, until the latter shall reascend the
cyclic arc, and finally stand -- its own Metatron, or Redeeming Spirit -- at
the foot of the upper step of the spiritual worlds, as at the first hour of its
emanation. Beyond that lies the great "Deep" -- A MYSTERY!
It must be remembered that
every cosmogony has a trinity of workers at its head -- Father, spirit; Mother,
nature, or matter; and the mani-
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GENESIS, "DAYS" OF BRAHMA.
fested universe, the Son or
result of the two. The universe, also, as well as each planet which it comprehends,
passes through four ages, like man himself. All have their infancy, youth,
maturity, and old age, and these four added to the other three make the sacred
seven again.
The introductory chapters of
Genesis were never meant to present even a remote allegory of the creation of
our earth. They embrace (chapter i.) a metaphysical conception of some
indefinite period in the eternity, when successive attempts were being made by
the law of evolution at the formation of universes. This idea is plainly stated
in the Sohar: "There were old worlds, which perished as soon as they came
into existence, were formless, and were called sparks. Thus, the smith, when
hammering the iron, lets the sparks fly in all directions. The sparks are the
primordial worlds which could not continue, because the Sacred Aged (Sephira)
had not as yet assumed its form (of androgyne or opposite sexes) of king and
queen (Sephira and Kadmon) and the Master was not yet at his work."*
The six periods or
"days" of Genesis refer to the same metaphysical belief. Five such
ineffectual attempts were made by the Elohim, but the sixth resulted in worlds
like our own (i.e., all the planets and most of the stars are worlds, and
inhabited, though not like our earth). Having formed this world at last in the
sixth period, the Elohim rested in the seventh. Thus the "Holy One,"
when he created the present world, said: "This pleases me; the previous
ones did not please me."** And the Elohim "saw everything that he had
made, and behold it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the
sixth day." -- Genesis i.
The reader will remember that
in Chapter IV. an explanation was given of the "day" and
"night" of Brahma. The former represents a certain period of cosmical
activity, the latter an equal one of cosmical repose. In the one, worlds are
being evolved, and passing through their allotted four ages of existence; in
the latter the "inbreathing" of Brahma reverses the tendency of the
natural forces; everything visible becomes gradually dispersed; chaos comes;
and a long night of repose reinvigorates the cosmos for its next term of
evolution. In the morning of one
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Idra Suta:
"Sohar," book iii., p. 292 b. The Supreme consulting with the Architect
of the world -- his Logos -- about creation.
** Idra Suta:
"Sohar," iii., 135 b. If the chapters of Genesis and the other Mosaic
books, as well as the subjects, are muddled up, the fault is the compiler's --
not that of oral tradition. Hilkiah and Josiah had to commune with Huldah, the
prophetess, hence resort to magic to understand the word of the "Lord God
of Israel," most conveniently found by Hilkiah (2 Kings, xxiii.); and that
it has passed still later through more than one revision and remodelling is but
too well proved by its frequent incongruities, repetitions, and contradictions.
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of these "days" the
formative processes are gradually reaching their climax of activity; in the
evening imperceptibly diminishing the same until the pralaya arrives, and with
it "night." One such morning and evening do, in fact, constitute a
cosmic day; and it was a "day of Brahma" that the kabalistic author
of Genesis had in mind each time when he said: "And the evening and the
morning were the first (or fifth or sixth, or any other) day." Six days of
gradual evolution, one of repose, and then -- evening! Since the first
appearance of man on our earth there has been an eternal Sabbath or rest for
the Demiurge.
The cosmogonical speculations
of the first six chapters of Genesis are shown in the races of "sons of
God," "giants," etc., of chapter vi. Properly speaking, the
story of the formation of our earth, or "creation," as it is very
improperly called, begins with the rescue of Noah from the deluge. The
Chaldeo-Babylonian tablets recently translated by George Smith leave no doubt
of that in the minds of those who read the inscriptions esoterically. Ishtar,
the great goddess, speaks in column iii. of the destruction of the sixth world
and the appearance of the seventh, thus:
"Six days and nights the
wind, deluge, and storm overwhelmed.
"On the seventh day, in
its course was calmed the storm, and all the deluge,
"which had destroyed like
an earthquake,*
"quieted. The sea he
caused to dry, and the wind and deluge ended. . . .
"I perceived the shore at
the boundary of the sea. . . .
"to the country of Nizir
went the ship (argha, or the moon).
"the mountain of Nizir
stopped the ship. . . .
"the first day, and the
second day, the mountain of Nizir the same.
"the fifth and the sixth,
the mountain of Nizir the same.
"on the seventh day, in
the course of it
"I sent forth a dove, and
it left. The dove went and turned, and . . . the raven went . . . and did not
return.
"I built an altar on the
peak of the mountain.
"by seven herbs I cut, at
the bottom of them I placed reeds, pines, and simgar. . . .
"the gods like flies over
the sacrifice gathered.
"from of old also the
great God in his course.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* This assimilation of the
deluge to an earthquake on the Assyrian tablets would go to prove that the
antediluvian nations were well acquainted with other geological cataclysms
besides the deluge, which is represented in the Bible as the first calamity
which befel humanity, and a punishment.
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OF NOAH.
"the great brightness
(the sun) of Anu had created.* When the glory of those gods the charm round my
neck would not repel," etc.
All this has a purely
astronomical, magical, and esoteric relation. One who reads these tablets will
recognize at a glance the biblical account; and judge, at the same time, how
disfigured is the great Babylonian poem by euhemeric personages -- degraded
from their exalted positions of gods into simple patriarchs. Space prevents our
entering fully into this biblical travesty of the Chaldean allegories. We shall
therefore but remind the reader that by the confession of the most unwilling
witnesses -- such as Lenormant, first the inventor and then champion of the
Akkadians -- the Chaldeo-Babylonian triad placed under Ilon, the unrevealed
deity, is composed of Anu, Nuah, and Bel. Anu is the primordial chaos, the god
time and world at once, [[chromos]] and [[Kosmos]], the uncreated matter issued
from the one and fundamental principle of all things. As to Nuah, he is,
according to the same Orientalist:
". . . the intelligence, we
will willingly say the verbum, which animates and fecundates matter, which
penetrates the universe, directs and makes it live; and at the same time Nuah
is the king of the humid principle; the Spirit moving on the waters."
Is not this evident? Nuah is Noah,
floating on the waters, in his ark; the latter being the emblem of the argha,
or moon, the feminine principle; Noah is the "spirit" falling into
matter. We find him as soon as he descends upon the earth, planting a vineyard,
drinking of the wine, and getting drunk on it; i.e., the pure spirit becoming
intoxicated as soon as it is finally imprisoned in matter. The seventh chapter
of Genesis is but another version of the first. Thus, while the latter reads:
" . . . and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit (of
God) moved upon the face of the waters," in chapter seventh, it is said:
" . . . and the waters prevailed . . . and the ark went (with Noah -- the
spirit) upon the face of the waters." Thus Noah, if the Chaldean Nuah, is
the spirit vivifying matter, chaos represented by the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* George Smith notes in the
tablets, first the creation of the moon, and then of the sun: "Its beauty
and perfection are extolled, and the regularity of its orbit, which led to its
being considered the type of a judge and the regulator of the world." Did
this story of the deluge relate simply to a cosmogonical cataclysm -- even were
it universal -- why should the goddess Ishtara or Astoreth (the moon) speak of
the creation of the sun after the deluge? The waters might have reached as high
as the mountain of Nizir (Chaldean version), or Jebel-Djudi (the
deluge-mountains of the Arabian legends), or yet Ararat (of the biblical
narrative), and even Himalaya of the Hindu tradition, and yet not reach the sun
-- even the Bible itself stopped short of such a miracle. It is evident that
the deluge of the people who first recorded it had another meaning, less
problematical and far more philosophical than that of a universal deluge, of
which there are no geological traces whatever.
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deep or waters of the flood.
In the Babylonian legend it is Istar (Astoreth, the moon) which is shut up in
the ark, and sends out a dove (emblem of Venus and other lunar goddesses) in
search of dry land. And whereas in the Semitic tablets it is Xisuthrus or
Hasisadra who is "translated to the company of the gods for his
piety," in the Bible it is Enoch who walks with, and being taken up by
God, "was no more."
The successive existence of an
incalculable number of worlds before the subsequent evolution of our own, was believed
and taught by all the ancient peoples. The punishment of the Christians for
despoiling the Jews of their records and refusing the true key to them began
from the earliest centuries. And thus is it that we find the holy Fathers of
the Church laboring through an impossible chronology and the absurdities of
literal interpretation, while the learned rabbis were perfectly aware of the
real significance of their allegories. So not only in the Sohar, but also in
other kabalistic works accepted by Talmudists, such as Midrash Berasheth, or
the universal Genesis, which, with the Merkaba (the chariot of Ezekiel),
composes the Kabala, may be found the doctrine of a whole series of worlds
evolving out of the chaos, and being destroyed in succession.
The Hindu doctrines teach of
two Pralayas or dissolutions; one universal, the Maha-Pralaya, the other
partial, or the minor Pralaya. This does not relate to the universal
dissolution which occurs at the end of every "Day of Brahma," but to
the geological cataclysms at the end of every minor cycle of our globe. This
historical and purely local deluge of Central Asia, the traditions of which can
be traced in every country, and which, according to Bunsen, happened about the
year 10,000 B.C., had naught to do with the mythical Noah, or Nuah. A partial
cataclysm occurs at the close of every "age" of the world, they say,
which does not destroy the latter, but only changes its general appearance. New
races of men and animals and a new flora evolve from the dissolution of the precedent
ones.
The allegories of the
"fall of man" and the "deluge," are the two most important
features of the Pentateuch. They are, so to say, the Alpha and Omega, the
highest and the lowest keys of the scale of harmony on which resounds the majestic
hymns of the creation of mankind; for they discover to him who questions the
Zura (figurative Gematria), the process of man's evolution from the highest
spiritual entity unto the lowest physical -- the post-diluvian man, as in the
Egyptian hieroglyphics, every sign of the picture writing which cannot be made
to fit within a certain circumscribed geometrical figure may be rejected as
only intended by the sacred hierogrammatist for a premeditated blind -- so many
of the details in the Bible must be treated on the same principle, that por-
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DELUGE.
tion only being accepted which
answers to the numerical methods taught in the Kabala.
The deluge appears in the
Hindu books only as a tradition. It claims no sacred character, and we find it
but in the Mahabharata, the Puranas, and still earlier in the Satapatha, one of
the latest Brahmanas. It is more than probable that Moses, or whoever wrote for
him, used these accounts as the basis of his own purposely disfigured allegory,
adding to it moreover the Chaldean Berosian narrative. In Mahabharata, we
recognize Nimrod under the name of King Daytha. The origin of the Grecian fable
of the Titans scaling Olympus, and the other of the builders of the Tower of
Babel who seek to reach heaven, is shown in the impious Daytha, who sends
imprecations against heaven's thunder, and threatens to conquer heaven itself
with his mighty warriors, thereby bringing upon humanity the wrath of Brahma.
"The Lord then resolved," says the text, "to chastise his
creatures with a terrible punishment which should serve as a warning to
survivors, and to their descendants."
Vaivasvata (who in the Bible
becomes Noah) saves a little fish, which turns out to be an avatar of Vishnu.
The fish warns that just man that the globe is about to be submerged, that all
that inhabit it must perish, and orders him to construct a vessel in which he
shall embark, with all his family. When the ship is ready, and Vaivasvata has
shut up in it with his family the seeds of plants and pairs of all animals, and
the rain begins to fall, a gigantic fish, armed with a horn, places itself at
the head of the ark. The holy man, following its orders, attaches a cable to
this horn, and the fish guides the ship safely through the raging elements. In
the Hindu tradition the number of days during which the deluge lasted agrees
exactly with that of the Mosaic account. When the elements were calmed, the
fish landed the ark on the summit of the Himalayas.
This fable is considered by
many orthodox commentators to have been borrowed from the Mosaic Scriptures.*
But surely if such a universal cataclysm had ever taken place within man's
memory, some of the monuments of the Egyptians, of which many are of such a
tremendous antiquity, would have recorded that occurrence, coupled with that of
the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
*The "dead letter that
killeth," is magnificently illustrated in the case of the Jesuit de
Carriere, quoted in the "Bible dans l'Inde." The following
dissertation represents the spirit of the whole Catholic world: "So that
the creation of the world," writes this faithful son of Loyola, explaining
the biblical chronology of Moses, "and all that is recorded in Genesis,
might have become known to Moses through recitals personally made to him by his
fathers. Perhaps, even, the memories yet existed among the Israelites, and from
those recollections he may have recorded the dates of births and deaths of the
patriarchs, the numbering of their children, and the names of the different
countries in which each became established under the guidance of the holy
spirit, which we must always regard as the chief author of the sacred
books"!!!
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disgrace of Ham, Canaan, and
Mizraim, their alleged ancestors. But, till now, there has not been found the
remotest allusion to such a calamity, although Mizraim certainly belongs to the
first generation after the deluge, if not actually an antediluvian himself. On
the other hand the Chaldeans preserved the tradition, as we find Berosus
testifying to it, and the ancient Hindus possess the legend as given above.
Now, there is but one explanation of the extraordinary fact that of two
contemporary and civilized nations like Egypt and Chaldea, one has preserved no
tradition of it whatever, although it was the most directly interested in the
occurrence -- if we credit the Bible -- and the other has. The deluge noticed
in the Bible, in one of the Brahmanas, and in the Berosus Fragment, relates to
the partial flood which, about 10,000 years B.C., according to Bunsen, and
according to the Brahmanical computations of the Zodiac also changed the whole
face of Central Asia.* Thus the Babylonians and the Chaldeans might have
learned of it from their mysterious guests, christened by some Assyriologists
Akkadians, or what is still more probable they, themselves, perhaps, were the
descendants of those who had dwelt in the submerged localities. The Jews had
the tale from the latter as they had everything else; the Brahmans may have
recorded the traditions of the lands which they first invaded, and had perhaps
inhabited before they possessed themselves of the Punjab. But the Egyptians,
whose first settlers had evidently come from Southern India, had less reason to
record the cataclysm, since it had perhaps never affected them except
indirectly, as the flood was limited to Central Asia.
Burnouf, noticing the fact
that the story of the deluge is found only in one of the most modern Brahmanas,
also thinks that it might have been borrowed by the Hindus from the Semitic
nations. Against such an assumption are ranged all the traditions and customs
of the Hindus. The Aryans, and especially the Brahmans, never borrowed anything
at all from the Semitists, and here we are corroborated by one of those
"unwilling witnesses," as Higgins calls the partisans of Jehovah and
Bible. "I have never seen anything in the history of the Egyptians and
Jews," writes Abbe Dubois, forty years a resident of India, "that
would induce me to believe that either of these nations, or any other on the
face of the earth, have been established earlier than the Hindus, and
particularly the Brahmans; so I cannot be induced to believe that the latter
have drawn their rites from foreign nations. On the contrary, I infer that they
have drawn them from an original source of their own. Whoever knows anything of
the spirit and character of the Brahmans, their stateliness, their pride, and
extreme vanity, their distance, and sovereign contempt for
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See chapter xv. and last of
Part I.
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HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT.
everything that is foreign,
and of which they cannot boast to have been the inventors, will agree with me
that such a people cannot have consented to draw their customs and rules of
conduct from an alien country."*
This fable which mentions the
earliest avatar -- the Matsya -- relates to another yuga than our own, that of
the first appearance of animal life; perchance, who knows, to the Devonian age
of our geologists? It certainly answers better to the latter than the year 2348
B.C.! Apart from this, the very absence of all mention of the deluge from the
oldest books of the Hindus suggests a powerful argument when we are left
utterly to inferences as in this case. "The Vedas and Manu," says
Jacolliot, "those monuments of the old Asiatic thought, existed far
earlier than the diluvian period; this is an incontrovertible fact, having all
the value of an historical truth, for, besides the tradition which shows Vishnu
himself as saving the Vedas from the deluge -- a tradition which,
notwithstanding its legendary form, must certainly rest upon a real fact -- it
has been remarked that neither of these sacred books mention the cataclysm,
while the Puranas and the Mahabharata, and a great number of other more recent
works, describe it with the minutest detail, which is a proof of the priority
of the former. The Vedas certainly would never have failed to contain a few
hymns on the terrible disaster which, of all other natural manifestations, must
have struck the imagination of the people who witnessed it."
"Neither would Manu, who
gives us a complete narrative of the creation, with a chronology from the
divine and heroical ages, down to the appearance of man on earth -- have passed
in silence an event of such importance." Manu (book i., sloka 35), gives
the names of ten eminent saints whom he calls pradjapatis (more correctly
pragapatis), in whom the Brahman theologians see prophets, ancestors of the
human race, and the Pundits simply consider as ten powerful kings who lived in
the Krita-yug, or the age of good (the golden age of the Greeks).
The last of these pragapatis
is Brighou.
"Enumerating the
succession of these eminent beings who, according to Manu, have governed the
world, the old Brahmanical legislator names as descending from Brighou:
Swarotchica, Ottami, Tamasa, Raivata, the glorious Tchakchoucha, and the son of
Vivasvat, every one of the six having made himself worthy of the title of Manu
(divine legislator), a title which had equally belonged to the Pradjapatis, and
every great personage of primitive India. The genealogy stops at this name.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Description, etc., of
the People of India," by the Abbe J. A. Dubois, missionary in Mysore, vol.
i., p. 186.
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"Now, according to the
Puranas and the Mahabharata it was under a descendant of this son of Vivaswata,
named Vaivaswata that occurred the great cataclysm, the remembrance of which,
as will be seen, has passed into a tradition, and been carried by emigration
into all the countries of the East and West which India has colonized since
then. . . .
"The genealogy given by
Manu stopping, as we have seen, at Vivaswata, it follows that this work (of
Manu) knew nothing either of Vaivaswata or the deluge."*
The argument is unanswerable;
and we commend it to those official scientists, who, to please the clergy,
dispute every fact proving the tremendous antiquity of the Vedas and Manu.
Colonel Vans Kennedy has long since declared that Babylonia was, from her
origin, the seat of Sanscrit literature and Brahman learning. And how or why
should the Brahmans have penetrated there, unless it was as the result of
intestine wars and emigration from India? The fullest account of the deluge is
found in the Mahabharata of Vedavyasa, a poem in honor of the astrological
allegories on the wars between the Solar and the Lunar races. One of the
versions states that Vivaswata became the father of all the nations of the
earth through his own progeny, and this is the form adopted for the Noachian
story; the other states that -- like Deukalion and Pyrrha -- he had but to
throw pebbles into the ilus left by the retiring waves of the flood, to produce
men at will. These two versions -- one Hebrew, the other Greek -- allow us no
choice. We must either believe that the Hindus borrowed from pagan Greeks as
well as from monotheistic Jews, or -- what is far more probable -- that the
versions of both of these nations are derived from the Vedic literature through
the Babylonians.
History tells us of the stream
of immigration across the Indus, and later of its overflowing the Occident; and
of populations of Hindu origin passing from Asia Minor to colonize Greece. But
history says not a single word of the "chosen people," or of Greek
colonies having penetrated India earlier than the 5th and 4th centuries B.C.,
when we first find vague traditions that make some of the problematical lost
tribes of Israel, take from Babylon the route to India. But even were the story
of the ten tribes to find credence, and the tribes themselves be proved to have
existed in profane as well as in sacred history, this does not help the
solution at all. Colebrooke, Wilson, and other eminent Indianists show the
Mahabharata, if not the Satapatha-brahmana, in which the story is also given,
as by far antedating the age of Cyrus, hence, the possible time of the
appearance of any of the tribes of Israel in India.**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Fetichisme,
Polytheisme, Monotheisme," pp. 170, 171.
** Against the latter assumption
derived solely from the accounts of the Bible we
[[Footnote continues on next
page]]
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MAHABHARATA.
Orientalists accord the
Mahabharata an antiquity of between twelve and fifteen hundred years B.C.; as
to the Greek version it bears as little evidence as the other, and the attempts
of the Hellenists in this direction have as signally failed. The story of the
conquering army of Alexander penetrating into Northern India, itself becomes
more doubted every day. No Hindu national record, not the slightest historical
memento, throughout the length and breadth of India offers the slightest trace
of such an invasion.
If even such historical facts
are now found to have been all the while fictions, what are we to think of
narratives which bear on their very face the stamp of invention? We cannot help
sympathizing at heart with Professor Muller when he remarks that it seems
"blasphemy to consider these fables of the heathen world as corrupted and
misinterpreted fragments of divine Revelation once granted to the whole race of
mankind." Only, can this scholar be held perfectly impartial and fair to
both parties, unless he includes in the number of these fables those of the
Bible? And is the language of the Old Testament more pure or moral than the
books of the Brahmans? Or any fables of the heathen world more blasphemous and
ridiculous than Jehovah's interview with Moses (Exodus xxxiii. 23)? Are any of
the Pagan gods made to appear more fiendish than the same Jehovah in a score of
passages? If the feelings of a pious Christian are shocked at the absurdities
of Father Kronos eating his children and maiming Uranos; or of Jupiter throwing
Vulcan down from heaven and breaking his leg; on the other hand he cannot feel
hurt if a non-Christian laughs at the idea of Jacob boxing with the Creator,
who "when he saw that he prevailed not against him," dislocated
Jacob's thigh, the patriarch still holding fast to God and not allowing Him to
go His way, notwithstanding His pleading.
Why should the story of
Deukalion and Pyrrha, throwing stones behind them, and thus creating the human
race, be deemed more ridiculous than that of Lot's wife being changed into a
pillar of salt, or of the Almighty creating men of clay and then breathing the
breath of life into them? The choice between the latter mode of creation and
that of the Egyptian ram-horned god fabricating man on a potter's wheel is
hardly perceptible. The story of Minerva, goddess of wisdom, ushered into
existence after a certain period of gestation in her father's brain, is at
least suggestive and poetical, as an allegory. No ancient Greek was ever burned
for not accepting it literally; and, at all events, "heathen" fables
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] have every historical fact. 1st. There are no proofs of these
twelve tribes having ever existed; that of Levi was a priestly caste and all
the others imaginary. 2d. Herodotus, the most accurate of historians, who was
in Assyria when Ezra flourished, never mentions the Israelites at all!
Herodotus was born in 484 B. C.
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in general are far less
preposterous and blasphemous than those imposed upon Christians, ever since the
Church accepted the Old Testament, and the Roman Catholic Church opened its
register of thaumaturgical saints.
"Many of the natives of
India," continues Professor Muller, "confess that their feelings
revolt against the impurities attributed to the gods by what they call their
sacred writings; yet there are honest Brahmans who will maintain that these
stories have a deeper meaning; that immorality being incompatible with a divine
being, a mystery must be supposed to be concealed in these time-hallowed
fables, a mystery which an inquiring and reverent mind may hope to
fathom."
This is precisely what the
Christian clergy maintain in attempting to explain the indecencies and
incongruities of the Old Testament. Only, instead of allowing the
interpretation to those who have the key to these seeming incongruities, they
have assumed to themselves the office and right, by divine proxy, to interpret
these in their own way. They have not only done that but have gradually
deprived the Hebrew clergy of the means to interpret their Scriptures as their
fathers did; so that to find among the Rabbis in the present century a
well-versed kabalist, is quite rare. The Jews have themselves forgotten the
key! How could they help it? Where are the original manuscripts? The oldest
Hebrew manuscript in existence is said to be the Bodleian Codex, which is not
older than between eight and nine hundred years.* The break between Ezra and
this Codex is thus fifteen centuries. In 1490 the Inquisition caused all the
Hebrew Bibles to be burned; and Torquemada alone destroyed 6,000 volumes at
Salamanca. Except a few manuscripts of the Tora Ketubim and Nebiim, used in the
synagogues, and which are of quite a recent date, we do not think there is one
old manuscript in existence which is not punctuated, hence -- completely
misinterpreted and altered by the Masorets. Were it not for this timely
invention of the Masorah, no copy of the Old Testament could possibly be
tolerated in our century. It is well known that the Masorets while transcribing
the oldest manuscripts put themselves to task to take out, except in a few
places which they have probably overlooked, all the immodest words and put
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Dr. Kennicot himself, and
Bruns, under his direction, about 1780, collated 692 manuscripts of the Hebrew
"Bible." Of all these, only two were credited to the tenth century,
and three to a period as early as the eleventh and twelfth. The others ranged
between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries.
In his "Introduzione alla
Sacra Scrittura," pp. 34-47, De Rossi, of Parma, mentions 1,418 MSS.
collated, and 374 editions. The oldest manuscript "Codex," he asserts
-- that of Vienna -- dates A.D. 1019; the next, Reuchlin's, of Carlsruhe, 1038.
"There is," he declares, "nothing in the manuscripts of the
Hebrew 'Old Testament' extant of an earlier date than the eleventh century
after Christ."
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FROM MANU.
in places sentences of their
own, often changing completely the sense of the verse. "It is clear,"
says Donaldson, "that the Masoretic school at Tiberias were engaged in
settling or unsettling the Hebrew text until the final publication of the
Masorah itself." Therefore, had we but the original texts -- judging by
the present copies of the Bible in our possession -- it would be really
edifying to compare the Old Testament with the Vedas and even with the
Brahmanical books. We verily believe that no faith, however blind, could stand
before such an avalanche of crude impurities and fables. If the latter are not
only accepted but enforced upon millions of civilized persons who find it
respectable and edifying to believe in them as divine revelation, why should we
wonder that Brahmans believe their books to be equally a Sruti, a revelation?
Let us thank the Masorets by
all means, but let us study at the same time both sides of the medal.
Legends, myths, allegories,
symbols, if they but belong to the Hindu, Chaldean, or Egyptian tradition, are
thrown into the same heap of fiction. Hardly are they honored with a
superficial search into their possible relations to astronomy or sexual
emblems. The same myths -- when and because mutilated -- are accepted as Sacred
Scriptures, more -- the Word of God! Is this impartial history? Is this justice
to either the past, the present, or the future? "Ye cannot serve God and
Mammon," said the Reformer, nineteen centuries ago. "Ye cannot serve
truth and public prejudice," would be more applicable to our own age. Yet
our authorities pretend they serve the former.
There are few myths in any
religious system but have an historical as well as a scientific foundation.
Myths, as Pococke ably expresses it, "are now proved to be fables, just in
proportion as we misunderstand them; truths, in proportion as they were once
understood. Our ignorance it is which has made a myth of history; and our ignorance
is an Hellenic inheritance, much of it the result of Hellenic vanity."*
Bunsen and Champollion have
already shown that the Egyptian sacred books are by far older than the oldest
parts of the Book of Genesis. And now a more careful research seems to warrant
the suspicion -- which with us amounts to a certainty, that the laws of Moses
are copies from the code of the Brahmanic Manu. Thus, according to every
probability, Egypt owes her civilization, her civil institutions, and her arts,
to India. But against the latter assumption we have a whole army of
"authorities" arrayed, and what matters if the latter do deny the
fact at present? Sooner or later they will have to accept it, whether they
belong to the German or French school. Among, but not of those
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "India in Greece,"
Preface, ix.
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who so readily compromise
between interest and conscience, there are some fearless scholars, who may
bring out to light incontrovertible facts. Some twenty years since, Max Muller,
in a letter to the Editor of the London Times, April, 1857, maintained most
vehemently that Nirvana meant annihilation, in the fullest sense of the word.
(See Chips, etc., vol. i., p. 287, on the meaning of Nirvana.) But in 1869, in
a lecture before the general meeting of the Association of German Philologists
at Kiel, "he distinctly declares his belief that the nihilism attributed
to Buddha's teaching forms no part of his doctrine, and that it is wholly wrong
to suppose that Nirvana means annihilation." (Trubner's American and
Oriental Literary Record, Oct. 16, 1869; also Inman's Ancient Faiths and
Modern, p. 128.) Yet if we mistake not, Professor Muller was as much of an
authority in 1857 as in 1869.
"It will be difficult to
settle," says (now) this great scholar, "whether the Vedas is the
oldest of books, and whether some of the portions of the Old Testament may not
be traced back to the same or even an earlier date than the oldest hymns of the
Veda."* But his retraction about the Nirvana allows us a hope that he may
yet change his opinion on the question of Genesis likewise, so that the public
may have simultaneously the benefit of truth, and the sanction of one of
Europe's greatest authorities.
It is well known how little
the Orientalists have come to anything like an agreement about the age of
Zoroaster, and until this question is settled, it would be safer perhaps to
trust implicitly in the Brahmanical calculations by the Zodiac, than to the
opinions of scientists. Leaving the profane horde of unrecognized scholars,
those we mean who yet wait their turn to be chosen for public worship as idols
symbolical of scientific leadership, where can we find, among the sanctioned
authorities of the day, two that agree as to this age? There's Bunsen, who
places Zoroaster at Baktra, and the emigration of Baktrians to the Indus at 3784
B.C.,** and the birth of Moses at 1392.*** Now it is rather difficult to place
Zoroaster anterior to the Vedas, considering that the whole of his doctrine is
that of the earlier Vedas. True, he remained in Afghanistan for a period more
or less problematical before crossing into the Punjab; but the Vedas were begun
in the latter country. They indicate the progress of the Hindus, as the Avesta
that of the Iranians. And there is Haug who assigns to the Aitareya Brahmanam
-- a Brahmanical speculation and commentary upon the Rig-Veda of a far
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Chips," vol. i.
** "Egypt's Place in
Universal History," vol. v., p. 77.
*** Ibid., p. 78.
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ARYANS.
later date than the Veda
itself -- between 1400 and 1200 B.C., while the Vedas are placed by him between
2,000 and 2,400 years B.C. Max Muller cautiously suggests certain difficulties
in this chronological computation, but still does not altogether deny it.* Let
it, however, be as it may, and supposing that the Pentateuch was written by
Moses himself -- notwithstanding that he would thereby be made to twice record
his own death -- still, if Moses was born, as Bunsen finds, in 1392 B.C., the
Pentateuch could not have been written before the Vedas. Especially if
Zoroaster was born 3784 B.C. If, as Dr. Haug** tells us, some of the hymns of
the Rig-Veda were written before Zoroaster accomplished his schism, something
like thirty-seven centuries B.C., and Max Muller says himself that "the
Zoroastrians and their ancestors started from India during the Vaidic
period," how can some of the portions of the Old Testament be traced back
to the same or even "an earlier date than the oldest hymns of the
Veda"?
It has generally been agreed
among Orientalists that the Aryans, 3,000 years B.C., were still in the steppes
east of the Caspian, and united. Rawlinson conjectures that they "flowed
east" from Armenia as a common centre; while two kindred streams began to
flow, one northward over the Caucasus, and the other westward over Asia Minor
and Europe. He finds the Aryans, at a period anterior to the fifteenth century
before our era, "settled in the territory watered by the Upper
Indus." Thence Vedic Aryans migrated to the Punjab, and Zendic Aryans
westward, establishing the historical countries. But this, like the rest, is a
hypothesis, and only given as such.
Again, Rawlinson, evidently
following Max Muller, says: "The early history of the Aryans is for many
ages an absolute blank." But many learned Brahmans, however, have declared
that they found trace of the existence of the Vedas as early as 2100 B.C.; and
Sir William Jones, taking for his guide the astronomical data, places the
Yagur-Veda 1580 B.C. This would be still "before Moses."
It is upon the supposition
that the Aryans did not leave Afghanistan for the Punjab prior to 1500 B.C.
that Max Muller and other Oxford savants have supposed that portions of the Old
Testament may be traced back to the same or even an earlier date than the
oldest hymns of the Veda. Therefore, until the Orientalists can show us the
correct date at which Zoroaster flourished, no authority can be regarded as
better for the ages of the Vedas than the Brahmans themselves.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Chips";
"Aitareya Brahmanam."
** Dr. M. Haug, Superintendent
of the Sanscrit studies in the Poona College, Bombay.
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As it is a recognized fact
that the Jews borrowed most of their laws from the Egyptians, let us examine
who were the Egyptians. In our opinion -- which is but a poor authority, of
course -- they were the ancient Indians, and in our first volume we have quoted
passages from the historian Collouca-Batta that support such a theory. What we
mean by ancient India is the following:
No region on the map -- except
it be the ancient Scythia -- is more uncertainly defined than that which bore
the designation of India. AEthiopia is perhaps the only parallel. It was the
home of the Cushite or Hamitic races, and lay to the east of Babylonia. It was
once the name of Hindustan, when the dark races, worshippers of Bala-Mahadeva
and Bhavani-Mahidevi, were supreme in that country. The India of the early
sages appears to have been the region at the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes.
Apollonius of Tyana crossed the Caucasus, or Hindu Kush, where he met with a
king who directed him to the abode of the sages -- perhaps the descendants of
those whom Ammianus terms the "Brahmans of Upper India," and whom
Hystaspes, the father of Darius (or more probably Darius Hystaspes himself)
visited; and, having been instructed by them, infused their rites and ideas
into the Magian observances. This narrative about Apollonius seems to indicate
Kashmere as the country which he visited, and the Nagas -- after their
conversion to Buddhism -- as his teachers. At this time Aryan India did not
extend beyond the Punjab.
To our notion, the most
baffling impediment in the way of ethnological progress has always been the
triple progeny of Noah. In the attempt to reconcile postdiluvian races with a
genealogical descent from Shem, Ham, and Japhet, the Christianesque
Orientalists have set themselves a task impossible of accomplishment. The
biblical Noachian ark has been a Procrustean bed to which they had to make
everything fit. Attention has therefore been diverted from veritable sources of
information as to the origin of man, and a purely local allegory mistaken for a
historical record emanating from an inspired source. Strange and unfortunate
choice! Out of all the sacred writings of all the branch nations, sprung from
the primitive stock of mankind, Christianity must choose for its guidance the
national records and scriptures of a people perhaps the least spiritual of the
human family -- the Semitic. A branch that has never been able to develop out
of its numerous tongues a language capable of embodying ideas of a moral and
intellectual world; whose form of expression and drift of thought could never
soar higher than the purely sensual and terrestrial figures of speech; whose
literature has left nothing original, nothing that was not borrowed from the
Aryan thought; and whose science and philosophy are utterly wanting in those
noble features which
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AETHIOPIANS.
characterize the highly
spiritual and metaphysical systems of the Indo-European (Japetic) races.
Bunsen shows Khamism (the
language of Egypt) as a very ancient deposit from Western Asia, containing the
germs of the Semitic, and thus bearing "witness to the primitive cognate
unity of the Semitic and Aryan races." We must remember, in this
connection, that the peoples of Southwestern and Western Asia, including the
Medes, were all Aryans. It is yet far from being proved who were the original
and primitive masters of India. That this period is now beyond the reach of
documentary history, does not preclude the probability of our theory that it
was the mighty race of builders, whether we call them Eastern AEthiopians, or
dark-skinned Aryans (the word meaning simply "noble warrior," a
"brave"). They ruled supreme at one time over the whole of ancient
India, enumerated later by Manu as the possession of those whom our scientists
term the Sanscrit-speaking people.
These Hindus are supposed to
have entered the country from the northwest; they are conjectured by some to
have brought with them the Brahmanical religion, and the language of the
conquerors was probably the Sanscrit. On these three meagre data our
philologists have worked ever since the Hindustani and its immense Sanscrit
literature was forcibly brought into notice by Sir William Jones -- all the
time with the three sons of Noah clinging around their necks. This is exact
science, free from religious prejudices! Verily, ethnology would have been the
gainer if this Noachian trio had been washed overboard and drowned before the
ark reached land!
The AEthiopians are generally
classed in the Semitic group; but we have to see how far they have a claim to
such a classification. We will also consider how much they might have had to do
with the Egyptian civilization, which, as a writer expresses it, seems
referable in the same perfection to the earliest dates, and not to have had a
rise and progress, as was the case with that of other peoples. For reasons that
we will now adduce, we are prepared to maintain that Egypt owes her
civilization, commonwealth and arts -- especially the art of building, to
pre-Vedic India, and that it was a colony of the dark-skinned Aryans, or those
whom Homer and Herodotus term the eastern AEthiopians, i.e., the inhabitants of
Southern India, who brought to it their ready-made civilization in the
ante-chronological ages, of what Bunsen calls the pre-Menite, but nevertheless
epochal history.
In Pococke's India in Greece,
we find the following suggestive paragraph: "The plain account of the wars
carried on between the solar chiefs, Oosras (Osiris) the prince of the Guclas,
and 'TU-PHOO' is the simple historical fact of the wars of the Apians, or
Sun-tribes of Oude,
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with the people of 'TU-PHOO'
or THIBET, who were, in fact, the lunar race, mostly Buddhists* and opposed by
Rama and the 'AITYO-PIAS' or people of Oude, subsequently the AITH-IO-PIANS of
Africa."**
We would remind the reader in
this connection, that Ravan, the giant, who, in the Ramayana, wages such a war
with Rama Chandra, is shown as King of Lanka, which was the ancient name for
Ceylon; and that Ceylon, in those days, perhaps formed part of the main-land of
Southern India, and was peopled by the "Eastern AEthiopians."
Conquered by Rama, the son of Dasarata, the Solar King of ancient Oude, a
colony of these emigrated to Northern Africa. If, as many suspect, Homer's
Iliad and much of his account of the Trojan war is plagiarized from the
Ramayana, then the traditions which served as a basis for the latter must date
from a tremendous antiquity. Ample margin is thus left in pre-chronological
history for a period, during which the "Eastern AEthiopians" might
have established the hypothetical Mizraic colony, with their high Indian
civilization and arts.
Science is still in the dark
about cuneiform inscriptions. Until these are completely deciphered, especially
those cut in rocks found in such abundance within the boundaries of the old
Iran, who can tell the secrets they may yet reveal? There are no Sanscrit
monumental inscriptions older than Chandragupta (315 B.C.), and the
Persepolitan inscriptions are found 220 years older. There are even now some
manuscripts in characters utterly unknown to philologists and palaeographists,
and one of them is, or was, some time since in the library of Cambridge,
England. Linguistic writers class the Semitic with the Indo-European language,
generally including the AEthiopian and the ancient Egyptian in the
classification. But if some of the dialects of the modern Northern Africa, and
even the modern Gheez or AEthiopian, are now so degenerated and corrupted as to
admit of false conclusions as to the genetical relationship between them and
the other Semitic tongues, we are not at all sure that the latter have any
claim to such a classification, except in the case of the old Coptic and the
ancient Gheez.
That there is more
consanguinity between the AEthiopians and the Aryan, dark-skinned races, and
between the latter and the Egyptians, is something which yet may be proved. It
has been lately found that the ancient Egyptians were of the Caucasian type of
mankind, and the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Pococke belongs to that
class of Orientalists who believe that Buddhism preceded Brahmanism, and was
the religion of the earliest Vedas, Gautama having been but the restorer of it
in its purest form, which after him degenerated again into dogmatism.
** "India in
Greece," p. 200.
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DYNASTIES.
shape of their skulls is
purely Asiatic.* If they were less copper-colored than the AEthiopians of our
modern day, the AEthiopians themselves might have had a lighter complexion in
days of old. The fact that, with the AEthiopian kings, the order of succession
gave the crown to the nephew of the king, the son of his sister, and not to his
own son, is extremely suggestive. It is an old custom which prevails until now
in Southern India. The Rajah is not succeeded by his own sons, but by his
sister's sons.**
Of all the dialects and
tongues alleged to be Semitic, the AEthiopian alone is written from left to
right like the Sanscrit and the Indo-Aryan people.***
Thus, against the origin of
the Egyptians being attributed to an ancient Indian colony, there is no graver
impediment than Noah's disrespectful son -- Ham -- himself a myth. But the
earliest form of Egyptian religious worship and government, theocratic and
sacerdotal, and her habits and customs all bespeak an Indian origin.
The earliest legends of the
history of India mention two dynasties now lost in the night of time; the first
was the dynasty of kings, of "the race of the sun," who reigned in
Ayodhia (now Oude); the second that of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The Asiatic origin of
the first dwellers in the Nilotic Valley is clearly demonstrated by concurrent
and independent testimony. Cuvier and Blumenbach affirm that all the skulls of
mummies which they had the opportunity of examining, presented the Caucasian
type. A recent American physiologist (Dr. Morton) has also argued for the same
conclusion ("Crania AEgyptiaca." Philadelphia, 1844).
** The late Rajah of
Travancore was succeeded by the elder son of his sister now reigning, the
Maharajah Rama Vurmah. The next heirs are the sons of his deceased sister. In
case the female line is interrupted by death, the royal family is obliged to
adopt the daughter of some other Rajah, and unless daughters are born to this
Rana another girl is adopted, and so on.
*** There are some Orientalists
who believe that this custom was introduced only after the early Christian
settlements in -AEthiopia; but as under the Romans the population of this
country was nearly all changed, the element becoming wholly Arabic, we may,
without doubting the statement, believe that it was the predominating Arab
influence which had altered the earliest mode of writing. Their present method
is even more analogous to the Devanagari, and other more ancient Indian
Alphabets, which read from left to right; and their letters show no resemblance
to the Phoenician characters. Moreover, all the ancient authorities corroborate
our assertion still more. Philostratus makes the Brahmin Iarchus say (V.A.,
iii., 6) that the AEthiopians were originally an Indian race, compelled to
emigrate from the mother-land for sacrilege and regicide (see Pococke's
"India," etc., ii., p. 206). An Egyptian is made to remark, that he
had heard from his father, that the Indians were the wisest of men, and that
the AEthiopians, a colony of the Indians, preserved the wisdom and usages of
their fathers, and acknowledged their ancient origin. Julius Africanus (in
Eusebius and Syncellus), makes the same statement. And Eusebius writes:
"The AEthiopians, emigrating from the river Indus, settled in the vicinity
of Egypt" (Lemp., Barker's edition, "Meroe").
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"race of the moon,"
who reigned in Pruyag (Allahabad). Let him who desires information on the
religious worship of these early kings read the Book of the Dead, of the
Egyptians, and all the peculiarities attending this sun-worship and the
sun-gods. Neither Osiris nor Horus are ever mentioned without being connected
with the sun. They are the "Sons of the Sun"; "the Lord and
Adorer of the Sun" is his name. "The sun is the creator of the body,
the engenderer of the gods who are the successors of the Son." Pococke, in
his most ingenious work, strongly advocates the same idea, and endeavors to
establish still more firmly the identity of the Egyptian, Greek, and Indian
mythology. He shows the head of the Rajpoot Solar race -- in fact the great
Cuclo-pos (Cyclop or builder) -- called "The great sun," in the
earliest Hindu tradition. This Gok-la Prince, the patriarch of the vast bands
of Inachienses, he says, "this Great Sun was deified at his death, and
according to the Indian doctrine of the metempsychosis, his Soul was supposed
to have transmigrated into the bull 'Apis,' the Sera-pis of the Greeks, and the
SOORAPAS, or 'Sun-Chief' of the Egyptians. . . . Osiris, properly Oosras,
signifies both 'a bull,' and 'a ray of light.' Soora-pas (Serapis) the sun
chief," for the Sun in Sanscrit is Surya. Champollion's Manifestation to
the Light, reminds in every chapter of the two Dynasties of the Kings of the
Sun and the Moon. Later, these kings became all deified and transformed after
death into solar and lunar deities. Their worship was the earliest corruption
of the great primitive faith which justly considered the sun and its fiery
life-giving rays as the most appropriate symbol to remind us of the universal
invisible presence of Him who is master of Life and Death. And now it can be
traced all around the globe. It was the religion of the earliest Vedic
Brahmans, who call, in the oldest hymns of the Rig-Veda, Surya (the sun) and
Agni (fire) "the ruler of the universe," "the lord of men,"
and the "wise king." It was the worship of the Magians, the Zoroastrians,
the Egyptians and Greeks, whether they called him Mithra, or Ahura-Mazda, or
Osiris, or Zeus, keeping in honor of his next of kin, Vesta, the pure celestial
fire. And this religion is found again in the Peruvian solar-worship; in the
Sabianism and heliolatry of the Chaldees, in the Mosaic "burning
bush," the hanging of the heads or chiefs of the people toward the Lord,
the "Sun," and even in the Abrahamic building of fire-altars and the
sacrifices of the monotheistic Jews, to Astarte the Queen of Heaven.
To the present moment, with
all the controversies and researches, History and Science remain as much as
ever in the dark as to the origin of the Jews. They may as well be the exiled
Tchandalas, or Pariahs, of old India, the "bricklayers" mentioned by
Vina-Svati, Veda-Vyasa and Manu, as the Phoenicians of Herodotus, or the
Hyk-sos of Josephus, or
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KING ARTHUR.
descendants of Pali shepherds,
or a mixture of all these. The Bible names the Tyrians as a kindred people, and
claims dominion over them.*
There is more than one
important character in the Bible, whose biography proves him a mythical hero.
Samuel is indicated as the personage of the Hebrew Commonwealth. He is the
doppel of Samson, of the Book of Judges, as will be seen -- being the son of
Anna and EL-KAINA, as Samson was of Manua or Manoah. Both were fictitious characters,
as now represented in the revealed book; one was the Hebrew Hercules, and the
other Ganesa. Samuel is credited with establishing the republic, as putting
down the Canaanite worship of Baal and Astarte, or Adonis and Venus, and
setting up that of Jehovah. Then the people demanded a king, and he anointed
Saul, and after him David of Bethlehem.
David is the Israelitish King
Arthur. He did great achievements and established a government in all Syria and
Idumea. His dominion extended from Armenia and Assyria on the north and
north-east, the Syrian Desert and Persian Gulf on the East, Arabia on the
south, and Egypt and the Levant on the west. Only Phoenicia was excepted.
His friendship with Hiram
seems to indicate that he made his first expedition from that country into
Judea; and his long residence at Hebron, the city of the Kabeiri (Arba or
four), would seem likewise to imply that he established a new religion in the
country.
After David came Solomon,
powerful and luxurious, who sought to consolidate the dominion which David had
won. As David was a Jehovah-worshipper, a temple of Jehovah (Tukt Suleima) was
built in Jerusalem, while shrines of Moloch-Hercules, Khemosh, and Astarte were
erected on Mount Olivet. These shrines remained till Josiah.
There were conspiracies
formed. Revolts took place in Idumea and Damascus; and Ahijah the prophet led
the popular movement which resulted in deposing the house of David and making
Jeroboam king. Ever after the prophets dominated in Israel, where the
calf-worship prevailed; the priests ruled over the weak dynasty of David, and
the lasci-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* They might have been also,
as Pococke thinks, simply the tribes of the "Oxus," a name derived
from the "Ookshas," those people whose wealth lay in the
"Ox," for he shows Ookshan to be a crude form of Ooksha, an ox (in
Sanscrit ox is as in English). He believes that it was they, "the lords of
the Oxus," who gave their name to the sea around which they ruled in many
a country, the Euxine or Ooksh-ine. Pali means a shepherd, and s'than is a
land. "The warlike tribes of the Oxus penetrated into Egypt, then swept
onward to Palestine (PALI-STAN), the land of the Palis or shepherds, and there
effected more permanent settlements" ("India in Greece"). Yet,
if even so, it would only the more confirm our opinion that the Jews are a
hybrid race, for the "Bible" shows them freely intermarrying, not
alone with the Canaanites, but with every other nation or race they come in
contact with.
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vious local worship existed
over the whole country. After the destruction of the house of Ahab, and the
failure of Jehu and his descendants to unite the country under one head, the
endeavor was made in Judah. Isaiah had terminated the direct line in the person
of Ahaz (Isaiah vii. 9), and placed on the throne a prince from Bethlehem (Micah
v. 2, 5). This was Hezekiah. On ascending the throne, he invited the chiefs of
Israel to unite in alliance with him against Assyria (2 Chronicles, xxx. 1, 21;
xxxi. 1, 5; 2 Kings, xviii. 7). He seems to have established a sacred college
(Proverbs xxv. 1), and to have utterly changed the worship. Aye, even unto
breaking into pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made.
This makes the story of Samuel
and David and Solomon mythical. Most of the prophets who were literate seem to
have begun about this time to write.
The country was finally
overthrown by the Assyrians, who found the same people and institutions as in
the Phoenician and other countries.
Hezekiah was not the lineal,
but the titular son of Ahaz. Isaiah, the prophet, belonged to the royal family,
and Hezekiah was reputed his son-in-law. Ahaz refused to ally himself with the
prophet and his party, saying: "I will not tempt (depend on) the
Lord" (Isaiah vii. 12). The prophet had declared: "If you will not
believe, surely you shall not be established" -- foreshadowing the
deposition of his direct language. "Ye weary my God," replied the
prophet, and predicted the birth of a child by an alma, or temple-woman, and
that before it should attain full age (Hebrews v. 14; Isaiah vii. 16; viii. 4),
the king of Assyria should overcome Syria and Israel. This is the prophecy
which Irenaeus took such pains to connect with Mary and Jesus, and made the
reason why the mother of the Nazarene prophet is represented as belonging to
the temple, and consecrated to God from her infancy.
In a second song, Isaiah
celebrated the new chief, to sit on the throne of David (ix. 6, 7; xi. 1), who
should restore to their homes the Jews whom the confederacy had led captive (Isaiah
viii. 2-12; Joel iii. 1-7; Obadiah 7, 11, 14). Micah -- his contemporary --
also announced the same event (iv. 7-13; v. 1-7). The Redeemer was to come out
of Bethlehem; in other words, was of the house of David; and was to resist
Assyria to whom Ahaz had sworn allegiance, and also to reform religion (2
Kings, xviii. 4-8). This Hezekiah did. He was grandson of Zechariah the seer (2
Chronicles, xxix. 1; xxvi. 5), the counsellor of Uzziah; and as soon as he
ascended the throne he restored the religion of David, and destroyed the last
vestiges of that of Moses, i.e., the esoteric doctrine, declaring "our
fathers have trespassed" (2 Chron., xxix. 6-9). He next attempted a
reunion with the northern monarchy,
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MESSIAH.
there being an interregnum in
Israel (2 Chron., xxx. 1, 2, 6; xxxi. 1, 6, 7). It was successful, but resulted
in an invasion by the king of Assyria. But it was a new regime; and all this
shows the course of two parallel streams in the religious worship of the
Israelites; one belonging to the state religion and adopted to fit political
exigencies; the other pure idolatry, resulting from ignorance of the true
esoteric doctrine preached by Moses. For the first time since Solomon built
them "the high places were taken away."
It was Hezekiah who was the
expected Messiah of the exoteric state-religion. He was the scion from the stem
of Jesse, who should recall the Jews from a deplorable captivity, about which
the Hebrew historians seem to be very silent, carefully avoiding all mention of
this particular fact, but which the irascible prophets imprudently disclose. If
Hezekiah crushed the exoteric Baal-worship, he also tore violently away the
people of Israel from the religion of their fathers, and the secret rites
instituted by Moses.
It was Darius Hystaspes who
was the first to establish a Persian colony in Judea, Zoro-Babel was perhaps
the leader. "The name Zoro-babel means 'the seed or son of Babylon' -- as
Zoro-aster [[Heb char]] is the seed, son, or prince of Ishtar."* The new
colonists were doubtless Judaei. This is a designation from the East. Even Siam
is called Judia, and there was an Ayodia in India. The temples of Solom or
Peace were numerous. Throughout Persia and Afghanistan the names of Saul and
David are very common. The "Law" is ascribed in turn to Hezekiah,
Ezra, Simon the Just, and the Asmonean period. Nothing definite; everywhere
contradictions. When the Asmonean period began, the chief supporters of the Law
were called Asideans or Khasdim (Chaldeans), and afterward Pharisees or Pharsi
(Parsis). This indicates that Persian colonies were established in Judea and ruled
the country; while all the people that are mentioned in the books of Genesis
and Joshua lived there as a commonalty (see Ezra ix. 1).
There is no real history in
the Old Testament, and the little historical information one can glean is only
found in the indiscreet revelations of the prophets. The book, as a whole, must
have been written at various times, or rather invented as an authorization of
some subsequent worship, the origin of which may be very easily traced
partially to the Orphic Mysteries, and partially to the ancient Egyptian rites
in familiarity with which Moses was brought up from his infancy.
Since the last century the
Church has been gradually forced into concessions of usurped biblical territory
to those to whom it of right belonged.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Prof. A. Wilder:
"Notes."
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Inch by inch has been yielded,
and one personage after another been proved mythical and Pagan. But now, after
the recent discovery of George Smith, the much-regretted Assyriologist, one of
the securest props of the Bible has been pulled down. Sargon and his tablets
are about demonstrated to be older than Moses. Like the account of Exodus, the
birth and story of the lawgiver seem to have been "borrowed" from the
Assyrians, as the "jewels of gold and jewels of silver" were said to
be from the Egyptians.
On page 224 of Assyrian
Discoveries, Mr. George Smith says: "In the palace of Sennacherib at
Kouyunjik, I found another fragment of the curious history of Sargon, a
translation of which I published in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical
Archaeology, vol. i., part i., page 46. This text relates that Sargon, an early
Babylonian monarch, was born of royal parents, but concealed by his mother, who
placed him on the Euphrates in an ark of rushes, coated with bitumen, like that
in which the mother of Moses hid her child (see Exodus ii.). Sargon was
discovered by a man named Akki, a water-carrier, who adopted him as his son;
and he afterward became King of Babylonia. The capital of Sargon was the great
city of Agadi -- called by the Semites Akkad -- mentioned in Genesis as a
capital of Nimrod (Genesis x. l0), and here he reigned for forty-five years.*
Akkad lay near the city of Sippara,** on the Euphrates and north of Babylon.
"The date of Sargon, who may be termed the Babylonian Moses, was in the
sixteenth century and perhaps earlier."
G. Smith adds in his Chaldean
Account that Sargon I. was a Babylonian monarch who reigned in the city of
Akkad about 1600 B.C. The name of Sargon signifies the right, true, or
legitimate king. This curious story is found on fragments of tablets from
Kouyunjik, and reads as follows:
1. Sargona, the powerful king,
the king of Akkad am I.
2. My mother was a princess,
my father I did not know, a brother of my father ruled over the country.
3. In the city of Azupirana,
which is by the side of the river Euphrates,
4. My mother, the princess,
conceived me; in difficulty she brought me forth.
5. She placed me in an ark of
rushes, with bitumen my exit she sealed up.
6. She launched me in the
river which did not drown me.
7. The river carried me to
Akki, the water-carrier it brought me.
8. Akki, the water-carrier, in
tenderness of bowels, lifted me, etc., etc.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Moses reigned over the people
of Israel in the wilderness for over forty years.
** The name of the wife of
Moses was Zipporah (Exodus ii.).
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SARGON.
And now Exodus (ii.):
"And when she (Moses' mother) could not longer hide him, she took for him
an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child
therein, and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink."
The story, says Mr. G. Smith,
"is supposed to have happened about 1600 B.C., rather earlier than the
supposed age of Moses* as we know that the fame of Sargon reached Egypt, it is
quite likely that this account had a connection with the event related in
Exodus ii., for every action, when once performed, has a tendency to be
repeated."
The "ages" of the
Hindus differ but little from those of the Greeks, Romans, and even the Jews.
We include the Mosaic computation advisedly, and with intent to prove our
position. The chronology which separates Moses from the creation of the world
by only four generations seems ridiculous, merely because the Christian clergy
would enforce it upon the world literally.** The kabalists know that these
generations stand for ages of the world. The allegories which, in the Hindu
calculations, embrace the whole stupendous sweep of the four ages, are
cunningly made in the Mosaic books, through the obliging help of the Masorah,
to cram into the small period of two millenniums and a half (2513)!
The exoteric plan of the Bible
was made to answer also to four ages. Thus, they reckon the Golden Age from
Adam to Abraham; the silver, from Abraham to David; copper, from David to the
Captivity; thenceforward, the iron. But the secret computation is quite
different, and does not vary at all from the zodiacal calculations of the
Brahmans. We are in the Iron Age, or Kali-Yug, but it began with Noah, the
mythical ancestor of our race.
Noah, or Nuah, like all the
euhemerized manifestations of the Unrevealed One -- Swayambhuva (or Swayambhu),
was androgyne. Thus, in
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* About 1040, the Jewish
doctors removed their schools from Babylonia to Spain, and of the four great
rabbis that flourished during the next four centuries, their works all show
different readings, and abound with mistakes in the manuscripts. The
"Masorah" made things still worse. Many things that then existed in
the manuscripts are there no longer, and their works teem with interpolations
as well as with lacunae. The oldest Hebrew manuscript belongs to this period.
Such is the divine revelation we are to credit.
** No chronology was accepted
by the rabbis as authoritative till the twelfth century. The 40 and 1,000 are
not exact numbers, but have been crammed in to answer monotheism and the
exigencies of a religion calculated to appear different from that of the
Pagans. ("Chron. Orth.," p. 238). One finds in the "Pentateuch"
only events occurring about two years before the fabled "Exodus" and
the last year. The rest of the chronology is nowhere, and can be followed only
through kabalistic computations, with a key to them in the hand.
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some instances, he belonged to
the purely feminine triad of the Chaldeans, known as "Nuah, the universal
Mother." We have shown, in another chapter, that every male triad had its
feminine counterpart, one in three, like the former. It was the passive
complement of the active principle, its reflection. In India, the male trimurty
is reproduced in the Sakti-trimurti, the feminine; and in Chaldea, Ana, Belita
and Davkina answered to Anu, Bel, Nuah. The former three resumed in one --
Belita, were called:
"Sovereign goddess, lady
of the nether abyss, mother of gods, queen of the earth, queen of
fecundity."
As the primordial humidity,
whence proceeded all, Belita is Tamti, or the sea, the mother of the city of
Erech (the great Chaldean necropolis), therefore, an infernal goddess. In the
world of stars and planets she is known as Istar or Astoreth. Hence, she is
identical with Venus, and every other queen of heaven, to whom cakes and buns
were offered in sacrifice,* and, as all the archaeologists know, with Eve, the
mother of all that live, and with Mary.
The Ark, in which are
preserved the germs of all living things necessary to repeople the earth,
represents the survival of life, and the supremacy of spirit over matter,
through the conflict of the opposing powers of nature. In the Astro-Theosophic
chart of the Western Rite, the Ark corresponds with the navel, and is placed at
the sinister side, the side of the woman (the moon), one of whose symbols is
the left pillar of Solomon's temple -- Boaz. The umbilicus is connected with
the receptacle in which are fructified the germs of the race.** The Ark is the
sacred Argha of the Hindus, and thus, the relation in which it stands to Noah's
ark may be easily inferred, when we learn that the Argha was an oblong vessel,
used by the high priests as a sacrificial chalice in the worship of Isis,
Astarte, and Venus-Aphrodite, all of whom were goddesses of the generative powers
of nature, or of matter -- hence, representing symbolically the Ark containing
the germs of all living things.
We admit that Pagans had and
now have -- as in India -- strange symbols, which, to the eyes of the hypocrite
and Puritan, seem scandalously
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Gnostics, called
Collyridians, had transferred from Astoreth their worship to Mary, also Queen
of Heaven. They were persecuted and put to death by the orthodox Christians as
heretics. But if these Gnostics had established her worship by offering her
sacrifices of cakes, cracknels, or fine wafers, it was because they imagined
her to have been born of an immaculate virgin, as Christ is alleged to have
been born of his mother. And now, the Pope's infallibility having been
recognized and accepted, its first practical manifestation is the revival of
the Collyridian belief as an article of faith (See "Apocryphal New
Testament"; Hone: "The Gospel of Mary attributed to Matthew").
** Hargrave Jennings:
"Rosicrucians."
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immoral. But did not the
ancient Jews copy most of these symbols? We have described elsewhere the
identity of the lingham with Jacob's pillar, and we could give a number of
instances from the present Christian rites, bearing the same origin, did but
space permit, and were not all these noticed fully by Inman and others (See
Inman's Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names).
Describing the worship of the
Egyptians, Mrs. Lydia Maria Child says: "This reverence for the production
of life, introduced into the worship of Osiris, the sexual emblems so common in
Hindustan. A colossal image of this kind was presented to his temple in
Alexandria, by King Ptolemy Philadelphus. . . . Reverence for the mystery of
organized life led to the recognition of a masculine and feminine principle in
all things, spiritual or material. . . . The sexual emblems, everywhere
conspicuous in the sculptures of their temples, would seem impure in
description, but no clean and thoughtful mind could so regard them while
witnessing the obvious simplicity and solemnity with which the subject is
treated."*
Thus speaks this respected
lady and admirable writer, and no truly pure man or woman would ever think of
blaming her for it. But such a perversion of the ancient thought is but natural
in an age of cant and prudery like our own.
The water of the flood when
standing in the allegory for the symbolic "sea," Tamti, typifies the
turbulent chaos, or matter, called "the great dragon." According to
the Gnostic and Rosicrucian medaeival doctrine, the creation of woman was not
originally intended. She is the offspring of man's own impure fancy, and, as
the Hermetists say, "an obtrusion." Created by an unclean thought she
sprang into existence at the evil "seventh hour," when the
"supernatural" real worlds had passed away and the
"natural" or delusive worlds began evolving along the
"descending Microcosmos," or the arc of the great cycle, in plainer
phraseology. First "Virgo," the Celestial Virgin of the Zodiac, she
became "Virgo-Scorpio." But in evolving his second companion, man had
unwittingly endowed her with his own share of Spirituality; and the new being
whom his "imagination" had called into life became his
"Saviour" from the snares of Eve-Lilith, the first Eve, who had a
greater share of matter in her composition than the primitive
"spiritual" man.**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Progress of Religious
Ideas."
** Lilith was Adam's first
wife "before he married Eve," of whom "he begat nothing but
devils"; which strikes us as a very novel, if pious, way of explaining a
very philosophical allegory.
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Thus woman stands in the
cosmogony in relation to "matter" or the great deep, as the
"Virgin of the Sea," who crushes the "Dragon" under her
foot. The "Flood" is also very often shown, in symbolical
phraseology, as the "great Dragon." For one acquainted with these
tenets it becomes more than suggestive to learn that with the Catholics the
Virgin Mary is not only the accepted patroness of Christian sailors, but also
the "Virgin of the Sea." So was Dido the patroness of the Phoenician
mariners;* and together with Venus and other lunar goddesses -- the moon having
such a strong influence over the tides -- was the "Virgin of the
Sea." Mar, the Sea, is the root of the name Mary. The blue color, which
was with the ancients symbolical of the "Great Deep" or the material
world, hence -- of evil, is made sacred to our "Blessed Lady." It is
the color of "Notre Dame de Paris." On account of its relation to the
symbolical serpent this color is held in the deepest aversion by the
ex-Nazarenes, disciples of John the Baptist, now the Mendaeans of Basra.
Among the beautiful plates of
Maurice, there is one representing Christna crushing the head of the Serpent. A
three-peaked mitre is on his head (typifying the trinity), and the body and
tail of the conquered serpent encircles the figure of the Hindu god. This plate
shows whence proceeded the inspiration for the "make up" of a later
story extracted from an alleged prophecy. "I will put enmity between thee
and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and
thou shalt bruise his heel."
The Egyptian Orante is also
shown with his arms extended as on a crucifix, and treading upon the
"Serpent"; and Horus (the Logos) is represented piercing the head of
the dragon, Typhon or Aphophis. All this gives us a clew to the biblical
allegory of Cain and Abel. Cain was held as the ancestor of the Hivites, the
Serpents, and the twins of Adam are an evident copy from the fable of Osiris
and Typhon. Apart from the external form of the allegory, however, it embodied
the philosophical conception of the eternal struggle of good and evil.
But how strangely elastic, how
adaptable to any and every thing this mystical philosophy proved after the
Christian era! When were ever facts, irrefutable, irrefragable, and beyond
denial, less potential for the reestablishment of truth than in our century of
casuistry and Christian cunning? Is Christna proved to have been known as the
"Good Shep-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is in commemoration of the
Ark of the Deluge that the Phoenicians, those bold explorers of the
"deep," carried, fixed on the prow of their ships, the image of the
goddess Astarte, who is Elissa, Venus Erycina of Sicily, and Dido, whose name
is the feminine of David.
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herd" ages before the
year A.D. 1, to have crushed the Serpent Kalinaga, and to have been crucified
-- all this was but a prophetic foreshadowing of the future! Are the
Scandinavian Thor, who bruised the head of the Serpent with his cruciform mace,
and Apollo, who killed Python, likewise shown to present the most striking
similarities with the heroes of the Christian fables; they become but original
conceptions of "heathen" minds, "working upon the old
Patriarchal prophecies respecting the Christ, as they were contained in the one
universal and primeval Revelation"!*
The flood, then, is the
"Old Serpent" or the great deep of matter, Isaiah's "dragon in
the sea" (xxvii. 1), over which the ark safely crosses on its way to the
mount of Salvation. But, if we have heard of the ark and Noah, and the Bible at
all, it is because the mythology of the Egyptians was ready at hand for Moses
(if Moses ever wrote any of the Bible), and that he was acquainted with the
story of Horus, standing on his boat of a serpentine form, and killing the
Serpent with his spear; and with the hidden meaning of these fables, and their
real origin. This is also why we find in Leviticus, and other parts of his
books, whole pages of laws identical with those of Manu.
The animals shut up in the ark
are the human passions. They typify certain ordeals of initiation, and the
mysteries which were instituted among many nations in commemoration of this
allegory. Noah's ark rested on the seventeenth of the seventh month. Here we
have again the number; as also in the "clean beasts" that he took by
sevens into the ark. Speaking of the water-mysteries of Byblos, Lucian says:
"On the top of one of the two pillars which Bacchus set up, a man remains
seven days."** He supposes this was done to honor Deukalion. Elijah, when
praying on the top of Mount Carmel, sends his servant to look for a cloud toward
the sea, and repeats, "go again seven times. And it came to pass at the
seventh time, behold there arose a little cloud out of the sea like a man's
hand."***
"Noah is a revolutio of
Adam, as Moses is a revolutio of Abel and Seth," says the Kabala; that is
to say, a repetition or another version of the same story. The greatest proof
of it is the distribution of the characters in the Bible. For instance,
beginning with Cain, the first murderer, every fifth man in his line of descent
is a murderer. Thus there come Enoch, Irad, Mehujael, Methuselah, and the fifth
is Lamech, the second
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Dr. Lundy: "Monumental
Christianity."
** Lucian, iv. 276.
*** 1 Kings xviii. All this is
allegorical, and, what is more, purely magical. For Elijah is bent upon an
incantation.
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murderer, and he is Noah's
father. By drawing the five-pointed star of Lucifer (which has its crown-point
downward) and writing the name of Cain beneath the lowest point, and those of
his descendants successively at each of the other points, it will be found that
each fifth name -- which would be written beneath that of Cain -- is that of a
murderer. In the Talmud this genealogy is given complete, and thirteen
murderers range themselves in line below the name of Cain. This is no
coincidence. Siva is the Destroyer, but he is also the Regenerator. Cain is a
murderer, but he is also the creator of nations, and an inventor. This star of
Lucifer is the same one that John sees falling down to earth in his Apocalypse.
In Thebes, or Theba, which
means ark -- TH-ABA being synonymous with Kartha or Tyre, Astu or Athens and
Urbs or Rome, and meaning also the city -- are found the same foliations as
described on the pillars of the temple of Solomon. The bicolored leaf of the
olive, the three-lobed figleaf, and the lanceolate-shaped laurel-leaf, had all
esoteric as well as popular or vulgar meanings with the ancients.
The researches of
Egyptologists present another corroboration of the identity of the
Bible-allegories with those of the lands of the Pharaohs and Chaldeans. The dynastic
chronology of the Egyptians, recorded by Herodotus, Manetho, Eratosthenes,
Diodorus Siculus, and accepted by our antiquarians, divided the period of
Egyptian history under four general heads: the dominion of gods, demi-gods,
heroes, and mortal men. By combining the demi-gods and heroes into one class,
Bunsen reduces the periods to three: the ruling gods, the demi-gods or heroes
-- sons of gods, but born of mortal mothers -- and the Manes, who were the
ancestors of individual tribes. These subdivisions, as any one may perceive,
correspond perfectly with the biblical Elohim, sons of God, giants, and mortal
Noachian men.
Diodorus of Sicily and Berosus
give us the names of the twelve great gods who presided over the twelve months
of the year and the twelve signs of the zodiac. These names, which include
Nuah,* are too well known to require repetition. The double-faced Janus was
also at the head of twelve gods, and in his representations of him he is made
to hold the keys to the celestial domains. All these having served as models
for the biblical patriarchs, have done still further service -- especially
Janus -- by furnishing copy to St. Peter and his twelve apostles, the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Talmud books say that
Noah was himself the dove (spirit), thus identifying him still more with the
Chaldean Nouah. Baal is represented with the wings of a dove, and the
Samaritans worshipped on Mount Gerizim the image of a dove. "Talmud, Tract.
Chalin.," fol. 6, col. 1.
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NOAH.
former also double-faced in
his denial, and also represented as holding the keys of Paradise.
This statement that the story
of Noah is but another version in its hidden meaning of the story of Adam and
his three sons, gathers proof on every page of the book of Genesis. Adam is the
prototype of Noah. Adam falls because he eats of the forbidden fruit of
celestial knowledge; Noah, because he tastes of the terrestrial fruit: the
juice of the grape representing the abuse of knowledge in an unbalanced mind.
Adam gets stripped of his spiritual envelope; Noah of his terrestrial clothing;
and the nakedness of both makes them feel ashamed. The wickedness of Cain is
repeated in Ham. But the descendants of both are shown as the wisest of races
on earth; and they are called on this account "snakes," and the
"sons of snakes," meaning the sons of wisdom, and not of Satan, as
some divines would be pleased to have the world understand the term. Enmity has
been placed between the "snake" and the "woman" only in
this mortal phenomenal "world of man" as "born of woman."
Before the carnal fall, the "snake" was Ophis, the divine wisdom,
which needed no matter to procreate men, humanity being utterly spiritual.
Hence the war between the snake and the woman, or between spirit and matter.
If, in its material aspect, the "old serpent" is matter, and
represents Ophiomorphos, in its spiritual meaning it becomes Ophis-Christos. In
the magic of the old Syro-Chaldeans both are conjoint in the zodiacal sign of
the androgyne of Virgo-Scorpio, and may be divided or separated whenever needed.
Thus as the origin of "good and evil," the meaning of the S.S. and
Z.Z. has always been interchangeable; and if upon some occasions the S.S. on
sigils and talismans are suggestive of serpentine evil influence and denote a
design of black magic upon others, the double S.S. are found on the sacramental
cups of the Church and mean the presence of the Holy Ghost, or pure wisdom.
The Midianites were known as
the wise men, or sons of snakes, as well as Canaanites and Hamites; and such
was the renown of the Midianites, that we find Moses, the prophet, led on, and
inspired by "the Lord," humbling himself before Hobab, the son of
Raguel, the Midianite, and beseeching him to remain with the people of Israel:
"Leave us not, I pray thee; forasmuch as thou knowest how we are to encamp
IN THE WILDERNESS, thou mayest be to us instead of eyes."* Further, when
Moses sends spies to search out the land of Canaan, they bring as a proof of
the wisdom (kabalistically speaking) and goodness of the land, a branch with
one cluster of grapes, which they are compelled to bear between two men on a
staff. Moreover, they add: "we saw the children of ANAK there."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Numbers x. 29, 31.
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They are the giants, the sons
of Anak, "which come of the giants,* and we were in our own sight as
grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight."**
Anak is Enoch, the patriarch,
who dies not, and who is the first possessor of the "mirific name,"
according to the Kabala, and the ritual of Freemasonry.
Comparing the biblical
patriarchs with the descendants of Vaiswasvata, the Hindu Noah, and the old
Sanscrit traditions about the deluge in the Brahmanical Mahabharata, we find
them mirrored in the Vaidic patriarchs who are the primitive types upon which
all the others were modelled. But before comparison is possible, the Hindu myths
must be comprehended in their true significance. Each of these mythical
personages bears, besides an astronomical significance, a spiritual or moral,
and an anthropological or physical meaning. The patriarchs are not only
euhemerized gods -- the prediluvian answering to the twelve great gods of
Berosus, and to the ten Pradjapati, and the postdiluvian to the seven gods of
the famous tablet in the Ninevean Library, but they stand also as the symbols
of the Greek AEons, the kabalistic Sephiroth, and the zodiacal signs, as types
of a series of human races.*** This variation from ten to twelve will be
accounted for presently, and proved on the very authority
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Bible contradicts itself
as well as the Chaldean account, for in chapter vii. of Genesis it shows
"every one of them" perishing in the deluge.
** Numbers xiii.
*** We do not see why the
clergy -- especially the Catholic -- should object to our statement that the
patriarchs are all signs of the zodiac, and the old gods of the
"heathen" as well. There was a time, and that less than two centuries
ago, when they themselves exhibited the most fervent desire to relapse into sun
and star worship. This pious and curious attempt was denounced but a few months
since by Camille Flammarion, the French astronomer. He shows two Augsburgian
Jesuits, Schiller and Bayer, who felt quite anxious to change the names of the
whole Sabean host of the starry heaven, and worship them again under Christian
names! Having anathematized the idolatrous sun-worshippers for over fifteen
centuries, the Church now seriously proposed to continue heliolatry -- to the
letter this time -- as their idea was to substitute for Pagan myths biblical
and (in their ideas) real personages. They would have called the sun, Christ;
the moon, Virgin Mary; Saturn, Adam; Jupiter, Moses (!); Mars, Joshua; Venus,
John the Baptist; and Mercury, Elias. And very proper substitutes too, showing
the great familiarity of the Catholic Church with ancient Pagan and kabalistic
learning, and its readiness, perhaps, to at last confess the source whence came
their own myths. For is not king Messiah the sun, the Demiurge of the
heliolaters, under various names? Is he not the Egyptian Osiris and the Grecian
Apollo? And what more appropriate name than Virgin Mary for the Pagan
Diana-Astarte, "the Queen of Heaven," against which Jeremiah
exhausted a whole vocabulary of imprecations? Such an adoption would have been
historically as well as religiously correct. Two large plates were prepared,
says Flammarion, in a recent number of "La Nature,"
[[Footnotes contined on next
page]]
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HINDU ADANARI.
of the Bible. Only, they are
not the first gods described by Cicero,* which belong to a hierarchy of higher
powers, the Elohim -- but appertain rather to the second class of the
"twelve gods," the Dii minores, and who are the terrestrial
reflections of the first, among whom Herodotus places Hercules.** Alone, out of
the group of twelve, Noah, by reason of his position at the transitional point,
belongs to the highest Babylonian triad, Noah, the spirit of the waters. The
rest are identical with the inferior gods of Assyria and Babylonia, who
represented the lower order of emanations, introduced around Bel, the Demiurge,
and help him in his work, as the patriarchs are shown to assist Jehovah -- the
"Lord God."
Besides these, many of which
were local gods, the protecting deities of rivers and cities, there were the
four classes of genius, we see Ezekiel making them support the throne of
Jehovah in his vision. A fact which, if it identifies the Jewish "Lord
God" with one of the Babylonian trinity, connects, at the same time, the
present Christian God with the same triad, inasmuch as it is these four
cherubs, if the reader will remember, on which Irenaeus makes Jesus ride, and
which are shown as the companions of the evangelists.
The Hindu kabalistic
derivation of the books of Ezekiel and Revelation are shown in nothing more
plainly than in this description of the four beasts, which typify the four
elementary kingdoms -- earth, air, fire, and water. As is well known, they are
the Assyrian sphinxes, but these figures are also carved on the walls of nearly
every Hindu pagoda.
The author of the Revelation
copies faithfully in his text (see chap. iv., verse 7) the Pythagorean
pentacle, of which Levi's admirable sketch is reproduced on page 452.
The Hindu goddess Adanari (or
as it might be more properly written, Adonari, since the second a is pronounced
almost like the English o) is represented as surrounded by the same figures. It
fits exactly Ezekiel's "wheel of the Adonai," known as "the
Cherub of Jeheskiel," and indicates, beyond question, the source from
which the Hebrew seer drew his allegories. For convenience of comparison we
have placed the figure in the pentacle. (See page 453.)
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnotes continued from
previous page]] and represented the heavens with Christian constellations
instead of Pagan. Apostles, popes, saints, martyrs, and personages of the Old
and New Testament completed this Christian Sabeanism. "The disciples of
Loyola used every exertion to make this plan succeed." It is curious to
find in India among the Mussulmans the name of Terah, Abraham's father, Azar or
Azarh, and Azur, which also means fire, and is, at the same time, the name of
the Hindu third solar month (from June to July), during which the sun is in
Gemini, and the full moon near Sagittarius.
* Cicero: "De Nat.
Deo," i., 13.
** "Herodotus," ii.,
145.
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Above these beasts were the
angels or spirits, divided in two groups: the Igili, or celestial beings, and
the Am-anaki, or terrestrial spirits, the giants, children of Anak, of whom the
spies complained to Moses.
The Kabbala Denudata gives to
the kabalists a very clear, to the profane a very muddled account of
permutations or substitutions of one person for another. So, for instance, it
says, that "the scintilla" (spiritual spark or soul) of Abraham was
taken from Michael, the chief
ADO NAI [[Design]]
of the AEons, and highest
emanation of the Deity; so high indeed that in the eyes of the Gnostics,
Michael was identical with Christ. And yet Michael and Enoch are one and the
same person. Both occupy the junction-point of the cross of the Zodiac as
"man." The scintilla of Isaac was that of Gabriel, the chief of the
angelic host, and the scintilla of Jacob was taken from Uriel, named "the
fire of God"; the sharpest sighted spirit in all Heaven. Adam is not the
Kadmon but Adam Primus, the Microprosopus. In one of his aspects the latter is
Enoch,
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MAN.
the terrestrial patriarch and
father of Methuselah. He that "walked with God" and "did not
die" is the spiritual Enoch, who typified humanity, eternal in spirit and as
eternal in flesh, though the latter does die. Death is but a new birth, and
spirit is immortal; thus humanity can never die, for the Destroyer has become
the Creator, Enoch is the type of the dual man, spiritual and terrestrial.
Hence his place in the centre of the astronomical cross.
ADA NARI [[design]]
But was this idea original
with the Hebrews? We think not. Every nation which had an astronomical system,
and especially India, held the cross in the highest reverence, for it was the
geometrical basis of the religious symbolism of their avatars; the
manifestation of the Deity, or of the Creator in his creature MAN; of God in
humanity and humanity in God, as spirits. The oldest monuments of Chaldea,
Persia, and India disclose the double or eight-pointed cross. This symbol,
which very naturally is found, like every other geometrical figure in nature,
in plants as well as in the snowflakes, has led Dr. Lundy, in his
super-Christian mysticism, to
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name such cruciform flowers as
form an eight-pointed star by the junction of the two crosses -- "the
Prophetic Star of the Incarnation, which joined heaven and earth, God and man
together."* The latter sentence is perfectly expressed; only, the old
kabalist axiom, "as above, so below," answers still better, as it
discloses to us the same God for all humanity, not alone for the handful of
Christians. It is the Mundane cross of Heaven repeated on earth by plants and
dual man: the physical man superseding the "spiritual," at the
junction-point of which stands the mythical Libra-Hermes-Enoch. The gesture of
one hand pointing to Heaven, is balanced by the other pointing down to the
earth; boundless generations below, boundless regenerations above; the visible
but the manifestation of the invisible; the man of dust abandoned to dust, the
man of spirit reborn in spirit; thus it is finite humanity which is the Son of
the Infinite God. Abba -- the Father; Amoria -- the Mother; the Son, the
Universe. This primitive triad is repeated in all the tbeogonies. Adam Kadmon,
Hermes, Enoch, Osiris, Christna, Ormazd, or Christos are all one. They stand as
Metatrons between body and soul -- eternal spirits which redeem flesh by the
regeneration of flesh below, and soul by the regeneration above, where humanity
walks once more with God.
We have shown elsewhere that
the symbol of the cross or Egyptian Tau, [[Design]], was by many ages earlier
than the period assigned to Abraham, the alleged forefather of the Israelites,
for otherwise Moses could not have learned it of the priests. And that the Tau
was held as sacred by the Jews as by other "Pagan" nations is proved
by a fact admitted now by Christian divines as well as by infidel
archeologists. Moses, in Exodus xii. 22, orders his people to mark their
door-posts and lintels with blood, lest the "Lord God" should make a
mistake and smite some of his chosen people, instead of the doomed Egyptians.**
And this mark is a tau! The identical Egyptian handled cross, with the half of
which talisman Horus raised the dead, as is shown on a sculptured ruin at
Philae.*** How gratuitous is the idea that all such crosses and symbols were so
many unconscious prophecies of Christ, is fully exemplified in the case of the
Jews upon whose accusation Jesus was put to death. For instance, the same
learned author remarks in Monumental Christianity that "the Jews
themselves acknowledged this sign of salvation until they rejected
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Monumental
Christianity," p. 3.
** Who but the authors of the
"Pentateuch" could have invented a Supreme God or his angel so
thoroughly human as to require a smear of blood upon the door-post to prevent
his killing one person for another! For gross materialism this exceeds any
theistical conception that we have noticed in Pagan literature.
*** Denon: "Egypt,"
ii., pl. 40, No. 8, p. 54.
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ZODIAC.
Christ"; and in another
place he asserts that the rod of Moses, used in his miracles before Pharaoh,
"was, no doubt, this crux ansata, or something like it, also used by the
Egyptian priests."* Thus the logical inference would be, that 1, if the
Jews worshipped the same symbols as the Pagans, then they were no better than
they; and 2, if, being so well versed as they were in the hidden symbolism of
the cross, in the face of their having waited for centuries for the Messiah,
they yet rejected both the Christian Messiah and Christian Cross, then there
must have been something wrong about both.
Those who "rejected"
Jesus as the "Son of God," were neither the people ignorant of
religious symbols, nor the handful of atheistical Sadducees who put him to
death; but the very men who were instructed in the secret wisdom, who knew the
origin as well as the meaning of the cruciform symbol, and who put aside both
the Christian emblem and the Saviour suspended from it, because they could not
be parties to such a blasphemous imposition upon the common people.
Nearly all the prophecies
about Christ are credited to the patriarchs and prophets. If a few of the
latter may have existed as real personages, every one of the former is a myth.
We will endeavor to prove it by the hidden interpretation of the Zodiac, and
the relations of its signs to these antediluvian men.
If the reader will keep in
mind the Hindu ideas of cosmogony, as given in chapter vi., he will better
understand the relation between the biblical antediluvian patriarchs, and that
puzzle of commentators -- "Ezekiel's wheel." Thus, be it remembered
1, that the universe is not a spontaneous creation, but an evolution from
pre-existent matter; 2, that it is only one of an endless series of universes;
3, that eternity is pointed off into grand cycles, in each of which twelve
transformations of our world occur, following its partial destruction by fire
and water, alternately. So that when a new minor period sets in, the earth is
so changed, even geologically, as to be practically a new world; 4, that of
these twelve transformations, the earth after each of the first six is grosser,
and everything on it -- man included -- more material, than after the preceding
one: while after each of the remaining six the contrary is true, both earth and
man growing more and more refined and spiritual with each terrestrial change;
5, that when the apex of the cycle is reached, a gradual dissolution takes
place, and every living and objective form is destroyed. But when that point is
reached, humanity has become fitted to live subjectively as well as
objectively. And not humanity alone, but also ani-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Pages 13 and 402.
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mals, plants, and every atom.
After a time of rest, say the Buddhists, when a new world becomes self-formed,
the astral souls of animals, and of all beings, except such as have reached the
highest Nirvana; will return on earth again to end their cycles of
transformations, and become men in their turn.
This stupendous conception,
the ancients synthesized for the instruction of the common people, into a
single pictorial design -- the Zodiac, or celestial belt. Instead of the twelve
signs now used, there were originally but ten known to the general public,
viz.: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo-Scorpio, Sagittarius,
Capricornus, Aquarius, and Pisces.* These were exoteric. But in addition there
were two mystical signs inserted, which none but initiates comprehended, viz.:
at the middle or junction-point where now stands Libra, and at the sign now
called Scorpio, which follows Virgo. When it was found necessary to make them
exoteric, these two secret signs were added under their present appellations as
blinds to conceal the true names which gave the key to the whole secret of
creation, and divulged the origin of "good and evil."
The true Sabean astrological
doctrine secretly taught that within this double sign was hidden the
explanation of the gradual transformation of the world, from its spiritual and
subjective, into the "two-sexed" sublunary state. The twelve signs
were therefore divided into two groups. The first six were called the
ascending, or the line of Macrocosm (the great spiritual world); the last six,
the descending line, or the Microcosm (the little secondary world) -- the mere
reflection of the former, so to say. This division was called Ezekiel's wheel,
and was completed in the following way: First came the ascending five signs
(euhemerized into patriarchs), Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, and the
group concluded with Virgo-Scorpio. Then came the turning-point, Libra. After
which, the first half of the sign Virgo-Scorpio, was duplicated and transferred
to lead the lower, or descending group of Microcosm which ran down to Pisces,
or Noah (deluge). To make it clearer, the sign Virgo-Scorpio, which appeared
originally thus [[symbol]], became simply Virgo, and the duplication,
[[design]], or Scorpio, was placed between Libra, the seventh sign (which is
Enoch, or the angel Metatron, or Mediator between spirit and matter, or God and
man). It now became Scorpio (or Cain), which sign or patriarch led mankind to
destruction, according
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* In Volney's "Ruins of
Empires" p. 360, it is remarked that as Aries was in its fifteenth degree
1447 B. C., it follows that the first degree of "Libra" could not
have coincided with the Vernal equinox more lately than 15,194 years B. C., to
which, if you add 1790 years since Christ, it appears that 16,984 years have
elapsed since the origin of the Zodiac.
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BY THE GREEKS.
to exoteric theology; but,
according to the true doctrine of the wisdom-religion, it indicated the
degradation of the whole universe in its course of evolution downward from the
subjective to the objective.
The sign of Libra is credited
as a later invention by the Greeks, but it is not generally stated that those
among them who were initiated had only made a change of names conveying the
same idea as the secret name to those "who knew," leaving the masses
as unwise as ever. Yet it was a beautiful idea of theirs, this Libra, or the
balance, expressing as much as could possibly be done without unveiling the
whole and ultimate truth. They intended it to imply that when the course of
evolution had taken the worlds to the lowest point of grossness, where the
earths and their products were coarsest, and their inhabitants most brutish,
the turning-point had been reached -- the forces were at an even balance. At
the lowest point, the still lingering divine spark of spirit within began to
convey the upward impulse. The scales typified that eternal equilibrium which
is the necessity of a universe of harmony, of exact justice, of the balance of
centripetal and centrifugal forces, darkness and light, spirit and matter.
These additional signs of the
Zodiac warrant us in saying that the Book of Genesis as we now find it, must be
of later date than the invention of Libra by the Greeks; for we find the
chapters of the genealogies remodelled to fit the new Zodiac, instead of the
latter being made to correspond with the list of patriarchs. And it is this
addition and the necessity of concealing the true key, that led the Rabbinical
compilers to repeat the names of Enoch and Lamech twice, as we see them now in
the Kenite table. Alone, among all the books of the Bible, Genesis belongs to
an immense antiquity. The others are all later additions, the earliest of which
appeared with Hilkiah, who evidently concocted it with the help of Huldah, the
prophetess.
As there is more than one
meaning attached to the stories of the creation and deluge, we say, therefore,
that the biblical account cannot be comprehended apart from the Babylonian
story of the same; while neither will be thoroughly clear without the Brahmanical
esoteric interpretation of the deluge, as found in the Mahabharata and the
Satapatha-Brahmana. It is the Babylonians who were taught the
"mysteries," the sacerdotal language, and their religion by the
problematical Akkadians who -- according to Rawlinson came from Armenia -- not
the former who emigrated to India. Here the evidence becomes clear. The
Babylonian Xisuthrus is shown by Movers to have represented the "sun"
in the Zodiac, in the sign of Aquarius, and Oannes, the man-fish, the semi-demon,
is Vishnu in his first avatar; thus giving the key to the double source of the
biblical revelation.
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Oannes is the emblem of
priestly, esoteric wisdom; he comes out from the sea, because the "great
deep," the water, typifies, as we have shown, the secret doctrine. For
this same reason Egyptians deified the Nile, apart from its being regarded, in
consequence of its periodical overflows, as the "Saviour" of the
country. They even held the crocodiles as sacred, from having their abode in
the "deep." The "Hamites," so called, have always preferred
to settle near rivers and oceans. Water was the first-created element,
according to some old cosmogonies. This name of Oannes is held in the greatest
reverence, in the Chaldean records. The Chaldean priests wore a head-gear like
a fish's head, and a shadbelly coat, representing the body of a fish.*
"Thales," says
Cicero, "assures that water is the principle of all things; and that God
is that Mind which shaped and created all things from water."**
"In the Beginning, SPIRIT
within strengthens Heaven and Earth,
The watery fields, and the
lucid globe of Luna, and then --
Titan stars; and mind infused
through the limbs
Agitates the whole mass, and
mixes itself with GREAT MATTER."***
Thus water represents the
duality of both the Macrocosmos and the Microcosmos, in conjunction with the vivifying
SPIRIT, and the evolution of the little world from the universal cosmos. The
deluge then, in this sense, points to that final struggle between the
conflicting elements, which brought the first great cycle of our planet to a
close. These periods gradually merged into each other, order being brought out
of chaos, or disorder, and the successive types of organism being evolved only
as the physical conditions of nature were prepared for their appearance; for
our present race could not have breathed on earth, during that intermediate
period, not having as yet the allegorical coats of skin.****
In chapters iv. and v. of
Genesis, we find the so-called generations of Cain and Seth. Let us glance at
them in the order in which they stand:
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See cuts in Inman's
"Ancient Faiths."
** Cicero: "De Nat.
Deorum," i., 10.
*** Virgil:
"AEneid," vi., 724 ff.
**** The term "coats of
skin," is the more suggestive when we learn that the Hebrew word "skin"
used in the original text, means human skin. The text says: "And Java
Aleim made for Adam and his wife [[Heb char]] CHITONUTT OUR. The first Hebrew
word is the same as the Greek [[chiton]] -- chiton -- coat. Parkhurst defines
it as the skin of men or animals [[Heb char]], and [[Heb char]], OUR, OR, or
ORA. The same word is used at Exodus xxxiv. 30, 35, when the skin of Moses
"shone" (A. Wilder).
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ONLY ZODIACAL SIGNS.
LINES of GENERATIONS.
Sethite.
(Good Principle)
1. Adam.
2. Seth.
3. Enos.
4. Cainan.
5. Mahalaleel.
6. Jared.
7. Enoch.
8. Methuselah.
9 . Lamech.
10. Noah.
Kenite.
(Evil Principle)
1. Adam.
2. Cain.
3. Enoch.
4. Irad.
5. Mehujael.
6. Methusael.
7. Lamech.
8. Jubal.
9. Jabal.
10. Tubal Cain.
The above are the ten biblical
patriarchs, identical with Hindu Pragapatis (Pradjapatis), and the Sephiroth of
the Kabala. We say ten patriarchs, not twenty, for the Kenite line was devised
for no other purpose than, 1, to carry out the idea of dualism, on which is
founded the philosophy of every religion; for these two genealogical tables
represent simply the opposing powers or principles of good and evil; and 2, as
a blind for the uninitiated masses. Suppose we restore them to their primitive
form, by erasing these premeditated blinds. These are so transparent as to
require but a small amount of perspicacity to select, even though one should
use only his unaided judgment, and were not, as we are, enabled to apply the
test of the secret doctrine.
By ridding ourselves,
therefore, of the Kenite names that are mere duplications of the Sethite, or of
each other, we get rid of Adam; of Enoch -- who, in one genealogy, is shown the
father of Irad, and in the other, the son of Jared; of Lamech, son of
Methusael, whereas he, Lamech, is son of Methuselah in the Sethite line; of
Irad (Jared),* Jubal and Jabal, who, with Tubal-Cain, form a trinity in one,
and that one the double of Cain; of Mehujael (who is but Mahalaleel differently
spelled), and Methusael (Methuselah). This leaves us in the Kenite genealogy of
chapter iv., one only, Cain, who -- the first murderer and fra-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Here, again, the
"Masorah," by converting one name into another, has helped to falsify
the little that was left original in the primitive Scriptures.
De Rossi, of Parma, says of
the Massoretes, in his "Compendis," vol. iv., p. 7: "It is known
with what carefulness Esdras, the most excellent critic they have had, had
reformed [the text] and corrected it, and restored it to its primary splendor.
Of the many revisions undertaken after him, none are more celebrated than that
of the Massoretes, who came after the sixth century . . . and all the most
zealous adorers and defenders of the "Masorah," Christians and Jews .
. . ingenuously accord and confess that it, such as it exists, is deficient,
imperfect, interpolated, full of errors, and a most unsafe guide." The
square letter was not invented till after the third century.
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tricide -- is made to stand in
his line as father of Enoch, the most virtuous of men, who does not die, but is
translated alive. Turn we now to the Sethite table, and we find that Enos, or
Enoch, comes second from Adam, and is father to Cain (an). This is no accident.
There was an evident reason for this inversion of paternity; a palpable design
-- that of creating confusion and baffling inquiry.
We say, then, that the
patriarchs are simply the signs of the Zodiac, emblems, in their manifold
aspects, of the spiritual and physical evolution of human races, of ages, and
of divisions of time. In astrology, the first four of the "Houses,"
in the diagrams of the "Twelve Houses of Heaven" -- namely, the
first, tenth, seventh, and fourth, or the second inner square placed with its
angles upward and downward, are termed angles, as being of the greatest
strength and power. They answer to Adam, Noah, Cain-an, and Enoch, Alpha,
Omega, evil and good, leading the whole. Furthermore, when divided (including
the two secret names) into four trigons or triads, viz.: fiery, airy, earthy,
and watery, we find the latter corresponding to Noah.
Enoch and Lamech were doubled
in the table of Cain, to fill out the required number ten in both
"generations" in the Bible, instead of employing the "Secret
Name"; and, in order that the patriarchs should correspond with the ten
kabalistic Sephiroth, and fit at the same time the ten, and, subsequently,
twelve signs of the Zodiac, in a manner comprehensible only to the kabalists.
And now, Abel having
disappeared out of that line of descent, he is replaced by Seth, who was
clearly an afterthought suggested by the necessity of not having the human race
descend entirely from a murderer. This dilemma being apparently first noticed
when the Kenite table had been completed, Adam is made (after all the
generations had appeared) to beget this son, Seth. It is a suggestive fact
that, whereas the double-sexed Adam of chapter v. is made in the likeness of
the Elohim (see Genesis chapter i. 27 and v. 1 of the same), Seth (v. 3) is
begotten in Adam's "own likeness," thus signifying that there were
men of different races. Also, it is most noticeable that neither the age nor a
single other particular respecting the patriarchs in the Kenite table is given,
whereas the reverse is the case with those in the Sethite line.
Most assuredly, no one could
expect to find, in a work open to the public, the final mysteries of that which
was preserved for countless ages as the grandest secret of the sanctuary. But,
without divulging the key to the profane, or being taxed with undue
indiscretion, we may be allowed to lift a corner of the veil which shrouds the
majestic doctrines of old. Let us then write down the patriarchs as they ought
to stand in their relation to the Zodiac, and see how they correspond with the
signs.
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The following diagram
represents Ezekiel's Wheel, as given in many works, among others, in Hargrave
Jennings' Rosicrucians:
EZEKIEL'S WHEEL (exoteric).
[[Design]]
These signs are (follow
numbers):
1, Aries; 2, Taurus; 3,
Gemini; 4, Cancer; 5, Leo; 6, Virgo, or the ascending line of the grand cycle
of creation. After this comes 7, Libra -- "man," which, though it is
found right in the middle, or the intersection point, leads down the numbers:
8, Scorpio; 9, Sagittarius;
10, Capricornus; 11, Aquarius; and 12, Pisces.
While discussing the double
sign of Virgo-Scorpio and Libra, Hargrave Jennings observes (p. 65):
"All this is
incomprehensible, except in the strange mysticism of the Gnostics and the
kabalists; and the whole theory requires a key of explanation to render it
intelligible; which key is only darkly referred to as possible, but refused
absolutely, by these extraordinary men, as not permissible to be
disclosed."
The said key must be turned
seven times before the whole system is divulged. We will give it but one turn,
and thereby allow the profane one glimpse into the mystery. Happy he, who
understands the whole!
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EZEKIEL'S WHEEL (esoteric).
[[design]]
To explain the presence of
Jodheva (or Yodheva), or what is generally termed the tetragram [[heb char]],
and of Adam and Eve, it will suffice to remind the reader of the following
verses in Genesis, with their right meaning inserted in brackets.
1. "And God [Elohim]
created man in his [their] own image . . . male and female created he them
[him]" -- (ch. 1. 27).
2. "Male and female
created he them [him] . . . and called their [his] name ADAM" -- (v. 2).
When the ternary is taken in
the beginning of the tetragram, it expresses the divine creation spiritually,
i.e., without any carnal sin: taken at its opposite end it expresses the
latter; it is feminine. The name of Eve is composed of three letters, that of
the primitive or heavenly
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ENOCH AND HERMES.
Adam, is written with one
letter, Jod or Yodh; therefore it must not be read Jehova but Ieva, or Eve. The
Adam of the first chapter is the spiritual, therefore pure androgyne, Adam
Kadmon. When woman issues from the left rib of the second Adam (of dust), the pure
Virgo is separated, and falling "into generation," or the downward
cycle, becomes Scorpio,* emblem of sin and matter. While the ascending cycle
points at the purely spiritual races, or the ten prediluvian patriarchs (the
Pradjapatis, and Sephiroth)** are led on by the creative Deity itself, who is
Adam Kadmon or Yodcheva, the lower one is that of the terrestrial races, led on
by Enoch or Libra, the seventh; who, because he is half-divine,
half-terrestrial, is said to have been taken by God alive. Enoch, or Hermes, or
Libra are one. All are the scales of universal harmony; justice and equilibrium
are placed at the central point of the Zodiac. The grand circle of the heavens,
so well discoursed upon by Plato, in his Timaeus, symbolizes the unknown as a unity;
and the smaller circles which form the cross, by their division on the plane of
the Zodiacal ring -- typify, at the point of their intersection, life. The
centripetal and centrifugal forces, as symbols of Good and Evil, Spirit and
Matter, Life and Death, are also those of the Creator and the Destroyer, --
Adam and Eve, or God and the Devil, as they say in common parlance. In the
subjective, as well as in the objective worlds, they are the two powers, which
through their eternal conflict keep the universe of spirit and matter in
harmony. They force the planets to pursue their paths, and keep them in their
elliptical orbits, thus tracing the astronomical cross in their revolution
through the Zodiac. In their conflict the centripetal force, were it to prevail,
would drive the planets and living souls into the sun, type of the invisible
Spiritual Sun, the Paraatma or great universal Soul, their parent; while the
centrifugal force would chase both planets and souls into the dreary space, far
from the luminary of the objective universe, away from the spiritual realm of
salvation and eternal life, and into the chaos of final cosmic destruction, and
individual annihilation. But the balance is there, ever sensitive at the
intersection point. It regulates the action of the two combatants, and the
combined effort of both, causes planets and "living souls" to pursue
a double diagonal line in their revolution through Zodiac and Life; and thus
preserving strict harmony, in visible and invisible heaven and earth, the forced
unity of the two reconciles spirit and matter, and Enoch is
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Scorpio is the astrological
sign of the organs of reproduction.
** The patriarchs are all convertible
in their numbers as well as interchangeable. According to what they relate,
they become ten, five, seven, twelve, and even fourteen. The whole system is so
complicated that it is an utter impossibility in a work like this to do more
than hint at certain matters.
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said to stand a
"Metatron" before God. Reckoning from him down to Noah and his three
sons, each of these represent a new "world," i.e., our earth, which
is the seventh* after every period of geological transformation, gives birth to
another and distinct race of men and beings.
Cain leads the ascending line,
or Macrocosm, for he is the Son of the "Lord," not of Adam (Genesis
iv. 1). The "Lord" is Adam Kadmon, Cain, the Son of sinful thought,
not the progeny of flesh and blood, Seth on the other hand is the leader of the
races of earth, for he is the Son of Adam, and begotten "in his own
likeness, after his image" (Genesis v. 3). Cain is Kenu, Assyrian, and
means eldest, while the Hebrew word [[Heb char]] means a Smith, an artificer.
Our science shows that the
globe has passed through five distinct geological phases, each characterized by
a different stratum, and these are in reverse order, beginning with the last:
1. The Quaternary period, in which man appears as a certainty; 2. The Tertiary
period, in which he may have appeared; 3. Secondary period, that of gigantic
saurians, the megalosaurus, icthyosaurus, and plesiosaurus -- no vestige of
man; 4. The Palaeozoic period, that of gigantic crustacea; 5 (or first). The
Azoic period, during which science asserts organic life had not yet appeared.
And is there no possibility that
there was a period, and several periods, when man existed, and yet was not an
organic being -- therefore could not have left any vestige of himself for exact
science? Spirit leaves no skeletons or fossils behind, and yet few are the men
on earth who doubt that man can live both objectively and subjectively. At all
events, the theology of the Brahmans, hoary with antiquity, and which divides
the formative periods of the earth into four ages, and places between each of
these a lapse of 1,728,000 years, far more agrees with official science and
modern discovery than the absurd chronological notions promulgated by the
Councils of Nice and Trent.
The names of the patriarchs
were not Hebrew, though they may
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See vol. I. of the present
work, p. 32. Alone, the Hindu calculation by the Zodiac, can give a key to the
Hebrew chronologies and the ages of the patriarchs. If we bear in mind that,
according to the former astronomical and chronological calculations, out of the
fourteen manwantara (or divine ages), each of which composed of twelve thousand
years of the devas, multiplied by seventy-one, forms one period of creation --
not quite seven are yet passed, the Hebrew calculation will become more clear.
To help, as much as possible, those who will be sure to get a good deal
bewildered in this calculation, we will remind the reader that the Zodiac is
divided into 360 degrees, and every sign into thirty degrees; that in the
Samaritan Bible the age of Enoch is fixed at 360 years; that in
"Manu," the divisions of time are given thus: "The day and the
night are composed of thirty Mouhourta. A mouhourta contains thirty kalas. A
month of the mortals is of thirty days, but it is but one day of the pitris. .
. . A year of the mortals is one day of the Devas."
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have been Hebraized later;
they are evidently of Assyrian or Aryan origin.
Thus Adam, for instance,
stands in the explained Kabala as a convertible term, and applies nearly to
every other patriarch, as every Sephiroth to each Sephira, and vice versa.
Adam, Cain, and Abel form the first triad of the twelve. They correspond in the
Sephiral tree to the Crown, Wisdom, and Intelligence; and in astrology to the
three trigons -- the fiery, the earthy, and the airy; which fact, were we
allowed to devote more space than we have to its elucidation, would perhaps
show that astrology deserves the name of science as well as any other. Adam
(Kadmon) or Aries (ram) is identical with the Egyptian ram-headed god Amun,
fabricating man on the potter's wheel. His duplication, therefore -- or the Adam
of dust -- is also Aries, Amon, when standing at the head of his generations,
for he fabricates mortals also in "his own likeness." In astrology
the planet Jupiter is connected with the "first house" (Aries). The
color of Jupiter, as seen in the "stages of the seven spheres," on
the tower of Borsippa, or Birs Nimrud, was red;* and in Hebrew Adam means [[Heb
char]] "red" as well as "man." The Hindu god Agni, who
presides at the sign of Pisces, next to that of Aries in their relation to the
twelve months (February and March),** is painted of a deep red color, with two
faces (male and female), three legs, and seven arms; the whole forming the
number twelve. So, also, Noah (Pisces), who appears in the generations as the
twelfth patriarch, counting Cain and Abel, is Adam again under another name,
for he is the forefather of a new race of mankind; and with his "three
sons," one bad, one good, and one partaking of both qualities, is the
terrestrial reflection of the super-terrestrial Adam and his three sons. Agni is
represented mounted on a ram, with a tiara surmounted by a cross.***
Kain, presiding over the
Taurus (Bull) of the Zodiac, is also very suggestive. Taurus belongs to the
earthy trigon, and in connection with this sign it will not be amiss to remind
the student of an allegory from the Persian Avesta. The story goes that Ormazd
produced a being -- source and type of all the universal beings -- called LIFE,
or Bull in the Zend. Ahriman (Cain) kills this being (Abel), from the seed of
which
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See Rawlinson's
"Diagrams."
** In the Brahmanical Zodiac
the signs are all presided over by and dedicated to one of the twelve great gods.
So, 1. Mecha (Aries) is dedicated to Varuna; 2. Vricha (Taurus), to Yama; 3.
Mithuna (Gemini), to Pavana; 4. Karcataca (Cancer), to Surya; 5. Sinha (Leo),
to Soma; 6. Kanya (Virgo), to Kartikeia; 7. Toulha (Libra), to Kouvera; 8.
Vristchica (Scorpio), to Kama; 9. Dhanous (Sagittarius), to Ganesa; 10. Makara
(Capricornus), to Poulhar; 11. Kumbha (Aquarius), to Indra; and, 12. Minas
(Pisces), to Agni.
*** Moor's "Hindu
Pantheon," pp. 295-302.
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(Seth) new beings are
produced. Abel, in Assyrian, means son, but in Hebrew [[Heb char]] it means
something ephemeral, not long-lived, valueless, and also a "Pagan
idol,"* as Kain means a Hermaic statue (a pillar, the symbol of
generation). Likewise, Abel is the female counterpart of Cain (male), for they
are twins and probably androgynous; the latter answering to Wisdom, the former
to Intelligence.
So with all other patriarchs.
Enos, [[Heb char]], is Homo again -- a man, or the same Adam, and Enoch in the
bargain; and [[Heb char]] Kain-an is identical with Cain. Seth, [[Heb char]],
is Teth, or Thoth, or Hermes; and this is the reason, no doubt, why Josephus,
in his first book (ch. 3) shows Seth so proficient in astrology, geometry, and
other occult sciences. Foreseeing the flood, he says, he engraved the
fundamental principles of his art on two pillars of brick and stone, the latter
of which "he saw himself [Josephus] to remain in Syria in his own
time." Thus is it that Seth is identified also with Enoch, to whom
kabalists and Masons attribute the same feat; and, at the same time, with
Hermes, or Kadmus again, for Enoch is identical with the former; [[Heb char]]
He-NOCH means a teacher, an initiator, or an initiate; in Grecian mythology,
Inachus. We have seen the part he is made to play in the Zodiac.
Mahalaleel, if we divide the
word and write [[Heb char]], ma-ha-la, means tender, merciful; and therefore is
he made to correspond with the fourth Sephira, Love or Mercy, emanated from the
first triad.** Irad, [[heb char]], or Iared, is (minus the vowels) precisely
the same. If from the verb [[Heb char]], it means descent; if from [[Heb
char]], arad, it means offspring, and thus corresponds perfectly with the
kabalistic emanations.
Lamech, [[Heb char]], is not
Hebrew, but Greek. Lam-ach means Lam -- the father, and Ou-Lom-Ach is the
father of the age; or the father of him (Noah) who inaugurates a new era or
period of creation after the pralaya of the deluge; Noah being the symbol of a
new world, the Kingdom (Malchuth) of the Sephiroth; hence his father,
corresponding to the ninth Sephiroth, is the Foundation.*** Furthermore, both
father and son answer to Aquarius and Pisces in the Zodiac; and thus the former
belonging to the airy and the latter to the watery trigons, they close the list
of the biblical myths.
But if, as we see, every
patriarch represents, in one sense, like each of the Pradjapatis, a new race of
antediluvian human beings; and if, as it may as easily be proved, they are the
copies of the Babylonian Saros,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Apollo was also Abelius, or
Bel.
** Halal is a name of Apollo.
The name of Mahalal-Eliel would then be the autumnal sun, of July, and this
patriarch presides over Leo (July) the zodiacal sign.
*** See description of the
Sephiroth, in chapter iv.
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PRADJAPATIS.
or ages, the latter themselves
copies of the Hindu ten dynasties of the "Lords of beings,"* yet,
however we may regard them, they are among the profoundest allegories ever
conceived by philosophical minds.
In the Nuctemeron,** the
evolution of the universe and its successive periods of formation, together
with the gradual development of the human races, are illustrated as fully as
possible in the twelve "hours" into which the allegory is divided.
Each "hour" typifies the evolution of a new man, and in its turn is
divided into four quarters or ages. This work shows how thoroughly was the
ancient philosophy imbued with the doctrines of the early Aryans, who were the
first to divide the life on our planet into four ages. If one would trace this
doctrine from its source in the night of the traditional period down to the
Seer of Patmos, he need not go astray among the religious systems of all nations.
The Babylonians he would find teaching that in four different periods four
Oannes (or suns) appeared; the Hindus asserting their four Yuga; the Greeks,
Romans, and others firmly believing in the golden, silver, brazen, and iron
ages, each of the epochs being heralded by the appearance of a saviour. The
four Buddhas of the Hindus and the three prophets of the Zoroastrians --
Oshedar-Cami, Oshedar-mah, and Sosiosh -- preceded by Zarotushtra, are the
types of these ages.
In the Bible, the very opening
tells us that before the sons of God saw the daughters of men, the latter lived
from 365 to 969 years. But when the "Lord God" saw the iniquities of
mankind, He concluded to allow them at most 120 years of life (Genesis vi. 3).
To account for such a violent oscillation in the human mortality-table is only
possible by tracing this decision of the "Lord God" to its origin.
Such incongruities as we meet at every step in the Bible can be only attributed
to the facts that the book of Genesis and the other books of Moses were
tampered with and remodelled by more than one author; and, that in their
original state they were, with the exception of the external form of the
allegories, faithful copies from the Hindu sacred books. In Manu, book i., we
find the following:
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* How servile was this
Chaldean copy may be seen in comparing the Hindu chronology with that of the
Babylonians. According to Manu, the antediluvian dynasties of the Pradjapatis
reigned 4,320,000 human years, a whole divine age of the devas in short, or
that length of time which invariably occurs between life on earth and the
dissolution of that life, or pralaya. The Chaldeans, in their turn, give
precisely the same figures, minus one cipher, to wit: they make their 120 saros
yield a total of 432,000 years.
** Eliphas Levi gives it both
in the Greek and Hebrew versions, but so condensed and arbitrarily that it is
impossible for one who knows less than himself to understand him.
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"In the first age,
neither sickness nor suffering were known. Men lived four centuries."
This was in the Krita or Satya
yug.
"The Krita-yug is the
type of justice. The bull which stands firm on its four legs is its image; man
adheres to truth, and evil does not as yet direct his actions."* But in
each of the following ages primitive human life loses one-fourth of its
duration, that is to say, in Treta-yug man lives 300, in Dwapara-yug 200, and
in Kali-yug, or our own age, but 100 years generally, at the most. Noah, son of
Lamech -- Oulom-Ach, or father of the age -- is the distorted copy of Manu, son
of Swayambhu, and the six Manus or Rishis issued from the Hindu "first
man" are the originals of Terah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses,
the Hebrew sages, who beginning with Terah were all alleged to have been
astrologers, alchemists, inspired prophets, and soothsayers; or in a more
profane but plainer language -- magicians.
If we consult the Talmudistic
Mishna we find therein the first emanated divine couple, the androgyne Demiurge
Chochmah (or Hachma Achamoth) and Binah building themselves a house with seven
pillars. They are the architects of God -- Wisdom and Intelligence -- and His
"compass and square." The seven columns are the future seven worlds,
or the typical seven primordial "days" of creation.
"Chochmah immolates her
victims." These victims are the numberless forces of nature which must
"die" (expend themselves) in order that they should live; when one
force dies out, it is but to give birth to another force, its progeny. It dies
but lives in its children, and resuscitates at every seventh generation. The
servants of Chochmah, or wisdom, are the souls of H-Adam, for in him are all
the souls of Israel.
There are twelve hours in the
day, says the Mishna, and it is during these hours that is accomplished the
creation of man. Would this be comprehensible, unless we had Manu to teach us
that this "day" embraces the four ages of the world and has a
duration of twelve thousand divine years of the Devas?
"The Creators (Elohim)
outline in the second" hour "the shape of a more corporeal form of
man. They separate it into two and prepare the sexes to become distinct from
each other. Such is the way the Elohim proceeded in reference to every created
thing."** "Every fish, fowl, plant, beast and man was androgyne at
the first hour."
Says the commentator, the
great Rabbi Simeon:
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Rabbi Simeon's
dissertation on the primitive Man-Bull and the horns. "Sohar."
** "The Nuctameron of the
Hebrews"; see Eliphas Levi, vol. ii.
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SPHEROID.
"O, companions,
companions, man as emanation was both man and woman; as well on the side of the
FATHER as on the side of the MOTHER. And this is the sense of the words, and
Elohim spoke, Let there be Light and it was Light! . . . And this is the
'two-fold man'!"*
A spiritual woman was
necessary as a contrast for the spiritual man. Harmony is the universal law. In
Taylor's translation, Plato's discourse upon creation is rendered so as to make
him say of this universe that "He caused it to move with circular motion.
. . . When, therefore, that God who is a perpetually reasoning Divinity, cogitated
about that God (man) who was destined to subsist at some certain period of
time, He produced his body smooth and even, and every way even and whole from
the centre, and made it perfect. This perfect circle of the created God, He
decussated in the form of the letter X."
The italics of both these
sentences from Timaeus belong to Dr. Lundy, the author of that remarkable work
mentioned once before, Monumental Christianity; and attention is drawn to the words
of the Greek philosopher, with the evident purpose of giving them the prophetic
character which Justin Martyr applied to the same, when accusing Plato of
having borrowed his "physiological discussion in the Timaeus . . .
concerning the Son of God placed crosswise in the universe," from Moses
and his serpent of brass. The learned author seems to fully accord an
unpremeditated prophecy to these words; although he does not tell us whether he
believes that like Plato's created god, Jesus was originally a sphere
"smooth and even, and every way even and whole from the centre." Even
if Justin Martyr were excusable for his perversion of Plato, Dr. Lundy ought to
know that the day for that sort of casuistry is long gone by. What the
philosopher meant was man, who before being encased in matter had no use for
limbs, but was a pure spiritual entity. Hence if the Deity, and his universe,
and the stellar bodies are to be conceived as spheroidal, this shape would be
archetypal man's. As his enveloping shell grew heavier, there came the
necessity for limbs, and the limbs sprouted. If we fancy a man with arms and
legs naturally extended at the same angle, by backing him against the circle
that symbolizes his prior shape as a spirit, we would have the very figure
described by Plato -- the X cross within the circle.
All the legends of the
creation, the fall of man, and the resultant deluge, belong to universal
history, and are no more the property of the Israelites than that of any other
nation. What specially belongs to them (kabalists excepted) are the disfigured
details of every tradition. The Genesis of Enoch is by far anterior to the
books of Moses,** and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Auszuge aus dem
Sohar," p. 13, 15.
** Such is the opinion of the
erudite Dr. Jost and Donaldson. "The Old Testa-
[[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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Guillaume Postel has presented
it to the world, explaining the allegories as far as he dared; but the
ground-work is still unexposed. For the Jews, the Book of Enoch is as canonical
as the Mosaic books; and if the Christians accepted the latter as an authority,
we do not see why they should reject the former as an apocrypha. No more can
the age of one than that of the other be determined with anything like
certainty. At the time of the separation, the Samaritans recognized only the books
of Moses and that of Joshua, says Dr. Jost.* In 168 B.C., Jerusalem had its
temple plundered, and all the sacred books were destroyed;** therefore, the few
MSS. that remained were to be found only among the "teachers of
tradition." The kabalistic Tanaim, and their initiates and prophets had
always practised its teachings in common with the Canaanites, the Hamites,
Midianites, Chaldeans, and all other nations. The story of Daniel is a proof of
it.
There was a sort of
Brotherhood, or Freemasonry among the kabalists scattered all over the world,
since the memory of man; and, like some societies of the mediaeval Masonry of
Europe, they called themselves Companions*** and Innocents.**** It is a belief
(founded on knowledge) among the kabalists, that no more than the Hermetic
rolls are the genuine sacred books of the seventy-two elders -- books which
contained the "Ancient Word" -- lost, but that they have all been
preserved from the remotest times among secret communities. Emanuel Swedenborg
says as much, and his words are based, he says, on the information he had from
certain spirits, who assured him that "they performed their worship
according to this Ancient Word." "Seek for it in China," adds
the great seer, "peradventure you may find it in Great Tartary!"
Other students of occult sciences have had more than the word of "certain
spirits" to rely upon in this special case -- they have seen the books.
We must choose therefore
perforce between two methods -- either to accept the Bible exoterically or
esoterically. Against the former we have the following facts: That, after the
first copy of the Book of God has been edited and launched on the world by
Hilkiah, this copy disappears, and Ezra has to make a new Bible, which Judas
Maccabeus finishes; that when it was copied from the horned letters into square
letters, it was corrupted beyond recognition; that the Masorah completed the
work of destruction; that, finally, we have a text, not 900 years old,
abounding
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] ment. Books, as we now find them, seem to have been concluded
about 150 years B.C. . . . The Jews now sought the other books, which had been
dispersed during the wars, and brought them into one collection"
(Ghillany: "Menschenopfer der Hebraer," p. 1). "Sod, the Son of
the Man." Appendix.
* "Jost," vol. i.,
p. 51.
** Burder's
"Josephus," vol. ii., pp. 331-335.
*** "Die Kabbala,"
p. 95.
**** Gaffarel: Introduction to
"Book of Enoch."
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SECRET VOLUME.
with omissions,
interpolations, and premeditated perversions; and that, consequently, as this
Masoretic Hebrew text has fossilized its mistakes, and the key to the
"Word of God" is lost, no one has a right to enforce upon so-called
"Christians" the divagations of a series of hallucinated and, perhaps,
spurious prophets, under the unwarranted and untenable assumption that the
author of it was the "Holy Ghost" in propria personae.
Hence, we reject this
pretended monotheistic Scripture, made up just when the priests of Jerusalem
found their political profit in violently breaking off all connection with the
Gentiles. It is at this moment only that we find them persecuting kabalists,
and banning the "old wisdom" of both Pagans and Jews. The real Hebrew
Bible was a secret volume, unknown to the masses, and even the Samaritan
Pentateuch is far more ancient than the Septuagint. As for the former, the
Fathers of the Church never even heard of it. We prefer decidedly to take the
word of Swedenborg that the "Ancient Word" is somewhere in China or
the Great Tartary. The more so, as the Swedish seer is declared, at least by
one clergyman, namely, the Reverend Dr. R. L. Tafel, of London, to have been in
a state of "inspiration from God," while writing his theological
works. He is given even the superiority over the penmen of the Bible, for,
while the latter had the words spoken to them in their ears, Swedenborg was
made to understand them rationally and was, therefore, internally and not
externally illuminated. "When," says the reverend author, "a
conscientious member of the New Church hears any charges made against the
divinity and the infallibility of either the soul or the body of the doctrines
of the New Jerusalem, he must at once place himself on the unequivocal
declaration made in those doctrines, that the Lord has effected His second
coming in and by means of those writings which were published by Emanuel
Swedenborg, as His servant, and that, therefore, those charges are not and
cannot be true." And if it is "the Lord" that spoke through
Swedenborg, then there is a hope for us that at least one divine will
corroborate our assertions, that the ancient "word of God" is nowhere
but in the heathen countries, especially Buddhistic Tartary, Thibet, and China!
"The primitive history of
Greece is the primitive history of India," exclaims Pococke in his India
in Greece. In view of subsequent fruits of critical research, we may paraphrase
the sentence and say: "The primitive history of Judea is a distortion of
Indian fable engrafted on that of Egypt." Many scientists, encountering
stubborn facts, and being reluctant to contrast the narratives of the
"divine" revelation with those of the Brahmanical books, merely
present them to the reading public. Meanwhile they limit their conclusions to
criticisms and contradictions
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of each other. So Max Muller
opposes the theories of Spiegel, and some one else; and Professor Whitney those
of the Oxford Orientalist; and Dr. Haug made onslaughts on Spiegel, while Dr.
Spiegel chose some other victim; and now even the time-honored Akkadians and
Turanians have had their day of glory. The Proto-Kasdeans, Kasdeo-Scyths,
Sumirians, and what not, have to make room for some other fictions. Alas! for
the Akkads, Halevy, the Assyriologist attacks the Akkado-Sumirian language of
old Babylon, and Chabas, the Egyptologist, not content with dethroning the
Turanian speech, which has rendered such eminent services to Orientalists when
perplexed, calls the venerable parent of the Akkadians -- Francois Lenormant --
himself, a charlatan. Profiting by the learned turmoil, the Christian clergy
take heart for their fantastic theology on the ground that when the jury
disagree there is a gain of time at least for the indicted party. And thus is
overlooked the vital question whether Christendom would not be the better for
adopting Christism in place of Christianity, with its Bible, its vicarious
atonement and its Devil. But to so important a personage as the latter, we
could not do less than devote a special chapter.
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CHAPTER X.
"Get thee behind me,
SATAN" (Jesus to Peter). -- Matt. xvi. 23.
"Such a deal of
skimble-skamble stuff
As puts me from my faith. I
tell you what --
He held me, last night, at
least nine hours
In reckoning up the several
devils' names." -- King Henry IV., Part i., Act iii.
"La force terrible et
juste qui tue eternellement les avortons a ete nommee par les Egyptiens Typhon,
par les Hebreux Samael; par les orientaux Satan; et par les Latins Lucifer. Le
Lucifer de la Cabale n'est pas un ange maudit et foudroye; c'est l'ange qui
eclaire et qui regenere en tombant." -- ELIPHAS LEVI: Dogme et Rituel.
"Bad as he is, the Devil
may be abus'd,
Be falsely charg'd, and
causelessly accus'd,
When Men, unwilling to be
blam'd alone,
Shift off those Crimes on Him
which are their Own." -- Defoe, 1726.
SEVERAL years ago, a
distinguished writer and persecuted kabalist suggested a creed for the
Protestant and Roman Catholic bodies, which may be thus formulated:
Protevangelium.
"I believe in the Devil,
the Father Almighty of Evil, the Destroyer of all things, Perturbator of Heaven
and Earth;
And in Anti-Christ, his only
Son, our Persecutor,
Who was conceived of the Evil
Spirit;
Born of a sacrilegious,
foolish Virgin;
Was glorified by mankind,
reigned over them,
And ascended to the throne of
Almighty God,
From which he crowds Him
aside, and from which he insults the living and the dead;
I believe in the Spirit of
Evil;
The Synagogue of Satan;
The coalition of the wicked;
The perdition of the body;
And the Death and Hell
everlasting. Amen."
Does this offend? Does it seem
extravagant, cruel, blasphemous? Listen. In the city of New York, on the ninth
day of April, 1877 -- that is to say, in the last quarter of what is proudly
styled the century of discovery and the age of illumination -- the following
scandalous ideas were broached. We quote from the report in the Sun of the
following morning:
"The Baptist preachers
met yesterday in the Mariners' Chapel, in
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Oliver Street. Several foreign
missionaries were present. The Rev. John W. Sarles, of Brooklyn, read an essay,
in which he maintained the proposition that all adult heathen, dying without
the knowledge of the Gospel, are damned eternally. Otherwise, the reverend
essayist argued, the Gospel is a curse instead of a blessing, the men who
crucified Christ served him right, and the whole structure of revealed religion
tumbles to the ground.
"Brother Stoddard, a
missionary from India, indorsed the views of the Brooklyn pastor. The Hindus
were great sinners. One day, after he had preached in the market place, a
Brahman got up and said: 'We Hindus beat the world in lying, but this man beats
us. How can he say that God loves us? Look at the poisonous serpents, tigers,
lions, and all kinds of dangerous animals around us. If God loves us, why
doesn't He take them away?'
"The Rev. Mr. Pixley, of
Hamilton, N. Y., heartily subscribed to the doctrine of Brother Sarles's essay,
and asked for $5,000 to fit out young men for the ministry."
And these men -- we will not
say teach the doctrine of Jesus, for that would be to insult his memory, but --
are paid to teach his doctrine! Can we wonder that intelligent persons prefer
annihilation to a faith encumbered by such a monstrous doctrine? We doubt
whether any respectable Brahman would have confessed to the vice of lying -- an
art cultivated only in those portions of British India where the most
Christians are found.*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* So firmly established seems
to have been the reputation of the Brahmans and Buddhists for the highest
morality, and that since time immemorial, that we find Colonel Henry Yule, in
his admirable edition of "Marco Polo," giving the following
testimony: "The high virtues ascribed to the Brahman and Indian merchants
were, perhaps, in part, matter of tradition . . . but the eulogy is so constant
among mediaeval travellers that it must have had a solid foundation. In fact,
it would not be difficult to trace a chain of similar testimony from ancient
times down to our own. Arrian says no Indian was ever accused of falsehood.
Hwen T'sang ascribes to the people of India eminent uprightness, honesty, and
disinterestedness. Friar Jordanus (circa 1330) says the people of Lesser India
(Sindh and Western India) were true in speech and eminent in justice; and we
may also refer to the high character given to the Hindus by Abul Fazl. But
after 150 years of European trade, indeed, we find a sad deterioration. . . .
Yet Pallas, in the last century, noticing the Bamyan colony at Astrakhan, says
its members were notable for an upright dealing that made them greatly preferable
to Armenians. And that wise and admirable public servant, the late Sir William
Sleeman, in our own time, has said that he knew no class of men in the world
more strictly honorable than the mercantile classes of India." (1)
The sad examples of the rapid
demoralization of savage American Indians, as soon as they are made to live in
a close proximity with Christian officials and missionaries, are familiar in
our modern days.
-------------------------------------
(1) The "Book of Ser
Marco Polo, the Venetian," translated by Colonel Henry Yule, vol. ii., p.
354.
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ASPECTS.
But we challenge any honest
man in the wide world to say whether he thinks the Brahman was far from the
truth in saying of the missionary Stoddard, "this man beats us all"
in lying. What else would he say, if the latter preached to them the doctrine
of eternal damnation, because, indeed, they had passed their lives without
reading a Jewish book of which they never heard, or asked salvation of a Christ
whose existence they never suspected! But Baptist clergymen who need a few
thousand dollars must devise terrifying sensations to fire the congregational
heart.
We abstain, as a rule, from
giving our own experience when we can call acceptable witnesses, and so, upon
reading missionary Stoddard's outrageous remarks, we requested our
acquaintance, Mr. William L. D. O'Grady,* to give a fair opinion upon the
missionaries. This gentleman's father and grandfather were British army
officers, and he himself was born in India, and enjoyed life-long opportunities
to learn what the general opinion among the English is of these religious
propagandists. Following is his communication in reply to our letter:
"You ask me for my
opinion of the Christian missionaries in India. In all the years I spent there,
I never spoke to a single missionary. They were not in society, and, from what
I heard of their proceedings and could see for myself, I don't wonder at it.
Their influence on the natives is bad. Their converts are worthless, and, as a
rule, of the lowest class; nor do they improve by conversion. No respectable
family will employ Christian servants. They lie, they steal, they are unclean
-- and dirt is certainly not a Hindu vice; they drink -- and no decent native
of any other belief ever touches intoxicating liquor; they are outcasts from
their own people and utterly despicable. Their new teachers set them a poor
example of consistency. While holding forth to the Pariah that God makes no
distinction of persons, they boast intolerably over the stray Brahmans, who,
very much "off color," occasionally, at long intervals, fall into the
clutches of these hypocrites.
"The missionaries get
very small salaries, as publicly stated in the proceedings of the societies
that employ them, but, in some unaccountable way, manage to live as well as
officials with ten times their income. When they come home to recover their
health, shattered, as they say, by their arduous labors -- which they seem to
be able to afford to do quite frequently, when supposed richer people cannot --
they tell childish stories on platforms, exhibit idols as procured with
infinite difficulty, which is quite absurd, and give an account of their
imaginary hardships which is perfectly harrowing but untrue from beginning to
end. I lived some years in India myself, and nearly all my blood-relations have
passed or will pass the best years of their lives there. I know hundreds of
British officials, and I never heard from one of them a single word in favor of
the missionaries. Natives of any position look on them with the supremest
contempt, although suffering chronic exasperation from their arrogant
aggressiveness; and the British Government, which continues endowments to
Pagodas, granted by the East
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* At the present moment Mr.
O'Grady is Editor of the "American Builder," of New York, and is well
known for his interesting letters, "Indian Sketches -- Life in the
East," which he contributed under the pseudonym of Hadji Nicka Bauker
Khan, to the Boston "Commercial Bulletin."
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India Company, and which
supports unsectarian education, gives them no countenance whatever. Protected
from personal violence, they yelp and bark at natives and Europeans alike,
after the fashion of ill-conditioned curs. Often recruited from the poorest
specimens of theological fanaticism, they are regarded on all sides as
mischievous. Their rabid, reckless, vulgar, and offensive propagandism caused
the great Mutiny of 1857. They are noisome humbugs.
"WM. L. D. O'GRADY.
"NEW YORK, June 12,
1877."
The new creed therefore, with
which we opened this chapter, coarse as it may sound, embodies the very essence
of the belief of the Church as inculcated by her missionaries. It is regarded
as less impious, less infidel, to doubt the personal existence of the Holy
Ghost, or the equal Godhead of Jesus, than to question the personality of the
Devil. But a summary of Koheleth is well-nigh forgotten.* Who ever quotes the
golden words of the prophet Micah,** or seems to care for the exposition of the
Law, as given by Jesus himself?*** The "bull's eye" in the target of
Modern Christianity is in the simple phrase to "fear the Devil."
The Catholic clergy and some
of the lay champions of the Roman Church fight still more for the existence of
Satan and his imps. If Des Mousseaux maintains the objective reality of
spiritual phenomena with such an unrelenting ardor, it is because, in his
opinion, the latter are the most direct evidence of the Devil at work. The
Chevalier is more Catholic than the Pope; and his logic and deductions from
never-to-be and non-established premises are unique, and prove once more that
the creed offered by us is the one which expresses the Catholic belief most
eloquently.
"If magic and
spiritualism," he says, "were both but chimeras, we would have to bid
an eternal farewell to all the rebellious angels, now troubling the world; for
thus, we would have no more demons down here. . . . And if we lost our demons,
we would LOSE OUR SAVIOUR likewise. For, from whom did that Saviour come to
save us? And then, there would be no more Redeemer; for from whom or what could
that Redeemer redeem us? Hence, there would be no more Christianity!!"****
Oh, Holy Father of Evil; Sainted Satan! We pray thee do not abandon such pious
Christians as the Chevalier des Mousseaux and some Baptist clergymen!!
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Ecclesiastes xii. 13; see
Tayler Lewis's "Metrical Translation."
"The great conclusion
here;
Fear God and His commandments
keep, for this is all of man."
** See Micah vi., 6-8,
"Noyes's Translation."
*** Matthew xvii. 37-40.
**** "Les Hauts
Phenomenes de la Magie," p. 12, preface.
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INVOLVES POLYTHEISM.
For our part, we would rather
remember the wise words of J. C. Colquhoun,* who says that "those persons
who, in modern times, adopt the doctrine of the Devil in its strictly literal
and personal application, do not appear to be aware that they are in reality
polytheists, heathens, idolaters."
Seeking supremacy in everything
over the ancient creeds, the Christians claim the discovery of the Devil
officially recognized by the Church. Jesus was the first to use the word
"legion" when speaking of them; and it is on this ground that M. des
Mousseaux thus defends his position in one of his demonological works.
"Later," he says, "when the synagogue expired, depositing its
inheritance in the hands of Christ, were born into the world and shone, the
Fathers of the Church, who have been accused by certain persons of a rare and precious
ignorance, of having borrowed their ideas as to the spirits of darkness from
the theurgists."
Three deliberate, palpable,
and easily-refuted errors -- not to use a harsher word -- occur in these few
lines. In the first place, the synagogue, far from having expired, is
flourishing at the present day in nearly every town of Europe, America, and
Asia; and of all churches in Christian cities, it is the most firmly
established, as well as the best behaved. Further -- while no one will deny
that many Christian Fathers were born into the world (always, of course,
excepting the twelve fictitious Bishops of Rome, who were never born at all),
every person who will take the trouble to read the works of the Platonists of
the old Academy, who were theurgists before Iamblichus, will recognize therein
the origin of Christian Demonology as well as the Angelology, the allegorical
meaning of which was completely distorted by the Fathers. Then it could hardly
be admitted that the said Fathers ever shone, except, perhaps, in the
refulgence of their extreme ignorance. The Reverend Dr. Shuckford, who passed
the better part of his life trying to reconcile their contradictions and
absurdities, was finally driven to abandon the whole thing in despair. The
ignorance of the champions of Plato must indeed appear rare and precious by
comparison with the fathomless profundity of Augustine, "the giant of
learning and erudition," who scouted the sphericity of the earth, for, if
true, it would prevent the antipodes from seeing the Lord Christ when he
descended from heaven at the second advent; or, of Lactantius, who rejects with
pious horror Pliny's identical theory, on the remarkable ground that it would
make the trees at the other side of the earth grow and the men walk with their
heads downward; or, again, of Cosmas-Indicopleustes, whose orthodox system of
geography is embalmed in his "Christian topography"; or, finally, of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "History of Magic,
Witchcraft, and Animal Magnetism."
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Bede, who assured the world
that the heaven "is tempered with glacial waters, lest it should be set on
fire"* -- a benign dispensation of Providence, most likely to prevent the
radiance of their learning from setting the sky ablaze!
Be this as it may, these
resplendent Fathers certainly did borrow their notions of the "spirits of
darkness" from the Jewish kabalists and Pagan theurgists, with the
difference, however, that they disfigured and outdid in absurdity all that the
wildest fancy of the Hindu, Greek, and Roman rabble had ever created. There is
not a dev in the Persian Pandaimonion half so preposterous, as a conception, as
des Mousseaux's Incubus revamped from Augustine. Typhon, symbolized as an ass,
appears a philosopher in comparison with the devil caught by the Normandy
peasant in a key-hole; and it is certainly not Ahriman or the Hindu Vritra who
would run away in rage and dismay, when addressed as St. Satan, by a native
Luther.
The Devil is the patron genius
of theological Christianity. So "holy and reverend is his name" in
modern conception, that it may not, except occasionally from the pulpit, be
uttered in ears polite. In like manner, anciently, it was not lawful to speak
the sacred names or repeat the jargon of the Mysteries, except in the sacred
cloister. We hardly know the names of the Samothracian gods, but cannot tell
precisely the number of the Kabeiri. The Egyptians considered it blasphemous to
utter the title of the gods of their secret rites. Even now, the Brahman only
pronounces the syllable Om in silent thought, and the Rabbi, the Ineffable
Name, [[Heb char]]. Hence, we who exercise no such veneration, have been led
into the blunders of miscalling the names of HISIRIS and YAVA by the
mispronunciations, Osiris and Jehovah. A similar glamour bids fair, it will be
perceived, to gather round the designation of the dark personage of whom we are
treating; and in the familiar handling, we shall be very likely to shock the
peculiar sensibilities of many who will consider a free mentioning of the
Devil's names as blasphemy -- the sin of sins, that "hath never forgiveness."**
Several years ago an
acquaintance of the author wrote a newspaper article to demonstrate that the
diabolos or Satan of the New Testament denoted the personification of an
abstract idea, and not a personal being. He was answered by a clergyman, who
concluded the reply with the deprecatory expression, "I fear that he has
denied his Saviour." In his rejoinder he pleaded, "Oh, no! we only
denied the Devil." But the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Draper's "Conflict
between Religion and Science."
** Gospel according to Mark,
iii. 29: "He that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost, hath never
forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation" ([[amartematos]],
error).
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CHRIST!"
clergyman failed to perceive
the difference. In his conception of the matter, the denying of the personal
objective existence of the Devil was itself "the sin against the Holy
Ghost."
This necessary Evil, dignified
by the epithet of "Father of Lies," was, according to the clergy, the
founder of all the world-religions of ancient time, and of the heresies, or
rather heterodoxies, of later periods, as well as the Deus ex Machina of modern
Spiritualism. In the exceptions which we take to this notion, we protest that
we do not attack true religion or sincere piety. We are only carrying on a
controversy with human dogmas. Perhaps in doing this we resemble Don Quixote,
because these things are only windmills. Nevertheless, let it be remembered
that they have been the occasion and pretext for the slaughtering of more than
fifty millions of human beings since the words were proclaimed: "LOVE YOUR
ENEMIES."*
It is a late day for us to
expect the Christian clergy to undo and amend their work. They have too much at
stake. If the Christian Church should abandon or even modify the dogma of an
anthropomorphic devil, it would be like pulling the bottom card from under a
castle of cards. The structure would fall. The clergymen to whom we have
alluded perceived that upon the relinquishing of Satan as a personal devil, the
dogma of Jesus Christ as the second deity in their trinity must go over in the
same catastrophe. Incredible, or even horrifying, as it may seem, the Roman
Church bases its doctrine of the godhood of Christ entirely upon the satanism
of the fallen archangel. We have the testimony of Father Ventura, who proclaims
the vital importance of this dogma to the Catholics.
The Reverend Father Ventura,
the illustrious ex-general of the Theatins, certifies that the Chevalier des
Mousseaux, by his treatise, Moeurs et Pratiques des Demons, has deserved well
of mankind, and still more of the most Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. With
this voucher, the noble Chevalier, it will be perceived, "speaks as one
having authority." He asserts explicitly, that to the Devil and his angels
we are absolutely indebted for our Saviour; and that but for them we would have
no Redeemer, no Christianity.
Many zealous and earnest souls
have revolted at the monstrous dogma of John Calvin, the popekin of Geneva,
that sin is the necessary cause of the greatest good. It was bolstered up,
nevertheless, by logic like that of des Mousseaux, and illustrated by the same
dogmas. The execution of Jesus, the god-man, on the cross, was the most
prodigious crime in the universe, yet it was necessary that mankind -- those
predestinated to ever-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Gospel according to Matthew,
v. 44.
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lasting life -- might be
saved. D'Aubignee cites the quotation by Martin Luther from the canon, and
makes him exclaim, in ecstatic rapture: "O beata culpa, qui talem meruisti
redemptorem!" O blessed sin, which didst merit such a Redeemer. We now
perceive that the dogma which had appeared so monstrous is, after all, the
doctrine of Pope, Calvin, and Luther alike -- that the three are one.
Mahomet and his disciples, who
held Jesus in great respect as a prophet, remarks Eliphas Levi, used to utter,
when speaking of Christians, the following remarkable words: "Jesus of
Nazareth was verily a true prophet of Allah and a grand man; but lo! his
disciples all went insane one day, and made a god of him."
Max Muller kindly adds:
"It was a mistake of the early Fathers to treat the heathen gods as demons
or evil spirits, and we must take care not to commit the same error with regard
to the Hindu gods."*
But we have Satan presented to
us as the prop and mainstay of sacerdotism -- an Atlas, holding the Christian
heaven and cosmos upon his shoulders. If he falls, then, in their conception,
all is lost, and chaos must come again.
This dogma of the Devil and
redemption seems to be based upon two passages in the New Testament: "For
this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of
the Devil."** "And there was war in heaven; Michael and his angels
fought against the Dragon; and the Dragon fought, and his angels, and prevailed
not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great Dragon was
cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan, which deceiveth the
whole world." Let us, then, explore the ancient Theogonies, in order to
ascertain what was meant by these remarkable expressions.
The first inquiry is whether
the term Devil, as here used, actually represents the malignant Deity of the
Christians, or an antagonistic, blind force -- the dark side of nature. By the
latter we are not to understand the manifestation of any evil principle that is
malum in se, but only the shadow of the Light, so to say. The theories of the
kabalists treat of it as a force which is antagonistic, but at the same time
essential to the vitality, evolving, and vigor of the good principle. Plants
would perish in their first stage of existence, if they were kept exposed to a
constant sunlight; the night alternating with the day is essential to their
healthy growth and development. Goodness, likewise, would speedily cease to be
such, were it not alternated by its opposite. In human nature, evil denotes the
antagonism of matter to the spiritual, and each is accordingly purified
thereby. In the cosmos, the equilibrium must be preserved; the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Comparative
Mythology," April, 1856.
** 1st Epistle of John, iii.
8.
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EDEN.
operation of the two
contraries produce harmony, like the centripetal and centrifugal forces, and
are necessary to each other. If one is arrested, the action of the other will
immediately become destructive.
This personification,
denominated Satan, is to be contemplated from three different planes: the Old
Testament, the Christian Fathers, and the ancient Gentile altitude. He is
supposed to have been represented by the Serpent in the Garden of Eden;
nevertheless, the epithet of Satan is nowhere in the Hebrew sacred writings
applied to that or any other variety of ophidian. The Brazen Serpent of Moses
was worshipped by the Israelites as a god;* being the symbol of Esmun-Asklepius
the Phoenician Iao. Indeed, the character of Satan himself is introduced in the
1st book of Chronicles in the act of instigating King David to number the
Israelitish people, an act elsewhere declared specifically to have been moved
by Jehovah himself.** The inference is unavoidable that the two, Satan and
Jehovah, were regarded as identical.
Another mention of Satan is found
in the prophecies of Zechariah. This book was written at a period subsequent to
the Jewish colonization of Palestine, and hence, the Asideans may fairly be
supposed to have brought the personification thither from the East. It is
well-known that this body of sectaries were deeply imbued with the Mazdean
notions; and that they represented Ahriman or Anra-manyas by the god-names of
Syria. Set or Sat-an, the god of the Hittites and Hyk-sos, and Beel-Zebub the
oracle-god, afterward the Grecian Apollo. The prophet began his labors in Judea
in the second year of Darius Hystaspes, the restorer of the Mazdean worship. He
thus describes the encounter with Satan: "He showed me Joshua the
high-priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his
right hand to be his adversary. And the Lord said unto Satan: 'The Lord rebuke
thee, O Satan; even the Lord that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee: is not
this a brand plucked out of the fire?' "**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 2 Kings, xviii. 4. It is
probable that the fiery serpents or Seraphim mentioned in the twenty-first
chapter of the book of Numbers were the same as the Levites, or Ophite tribe.
Compare Exodus xxxii. 26-29 with Numbers xxi. 5-9. The names Heva, [[Heb
char]], Hivi or Hivite, [[Heb char]], and Levi [[Heb char]], all signify a
serpent; and it is a curious fact that the Hivites, or serpent-tribe of
Palestine, like the Levites or Ophites of Israel, were ministers to the
temples. The Gibeonites, whom Joshua assigned to the service of the sanctuary,
were Hivites.
** 1 Chronicles, xxi. 1:
"And Satan stood up against Israel and moved David to number Israel."
2d Samuel, xxiv. 1: "And again the anger of the Lord was kindled against
Israel, and he moved David against them to say: 'Go, number Israel and Judah.'
"
*** Zechariah iii. 1, 2. A pun
or play on words is noticeable; "adversary" is associated with
"Satan," as if from [[Heb char]], to oppose.
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We apprehend that this passage
which we have quoted is symbolical. There are two allusions in the New
Testament that indicate that it was so regarded. The Catholic Epistle of Jude
refers to it in this peculiar language: "Yet Michael the archangel, when
contending with the Devil, he disputed about the body of Moses, did not venture
to utter to him a reviling judgment ([[Krisin epenegkein Blasphemias]]), but
said, 'The Lord rebuke thee.' "* The archangel Michael is thus mentioned
as identical with the [[Heb char]] Lord, or angel of the Lord, of the preceding
quotation, and thus is shown that the Hebrew Jehovah had a twofold character,
the secret and that manifested as the angel of the Lord, or Michael the
archangel. A comparison between these two passages renders it plain that
"the body of Moses" over which they contended was Palestine, which as
"the land of the Hittites"** was the peculiar domain of Seth, their
tutelar god.*** Michael, as the champion of the Jehovah-worship, contended with
the Devil or Adversary, but left judgment to his superior.
Belial is not entitled to the
distinction of either god or devil. The term [[Heb char]], BELIAL, is defined
in the Hebrew lexicons to mean a destroying, waste, uselessness; or the phrase
[[Heb char]] AIS-BELIAL or Belial-man signifies a wasteful, useless man. If
Belial must be personified to please our religious friends, we would be obliged
to make him perfectly distinct from Satan, and to consider him as a sort of
spiritual "Diakka." The demonographers, however, who enumerate nine
distinct orders of daimonia, make him chief of the third class -- a set of
hobgoblins, mischievous and good-for-nothing.
Asmodeus is no Jewish spirit
at all, his origin being purely Persian. Breal, the author of Hercule et Cacus,
shows that he is the Parsi Eshem-Dev, or Aeshma-dev, the evil spirit of
concupiscence, whom Max Muller tells us "is mentioned several times in the
Avesta as one of the Devs,**** originally gods, who became evil spirits."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Jude 9.
** In the "Assyrian
Tablets," Palestine is called "the land of the Hittites"; and
the Egyptian Papyri, declaring the same thing, also make Seth, the
"pillar-god," their tutelar deity.
*** Seth, Suteh, or Sat-an,
was the god of the aboriginal nations of Syria. Plutarch makes him the same as Typhon.
Hence he was god of Goshen and Palestine, the countries occupied by the
Israelites.
**** "Vendidad,"
fargard x., 23: "I combat the daeva AEshma, the very evil." "The
Yacnas," x. 18, speaks likewise of AEshma-Daeva, or Khasm: "All other
sciences depend upon AEshma, the cunning." "Serv.," lvi. 12:
"To smite the wicked Auramanyas (Ahriman, the evil power), to smite AEshma
with the terrible weapon, to smite the Mazanian daevas, to smite all
devas."
In the same fargard of the
"Vendidad" the Brahman divinities are involved in the same
denunciation with AEshma-daeva: "I combat India, I combat Sauru, I com-
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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SATAN.
Samael is Satan; but Bryan and
a good many other authorities show it to be the name of the "Simoun"
-- the wind of the desert,* and the Simoun is called Atabul-os or Diabolos.
Plutarch remarks that by
Typhon was understood anything violent, unruly, and disorderly. The overflowing
of the Nile was called by the Egyptians Typhon. Lower Egypt is very flat, and
any mounds built along the river to prevent the frequent inundations, were
called Typhonian or Taphos; hence, the origin of Typhon. Plutarch, who was a
rigid, orthodox Greek, and never known to much compliment the Egyptians,
testifies in his Isis and Osiris, to the fact that, far from worshipping the
Devil (of which Christians accused them), they despised more than they dreaded
Typhon. In his symbol of the opposing, obstinate power of nature, they believed
him to be a poor, struggling, half-dead divinity. Thus, even at that remote
age, we see the ancients already too enlightened to believe in a personal
devil. As Typhon was represented in one of his symbols under the figure of an
ass at the festival of the sun's sacrifices, the Egyptian priests exhorted the
faithful worshippers not to carry gold ornaments upon their bodies for fear of
giving food to the ass!**
Three and a half centuries
before Christ, Plato expressed his opinion of evil by saying that "there
is in matter a blind, refractory force, which resists the will of the Great
Artificer." This blind force, under Christian influx, was made to see and
become responsible; it was transformed into Satan!
His identity with Typhon can
scarcely be doubted upon reading the account in Job of his appearance with the
sons of God, before the Lord. He accuses Job of a readiness to curse the Lord
to his face upon sufficient provocation. So Typhon, in the Egyptian Book of the
Dead, figures as the accuser. The resemblance extends even to the names, for
one of Typhon's appellations was Seth, or Seph; as Satan, in Hebrew, means an
adversary. In Arabic the word is Shatana -- to be adverse, to persecute, and
Manetho says he had treacherously murdered Osiris and allied himself with the
Shemites (the Israelites). This may possibly have originated the fable told by
Plutarch, that, from the fight between Horus and Typhon, Typhon, overcome with
fright at the mis-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] bat the Daeva Naonhaiti." The annotator explains them to
be the Vedic gods, Indus, Gaurea, or Siva, and the two Aswins. There must be
some mistake, however, for Siva, at the time the "Vedas" were
completed, was an aboriginal or AEthiopian God, the Bala or Bel of Western
Asia. He was not an Aryan or Vedic deity. Perhaps Surya was the divinity intended.
* Jacob Bryant: "Analysis
of Ancient Mythology."
** Plutarch: "de
Iside," xxx., xxxi.
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chief he had caused,
"fled seven days on an ass, and escaping, begat the boys Ierosolumos and
Ioudaios (Jerusalem and Judea)."
Referring to an invocation of
Typhon-Seth, Professor Reuvens says that the Egyptians worshipped Typhon under
the form of an ass; and according to him Seth "appears gradually among the
Semites as the background of their religious consciousness."* The name of
the ass in Coptic, AO, is a phonetic of IAO, and hence the animal became a
pun-symbol. Thus Satan is a later creation, sprung from the overheated fancy of
the Fathers of the Church. By some reverse of fortune, to which the gods are
subjected in common with mortals, Typhon-Seth tumbled down from the eminence of
the deified son of Adam Kadmon, to the degrading position of a subaltern
spirit, a mythical demon -- ass. Religious schisms are as little free from the
frail pettiness and spiteful feelings of humanity as the partisan quarrels of
laymen. We find a strong instance of the above in the case of the Zoroastrian
reform, when Magianism separated from the old faith of the Brahmans. The bright
Devas of the Veda became, under the religious reform of Zoroaster, daevas, or
evil spirits, of the Avesta. Even Indra, the luminous god, was thrust far back
into the dark shadow** in order to show off, in a brighter light, Ahura-mazda,
the Wise and Supreme Deity.
The strange veneration in
which the Ophites held the serpent which represented Christos may become less
perplexing if the students would but remember that at all ages the serpent was
the symbol of divine wisdom, which kills in order to resurrect, destroys but to
rebuild the better. Moses is made a descendant of Levi, a serpent-tribe.
Gautama-Buddha is of a serpent-lineage, through the Naga (serpent) race of
kings who reigned in Magadha. Hermes, or the god Taaut (Thoth), in his
snake-symbol is Tet; and, according to the Ophite legends, Jesus or Christos is
born from a snake (divine wisdom, or Holy Ghost), i.e., he became a Son of God
through his initiation into the "Serpent Science." Vishnu, identical
with the Egyptian Kneph, rests on the heavenly seven-headed serpent.
The red or fiery dragon of the
ancient time was the military ensign of the Assyrians. Cyrus adopted it from
them when Persia became dominant. The Romans and Byzantines next assumed it;
and so the "great red dragon," from being the symbol of Babylon and
Nineveh, became that of Rome.***
The temptation, or
probation,**** of Jesus is, however, the most dramatic
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Wilkinson's "Ancient
Egyptians," p. 434.
** See "Vendidad,"
fargard x.
*** Salverte: "Des
Sciences Occultes," appendix, note A.
**** The term [[teirasmos]]
signifies a trial, or probation.
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AND JESUS.
occasion in which Satan
appears. As if to prove the designation of Apollo, AEsculapius, and Bacchus,
Diobolos, or son of Zeus, he is also styled Diabolos, or accuser. The scene of
the probation was the wilderness. In the desert about the Jordan and Dead Sea
were the abodes of the "sons of the prophets," and the Essenes.*
These ascetics used to subject their neophytes to probations, analogous to the
tortures of the Mithraic rites; and the temptation of Jesus was evidently a
scene of this character. Hence, in the Gospel according to Luke, it is stated
that "the Diabolos, having completed the probation, left him for a
specific time, [[achri kairou]], and Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit
into Galilee." But the [[diabolos]], or Devil, in this instance is
evidently no malignant principle, but one exercising discipline. In this sense
the terms Devil and Satan are repeatedly employed.** Thus, when Paul was liable
to undue elation by reason of the abundance of revelations or epoptic
disclosures, there was given him "a thorn in the flesh, an angel of
Satanas," to check him.***
The story of Satan in the Book
of Job is of a similar character. He is introduced among the "Sons of
God," presenting themselves before the Lord, as in a Mystic initiation.
Micaiah the prophet describes a similar scene, where he "saw the Lord sitting
on His throne, and all the host of Heaven standing by Him," with whom He
took counsel, which resulted in putting "a lying spirit into the mouth of
the prophets of Ahab."**** The Lord counsels with Satan, and gives him
carte blanche to test the fidelity of Job. He is stripped of his wealth and
family, and smitten with a loathsome disease. In his extremity, his wife doubts
his integrity, and exhorts him to worship God, as he is about to die. His
friends all beset him with accusations, and finally the Lord, the chief hierophant
Himself, taxes him with the uttering of words in which there is no wisdom, and
with contending with the Almighty. To this rebuke Job yielded, making this
appeal: "I will demand of thee, and thou shalt declare unto me: wherefore
do I abhor myself and mourn in dust and ashes?" Immediately he was
vindicated. "The Lord said unto Eliphaz . . . ye have not spoken of me the
thing that is right, as my servant Job hath." His integrity had been
asserted, and his prediction verified: "I know that my Champion liveth,
and that he will stand up for me at a later time on the earth; and though after
my skin my body itself be corroded away, yet even then without my flesh shall I
see God." The pre-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* 2 Samuel, ii. 5, 15; vi.
1-4. Pliny.
** See 1 Corinthians, v. 5; 2
Corinthians, xi. 14; 1 Timothy, i. 20.
*** 2d Epistle of Paul to the
Corinthians, xii. In Numbers xxii, 22 the angel of the Lord is described as
acting the part of a Satan to Balaam.
**** 1 Kings, xxii. 19-23.
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diction was accomplished:
"I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth
thee. . . . And the Lord turned the captivity of Job."
In all these scenes there is
manifested no such malignant diabolism as is supposed to characterize "the
adversary of souls."
It is an opinion of certain
writers of merit and learning, that the Satan of the book of Job is a Jewish
myth, containing the Mazdean doctrine of the Evil Principle. Dr. Haug remarks
that "the Zoroastrian religion exhibits a close affinity, or rather identity
with the Mosaic religion and Christianity, such as the personality and
attributes of the Devil, and the resurrection of the dead."* The war of
the Apocalypse between Michael and the Dragon, can be traced with equal
facility to one of the oldest myths of the Aryans. In the Avesta we read of war
between Thraetaona and Azhi-Dahaka, the destroying serpent. Burnouf has
endeavored to show that the Vedic myth of Ahi, or the serpent, fighting against
the gods, has been gradually euhemerized into "the battle of a pious man
against the power of evil," in the Mazdean religion. By these
interpretations Satan would be made identical with Zohak or Azhi-Dahaka, who is
a three-headed serpent, with one of the heads a human one.**
Beel-Zebub is generally
distinguished from Satan. He seems, in the Apocryphal New Testament, to be
regarded as the potentate of the underworld. The name is usually rendered
"Baal of the Flies," which may be a designation of the Scarabaei or
sacred beetles.*** More correctly it shall be read, as it is always given in
the Greek text of the Gospels, Beelzebul, or lord of the household, as is
indeed intimated in Matthew
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Haug: "Essays on the
Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion of the Parsees."
** The "Avesta"
describes the serpent Dahaka, as of the region of Bauri or Babylonia. In the
Median history are two kings of the name Deiokes or Dahaka, and Astyages or
Az-dahaka. There were children of Zohak seated on various Eastern thrones, after
Feridun. It is apparent, therefore, that by Zohak is meant the Assyrian
dynasty, whose symbol was the purpureum signum draconis -- the purple sign of
the Dragon. From a very remote antiquity (Genesis xiv.) this dynasty ruled
Asia, Armenia, Syria, Arabia, Babylonia, Media, Persia, Bactria, and
Afghanistan. It was finally overthrown by Cyrus and Darius Hystaspes, after
"1,000 years" rule. Yima and Thraetaona, or Jemshid and Feridun, are
doubtless personifications. Zohak probably imposed the Assyrian or Magian
worship of fire upon the Persians. Darius was the vicegerent of Ahura-Mazda.
*** The name in the Gospels is
[[beelzeboul]], or Baal of the Dwelling. It is pretty certain that Apollo, the
Delphian God, was not Hellenian originally, but Phoenician. He was the Paian or
physician, as well as the god of oracles. It is no great stretch of imagination
to identify him with Baal-Zebul, the god of Ekron, or Acheron, doubtless
changed to Zebub, or flies, by the Jews in derision.
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x. 25: "If they have
called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more shall they call them of
his household." He was also styled the prince or archon of daemons.
Typhon figures in the Book of
the Dead, as the Accuser of souls when they appear for judgment, as Satan stood
up to accuse Joshua, the high-priest, before the angel, and as the Devil came
to Jesus to tempt or test him during his great fast in the wilderness. He was
also the deity denominated Baal-Tsephon, or god of the crypt, in the book of
Exodus, and Seth, or the pillar. During this period, the ancient or archaic
worship was more or less under the ban of the government; in figurative
language, Osiris had been treacherously slain and cut in fourteen (twice seven)
pieces, and coffined by his brother Typhon, and Isis had gone to Byblos in
quest of his body.
We must not forget in this
relation that Saba or Sabazios, of Phrygia and Greece, was torn by the Titans
into seven pieces, and that he was, like Heptaktis of the Chaldeans, the
seven-rayed god. Siva, the Hindu, is represented crowned with seven serpents,
and he is the god of war and destruction. The Hebrew Jehovah the Sabaoth is
also called the Lord of hosts, Seba or Saba, Bacchus or Dionysus Sabazios; so
that all these may easily be proved identical.
Finally the princes of the
older regime, the gods who had, on the assault of the giants, taken the forms
of animals and hidden in AEthiopia, returned and expelled the shepherds.
According to Josephus, the
Hyk-sos were the ancestors of the Israelites.* This is doubtless substantially
true. The Hebrew Scriptures, which tell a somewhat different story, were
written at a later period, and underwent several revisions, before they were
promulgated with any degree of publicity. Typhon became odious in Egypt, and
shepherds "an abomination." "In the course of the twentieth
dynasty he was suddenly treated as an evil demon, insomuch that his effigies
and name are obliterated on all the monuments and inscriptions that could be
reached."** In all ages the gods have been liable to be euhemerized into
men. There are tombs of Zeus, Apollo, Hercules, and Bacchus, which are often
mentioned to show that originally they were only mortals. Shem, Ham, and
Japhet, are traced in the divinities Shamas of Assyria, Kham of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Against Apion,"
i. 25. "The Egyptians took many occasions to hate and envy us: in the
first place because our ancestors (the Hyk-sos, or shepherds) had had the
dominion over their country, and when they were delivered from them and gone to
their own country, they lived there in prosperity."
** Bunsen. The name Seth with
the syllable an from the Chaldean ana or Heaven, makes the term Satan. The
punners seem now to have pounced upon it, as was their wont, and so made it
Satan from the verb [[Heb char]] Sitan, to oppose.
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Egypt, and Iapetos the Titan.
Seth was god of the Hyk-sos, Enoch, or Inachus, of the Argives; and Abraham,
Isaac, and Judah have been compared with Brahma, Ikshwaka, and Yadu of the
Hindu pantheon. Typhon tumbled down from godhead to devilship, both in his own
character as brother of Osiris, and as the Seth, or Satan of Asia. Apollo, the god
of day, became, in his older Phoenician garb, no more Baal Zebul, the
Oracle-god, but prince of demons, and finally the lord of the underworld. The
separation of Mazdeanism from Vedism, transformed the devas or gods into evil
potencies. Indra, also, in the Vendidad is set forth as the subaltern of
Ahriman,* created by him out of the materials of darkness,** together with Siva
(Surya) and the two Aswins. Even Jahi is the demon of Lust -- probably
identical with Indra.
The several tribes and nations
had their tutelar gods, and vilified those of inimical peoples. The
transformation of Typhon, Satan and Beelzebub are of this character. Indeed,
Tertullian speaks of Mithra, the god of the Mysteries, as a devil.
In the twelfth chapter of the
Apocalypse, Michael and his angels overcame the Dragon and his angels:
"and the Great Dragon was cast out, that Archaic Ophis, called Diabolos
and Satan, that deceiveth the whole world." It is added: "They
overcame him by the blood of the Lamb." The Lamb, or Christ, had to descend
himself to hell, the world of the dead, and remain there three days before he
subjugated the enemy, according to the myth.
Michael was denominated by the
kabalists and the Gnostics, "the Saviour," the angel of the Sun, and
angel of Light. ([[Heb char]], probably, from [[Heb char]] to manifest and
[[Heb char] God.) He was the first of the AEons, and was well-known to
antiquarians as the "unknown angel" represented on the Gnostic
amulets.
The writer of the Apocalypse,
if not a kabalist, must have been a Gnostic. Michael was not a personage
originally exhibited to him in his vision (epopteia) but the Saviour and
Dragon-slayer. Archaeological explorations have indicated him as identical with
Anubis, whose effigy was lately discovered upon an Egyptian monument, with a
cuirass and holding a spear, like St. Michael and St. George. He is also
represented as slaying a Dragon, that has the head and tail of a serpent.***
The student of Lepsius,
Champollion, and other Egyptologists will
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Vendidad,"
fargard x. The name Vendidad is a contraction of Vidaeva-data, ordinances
against the Daevas.
** Bundahest, "Ahriman
created out of the materials of darkness Akuman and Ander, then Sauru and
Nakit."
*** See Lenoir's "Du
Dragon de Metz," in "Memoires de l'Academie Celtique," i., 11,
12.
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LONG-DEFERRED EXPLANATION.
quickly recognize Isis as the
"woman with child," "clothed with the Sun and with the Moon
under her feet," whom the "great fiery Dragon" persecuted, and
to whom "were given two wings of the Great Eagle that she might fly into
the wilderness." Typhon was red-skinned.*
The Two Brothers, the Good and
Evil Principles, appear in the Myths of the Bible as well as those of the
Gentiles, and Cain and Abel, Typhon and Osiris, Esau and Jacob, Apollo and
Python, etc., Esau or Osu, is represented, when born, as "red all over
like an hairy garment." He is the Typhon or Satan, opposing his brother.
From the remotest antiquity
the serpent was held by every people in the greatest veneration, as the
embodiment of Divine wisdom and the symbol of spirit, and we know from
Sanchoniathon that it was Hermes or Thoth who was the first to regard the
serpent as "the most spirit-like of all the reptiles"; and the
Gnostic serpent with the seven vowels over the head is but the copy of Ananta, the
seven-headed serpent on which rests the god Vishnu.
We have experienced no little
surprise to find upon reading the latest European treatises upon
serpent-worship, that the writers confess that the public is "still almost
in the dark as to the origin of the superstition in question." Mr. C.
Staniland Wake, M.A.I., from whom we now quote, says: "The student of
mythology knows that certain ideas were associated by the peoples of antiquity
with the serpent, and that it was the favorite symbol of particular deities; but
why that animal rather than any other was chosen for the purpose is yet
uncertain."**
Mr. James Fergusson, F.R.S.,
who has gathered together such an abundance of material upon this ancient cult,
seems to have no more suspicion of the truth than the rest.***
Our explanation of the myth
may be of little value to students of symbology, and yet we believe that the
interpretation of the primitive serpent-worship as given by the initiates is
the correct one. In Vol. i., p. 10, we quote from the serpent Mantra, in the
Aytareya-Brahmana, a passage which speaks of the earth as the Sarpa Rajni, the
Queen of the Serpents, and "the mother of all that moves." These
expressions refer to the fact that before our globe had become egg-shaped or
round it was a long trail of cosmic dust or fire-mist, moving and writhing like
a serpent. This, say the explanations, was the Spirit of God moving on the
chaos until its breath had incubated cosmic matter and made it assume the
annular shape of a serpent with its tail in its mouth -- emblem of eternity
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Plutarch: "Isis and
Osiris."
** "The Origin of Serpent
Worship," by C. Staniland Wake, M.A.I. New York: J. W. Bouton, 1877.
*** "Tree and Serpent
Worship," etc.
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in its spiritual and of our
world in its physical sense. According to the notions of the oldest
philosophers, as we have shown in the preceding chapter, the earth,
serpent-like, casts off its skin and appears after every minor pralaya in a
rejuvenated state, and after the great pralaya resurrects or evolves again from
its subjective into objective existence. Like the serpent, it not only
"puts off its old age," says Sanchoniathon, "but increases in
size and strength." This is why not only Serapis, and later, Jesus, were
represented by a great serpent, but even why, in our own century, big snakes
are kept with sacred care in Moslem mosques; for instance, in that of Cairo. In
Upper Egypt a famous saint is said to appear under the form of a large serpent;
and in India in some children's cradles a pair of serpents, male and female,
are reared with the infant, and snakes are often kept in houses, as they are
thought to bring (a magnetic aura of) wisdom, health, and good luck. They are
the progeny of Sarpa Rajni, the earth, and endowed with all her virtues.
In the Hindu mythology Vasaki,
the Great Dragon, pours forth upon Durga, from his mouth, a poisonous fluid
which overspreads the ground, but her consort Siva caused the earth to open her
mouth and swallow it.
Thus the mystic drama of the
celestial virgin pursued by the dragon seeking to devour her child, was not
only depicted in the constellations of heaven, as has been mentioned, but was
represented in the secret worship of the temples. It was the mystery of the god
Sol, and inscribed on a black image of Isis.* The Divine Boy was chased by the
cruel Typhon.** In an Egyptian legend the Dragon is said to pursue Thuesis
(Isis) while she is endeavoring to protect her son.*** Ovid describes Dione
(the consort of the original Pelasgian Zeus, and mother of Venus) as flying
from Typhon to the Euphrates,**** thus identifying the myth as belonging to all
the countries where the Mysteries were celebrated. Virgil sings the victory:
"Hail, dear child of
gods, great son of Jove!
Receive the honors great; the
time is at hand;
The Serpent will
die!"*****
Albertus Magnus, himself an
alchemist and student of occult science, as well as a bishop of the Roman
Catholic Church, in his enthusiasm for astrology, declared that the zodiacal
sign of the celestial virgin rises above the horizon on the twenty-fifth of
December, at the moment assigned by the Church for the birth of the
Saviour.******
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Godfrey Higgins:
"Anacalypsis"; Dupuis: "Origines des Cultes," iii., 51.
** Martianus Capella:
"Hymn to the Sun," i., ii.; Movers: "Phiniza," 266.
*** Plutarch: "Isis and
Osiris."
**** Virgil:
"Eclogues," iv.
***** Ovid: "Fasti,"
ii., 451.
****** Knorring: "Terra
et Coelum," 53.
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AND MITHRAS.
The sign and myth of the
mother and child were known thousands of years before the Christian era. The
drama of the Mysteries of Demeter represents Persephoneia, her daughter, as
carried away by Pluto or Hades into the world of the dead; and when the mother
finally discovers her there, she has been installed as queen of the realm of
Darkness. This myth was transcribed by the Church into the legend of St. Anna*
going in quest of her daughter Mary, who has been conveyed by Joseph into
Egypt. Persephone is depicted with two ears of wheat in her hand; so is Mary in
the old pictures; so was the Celestial Virgin of the constellation. Albumazar
the Arabian indicates the identity of the several myths as follows:
"In the first decan of
the Virgin rises a maid, called in Arabic Aderenosa [Adha-nari?], that is, pure
immaculate virgin,** graceful in person, charming in countenance, modest in
habit, with loosened hair, holding in her hands two ears of wheat, sitting upon
an embroidered throne, nursing a boy, and rightly feeding him in the place
called Hebraea; a boy, I say, named Iessus by certain nations, which signifies
Issa, whom they also call Christ in Greek."***
At this time Grecian, Asiatic,
and Egyptian ideas had undergone a remarkable transformation. The Mysteries of
Dionysus-Sabazius had been replaced by the rites of Mithras, whose
"caves" superseded the crypts of the former god, from Babylon to
Britain. Serapis, or Sri-Apa, from Pontus, had usurped the place of Osiris. The
king of Eastern Hindustan, Asoka, had embraced the religion of Siddhartha, and
sent missionaries clear to Greece, Asia, Syria, and Egypt, to promulgate the
evangel of wisdom. The Essenes of Judea and Arabia, the Therapeutists**** of
Egypt, and the Pythagorists***** of Greece and Magna Graecia, were evidently
religionists of the new faith. The legends of Gautama superseded the myths of
Horus, Anubis, Adonis, Atys, and Bacchus. These were wrought anew into the
Mysteries and Gospels, and to them we owe the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Anna is an Oriental
designation from the Chaldean ana, or heaven, whence Anaitis and Anaitres.
Durga, the consort of Siva, is also named Anna purna, and was doubtless the
original St. Anna. The mother of the prophet Samuel was named Anna; the father
of his counterpart, Samson, was Manu.
** The virgins of ancient
time, as will be seen, were not maids, but simply almas, or nubile women.
*** Kircher: "OEdipus
AEgyptiacus," iii., 5.
**** From [[therapeuo]], to
serve, to worship, to heal.
***** E. Pococke derives the
name Pythagoras from Buddha, and guru, a spiritual teacher. Higgins makes it Celtic,
and says that it means an observer of the stars. See "Celtic Druids."
If, however, we derive the word Pytho from [[Heb char]], petah, the name would
signify an expounder of oracles, and Buddha-guru a teacher of the doctrines of
Buddha.
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literature known as the
Evangelists and the Apocryphal New Testament. They were kept by the Ebionites,
Nazarenes, and other sects as sacred books, which they might "show only to
the wise"; and were so preserved till the overshadowing influence of the
Roman ecclesiastical polity was able to wrest them from those who kept them.
At the time that the high-priest
Hilkiah is said to have found the Book of the Law, the Hindu Puranas
(Scriptures) were known to the Assyrians. These last had for many centuries
held dominion from the Hellespont to the Indus, and probably crowded the Aryans
out of Bactriana into the Punjab. The Book of the Law seems to have been a
purana. "The learned Brahmans," says Sir William Jones, "pretend
that five conditions are requisite to constitute a real purana:
"1. To treat of the
creation of matter in general.
"2. To treat of the creation
or production of secondary material and spiritual beings.
"3. To give a
chronological abridgment of the great periods of time.
"4. To give a
genealogical abridgment of the principal families that reigned over the
country.
"5. Lastly, to give the history
of some great man in particular."
It is pretty certain that
whoever wrote the Pentateuch had this plan before him, as well as those who
wrote the New Testament had become thoroughly well acquainted with Buddhistic
ritualistic worship, legends and doctrines, through the Buddhist missionaries
who were many in those days in Palestine and Greece.
But "no Devil, no
Christ." This is the basic dogma of the Church. We must hunt the two
together. There is a mysterious connection between the two, more close than
perhaps is suspected, amounting to identity. If we collect together the
mythical sons of God, all of whom were regarded as "first-begotten,"
they will be found dovetailing together and blending in this dual character.
Adam Kadmon bifurcates from the spiritual conceptive wisdom into the creative
one, which evolves matter. The Adam made from dust is both son of God and
Satan; and the latter is also a son of God,* according to Job.
Hercules was likewise
"the First-Begotten." He is also Bel, Baal, and Bal, and therefore
Siva, the Destroyer. Bacchus was styled by Euripides, "Bacchus, the Son of
God." As a child, Bacchus, like the Jesus of the Apocryphal Gospels, was
greatly dreaded. He is described as benevolent to mankind; nevertheless he was
merciless in punishing whomever failed of respect to his worship. Pentheus, the
son of Cad-
[[Footnote(s)]]
--------------------------------------------------
* In the Secret Museum of
Naples, there is a marble bas-relief representing the Fall of Man, in which God
the Father plays the part of the Beguiling Serpent.
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"BOOK OF THE DEAD."
mus and Hermione, was, like
the son of Rabbi Hannon, destroyed for his want of piety.
The allegory of Job, which has
been already cited, if correctly understood, will give the key to this whole
matter of the Devil, his nature and office; and will substantiate our declarations.
Let no pious individual take exception to this designation of allegory. Myth
was the favorite and universal method of teaching in archaic times. Paul,
writing to the Corinthians, declared that the entire story of Moses and the
Israelites was typical;* and in his Epistle to the Galatians, asserted that the
whole story of Abraham, his two wives, and their sons was an allegory.**
Indeed, it is a theory amounting to certitude, that the historical books of the
Old Testament were of the same character. We take no extraordinary liberty with
the Book of Job when we give it the same designation which Paul gave the
stories of Abraham and Moses.
But we ought, perhaps, to
explain the ancient use of allegory and symbology. The truth in the former was
left to be deduced; the symbol expressed some abstract quality of the Deity,
which the laity could easily apprehend. Its higher sense terminated there; and
it was employed by the multitude thenceforth as an image to be employed in
idolatrous rites. But the allegory was reserved for the inner sanctuary, when
only the elect were admitted. Hence the rejoinder of Jesus when his disciples
interrogated him because he spoke to the multitude in parables. "To
you," said he, "it is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of
Heaven, but to them it is not given. For whosoever hath, to him shall be given,
and he shall have more abundance; but whosoever hath not, from him shall be
taken away even that he hath." In the minor Mysteries a sow was washed to
typify the purification of the neophyte; as her return to the mire indicated
the superficial nature of the work that had been accomplished.
"The Mythus is the
undisclosed thought of the soul. The characteristic trait of the myth is to
convert reflection into history (a historical form). As in the epos, so in the
myth, the historical element predominates. Facts (external events) often
constitute the basis of the myth, and with these, religious ideas are
interwoven."
The whole allegory of Job is
an open book to him who understands the picture-language of Egypt as it is
recorded in the Book of the Dead. In the Scene of Judgment, Osiris is
represented sitting on his throne,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* First Epistle to the
Corinthians, x. 11.: "All these things happened unto them for types."
** Epistle to the Galatians,
iv. 24: "It is written that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bond-maid,
the other by a freewoman . . . which things are an allegory."
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holding in one hand the symbol
of life, "the hook of attraction," and in the other the mystic Bacchic
fan. Before him are the sons of God, the forty-two assessors of the dead. An
altar is immediately before the throne, covered with gifts and surmounted with
the sacred lotus-flower, upon which stand four spirits. By the entrance stands
the soul about to be judged, whom Thmei, the genius of Truth, is welcoming to
this conclusion of the probation. Thoth holding a reed, makes a record of the
proceedings in the Book of Life. Horus and Anubis, standing by the scales,
inspect the weight which determines whether the heart of the deceased balances
the symbol of truth, or the latter preponderates. On pedestal sits a bitch --
the symbol of the Accuser.
Initiation into the Mysteries,
as every intelligent person knows, was dramatic representation of scenes in the
underworld. Such was the allegory of Job.
Several critics have
attributed the authorship of this book to Moses. But it is older than the
Pentateuch. Jehovah is not mentioned in the poem itself; and if the name occurs
in the prologue, the fact must be attributed to either an error of the
translators, or the premeditation exacted by the later necessity to transform
polytheism into a monotheistic religion. The plan adopted was the very simple
one of attributing the many names of the Elohim (gods) to a single god. So in
one of the oldest Hebrew texts of Job (in chapter xii. 9) there stands the name
of Jehovah, whereas all other manuscripts have "Adonai." But in the
original poem Jehovah is absent. In place of this name we find Al, Aleim, Ale,
Shaddai, Adonai, etc. Therefore, we must conclude that either the prologue and
epilogue were added at a later period, which is inadmissible for many reasons,
or that it has been tampered with like the rest of the manuscripts. Then, we
find in this archaic poem no mention whatever of the Sabbatical Institution;
but a great many references to the sacred number seven, of which we will speak
further, and a direct discussion upon Sabeanism, the worship of the heavenly
bodies prevailing in those days in Arabia. Satan is called in it a "Son of
God," one of the council which presents itself before God, and he leads
him into tempting Job's fidelity. In this poem, clearer and plainer than
anywhere else, do we find the meaning of the appellation, Satan. It is a term
for the office or character of public accuser. Satan is the Typhon of the
Egyptians, barking his accusations in Amenthi; an office quite as respectable
as that of the public prosecutor, in our own age; and if, through the ignorance
of the first Christians, he became later identical with the Devil, it is
through no connivance of his own.
The Book of Job is a complete
representation of ancient initiation, and the trials which generally precede
this grandest of all ceremonies.
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AND INTERPOLATIONS.
The neophyte perceives himself
deprived of everything he valued, and afflicted with foul disease. His wife appeals
to him to adore God and die; there was no more hope for him. Three friends
appear on the scene by mutual appointment: Eliphaz, the learned Temanite, full
of the knowledge "which wise men have told from their fathers -- to whom
alone the earth was given"; Bildad, the conservative, taking matters as
they come, and judging Job to have done wickedly, because he was afflicted; and
Zophar, intelligent and skilful with "generalities" but not
interiorly wise. Job boldly responds: "If I have erred, it is a matter
with myself. You magnify yourselves and plead against me in my reproach; but it
is God who has overthrown me. Why do you persecute me and are not satisfied
with my flesh thus wasted away? But I know that my Champion lives, and that at
a coming day he will stand for me in the earth; and though, together with my
skin, all this beneath it shall be destroyed, yet without my flesh I shall see
God. . . . Ye shall say: 'Why do we molest him?' for the root of the matter is
found in me!"
This passage, like all others
in which the faintest allusions could be found to a "Champion,"
"Deliverer," or "Vindicator," was interpreted into a direct
reference to the Messiah; but apart from the fact that in the Septuagint this
verse is translated:
"For I know that He is eternal
Who is about to deliver me on
earth,
To restore this skin of mine
which endures these things," etc.
In King James's version, as it
stands translated, it has no resemblance whatever to the original.* The crafty
translators have rendered it, "I know that my Redeemer liveth," etc.
And yet Septuagint, Vulgate, and Hebrew original, have all to be considered as
an inspired Word of God. Job refers to his own immortal spirit which is
eternal, and which, when death comes, will deliver him from his putrid earthly
body and clothe him with a new spiritual envelope. In the Mysteries of
Eleusinia, in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and all other works treating on
matters of initiation, this "eternal being" has a name. With the
Neo-platonists it was the Nous, the Augoeides; with the Buddhists it is Aggra;
and with the Persians, Ferwer. All of these are called the
"Deliverers," the "Champions," the "Metatrons,"
etc. In the Mithraic sculptures of Persia, the ferwer is represented by a winged
figure hovering in the air above its "object" or body.** It is the
luminous Self -- the Atman of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Job," by
various translators, and compare the different texts.
** See Kerr Porter's
"Persia," vol. i., plates 17, 41.
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the Hindus, our immortal
spirit, who alone can redeem our soul; and will, if we follow him instead of
being dragged down by our body. Therefore, in the Chaldean texts, the above
reads, "My deliverer, my restorer," i.e., the Spirit who will restore
the decayed body of man, and transform it into a clothing of ether. And it is
this Nous, Augoeides, Ferwer, Aggra, Spirit of himself, that the triumphant Job
shall see without his flesh -- i.e., when he has escaped from his bodily
prison, and that the translators call "God."
Not only is there not the
slightest allusion in the poem of Job to Christ, but it is now well proved that
all those versions by different translators, which agree with that of King
James, were written on the authority of Jerome, who has taken strange liberties
in his Vulgate. He was the first to cram into the text this verse of his own
fabrication:
"I know that my Redeemer
lives,
And at the last day I shall
arise from the earth,
And again shall be surrounded
with my skin,
And in my flesh I shall see my
God."
All of which might have been a
good reason for himself to believe in it since he knew it, but for others who
did not, and who moreover found in the text a quite different idea, it only
proves that Jerome had decided, by one more interpolation, to enforce the dogma
of a resurrection "at the last day," and in the identical skin and
bones which we had used on earth. This is an agreeable prospect of
"restoration" indeed. Why not the linen also, in which the body
happens to die?
And how could the author of
the Book of Job know anything of the New Testament, when evidently he was
utterly ignorant even of the Old one? There is a total absence of allusion to
any of the patriarchs; and so evidently is it the work of an Initiate, that one
of the three daughters of Job is even called by a decidedly "Pagan"
mythological name. The name of Kerenhappuch is rendered in various ways by the
many translators. The Vulgate has "horn of antimony"; and the LXX has
the "horn of Amalthea," the nurse of Jupiter, and one of the constellations,
emblem of the "horn of plenty." The presence in the Septuagint of
this heroine of Pagan fable, shows the ignorance of the transcribers of its
meaning as well as the esoteric origin of the Book of Job.
Instead of offering
consolations, the three friends of the suffering Job seek to make him believe
that his misfortune must have come in punishment of some extraordinary
transgressions on his part. Hurling back upon them all their imputations, Job
swears that while his breath is in him he will maintain his cause. He takes in
view the period of his prosperity "when the secret of God was upon his
tabernacles," and he was a judge
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UPON INITIATION.
"who sat chief, and dwelt
as a king in the army, or one that comforteth the mourners," and compares
with it the present time -- when vagrant Bedouins held him in derision, men
"viler than the earth," when he was prostrated by misfortune and foul
disease. Then he asserts his sympathy for the unfortunate, his chastity, his
integrity, his probity, his strict justice, his charities, his moderation, his
freedom from the prevalent sun-worship, his tenderness to enemies, his hospitality
to strangers, his openness of heart, his boldness for the right, though he
encountered the multitude and the contempt of families; and invokes the
Almighty to answer him, and his adversary to write down of what he had been
guilty.
To this there was not, and
could not be, any answer. The three had sought to crush Job by pleadings and
general arguments, and he had demanded consideration for his specific acts.
Then appeared the fourth; Elihu, the son of Barachel the Buzite, of the kindred
of Ram.*
Elihu is the hierophant; he
begins with a rebuke, and the sophisms of Job's false friends are swept away
like the loose sand before the west wind.
"And Elihu, the son of
Barachel, spoke and said: 'Great men are not always wise . . . there is a
spirit in man; the spirit within me constraineth me. . . . God speaketh once,
yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not. In a dream; in a vision of the night,
when deep sleep falleth upon man, in slumberings upon the bed; then he openeth
the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction. O Job, hearken unto me; hold
thy peace, and I shall teach thee WISDOM.' "
And Job, who to the dogmatic
fallacies of his three friends in the bitterness of his heart had exclaimed:
"No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you. . . .
Miserable comforters are ye all. . . . Surely I would speak to the Almighty,
and I desire to reason with God. But ye are forgers of lies, ye are physicians
of no value!" The sore-eaten, visited Job, who in the face of the official
clergy -- offering for all hope the necessarianism of damnation, had in his
despair nearly wavered in his patient faith, answered: "What ye know, the
same do I know also; I am not inferior unto you. . . . Man cometh forth like a
flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not. . . .
Man dieth, and wasteth away, yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? . .
. If a man die shall he live again? . . . When a few years are come then I
shall go the way whence I shall not return. . . . O that one might plead for a
man with God, as a man pleadeth for his neighbor!"
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The expression "of the
kindred of Ram" denotes that he was an Aramaean or Syrian from
Mesopotamia. Buz was a son of Nahor. "Elihu son of Barachel" is
susceptible of two translations. Eli-Hu -- God is, or Hoa is God; and Barach-Al
-- the worshipper of God, or Bar-Rachel, the son of Rachel, or son of the ewe.
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Job finds one who answers to
his cry of agony. He listens to the WISDOM of Elihu, the hierophant, the
perfected teacher, the inspired philosopher. From his stern lips comes the just
rebuke for his impiety in charging upon the SUPREME Being the evils of
humanity. "God," says Elihu, "is excellent in power, and in
judgment, and in plenty of justice; HE will not afflict."
So long as the neophyte was
satisfied with his own worldly wisdom and irreverent estimate of the Deity and
His purposes; so long as he gave ear to the pernicious sophistries of his
advisers, the hierophant kept silent. But, when this anxious mind was ready for
counsel and instruction, his voice is heard, and he speaks with the authority
of the Spirit of God that "constraineth" him: "Surely God will
not hear vanity, neither will the Almighty regard it. . . . He respecteth not
any that are wise at heart."
What better commentary than
this upon the fashionable preacher, who "multiplieth words without
knowledge!" This magnificent prophetic satire might have been written to
prefigure the spirit that prevails in all the denominations of Christians.
Job hearkens to the words of
wisdom, and then the "Lord" answers Job "out of the
whirlwind" of nature, God's first visible manifestation: "Stand
still, O Job, stand still! and consider the wondrous works of God; for by them
alone thou canst know God. 'Behold, God is great, and we know him not,' Him who
'maketh small the drops of water; but they pour down rain according to the
vapor thereof' ";* not according to the divine whim, but to the once
established and immutable laws. Which law "removeth the mountains and they
know not; which shaketh the earth; which commandeth the sun, and it riseth not;
and sealeth up the stars; . . . which doeth great things past finding out; yea,
and wonders without number. . . . Lo, He goeth by me, and I see him not; he
passeth on also, but I perceive him not!"**
Then, "Who is this that
darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?"*** speaks the voice of God
through His mouthpiece -- nature. "Where wast thou when I laid the
foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid
the measures thereof, if thou knowest? When the morning stars sang together,
and all the sons of God shouted for joy? . . . Wast thou present when I said to
the seas, 'Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further; and here shall thy proud
waves be stayed?' . . . Knowest thou who hath caused it to rain on the earth,
where no man is; on the wilderness, wherein there is no man. . . . Canst thou
bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* xxxvi. 24-27.
** ix. 5-11.
*** xxxviii. 1, et passim.
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TO LIGHT.
of Orion? . . .Canst thou send
lightnings, that they may go, and say unto thee, 'Here we are?' "*
"Then Job answered the
Lord." He understood His ways, and his eyes were opened for the first
time. The Supreme Wisdom descended upon him; and if the reader remain puzzled
before this final PETROMA of initiation, at least Job, or the man
"afflicted" in his blindness, then realized the impossibility of
catching "Leviathan by putting a hook into his nose." The Leviathan
is OCCULT SCIENCE, on which one can lay his hand, but "do no more,"**
whose power and "comely proportion" God wishes not to conceal.
"Who can discover the
face of his garment, or who can come to him with his double bridle? Who can
open the doors of his face, 'of him whose scales are his pride, shut up
together as with a closed seal?' Through whose 'neesings a light doth Shine,'
and whose eyes are like the lids of the morning." Who "maketh a light
to shine after him," for those who have the fearlessness to approach him.
And then they, like him, will behold "all high things, for he is king only
over all the children of pride."***
Job, now in modest confidence,
responded:
"I know that thou canst
do everything,
And that no thought of thine
can be resisted.
Who is he that maketh a show
of arcane wisdom,
Of which he knoweth nothing?
Thus have I uttered what I did
not comprehend --
Things far above me, which I
did not know.
Hear! I beseech thee, and I
will speak;
I will demand of thee, and do
thou answer me:
I have heard thee with my
ears,
And now I see thee with my
eyes,
Wherefore am I loathsome,
And mourn in dust and
ashes?"
He recognized his
"champion," and was assured that the time for his vindication had
come. Immediately the Lord ("the priests and the judges," Deuteronomy
xix. 17) saith to his friends: "My wrath is kindled against thee and
against thy two friends; for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right,
as my servant Job hath." So "the Lord turned the captivity of
Job," and "blessed the latter end of Job more than his
beginning."
Then in the judgment the
deceased invokes four spirits who preside over the Lake of Fire, and is
purified by them. He then is conducted to
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Job xxxviii. 35.
** Ibid., xli. 8.
*** Ibid., xli. 34.
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his celestial house, and is
received by Athar and Isis, and stands before Atum,* the essential God. He is
now Turu, the essential man, a pure spirit, and henceforth On-ati, the eye of
fire, and an associate of the gods.
This grandiose poem of Job was
well understood by the kabalists. While many of the mediaeval Hermetists were
profoundly religious men, they were, in their innermost hearts -- like
kabalists of every age -- the deadliest enemies of the clergy. How true the
words of Paracelsus when worried by fierce persecution and slander,
misunderstood by friends and foes, abused by clergy and laity, he exclaimed:
"O ye of Paris, Padua,
Montpellier, Salerno, Vienna, and Leipzig! Ye are not teachers of the truth,
but confessors of lies. Your philosophy is a lie. Would you know what MAGIC
really is, then seek it in St. John's Revelation. . . . As you cannot
yourselves prove your teachings from the Bible and the Revelation, then let
your farces have an end. The Bible is the true key and interpreter. John, not
less than Moses, Elias, Enoch, David, Solomon, Daniel, Jeremiah, and the rest
of the prophets, was a magician, kabalist, and diviner. If now, all, or even
any of those I have named, were yet living, I do not doubt that you would make
an example of them in your miserable slaughter-house, and would annihilate them
there on the spot, and if it were possible, the Creator of all things
too!"
That Paracelsus had learned
some mysterious and useful things out of Revelation and other Bible books, as
well as from the Kabala, was proved by him practically; so much so, that he is
called by many the "father of magic and founder of the occult physics of
the Kabala and magnetism."**
So firm was the popular belief
in the supernatural powers of Paracelsus, that to this day the tradition
survives among the simple-minded Alsatians that he is not dead, but
"sleepeth in his grave" at Strasburg.*** And they often whisper among
themselves that the green sod heaves with every respiration of that weary
breast, and that deep groans are heard as the great fire-philosopher awakes to
the remembrance of the cruel wrongs he suffered at the hands of his cruel
slanderers for the sake of the great truth!
It will be perceived from
these extended illustrations that the Satan of the Old Testament, the Diabolos
or Devil of the Gospels and Apostolic Epistles, were but the antagonistic
principle in matter, necessarily incident to it, and not wicked in the moral
sense of the term. The Jews,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Atum, or At-ma, is the
Concealed God, at once Phtha and Amon, Father and Son, Creator and thing
created, Thought and Appearance, Father and Mother.
** Molitor, Ennemoser, Henman,
Pfaff, etc.
*** Schopheim:
"Traditions," p. 32.
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SATANISM UNLIKE.
coming from the Persian
country, brought with them the doctrine of two principles. They could not bring
the Avesta, for it was not written. But they -- we mean the Asidians and Pharsi
-- invested Ormazd with the secret name of [[Heb char]], and Ahriman with the
name of the gods of the land, Satan of the Hittites, and Diabolos, or rather
Diobolos, of the Greeks. The early Church, at least the Pauline part of it, the
Gnostics and their successors, further refined upon their ideas; and the
Catholic Church adopted and adapted them, meanwhile putting their promulgators
to the sword.
The Protestant is a reaction
from the Roman Catholic Church. It is necessarily not coherent in its parts,
but a prodigious host of fragments beating their way round a common centre,
attracting and repelling each other. Parts are centripetally impelled towards
old Rome, or the system which enabled old Rome to exist; parts still recoil
under the centrifugal impulse, and seek to rush into the broad ethereal region
beyond Roman, or even Christian influence.
The modern Devil is their
principal heritage from the Roman Cybele, "Babylon, the Great Mother of
the idolatrous and abominable religions of the earth."
But it may be argued, perhaps,
that Hindu theology, both Brahmanical and Buddhistic, is as strongly
impregnated with belief in objective devils as Christianity itself. There is a
slight difference. This very subtlety of the Hindu mind is a sufficient warrant
that the well-educated people, the learned portion, at least, of the Brahman
and Buddhist divines, consider the Devil in another light. With them the Devil
is a metaphysical abstraction, an allegory of necessary evil; while with
Christians the myth has become a historical entity, the fundamental stone on
which Christianity, with its dogma of redemption, is built. He is as necessary
-- as Des Mousseaux has shown -- to the Church as the beast of the seventeenth
chapter of the Apocalypse was to his rider. The English-speaking Protestants,
not finding the Bible explicit enough, have adopted the Diabology of Milton's
celebrated poem, Paradise Lost, embellishing it somewhat from Goethe's
celebrated drama of Faust. John Milton, first a Puritan and finally a Quietist
and Unitarian, never put forth his great production except as a work of
fiction, but it thoroughly dovetailed together the different parts of
Scripture. The Ilda-Baoth of the Ophites was transformed into an angel of
light, and the morning star, and made the Devil in the first act of the
Diabolic Drama. Then the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse was brought in for
the second act. The great red Dragon was adopted as the same illustrious
personage as Lucifer, and the last scene is his fall, like that of Vulcan-Hephaistos,
from Heaven into the island of Lemnos; the fugitive hosts and their
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leader "coming to hard
bottom" in Pandemonium. The third act is the Garden of Eden. Satan holds a
council in a hall erected by him for his new empire, and determines to go forth
on an exploring expedition in quest of the new world. The next acts relate to
the fall of man, his career on earth, the advent of the Logos, or Son of God,
and his redemption of mankind, or the elect portion of them, as the case may
be.
This drama of Paradise Lost
comprises the unformulated belief of English-speaking "evangelical
Protestant Christians." Disbelief of its main features is equivalent, in
their view, to "denying Christ" and "blaspheming against the
Holy Ghost." If John Milton had supposed that his poem, instead of being
regarded as a companion of Dante's Divine Comedy, would have been considered as
another Apocalypse to supplement the Bible, and complete its demonology, it is
more than probable that he would have borne his poverty more resolutely, and
withheld it from the press. A later poet, Robert Pollok, taking his cue from this
work, wrote another, The Course of Time, which bade fair for a season to take
the rank of a later Scripture; but the nineteenth century has fortunately
received a different inspiration, and the Scotch poet is falling into oblivion.
We ought, perhaps, to make a
brief notice of the European Devil. He is the genius who deals in sorcery,
witchcraft, and other mischief. The Fathers taking the idea from the Jewish
Pharisees, made devils of the Pagan gods, Mithras, Serapis, and the others. The
Roman Catholic Church followed by denouncing the former worship as commerce
with the powers of darkness. The malefecii and witches of the middle ages were
thus but the votaries of the proscribed worship. Magic in all ancient times had
been considered as divine science, wisdom, and the knowledge of God. The
healing art in the temples of AEsculapius, and at the shrines of Egypt and the
East, had always been magical. Even Darius Hystaspes, who had exterminated the
Median Magi, and even driven out the Chaldean theurgists from Babylon into Asia
Minor, had also been instructed by the Brahmans of Upper Asia, and, finally,
while establishing the worship of Ormazd, was also himself denominated the
instituter of magism. All was now changed. Ignorance was enthroned as the
mother of devotion. Learning was denounced, and savants prosecuted the sciences
in peril of their lives. They were compelled to employ a jargon to conceal
their ideas from all but their own adepts, and to accept opprobrium, calumny,
and poverty.
The votaries of the ancient
worship were persecuted and put to death on charges of witchcraft. The
Albigenses, descendants of the Gnostics, and the Waldenses, precursors of the
Protestants, were hunted and massacred under like accusations. Martin Luther
himself was accused of
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SATAN.
companionship with Satan in
proper person. The whole Protestant world still lies under the same imputation.
There is no distinction in the judgments of the Church between dissent, heresy,
and witchcraft. And except where civil authority protects, they are alike
capital offences. Religious liberty the Church regards as intolerance.
But the reformers were nursed
with the milk of their mother. Luther was as bloodthirsty as the Pope; Calvin
more intolerant than Leo or Urban. Thirty years of war depopulated whole
districts of Germany, Protestants and Catholics cruel alike. The new faith too
opened its batteries against witchcraft. The statute books became crimsoned
with bloody legislation in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Holland, Great Britain,
and the North American Commonwealth. Whosoever was more liberal, more
intelligent, more free speaking than his fellows was liable to arrest and
death. The fires that were extinguished at Smithfield were kindled anew for
magicians; it was safer to rebel against a throne than to pursue abstruse
knowledge outside the orthodox dead-line.
In the seventeenth century
Satan made a sortie in New England, New Jersey, New York, and several of the
Southern colonies of North America, and Cotton Mather gives us the principal
chronicles of his manifestation. A few years later he visited the Parsonage of
Mora, in Sweden, and Life in Dalecarlia was diversified with the burning alive
of young children, and the whipping of others at the church-doors on
Sabbath-days. The skepticism of modern times has, however, pretty much driven
the belief in witchcraft into Coventry; and the Devil in personal
anthropomorphic form, with his Bacchus-foot, and his Pan-like goat's horns,
holds place only in the Encyclical Letters, and other effusions of the Roman
Catholic Church. Protestant respectability does not allow him to be named at all
except with bated breath in a pulpit-enclosure.
Having now set forth the
biography of the Devil from his first advent in India and Persia, his progress
through Jewish, and both early and later Christian Theology down to the latest
phases of his manifestation, we now turn back to review certain of the opinions
extant in the earlier Christian centuries.
Avatars or incarnations were
common to the old religions. India had them reduced to a system. The Persians
expected Sosiosh, and the Jewish writers looked for a deliverer. Tacitus and
Suetonius relate that the East was full of expectation of the Great Personage
about the time of Octavius. "Thus doctrines obvious to Christians were the
highest arcana of Paganism."* The Maneros of Plutarch was a child of
Pales-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* W. Williams: "Primitive
History"; Dunlap: "Spirit History of Man."
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tine;* his mediator Mithras,
the Saviour Osiris is the Messiah. In our present "Canonical
Scriptures" are to be traced the vestigia of the ancient worships; and in the
rites and ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church we find the forms of the
Buddhistical worship, its ceremonies and hierarchy. The first Gospels, once as
canonical as any of the present four, contain pages taken almost entire from
Buddhistical narratives, as we are prepared to show. After the evidence
furnished by Burnouf, Asoma, Korosi, Beal, Hardy, Schmidt, and translations
from the Tripitaka, it is impossible to doubt that the whole Christian scheme
emanated from the other. The "Miraculous Conception" miracles and
other incidents are found in full in Hardy's Manual of Buddhism. We can readily
realize why the Roman Catholic Church is anxious to keep the common people in
utter ignorance of the Hebrew Bible and the Greek literature. Philology and comparative
Theology are her deadliest enemies. The deliberate falsifications of Irenaeus,
Epiphanius, Eusebius and Tertullian had become a necessity.
The Sibylline Books at that
period seem to have been regarded with extraordinary favor. One can easily
perceive that they were inspired from the same source as those of the Gentile
nations.
Here is a leaf from Gallaeus:
"New Light has arisen:
Coming from Heaven, it assumed
a mortal form. . . .
-- Virgin, receive God in thy
pure bosom --
And the Word flew into her womb:
Becoming incarnate in Time,
and animated by her body,
It was found in a mortal
image, and a Boy was created
By a Virgin. . . . The new
God-sent Star was adored by the Magi,
The infant swathed was shown
in a manger. . . .
And Bethlehem was called
"God-called country of the Word."*
This looks at first-sight like
a prophecy of Jesus. But could it not mean as well some other creative God? We
have like utterances concerning Bacchus and Mithras.
"I, son of Deus, am come
to the land of the Thebans -- Bacchus, whom formerly Semele (the Virgin), the
daughter of Kadmus (the man from the East) brings forth -- being delivered by
the lightning-bearing flame; and having taken a mortal form instead of God's, I
have arrived."***
The Dionysiacs, written in the
fifth century, serve to render this matter very clear, and even to show its
close connection with the Christian legend of the birth of Jesus:
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Plutarch: "Isis and
Osiris," p. 17.
** "Sibylline Oracles,"
760-788.
*** Euripides:
"Bacchae."
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PERSEPHONE.
Kore-Persephoneia* . . . you were
wived as the Dragon's spouse,
When Zeus, very coiled, his
form and countenance changed,
A Dragon-Bridegroom, coiled in
love-inspiring fold . . .
Glided to dark Kore's maiden
couch . . .
Thus, by the alliance with the
Dragon of AEther,
The womb of Persephone became
alive with fruit,
Bearing Zagreus,** the Horned
Child."***
Here we have the secret of the
Ophite worship, and the origin of the Christian later-revised fable of the
immaculate conception. The Gnostics were the earliest Christians with anything
like a regular theological system, and it is only too evident that it was Jesus
who was made to fit their theology as Christos, and not their theology that was
developed out of his sayings and doings. Their ancestors had maintained, before
the Christian era, that the Great Serpent -- Jupiter, the Dragon of Life, the
Father and "Good Divinity," had glided into the couch of Semele, and
now, the post-Christian Gnostics, with a very trifling change, applied the same
fable to the man Jesus, and asserted that the same "Good Divinity,"
Saturn (Ilda-Baoth), had, in the shape of the Dragon of Life, glided over the
cradle of the infant Mary.**** In their eyes the Serpent was the Logos --
Christos, the incarnation of Divine Wisdom, through his Father Ennola and
Mother Sophia.
"Now my mother, the Holy
Spirit (Holy Ghost) took me," Jesus is made to say in the Gospel of the
Hebrews,***** thus entering upon his part of Christos -- the Son of Sophia, the
Holy Spirit.******
"The Holy Ghost shall
come upon thee, and the POWER of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore,
that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called Son of God,"
says the angel (Luke i. 35).
"God . . . hath at the
last of these days spoken to us by a Son,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* We doubt the propriety of
rendering [[kore]], virgin. Demeter and Persephoneia were substantially the
same divinity, as were Apollo and Esculapius. The scene of this adventure is
laid in Krete or Koureteia, where Zeus was chief god. It was, doubtless, Keres
or Demeter that is intended. She was also named [[koura]], which is the same as
[[kore]]. As she was the goddess of the Mysteries, she was fittest for the
place as consort of the Serpent-God and mother of Zagreus.
** Pococke considers Zeus a
grand lama, or chief Jaina, and Kore-Persephone, or Kuru-Parasu-pani. Zagreus,
is Chakras, the wheel, or circle, the earth, the ruler of the world. He was
killed by the Titans, or Teith-ans (Daityas). The Horns or crescent was a badge
of Lamaic sovereignty.
*** Nonnus:
"Dionysiacs."
**** See Deane's "Serpent
Worship," pp. 89, 90.
***** Creuzer:
"Symbol.," vol. i., p. 341.
****** The Dragon is the sun,
the generative principle -- Jupiter-Zeus; and Jupiter is called the "Holy
Spirit" by the Egyptians, says Plutarch, "De Iside," xxxvi.
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whom he hath appointed heir of
all things, by whom also he made the AEons" (Paul: Heb. i.).*
All such expressions are so
many Christian quotations from the Nonnus verse " . . . through the
AEtherial Draconteum," for Ether is the Holy Ghost or third person of the
Trinity -- the Hawk-headed Serpent, the Egyptian Kneph, emblem of the Divine
Mind** and Plato's universal soul.
"I, Wisdom, came out of
the mouth of the Most High, and covered the earth as a cloud."***
Pimander, the Logos, issues from
the Infinite Darkness, and covers the earth with clouds which, serpentine-like,
spread all over the earth (See Champollion's Egypte). The Logos is the oldest
image of God, and he is the active Logos, says Philo.**** The Father is the
Latent Thought.
This idea being universal, we
find an identical phraseology to express it, among Pagans, Jews, and early
Christians. The Chaldeo-Persian Logos is the Only-Begotten of the Father in the
Babylonian cosmogony of Eudemus. "Hymn now, ELI, child of Deus,"
begins a Homeric hymn to the sun.***** Sol-Mithra is an "image of the
Father," as the kabalistic Seir-Anpin.
That of all the various
nations of antiquity, there never was one which believed in a personal devil
more than liberal Christians in the nineteenth century, seems hardly credible,
and yet such is the sorrowful fact. Neither the Egyptians, whom Porphyry terms
"the most learned nation of the world," ****** nor Greece, its
faithful copyist, were ever guilty of such a crowning absurdity. We may add at
once that none of them, not even the ancient Jews, believed in hell or an
eternal damnation any more than in the Devil, although our Christian churches
are so liberal in dealing it out to the heathen. Wherever the word
"hell" occurs in the translations of the Hebrew sacred texts, it is
unfortunate. The Hebrews were ignorant of such an idea; but yet the gospels
contain frequent examples of the same misunderstanding. So, when Jesus is made
to say (Matthew xvi. 18) ". . . and the gates of Hades shall not prevail
against it," in the original text it stands "the gates of
death."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In the original it stands
AEons (emanations). In the translation it stands worlds. It was not to be
expected that, after anathematizing the doctrine of emanations, the Church
would refrain from erasing the original word, which clashed diametrically with
her newly-enforced dogma of the Trinity.
** See Dean's "Serpent
Worship," p. 145.
*** Ecclesiasticus xxiv. 3.
**** See Dunlap's "Spirit
History of Man," the chapter on "the Logos, the Only Begotten and the
King."
***** Translated by Buckley.
****** "Select Works on
Sacrifice."
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SHADOWS OF THE LIGHT.
Never is the word
"hell" -- as applied to the state of damnation, either temporary or
eternal -- used in any passage of the Old Testament, all hellists to the contrary,
notwithstanding. "Tophet," or "the Valley of Hinnom"
(Isaiah lxvi. 24) bears no such interpretation. The Greek term
"Gehenna" has also quite a different meaning, as it has been proved
conclusively by more than one competent writer, that "Gehenna" is
identical with the Homeric Tartarus.
In fact, we have Peter himself
as authority for it. In his second Epistle (ii. 2) the Apostle, in the original
text, is made to say of the sinning angels that God "cast them down into
Tartarus." This expression too inconveniently recalling the war of Jupiter
and the Titans, was altered, and now it reads, in King James's version:
"cast them down to hell."
In the Old Testament the
expressions "gates of death," and the "chambers of death,"
simply allude to the "gates of the grave," which are specifically
mentioned in the Psalms and Proverbs. Hell and its sovereign are both
inventions of Christianity, coeval with its accession to power and resort to
tyranny. They were hallucinations born of the nightmares of the SS. Anthonys in
the desert. Before our era the ancient sages knew the "Father of
Evil," and treated him no better than an ass, the chosen symbol of Typhon,
"the Devil."* Sad degeneration of human brains!
As Typhon was the dark shadow
of his brother Osiris, so Python is the evil side of Apollo, the bright god of
visions, the seer and the soothsayer. He is killed by Python, but kills him in
his turn, thus redeeming humanity from sin. It was in memory of this deed that
the priestesses of the sun-god enveloped themselves in the snake-skin, typical
of the fabulous monster. Under its exhilarating influence -- the serpent's skin
being considered magnetic -- the priestesses fell into magnetic trances, and
"receiving their voice from Apollo," they became prophetic and
delivered oracles.
Again Apollo and Python are
one and morally androgynous. The sun-god ideas are all dual, without exception.
The beneficent warmth of the sun calls the germ into existence, but excessive
heat kills the plant. While playing on his seven-stringed planetary lyre,
Apollo produces harmony; but, as well as other sun-gods, under his dark aspect
he becomes the destroyer, Python.
St. John is known to have
travelled in Asia, a country governed by Magi and imbued with Zoroastrian
ideas, and in those days full of Buddhist
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Typhon is called by Plutarch
and Sanchoniathon, "Tuphon, the red-skinned." Plutarch: "Isis
and Osiris," xxi.-xxvi.
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missionaries. Had he never
visited those places and come in contact with Buddhists, it is doubtful whether
the Revelation would have been written. Besides his ideas of the dragon, he
gives prophetic narratives entirely unknown to the other apostles, and which,
relating to the second advent, make of Christ a faithful copy of Vishnu.
Thus Ophios and Ophiomorphos,
Apollo and Python, Osiris and Typhon, Christos and the Serpent, are all
convertible terms. They are all Logoi, and one is unintelligible without the
other, as day could not be known had we no night. All are regenerators and
saviours, one in a spiritual, the other in a physical sense. One insures
immortality for the Divine Spirit; the other gives it through regeneration of
the seed. The Saviour of mankind has to die, because he unveils to humanity the
great secret of the immortal ego; the serpent of Genesis is cursed because he
said to matter, "Ye shall not die." In the world of Paganism the
counterpart of the "serpent" is the second Hermes, the reincarnation
of Hermes Trismegistus.
Hermes is the constant
companion and instructor of Osiris and Isis. He is the personified wisdom; so
is Cain, the son of the "Lord." Both build cities, civilize and
instruct mankind in the arts.
It has been repeatedly stated
by the Christian missionaries in Ceylon and India that the people are steeped
in demonolatry; that they are devil-worshippers, in the full sense of the word.
Without any exaggeration we say that they are no more so than the masses of
uneducated Christians. But even were they worshippers of (which is more than
believers in) the Devil, yet there is a great difference between the teachings of
their clergy on the subject of a personal devil and the dogmas of Catholic
preachers and many Protestant ministers also. The Christian priests are bound
to teach and impress upon the minds of their flock the existence of the Devil,
and the opening pages of the present chapter show the reason why. But not only
will the Cingalese Oepasampala, who belong to the highest priesthood, not
confess to belief in a personal demon but even the Samenaira, the candidates
and novices, would laugh at the idea. Everything in the external worship of the
Buddhists is allegorical and is never otherwise accepted or taught by the
educated pungis (pundits). The accusation that they allow, and tacitly agree to
leave the poor people steeped in the most degrading superstitions, is not
without foundation; but that they enforce such superstitions, we most
vehemently deny. And in this they appear to advantage beside our Christian
clergy, who (at least those who have not allowed their fanaticism to interfere
with their brains), without believing a word of it, yet preach the existence of
the Devil, as the personal enemy of a personal God, and the evil genius of
mankind.
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RAWHO.
St. George's Dragon, which
figures so promiscuously in the grandest cathedrals of the Christians, is not a
whit handsomer than the King of Snakes, the Buddhist Nammadanam-naraya, the
great Dragon. If the planetary Demon Rawho, is believed, in the popular
superstition of the Cingalese, to endeavor to destroy the moon by swallowing
it; and if in China and Tartary the rabble is allowed, without rebuke, to beat
gongs and make fearful noises to drive the monster away from its prey during
the eclipses, why should the Catholic clergy find fault, or call this
superstition? Do not the country clergy in Southern France do the same,
occasionally, at the appearance of comets, eclipses, and other celestial phenomena?
In 1456, when Halley's comet made its appearance, "so tremendous was its
apparition," writes Draper, "that it was necessary for the Pope
himself to interfere. He exorcised and expelled it from the skies. It slunk
away into the abysses of space, terror-stricken by the maledictions of Calixtus
III., and did not venture back for seventy-five years!"*
We never heard of any
Christian clergyman or Pope trying to disabuse ignorant minds of the belief
that the Devil had anything to do with eclipses and comets; but we do find a
Buddhist chief priest saying to an official who twitted him with this
superstition: "Our Cingalese religious books teach that the eclipses of
the sun and moon denote an attack of Rahu** (one of the nine planets) not by a
devil."***
The origin of the
"Dragon" myth so prominent in the Apocalypse and Golden Legend, and
of the fable about Simeon Stylites converting the Dragon, is undeniably
Buddhistic and even pre-Buddhistic. It was Gautama's pure doctrines which
reclaimed to Buddhism the Cashmerians whose primitive worship was the Ophite or
Serpent worship. Frankincense and flowers replaced the human sacrifices and
belief in personal demons. It became the turn of Christianity to inherit the
degrading superstition about devils invested with pestilential and murderous
powers. The Mahavansa, oldest of the Ceylonese books, relates the story of King
Covercapal (cobra-de-capello), the snake-god, who was converted to Buddhism by
a holy Rahat;**** and it is earlier, by all odds, than the Golden Legend which
tells the same of Simeon the Stylite and his Dragon.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Conflict between
Religion and Science," p. 269.
** Rahu and Kehetty are the
two fixed stars which form the head and tail of the constellation of the
Dragon.
*** E. Upham: "The
Mahavansi, etc.," p. 54, for the answer given by the chief-priest of
Mulgirs Galle Vihari, named Sue Bandare Metankere Samanere Samavahanse, to a
Dutch Governor in 1766.
**** We leave it to the learned
archaeologists and philologists to decide how the Naga or Serpent worship could
travel from Kashmir to Mexico and become the Nargal worship, which is also a
Serpent worship, and a doctrine of lycanthropy.
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The Logos triumphs once more
over the great Dragon; Michael, the luminous archangel, chief of the AEons,
conquers Satan.*
It is a fact worthy of remark,
that so long as the initiate kept silent "on what he knew," he was
perfectly safe. So was it in days of old, and so it is now. As soon as the
Christian God, emanating forth from Silence, manifested himself as the Word or
Logos, the latter became the cause of his death. The serpent is the symbol of
wisdom and eloquence, but it is likewise the symbol of destruction. "To
dare, to know, to will, and be silent," are the cardinal axioms of the
kabalist. Like Apollo and other gods, Jesus is killed by his Logos;** he rises
again, kills him in his turn, and becomes his master. Can it be that this old
symbol has, like the rest of ancient philosophical conceptions, more than one
allegorical and never-suspected meaning? The coincidences are too strange to be
results of mere chance.
And now that we have shown
this identity between Michael and Satan, and the Saviours and Dragons of other
people, what can be more clear than that all these philosophical fables
originated in India, that universal hot-bed of metaphysical mysticism?
"The world," says Ramatsariar, in his comments upon the Vedas,
"commenced with a contest between the Spirit of Good and the Spirit of
Evil, and so must end. After the destruction of matter evil can no longer exist,
it must return to naught."***
In the Apologia, Tertullian
falsifies most palpably every doctrine and belief of the Pagans as to the
oracles and gods. He calls them, indifferently, demons and devils, accusing the
latter of taking possession of even the birds of the air! What Christian would
now dare doubt such an authority? Did not the Psalmist exclaim: "All the
gods of the nations are idols"; and the Angel of the School, Thomas
Aquinas, explains, on his own kabalistic authority, the word idols by devils?
"They come to men," he says, "and offer themselves to their
adoration by operating certain things which seem miraculous."****
The Fathers were prudent as
they were wise in their inventions. To be impartial, after having created a
Devil, they set to creating apocryphal saints. We have named several in
preceding chapters; but we must not forget Baronius, who having read in a work
of Chrysostom about the holy Xenoris, the word meaning a pair, a couple,
mistook it for the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Michael, the chief of the
AEons, is also "Gabriel, the messenger of Life," of the Nazarenes,
and the Hindu Indra, the chief of the good Spirits, who vanquished Vasouki, the
Demon who rebelled against Brahma.
** See the Gnostic amulet
called the "Chnuphis-Serpent," in the act of raising its head crowned
with the seven vowels, which is the kabalistic symbol for signifying the
"gift of speech to man," or Logos.
*** "Tamas, the
Vedas."
**** Thomas Aquinas:
"Somma," ii., 94 Art.
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GOETHE.
name of a saint, and proceeded
forthwith to create of it a martyr of Antioch, and went on to give a most
detailed and authentic biography of the "blessed martyr." Other
theologians made of Apollyon -- or rather Apolouon -- the anti-Christ. Apolouon
is Plato's "washer," the god who purifies, who washes off, and
releases us from sin, but he was thus transformed into him "whose name in
the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name
Apollyon" -- Devil!
Max Muller says that the
serpent in Paradise is a conception which might have sprung up among the Jews,
and "seems hardly to invite comparison with the much grander conceptions
of the terrible power of Vritra and Ahriman in the Veda and Avesta." With
the kabalists the Devil was always a myth -- God or good reversed. That modern
Magus, Eliphas Levi, calls the Devil l'ivresse astrale. It is a blind force
like electricity, he says; and, speaking allegorically, as he always did, Jesus
remarked that he "beheld Satan like lightning fall from Heaven."
The clergy insist that God has
sent the Devil to tempt mankind; which would be rather a singular way of
showing his boundless love to humanity! If the Supreme One is really guilty of
such unfatherly treachery, he is worthy, certainly, of the adoration only of a
Church capable of singing the Te Deum over a massacre of St. Bartholomew, and
of blessing Mussulman swords drawn to slaughter Greek Christians!
This is at once sound logic
and good sound law, for is it not a maxim of jurisprudence: "Qui facit per
alium, facit per se"?
The great dissimilarity which
exists between the various conceptions of the Devil is really often ludicrous.
While bigots will invariably endow him with horns, tail, and every conceivable
repulsive feature, even including an offensive human smell,* Milton, Byron,
Goethe, Lermontoff,** and a host of French novelists have sung his praise in
flowing verse and thrilling prose. Milton's Satan, and even Goethe's
Mephistopheles, are certainly far more commanding figures than some of the
angels, as represented in the prose of ecstatic bigots. We have
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See des Mousseaux; see
various other Demonographers; the different "Trials of Witches," the
depositions of the latter exacted by torture, etc. In our humble opinion, the Devil
must have contracted this disagreeable smell and his habits of uncleanliness in
company with mediaeval monks. Many of these saints boasted of having never
washed themselves! "To strip one's self for the sake of vain cleanliness,
is to sin in the eyes of God," says Sprenger, in the "Witches'
Hammer." Hermits and monks "dreaded all cleansing as so much
defilement. There was no bathing for a thousand years!" exclaims Michelet
in his "Sorciere." Why such an outcry against Hindu fakirs in such a
case? These, if they keep dirty, besmear themselves only after washing, for
their religion commands them to wash every morning, and sometimes several times
a day.
** Lermontoff, the great
Russian poet, author of the "Demon."
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but to compare two
descriptions. Let us first award the floor to the incomparably sensational des
Mousseaux. He gives us a thrilling account of an incubus, in the words of the
penitent herself: "Once," she tells us, "during the space of a
whole half-hour, she saw distinctly near her an individual with a black,
dreadful, horrid body, and whose hands, of an enormous size, exhibited clawed
fingers strangely hooked. The senses of sight, feeling, and smell were
confirmed by that of hearing!!"*
And yet, for the space of
several years, the damsel suffered herself to be led astray by such a hero. How
far above this odoriferous gallant is the majestic figure of the Miltonic
Satan!
Let the reader then fancy, if
he can, this superb chimera, this ideal of the rebellious angel become
incarnate Pride, crawling into the skin of the most disgusting of all animals!
Notwithstanding that the Christian catechism teaches us that Satan in propria
persona tempted our first mother, Eve, in a real paradise, and that in the
shape of a serpent, which of all animals was the most insinuating and
fascinating! God orders him, as a punishment, to crawl eternally on his belly,
and bite the dust. "A sentence," remarks Levi, "which resembles
in nothing the traditional flames of hell." The more so, that the real
zoological serpent, which was created before Adam and Eve, crawled on his
belly, and bit the dust likewise, before there was any original sin.
Apart from this, was not
Ophion the Daimon, or Devil, like God called Dominus?** The word God (deity) is
derived from the Sanscrit word Deva, and Devil from the Persian daeva, which
words are substantially alike. Hercules, son of Jove and Alcmena, one of the
highest sun-gods and also Logos manifested, is nevertheless represented under a
double nature, as all others.***
The Agathodaemon, the
beneficent daemon,**** the same which we find later among the Ophites under the
appellation of the Logos, or divine wisdom, was represented by a serpent
standing erect on a pole, in the Bacchanalian Mysteries. The hawk-headed
serpent is among the oldest of the Egyptian emblems, and represents the divine
mind, says Deane.***** Azazel is Moloch and Samael, says Movers,****** and we
find Aaron, the brother of the great law-giver Moses, making equal sacrifices
to Jehovah and Azazel.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Les Hauts Phenomenes
de la Magie," p. 379.
** "Movers," p. 109.
*** Hercules is of Hindu
origin.
**** The same as the Egyptian
Kneph, and the Gnostic Ophis.
***** "Serpent
Worship," p. 145.
****** "Movers," p.
397. Azazel and Samael are identical.
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AGATHODAEMON.
"And Aaron shall cast
lots upon the two goats; one lot for the Lord (Ihoh in the original) and one lot
for the scape-goat" (Azazel).
In the Old Testament Jehovah
exhibits all the attributes of old Saturn,* notwithstanding his metamorphoses
from Adoni into Eloi, and God of Gods, Lord of Lords.**
Jesus is tempted on the
mountain by the Devil, who promises to him kingdoms and glory if he will only
fall down and worship him (Matthew iv. 8, 9). Buddha is tempted by the Demon
Wasawarthi Mara, who says to him as he is leaving his father's palace: "Be
entreated to stay that you may possess the honors that are within your reach;
go not, go not! " And upon the refusal of Gautama to accept his offers,
gnashes his teeth with rage, and threatens him with vengeance. Like Christ,
Buddha triumphs over the Devil.***
In the Bacchic Mysteries a
consecrated cup was handed around after supper, called the cup of the
Agathodaemon.**** The Ophite rite of the same description is evidently borrowed
from these Mysteries. The communion consisting of bread and wine was used in
the worship of nearly every important deity.*****
In connection with the
semi-Mithraic sacrament adopted by the Marcosians, another Gnostic sect,
utterly kabalistic and theurgic, there is a strange story given by Epiphanius
as an illustration of the cleverness of the Devil. In the celebration of their
Eucharist, three large vases of the finest and clearest crystal were brought
among the congregation and filled with white wine. While the ceremony was going
on, in full view of everybody, this wine was instantaneously changed into a
blood-red, a purple, and then into an azure-blue color. "Then the
magus," says Epiphanius, "hands one of these vases to a woman in the
congregation, and asks her to bless it. When it is done, the magus pours out of
it into another vase of much greater capacity with the prayer: "May the
grace of God, which is above all, inconceivable, inexplicable, fill thy inner
man, and augment the knowledge of Him within thee, sowing the grain of mus-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Saturn is Bel-Moloch and
even Hercules and Siva. Both of the latter are Harakala, or gods of the war, of
the battle, or the "Lords of Hosts." Jehovah is called "a man of
war" in Exodus xv. 3. "The Lord of Hosts is his name" (Isaiah
li. 15), and David blesses him for teaching his "hands to war and his
fingers to fight" (Psalms cxliv. 1). Saturn is also the Sun, and Movers
says that Kronos Saturn was called by the Phoenicians Israel (130). Philo says
the same (in Euseb., p. 44).
** "Blessed be Iahoh,
Alahim, Alahi, Israel" (Psalm lxii.).
*** Hardy's "Manual of
Buddhism," p. 60.
**** Cousin: "Lect. on
Mod. Phil.," vol. i., p. 404.
***** Movers, Duncker,
Higgins, and others.
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tard-seed in good ground.*
Whereupon the liquor in the larger vase swells and swells until it runs over
the brim."**
In connection with several of
the Pagan deities which are made after death, and before their resurrection to
descend into Hell, it will be found useful to compare the pre-Christian with
the post-Christian narratives. Orpheus made the journey,*** and Christ was the
last of these subterranean travellers. In the Credo of the Apostles, which is
divided in twelve sentences or articles, each particular article having been
inserted by each particular apostle, according to St. Austin**** the sentence
"He descended into hell, the third day he rose again from the dead,"
is assigned to Thomas; perhaps, as an atonement for his unbelief. Be it as it
may, the sentence is declared a forgery, and there is no evidence "that
this creed was either framed by the apostles, or indeed, that it existed as a
creed in their time."*****
It is the most important
addition in the Apostle's Creed, and dates since the year of Christ 600.******
It was not known in the days of Eusebius. Bishop Parsons says that it was not
in the ancient creeds or rules of faith.******* Irenaeus, Origen, and
Tertullian exhibit no knowledge of this sentence.******** It is not mentioned
in any of the Councils before the seventh century. Theodoret, Epiphanius, and
Socrates are silent about it. It differs from the creed in St.
Augustine.********* Ruffinus affirms that in his time it was neither in the
Roman nor in the Oriental creeds (Exposit., in Symbol. Apost. § 10). But the
problem is solved when we learn that ages ago Hermes spoke thus to Prometheus,
chained on the arid rocks of the Caucasian mount:
"To such labors look thou
for no termination, UNTIL SOME GOD
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Haeres," xxxiv;
"Gnostics," p. 53.
** Wine was first made sacred
in the mysteries of Bacchus. Payne Knight believes -- erroneously we think -- that
wine was taken with the view to produce a false ecstasy through intoxication.
It was held sacred, however, and the Christian Eucharist is certainly an
imitation of the Pagan rite. Whether Mr. Knight was right or wrong, we regret
to say that a Protestant clergyman, the Rev. Joseph Blanchard, of New York, was
found drunk in one of the public squares on the night of Sunday, August 5,
1877, and lodged in prison. The published report says: "The prisoner said
that he had been to church and taken a little too much of the communion
wine!"
*** The initiatory rite
typified a descent into the underworld. Bacchus, Herakles, Orpheus, and
Asklepius all descended into hell and ascended thence the third day.
**** King's "Hist. Apost.
Creed," 8vo, p. 26.
***** Justice Bailey's
"Common Prayer," 1813, p. 9.
****** "Apostle's
Creed"; "Apocryphal New Testament."
******* "On the
Creed," fol. 1676, p. 225.
******** Lib. 1, c. 2;
"Lib. de Princ," in "Procoem. Advers. Praxeam," c. ii.
********* "De Fide et
Symbol."
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HELL" AND "KING OF GLORY."
SHALL APPEAR AS A SUBSTITUTE
IN THY PANGS, AND SHALL BE WILLING TO GO BOTH TO GLOOMY HADES AND TO THE MURKY
DEPTHS AROUND TARTARUS!" (AESCHYLUS: Prometheus, 1027, ff.).
This god was Herakles, the
"Only-Begotten One," and the Saviour. And it is he who was chosen as
a model by the ingenious Fathers. Hercules -- called Alexicacos -- for he
brought round the wicked and converted them to virtue; Soter, or Saviour, also
called Neulos Eumelos -- the Good Shepherd; Astrochiton, the star-clothed, and
the Lord of Fire. "He sought not to subject nations by force but by divine
wisdom and persuasion," says Lucian. "Herakles spread cultivation and
a mild religion, and destroyed the doctrine of eternal punishment by dragging
Kerberus (the Pagan Devil) from the nether world." And, as we see, it was
Herakles again who liberated Prometheus (the Adam of the pagans), by putting an
end to the torture inflicted on him for his transgressions, by descending to
the Hades, and going round the Tartarus. Like Christ he appeared as a
substitute for the pangs of humanity, by offering himself in a self-sacrifice
on a funereal-burning pile. "His voluntary immolation," says Bart,
"betokened the ethereal new birth of men. . . . Through the release of
Prometheus, and the erection of altars, we behold in him the mediator between
the old and new faiths. . . . He abolished human sacrifice wherever he found it
practiced. He descended into the sombre realm of Pluto, as a shade . . . he
ascended as a spirit to his father Zeus in Olympus."
So much was antiquity
impressed by the Heraklean legend, that even the monotheistic (?) Jews of those
days, not to be outdone by their contemporaries, put him to use in their
manufacture of original fables. Herakles is accused in his mythobiography of an
attempted theft of the Delphian oracle. In Sepher Toldos Jeschu, the Rabbins
accuse Jesus of stealing from their Sanctuary the Incommunicable Name!
Therefore it is but natural to
find his numerous adventures, worldly and religious, mirrored so faithfully in
the Descent into Hell. For extraordinary daring of mendacity, and unblushing
plagiarism, the Gospel of Nicodemus, only now proclaimed apocryphal, surpasses
anything we have read. Let the reader judge.
At the beginning of chapter
xvi., Satan and the "Prince of Hell" are described as peacefully
conversing together. All of a sudden, both are startled by "a voice as of
thunder" and the rushing of winds, which bids them to lift up their gates
for "the King of Glory shall come in." Whereupon the Prince of Hell
hearing this "begins quarrelling with Satan for minding his duty so
poorly, as not to have taken the necessary precautions against such a
visit." The quarrel ends with the prince casting Satan "forth from
his hell," ordering, at the same time, his
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impious officers "to shut
the brass gates of cruelty, make them fast with iron bars, and fight
courageously lest we be taken captives."
But "when all the company
of the saints . . . (in Hell?) heard this, they spoke with a loud voice of
anger to the Prince of Darkness, 'Open thy gates, that the King of Glory may
come in,' " thereby proving that, the prince needed spokesmen.
"And the divine (?)
prophet David cried out, saying: 'Did not I, when on earth, truly prophesy?'
" After this, another prophet, namely holy Isaiah spake in like manner,
"Did not I rightly prophesy?" etc. Then the company of the saints and
prophets, after boasting for the length of a chapter, and comparing notes of
their prophecies, begin a riot, which makes the Prince of Hell remark that,
"the dead never durst before behave themselves so insolently towards
us" (the devils, xviii. 6); feigning the while to be ignorant who it was
claiming admission. He then innocently asks again: "But who is the King of
Glory?" Then David tells him that he knows the voice well, and understands
its words, "because," he adds, "I spake them by his
Spirit." Perceiving finally that the Prince of Hell would not open the
"brass doors of iniquity," notwithstanding the king-psalmist's
voucher for the visitor, he, David, concludes to treat the enemy "as a
Philistine, and begins shouting: 'And now, thou filthy and stinking prince of
hell, open thy gates. . . . I tell thee that the King of Glory comes . . . let
him enter in.' "
While he was yet quarrelling
the "mighty Lord appeared in the form of a man" (?) upon which
"impious Death and her cruel officers are seized with fear." Then
they tremblingly begin to address Christ with various flatteries and
compliments in the shape of questions, each of which is an article of creed.
For instance: "And who art thou, so powerful and so great who dost release
the captives that were held in chains by original sin?" asks one devil.
"Perhaps, thou art that Jesus," submissively says another, "of
whom Satan just now spoke, that by the death of the Cross thou wert about to
receive the power over death?" etc. Instead of answering, the King of
Glory "tramples upon Death, seizes the Prince of Hell, and deprives him of
his power."
Then begins a turmoil in Hell
which has been graphically described by Homer, Hesiod, and their interpreter
Preller, in his account of the Astronomical Hercules Invictus, and his
festivals at Tyre, Tarsus, and Sardis. Having been initiated in the Attic
Eleusinia, the Pagan god descends into Hades and "when he entered the
nether world he spread such terror among the dead that all of them fled!"*
The same words
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Preller": ii., p.
154.
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are repeated in Nicodemus.
Follows a scene of confusion, horror, and lamenting. Perceiving that the battle
is lost, the Prince of Hell turns tail and prudently chooses to side with the
strongest. He against whom, according to Jude and Peter, even the Archangel
Michael "durst not bring a railing accusation before the Lord," is
now shamefully treated by his ex-ally and friend, the "Prince of
Hell." Poor Satan is abused and reviled for all his crimes both by devils
and saints; while the Prince is openly rewarded for his treachery. Addressing
him, the King of Glory says thus: "Beelzebub, the Prince of Hell, Satan
the Prince shall now be subject to thy dominion forever, in the room of Adam
and his righteous sons, who are mine . . . Come to me, all ye my saints, who
were created in my image, who were condemned by the tree of the forbidden
fruit, and by the Devil and death. Live now by the wood of my cross; the Devil,
the prince of this world is overcome (?) and Death is conquered." Then the
Lord takes hold of Adam by his right hand, of David by the left, and "ascends
from Hell, followed by all the saints," Enoch and Elias, and by the
"holy thief."*
The pious author, perhaps
through an oversight, omits to complete the cavalcade, by bringing up the rear
with the penitent dragon of Simon Stylites and the converted wolf of St.
Francis, wagging their tails and shedding tears of joy!
In the Codex of the Nazarenes
it is Tobo who is "the liberator of the soul of Adam," to bear it
from Orcus (Hades) to the place of LIFE. Tobo is Tob-Adonijah, one of the
twelve disciples (Levites) sent by Jehosaphat to preach to the cities of Judah
the Book of the Law (2 Chron. xvii.). In the kabalistic books these were
"wise men," Magi. They drew down the rays of the sun to enlighten the
sheol (Hades) Orcus, and thus show the way out of the Tenebrae, the darkness of
ignorance, to the soul of Adam, which represents collectively all the
"souls of mankind." Adam (Athamas) is Tamuz or Adonis, and Adonis is
the sun Helios. In the Book of the Dead (vi. 231) Osiris is made to say:
"I shine like the sun in the star-house at the feast of the sun."
Christ is called the "Sun of Righteousness," "Helios of
Justice" (Euseb.: Demons. Ev., v. 29), simply a revamping of the old
heathen allegories; nevertheless, to have made it serve for such a use is no
less blasphemous on the part of men who pretended to be describing a true
episode of the earth-pilgrimage of their God!
"Herakles, who has gone
out from the chambers of earth,
Leaving the nether house of
Plouton!"**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Nicodemus: "Apocryphal
Gospel," translated from the Gospel published by Grynaeus,
"Orthodoxographa," vol. i., tom. ii., p. 643.
** Euripides:
"Herakles," 807.
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"At THEE the Stygian
lakes trembled; Thee the janitor of Orcus
Feared. . . . Thee not even
Typhon frightened. . . .
Hail true SON of JOVE, GLORY added
to the gods!"*
More than four centuries
before the birth of Jesus, Aristophanes had written his immortal parody on the
Descent into Hell, by Herakles.** The chorus of the "blessed ones,"
the initiated, the Elysian Fields, the arrival of Bacchus (who is Iacchos --
Iaho -- and Sabaoth) with Herakles, their reception with lighted torches,
emblems of new life and RESURRECTION from darkness, death unto light, eternal
LIFE; nothing that is found in the Gospel of Nicodemus is wanting in this
poem:***
"Wake, burning torches .
. . for thou comest
Shaking them in thy hand,
Iacche,
Phosphoric star of the nightly
rite!"****
But the Christians accept
these post-mortem adventures of their god, concocted from those of his Pagan
predecessors, and derided by Aristophanes four centuries before our era,
literally! The absurdities of Nicodemus were read in the churches, as well as
those of the Shepherd of Hermas. Irenaeus quotes the latter under the name of
Scripture, a divinely-inspired "revelation"; Jerome and Eusebius both
insist upon its being publicly read in the churches; and Athanasius observes
that the Fathers "appointed it to be read in confirmation of faith and
piety." But then comes the reverse of this bright medal, to show once more
how stable and trustworthy were the opinions of the strongest pillars of an
infallible Church. Jerome, who applauds the book in his catalogue of
ecclesiastical writers, in his later comments terms it "apocryphal and
foolish"! Tertullian, who could not find praise enough for the Shepherd of
Hermas when a Catholic, "began abusing it when a Montanist."*****
Chapter xiii. begins with the
narrative given by the two resuscitated ghosts of Charinus and Lenthius, the
sons of that Simeon who, in the Gospel according to Luke (ii. 25-32), takes the
infant Jesus in his arms and blesses God, saying: "Lord, now lettest thou
thy servant depart in peace . . . for mine eyes have seen thy
salvation"****** These two ghosts
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "AEneid," viii.,
274, ff.
** "Frogs"; see
fragments given in "Sod, the Mystery of Adonis."
*** See pages 180-187, 327.
**** Aristophanes:
"Frogs."
***** See Preface to
"Hermas" in the Apocryphal New Testament.
****** In the "Life of
Buddha," of Bkah Hgyur (Thibetan text), we find the original of the
episode given in the Gospel according to Luke. An old and holy ascetic, Rishi
Asita, comes from afar to see the infant Buddha, instructed as he is of his
birth and mission by supernatural visions. Having worshipped the little
Gautama, the old saint bursts into
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WITNESSED IN HELL.
have arisen from their cold
tombs on purpose to declare "the mysteries" which they saw after
death in hell. They are enabled to do so only at the importunate prayer of
Annas and Caiaphas, Nicodemus (the author), Joseph (of Arimathaea), and
Gamaliel, who beseech them to reveal to them the great secrets. Annas and
Caiaphas, however, who bring the ghosts to the synagogue at Jerusalem, take the
precaution to make the two resuscitated men, who had been dead and buried for
years, to swear on the Book of the Law "by God Adonai, and the God of
Israel," to tell them only the truth. Therefore, after making the sign of
the cross on their tongues,* they ask for some paper to write their confessions
(xii. 21-25). They state how, when "in the depth of hell, in the blackness
of darkness," they suddenly saw "a substantial, purple-colored light
illuminating the place." Adam, with the patriarchs and prophets, began
thereupon to rejoice, and Isaiah also immediately boasted that he had predicted
all that. While this was going on, Simeon, their father, arrived, declaring
that "the infant he took in his arms in the temple was now coming to
liberate them."
After Simeon had delivered his
message to the distinguished company in hell, "there came forth one like a
little hermit (?), who proved to be John the Baptist." The idea is
suggestive and shows that even the "Precursor" and "the Prophet
of the Most High," had not been exempted from drying up in hell to the
most diminutive proportions, and that to the extent of affecting his brains and
memory. Forgetting that (Matthew xi.) he had manifested the most evident doubts
as to the Messiahship of Jesus, the Baptist also claims his right to be
recognized as a prophet. "And I, John," he says, "when I saw Jesus
coming to me, being moved by the Holy Ghost, I said: 'Behold the Lamb of God,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
tears, and upon being
questioned upon the cause of his grief, answers: "After becoming Buddha,
he will help hundreds of thousands of millions of creatures to pass to the
other shore of the ocean of life, and will lead them on forever to immortality.
And I -- I shall not behold this pearl of Buddhas! Cured of my illness, I shall
not be freed by him from human passion! Great King! I am too old -- that is why
I weep, and why, in my sadness, I heave long sighs!"
It does not prevent the holy
man, however, from delivering prophecies about the young Buddha, which, with a
very slight difference, are of the same substance as those of Simeon about
Jesus. While the latter calls the young Jesus "a light for the revelation
of the Gentiles and the glory of the people of Israel," the Buddhist
prophet promises that the young prince will find himself clothed with the
perfect and complete enlightenment or "light" of Buddha, and will
turn the wheel of law as no one ever did before him. "Rgya Tcher Rol
Pa"; translated from the Thibetan text and revised on the original
Sanscrit, Lalitavistara, by P. E. Foncaux. 1847. Vol. ii., pp. 106, 107.
* The sign of the cross --
only a few days after the resurrection, and before the cross was ever thought
of as a symbol!
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who takes away the sins of the
world' . . . And I baptized him . . . and I saw the Holy Ghost descending upon
him, and saying, 'This is my Beloved Son,' etc." And to think, that his
descendants and followers, like the Mandeans of Basra, utterly reject these
words!
Then Adam, who acts as though
his own veracity might be questioned in this "impious company," calls
his son Seth, and desires him to declare to his sons, the patriarchs and
prophets, what the Archangel Michael had told him at the gate of Paradise, when
he, Adam, sent Seth "to entreat God that he would anoint" his head
when Adam was sick (xiv. 2). And Seth tells them that when he was praying at
the gates of Paradise, Michael advised him not to entreat God for "the oil
of the tree of mercy wherewith to anoint father Adam for his headache; because
thou canst not by any means obtain it till the LAST DAY and times, namely till
5,500 years be past."
This little bit of private
gossip between Michael and Seth was evidently introduced in the interests of
Patristic Chronology; and for the purpose of connecting Messiahship still
closer with Jesus, on the authority of a recognized and divinely-inspired
Gospel. The Fathers of the early centuries committed an inextricable mistake in
destroying fragile images and mortal Pagans, in preference to the monuments of
Egyptian antiquity. These have become the more precious to archaeology and
modern science since it is found they prove that King Menes and his architects
flourished between four and five thousand years before "Father Adam"
and the universe, according to the biblical chronology, were created "out
of nothing."*
"While all the saints
were rejoicing, behold Satan, the prince and captain of death," says to
the Prince of Hell: "Prepare to receive Jesus of Nazareth himself, who
boasted that he was the Son of God, and yet was a man afraid of death, and
said: 'My soul is sorrowful even to death' " (xv. 1, 2).
There is a tradition among the
Greek ecclesiastical writers that the "Haeretics" (perhaps Celsus)
had sorely twitted the Christians on this delicate point. They held that if
Jesus were not a simple mortal, who was often forsaken by the Spirit of
Christos, he could not have complained in such expressions as are attributed to
him; neither would he have cried out with a loud voice: "My god, My god!
why hast thou for-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Payne Knight shows that
"from the time of the first King Menes, under whom all the country below
Lake Moeris was a bog (Herod., ii., 4), to that of the Persian invasion, when
it was the garden of the world" -- between 11,000 and 12,000 years must
have elapsed. (See "Ancient Art and Mythology"; cli., R. Payne
Knight, p. 108. Edit. by A. Wilder.)
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"THE PRINCE OF HELL."
saken me?" This objection
is very cleverly answered in the Gospel of Nicodemus, and it is the
"Prince of Hell" who settles the difficulty.
He begins by arguing with
Satan like a true metaphysician. "Who is that so powerful prince," he
sneeringly inquires, "who is he so powerful, and yet a man who is afraid
of death? . . . I affirm to thee that when, therefore, he said he was afraid of
death, he designed to ensnare thee, and unhappy it will be to thee for
everlasting ages!"
It is quite refreshing to see
how closely the author of this Gospel sticks to his New Testament text, and
especially to the fourth evangelist. How cleverly he prepares the way for
seemingly "innocent" questions and answers, corroborating the most
dubious passages of the four gospels, passages more questioned and
cross-examined in those days of subtile sophistry of the learned Gnostics than
they are now; a weighty reason why the Fathers should have been even more
anxious to burn the documents of their antagonists than to destroy their
heresy. The following is a good instance. The dialogue is still proceeding
between Satan and the metaphysical half-converted Prince of the under world.
"Who, then, is that Jesus
of Nazareth," naively inquires the prince, "that by his word hath
taken away the dead from me, without prayers to God?" (xv. 16).
"Perhaps," replies Satan,
with the innocence of a Jesuit, "it is the same who took away from me
LAZARUS, after he had been four days dead, and did both stink and was rotten? .
. . It is the very same person, Jesus of Nazareth. . . . I adjure thee, by the
powers which belong to thee and me, that thou bring him not to me!"
exclaims the prince. "For when I heard of the power of his word, I
trembled for fear, and all my impious company were disturbed. And we were not
able to detain Lazarus, but he gave himself a shake, and with all the signs of
malice, he immediately went away from us; and the very earth, in which the dead
body of Lazarus was lodged, presently turned him alive." "Yes,"
thoughtfully adds the Prince of Hell, "I know now that he is Almighty God,
who is mighty in his dominion, and mighty in his human nature, who is the
Saviour of mankind. Bring not therefore this person hither, for he will set at
liberty all those I held in prison under unbelief, and . . . will conduct them
to everlasting life" (xv. 20).
Here ends the post-mortem
evidence of the two ghosts. Charinus (ghost No. 1) gives what he wrote to
Annas, Caiaphas, and Gamaliel, and Lenthius (ghost No. 2) his to Joseph and
Nicodemus, having done which, both change into "exceedingly white forms and
were seen no more."
To show furthermore that the
"ghosts" had been all the time under the strictest "test
conditions," as the modern spiritualists would express it, the author of
the Gospel adds: "But what they had wrote was found
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perfectly to agree, the one
not containing one letter more or less than the other."
This news spread in all the synagogues,
the Gospel goes on to state, that Pilate went to the temple as advised by
Nicodemus, and assembled the Jews together. At this historical interview,
Caiaphas and Annas are made to declare that their Scriptures testify "that
He (Jesus) is the Son of God and the Lord and King of Israel" (!) and
close the confession with the following memorable words:
"And so it appears that
Jesus, whom we crucified, is Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and true and
Almighty God. Amen." (!)
Notwithstanding such a crushing
confession for themselves, and the recognition of Jesus as the Almighty God
himself, the "Lord God of Israel," neither the high priest, nor his
father-in-law, nor any of the elders, nor Pilate, who wrote those accounts, nor
any of the Jews of Jerusalem, who were at all prominent, became Christians.
Comments are unnecessary. This
Gospel closes with the words: "In the name of the Holy Trinity [of which
Nicodemus could know nothing yet] thus ends the Acts of our Saviour Jesus
Christ, which the emperor Theodosius the Great found at Jerusalem, in the hall
of Pontius Pilate among the public records"; and which history purports to
have been written in Hebrew by Nicodemus, "the things being acted in the
nineteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, emperor of the Romans, and in the
seventeenth year of the government of Herod, the son of Herod, king of Galilee,
on the eighth before the calends of April, etc., etc." It is the most
barefaced imposture that was perpetrated after the era of pious forgeries
opened with the first bishop of Rome, whoever he may have been. The clumsy
forger seems to have neither known nor heard that the dogma of the Trinity was
not propounded until 325 years later than this pretended date. Neither the Old
nor the New Testament contains the word Trinity, nor anything that affords the
slightest pretext for this doctrine (see page 177 of this volume,
"Christ's descent into Hell"). No explanation can palliate the
putting forth of this spurious gospel as a divine revelation, for it was known
from the first as a premeditated imposture. If the gospel itself has been
declared apocryphal, nevertheless every one of the dogmas contained in it was
and is still enforced upon the Christian world. And even the fact that itself
is now repudiated, is no merit, for the Church was shamed and forced into it.
And so we are perfectly
warranted in repeating the amended Credo of Robert Taylor, which is
substantially that of the Christians.
I believe in Zeus, the Father
Almighty,
And in his son, Iasios Christ
our Lord,
Who was conceived of the Holy
Ghost,
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Born of the Virgin Elektra,
Smitten with a thunderbolt,
Dead and buried,
He descended into Hell,
Rose again and ascended up on
high,
And will return to judge the
living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Nous,
In the Holy circle of Great
Gods,
In the Community of
Divinities,
In the expiation of sins,
The immortality of the Soul
And the Life Everlasting.
The Israelites have been
proved to have worshipped Baal, the Syrian Bacchus, offered incense to the
Sabazian or AEsculapian serpent, and performed the Dionysian Mysteries. And how
could it be otherwise if Typhon was called Typhon Set,* and Seth, the son of
Adam, is identical with Satan or Sat-an; and Seth was worshipped by the
Hittites? Less than two centuries B.C., we find the Jews either reverencing or
simply worshipping the "golden head of an ass" in their temple;
according to Apion, Antiochus Epiphanes carried it off with him. And Zacharias
is struck dumb by the apparition of the deity under the shape of an ass in the
temple! **
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Seth or Sutech,
"Rawlinson's History of Herodotus," book ii., appendix. viii., 23.
** The fact is vouchsafed for
by Epiphanius. See Hone: "Apocryphal New Testament"; "The Gospel
of the Birth of Mary."
In his able article
"Bacchus, the Prophet-God," Professor A. Wilder remarks that
"Tacitus was misled into thinking that the Jews worshipped an ass, the
symbol of Typhon or Seth, the Hyk-sos God. The Egyptian name of the ass was co,
the phonetic of Iao"; and hence, probably, he adds, "a symbol from
that mere circumstance." We can hardly agree with this learned
archaeologist, for the idea that the Jews reverenced, for some mysterious
reason, Typhon under his symbolical representation rests on more proof than
one. And for one we find a passage in the "Gospel of Mary," is cited
from Epiphanius, which corroborates the fact. It relates to the death of
"Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, murdered by Herod," says
the Protevangelion. Epiphanius writes that the cause of the death of Zacharias
was that upon seeing a vision in the temple he, through surprise, was willing
to disclose it, but his mouth was stopped. That which he saw was at the time of
his offering incense, and it was a man STANDING IN THE FORM OF AN ASS. When he
was gone out, and had a mind to speak thus to the people, Woe unto you, whom do
ye worship? he who had appeared unto him in the temple took away the use of his
speech. Afterward when he recovered it, and was able to speak, he declared this
to the Jews, and they slew him. They (the Gnostics) add in this book, that on
this very account the high priest was commanded by the law-giver (Moses) to
carry little bells, that whensoever he went into the temple to sacrifice, he
whom they worshipped, hearing the noise of the bells, might have time enough to
hide himself, and not be caught in that ugly shape and figure" (Epiph.).
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El, the Sun-God of the
Syrians, the Egyptians, and the Semites, is declared by Pleyte to be no other
than Set or Seth, and El is the primeval Saturn -- Israel.* Siva is an
AEthiopian God, the same as the Chaldean Baal -- Bel; thus he is also Saturn.
Saturn, El, Seth and Kiyun, or the biblical Chiun of Amos, are all one and the
same deity, and may be all regarded in their worst aspect as Typhon the
Destroyer. When the religious Pantheon assumed a more definite expression,
Typhon was separated from his androgyne -- the good deity, and fell into
degradation as a brutal unintellectual power.
Such reactions in the
religious feelings of a nation were not unfrequent. The Jews had worshipped
Baal or Moloch, the Sun-God Hercules,** in their early days -- if they had any
days at all earlier than the Persians or Maccabees -- and then made their
prophets denounce them. On the other hand, the characteristics of the Mosaic
Jehovah exhibit more of the moral disposition of Siva than of a benevolent,
"long-suffering" God. Besides, to be identified with Siva is no small
compliment, for the latter is God of wisdom. Wilkinson depicts him as the most
intellectual of the Hindu gods. He is three-eyed, and, like Jehovah, terrible
in his resistless revenge and wrath. And, although the Destroyer, "yet he
is the re-creator of all things in perfect wisdom."*** He is the type of
St. Augustine's God who "prepares hell for pryers into his
mysteries," and insists on trying human reason as well as common sense by
forcing mankind to view with equal reverence his good and evil acts.
Notwithstanding the numerous
proofs that the Israelites worshipped a variety of gods, and even offered human
sacrifices until a far later period than their Pagan neighbors, they have
contrived to blind posterity in regard to truth. They sacrificed human life as
late as 169 B.C.,**** and the Bible contains a number of such records. At a
time when the Pagans had long abandoned the abominable practice, and had
replaced the sacrificial man by the animal,***** Jephthah is represented
sacrificing his own daughter to the "Lord" for a burnt-offering.
The denunciations of their own
prophets are the best proofs against them. Their worship in high places is the
same as that of the "idolaters." Their prophetesses are counterparts
of the Pythiae and Bacchantes. Pausanias speaks of women-colleges which
superintend the worship of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Phallism in Ancient
Religions," by Staniland Wake and Westropp, p. 74.
** Hercules is also a
god-fighter as well as Jacob-Israel.
*** "Phallism in Ancient
Religions," p. 75.
**** Antiochus Epiphanius
found in 169 B.C. in the Jewish temple, a man kept there to be sacrificed.
Apion: "Joseph. contra Apion," ii., 8.
***** The ox of Dionysus was
sacrificed at the Bacchic Mysteries. See "Anthon," p. 365.
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THE JEWS.
Bacchus, and of the sixteen
matrons of Elis.* The Bible says that "Deborah, a prophetess . . . judged
Israel at that time";** and speaks of Huldah, another prophetess, who
"dwelt in Jerusalem, in the college";*** and 2 Samuel mentions
"wise women" several times,**** notwithstanding the injunction of
Moses not to use either divination or augury. As to the final and conclusive
identification of the "Lord God" of Israel with Moloch, we find a
very suspicious evidence of the case in the last chapter of Leviticus,
concerning things devoted not to be redeemed. . . . A man shall devote unto the
Lord of all that he hath, both of man and beast. . . . None devoted, which
shall be devoted of men, shall be redeemed, but shall surely be put to death .
. . for it is most holy unto the Lord."*****
The duality, if not the
plurality of the gods of Israel may be inferred from the very fact of such
bitter denunciations. Their prophets never approved of sacrificial worship.
Samuel denied that the Lord had any delight in burnt-offerings and sacrifices
(1 Samuel, xv. 22). Jeremiah asserted, unequivocally, that the Lord, Yava
Sabaoth Elohe Israel, never commanded anything of the sort, but contrariwise
(vii. 21-24).
But these prophets who opposed
themselves to human sacrifices were all nazars and initiates. These prophets
led a party in the nation against the priests, as later the Gnostics contended
against the Christian Fathers. Hence, when the monarchy was divided, we find
the priests at Jerusalem and the prophets in the country of Israel. Even Ahab
and his sons, who introduced the Tyrian worship of Baal-Hercules and the Syrian
goddess into Israel, were aided and encouraged by Elijah and Elisha. Few
prophets appeared in Judea till Isaiah, after the northern monarchy had been
overthrown. Elisha anointed Jehu on purpose that he should destroy the royal
families of both countries, and so unite the people into one civil polity. For
the Temple of Solomon, desecrated by the priests, no Hebrew prophet or initiate
cared a straw. Elijah never went to it, nor Elisha, Jonah, Nahum, Amos, or any
other Israelite. While the initiates were holding to the "secret
doctrine" of Moses, the people, led by their priests, were steeped in
idolatry exactly the same as that of the Pagans. It is the popular views and
interpretations of Jehovah that the Christians have adopted.
The question is likely to be
asked: "In the view of so much evidence to show that Christian theology is
only a pot-pourri of Pagan mythologies, how can it be connected with the
religion of Moses?" The early Christians, Paul and his disciples, the
Gnostics and their successors generally, regarded Christianity and Judaism as
essentially distinct. The
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Paus.," 5, 16.
** Judges iv. 4.
*** 2 Kings, xxii. 14.
**** xiv. 2; xx. 16, 17.
***** xxvii. 28, 29.
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latter, in their view, was an
antagonistic system, and from a lower origin. "Ye received the law,"
said Stephen, "from the ministration of angels," or aeons, and not
from the Most High Himself. The Gnostics, as we have seen, taught that Jehovah,
the Deity of the Jews, was Ilda-Baoth, the son of the ancient Bohu, or Chaos,
the adversary of Divine Wisdom.
The question may be more than
easily answered. The law of Moses, and the so-called monotheism of the Jews,
can hardly be said to have been more than two or three centuries older than
Christianity. The Pentateuch itself, we are able to show, was written and
revised upon this "new departure," at a period subsequent to the
colonization of Judea under the authority of the kings of Persia. The Christian
Fathers, in their eagerness to make their new system dovetail with Judaism, and
so avoid Paganism, unconsciously shunned Scylla only to be caught in the
whirlpool of Charybdis. Under the monotheistic stucco of Judaism was unearthed
the same familiar mythology of Paganism. But we should not regard the
Israelites with less favor for having had a Moloch and being like the natives.
Nor should we compel the Jews to do penance for their fathers. They had their
prophets and their law, and were satisfied with them. How faithfully and nobly
they have stood by their ancestral faith under the most diabolical
persecutions, the present remains of a once-glorious people bear witness. The
Christian world has been in a state of convulsion from the first to the present
century; it has been cleft into thousands of sects; but the Jews remain
substantially united. Even their differences of opinion do not destroy their
unity.
The Christian virtues
inculcated by Jesus in the sermon on the mount are nowhere exemplified in the
Christian world. The Buddhist ascetics and Indian fakirs seem almost the only
ones that inculcate and practice them. Meanwhile the vices which coarse-mouthed
slanderers have attributed to Paganism, are current everywhere among Christian
Fathers and Christian Churches.
The boasted wide gap between
Christianity and Judaism, that is claimed on the authority of Paul, exists but
in the imagination of the pious. We are nought but the inheritors of the
intolerant Israelites of ancient days; not the Hebrews of the time of Herod and
the Roman dominion, who, with all their faults, kept strictly orthodox and
monotheistic, but the Jews who, under the name of Jehovah-Nissi, worshipped
Bacchus-Osiris, Dio-Nysos, the multiform Jove of Nyssa, the Sinai of Moses. The
kabalistic demons -- allegories of the profoundest meaning -- were adopted as
objective entities, and a Satanic hierarchy carefully drawn by the orthodox
demonologists.
The Rosicrucian motto,
"Igne natura renovatur integra," which the alchemists interpret as
nature renovated by fire, or matter by spirit, is
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LETTERS I. H. S.
made to be accepted to this
day as Iesus Nazarenus rex Iudaeorum. The mocking satire of Pilate is accepted
literally, and the Jews made to unwittingly confess thereby the royalty of
Christ; whereas, if the inscription is not a forgery of the Constantinian
period, it yet is the action of Pilate, against which the Jews were first to
violently protest. I. H. S. is interpreted Iesus Hominum Salvator, and In hoc
signo, whereas [[IHS]] is one of the most ancient names of Bacchus. And more than
ever do we begin to find out, by the bright light of comparative theology, that
the great object of Jesus, the initiate of the inner sanctuary, was to open the
eyes of the fanatical multitude to the difference between the highest Divinity
-- the mysterious and never-mentioned IAO of the ancient Chaldean and later
Neo-platonic initiates -- and the Hebrew Yahuh, or Yaho (Jehovah). The modern
Rosicrucians, so violently denounced by the Catholics, now find brought against
them, as the most important charge, the fact that they accuse Christ of having
destroyed the worship of Jehovah. Would to Heaven he could have been allowed
the time to do so, for the world would not have found itself still bewildered,
after nineteen centuries of mutual massacres, among 300 quarrelling sects, and
with a personal Devil reigning over a terrorized Christendom!
True to the exclamation of
David, paraphrased in King James' Version as "all the gods of the nations
are idols," i.e., devils, Bacchus or the "first-born" or the
Orphic theogony, the Monogenes, or "only-begotten" of Father Zeus and
Kore, was transformed, with the rest of the ancient myths, into a devil. By
such a degradation, the Fathers, whose pious zeal could only be surpassed by
their ignorance, have unwittingly furnished evidence against themselves. They
have, with their own hands, paved the way for many a future solution, and
greatly helped modern students of the science of religions.
It was in the Bacchus-myth
that lay concealed for long and dreary centuries both the future vindication of
the reviled "gods of the nations," and the last clew to the enigma of
Jehovah. The strange duality of Divine and mortal characteristics, so
conspicuous in the Sinaitic Deity, begins to yield its mystery before the
untiring inquiry of the age. One of the latest contributions we find in a short
but highly-important paper in the Evolution, a periodical of New York, the
closing paragraph of which throws a flood of light on Bacchus, the Jove of
Nysa, who was worshipped by the Israelites as Jehovah of Sinai.
"Such was the Jove of
Nysa to his worshippers," concludes the author. "He represented to
them alike the world of nature and the world of thought. He was the 'Sun of
righteousness, with healing on his wings,' and he not only brought joy to mortals,
but opened to them hope beyond mortality of immortal life. Born of a human
mother, he raised her from
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the world of death to the
supernal air, to be revered and worshipped. At once lord of all worlds, he was
in them all alike the Saviour.
"Such was Bacchus, the
prophet-god. A change of cultus, decreed by the Murderer-Imperial, the Emperor
Theodosius, at the instance of Ghostly-Father Ambrosius, of Milan, has changed
his title to Father of Lies. His worship, before universal, was denominated
Pagan or local, and his rites stigmatized as witchcraft. His orgies received
the name of Witches' Sabbath, and his favorite symbolical form with the bovine
foot became the modern representative of the Devil with the cloven hoof. The
master of the house having been called Beelzebub, they of his household were
alike denounced as having commerce with the powers of darkness. Crusades were
undertaken; whole peoples massacred. Knowledge and the higher learning were
denounced as magic and sorcery. Ignorance became the mother of devotion -- such
as was then cherished. Galileo languished long years in prison for teaching
that the sun was in the centre of the solar universe. Bruno was burned alive at
Rome in 1600 for reviving the ancient philosophy; yet, queerly enough, the
Liberalia have become a festival of the Church,* Bacchus is a saint in the
calendar four times repeated, and at many a shrine he may be seen reposing in
the arms of his deified mother. The names are changed; the ideas remain as
before."**
And now that we have shown
that we must indeed "bid an eternal farewell to all the rebellious angels,"
we naturally pass to an examination of the God Jesus, who was manufactured out
of the man Jesus to redeem us from these very mythical devils, as Father
Ventura shows us. This labor will of course necessitate once more a comparative
inquiry into the history of Gautama-Buddha, his doctrines and his
"miracles," and those of Jesus and the predecessor of both --
Christna.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The festival denominated
Liberalia occurred on the seventeenth of March, now St. Patrick's Day. Thus
Bacchus was also the patron saint of the Irish.
** Prof. A. Wilder:
"Bacchus, the Prophet-God," in the June number (1877) of the
"Evolution, a Review of Polities, Religion, Science, Literature, and
Art."
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CHAPTER XI.
"Not to commit any sin,
to do good, and to purify one's mind, that is the teaching of the Awakened. . .
.
"Better than Sovereignty
over the earth, better than going to heaven, better than lordship over all the
worlds is the reward of the first step in holiness." -- Dhammapada, verses
178-183.
"Creator, where are these
tribunals, where do these courts proceed, where do these courts assemble, where
do the tribunals meet to which the man of the embodied world gives an account
for his soul?" -- Persian Vendidad, xix. 89.
"Hail to thee O Man, who
art come from the transitory place to the imperishable!" -- Vendidad,
farg. vii., 136.
"To the true believer,
truth, wherever it appears, is welcome, nor will any doctrine seem the less
true or the less precious, because it was seen not only by Moses or Christ, but
likewise by Buddha or Lao-tse." -- MAX MULLER.
UNLUCKILY for those who would
have been glad to render justice to the ancient and modern religious
philosophies of the Orient, a fair opportunity has hardly ever been given to
them. Of late there has been a touching accord between philologists holding
high official positions, and missionaries from heathen lands. Prudence before
truth when the latter endangers our sinecures! Besides, how easy to compromise
with conscience. A State religion is a prop of government; all State religions
are "exploded humbugs"; therefore, since one is as good, or rather as
bad, as another, the State religion may as well be supported. Such is the
diplomacy of official science.
Grote in his History of
Greece, assimilates the Pythagoreans to the Jesuits, and sees in their
Brotherhood but an ably-disguised object to acquire political ascendancy. On
the loose testimony of Herakleitus and some other writers, who accused
Pythagoras of craft, and described him as a man "of extensive research . .
. but artful for mischief and destitute of sound judgment," some
historical biographers hastened to present him to posterity in such a
character.
How then if they must accept
the Pythagoras painted by the satirical Timon: "a juggler of solemn speech
engaged in fishing for men," can they avoid judging of Jesus from the
sketch that Celsus has embalmed in his satire? Historical impartiality has
nought to do with creeds and personal beliefs, and exacts as much of posterity
for one as for the other. The life and doings of Jesus are far less attested
than
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those of Pythagoras, if,
indeed, we can say that they are attested at all by any historical proof. For
assuredly no one will gainsay that as a real personage Celsus has the advantage
as regards the credibility of his testimony over Matthew, or Mark, or Luke, or
John, who never wrote a line of the Gospels attributed to them respectively.
Withal Celsus is at least as good a witness as Herakleitus. He was known as a
scholar and a Neo-platonist to some of the Fathers; whereas the very existence
of the four Apostles must be taken on blind faith. If Timon regarded the
sublime Samian as "a juggler," so did Celsus hold Jesus, or rather
those who made all the pretenses for him. In his famous work, addressing the
Nazarene, he says: "Let us grant that the wonders were performed by you .
. . but are they not common with those who have been taught by the Egyptians to
perform in the middle of the forum for a few oboli." And we know, on the
authority of the Gospel according to Matthew, that the Galilean prophet was
also a man of solemn speech, and that he called himself and offered to make his
disciples "fishers of men."
Let it not be imagined that we
bring this reproach to any who revere Jesus as God. Whatever the faith, if the
worshipper be but sincere, it should be respected in his presence. If we do not
accept Jesus as God, we revere him as a man. Such a feeling honors him more
than if we were to attribute to him the powers and personality of the Supreme,
and credit him at the same time with having played a useless comedy with
mankind, as, after all, his mission proves scarcely less than a complete
failure; 2,000 years have passed, and Christians do not reckon one-fifth part
of the population of the globe, nor is Christianity likely to progress any
better in the future. No, we aim but at strict justice, leaving all personality
aside. We question those who, adoring neither Jesus, Pythagoras, nor
Apollonius, yet recite the idle gossip of their contemporaries; those who in
their books either maintain a prudent silence, or speak of "our
Saviour" and "our Lord," as though they believed any more in the
made-up theological Christ, than in the fabulous Fo of China.
There were no Atheists in
those days of old; no disbelievers or materialists, in the modern sense of the
word, as there were no bigoted detractors. He who judges the ancient
philosophies by their external phraseology, and quotes from ancient writings
sentences seemingly atheistical, is unfit to be trusted as a critic, for he is
unable to penetrate into the inner sense of their metaphysics. The views of
Pyrrho, whose rationalism has become proverbial, can be interpreted only by the
light of the oldest Hindu philosophy. From Manu down to the latest Swabhavika,
its leading metaphysical feature ever was to proclaim the reality and supremacy
of spirit, with a vehemence proportionate to the denial of the objective
existence of our material world -- passing phantom of
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TWO-EDGED WEAPON.
temporary forms and beings.
The numerous schools begotten by Kapila, reflect his philosophy no clearer than
the doctrines left as a legacy to thinkers by Timon, Pyrrho's
"Prophet," as Sextus Empiricus calls him. His views on the divine
repose of the soul, his proud indifference to the opinion of his fellow men,
his contempt for sophistry, reflect in an equal degree stray beams of the
self-contemplation of the Gymnosophists and of the Buddhist Vaibhashika.
Notwithstanding that he and his followers are termed, from their state of
constant suspense, "skeptics," "doubters," inquirers, and
ephectics, only because they postponed their final judgment on dilemmas, with
which our modern philosophers prefer dealing, Alexander-like, by cutting the
Gordian knot, and then declaring the dilemma a superstition, such men as Pyrrho
cannot be pronounced atheists. No more can Kapila, or Giordano Bruno, or again
Spinoza, who were also treated as atheists; nor yet, the great Hindu poet,
philosopher, and dialectician, Veda-Vyasa, whose principle that all is illusion
-- save the Great Unknown and His direct essence -- Pyrrho has adopted in full.
These philosophical beliefs
extended like a net-work over the whole pre-Christian world; and, surviving
persecution and misrepresentations, form the corner-stone of every now existing
religion outside Christianity.
Comparative theology is a
two-edged weapon, and has so proved itself. But the Christian advocates,
unabashed by evidence, force comparison in the serenest way; Christian legends
and dogmas, they say, do somewhat resemble the heathen, it is true; but see,
while the one teaches us the existence, powers, and attributes of an all-wise,
all-good Father-God, Brahmanism gives us a multitude of minor gods, and
Buddhism none whatever; one is fetishism and polytheism, the other bald
atheism. Jehovah is the one true God, and the Pope and Martin Luther are His
prophets! This is one edge of the sword, and this the other: Despite missions,
despite armies, despite enforced commercial intercourse, the
"heathen" find nothing in the teachings of Jesus -- sublime though
some are -- that Christna and Gautama had not taught them before. And so, to
gain over any new converts, and keep the few already won by centuries of cunning,
the Christians give the "heathen" dogmas more absurd than their own,
and cheat them by adopting the habit of their native priests, and practicing
the very "idolatry and fetishism" which they so disparage in the
"heathens." Comparative theology works both ways.
In Siam and Burmah, Catholic
missionaries have become perfect Talapoins to all external appearance, i.e.,
minus their virtues; and throughout India, especially in the south, they were
denounced by their
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own colleague, the Abbe
Dubois.* This was afterward vehemently denied. But now we have living witnesses
to the correctness of the charge. Among others, Captain O'Grady, already
quoted, a native of Madras, writes the following on this systematic method of
deception:** "The hypocritical beggars profess total abstinence and horror
of flesh to conciliate converts from Hinduism. . . . I got one father, or
rather, he got himself gloriously drunk in my house, time and again, and the
way he pitched into roast beef was a caution." Further, the author has
pretty stories to tell of "black-faced Christs," "Virgins on
wheels," and of Catholic processions in general. We have seen such solemn
ceremonies accompanied by the most infernal cacophony of a Cingalese orchestra,
tam-tam and gongs included, followed by a like Brahmanic procession, which, for
its picturesque coloring and mise en scene, looked far more solemn and imposing
than the Christian saturnalias. Speaking of one of these, the same author
remarks: "It was more devilish than religious. . . . The bishops walked
off Romeward,*** with a mighty pile of Peter's pence gathered in the minutest sums,
with gold ornaments, nose-rings, anklets, elbow bangles, etc., etc., in
profusion, recklessly thrown in heaps at the feet of the grotesque
copper-colored image of the Saviour, with its Dutch metal halo and
gaudily-striped cummerbund and -- shade of Raphael! -- blue turban."****
As every one can see, such
voluntary contributions make it quite profitable to mimic the native Brahmans
and bonzes. Between the worshippers of Christna and Christ, or Avany and the
Virgin Mary, there is less substantial difference, in fact, than between the
two native sects, the Vishnavites and the Sivites. For the converted Hindus,
Christ is a slightly modified Christna, that is all. Missionaries carry away
rich donations and Rome is satisfied. Then comes a year of famine; but the
nose-rings and gold elbow-bangles are gone and people starve by thousands. What
matters it? They die in Christ, and Rome scatters her blessings over their
corpses, of which thousands float yearly down the sacred rivers to the
ocean.***** So servile are the Catholics in their imita-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Edinburgh
Review," April, 1851, p. 411.
** "Indian Sketches; or
Life in the East," written for the "Commercial Bulletin," of
Boston.
*** See chapter ii. of this
vol., p. 110.
**** It would be worth the
trouble of an artist, while travelling around the world, to make a collection
of the multitudinous varieties of Madonnas, Christs, saints, and martyrs as
they appear in various costumes in different countries. They would furnish
models for masquerade balls in aid of church charities!
***** Even as we write, there
comes from Earl Salisbury, Secretary of State for India, a report that the
Madras famine is to be followed by one probably still more severe in Southern
India, the very district where the heaviest tribute has been exacted by the
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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CHRISTIANITY.
tion, and so careful not to
give offense to their parishioners, that if they happen to have a few higher
caste converts in a Church, no pariah nor any man of the lower castes, however
good a Christian he may be, can be admitted into the same Church with them. And
yet they dare call themselves the servants of Him who sought in preference the
society of the publicans and sinners; and whose appeal -- "Come unto me
all ye that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" has opened to him
the hearts of millions of the suffering and the oppressed!
Few writers are as bold and
outspoken as the late lamented Dr. Thomas Inman, of Liverpool, England. But
however small their number, these men all agree unanimously, that the
philosophy of both Buddhism and Brahmanism must rank higher than Christian
theology, and teach neither atheism or fetishism. "To my own mind,"
says Inman, "the assertion that Sakya did not believe in God is wholly
unsupported. Nay, his whole scheme is built upon the belief that there are
powers above which are capable of punishing mankind for their sins. It is true
that these gods were not called Elohim, nor Jah, nor Jehovah, nor Jahveh, nor
Adonai, nor Ehieh, nor Baalim, nor Ashtoreth -- yet, for the son of Suddhadana,
there was a Supreme Being."*
There are four schools of
Buddhist theology, in Ceylon, Thibet, and India. One is rather pantheistical
than atheistical, but the other three are purely theistical.
On the first the speculations
of our philologists are based. As to the second, third, and the fourth, their
teachings vary but in the external mode of expression. We have fully explained
the spirit of it elsewhere.
As to practical, not
theoretical views on the Nirvana, this is what a rationalist and a skeptic
says: "I have questioned at the very doors of their temples several
hundreds of Buddhists, and have not found one but strove, fasted, and gave
himself up to every kind of austerity, to perfect himself and acquire immortality;
not to attain final annihilation.
"There are over
300,000,000 of Buddhists who fast, pray, and toil. . . . Why make of these
300,000,000 of men idiots and fools, macerating their bodies and imposing upon
themselves most fearful privations of every nature, in order to reach a fatal
annihilation which must overtake them anyhow?"**
As well as this author we have
questioned Buddhists and Brahmanists and studied their philosophy. Apavarg has
wholly a different meaning
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] Catholic missionaries for the expenses of the Church of Rome.
The latter, unable to retaliate otherwise, despoils British subjects, and when
famine comes as a consequence, makes the heretical British Government pay for
it.
* "Ancient Faiths and
Modern," p. 24.
** "Fetichisme,
Polytheisme, Monotheisme."
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from annihilation. It is but
to become more and more like Him, of whom he is one of the refulgent sparks,
that is the aspiration of every Hindu philosopher and the hope of the most ignorant
is never to yield up his distinct individuality. "Else," as once
remarked an esteemed correspondent of the author, "mundane and separate
existence would look like God's comedy and our tragedy; sport to Him that we
work and suffer, death to us to suffer it."
The same with the doctrine of
metempsychosis, so distorted by European scholars. But as the work of
translation and analysis progresses, fresh religious beauties will be
discovered in the old faiths.
Professor Whitney has in his
translation of the Vedas passages in which he says, the assumed importance of
the body to its old tenant is brought out in the strongest light. These are
portions of hymns read at the funeral services, over the body of the departed
one. We quote them from Mr. Whitney's scholarly work:
"Start onward! bring
together all thy members;
let not thy limbs be left, nor
yet thy body;
Thy spirit gone before, now
follow after;
Wherever it delights thee, go
thou thither.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
Collect thy body; with its
every member;
thy limbs with help of rites I
fashion for thee.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
If some one limb was left
behind by Agni,
When to thy Fathers' world he
hence conveyed you,
That very one I now again
supply you;
rejoice in heaven with all
your limbs, ye Fathers!"*
The "body" here
referred to is not the physical, but the astral one -- a very great
distinction, as may be seen.
Again, belief in the
individual existence of the immortal spirit of man is shown in the following
verses of the Hindu ceremonial of incremation and burial.
"They who within the
sphere of earth are stationed,
or who are settled now in
realms of pleasure,
The Fathers who have the earth
-- the atmosphere -- the heaven for their seat,
The 'fore-heaven' the third heaven
is styled,
and where the Fathers have
their seat." -- (Rig-Veda, x.)
With such majestic views as
these people held of God and the immortality of man's spirit, it is not
surprising that a comparison between the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Oriental and
Linguistic Studies," "Vedic Doctrine of a Future Life," by W.
Dwight Whitney, Prof. of Sanscrit and Comparative Philology at Yale College.
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IMPORTANT DISCOVERY.
Vedic hymns and the narrow,
unspiritual Mosaic books should result to the advantage of the former in the
mind of every unprejudiced scholar. Even the ethical code of Manu is
incomparably higher than that of the Pentateuch of Moses, in the literal
meaning of which all the uninitiated scholars of two worlds cannot find a
single proof that the ancient Jews believed either in a future life or an
immortal spirit in man, or that Moses himself ever taught it. Yet, we have
eminent Orientalists who begin to suspect that the "dead letter"
conceals something not apparent at first sight. So Professor Whitney tells us
that "as we look yet further into the forms of the modern Hindu ceremonial
we discover not a little of the same discordance between creed and observance;
the one is not explained by the other," says this great American scholar.
He adds: "We are forced to the conclusion either that India derived its
system of rites from some foreign source, and practiced them blindly, careless
of their true import, or else that those rites are the production of another
doctrine of older date, and have maintained themselves in popular usage after
the decay of the creed of which they were the original expression."*
This creed has not decayed,
and its hidden philosophy, as understood now by the initiated Hindus, is just
as it was 10,000 years ago. But can our scholars seriously hope to have it
delivered unto them upon their first demand? Or do they still expect to fathom
the mysteries of the World-Religion in its popular exoteric rites?
No orthodox Brahmans and
Buddhists would deny the Christian incarnation; only, they understand it in their
own philosophical way, and how could they deny it? The very corner-stone of
their religious system is periodical incarnations of the Deity. Whenever
humanity is about merging into materialism and moral degradation, a Supreme
Spirit incarnates himself in his creature selected for the purpose. The
"Messenger of the Highest" links itself with the duality of matter
and soul, and the triad being thus completed by the union of its Crown, a
saviour is born, who helps restore humanity to the path of truth and virtue.
The early Christian Church, all imbued with Asiatic philosophy, evidently
shared the same belief -- otherwise it would have neither erected into an
article of faith the second advent, nor cunningly invented the fable of
Anti-Christ as a precaution against possible future incarnations. Neither could
they have imagined that Melchisedek was an avatar of Christ. They had only to
turn to the Bagavedgitta to find Christna or Bhagaved saying to Arjuna:
"He who follows me is saved by wisdom and even by works. . . . As often as
virtue declines in the world, I make myself manifest to save it."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Oriental and
Linguistic Studies," p. 48.
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Indeed, it is more than
difficult to avoid sharing this doctrine of periodical incarnations. Has not
the world witnessed, at rare intervals, the advent of such grand characters as
Christna, Sakya-muni, and Jesus? Like the two latter personages, Christna seems
to have been a real being, deified by his school at some time in the twilight
of history, and made to fit into the frame of the time-honored religious
programme. Compare the two Redeemers, the Hindu and the Christian, the one
preceding the other by some thousands of years; place between them Siddhartha
Buddha, reflecting Christna and projecting into the night of the future his own
luminous shadow, out of whose collected rays were shaped the outlines of the
mythical Jesus, and from whose teachings were drawn those of the historical
Christos; and we find that under one identical garment of poetical legend lived
and breathed three real human figures. The individual merit of each of them is
rather brought out in stronger relief than otherwise by this same mythical
coloring; for no unworthy character could have been selected for deification by
the popular instinct, so unerring and just when left untrammeled. Vox populi,
vox Dei was once true, however erroneous when applied to the present
priest-ridden mob.
Kapila, Orpheus, Pythagoras,
Plato, Basilides, Marcian, Ammonius and Plotinus, founded schools and sowed the
germs of many a noble thought, and disappearing left behind them the refulgence
of demi-gods. But the three personalities of Christna, Gautama, and Jesus
appeared like true gods, each in his epoch, and bequeathed to humanity three
religions built on the imperishable rock of ages. That all three, especially
the Christian faith, have in time become adulterated, and the latter almost
unrecognizable, is no fault of either of the noble Reformers. It is the
priestly self-styled husbandmen of the "vine of the Lord" who must be
held to account by future generations. Purify the three systems of the dross of
human dogmas, the pure essence remaining will be found identical. Even Paul,
the great, the honest apostle, in the glow of his enthusiasm either unwittingly
perverted the doctrines of Jesus, or else his writings are disfigured beyond
recognition. The Talmud, the record of a people who, notwithstanding his
apostasy from Judaism, yet feel compelled to acknowledge Paul's greatness as a
philosopher and religionist, says of Aher (Paul),*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In his article on
"Paul, the Founder of Christianity," Professor A. Wilder, whose
intuitions of truth are always clear, says: "In the person of Aher we
recognize the Apostle Paul. He appears to have been known by a variety of
appellations. He was named Saul, evidently because of his vision of Paradise --
Saul or Sheol being the Hebrew name of the other world. Paul, which only means
'the little man,' was a species of nickname. Aher, or other, was an epithet in
the Bible for persons outside of the Jewish polity, and was applied to him for
having extended his ministry to the Gentiles. His real name was Elisha ben
Abuiah."
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SAVIOURS.
in the Yerushalmi, that
"he corrupted the work of that man" -- meaning Jesus.*
Meanwhile, before this
smelting is completed by honest science and future generations, let us glance
at the present aspect of the legendary three religions.
THE LEGENDS OF THREE SAVIOURS.
[Column 1]
CHRISTNA.
Epoch: Uncertain. European
science fears to commit itself. But the Brahmanical calculations fix it at about
6,877 years ago.
Christna descends of a royal
family, but is brought up by shepherds; is called the Shepherd God. His birth
and divine descent are kept secret from Kansa.
An incarnation of Vishnu, the
second person of the Trimurti (Trinity). Christna was worshipped at Mathura, on
the river Jumna (See Strabo and Arrian and Bampton Lectures, pp. 98-100).
Christna is persecuted by
Kansa, Tyrant of Madura, but miraculously escapes. In the hope of destroying
the child, the king has thousands of male innocents slaughtered.
Christna's mother was Devaki,
or Devanagui, an immaculate virgin (but had given birth to eight sons before
Christna).
[Column 2]
GAUTAMA-BUDDHA.
Epoch
: According to European
science and the Ceylonese calculations, 2,540 years ago.
Gautama is the son of a king.
His first disciples are shepherds and mendicants.
According to some, an
incarnation of Vishnu; according to others, an incarnation of one of the
Buddhas, and even of Ad'Buddha, the Highest Wisdom.
Buddhist legends are free from
this plagiarism, but the Catholic legend that makes of him St. Josaphat, shows
his father, king of Kapilavastu, slaying innocent young Christians (!!). (See
Golden Legend.)
Buddha's mother was Maya, or
Mayadeva; married to her husband (yet an immaculate virgin).
[Column 3]
JESUS OF NAZARETH.
Epoch
: Supposed to be 1877 years
ago. His birth and royal descent are concealed from Herod the tyrant.
Descends of the Royal family
of David. Is worshipped by shepherds at his birth, and is called the "Good
Shepherd" (See Gospel according to John).
An incarnation of the Holy
Ghost, then the second person of the Trinity, now the third. But the Trinity
was not invented until 325 years after his birth. Went to Mathura or Matarea,
Egypt, and produced his first miracles there (See Gospel of Infancy).
Jesus is persecuted by Herod,
King of Judaea, but escapes into Egypt under conduct of an angel. To assure his
slaughter, Herod orders a massacre of innocents, and 40,000 were slain.
Jesus' mother was Mariam, or
Miriam; married to her husband, yet an immaculate virgin, but had several
children besides Jesus. (See Matthew xiii. 55, 56.)
[[Footnote(s)]]
---------------------------------------
* "In the 'Talmud' Jesus
is called AUTU H-AIS, [[Heb char]], that man." -- A. Wilder.
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[[Column 1]]
CHRISTNA.
Chistna is endowed with
beauty, omniscience, and omnipotence from birth. Produces miracles, cures the
lame and blind, and casts out demons. Washes the feet of the Brahmans, and
descending to the lowest regions (hell), liberates the dead, and returns to
Vaicontha -- the paradise of Vishnu. Christna was the God Vishnu himself in
human form.
Christna creates boys out of
calves, and vice versa (Maurice's Indian Antiquities, vol. ii., p. 332). He
crushes the Serpent's head. (Ibid.)
Christna is Unitarian. He
persecutes the clergy, charges them with ambition and hypocrisy to their faces,
divulges the great secrets of the Sanctuary -- the Unity of God and immortality
of our spirit. Tradition says he fell a victim to their vengeance. His favorite
disciple, Arjuna, never deserts him to the last. There are credible traditions
that he died on the cross (a tree), nailed to it by an arrow. The best scholars
agree that the Irish Cross at Tuam, erected long before the Christian era, is
Asiatic. (See Round Towers, p. 296, et seq., by O'Brien; also Reli- [[Column
continues on next page]]
[[Column 2]]
GAUTAMA-BUDDHA.
Buddha is endowed with the
same powers and qualities, and performs similar wonders. Passes his life with
mendicants. It is claimed for Gautama that he was distinct from all other
Avatars, having the entire spirit of Buddha in him, while all others had but a
part (ansa) of the divinity in them.
Gautama crushes the Serpent's
head, i.e., abolishes the Naga worship as fetishism; but, like Jesus, makes the
Serpent the emblem of divine wisdom.
Buddha abolishes idolatry;
divulges the Mysteries of the Unity of God and the Nirvana, the true meaning of
which was previously known only to the priests. Persecuted and driven out of
the country, he escapes death by gathering about him some hundreds of thousands
of believers in his Buddhaship. Finally, dies, surrounded by a host of
disciples, with Ananda, his beloved disciple and cousin, chief among them all.
O'Brien believes that the Irish Cross at Tuam is meant for Buddha's, but
Gautama was never crucified. He is represented in many temples, as sit-
[[Column continues on next page]]
[[Column 3]]
JESUS OF NAZARETH.
Jesus is similarly endowed.
(See Gospels and the Apocryphal Testament.) Passes his life with sinners and
publicans. Casts out demons likewise. The only notable difference between the
three is that Jesus is charged with casting out devils by the power of
Beelzebub, which the others were not. Jesus washes the feet of his disciples,
dies, descends to hell, and ascends to heaven, after liberating the dead.
Jesus is said to have crushed
the Serpent's head, agreeably to original revelation in Genesis. He also
transforms boys into kids, and kids into boys. (Gospel of Infancy.)
Jesus rebels against the old
Jewish law; denounces the Scribes, and Pharisees, and the synagogue for
hypocrisy and dogmatic intolerance. Breaks the Sabbath, and defies the Law. Is
accused by the Jews of divulging the secrets of the Sanctuary. Is put to death
on a cross (a tree). Of the little handful of disciples whom he had converted,
one betrays him, one denies him, and the others desert him at the last, except
John -- the disciple he loved. Jesus, Christna, and Buddha, all three Saviours,
die either on or under trees, and are connected with crosses which [[Column
continues on next page]]
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THREE RELIGIONS.
[[Column 1 continued from
previous page]]
CHRISTNA.
gions de l'Antiquie;
Creuzer's Symbolik, vol. i.,
p. 208; and engraving in Dr. Lundy's Monumental Christianity, p. 160.
Christna ascends to Swarga and
becomes Nirguna.
[[Column 2 continued from
previous page]]
GAUTAMA-BUDDHA.
ting under a cruciform tree,
which is the "Tree of Life." In another image he is sitting on Naga
the Raja of Serpents with a cross on his breast.*
Buddha ascends to Nirvana.
[[Column 3 continued from
previous page]]
JESUS OF NAZARETH.
are symbolical of the
three-fold powers of creation.
Jesus ascends to Paradise.
RESULT.
About the middle of the
present century, the followers of these three religions were reckoned as
follows:**
OF CHRISTNA.
Brahmans, 60,000,000.
OF BUDDHA.
Buddhists, 450,000,000.
OF JESUS.
Christians, 260,000,000.
Such is the present aspect of
these three great religions, of which each is in turn reflected in its
successor. Had the Christian dogmatizers stopped there, the results would not
have been so disastrous, for it would be hard, indeed, to make a bad creed out
of the lofty teachings of Gautama, or Christna, as Bhagaved. But they went
farther, and added to pure primitive Christianity the fables of Hercules,
Orpheus, and Bacchus. As Mussulmans will not admit that their Koran is built on
the substratum of the Jewish Bible, so the Christians will not confess that
they owe next to everything to the Hindu religions. But the Hindus have
chronology to prove it to them. We see the best and most learned of our writers
uselessly striving to show that the extraordinary similarities -- amounting to
identity -- between Christna and Christ are due to the spurious Gospels of the
Infancy and of St. Thomas having "probably circulated on the coast of
Malabar, and giving color to the story of Christna."*** Why not accept
truth in all sincerity, and reversing matters, admit that St. Thomas, faithful
to that policy of proselytism which marked the earliest Christians, when he
found in Malabar the original of the mythical Christ in Christna, tried to
blend the two; and, adopting in his gospel (from which all others were copied)
the most important details of the story of the Hindu Avatar, engrafted the
Christian heresy on the primitive religion of Christna. For any one acquainted
with the spirit of Brahmanism, the idea of Brahmans accepting anything from a
stranger, especially from a foreigner, is simply ridiculous. That they, the
most fanatic people in religious matters, who, during centuries, cannot be
compelled to adopt the most simple of European usages, should be suspected of
having introduced into their sacred books unveri-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Moor's plates, 75, No.
3.
** Max Muller's estimate.
*** Dr. Lundy:
"Monumental Christianity," p. 153.
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fied legends about a foreign
God, is something so preposterously illogical, that it is really waste of time
to contradict the idea!
We will not stop to examine
the too well-known resemblances between the external form of Buddhistic worship
-- especially Lamaism -- and Roman Catholicism, for noticing which poor Huc
paid dear -- but proceed to compare the most vital points. Of all the original
manuscripts that have been translated from the various languages in which
Buddhism is expounded, the most extraordinary and interesting are Buddha's
Dhammapada, or Path of Virtue, translated from the Pali by Colonel Rogers,* and
the Wheel of the Law, containing the views of a Siamese Minister of State on
his own and other religions, and translated by Henry Alabaster.** The reading
of these two books, and the discovery in them of similarities of thought and
doctrine often amounting to identity, prompted Dr. Inman to write the many
profoundly true passages embodied in one of his last works, Ancient Faith and
Modern.*** "I speak with sober earnestness," writes this
kind-hearted, sincere scholar, "when I say that after forty years'
experience among those who profess Christianity, and those who proclaim . . .
more or less quietly their disagreement with it, I have noticed more sterling
virtue and morality amongst the last than the first. . . . I know personally
many pious, good Christian people, whom I honor, admire, and, perhaps, would be
glad to emulate or to equal; but they deserve the eulogy thus passed on them,
in consequence of their good sense, having ignored the doctrine of faith to a
great degree, and having cultivated the practice of good works. . . . In my
judgment the most praiseworthy Christians whom I know are modified Buddhists,
though probably, not one of them ever heard of Siddartha."****
Between the Lamaico-Buddhistic
and Roman Catholic articles of faith and ceremonies, there are fifty-one points
presenting a perfect and striking similarity; and four diametrically
antagonistic.
As it would be useless to
enumerate the "similarities," for the reader may find them carefully
noted in Inman's work on Ancient Faith and Modern, pp. 237-240, we will quote
but the four dissimilarities, and leave every one to draw his own deductions
therefrom:
[[Column 1]]
1. "The Buddhists hold
that nothing which is contradicted by sound reason can be a true doctrine of
Buddha." [[Column continued on next page]]
[[Column 2]]
1. "The Christians will
accept any non-sense, if promulgated by the Church as a matter of
faith."***** [[Column continued on next page]]
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Buddhaghosa's
"Parables," translated from the Burmese, by Col. H. T. Rogers, R. E.;
with an introduction by M. Muller, containing "Dhammapada," 1870.
** Interpreter of the
Consulate-General in Siam.
*** "Ancient Faith and
Modern," p. 162.
**** Ibid.
***** The words contained within
quotation marks are Inman's.
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[[Column 1 continued from
previous page]]
2. "The Buddhists do not
adore the mother of Sakya," though they honor her as a holy and saint-like
woman, chosen to be his mother through her great virtue.
3. "The Buddhists have no
sacraments."
4. The Buddhists do not
believe in any pardon for their sins, except after an adequate punishment for
each evil deed, and a proportionate compensation to the parties injured.
[[Column 2 from previous
page]]
2. "The Romanists adore
the mother of Jesus, and prayer is made to her for aid and intercession."
The worship of the Virgin has weakened that of Christ and thrown entirely into
the shadow that of the Almighty.
3. "The papal followers
have seven."
4. The Christians are promised
that if they only believe in the "precious blood of Christ," this
blood offered by Him for the expiation of the sins of the whole of mankind
(read Christians) will atone for every mortal sin.
Which of these theologies most
commends itself to the sincere inquirer, is a question that may safely be left
to the sound judgment of the reader. One offers light, the other darkness.
The Wheel of the Law has the
following:
"Buddhists believe that
every act, word, or thought has its consequence, which will appear sooner or
later in the present or in the future state. Evil acts will produce evil consequences,*
good acts will produce good consequences: prosperity in this world, or birth in
heaven . . . in some future state."**
This is strict and impartial
justice. This is the idea of a Supreme Power which cannot fail, and therefore,
can have neither wrath nor mercy, but leaves every cause, great or small, to
work out its inevitable effects. "With what measure you mete, it shall be
measured to you again"*** neither by expression nor implication points to
any hope of future mercy or salvation by proxy. Cruelty and mercy are finite
feelings. The Supreme Deity is infinite, hence it can only be JUST, and Justice
must be blind. The ancient Pagans held on this question far more philosophical
views than modern Christians, for they represented their Themis blindfold. And
the Siamese author of the work under notice, has again a more reverent
conception of the Deity than the Christians have, when he thus gives vent to
his thought: "A Buddhist might believe in the existence of a God, sublime
above all human qualities and attributes -- a perfect God, above love, and
hatred, and jealousy, calmly resting in a quiet happiness that nothing could
disturb; and of such a God he would speak no disparagement, not from a desire
to please Him, or fear to offend Him, but from natural veneration. But he
cannot understand a God with the attributes and qualities of men, a God who
loves and hates, and shows anger; a Deity, who, whether described to
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See vol. i. of this work, p.
319.
** p. 57.
*** Matthew vii. 2.
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him by Christian missionaries,
or by Mahometans, or Brahmans, or Jews, falls below his standard of even an
ordinary good man."*
We have often wondered at the
extraordinary ideas of God and His justice that seem to be honestly held by
those Christians who blindly rely upon the clergy for their religion, and never
upon their own reason. How strangely illogical is this doctrine of the
Atonement. We propose to discuss it with the Christians from the Buddhistic
stand-point, and show at once by what a series of sophistries, directed toward
the one object of tightening the ecclesiastical yoke upon the popular neck, its
acceptance as a divine command has been finally effected; also, that it has
proved one of the most pernicious and demoralizing of doctrines.
The clergy say: no matter how
enormous our crimes against the laws of God and of man, we have but to believe
in the self-sacrifice of Jesus for the salvation of mankind, and His blood will
wash out every stain. God's mercy is boundless and unfathomable. It is
impossible to conceive of a human sin so damnable that the price paid in
advance for the redemption of the sinner would not wipe it out if a
thousandfold worse. And, furthermore, it is never too late to repent. Though
the offender wait until the last minute of the last hour of the last day of his
mortal life, before his blanched lips utter the confession of faith, he may go
to Paradise; the dying thief did it, and so may all others as vile. These are
the assumptions of the Church.
But if we step outside the
little circle of creed and consider the universe as a whole balanced by the
exquisite adjustment of parts, how all sound logic, how the faintest glimmering
sense of Justice revolts against this Vicarious Atonement! If the criminal
sinned only against himself, and wronged no one but himself; if by sincere
repentance he could cause the obliteration of past events, not only from the
memory of man, but also from that imperishable record, which no deity -- not
even the Supremest of the Supreme -- can cause to disappear, then this dogma
might not be incomprehensible. But to maintain that one may wrong his
fellow-man, kill, disturb the equilibrium of society, and the natural order of
things, and then -- through cowardice, hope, or compulsion, matters not -- be
forgiven by believing that the spilling of one blood washes out the other blood
spirt -- this is preposterous! Can the results of a crime be obliterated even
though the crime itself should be pardoned? The effects of a cause are never
limited to the boundaries of the cause, nor can the results of crime be
confined to the offender and his victim. Every good as well as evil action has
its effects, as palpably as the stone flung into a calm water. The simile is
trite, but it is the best ever conceived, so let us use
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* P. 25.
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ATONEMENT ANALYZED.
it. The eddying circles are
greater and swifter, as the disturbing object is greater or smaller, but the
smallest pebble, nay, the tiniest speck, makes its ripples. And this
disturbance is not alone visible and on the surface. Below, unseen, in every
direction -- outward and downward -- drop pushes drop until the sides and
bottom are touched by the force. More, the air, above the water is agitated,
and this disturbance passes, as the physicists tell us, from stratum to stratum
out into space forever and ever; an impulse has been given to matter, and that
is never lost, can never be recalled! . . .
So with crime, and so with its
opposite. The action may be instantaneous, the effects are eternal. When, after
the stone is once flung into the pond, we can recall it to the hand, roll back
the ripples, obliterate the force expended, restore the etheric waves to their
previous state of non-being, and wipe out every trace of the act of throwing
the missile, so that Time's record shall not show that it ever happened, then,
then we may patiently hear Christians argue for the efficacy of this Atonement.
The Chicago Times recently
printed the hangman's record of the first half of the present year (1877) -- a
long and ghastly record of murders and hangings. Nearly every one of these murderers
received religious consolation, and many announced that they had received God's
forgiveness through the blood of Jesus, and were going that day to Heaven!
Their conversion was effected in prison. See how this ledger-balance of
Christian justice (!) stands: These red-handed murderers, urged on by the
demons of lust, revenge, cupidity, fanaticism, or mere brutal thirst for blood,
slew their victims, in most cases, without giving them time to repent, or call
on Jesus to wash them clean with his blood. They, perhaps, died sinful, and, of
course, -- consistently with theological logic -- met the reward of their
greater or lesser offenses. But the murderer, overtaken by human justice, is
imprisoned, wept over by sentimentalists, prayed with and at, pronounces the
charmed words of conversion, and goes to the scaffold a redeemed child of
Jesus! Except for the murder, he would not have been prayed with, redeemed,
pardoned. Clearly this man did well to murder, for thus he gained eternal
happiness? And how about the victim, and his or her family, relatives,
dependants, social relations -- has justice no recompense for them? Must they
suffer in this world and the next, while he who wronged them sits beside the
"holy thief" of Calvary and is forever blessed? On this question the
clergy keep a prudent silence.
Steve Anderson was one of
these American criminals -- convicted of double murder, arson, and robbery.
Before the hour of his death he was "converted," but, the record
tells us that "his clerical attendants objected to his reprieve, on the
ground that they felt sure of his salvation
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should he die then, but could
not answer for it if his execution was postponed." We address these
ministers, and ask them to tell us on what grounds they felt sure of such a
monstrous thing. How they could feel sure, with the dark future before them,
and the endless results of this double murder, arson, and robbery? They could
be sure of nothing, but that their abominable doctrine is the cause of
three-fourths of the crimes of so-called Christians; that these terrific causes
must produce like monstrous effects, which in their turn will beget other
results, and so roll on throughout eternity to an accomplishment that no man
can calculate.
Or take another crime, one of
the most selfish, cruel, and heartless, and yet the most frequent, the
seduction of a young girl. Society, by an instinct of self-preservation,
pitilessly judges the victim, and ostracizes her. She may be driven to
infanticide, or self-murder, or if too averse to die, live to plunge into a
career of vice and crime. She may become the mother of criminals, who, as in
the now celebrated Jukes, of whose appalling details Mr. Dugdale has published
the particulars, breed other generations of felons to the number of hundreds,
in fifty or sixty years. All this social disaster came through one man's
selfish passion; shall he be forgiven by Divine Justice until his offense is
expiated, and punishment fall only upon the wretched human scorpions begotten
of his lust?
An outcry has just been made
in England over the discovery that Anglican priests are largely introducing auricular
confession and granting absolution after enforcing penances. Inquiry shows the
same thing prevailing more or less in the United States. Put to the ordeal of
cross-examination, the clergy quote triumphantly from the English Book of
Common Prayer the rubrics which clearly give them the absolving authority,
through the power of "God, the Holy Ghost," committed unto them by
the bishop by imposition of hands at their ordination. The bishop, questioned,
points to Matthew xvi., 19, for the source of his authority to bind and loose
on earth those who are to be blessed or damned in heaven; and to the apostolic
succession for proof of its transmission from Simon Barjona to himself. The
present volumes have been written to small purpose if they have not shown, 1,
that Jesus, the Christ-God, is a myth concocted two centuries after the real
Hebrew Jesus died; 2, that, therefore, he never had any authority to give
Peter, or any one else, plenary power; 3, that even if he had given such
authority, the word Petra (rock) referred to the revealed truths of the
Petroma, not to him who thrice denied him; and that besides, the apostolic
succession is a gross and palpable fraud; 4, that the Gospel according to
Matthew is a fabrication based upon a wholly different manuscript. The whole
thing, therefore, is an imposition alike upon priest and penitent. But putting
all these points aside for the moment, it suffices to ask these pretended
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SOULS IMPOSSIBLE.
agents of the three gods of
the Trinity, how they reconcile it with the most rudimental notions of equity, that
if the power to pardon sinners for sinning has been given them, they did not
also receive the ability by miracle to obliterate the wrongs done against
person or property. Let them restore life to the murdered; honor to the
dishonored; property to those who have been wronged, and force the scales of
human and divine justice to recover their equilibrium. Then we may talk of
their divine commission to bind and loose. Let them say, if they can do this.
Hitherto the world has received nothing but sophistry -- believed on blind
faith; we ask palpable, tangible evidence of their God's justice and mercy. But
all are silent; no answer, no reply, and still the inexorable unerring Law of
Compensation proceeds on its unswerving path. If we but watch its progress, we
will find that it ignores all creeds, shows no preferences, but its sunlight
and its thunderbolts fall alike on heathen and Christian. No absolution can
shield the latter when guilty, no anathema hurt the former when innocent.
Away from us such an insulting
conception of divine justice as that preached by priests on their own
authority. It is fit only for cowards and criminals! If they are backed by a
whole array of Fathers and Churchmen, we are supported by the greatest of all
authorities, an instinctive and reverential sense of the everlasting and
everpresent law of harmony and justice.
But, besides that of reason,
we have other evidence to show that such a construction is wholly unwarranted.
The Gospels being "Divine revelation," doubtless Christians will
regard their testimony as conclusive. Do they affirm that Jesus gave himself as
a voluntary sacrifice? On the contrary, there is not a word to sustain the
idea. They make it clear that he would rather have lived to continue what he
considered his mission, and that he died because he could not help it, and only
when betrayed. Before, when threatened with violence, he had made himself
invisible by employing the mesmeric power over the bystanders, claimed by every
Eastern adept, and escaped. When, finally, he saw that his time had come, he
succumbed to the inevitable. But see him in the garden, on the Mount of Olives,
writhing in agony until "his sweat was, as it were, great drops of
blood," praying with fervid supplication that the cup might be removed
from him; exhausted by his struggle to such a degree that an angel from heaven
had to come and strengthen him; and say if the picture is that of a
self-immolating hostage and martyr. To crown all, and leave no lingering doubt
in our minds, we have his own despairing words, "NOT MY WILL, but thine,
be done!" (Luke xxii. 42. 43.)
Again, in the Puranas it may
be found that Christna was nailed to a tree by the arrow of a hunter, who,
begging the dying god to forgive
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him, receives the following
answer: "Go, hunter, through my favor, to Heaven, the abode of the gods. .
. . Then the illustrious Christna, having united himself with his own pure,
spiritual, inexhaustible, inconceivable, unborn, undecaying, imperishable, and
universal Spirit, which is one with Vasudeva, abandoned his mortal body, and .
. . he became Nirguna" (Wilson's Vishnu Purana, p. 612). Is not this the
original of the story of Christ forgiving the thief on the cross, and promising
him a place in Heaven? Such examples "challenge inquiry as to their origin
and meaning so long anterior to Christianity," says Dr. Lundy in Monumental
Christianity, and yet to all this he adds: "The idea of Krishna as a
shepherd, I take to be older than either (the Gospel of Infancy and that of St.
John), and prophetic of Christ" (p. 156).
Facts like these, perchance,
furnished later a plausible pretext for declaring apocryphal all such works as
the Homilies, which proved but too clearly the utter want of any early
authority for the doctrine of atonement. The Homilies clash but little with the
Gospels; they disagree entirely with the dogmas of the Church. Peter knew
nothing of the atonement; and his reverence for the mythical father Adam would
never have allowed him to admit that this patriarch had sinned and was
accursed. Neither do the Alexandrian theological schools appear to have been
cognizant of this doctrine, nor Tertullian; nor was it discussed by any of the
earlier Fathers. Philo represents the story of the Fall as symbolical, and
Origen regarded it the same way as Paul, as an allegory.*
Whether they will or not, the
Christians have to credit the foolish story of Eve's temptation by a serpent.
Besides, Augustine has formally pronounced upon the subject. "God, by His
arbitrary will," he says, "has selected beforehand certain persons,
without regard to foreseen faith or good actions, and has irretrievably
ordained to bestow upon them eternal happiness; while He has condemned others
in the same way to eternal reprobation"!! (De dono perseverantae).**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Draper's "Conflict
between Religion and Science," p. 224.
** This is the doctrine of the
Supralapsarians, who asserted that "He [God] predestinated the fall of
Adam, with all its pernicious consequences, from all eternity, and that our
first parents had no liberty from the beginning."
It is also to this
highly-moral doctrine that the Catholic world became indebted, in the eleventh
century, for the institution of the Order known as the Carthusian monks. Bruno,
its founder, was driven to the foundation of this monstrous Order by a circumstance
well worthy of being recorded here, as it graphically illustrates this divine
predestination. A friend of Bruno, a French physician, famed far and wide for
his extraordinary piety, purity of morals, and charity, died, and his body was
watched by Bruno himself. Three days after his death, and as he was going to be
buried, the pious physician suddenly sat up in his coffin and declared, in a
loud and solemn voice, "that by the
[[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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CALVIN.
Calvin promulgated views of
Divine partiality and bloodthirstiness equally abhorrent. "The human race,
corrupted radically in the fall with Adam, has upon it the guilt and impotence
of original sin; its redemption can be achieved only through an incarnation and
a propitiation; of this redemption only electing grace can make the soul a
participant, and such grace, once given, is never lost; this election can come
only from God, and it includes only a part of the race, the rest being left to
perdition; election and perdition (the horribile decretum) are both
predestinated in the Divine plan; that plan is a decree, and this decree is
eternal and unchangeable . . . justification is by faith alone, and faith is
the gift of God."
O Divine Justice, how
blasphemed has been thy name! Unfortunately for all such speculations, belief
in the propitiatory efficacy of blood can be traced to the oldest rites. Hardly
a nation remained ignorant of it. Every people offered animal and even human
sacrifices to the gods, in the hope of averting thereby public calamity, by
pacifying the wrath of some avenging deity. There are instances of Greek and
Roman generals offering their lives simply for the success of their army.
Caesar complains of it, and calls it a superstition of the Gauls. "They
devote themselves to death . . . believing that unless life is rendered for
life the immortal gods cannot be appeased," he writes. "If any evil
is about to befall either those who now sacrifice, or Egypt, may it be averted
on this head," was pronounced by the Egyptian priests when sacrificing one
of their sacred animals. And imprecations were uttered over the head of the
expiatory victim, around whose horns a piece of byblus was rolled.* The animal
was generally led to some barren region, sacred to Typhon, in those primitive
ages when this fatal deity was yet held in a certain consideration by the Egyptians.
It is in this custom that lies the origin of the "scape-goat" of the
Jews, who, when the rufous ass-god was rejected by the Egyptians, began
sacrificing to another deity the "red heifer."
"Let all sins that have
been committed in this world fall on me that the world may be delivered,"
exclaimed Gautama, the Hindu Saviour, centuries before our era.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] just judgment of God he was eternally damned." After which
consoling message from beyond the "dark river," he fell back and
relapsed into death.
In their turn, the Parsi
theologians speak thus: "If any of you commit sin under the belief that he
shall be saved by somebody, both the deceiver as well as the deceived shall be
damned to the day of Rasta Khez. . . . There is no Saviour. In the other world
you shall receive the return according to your actions. . . . Your Saviour is
your deeds and God Himself. (1)
* "De Isid. et
Osir," p. 380.
----------------------------------
(1) "The Modern
Parsis," lecture by Max Muller, 1862.
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No one will pretend to assert
in our own age that it was the Egyptians who borrowed anything from the
Israelites, as they now accuse the Hindus of doing. Bunsen, Lepsius,
Champollion, have long since established the precedence of Egypt over the
Israelites in age as well as in all the religious rites that we now recognize
among the "chosen people." Even the New Testament teems with
quotations and repetitions from the Book of the Dead, and Jesus, if everything
attributed to him by his four biographers is true -- must have been acquainted
with the Egyptian Funereal Hymns.* In the Gospel according to Matthew we find
whole sentences from the ancient and sacred Ritual which preceded our era by
more than 4,000 years. We will again compare.**
The "soul" under
trial is brought before Osiris, the "Lord of Truth," who sits
decorated with the Egyptian cross, emblem of eternal life, and holding in his
right hand the Vannus or the flagellum of justice.*** The spirit begins, in the
"Hall of the Two Truths," an earnest appeal, and enumerates its good
deeds, supported by the responses of the forty-two assessors -- its incarnated
deeds and accusers. If justified, it is addressed as Osiris, thus assuming the
appellation of the Deity whence its divine essence proceeded, and the following
words, full of majesty and justice, are pronounced! "Let the Osiris go; ye
see he is without fault. . . . He lived on truth, he has fed on truth. . . .
The god has welcomed him as he desired. He has given food to my hungry, drink
to my thirsty ones, clothes to my naked. . . . He has made the sacred food of
the gods the meat of the spirits."
In the parable of the Kingdom
of Heaven (Matthew xxv.), the Son of Man (Osiris is also called the Son) sits
upon the throne of his glory, judging the nations, and says to the justified,
"Come ye blessed of my Father (the God) inherit the kingdom. . . . For I
was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty and ye gave me drink . . .
naked and
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Every tradition shows that
Jesus was educated in Egypt and passed his infancy and youth with the
Brotherhoods of the Essenes and other mystic communities.
** Bunsen found some records
which show the language and religious worship of the Egyptians, for instance, not
only existing at the opening of the old Empire, "but already so fully
established and fixed as to receive but a very slight development in the course
of the old, middle, and modern Empires," and while this opening of the old
Empire is placed by him beyond the Menes period, at least 4,000 years B.C., the
origin of the ancient Hermetic prayers and hymns of the "Book of the
Dead," is assigned by Bunsen to the pre-Menite dynasty of Abydos (between
4,000 and 4,500 B.C.), thus showing that "the system of Osirian worship
and mythology was already formed 3,000 years before the days of Moses."
*** It was also called the
"hook of attraction." Virgil terms it "Mystica vannus
Iacchi," "Georgics," i., 166.
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CHRISTIANITY.
ye clothed me."* To
complete the resemblance (Matthew iii. 12): John is made to describe Christ as
Osiris, "whose fan (winnow or vannus) is in his hand, and who will
"purge his floor and gather his wheat into the garner."
The same in relation to
Buddhist legends. In Matthew iv. 19, Jesus is made to say: "Follow me and
I will make you fishers of men," the whole adapted to a conversation
between him and Simon Peter and Andrew his brother.
In Schmidt's "Der Weise
und der Thor,"** a work full of anecdotes about Buddha and his disciples,
the whole from original texts, it is said of a new convert to the faith, that
"he had been caught by the hook of the doctrine, just as a fish, who has
caught at the bait and line is securely pulled out." In the temples of
Siam the image of the expected Buddha, the Messiah Maitree, is represented with
a fisherman's net in the hand, while in Thibet he holds a kind of a trap. The
explanation of it reads as follows: "He (Buddha) disseminates upon the
Ocean of birth and decay the Lotus-flower of the excellent law as a bait; with
the loop of devotion, never cast out in vain, he brings living beings up like
fishes, and carries them to the other side of the river, where there is true
understanding."***
Had the erudite Archbishop
Cave, Grabe, and Dr. Parker, who so zealously contended in their time for the
admission of the Epistles of Jesus Christ and Abgarus, King of Edessa, into the
Canon of the Scripture, lived in our days of Max Muller and Sanscrit
scholarship, we doubt whether they would have acted as they did. The first
mention of these Epistles ever made, was by the famous Eusebius. This pious
bishop seems to have been self-appointed to furnish Christianity with the most
unexpected proofs to corroborate its wildest fancies. Whether
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In an Address to the Delegates
of the Evangelical Alliance, New York, 1874, Mr. Peter Cooper, a Unitarian, and
one of the noblest practical Christians of the age, closes it with the
following memorable language: "In that last and final account it will be
happy for us if we shall then find that our influence through life has tended
to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, and soothe the sorrows of those who
were sick and in prison." Such words from a man who has given two million
dollars in charity; educated four thousand young girls in useful arts, by which
they gain a comfortable support; maintained a free public library, museum, and
reading-room; classes for working people; public lectures by eminent
scientists, open to all; and been foremost in all good works, throughout a long
and blameless life, come with the noble force that marks the utterances of all
benefactors of their kind. The deeds of Peter Cooper will cause posterity to
treasure his golden sayings in its heart.
** "Aus dem Tibetischen
ubersetzt und mit dem Originaltexte herausgegeben," von S. J. Schmidt.
*** "Buddhism in
Tibet," by Emil Schlagintweit, 1863, p. 213.
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among the many accomplishments
of the Bishop of Caesarea, we must include a knowledge of the Cingalese,
Pehlevi, Thibetan, and other languages, we know not; but he surely transcribed
the letters of Jesus and Abgarus, and the story of the miraculous portrait of
Christ taken on a piece of cloth, by the simple wiping of his face, from the
Buddhistical Canon. To be sure, the bishop declared that he found the letter
himself written in Syriac, preserved among the registers and records of the city
of Edessa, where Abgarus reigned.* We recall the words of Babrias: "Myth,
O son of King Alexander, is an ancient human invention of Syrians, who lived in
old time under Ninus and Belus." Edessa was one of the ancient "holy
cities." The Arabs venerate it to this day; and the purest Arabic is there
spoken. They call it still by its ancient name Orfa, once the city Arpha-Kasda
(Arphaxad) the seat of a College of Chaldeans and Magi; whose missionary,
called Orpheus, brought thence the Bacchic Mysteries to Thrace. Very naturally,
Eusebius found there the tales which he wrought over into the story of Abgarus,
and the sacred picture taken on a cloth; as that of Bhagavat, or the blessed
Tathagata (Buddha)** was obtained by King Binsbisara.*** The King having brought
it, Bhagavat projected his shadow on it.**** This bit of "miraculous
stuff," with its shadow, is still preserved, say the Buddhists; "only
the shadow itself is rarely seen."
In like manner, the Gnostic
author of the Gospel according to John, copied and metamorphosed the legend of
Ananda who asked drink of a Matangha woman -- the antitype of the woman met by
Jesus at the well,*****
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Ecclesiastical
History," 1. i., c. 13.
** Tathagata is Buddha,
"he who walks in the footsteps of his predecessors"; as Bhagavat --
he is the Lord.
*** We have the same legend
about St. Veronica -- as a pendant.
**** "Introduction a
l'Histoire du Bouddhisme Indien," E. Burnouf, p. 341.
***** Moses was a most notable
practitioner of Hermetic Science. Bearing in mind that Moses (Asarsiph) is made
to run away to the Land of Midian, and that he "sat down by a well"
(Exod. ii.), we find the following:
The "Well" played a
prominent part in the Mysteries of the Bacchic festivals. In the sacerdotal
language of every country, it had the same significance. A well is "the
fountain of salvation" mentioned in Isaiah (xii. 3). The water is the male
principle in its spiritual sense. In its physical relation in the allegory of
creation, the water is chaos, and chaos is the female principle vivified by the
Spirit of God -- the male principle. In the "Kabala," Zachar means
"male"; and the Jordan was called Zachar ("Universal
History," vol. ii., p. 429). It is curious that the Father of St. John the
Baptist, the Prophet of Jordan -- Zacchar -- should be called Zachar-ias. One
of the names of Bacchus is Zagreus. The ceremony of pouring water on the shrine
was sacred in the Osirian rites as well as in the Mosaic institutions. In the
Mishna it is said, "Thou shalt dwell in Succa and pour out water seven,
and the pipes six days" ("Mishna Succah," p. 1). "Take
virgin earth . . . and work up the dust with liv-
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page]]
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STORY BUDDHISTIC.
and was reminded by her that
she belongs to a low caste, and may have nothing to do with a holy monk.
"I do not ask thee, my sister," answers Ananda to the woman,
"either thy caste or thy family, I only ask thee for water, if thou canst
give me some." This Matangha woman, charmed and moved to tears, repents,
joins the monastic Order of Gautama, and becomes a saint, rescued from a life
of unchastity by Sakya-muni. Many of her subsequent actions were used by
Christian forgers, to endow Mary Magdalen and other female saints and martyrs.
"And whosoever shall give
to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of
a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward,"
says the Gospel (Matthew x. 42). "Whosoever, with a purely believing
heart, offers nothing but a handful of water, or presents so much to the
spiritual assembly, or gives drink therewith to the poor and needy, or to a
beast of the field; this meritorious action will not be exhausted in many
ages,"* says the Buddhist Canon.
At the hour of
Gautama-Buddha's birth there were 32,000 wonders performed. The clouds stopped
immovable in the sky, the waters of the rivers ceased to flow; the flowers
ceased unbudding; the birds re-
[[Footnote(s)]]
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[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] ing WATER," prescribes the Sohar (Introduction to
"Sohar"; "Kabbala Denudata," ii., pp. 220, 221). Only
"earth and water, according to Moses, can bring forth a living soul,"
quotes Cornelius Agrippa. The water of Bacchus was considered to impart the
Holy Pneuma to the initiate; and it washes off all sin by baptism through the
Holy Ghost, with the Christians. The "well" in the kabalistic sense,
is the mysterious emblem of the Secret Doctrine. "If any man thirst, let
him come unto me and drink," says Jesus (John vii.).
Therefore, Moses the adept, is
naturally enough represented sitting by a well. He is approached by the seven
daughters of the Kenite Priest of Midian coming to fill the troughs, to water
their father's flock. Here we have seven again -- the mystic number. In the
present biblical allegory the daughters represent the seven occult powers.
"The shepherds came and drove them (the seven daughters) away, but Moses
stood up, and helped them, and watered their flock." The shepherds are
shown, by some kabalistic interpreters, to represent the seven
"badly-disposed Stellars" of the Nazarenes; for in the old Samaritan
text the number of these Shepherds is also said to be seven (see kabalistic
books).
Then Moses, who had conquered
the seven evil Powers, and won the friendship of the seven occult and
beneficent ones, is represented as living with the Reuel Priest of Midian, who
invites "the Egyptian" to eat bread, i.e., to partake of his wisdom.
In the Bible the elders of Midian are known as great soothsayers and diviners.
Finally, Reuel or Jethro, the initiator and instructor of Moses, gives him in
marriage his daughter. This daughter is Zipporah, i.e., the esoteric Wisdom,
the shining light of knowledge, for Siprah means the "shining" or
"resplendent," from the word "Sapar" to shine. Sippara, in
Chaldea, was the city of the "Sun." Thus Moses was initiated by the
Midianite, or rather the Kenite, and thence the biblical allegory.
* Schmidt: "Der Weise und
der Thor," p. 37.
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mained silent and full of
wonder; all nature remained suspended in her course, and was full of
expectation. "There was a preternatural light spread all over the world;
animals suspended their eating; the blind saw; and the lame and dumb were
cured," etc.*
We now quote from the
Protevangelion:
"At the hour of the
Nativity, as Joseph looked up into the air, 'I saw,' he says, 'the clouds astonished,
and the fowls of the air stopping in the midst of their flight. . . . And I
beheld the sheep dispersed . . . and yet the sheep stood still; and I looked
into a river, and saw the kids with their mouths close to the water, and
touching it, but they did not drink.
"Then a bright cloud
overshadowed the cave. But on a sudden the cloud became a great light in the
cave, so that their eyes could not bear it. . . . The hand of Salome, which was
withered, was straightway cured. . . . The blind saw; the lame and dumb were
cured."**
When sent to school, the young
Gautama, without having ever studied, completely worsted all his competitors;
not only in writing, but in arithmetic, mathematics, metaphysics, wrestling,
archery, astronomy, geometry, and finally vanquishes his own professors by
giving the definition of sixty-four kinds of writings, which were unknown to
the masters themselves.***
And this is what is said again
in the Gospel of the Infancy: "And when he (Jesus) was twelve years old .
. . a certain principal Rabbi asked him, 'Hast thou read books?' and a certain
astronomer asked the Lord Jesus whether he had studied astronomy. And Lord
Jesus explained to him . . . about the spheres . . . about the physics and
metaphysics. Also things that reason of man had never discovered. . . . The
constitutions of the body, how the soul operated upon the body, . . . etc. And
at this the master was so surprised that he said: 'I believe this boy was born
before Noah . . . he is more learned than any master.' "****
The precepts of Hillel, who
died forty years B. C., appear rather as quotations than original expressions
in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus taught the world nothing that had not been
taught as earnestly before by other masters. He begins his sermon with certain purely
Buddhistic
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Rgya. Tcher. Rol.
Pa.," "History of Buddha Sakya-muni" (Sanscrit),
"Lalitavistara," vol. ii., pp. 90, 91.
** "Protevangelion"
(ascribed to James), ch. xiii. and xiv.
*** "Pali Buddhistical
Annals," iii., p. 28; "Manual of Buddhism," 142. Hardy.
**** "Gospel of the
Infancy," chap. xx., xxi.; accepted by Eusebius, Athanasius, Epiphanius,
Chrysostom, Jerome, and others. The same story, with the Hindu earmarks rubbed
off to avoid detection, is found at Luke ii. 46, 47.
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ANTAGONIST.
precepts that had found
acceptance among the Essenes, and were generally practiced by the Orphikoi, and
the Neo-platonists. There were the Philhellenes, who, like Apollonius, had
devoted their lives to moral and physical purity, and who practiced asceticism.
He tries to imbue the hearts of his audience with a scorn for worldly wealth; a
fakir-like unconcern for the morrow; love for humanity, poverty, and chastity.
He blesses the poor in spirit, the meek, the hungering and the thirsting after
righteousness, the merciful and the peace-makers, and, Buddha-like, leaves but
a poor chance for the proud castes to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Every
word of his sermon is an echo of the essential principles of monastic Buddhism.
The ten commandments of Buddha, as found in an appendix to the Pratimoksha
Sutra (Pali-Burman text), are elaborated to their full extent in Matthew. If we
desire to acquaint ourselves with the historical Jesus we have to set the
mythical Christ entirely aside, and learn all we can of the man in the first Gospel.
His doctrines, religious views, and grandest aspirations will be found
concentrated in his sermon.
This is the principal cause of
the failure of missionaries to convert Brahmanists and Buddhists. These see
that the little of really good that is offered in the new religion is paraded
only in theory, while their own faith demands that those identical rules shall
be applied in practice. Notwithstanding the impossibility for Christian
missionaries to understand clearly the spirit of a religion wholly based on
that doctrine of emanation which is so inimical to their own theology, the
reasoning powers of some simple Buddhistical preachers are so high, that we see
a scholar like Gutzlaff,* utterly silenced and put to great straits by
Buddhists. Judson, the famous Baptist missionary in Burmah, confesses, in his
Journal, the difficulties to which he was often driven by them. Speaking of a
certain Ooyan, he remarks that his strong mind was capable of grasping the most
difficult subjects. "His words," he remarks, "are as smooth as
oil, as sweet as honey, and as sharp as razors; his mode of reasoning is soft,
insinuating, and acute; and so adroitly does he act his part, that I with the
strength of truth, was scarcely able to keep him down." It appears though,
that at a later period of his mission, Mr. Judson found that he had utterly
mistaken the doctrine. "I begin to find," he says, "that the
semi-atheism, which I had sometimes mentioned, is nothing but a refined
Buddhism, having its foundation in the Buddhistic Scriptures." Thus he
discovered at last that while there is in Buddhism "a generic term of most
exalted perfection actually applied to numerous individuals, a Buddha superior
to the whole host of subordinate deities," there are also lurking in the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Alabaster: "Wheel of
the Law," pp. 29, 34, 35, and 38.
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system "the glimmerings
of an anima mundi anterior to, and even superior to, Buddha."*
This is a happy discovery,
indeed!
Even the so-slandered Chinese
believe in One, Highest God. "The Supreme Ruler of Heavens."
Yuh-Hwang-Shang-ti, has his name inscribed only on the golden tablet before the
altar of heaven at the great temple at Pekin, T'Iantan. "This
worship," says Colonel Yule, "is mentioned by the Mahometan narrator
of Shah Rukh's embassy (A.D. 1421): 'Every year there are some days on which
the emperor eats no animal food. . . . He spends his time in an apartment which
contains no idol, and says that he is worshipping the God of Heaven.' "**
Speaking of Shahrastani, the
great Arabian scholar, Chwolsohn says that for him Sabaeism was not astrolatry,
as many are inclined to think. He thought "that God is too sublime and too
great to occupy Himself with the immediate management of this world; that He
has, therefore, transferred the government thereof to the gods, and retained
only the most important affairs for Himself; that further, man is too weak to
be able to apply immediately to the Highest; that he must, therefore, address
his prayers and sacrifices to the intermediate divinities, to whom the
management of the world has been entrusted by the Highest." Chwolsohn
argues that this idea is as old as the world, and that "in the heathen
world this view was universally shared by the cultivated."***
Father Boori, a Portuguese
missionary, who was sent to convert the "poor heathen" of
Cochin-China, as early as the sixteenth century, "protests in despair, in
his narrative, that there is not a dress, office, or ceremony in the Church of
Rome, to which the Devil has not here provided some counterpart. Even when the
Father began inveighing against the idols, he was answered that these were the
images of departed great men, whom they worshipped exactly on the same
principle, and in the same manner, as the Catholics did the images of the
apostles and martyrs."**** Moreover, these idols have importance but in
the eyes of the ignorant multitudes. The philosophy of Buddhism ignores images
and fetishes. Its strongest vitality lies in its psychological conceptions of
man's inner self. The road to the supreme state of felicity, called the Ford of
Nirvana, winds its invisible paths through the spiritual, not physical life of
a person while on this earth. The sacred Buddhistical literature points the way
by stimulating man to follow practically the example of Gau-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* E. Upham: "The History
and Doctrines of Buddhism," p. 135. Dr. Judson fell into this prodigious
error by reason of his fanaticism. In his zeal to "save souls," he
refused to peruse the Burmese classics, lest his attention should be diverted
thereby.
** "Indian
Antiquary," vol. ii., p. 81; "Book of Ser Marco Polo," vol. i.,
p. 441.
*** "Ssabismus,"
vol. i., p. 725.
**** Murray's "History of
Discoveries in Asia."
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PILFERINGS FROM BUDDHISM.
tama. Therefore, the
Buddhistical writings lay a particular stress on the spiritual privileges of
man, advising him to cultivate his powers for the production of Meipo
(phenomena) during life, and for the attainment of Nirvana in the hereafter.
But turning again from the
historical to the mythical narratives, invented alike about Christna, Buddha,
and Christ, we find the following:
Setting a model for the
Christian avatar and the archangel Gabriel to follow, the luminous San-tusita
(Bodhisat) appeared to Maha-maya 'like a cloud in the moonlight, coming from
the north, and in his hand holding a white lotus.' He announced to her the
birth of her son, and circumambulating the queen's couch thrice . . . passed
away from the dewa-loka and was conceived in the world of men.* The resemblance
will be found still more perfect upon examining the illustrations in mediaeval
psalters,** and the panel-paintings of the sixteenth century (in the Church of
Jouy, for instance, in which the Virgin is represented kneeling, with her hands
uplifted toward the Holy Ghost, and the unborn child is miraculously seen
through her body), and then finding the same subject treated in the identical
way in the sculptures in certain convents in Thibet. In the Pali-Buddhistic
annals, and other religious records, it is stated that Maha-devi and all her
attendants were constantly "gatified with the sight of the infant
Bodhisatva quietly developing within his mother's bosom, and beaming already,
from his place of gestation, upon humanity "the resplendent moonshine of
his future benevolence."***
Ananda, the cousin and future
disciple of Sakya-muni, is represented as having been born at the same time. He
appears to have been the original for the old legends about John the Baptist.
For example, the Pali narrative relates that Maha-maya, while pregnant with the
sage, paid a visit to his mother, as Mary did to the mother of the Baptist.
Immediately, as she entered the apartment, the unborn Ananda greeted the unborn
Buddha-Siddhartha, who also returned the salutation; and in like manner the
babe, afterward John the Baptist, leaped in the womb of Elizabeth when Mary
came in.**** More even that that; for Didron describes a scene of salutation,
painted on shutters at Lyons, between Elizabeth and Mary, in which the two
unborn infants, both pictured as outside their mothers, are also saluting each
other.*****
If we turn now to Christna and
attentively compare the prophecies respecting him, as collected in the
Ramatsariarian traditions of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Manual of
Buddhism," p. 142.
** See Inman's "Ancient
Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism," p. 92.
*** "Rgya. Tcher. Rol.
Pa.," Bkah Hgyour (Thibetan version).
**** Gospel according to Luke,
i. 39-45.
***** Didron:
"Iconograph. Chretienne Histoire de Dieu."
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Atharva, the Vedangas, and the
Vedantas,* with passages in the Bible and apocryphal Gospels, of which it is pretended
that some presage the coming of Christ, we shall find very curious facts.
Following are examples:
[Column 1]
FROM THE HINDU BOOKS.
1st. "He (the Redeemer)
shall come, crowned with lights, the pure fluid issuing from the great soul . .
. dispersing darkness" (Atharva).
2d. "In the early part of
the Kali-Yuga shall be born the son of the Virgin" (Vedanta).
3d. "The Redeemer shall
come, and the accursed Rakhasas shall fly for refuge to the deepest hell"
(Atharva).
4th. "He shall come, and
life will defy death . . . and he shall revivify the blood of all beings, shall
regenerate all bodies, and purify all souls."
5th. "He shall come, and
all animated beings, all the flowers, plants, men, women, the infants, the
slaves . . . shall together intone the chant of joy, for he is the Lord of all
creatures . . . he is infinite, for he is power, for he is wisdom, for he is
beauty, for he is all and in all."
6th. "He shall come, more
sweet than honey and ambrosia, more pure than the lamb without spot"
(Ibid.).
7th. "Happy the blest
womb that shall bear him" (Ibid.).
8th. "And God shall
manifest His glory, and make His power resound, and shall reconcile Himself
with His creatures" (Ibid.).
9th. "It is in the bosom
of a woman that the ray of the Divine splendor will receive human form, and she
shall bring forth, being a virgin, for no impure contact shall have defiled
her" (Vedangas).
[Column 2]
FROM THE CHRISTIAN BOOKS.
1st. "The people of
Galilee of the Gentiles which sat in darkness saw great light" (Matthew
iv. from Isaiah ix. 1, 2).
2d. "Behold, a virgin
shall conceive and bear a son" (Isaiah vii. quoted in Matthew i. 23).
3d. "Behold, now, Jesus
of Nazareth, with the brightness of his glorious divinity, put to flight all
the horrid powers of darkness" (Nicodemus).
4th. "And I give unto
them eternal life, and they shall never perish" (John x. 28).
5th. "Rejoice greatly, O
daughter of Zion! shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! behold, thy King cometh unto
thee . . . he is just . . . for how great is his goodness, and how great is his
beauty! Corn shall make the young men cheerful, and new wine the maids"
(Zechariah ix.).
6th. "Behold the lamb of
God" (John i. 36). "He was brought as a lamb to the slaughter"
(Isaiah 53).
7th. "Blessed art thou
among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb" (Luke i.);
"Blessed is the womb that bare thee" (xi. 27).
8th. "God manifested
forth His glory" (John, 1st Ep.).
"God was in Christ,
reconciling the world unto himself" (2 Corinth. v.).
9th. "Being an
unparalleled instance, without any pollution or defilement, and a virgin shall
bring forth a son, and a maid shall bring forth the Lord" (Gospel of Mary,
iii.).
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* There are numerous works
deduced immediately from the "Vedas," called the "Upa-Ved."
Four works are included under this denomination, namely, the "Ayus,"
"Gandharva," "Dhanus," and "Sthapatya." The third
"Upaveda" was composed by Viswamitra for the use of the Kshatriyas,
the warrior caste.
Isis Unveiled by H. P.
Blavatsky -- Vol. 2
Theosophical University Press
Online Edition
[[Chapter 11, part 2]]
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WITTOBA.
Let there be exaggeration or
not in attributing to the Atharva-Veda and the other books such a great
antiquity, the fact remains that these prophecies and their realization
preceded Christianity, and Christna preceded Christ. That is all we need care
to inquire.
One is completely overwhelmed
with astonishment upon reading Dr. Lundy's Monumental Christianity. It would be
difficult to say whether an admiration for the author's erudition, or amazement
at his serene and unparalleled sophistry is stronger. He has gathered a world
of facts which prove that the religions, far more ancient than Christianity, of
Christna, Buddha, and Osiris had anticipated even its minutest symbols. His
materials come from no forged papyri, no interpolated Gospels, but from
sculptures on the walls of ancient temples, from monuments, inscriptions, and
other archaic relics, only mutilated by the hammers of iconoclasts, the cannon
of fanatics, and the effects of time. He shows us Christna and Apollo as good
shepherds; Christna holding the cruciform chank and the chakra, and Christna
"crucified in space," as he calls it (Monumental Christianity, fig.
72). Of this figure -- borrowed by Dr. Lundy from Moor's Hindu Pantheon -- it
may be truly said that it is calculated to petrify a Christian with
astonishment, for it is the crucified Christ of Romish art to the last degree
of resemblance. Not a feature is lacking; and, the author says of it himself:
"This representation I believe to be anterior to Christianity. . . . It looks
like a Christian crucifix in many respects. . . . The drawing, the attitude,
the nail-marks in hands and feet, indicate a Christian origin, while the
Parthian coronet of seven points, the absence of the wood, and of the usual
inscription, and the rays of glory above, would seem to point to some other
than a Christian origin. Can it be the victim-man, or the priest and victim
both in one, of the Hindu Mythology, who offered himself a sacrifice before the
worlds were? Can it be Plato's Second God who impressed himself on the universe
in the form of the cross? Or is it his divine man who would be scourged,
tormented, fettered; have his eyes burnt out; and lastly . . . would be
crucified?" (Republic, c. ii., p. 52, Spens. Trans.). It is all that and
much more; Archaic Religious Philosophy was universal.
As it is, Dr. Lundy
contradicts Moor, and maintains that this figure is that of Wittoba, one of the
avatars of Vishnu, hence Christna, and anterior to Christianity, which is a
fact not very easily to be put down. And yet although he finds it prophetic of
Christianity, he thinks it has no relation whatever to Christ! His only reason
is that "in a Christian crucifix the glory always comes from the sacred
head; here it is from above and beyond. . . . The Pundit's Wittoba then, given
to Moor, would seem to be the crucified Krishna, the shepherd-god of Mathura
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. . . a Saviour -- the Lord of
the Covenant, as well as Lord of Heaven and earth -- pure and impure, light and
dark, good and bad, peaceful and war-like, amiable and wrathful, mild and
turbulent, forgiving and vindictive, God and a strange mixture of man, but not
the Christ of the Gospels."
Now all these qualities must
pertain to Jesus as well as to Christna. The very fact that Jesus was a man
upon the mother's side -- even though he were a God, implies as much. His
behavior toward the fig-tree, and his self-contradictions, in Matthew, where at
one time he promises peace on earth, and at another the sword, etc., are proofs
in this direction. Undoubtedly this cut was never intended to represent Jesus
of Nazareth. It was Wittoba, as Moor was told, and as moreover the Hindu Sacred
Scriptures state, Brahma, the sacrificer who is "at once both sacrificer
and victim"; it is "Brahma, victim in His Son Christna, who came to
die on earth for our salvation, who Himself accomplishes the solemn sacrifice (of
the Sarvameda)." And yet, it is the man Jesus as well as the man Christna,
for both were united to their Chrestos.
Thus we have either to admit
periodical "incarnations," or let Christianity go as the greatest
imposture and plagiarism of the ages!
As to the Jewish Scriptures,
only such men as the Jesuit de Carriere, a convenient representative of the
majority of the Catholic clergy, can still command their followers to accept
only the chronology established by the Holy Ghost. It is on the authority of the
latter that we learn that Jacob went, with a family of seventy persons, all
told, to settle in Egypt in A.M. 2298, and that in A.M. 2513 -- just 215 years
afterward -- these seventy persons had so increased that they left Egypt
600,000 fighting men strong, "without counting women and children,"
which, according to the science of statistics, should represent a total
population of between two and three millions!! Natural history affords no
parallel to such fecundity, except in red herrings. After this let the
Christian missionaries laugh, if they can, at Hindu chronology and
computations.
"Happy are those persons,
but not to be envied," exclaims Bunsen, "who have no misgivings about
making Moses march out with more than two millions of people at the end of a
popular conspiracy and rising, in the sunny days of the eighteenth dynasty; who
make the Israelites conquer Kanaan under Joshua, during and previous to the
most formidable campaigns of conquering Pharaohs in that same country. The
Egyptian and Assyrian annals, combined with the historical criticism of the
Bible, prove that the exodus could only have taken place under Menephthah, so
that Joshua could not have crossed the Jordan before Easter 1280, the last
campaign of Ramses III. in Palestine being in 1281."*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Bunsen's "Egypt's Place
in Universal History," vol. v., p. 93.
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JEHOVAH."
But we must resume the thread
of our narrative with Buddha.
Neither he nor Jesus ever
wrote one word of their doctrines. We have to take the teachings of the masters
on the testimony of the disciples, and therefore it is but fair that we should
be allowed to judge both doctrines on their intrinsic value. Where the logical
preponderance lies, may be seen in the results of frequent encounters between
Christian missionaries and Buddhist theologians (pungui). The latter usually,
if not invariably, have the better of their opponents. On the other hand, the
"Lama of Jehovah" rarely fails to lose his temper, to the great
delight of the Lama of Buddha, and practically demonstrates his religion of
patience, mercy, and charity, by abusing his disputant in the most uncanonical
language. This we have witnessed repeatedly.
Despite the notable similarity
of the direct teachings of Gautama and Jesus, we yet find their respective
followers starting from two diametrically opposite points. The Buddhist divine,
following literally the ethical doctrine of his master, remains thus true to
the legacy of Gautama; while the Christian minister, distorting the precepts
recorded by the four Gospels beyond recognition, teaches, not that which Jesus
taught, but the absurd, too often pernicious, interpretations of fallible men
-- Popes, Luthers, and Calvins included. The following are two instances
selected from both religions, and brought into contrast. Let the reader judge
for himself:
"Do not believe in
anything because it is rumored and spoken of by many," says Buddha;
"do not think that is a proof of its truth.
"Do not believe merely
because the written statement of some old sage is produced; do not be sure that
the writing has ever been revised by the said sage, or can be relied on. Do not
believe in what you have fancied, thinking that, because an idea is
extraordinary, it must have been implanted by a Deva, or some wonderful being.
"Do not believe in
guesses, that is, assuming something at hap-hazard as a starting-point, and
then drawing conclusions from it -- reckoning your two and your three and your
four before you have fixed your number one.
"Do not believe merely on
the authority of your teachers and masters, or believe and practice merely
because they believe and practice.
"I [Buddha] tell you all,
you must of yourselves know that this is evil, this is punishable, this is
censured by wise men; belief in this will bring no advantage to any one, but
will cause sorrow; and when you know this, then eschew it."*
It is impossible to avoid
contrasting with these benevolent and human sentiments, the fulminations of the
OEcumenical Council and the Pope,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Alabaster: "Wheel of
the Law," pp. 43-47.
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against the employment of
reason, and the pursuit of science when it clashes with revelation. The
atrocious Papal benediction of Moslem arms and cursing of the Russian and
Bulgarian Christians have roused the indignation of some of the most devoted
Catholic communities. The Catholic Czechs of Prague on the day of the recent
semi-centennial jubilee of Pius IX., and again on the 6th of July, the day
sacred to the memory of John Huss, the burned martyr, to mark their horror of
the Ultramontane policy in this respect, gathered by thousands upon the
neighboring Mount Zhishko, and with great ceremony and denunciations, burned
the Pope's portrait, his Syllabus, and last allocution against the Russian
Czar, saying that they were good Catholics, but better Slavs. Evidently, the
memory of John Huss is more sacred to them than the Vatican Popes.
"The worship of words is
more pernicious than the worship of images," remarks Robert Dale Owen.
"Grammatolatry is the worst species of idolatry. We have arrived at an era
in which literalism is destroying faith. . . . The letter killeth."*
There is not a dogma in the
Church to which these words can be better applied than to the doctrine of
transubstantiation.** "Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath
eternal life," Christ is made to say. "This is a hard saying,"
repeated his dismayed listeners. The answer was that of an initiate. "Doth
this offend you? It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.
The words (remata, or arcane utterances) that I speak unto you, they are Spirit
and they are Life."
During the Mysteries wine
represented Bacchus, and bread Ceres.***
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The Debatable
Land," p. 145.
** "We divide our
zeal," says Dr. Henry More, "against so many things that we fancy
Popish, that we scarce reserve a just share of detestation against what is
truly so. Such are that gross, rank, and scandalous impossibility of
transubstantiation, the various modes of fulsome idolatry and lying impostures,
the uncertainty of their loyalty to their lawful sovereigns by their
superstitious adhesion to the spiritual tyranny of the Pope, and that barbarous
and ferine cruelty against those that are not either such fools as to be
persuaded to believe such things as they would obtrude upon men, or, are not so
false to God and their own consciences, as, knowing better, yet to profess
them" (Postscript to "Glanvill").
*** Payne Knight believes that
Ceres was not a personification of the brute matter which composed the earth, but
of the female productive principle supposed to pervade it, which, joined to the
active, was held to be the cause of the organization and animation of its
substance. . . . She is mentioned as the wife of the Omnipotent Father, AEther,
or Jupiter ("The Symbolical Language of Ancient Art and Mythology,"
xxxvi.). Hence the word, of Christ, "it is the Spirit that quickeneth,
flesh profiteth nothing," applied in their dual meaning to both spiritual
and terrestrial things, to spirit and matter.
Bacchus, as Dionysus, is of
Indian origin. Cicero mentions him as a son of Thyone and Nisus. [[Dionusos]]
means the god Dis from Mount Nys in India. Bacchus, crowned [[Footnote
continued on next page]]
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MYSTERIES.
The hierophant-initiator
presented symbolically before the final revelation wine and bread to the
candidate who had to eat and drink of both in token that the spirit was to
quicken matter, i.e., the divine wisdom was to enter into his body through what
was to be revealed to him. Jesus, in his Oriental phraseology, constantly
assimilated himself to the true vine (John xv. 1). Furthermore, the hierophant,
the discloser of the Petroma, was called "Father." When Jesus says,
"Drink . . . this is my blood," what else was meant, it was simply a
metaphorical assimilation of himself to the vine, which bears the grape, whose
juice is its blood -- wine. It was a hint that as he had himself been initiated
by the "Father," so he desired to initiate others. His
"Father" was the husbandman, himself the vine, his disciples the
branches. His followers being ignorant of the terminology of the Mysteries, wondered;
they even took it as an offense, which is not surprising, considering the
Mosaic injunction against blood.
There is quite enough in the
four gospels to show what was the secret and most fervent hope of Jesus; the
hope in which he began to teach, and in which he died. In his immense and
unselfish love for humanity, he considers it unjust to deprive the many of the
results of the knowledge acquired by the few. This result he accordingly
preaches -- the unity of a spiritual God, whose temple is within each of us,
and in whom we live as He lives in us -- in Spirit. This knowledge was in the
hands of the Jewish adepts of the school of Hillel and the kabalists. But the
"scribes," or lawyers, having gradually merged into the dogmatism of
the dead letter, had long since separated themselves from the Tanaim, the true
spiritual teachers; and the practical kabalists were more or less persecuted by
the Synagogue. Hence, we find Jesus exclaiming: "Woe unto you lawyers! For
ye have taken away the key of knowledge [the Gnosis]: ye entered not in
yourselves, and them that were entering ye prevented" (Luke xi. 52). The
meaning here is clear. They did take the key away, and could not even profit by
it themselves, for the Masorah (tradition) had become a closed book to themselves
as well as to others.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] with ivy, or kissos, is Christna, one of whose names was
Kissen. Dionysus is preeminently the deity on whom were centred all the hopes
for future life; in short, he was the god who was expected to liberate the
souls of men from their prisons of flesh. Orpheus, the poet-Argonaut, is also
said to have come on earth to purify the religion of its gross, and terrestrial
anthropomorphism, he abolished human sacrifice and instituted a mystic theology
based on pure spirituality. Cicero calls Orpheus a son of Bacchus. It is
strange that both seem to have originally come from India. At least, as
Dionysus Zagreus, Bacchus is of undoubted Hindu origin. Some writers deriving a
curious analogy between the name of Orpheus and an old Greek term, [[orphos]],
dark or tawny-colored, make him Hindu by connecting the term with his dusky
Hindu complexion. See Voss, Heyne and Schneider on the Argonauts.
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Neither Renan nor Strauss, nor
the more modern Viscount Amberley seem to have had the remotest suspicion of
the real meaning of many of the parables of Jesus, or even of the character of
the great Galilean philosopher. Renan, as we have seen, presented him to us as
a Gallicized Rabbi, "le plus charmant de tous," still but a Rabbi;
and one, moreover, who does not even come out of the school of Hillel, or any
school either, albeit he terms him repeatedly "the charming doctor."*
He shows him as a sentimental young enthusiast, sprung out of the plebeian
classes of Galilee, who imagines the ideal kings of his parables the empurpled
and jewelled beings of whom one reads in nursery tales.**
Lord Amberley's Jesus, on the
other hand, is an "iconoclastic idealist," far inferior in subtilty
and logic to his critics. Renan looks over at Jesus with the one-sidedness of a
Semitomaniac; Viscount Amberley looks down upon him from the social plane of an
English lord. Apropos of this marriage-feast parable, which he considers as
embodying "a curious theory of social intercourse," the Viscount says:
"Nobody can object to charitable individuals asking poor people or
invalids without rank at their houses. . . . But we cannot admit that this kind
action ought to be rendered obligatory . . . it is eminently desirable that we
should do exactly what Christ would forbid us doing -- namely, invite our
neighbors and be invited by them as circumstances may require. The fear that we
may receive a recompense for the dinner-parties we may give, is surely
chimerical. . . . Jesus, in fact, overlooks entirely the more intellectual side
of society."*** All of which unquestionably shows that the "Son of
God" was no master of social etiquette, nor fit for "society";
but it is also a fair example of the prevalent misconception of even his most suggestive
parables.
The theory of Anquetil du
Perron that the Bagaved-gita is an independent work, as it is absent from
several manuscripts of the Maha-Bharata, may be as much a plea for a still
greater antiquity as the reverse. The work is purely metaphysical and ethical,
and in a certain sense it is anti-Vedic; so far, at least, that it is in
opposition with many of the later Brahmanical interpretations of the Vedas. How
comes it, then, that instead of destroying the work, or, at least, of
sentencing it as uncanonical -- an expedient to which the Christian Church
would never have failed to resort -- the Brahmans show it the greatest
reverence? Perfectly unitarian in its aim, it clashes with the popular
idol-worship. Still, the only precaution taken by the Brahmans to keep its tenets
from becoming too well known, is to preserve it more secretly than any other
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Vie de Jesus," p.
219.
** Ibid., p. 221.
*** "Analysis of
Religious Belief," vol. i., p. 467.
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ARJUNA.
religious book from every caste
except the sacerdotal; and, to impose upon that even, in many cases, certain
restrictions. The grandest mysteries of the Brahmanical religion are embraced
within this magnificent poem; and even the Buddhists recognize it, explaining
certain dogmatic difficulties in their own way. "Be unselfish, subdue your
senses and passions, which obscure reason and lead to deceit," says
Christna to his disciple Arjuna, thus enunciating a purely Buddhistic
principle. "Low men follow examples, great men give them. . . . The soul
ought to free itself from the bonds of action, and act absolutely according to
its divine origin. There is but one God, and all other devotas are inferior,
and mere forms (powers) of Brahma or of myself. Worship by deeds predominates
over that of contemplation."*
This doctrine coincides
perfectly with that of Jesus himself.** Faith alone, unaccompanied by
"works," is reduced to naught in the Bagaved-gita. As to the
Atharva-Veda, it was and is preserved in such secrecy by the Brahmans, that it
is a matter of doubt whether the Orientalists have a complete copy of it. One
who has read what Abbe Dubois says may well doubt the fact. "Of the last
species -- the Atharva -- there are very few," he says, writing of the
Vedas, "and many people suppose they no longer exist. But the truth is,
they do exist, though they conceal themselves with more caution than the
others, from the fear of being suspected to be initiated in the magic mysteries
and other dreaded mysteries which the work is believed to teach."***
There were even those among
the highest epoptae of the greater Mysteries who knew nothing of their last and
dreaded rite -- the voluntary transfer of life from hierophant to candidate. In
Ghost-Land**** this mystical operation of the adept's transfer of his spiritual
entity, after the death of his body, into the youth he loves with all the
ardent love of a spiritual parent, is superbly described. As in the case of the
reincarnation of the lamas of Thibet, an adept of the highest order may live
indefinitely. His mortal casket wears out notwithstanding certain alchemical
secrets for prolonging the youthful vigor far beyond the usual limits, yet the
body can rarely be kept alive beyond ten or twelve score of years. The old
garment is then worn out, and the spiritual Ego forced to leave it, selects for
its habitation a new body, fresh and full of healthy vital principle. In case
the reader should feel inclined to ridicule this asser-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See the "Gita,"
translated by Charles Wilkins, in 1785; and the "Bhagavad-Purana,"
containing the history of Christna, translated into French by Eugene Burnouf.
1840.
** Matthew vii. 21.
*** "Of the People of
India," vol. i., p. 84.
**** Or "Researches into
the Mysteries of Occultism"; Boston, 1877, Edited by Mrs. E. Hardinge
Britten.
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tion of the possible
prolongation of human life, we may as well refer him to the statistics of
several countries. The author of an able article in the Westminster Review, for
October, 1850, is responsible for the statement that in England, they have the
authentic instances of one Thomas Jenkins dying at the age of 169, and
"Old Parr" at 152; and that in Russia some of the peasants are
"known to have reached 242 years."* There are also cases of
centenarianism reported among the Peruvian Indians. We are aware that many able
writers have recently discredited these claims to an extreme longevity, but we
nevertheless affirm our belief in their truth.
True or false there are
"superstitions" among the Eastern people such as have never been
dreamed even by an Edgar Poe or a Hoffmann. And these beliefs run in the very
blood of the nations with which they originated. Carefully stripped of
exaggeration they will be found to embody an universal belief in those
restless, wandering, astral souls, which are called ghouls and vampires. An
Armenian Bishop of the fifth century, named Yeznik, gives a number of such
narratives in a manuscript work (Book i., §§ 20, 30), preserved some thirty
years ago in the library of the Monastery of Etchmeadzine.** Among others,
there is a tradition dating from the days of heathendom, that whenever a hero
whose life is needed yet on earth falls on the battle-field, the Aralez, the
popular gods of ancient Armenia, empowered to bring back to life those
slaughtered in battle, lick the bleeding wounds of the victim, and breathe on
them until they have imparted a new and vigorous life. After that the warrior
rises, washes off all traces of his wounds, and resumes his place in the fray.
But his immortal spirit has fled; and for the remainder of his days he lives --
a deserted temple.
Once that an adept was
initiated into the last and most solemn mystery of the life-transfer, the awful
seventh rite of the great sacerdotal operation, which is the highest theurgy,
he belonged no more to this world. His soul was free thereafter, and the seven
mortal sins lying in wait to devour his heart, as the soul, liberated by death,
would be crossing the seven halls and seven staircases, could hurt him no more
alive or dead; he has passed the "twice seven trials" the twelve labors
of the final hour.***
The High Hierophant alone knew
how to perform this solemn opera-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Stone Him to
Death"; "Septenary Institutions." Capt. James Riley, in his
"Narrative" of his enslavement in Africa, relates like instances of
great longevity on the Sahara Desert.
** Russian Armenia; one of the
most ancient Christian convents.
*** "Egyptian Book of the
Dead." The Hindus have seven upper and seven lower heavens. The seven mortal
sins of the Christians have been borrowed from the Egyptian Books of Hermes
with which Clement of Alexandria was so familiar.
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"BORN AGAIN" INTERPRETED.
tion by infusing his own vital
life and astral soul into the adept, chosen by him for his successor, who thus
became endowed with a double life.*
"Verily, verily, I say
unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God"
(John iii. 3). Jesus tells Nicodemus, "That which is born of the flesh is
flesh; and that which is born of the spirit is spirit."
This allusion, so
unintelligible in itself, is explained in the Satapa-Brahmana. It teaches that
a man striving after spiritual perfection must have three births: 1st. Physical
from his mortal parents; 2d. Spiritual, through religious sacrifice
(initiation); 3d. His final birth into the world of spirit -- at death. Though
it may seem strange that we should have to go to the old land of the Punjab and
the banks of the sacred Ganges, for an interpreter of words spoken in Jerusalem
and expounded on the banks of the Jordan, the fact is evident. This second
birth, or regeneration of spirit, after the natural birth of that which is born
of the flesh, might have astonished a Jewish ruler. Nevertheless, it had been
taught 3,000 years before the appearance of the great Galilean prophet, not
only in old India but to all the epoptae of the Pagan initiation, who were
instructed in the great mysteries of LIFE and DEATH. This secret of secrets,
that soul is not knit to flesh, was practically demonstrated in the instance of
the Yogis, the followers of Kapila. Having emancipated their souls from the
fetters of Prakriti, or Mahat (the physical perception of the senses and mind
-- in one sense, creation), they so developed their soul-power and will-force,
as to have actually enabled themselves, while on earth, to communicate with the
supernal worlds, and perform what is bunglingly termed "miracles."**
Men whose astral
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The atrocious custom
subsequently introduced among the people, of sacrificing human victims, is a
perverted copy of the Theurgic Mystery. The Pagan priests, who did not belong
to the class of the hierophants, carried on for awhile this hideous rite, and
it served to screen the genuine purpose. But the Grecian Herakles is
represented as the adversary of human sacrifices and as slaying the men and
monsters who offered them. Bunsen shows, by the very absence of any
representation of human sacrifice on the oldest monuments, that this custom had
been abolished in the old Empire, at the close of the seventh century after
Menes; therefore, 3,000 years B.C., Iphicrates had stopped the human sacrifices
entirely among the Carthaginians. Diphilus ordered bulls to be substituted for
human victims. Amosis forced the priests to replace the latter by figures of
wax. On the other hand, for every stranger offered on the shrine of Diana by
the inhabitants of the Tauric Chersonesus, the Inquisition and the Christian
clergy can boast of a dozen of heretics offered on the altar of the
"mother of God," and her "Son." And when did the Christians
ever think of substituting either animals or wax-figures for living heretics,
Jews, and witches? They burned these in effigy only when, through providential
interference, the doomed victims had escaped their clutches.
** This is why Jesus recommends
prayer in the solitude of one's closet. This secret prayer is but the paravidya
of the Vedantic philosopher: "He who knows his soul [[Footnote continued
on next page]]
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spirits have attained on earth
the nehreyasa, or the mukti, are half-gods; disembodied spirits, they reach
Moksha or Nirvana, and this is their second spiritual birth.
Buddha teaches the doctrine of
a new birth as plainly as Jesus does. Desiring to break with the ancient
Mysteries, to which it was impossible to admit the ignorant masses, the Hindu
reformer, though generally silent upon more than one secret dogma, clearly
states his thought in several passages. Thus, he says: "Some people are
born again; evil-doers go to Hell; righteous people go to Heaven; those who are
free from all worldly desires enter Nirvana" (Precepts of the Dhammapada,
v., 126). Elsewhere Buddha states that "it is better to believe in a
future life, in which happiness or misery can be felt; for if the heart
believes therein, it will abandon sin and act virtuously; and even if there is
no resurrection, such a life will bring a good name and the regard of men. But
those who believe in extinction at death will not fail to commit any sin that
they may choose, because of their disbelief in a future."*
The Epistle to the Hebrews
treats of the sacrifice of blood. "Where a testament is," says the
writer, "there must be of necessity the death of the testator. . . .
Without the shedding of blood is no remission." Then again: "Christ
glorified not himself to be made High Priest; but He that said unto him: Thou
art my son; TO-DAY HAVE I BEGOTTEN THEE" (Heb. v. 5). This is a very clear
inference, that, 1, Jesus was considered only in the light of a high priest,
like Melchisedek -- another avatar, or incarnation of Christ, according to the
Fathers; and, 2, that the writer thought that Jesus had become a "Son of God"
only at the moment of his initiation by water; hence, that he was not born a
god, neither was he begotten physically by Him. Every initiate of the
"last hour" became, by the very fact of his initiation, a son of God.
When Maxime, the Ephesian, initiated the Emperor Julian into the Mithraic
Mysteries, he pronounced as the usual formula of the rite, the following:
"By this blood, I wash thee from thy sins. The Word of the Highest has
entered unto thee, and His Spirit henceforth will rest upon the NEWLY-BORN, the
now-begotten of the Highest God. . . . Thou art the son of Mithra."
"Thou art the 'Son of God,' " repeated the disciples after Christ's
baptism. When Paul shook off the viper into the fire without further injury to
himself, the people of Melita said "that he was a god" (Acts
xxviii.). "He is the son of God, the Beautiful!" was the term used by
the disciples of Simon
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] (inner self) daily retires to the region of Swarga (the
heavenly realm) in his own heart," says the Brihad-Aranyaka. The Vedantic
philosopher recognizes the Atman, the spiritual self, as the sole and Supreme
God.
* "Wheel of the
Law," p. 54.
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BLOOD.
Magus, for they thought they
recognized the "great power of God" in him.
A man can have no god that is
not bounded by his own human conceptions. The wider the sweep of his spiritual
vision, the mightier will be his deity. But where can we find a better
demonstration of Him than in man himself; in the spiritual and divine powers
lying dormant in every human being? "The very capacity to imagine the
possibility of thaumaturgical powers, is itself evidence that they exist,"
says the author of Prophecy. "The critic, as well as the skeptic, is
generally inferior to the person or subject that he is reviewing, and,
therefore, is hardly a competent witness. If there are counterfeits, somewhere
there must have been a genuine original."*
Blood begets phantoms, and its
emanations furnish certain spirits with the materials required to fashion their
temporary appearances. "Blood," says Levi, "is the first
incarnation of the universal fluid; it is the materialized vital light. Its
birth is the most marvellous of all nature's marvels; it lives only by
perpetually transforming itself, for it is the universal Proteus. The blood
issues from principles where there was none of it before, and it becomes flesh,
bones, hair, nails . . . tears, and perspiration. It can be allied neither to
corruption nor death; when life is gone, it begins decomposing; if you know how
to reanimate it, to infuse into it life by a new magnetization of its globules,
life will return to it again. The universal substance, with its double motion,
is the great arcanum of being; blood is the great arcanum of life."
"Blood," says the
Hindu Ramatsariar, "contains all the mysterious secrets of existence, no
living being can exist without. It is profaning the great work of the Creator
to eat blood."
In his turn Moses, following
the universal and traditional law, forbids eating blood.
Paracelsus writes that with
the fumes of blood one is enabled to call forth any spirit we desire to see;
for with its emanations it will build itself an appearance, a visible body --
only this is sorcery. The hierophants of Baal made deep incisions all over
their bodies and produced apparitions, objective and tangible, with their own
blood. The followers of a certain sect in Persia, many of whom may be found
around the Russian settlements in Temerchan-Shoura, and Derbent, have their
religious mysteries in which they form a large ring, and whirl round in a
frantic dance. Their temples are ruined, and they worship in large temporary
buildings, securely enclosed, and with the earthen floor deeply strewn with
sand. They are all dressed in long white robes, and their heads are
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* A. Wilder: "Ancient and
Modern Prophecy."
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bare and closely shaved. Armed
with knives, they soon reach a point of furious exaltation, and wound
themselves and others until their garments and the sand on the floor are soaked
with blood. Before the end of the "Mystery" every man has a
companion, who whirls round with him. Sometimes the spectral dancers have hair
on their heads, which makes them quite distinct from their unconscious
creators. As we have solemnly promised never to divulge the principal details
of this terrible ceremony (which we were allowed to witness but once), we must
leave the subject.*
In the days of antiquity the
sorceresses of Thessaly added sometimes to the blood of a black lamb that of an
infant, and by this means evoked the shadows. The priests were taught the art
of calling up the spirits of the dead, as well as those of the elements, but
their mode was certainly not that of Thessalian sorceresses.
Among the Yakuts of Siberia
there is a tribe dwelling on the very confines of the Transbaikal regions near
the river Vitema (eastern Siberia) which practices sorcery as known in the days
of the Thessalian witches. Their religious beliefs are curious as a mixture of
philosophy and superstition. They have a chief or supreme god Aij-Taion, who
did not create, they say, but only presides over the creation of all the
worlds. He lives on the ninth heaven, and it is but from the seventh that the
other minor gods -- his servants -- can manifest themselves to their creatures.
This ninth heaven, according to the revelation of the minor deities (spirits,
we suppose), has three suns and three moons, and the ground of this abode is
formed of four lakes (the four cardinal points) of "soft air"
(ether), instead of water. While they offer no sacrifices to the Supreme Deity,
for he needs none, they do try to propitiate both the good and bad deities,
which they respectively term the "white" and the "black"
gods. They do it, because neither of the two classes are good or bad through
personal merit or demerit. As they are all subject to the Supreme Aij-Taion,
and each has to carry on the duty assigned to him from eternity, they are not
responsible for either the good or evil they produce in this world. The reason
given by the Yakuts for such sacrifices is very curious. Sacrifices, they say, help
each class of gods to perform their mission the better, and so please the
Supreme; and every mortal that helps either of them in performing his duty
must, therefore,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* While at Petrovsk
(Dhagestan, region of the Caucasus) we had the opportunity of witnessing
another such mystery. It was owing to the kindness of Prince Melikoff, the
governor-general of Dhagestan, living at Temerchan-Shoura, and especially of
Prince Shamsoudine, the ex-reigning Shamchal of Tarchoff, a native Tartar, that
during the summer of 1865 we assisted at this ceremonial from the safe distance
of a sort of private box, constructed under the ceiling of the temporary
building.
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BULGARIA AND MOLDAVIA.
please the Supreme as well,
for he will have helped justice to take place. As the "black" gods are
appointed to bring diseases, evils, and all kinds of calamities to mankind,
each of which is a punishment for some transgression, the Yakuts offer to them
"bloody" sacrifices of animals; while to the "white" they
make pure offerings, consisting generally of an animal consecrated to some
special god and taken care of with great ceremony, as having become sacred.
According to their ideas the souls of the dead become "shadows," and
are doomed to wander on earth, till a certain change takes place either for the
better or worse, which the Yakuts do not pretend to explain. The light shadows,
i.e., those of good people, become the guardians and protectors of those they
loved on earth; the "dark" shadows (the wicked) always seek, on the
contrary, to hurt those they knew, by inciting them to crimes, wicked acts, and
otherwise injuring mortals. Besides these, like the ancient Chaldees, they
reckon seven divine Sheitans (daemons) or minor gods. It is during the
sacrifices of blood, which take place at night, that the Yakuts call forth the
wicked or dark shadows, to inquire of them what they can do to arrest their
mischief; hence, blood is necessary, for without its fumes the ghosts could not
make themselves clearly visible, and would become, according to their ideas, but
the more dangerous, for they would suck it from living persons by their
perspiration.* As to the good, light shadows, they need not be called out;
besides that, such an act disturbs them; they can make their presence felt,
when needed, without any preparation and ceremonies.
The blood-evocation is also
practiced, although with a different purpose, in several parts of Bulgaria and
Moldavia, especially in districts in the vicinity of Mussulmans. The fearful oppressions
and slavery to which these unfortunate Christians have been subjected for
centuries has rendered them a thousand-fold more impressible, and at the same
time more superstitious, than those who live in civilized countries. On every
seventh of May the inhabitants of every Moldavo-Valachian and Bulgarian city or
village, have what they term the "feast of the dead." After sunset,
immense crowds of women and men, each with a lighted wax taper in hand, resort
to the burial places, and pray on the tombs of their departed friends. This
ancient and solemn ceremony, called Trizna, is everywhere a reminiscence of
primitive Christian rites, but far more solemn yet, while in Mussulman slavery.
Every tomb is furnished with a kind of cupboard, about half a yard high, built
of four stones, and with hinged double-doors. These closets contain what is
termed the household of the defunct: namely, a few wax tapers, some
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Does not this afford us a
point of comparison with the so-called "materializing mediums"?
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oil and an earthen lamp, which
is lighted on that day, and burns for twenty-four hours. Wealthy people have
silver lamps richly chiselled, and bejewelled images, which are secure from
thieves, for in the burial ground the closets are even left open. Such is the
dread of the population (Mussulman and Christian) of the revenge of the dead
that a thief bold enough to commit any murder, would never dare touch the
property of a dead person. The Bulgarians have a belief that every Saturday,
and especially the eve of Easter Sunday, and until Trinity day (about seven
weeks) the souls of the dead descend on earth, some to beg forgiveness from
those living whom they had wronged; others to protect and commune with their
loved ones. Faithfully following the traditional rites of their forefathers,
the natives on each Saturday of these seven weeks keep either lamps or tapers
lighted. In addition to that, on the seventh of May they drench the tombs with
grape wine, and burn incense around them from sunset to sunrise. With the
inhabitants of towns, the ceremony is limited to these simple observances. With
some of the rustics though, the rite assumes the proportions of a theurgic
evocation. On the eve of Ascension Day, Bulgarian women light a quantity of
tapers and lamps; the pots are placed upon tripods, and incense perfumes the
atmosphere for miles around; while thick white clouds of smoke envelope each
tomb, as though a veil had separated it from the others. During the evening,
and until a little before midnight, in memory of the deceased, acquaintances
and a certain number of mendicants are fed and treated with wine and raki
(grape-whiskey), and money is distributed among the poor according to the means
of the surviving relatives. When the feast is ended, the guests approaching the
tomb and addressing the defunct by name, thank him or her for the bounties
received. When all but the nearest relatives are gone, a woman, usually the
most aged, remains alone with the dead, and -- some say -- resorts to the
ceremony of invocation.
After fervent prayers,
repeated face downward on the grave-mound, more or less drops of blood are
drawn from near the left bosom, and allowed to trickle upon the tomb. This
gives strength to the invisible spirit which hovers around, to assume for a few
instants a visible form, and whisper his instructions to the Christian
theurgist -- if he has any to offer, or simply to "bless the mourner"
and then disappear again till the following year. So firmly rooted is this
belief that we have heard, in a case of family difficulty, a Moldavian woman
appeal to her sister to put off every decision till Ascension-night, when their
dead father would be able to tell them of his will and pleasure in person; to
which the sister consented as simply as though their parent were in the next
room.
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SORCERERS.
That there are fearful secrets
in nature may well be believed when, as we have seen in the case of the Russian
Znachar, the sorcerer cannot die until he has passed the word to another, and
the hierophants of White Magic rarely do. It seems as if the dread power of the
"Word" could only be entrusted to one man of a certain district or
body of people at a time. When the Brahmatma was about to lay aside the burden
of physical existence, he imparted his secret to his successor, either orally,
or by a writing placed in a securely-fastened casket which went into the
latter's hands alone. Moses "lays his hands" upon his neophyte,
Joshua, in the solitudes of Nebo and passes away forever. Aaron initiates
Eleazar on Mount Hor, and dies. Siddhartha-Buddha promises his mendicants
before his death to live in him who shall deserve it, embraces his favorite
disciple, whispers in his ear, and dies; and as John's head lies upon the bosom
of Jesus, he is told that he shall "tarry" until he shall come. Like
signal-fires of the olden times, which, lighted and extinguished by turns upon
one hill-top after another, conveyed intelligence along a whole stretch of
country, so we see a long line of "wise" men from the beginning of
history down to our own times communicating the word of wisdom to their direct
successors. Passing from seer to seer, the "Word" flashes out like
lightning, and while carrying off the initiator from human sight forever,
brings the new initiate into view. Meanwhile, whole nations murder each other
in the name of another "Word," an empty substitute accepted literally
by each, and misinterpreted by all!
We have met few sects which
truly practice sorcery. One such is the Yezidis, considered by some a branch of
the Koords, though we believe erroneously. These inhabit chiefly the
mountainous and desolate regions of Asiatic Turkey, about Mosul, Armenia, and
are found even in Syria,* and Mesopotamia. They are called and known everywhere
as devil-worshippers; and most certainly it is not either through ignorance or
mental obscuration that they have set up the worship and a regular inter-communication
with the lowest and the most malicious of both elementals and elementaries.
They recognize the present wickedness of the chief of the "black
powers"; but at the same time they dread his power, and so try
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Yezidis must number over
200,000 men altogether. The tribes which inhabit the Pashalik of Bagdad, and
are scattered over the Sindjar mountains are the most dangerous, as well as the
most hated for their evil practices. Their chief Sheik lives constantly near
the tomb of their prophet and reformer Adi, but every tribe chooses its own
sheik among the most learned in the "black art." This Adi or Ad is a
mythic ancestor of theirs, and simply is, Adi -- the God of wisdom or the Parsi
Ab-ad the first ancestor of the human race, or again Adh-Buddha of the Hindus,
anthropomorphized and degenerated.
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to conciliate to themselves
his favors. He is in an open quarrel with Allah, they say, but a reconciliation
can take place between the two at any day; and those who have shown marks of
their disrespect to the "black one" now, may suffer for it at some
future time, and thus have both God and Devil against them. This is simply a
cunning policy that seeks to propitiate his Satanic majesty, who is no other
than the great Tcherno-bog (the black god) of the Variagi-Russ, the ancient
idolatrous Russians before the days of Vladimir.
Like Wierus, the famous
demonographer of the sixteenth century (who in his Pseudomonarchia Daemonum
describes and enumerates a regular infernal court, which has its dignitaries,
princes, dukes, nobles, and officers), the Yezidis have a whole pantheon of
devils, and use the Jakshas, aerial spirits, to convey their prayers and
respects to Satan their master, and the Afrites of the Desert. During their
prayer-meetings, they join hands, and form immense rings, with their Sheik, or
an officiating priest in the middle who claps his hands, and intones every
verse in honor of Sheitan (Satan). Then they whirl and leap in the air. When
the frenzy is at its climax, they often wound and cut themselves with their
daggers, occasionally rendering the same service to their next neighbors. But
their wounds do not heal and cicatrize as easily as in the case of lamas and
holy men; for but too often they fall victims to these self-inflicted wounds.
While dancing and flourishing high their daggers without unclasping hands --
for this would be considered a sacrilege, and the spell instantly broken, they
coax and praise Sheitan, and entreat him to manifest himself in his works by
"miracles." As their rites are chiefly accomplished during night,
they do not fail to obtain manifestations of various character, the least of
which are enormous globes of fire which take the shapes of the most uncouth
animals.
Lady Hester Stanhope, whose
name was for many years a power among the masonic fraternities of the East, is
said to have witnessed, personally, several of these Yezidean ceremonies. We
were told by an Ockhal, of the sect of Druses, that after having been present
at one of the Yezidis' "Devil's masses," as they are called, this
extraordinary lady, so noted for personal courage and daring bravery, fainted,
and notwithstanding her usual Emir's male attire, was recalled to life and
health with the greatest difficulty. Personally, we regret to say, all our
efforts to witness one of these performances failed.
A recent article in a Catholic
journal on Nagualism and Voodooism charges Hayti with being the centre of
secret societies, with terrible forms of initiation and bloody rites, where
human infants are sacrificed and devoured by the adepts (!!). Piron, a French
traveller, is quoted at length, describing a most fearful scene witnessed by
him in Cuba, in the
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house of a lady whom he never
would have suspected of any connection with so monstrous a sect. "A naked
white girl acted as a voodoo priestess, wrought up to frenzy by dances and
incantations that followed the sacrifice of a white and a black hen. A serpent,
trained to its part, and acted on by the music, coiled round the limbs of the
girl, its motions studied by the votaries dancing around or standing to watch
its contortions. The spectator fled at last in horror when the poor girl fell
writhing in an epileptic fit."
While deploring such a state
of things in Christian countries, the Catholic article in question explains
this tenacity for ancestral religious rites as evidence of the natural
depravity of the human heart, and makes a loud call for greater zeal on the
part of Catholics. Besides repeating the absurd fiction about devouring
children, the writer seems wholly insensible to the fact that a devotion to
one's faith that centuries of the most cruel and bloody persecution cannot
quench, makes heroes and martyrs of a people, whereas their conversion to any
other faith would turn them simply into renegades. A compulsory religion can
never breed anything but deceit. The answer received by the missionary Margil
from some Indians supports the above truism. The question being: "How is
it that you are so heathenish after having been Christians so long?" The
answer was: "What would you do, father, if enemies of your faith entered
your land? Would you not take all your books and vestments and signs of
religion and retire to the most secret caves and mountains? This is just what
our priests, and prophets, and soothsayers, and nagualists have done to this
time and are still doing."
Such an answer from a Roman
Catholic, questioned by a missionary of either Greek or Protestant Church,
would earn for him the crown of a saint in the Popish martyrology. Better a
"heathen" religion that can extort from a Francis Xavier such a
tribute as he pays the Japanese, in saying that "in virtue and probity
they surpassed all the nations he had ever seen"; than a Christianity
whose advance over the face of the earth sweeps aboriginal nations out of
existence as with a hurricane of fire.* Disease, drunkenness, and demoralization
are the immediate results of apostasy from the faith of their fathers, and
conversion into a religion of mere forms.
What Christianity is doing for
British India, we need go to no inim-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Within less than four months
we have collected from the daily papers forty-seven cases of crime, ranging
from drunkenness up to murder, committed by ecclesiastics in the United States
only. By the end of the year our correspondents in the East will have valuable
facts to offset missionary denunciations of "heathen" misdemeanors.
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ical sources to inquire.
Captain O'Grady, the British ex-official, says: "The British government is
doing a shameful thing in turning the natives of India from a sober race to a
nation of drunkards. And for pure greed. Drinking is forbidden by the religion
alike of Hindus and Mussulmans. But . . . drinking is daily becoming more and
more prevalent. . . . What the accursed opium traffic, forced on China by
British greed, has been to that unhappy country, the government sale of liquor
is likely to become to India. For it is a government monopoly, based on almost
precisely the same model as the government monopoly of tobacco in Spain. . . .
The outside domestics in European families usually get to be terrible
drunkards. . . . The indoor servants usually detest drinking, and are a good
deal more respectable in this particular than their masters and mistresses . .
. everybody drinks . . . bishops, chaplains, freshly-imported boarding-school
girls, and all."
Yes, these are the
"blessings" that the modern Christian religion brings with its Bibles
and Catechisms to the "poor heathen." Rum and bastardy to Hindustan;
opium to China; rum and foul disorders to Tahiti; and, worst of all, the
example of hypocrisy in religion, and a practical skepticism and atheism,
which, since it seems to be good enough for civilized people, may well in time
be thought good enough for those whom theology has too often been holding under
a very heavy yoke. On the other hand, everything that is noble, spiritual,
elevating, in the old religion is denied, and even deliberately falsified.
Take Paul, read the little of
original that is left of him in the writings attributed to this brave, honest,
sincere man, and see whether any one can find a word therein to show that Paul
meant by the word Christ anything more than the abstract ideal of the personal
divinity indwelling in man. For Paul, Christ is not a person, but an embodied
idea. "If any man is in Christ he is a new creation," he is reborn,
as after initiation, for the Lord is spirit -- the spirit of man. Paul was the
only one of the apostles who had understood the secret ideas underlying the
teachings of Jesus, although he had never met him. But Paul had been initiated
himself; and, bent upon inaugurating a new and broad reform, one embracing the
whole of humanity, he sincerely set his own doctrines far above the wisdom of
the ages, above the ancient Mysteries and final revelation to the epoptae. As
Professor A. Wilder well proves in a series of able articles, it was not Jesus,
but Paul who was the real founder of Christianity. "The disciples were
called Christians first in Antioch," say the Acts of the Apostles.
"Such men as Irenaeus, Epiphanius, and Eusebius have transmitted to
posterity a reputation for untruth and dishonest practices; and the heart
sickens at the story of the crimes of that
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MOSLEMS.
period," writes this
author, in a recent article.* "It will be remembered," he adds,
"that when the Moslems overran Syria and Asia Minor for the first time,
they were welcomed by the Christians of those regions as deliverers from the
intolerable oppression of the ruling authorities of the Church."
Mahomet never was, neither is
he now, considered a god; yet under the stimulus of his name millions of
Moslems have served their God with an ardor that can never be paralleled by
Christian sectarianism. That they have sadly degenerated since the days of
their prophet, does not alter the case in hand, but only proves the more the
prevalence of matter over spirit all over the world. Besides, they have never
degenerated more from primitive faith than Christians themselves. Why, then,
should not Jesus of Nazareth, a thousandfold higher, nobler, and morally
grander than Mahomet, be as well revered by Christians and followed in
practice, instead of being blindly adored in fruitless faith as a god, and at
the same time worshipped much after the fashion of certain Buddhists, who turn
their wheel of prayers. That this faith has become sterile, and is no more
worthy the name of Christianity than the fetishism of Calmucks that of the
philosophy preached by Buddha, is doubted by none. "We would not be supposed
to entertain the opinion," says Dr. Wilder, "that modern Christianity
is in any degree identical with the religion preached by Paul. It lacks his
breadth of view, his earnestness, his keen spiritual perception. Bearing the
impress of the nations by which it is professed, it exhibits as many forms as
there are races. It is one thing in Italy and Spain, but widely differs in
France, Germany, Holland, Sweden, Great Britain, Russia, Armenia, Kurdistan,
and Abyssinia. As compared with the preceding worships, the change seems to be
more in name than in genius. Men had gone to bed Pagans and awoke Christians.
As for the Sermon on the Mount, its conspicuous doctrines are more or less
repudiated by every Christian community of any considerable dimensions. Barbarism,
oppression, cruel punishments, are as common now as in the days of Paganism.
"The Christianity of
Peter exists no more; that of Paul supplanted it, and was in its turn
amalgamated with the other world-religions. When mankind are enlightened, or
the barbarous races and families are supplanted by those of nobler nature and
instincts, the ideal excellencies may become realities.
"The 'Christ of Paul' has
constituted an enigma which evoked the most strenuous endeavor to solve. He was
something else than the Jesus of the Gospels. Paul disregarded utterly their
'endless genealogies.' The
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Evolution," art.
Paul, the Founder of Christianity.
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author of the fourth Gospel,
himself an Alexandrian Gnostic, describes Jesus as what would now be termed a
'materialized' divine spirit. He was the Logos, or First Emanation -- the
Metathron. . . . The 'mother of Jesus,' like the Princess Maya, Danae, or
perhaps Periktione, had given birth, not to a love-child, but to a divine
offspring. No Jew of whatever sect, no apostle, no early believer, ever
promulgated such an idea. Paul treats of Christ as a personage rather than as a
person. The sacred lessons of the secret assemblies often personified the
divine good and the divine truth in a human form, assailed by the passions and
appetites of mankind, but superior to them; and this doctrine, emerging from
the crypt, was apprehended by churchlings and gross-minded men as that of
immaculate conception and divine incarnation."
In the old book, published in
1693 and written by the Sieur de la Loubere, French Ambassador to the King of
Siam, are related many interesting facts of the Siamese religion. The remarks
of the satirical Frenchman are so pointed that we will quote his words about
the Siamese Saviour -- Sommona-Cadom.
"How marvellous soever
they pretend the birth of their Saviour has been, they cease not to give him a
father and a mother.* His mother, whose name is found in some of their Balie
(Pali?) books, was called, as they say, Maha MARIA, which seems to signify the
great Mary, for Maha signifies great. However it be, this ceases not to give
attention to the missionaries, and has perhaps given occasion to the Siamese to
believe that Jesus being the son of Mary, was brother to Sommona-Cadom, and
that, having been crucified, he was that wicked brother whom they give to
Sommona-Cadom, under the name of Thevetat, and whom they report to be punished
in Hell, with a punishment which participates something of a cross. . . . The
Siamese expect another Sommona-Cadom, I mean, another miraculous man like him,
whom they already named Pronarote, and whom they say was foretold by Sommona.
He made all sorts of miracles. . . . He had two disciples, both standing on
each hand of his idol; one on the right hand, and the other on the left . . .
the first is named Pra-Magla, and the second Pra Scaribout. . . . The father of
Sommona-Cadom was, according to this same Balie Book, a King of Teve Lanca,
that is to say, a King of Ceylon. But the Balie Books being without date and
without the author's name, have no more authority than all the traditions,
whose origin is unknown."**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* We find in Galatians iv. 4,
the following: "But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth
his Son, made of a woman, made under the law."
** The date has been fully
established for these Pali Books in our own century; sufficiently so, at least,
to show that they existed in Ceylon, 316 B.C., when Mahinda, the son of Asoka,
was there (See Max Muller, "Chips, etc.," vol. i., on Buddhism).
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AUTHENTICATED THAN THE BIBLE.
This last argument is as
ill-considered as it is naively expressed. We do not know of any book in the
whole world less authenticated as to date, authors' names, or tradition, than
our Christian Bible. Under these circumstances the Siamese have as much reason
to believe in their miraculous Sommona-Cadom as the Christians in their
miraculously-born Saviour. Moreover, they have no better right to force their
religion upon the Siamese, or any other people, against their will, and in
their own country, where they go unasked, than the so-called heathen "to
compel France or England to accept Buddhism at the point of the sword." A
Buddhist missionary, even in free-thinking America, would daily risk being
mobbed, but this does not at all prevent missionaries from abusing the religion
of the Brahmans, Lamas, and Bonzes, publicly to their teeth; and the latter are
not always at liberty to answer them. This is termed diffusing the beneficent
light of Christianity and civilization upon the darkness of heathenism!
And yet we find that these
pretensions -- which might appear ludicrous were they not so fatal to millions
of our fellow-men, who only ask to be left alone -- were fully appreciated as
early as in the seventeenth century. We find the same witty Monsieur de la
Loubere, under a pretext of pious sympathy, giving some truly curious
instructions to the ecclesiastical authorities at home,* which embody the very
soul of Jesuitism.
"From what I have said
concerning the opinions of the Orientals," he remarks, "it is easy to
comprehend how difficult an enterprise it is to bring them over to the
Christian religion; and of what consequence it is that the missionaries, which
preach the Gospel in the East, do perfectly understand the manners and belief
of these people. For as the apostles and first Christians, when God supported
their preaching by so many wonders, did not on a sudden discover to the
heathens all the mysteries which we adore, but a long time concealed from them,
and the Catechumens themselves, the knowledge of those which might scandalize
them; it seems very rational to me that the missionaries, who have not
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "A New Historical
Relation of the Kingdom of Siam," by M. de la Loubere, Envoy to Siam from
France, 1687-8, chap. xxv., London; "Diverse Observations to be Made in
Preaching the Gospel to the Orientals."
The Sieur de la Loubere's
report to the king was made, as we see, in 1687-8. How thoroughly his
proposition to the Jesuits, to suppress and dissemble in preaching Christianity
to the Siamese, met their approval, is shown in the passage elsewhere quoted
from the Thesis propounded by the Jesuits of Caen ("Thesis propugnata in
regio Soc. Jes. Collegio, celeberrimae Academiae Cadoniensis," die
Veneris, 30 Jan., 1693), to the following effect: ". . . neither do the
Fathers of the Society of Jesus dissemble when they adopt the institute and the
habit of the Talapoins of Siam." In five years the Ambassador's little
lump of leaven had leavened the whole.
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the gift of miracles, ought
not presently to discover to the Orientals all the mysteries nor all the practices
of Christianity.
"'Twould be convenient,
for example, if I am not mistaken, not to preach unto them, without great
caution, the worshipping of saints; and as to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, I
think it would be necessary to manage it with them, if I may so say, and not to
speak to them of the mystery of the Incarnation, till after having convinced
them of the existence of a God Creator. For what probability is there, to begin
with, of persuading the Siamese to remove Sommona-Cadom, Pra Mogla, and Pra
Scaribout from the altars, to set up Jesus Christ, St. Peter, and St. Paul, in
their stead? 'Twould, perhaps, be more proper not to preach unto them Jesus
Christ crucified, till they have first comprehended that one may be unfortunate
and innocent; and that by the rule received, even amongst them, which is, that
the innocent might load himself with the crimes of the guilty, it was necessary
that a god should become man, to the end that this man-God should, by a
laborious life, and a shameful but voluntary death, satisfy for all the sins of
men; but before all things it would be necessary to give them the true idea of
a God Creator, and justly provoked against men. The Eucharist, after this, will
not scandalize the Siamese, as it formerly scandalized the Pagans of Europe;
forasmuch as the Siamese do not believe Sommona-Cadom could give his wife and
children to the Talapoins to eat.
"On the contrary, as the
Chinese are respectful toward their parents even to a scruple, I doubt not that
if the Gospel should be presently put into their hands, they would be
scandalized at that place, where, when some told Jesus Christ that his mother
and his brethren asked after him, he answered in such a manner, that he seems
so little to regard them, that he affected not to know them. They would not be
less offended at those other mysterious words, which our divine Saviour spoke
to the young man, who desired time to go and bury his parents: 'Let the dead,'
said he, 'bury the dead.' Every one knows the trouble which the Japanese
expressed to St. Francis Xavier upon the eternity of damnation, not being able
to believe that their dead parents should fall into so horrible a misfortune
for want of having embraced Christianity, which they had never heard of. . . .
It seems necessary, therefore, to prevent and mollify this thought, by the
means which that great apostle of the Indies used, in first establishing the
idea of an omnipotent, all-wise, and most just God, the author of all good, to
whom only everything is due, and by whose will we owe unto kings, bishops,
magistrates and to our parents the respects which we owe them.
"These examples are
sufficient to show with what precautions it is
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A CATHOLIC SAINT!
necessary to prepare the minds
of the Orientals to think like us, and not to be offended with most of the
articles of the Christian faith."*
And what, we ask, is left to
preach? With no Saviour, no atonement, no crucifixion for human sin, no Gospel,
no eternal damnation to tell them of, and no miracles to display, what remained
for the Jesuits to spread among the Siamese but the dust of the Pagan sanctuaries
with which to blind their eyes? The sarcasm is biting indeed. The morality to
which these poor heathen are made to adhere by their ancestral faith is so
pure, that Christianity has to be stripped of every distinguishing mark before
its priests can venture to offer it for their examination. A religion that
cannot be trusted to the scrutiny of an unsophisticated people who are patterns
of filial piety, of honest dealing, of deep reverence for God and an
instinctive horror of profaning His majesty, must indeed be founded upon error.
That it is so, our century is discovering little by little.
In the general spoliation of
Buddhism to make up the new Christian religion, it was not to be expected that
so peerless a character as Gautama-Buddha would be left unappropriated. It was
but natural that after taking his legendary history to fill out the blanks left
in the fictitious story of Jesus, after using what they could of Christna's,
they should take the man Sakya-muni and put him in their calendar under an alias.
This they actually did, and the Hindu Saviour in due time appeared on the list
of saints as Josaphat, to keep company with those martyrs of religion, SS. Aura
and Placida, Longinus and Amphibolus.
In Palermo there is even a
church dedicated to Divo Josaphat. Among the vain attempts of subsequent
ecclesiastical writers to fix the genealogy of this mysterious saint, the most
original was the making him Joshua, the son of Nun. But these trifling
difficulties being at last surmounted, we find the history of Gautama copied
word for word from Buddhist sacred books, into the Golden Legend. Names of
individuals
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In a discourse of Hermes
with Thoth, the former says: "It is impossible for thought to rightly
conceive of God. . . . One cannot describe, through material organs, that which
is immaterial and eternal. . . . One is a perception of the spirit, the other a
reality. That which can be perceived by our senses can be described in words;
but that which is incorporeal, invisible, immaterial, and without form cannot
be realized through our ordinary senses. I understand thus, O Thoth, I
understand that God is ineffable."
In the Catechism of the
Parsis, as translated by M. Dadabhai Naoroji, we read the following:
"Q. What is the form of
our God?"
"A. Our God has neither
face nor form, color nor shape, nor fixed place. There is no other like Him. He
is Himself, singly such a glory that we cannot praise or describe Him; nor our
mind comprehend Him."
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are changed, the place of
action, India, remains the same -- in the Christian as in the Buddhist Legends.
It can be also found in the Speculum Historiale of Vincent of Beauvais, which
was written in the thirteenth century. The first discovery is due to the
historian de Couto, although Professor Muller credits the first recognition of
the identity of the two stories to M. Laboulaye, in 1859. Colonel Yule tells us
that* these stories of Barlaam and Josaphat, are recognized by Baronius, and
are to be found at p. 348, of The Roman Martyrology, set forth by command of
Pope Gregory XIII., and revised by the authority of Pope Urban VIII.,
translated out of Latin into English by G. K. of the Society of Jesus.**
To repeat even a small portion
of this ecclesiastical nonsense would be tedious and useless. Let him who
doubts and who would learn the story read it as given by Colonel Yule. Some***
of the Christian and ecclesiastical speculations seem to have embarrassed even
Dominie Valentyn. "There be some, who hold this Budhum for a fugitive
Syrian Jew," he writes; "others who hold him for a disciple of the
Apostle Thomas; but how in that case he could have been born 622 years before
Christ I leave them to explain. Diego de Couto stands by the belief that he was
certainly Joshua, which is still more absurd!"
"The religious romance
called The History of Barlaam and Josaphat was, for several centuries, one of
the most popular works in Christendom," says Col. Yule. "It was
translated into all the chief European languages, including Scandinavian and
Sclavonic tongues. . . . This story first appears among the works of St. John
of Damascus, a theologian of the early part of the eighth century."****
Here then lies the secret of its origin, for this St. John, before he became a
divine, held a high office at the court of the Khalif Abu Jafar Almansur, where
he probably learned the story, and afterwards adapted it to the new orthodox
necessities of the Buddha turned into a Christian saint.
Having repeated the
plagiarized story, Diego de Couto, who seems to yield up with reluctance his
curious notion that Gautama was Joshua, says: "To this name (Budao) the
Gentiles throughout all India have dedicated great and superb pagodas. With
reference to this story, we have been diligent in inquiring if the ancient
Gentiles of those parts had in their writings any knowledge of St. Josaphat who
was converted by Balaam, and who in his legend is represented as the son of a
great king of India, and who had just the same up-bringing, with all the same
particulars that we have recounted of the life of the Budao. And as I was
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Contemporary
Review," p. 588, July, 1870.
** "Book of Ser Marco
Polo," vol. ii., pp. 304, 306.
*** Ibid.
**** Ibid.
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ST. JOSAPHAT.
travelling in the Isle of
Salsette, and went to see that rare and admirable pagoda, which we call the
Canara Pagoda (Kanhari Caves) made in a mountain, with many halls cut out of
one solid rock, and inquiring of an old man about the work, what he thought as
to who had made it, he told us that without doubt the work was made by order of
the father of St. Josaphat to bring him up in seclusion, as the story tells.
And as it informs us that he was the son of a great king in India, it may well
be, as we have just said, that he was the Budao, of whom they relate such
marvels."*
The Christian legend is taken,
moreover, in most of its details, from the Ceylonese tradition. It is on this
island that originated the story of young Gautama rejecting his father's
throne, and the king's erecting a superb palace for him, in which he kept him
half prisoner, surrounded by all the temptations of life and wealth. Marco Polo
told it as he had it from the Ceylonese, and his version is now found to be a
faithful repetition of what is given in the various Buddhist books. As Marco
naively expresses it, Buddha led a life of such hardship and sanctity, and kept
such great abstinence, "just as if he had been a Christian. Indeed,"
he adds, "had he but been so, he would have been a great saint of our Lord
Jesus Christ, so good and pure was the life he led." To which pious
apothegm his editor very pertinently remarks that "Marco is not the only
eminent person who has expressed this view of Sakya-muni's life in such
words." And in his turn Prof. Max Muller says: "And whatever we may
think of the sanctity of saints, let those who doubt the right of Buddha to a
place among them, read the story of his life as it is told in the Buddhistical
canon. If he lived the life which is there described, few saints have a better
claim to the title than Buddha; and no one either in the Greek or the Roman
Church need be ashamed of having paid to his memory the honor that was intended
for St. Josaphat, the prince, the hermit, and the saint."
The Roman Catholic Church has
never had so good a chance to Christianize all China, Thibet, and Tartary, as
in the thirteenth century, during the reign of Kublai-Khan. It seems strange
that they did not embrace the opportunity when Kublai was hesitating at one
time between the four religions of the world, and, perhaps through the
eloquence of Marco Polo, favored Christianity more than either Mahometanism,
Judaism, or Buddhism. Marco Polo and Ramusio, one of his interpreters, tell us
why. It seems that, unfortunately for Rome, the embassy of Marco's father and
uncle failed, because Clement IV. happened to die just at that very time. There
was no Pope for several months to
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* "Dec.," v., lib.
vi., cap. 2.
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receive the friendly overtures
of Kublai-Khan; and thus the one hundred Christian missionaries invited by him
could not be sent to Thibet and Tartary. To those who believe that there is an
intelligent Deity above who takes a certain concern in the welfare of our
miserable little world, this contretemps must in itself seem a pretty good
proof that Buddhism should have the best of Christianity. Perhaps -- who knows
-- Pope Clement fell sick so as to save the Buddhists from sinking into the
idolatry of Roman Catholicism?
From pure Buddhism, the
religion of these districts has degenerated into lamaism; but the latter, with
all its blemishes -- purely formalistic and impairing but little the doctrine
itself -- is yet far above Catholicism. The poor Abbe Huc very soon found it
out for himself. As he moved on with his caravan, he writes -- "every one
repeated to us that, as we advanced toward the west, we should find the
doctrines growing more luminous and sublime. Lha-Ssa was the great focus of
light, the rays from which became weakened as they were diffused." One day
he gave to a Thibetan lama "a brief summary of Christian doctrine, which
appeared by no means unfamiliar to him [we do not wonder at that], and he even
maintained that it [Catholicism] did not differ much from the faith of the
grand lamas of Thibet. . . . These words of the Thibetan lama astonished us not
a little," writes the missionary; "the unity of God, the mystery of
the Incarnation, the dogma of the real presence, appeared to us in his belief.
. . . The new light thrown on the religion of Buddha induced us really to
believe that we should find among the lamas of Thibet a more purified
system."* It is these words of praise to lamaism, with which Huc's book
abounds, that caused his work to be placed on the Index at Rome, and himself to
be unfrocked.
When questioned why, since he
held the Christian faith to be the best of the religions protected by him, he
did not attach himself to it, the answer given by Kublai-Khan is as suggestive
as it is curious:
"How would you have me to
become a Christian? There are four prophets worshipped and revered by all the
world. The Christians say their God is Jesus Christ; the Saracens, Mahomet; the
Jews, Moses; the idolaters, Sogomon Borkan (Sakya-muni Burkham, or Buddha), who
was the first god among the idols; and I worship and pay respect to all four,
and pray that he among them who is greatest in heaven in very truth may aid
me."
We may ridicule the Khan's prudence;
we cannot blame him for trustingly leaving the decision of the puzzling dilemma
to Providence itself. One of his most unsurmountable objections to embrace
Chris-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Travels in Tartary,"
etc., pp. 121, 122.
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KUBLAI-KHAN.
tianity he thus specifies to
Marco: "You see that the Christians of these parts are so ignorant that
they achieve nothing and can achieve nothing, whilst you see the idolaters can
do anything they please, insomuch that when I sit at table, the cups from the
middle of the hall come to me full of wine or other liquor, without being
touched by anybody, and I drink from them. They control storms, causing them to
pass in whatever direction they please, and do many other marvels; whilst, as
you know, their idols speak, and give them predictions on whatever subjects
they choose. But if I were to turn to the faith of Christ and become a
Christian, then my barons and others who are not converted, would say: 'What
has moved you to be baptized? . . . What powers or miracles have you witnessed
on the part of Christ? You know the idolaters here say that their wonders are
performed by the sanctity and power of their idols.' Well, I should not know
what answer to make, so they would only be confirmed in their errors, and the
idolaters, who are adepts in such surprising arts, would easily compass my
death. But now you shall go to your Pope, and pray him on my part to send
hither an hundred men skilled in your law; and if they are capable of rebuking
the practices of idolaters to their faces, and of proving to them that they too
know how to do such things, but will not, because they are done by the help of
the Devil and other evil spirits; and if they so control the idolaters that
these shall have no power to perform such things in their presence, and when we
shall witness this, we will denounce the idolaters and their religion, and then
I will receive baptism, and then all my barons and chiefs shall be baptized
also, and thus, in the end, there will be more Christians here than exist in
your part of the world."*
The proposition was fair. Why
did not the Christians avail themselves of it? Moses is said to have faced such
an ordeal before Pharaoh, and come off triumphant.
To our mind, the logic of this
uneducated Mongol was unanswerable, his intuition faultless. He saw good
results in all religions, and felt that, whether a man be Buddhist, Christian,
Mahometan, or Jew, his spiritual powers might equally be developed, his faith
equally lead him to the highest truth. All he asked before making choice of a
creed for his people, was the evidence upon which to base faith.
To judge alone by its
jugglers, India must certainly be better acquainted with alchemy, chemistry,
and physics than any European academy. The psychological wonders produced by
some fakirs of Southern Hindustan, and by the shaberons and hobilhans of Thibet
and Mongolia, alike prove our case. The science of psychology has there reached
an acme of per-
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* "Book of Ser Marco
Polo," vol. ii., p. 340.
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fection never attained
elsewhere in the annals of the marvellous. That such powers are not alone due
to study, but are natural to every human being, is now proved in Europe and
America by the phenomena of mesmerism and what is termed
"spiritualism." If the majority of foreign travellers, and residents
in British India, are disposed to regard the whole as clever jugglery, not so
with a few Europeans who have had the rare luck to be admitted behind the veil
in the pagodas. Surely these will not deride the rites, nor undervalue the
phenomena produced in the secret lodges of India. The mahadthevassthanam of the
pagodas (usually termed goparam, from the sacred pyramidal gateway by which the
buildings are entered) has been known to Europeans before now, though to a mere
handful in all.
We do not know whether the
prolific Jacolliot* was ever admitted into one of these lodges. It is extremely
doubtful, we should say, if we may judge from his many fantastic tales of the
immoralities of the mystical rites among the Brahmans, the fakirs of the
pagodas, and even the Buddhists (!!) at all of which he makes himself figure as
a Joseph. Anyhow, it is evident that the Brahmans taught him no secrets, for
speaking of the fakirs and their wonders, he remarks, "under the direction
of initiated Brahmans they practice in the seclusion of the pagodas, the occult
sciences. . . . And let no one be surprised at this word, which seems to open
the door of the supernatural; while there are in the sciences which the
Brahmans call occult, phenomena so extraordinary as to baffle all
investigation, there is not one which cannot be explained, and which is not
subject to natural law."
Unquestionably, any initiated
Brahman could, if he would, explain every phenomenon. But he will not.
Meanwhile, we have yet to see an explanation by the best of our physicists of
even the most trivial occult phenomenon produced by a fakir-pupil of a pagoda.
Jacolliot says that it will be
quite impracticable to give an account of the marvellous facts witnessed by
himself. But adds, with entire truthfulness, "let it suffice to say, that
in regard to magnetism and spiritism, Europe
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* His twenty or more volumes
on Oriental subjects are indeed a curious conglomerate of truth and fiction.
They contain a vast deal of fact about Indian traditions, philosophy and
chronology, with most just views courageously expressed. But it seems as if the
philosopher were constantly being overlaid by the romancist. It is as though
two men were united in their authorship -- one careful, serious, erudite, scholarly,
the other a sensational and sensual French romancer, who judges of facts not as
they are but as he imagines them. His translations from Manu are admirable; his
controversial ability marked; his views of priestly morals unfair, and in the
case of the Buddhists, positively slanderous. But in all the series of volumes
there is not a line of dull reading; he has the eye of the artist, the pen of
the poet of nature.
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GENUINE BEGGARS.
has yet to stammer over the
first letters of the alphabet, and that the Brahmans have reached, in these two
departments of learning, results in the way of phenomena that are truly
stupefying. When one sees these strange manifestations, whose power one cannot
deny, without grasping the laws that the Brahmans keep so carefully concealed,
the mind is overwhelmed with wonder, and one feels that he must run away and
break the charm that holds him."
"The only explanation
that we have been able to obtain on the subject from a learned Brahman, with
whom we were on terms of the closest intimacy, was this: 'You have studied physical
nature, and you have obtained, through the laws of nature, marvellous results
-- steam, electricity, etc.; for twenty thousand years or more, we have studied
the intellectual forces, we have discovered their laws, and we obtain, by
making them act alone or in concert with matter, phenomena still more
astonishing than your own.' "
Jacolliot must indeed have
been stupefied by wonders, for he says: "We have seen things such as one
does not describe for fear of making his readers doubt his intelligence . . .
but still we have seen them. And truly one comprehends how, in presence of such
facts, the ancient world believed . . . in possessions of the Devil and in
exorcism."*
But yet this uncompromising
enemy of priestcraft, monastic orders, and the clergy of every religion and
every land -- including Brahmans, lamas, and fakirs -- is so struck with the
contrast between the fact-supported cults of India, and the empty pretences of
Catholicism, that after describing the terrible self-tortures of the fakirs, in
a burst of honest indignation, he thus gives vent to his feelings:
"Nevertheless, these fakirs, these mendicant Brahmans, have still
something grand about them: when they flagellate themselves, when during the
self-inflicted martyrdom the flesh is torn out by bits, the blood pours upon
the ground. But you (Catholic mendicants), what do you do to-day? You, Gray
Friars, Capuchins, Franciscans, who play at fakirs, with your knotted cords,
your flints, your hair shirts, and your rose-water flagellations, your bare
feet and your comical mortifications -- fanatics without faith, martyrs without
tortures? Has not one the right to ask you, if it is to obey the law of God
that you shut yourselves in behind thick walls, and thus escape the law of
labor which weighs so heavily upon all other men? . . . Away, you are only
beggars!"
Let them pass on -- we have
devoted too much space to them and their conglomerate theology, already. We
have weighed both in the balance of history, of logic, of truth, and found them
wanting. Their
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* Les Fils de Dieu,
"L'Inde Brahmanique," p. 296.
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system breeds atheism,
nihilism, despair, and crime; its priests and preachers are unable to prove by
works their reception of divine power. If both Church and priest could but pass
out of the sight of the world as easily as their names do now from the eye of
our reader, it would be a happy day for humanity. New York and London might
then soon become as moral as a heathen city unoccupied by Christians; Paris be
cleaner than the ancient Sodom. When Catholic and Protestant would be as fully
satisfied as a Buddhist or Brahman that their every crime would be punished,
and every good deed rewarded, they might spend upon their own heathen what now
goes to give missionaries long picnics, and to make the name of Christian hated
and despised by every nation outside the boundaries of Christendom.
--------
As occasion required, we have
reinforced our argument with descriptions of a few of the innumerable phenomena
witnessed by us in different parts of the world. The remaining space at our
disposal will be devoted to like subjects. Having laid a foundation by
elucidating the philosophy of occult phenomena, it seems opportune to
illustrate the theme with facts that have occurred under our own eye, and that
may be verified by any traveller. Primitive peoples have disappeared, but
primitive wisdom survives, and is attainable by those who "will,"
"dare," and can "keep silent."
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CHAPTER XII.
"My vast and noble
capital, my Daitu, my splendidly-adorned;
And thou, my cool and
delicious summer-seat, my Shangtu-Keibung.
. . . . . . . . . . .
Alas, for my illustrious name
as the Sovereign of the World!
Alas, for my Daitu, seat of
sanctity, glorious work of the immortal Kublai!
All, all is rent from
me!" -- COL. YULE, in Marco Polo.
"As for what thou hearest
others say, who persuade the many that the soul, when once freed from the body,
neither suffers . . . evil nor is conscious, I know that thou art better
grounded in the doctrines received by us from our ancestors, and in the sacred
orgies of Dionysus, than to believe them; for the mystic symbols are well known
to us who belong to the 'Brotherhood.' " -- PLUTARCH.
"The problem of life is
man. MAGIC, or rather Wisdom, is the evolved knowledge of the potencies of
man's interior being; which forces are Divine emanations, as intuition is the
perception of their origin, and initiation our induction into that knowledge. .
. . We begin with instinct; the end is OMNISCIENCE." -- A. WILDER.
"Power belongs to him WHO
KNOWS." -- Brahmanical Book of Evocation.
IT would argue small
discernment on our part were we to suppose that we had been followed thus far
through this work by any but metaphysicians, or mystics of some sort. Were it
otherwise, we should certainly advise such to spare themselves the trouble of
reading this chapter; for, although nothing is said that is not strictly true,
they would not fail to regard the least wonderful of the narratives as
absolutely false, however substantiated.
To comprehend the principles
of natural law involved in the several phenomena hereinafter described, the
reader must keep in mind the fundamental propositions of the Oriental
philosophy which we have successively elucidated. Let us recapitulate very
briefly:
1st. There is no miracle.
Everything that happens is the result of law -- eternal, immutable, ever
active. Apparent miracle is but the operation of forces antagonistic to what
Dr. W. B. Carpenter, F. R. S. -- a man of great learning but little knowledge
-- calls "the well-ascertained laws of nature." Like many of his
class, Dr. Carpenter ignores the fact that there may be laws once "known,"
now unknown to science.
2d. Nature is triune: there is
a visible, objective nature; an invisible, indwelling, energizing nature, the
exact model of the other, and its vital principle; and, above these two,
spirit, source of all forces, alone eter-
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nal, and indestructible. The
lower two constantly change; the higher third does not.
3d. Man is also triune: he has
his objective, physical body; his vitalizing astral body (or soul), the real
man; and these two are brooded over and illuminated by the third -- the
sovereign, the immortal spirit. When the real man succeeds in merging himself
with the latter, he becomes an immortal entity.
4th. Magic, as a science, is
the knowledge of these principles, and of the way by which the omniscience and
omnipotence of the spirit and its control over nature's forces may be acquired
by the individual while still in the body. Magic, as an art, is the application
of this knowledge in practice.
5th. Arcane knowledge
misapplied, is sorcery; beneficently used, true magic or WISDOM.
6th. Mediumship is the
opposite of adeptship; the medium is the passive instrument of foreign influences,
the adept actively controls himself and all inferior potencies.
7th. All things that ever
were, that are, or that will be, having their record upon the astral light, or
tablet of the unseen universe, the initiated adept, by using the vision of his own
spirit, can know all that has been known or can be known.
8th. Races of men differ in
spiritual gifts as in color, stature, or any other external quality; among some
peoples seership naturally prevails, among others mediumship. Some are addicted
to sorcery, and transmit its secret rules of practice from generation to
generation, with a range of psychical phenomena, more or less wide, as the
result.
9th. One phase of magical
skill is the voluntary and conscious withdrawal of the inner man (astral form)
from the outer man (physical body). In the cases of some mediums withdrawal
occurs, but it is unconscious and involuntary. With the latter the body is more
or less cataleptic at such times; but with the adept the absence of the astral
form would not be noticed, for the physical senses are alert, and the
individual appears only as though in a fit of abstraction -- "a brown
study," as some call it.
To the movements of the
wandering astral form neither time nor space offer obstacles. The
thaumaturgist, thoroughly skilled in occult science, can cause himself (that
is, his physical body) to seem to disappear, or to apparently take on any shape
that he may choose. He may make his astral form visible, or he may give it
protean appearances. In both cases these results will be achieved by a mesmeric
hallucination of the senses of all witnesses, simultaneously brought on. This
hallucination is so perfect that the subject of it would stake his life that he
saw a
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PRINCIPLES OF MAGIC.
reality, when it is but a
picture in his own mind, impressed upon his consciousness by the irresistible
will of the mesmerizer.
But, while the astral form can
go anywhere, penetrate any obstacle, and be seen at any distance from the
physical body, the latter is dependent upon ordinary methods of transportation.
It may be levitated under prescribed magnetic conditions, but not pass from one
locality to another except in the usual way. Hence we discredit all stories of
the aerial flight of mediums in body, for such would be miracle, and miracle we
repudiate. Inert matter may be, in certain cases and under certain conditions, disintegrated,
passed through walls, and recombined, but living animal organisms cannot.
Swedenborgians believe and
arcane science teaches that the abandonment of the living body by the soul
frequently occurs, and that we encounter every day, in every condition of life,
such living corpses. Various causes, among them overpowering fright, grief,
despair, a violent attack of sickness, or excessive sensuality may bring this
about. The vacant carcass may be entered and inhabited by the astral form of an
adept sorcerer, or an elementary (an earth-bound disembodied human soul), or,
very rarely, an elemental. Of course, an adept of white magic has the same
power, but unless some very exceptional and great object is to be accomplished,
he will never consent to pollute himself by occupying the body of an impure
person. In insanity, the patient's astral being is either semi-paralyzed,
bewildered, and subject to the influence of every passing spirit of any sort,
or it has departed forever, and the body is taken possession of by some
vampirish entity near its own disintegration, and clinging desperately to
earth, whose sensual pleasures it may enjoy for a brief season longer by this
expedient.
10th. The corner-stone of MAGIC
is an intimate practical knowledge of magnetism and electricity, their
qualities, correlations, and potencies. Especially necessary is a familiarity
with their effects in and upon the animal kingdom and man. There are occult
properties in many other minerals, equally strange with that in the lodestone,
which all practitioners of magic must know, and of which so-called exact
science is wholly ignorant. Plants also have like mystical properties in a most
wonderful degree, and the secrets of the herbs of dreams and enchantments are
only lost to European science, and useless to say, too, are unknown to it,
except in a few marked instances, such as opium and hashish. Yet, the psychical
effects of even these few upon the human system are regarded as evidences of a
temporary mental disorder. The women of Thessaly and Epirus, the female
hierophants of the rites of Sabazius, did not carry their secrets away with the
downfall of their sanc-
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tuaries. They are still
preserved, and those who are aware of the nature of Soma, know the properties
of other plants as well.
To sum up all in a few words,
MAGIC is spiritual WISDOM; nature, the material ally, pupil and servant of the
magician. One common vital principle pervades all things, and this is
controllable by the perfected human will. The adept can stimulate the movements
of the natural forces in plants and animals in a preternatural degree. Such
experiments are not obstructions of nature, but quickenings; the conditions of
intenser vital action are given.
The adept can control the
sensations and alter the conditions of the physical and astral bodies of other
persons not adepts; he can also govern and employ, as he chooses, the spirits
of the elements. He cannot control the immortal spirit of any human being,
living or dead, for all such spirits are alike sparks of the Divine Essence,
and not subject to any foreign domination.
There are two kinds of
seership -- that of the soul and that of the spirit. The seership of the
ancient Pythoness, or of the modern mesmerized subject, vary but in the
artificial modes adopted to induce the state of clairvoyance. But, as the
visions of both depend upon the greater or less acuteness of the senses of the
astral body, they differ very widely from the perfect, omniscient spiritual
state; for, at best, the subject can get but glimpses of truth, through the
veil which physical nature interposes. The astral principle, or mind, called by
the Hindu Yogin fav-atma, is the sentient soul, inseparable from our physical
brain, which it holds in subjection, and is in its turn equally trammelled by
it. This is the ego, the intellectual life-principle of man, his conscious
entity. While it is yet within the material body, the clearness and correctness
of its spiritual visions depend on its more or less intimate relation with its
higher Principle. When this relation is such as to allow the most ethereal
portions of the soul-essence to act independently of its grosser particles and
of the brain, it can unerringly comprehend what it sees; then only is it the
pure, rational, supersentient soul. That state is known in India as the Samaddi;
it is the highest condition of spirituality possible to man on earth. Fakirs
try to obtain such a condition by holding their breath for hours together
during their religious exercises, and call this practice dam-sadhna. The Hindu
terms Pranayama, Pratyahara, and Dharana, all relate to different psychological
states, and show how much more the Sanscrit, and even the modern Hindu language
are adapted to the clear elucidation of the phenomena that are encountered by
those who study this branch of psychological science, than the tongues of
modern peoples, whose experiences have not yet necessitated the invention of
such descriptive terms.
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WITH CLAIRVOYANCE.
When the body is in the state
of dharana -- a total catalepsy of the physical frame -- the soul of the
clairvoyant may liberate itself, and perceive things subjectively. And yet, as
the sentient principle of the brain is alive and active, these pictures of the
past, present, and future will be tinctured with the terrestrial perceptions of
the objective world; the physical memory and fancy will be in the way of clear
vision. But the seer-adept knows how to suspend the mechanical action of the
brain. His visions will be as clear as truth itself, uncolored and undistorted,
whereas, the clairvoyant, unable to control the vibrations of the astral waves,
will perceive but more or less broken images through the medium of the brain.
The seer can never take flickering shadows for realities, for his memory being
as completely subjected to his will as the rest of the body, he receives
impressions directly from his spirit. Between his subjective and objective
selves there are no obstructive mediums. This is the real spiritual seership,
in which, according to an expression of Plato, soul is raised above all
inferior good. When we reach "that which is supreme, which is simple,
pure, and unchangeable, without form, color, or human qualities: the God -- our
Nous."
This is the state which such
seers as Plotinus and Apollonius termed the "Union to the Deity";
which the ancient Yogins called Isvara,* and the modern call
"Samaddi"; but this state is as far above modern clairvoyance as the
stars above glow-worms. Plotinus, as is well known, was a clairvoyant-seer
during his whole and daily life; and yet, he had been united to his God but six
times during the sixty-six years of his existence, as he himself confessed to
Porphyry.
Ammonius Sakkas, the
"God-taught," asserts that the only power which is directly opposed
to soothsaying and looking into futurity is memory; and Olympiodorus calls it
phantasy. "The phantasy," he says (in Platonis Phaed.), "is an
impediment to our intellectual conceptions; and hence, when we are agitated by
the inspiring influence of the Divinity, if the phantasy intervenes, the
enthusiastic energy ceases; for enthusiasm and the ecstasy are contrary to each
other. Should it be asked whether the soul is able to energize without the
phantasy, we reply, that its perception of universals proves that it is able.
It has per-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In its general sense, Isvara
means "Lord"; but the Isvara of the mystic philosophers of India was
understood precisely as the union and communion of men with the Deity of the
Greek mystics. Isvara-Parasada means, literally, in Sanscrit, grace. Both of
the "Mimansas," treating of the most abstruse questions, explain
Karma as merit, or the efficacy of works; Isvara-Parasada, as grace; and
Sradha, as faith. The "Mimansas" are the work of the two most
celebrated theologians of India. The "Pourva-Mimansa" was written by
the philosopher Djeminy, and the "Outtara-Mimansa" (or Vedanta), by
Richna Dvipayna Vyasa, who collected the four "Vedas" together. (See
Sir William Jones, Colebrooke, and others.)
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ceptions, therefore,
independent of the phantasy; at the same time, however, the phantasy attends it
in its energies, just as a storm pursues him who sails on the sea."
A medium, moreover, needs either
a foreign intelligence -- whether it be spirit or living mesmerizer -- to
overpower his physical and mental parts, or some factitious means to induce
trance. An adept, and even a simple fakir requires but a few minutes of
"self-contemplation." The brazen columns of Solomon's temple; the
golden bells and pomegranates of Aaron; the Jupiter Capitolinus of Augustus,
hung around with harmonious bells;* and the brazen bowls of the Mysteries when
the Kora was called,** were all intended for such artificial helps.*** So were
the brazen bowls of Solomon hung round with a double row of 200 pomegranates,
which served as clappers within the hollow columns. The priestesses of Northern
Germany, under the guidance of hierophants, could never prophesy but amidst the
roar of the tumultuous waters. Regarding fixedly the eddies formed on the rapid
course of the river they hypnotized themselves. So we read of Joseph, Jacob's
son, who sought for divine inspiration with his silver divining-cup, which must
have had a very bright bottom to it. The priestesses of Dodona placed
themselves under the ancient oak of Zeus (the Pelasgian, not the Olympian god),
and listened intently to the rustling of the sacred leaves, while others
concentrated their attention on the soft murmur of the cold spring gushing from
underneath its roots.**** But the adept has no need of any such extraneous aids
-- the simple exertion of his will-power is all-sufficient.
The Atharva-Veda teaches that
the exercise of such will-power is the highest form of prayer and its
instantaneous response. To desire is to realize in proportion to the intensity
of the aspiration; and that, in its turn, is measured by inward purity.
Some of these nobler Vedantic
precepts on the soul and man's mystic powers, have recently been contributed to
an English periodical by a Hindu scholar. "The Sankhya," he writes,
"inculcates that the soul (i. e., astral body) has the following powers:
shrinking into a minute bulk to which everything is pervious; enlarging to a
gigantic body; assuming levity (rising along a sunbeam to the solar orb);
possessing an unlimited reach of organs, as touching the moon with the tip of a
finger; irresistible will (for instance, sinking into the earth as easily as in
water); dominion over all things, animate or inanimate; faculty of changing the
course of nature; ability to accomplish every desire." Further, he gives
their various appellations:
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Suetonius:
"August."
** Plutarch.
*** "Pliny," xxx.,
pp. 2, 14.
**** "Servius ad.
AEon," p. 71.
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ARYAS.
"The powers are called:
1, Anima; 2, Mahima; 3, Laghima; 4, Garima; 5, Prapti; 6, Prakamya; 7, Vasitwa;
8, Isitwa, or divine power. The fifth, predicting future events, understanding
unknown languages, curing diseases, divining unexpressed thoughts,
understanding the language of the heart. The sixth is the power of converting
old age into youth. The seventh is the power of mesmerizing human beings and
beasts, and making them obedient; it is the power of restraining passions and
emotions. The eighth power is the spiritual state, and presupposes the absence
of the above seven powers, as in this state the Yogi is full of God."
"No writings," he
adds, "revealed or sacred, were allowed to be so authoritative and final
as the teaching of the soul. Some of the Rishis appear to have laid the
greatest stress on this supersensuous source of knowledge."*
From the remotest antiquity
mankind as a whole have always been convinced of the existence of a personal
spiritual entity within the personal physical man. This inner entity was more
or less divine, according to its proximity to the crown -- Chrestos. The closer
the union the more serene man's destiny, the less dangerous the external
conditions. This belief is neither bigotry nor superstition, only an
ever-present, instinctive feeling of the proximity of another spiritual and
invisible world, which, though it be subjective to the senses of the outward
man, is perfectly objective to the inner ego. Furthermore, they believed that
there are external and internal conditions which affect the determination of
our will upon our actions. They rejected fatalism, for fatalism implies a blind
course of some still blinder power. But they believed in destiny, which from
birth to death every man is weaving thread by thread around himself, as a
spider does his cobweb; and this destiny is guided either by that presence
termed by some the guardian angel, or our more intimate astral inner man, who
is but too often the evil genius of the man of flesh. Both these lead on the
outward man, but one of them must prevail; and from the very beginning of the
invisible affray the stern and implacable law of compensation steps in and
takes its course, following faithfully the fluctuations. When the last strand
is woven, and man is seemingly enwrapped in the net-work of his own doing, then
he finds himself completely under the empire of this self-made destiny. It then
either fixes him like the inert shell against the immovable rock, or like a
feather carries him away in a whirlwind raised by his own actions.
The greatest philosophers of
antiquity found it neither unreasonable
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Peary Chand Mittra:
"The Psychology of the Aryas"; "Human Nature," for March,
1877.
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nor strange that "souls
should come to souls, and impart to them conceptions of future things,
occasionally by letters, or by a mere touch, or by a glance reveal to them past
events or announce future ones," as Ammonius tells us. Moreover, Lamprias
and others held that if the unembodied spirits or souls could descend on earth
and become guardians of mortal men, "we should not seek to deprive those
souls which are still in the body of that power by which the former know future
events and are able to announce them. It is not probable," adds Lamprias,
"that the soul gains a new power of prophecy after separation from the
body, and which before it did not possess. We may rather conclude that it
possessed all these powers during its union with the body, although in a lesser
perfection. . . . For as the sun does not shine only when it passes from among
the clouds, but has always been radiant and has only appeared dim and obscured
by vapors, the soul does not only receive the power of looking into futurity
when it passes from the body as from a cloud, but has possessed it always,
though dimmed by connection with the earthly."
A familiar example of one
phase of the power of the soul or astral body to manifest itself, is the
phenomenon of the so-called spirit-hand. In the presence of certain mediums
these seemingly detached members will gradually develop from a luminous nebula,
pick up a pencil, write messages, and then dissolve before the eyes of the
witnesses. Many such cases are recorded by perfectly competent and trustworthy
persons. These phenomena are real, and require serious consideration. But false
"phantom-hands" have sometimes been taken for the genuine. At Dresden
we once saw a hand and arm, made for the purpose of deception, with an
ingenious arrangement of springs that would cause the machine to imitate to
perfection the movements of the natural member; while exteriorly it would require
close inspection to detect its artificial character. In using this, the
dishonest medium slips his natural arm out of his sleeve, and replaces it with
the mechanical substitute; both hands may then be made to seem resting upon the
table, while in fact one is touching the sitters, showing itself, knocking the
furniture, and making other phenomena.
The mediums for real
manifestations are least able, as a rule, to comprehend or explain them. Among
those who have written most intelligently upon the subject of these luminous
hands, may be reckoned Dr. Francis Gerry Fairfield, author of Ten Years among
the Mediums, an article from whose pen appears in the Library Table for July
19, 1877. A medium himself, he is yet a strong opponent of the spiritualistic
theory. Discussing the subject of the "phantom-hand," he testifies
that "this the writer has personally witnessed, under conditions of test
provided by himself, in his own room, in full daylight, with the medium seated
upon a
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"SPIRIT-LAND."
sofa from six to eight feet
from the table hovering upon which the apparition (the hand) appeared. The
application of the poles of a horse-shoe magnet to the hand caused it to waver
perceptibly, and threw the medium into violent convulsions -- pretty positive
evidence that the force concerned in the phenomenon was generated in his own
nervous system."
Dr. Fairfield's deduction that
the fluttering phantom-hand is an emanation from the medium is logical, and it
is correct. The test of the horse-shoe magnet proves in a scientific way what
every kabalist would affirm upon the authority of experience, no less than
philosophy. The "force concerned in the phenomenon" is the will of
the medium, exercised unconsciously to the outer man, which for the time is
semi-paralyzed and cataleptic; the phantom-hand an extrusion of the man's inner
or astral member. This is that real self whose limbs the surgeon cannot
amputate, but remain behind after the outer casing is cut off, and (all
theories of exposed or compressed nerve termini to the contrary,
notwithstanding) have all the sensations the physical parts formerly experienced.
This is that spiritual (astral) body which "is raised in
incorruption." It is useless to argue that these are spirit-hands; for,
admitting even that at every seance human spirits of many kinds are attracted
to the medium, and that they do guide and produce some manifestations, yet to
make hands or faces objective they are compelled to use either the astral limbs
of the medium, or the materials furnished them by the elementals, or yet the
combined aural emanations of all persons present. Pure spirits will not and
cannot show themselves objectively; those that do are not pure spirits, but
elementary and impure. Woe to the medium who falls a prey to such!
The same principle involved in
the unconscious extrusion of a phantom limb by the cataleptic medium, applies
to the projection of his entire "double" or astral body. This may be
withdrawn by the will of the medium's own inner self, without his retaining in
his physical brain any recollection of such an intent -- that is one phase of
man's dual capacity. It may also be effected by elementary and elemental
spirits, to whom he may stand in the relation of mesmeric subject. Dr.
Fairfield is right in one position taken in his book, viz.: mediums are usually
diseased, and in many if not most cases the children or near connections of
mediums. But he is wholly wrong in attributing all psychical phenomena to
morbid physiological conditions. The adepts of Eastern magic are uniformly in
perfect mental and bodily health, and in fact the voluntary and independent
production of phenomena is impossible to any others. We have known many, and
never a sick man among them. The adept retains perfect consciousness; shows no
change of bodily temperature, or other sign of morbidity; requires no
"conditions," but will do his feats any-
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where and everywhere; and
instead of being passive and in subjection to a foreign influence, rules the
forces with iron will. But we have elsewhere shown that the medium and the
adept are as opposed as the poles. We will only add here that the body, soul,
and spirit of the adept are all conscious and working in harmony, and the body
of the medium is an inert clod, and even his soul may be away in a dream while
its habitation is occupied by another.
An adept can not only project
and make visible a hand, a foot, or any other portion of his body, but the
whole of it. We have seen one do this, in full day, while his hands and feet
were being held by a skeptical friend whom he wished to surprise.* Little by
little the whole astral body oozed out like a vapory cloud, until before us
stood two forms, of which the second was an exact duplicate of the first, only
slightly more shadowy.
The medium need not exercise
any will-power. It suffices that she or he shall know what is expected by the
investigators. The medium's "spiritual" entity, when not obsessed by
other spirits, will act outside the will or consciousness of the physical
being, as surely as it acts when within the body during a fit of somnambulism.
Its perceptions, external and internal, will be acuter and far more developed,
precisely as they are in the sleep-walker. And this is why "the
materialized form sometimes knows more than the medium,"** for the
intellectual perception of the astral entity is proportionately as much higher
than the corporeal intelligence of the medium in its normal state, as the
spirit entity is finer than itself. Generally the medium will be found cold,
the pulse will have visibly changed, and a state of nervous prostration
succeeds the phenomena, bunglingly and without discrimination attributed to
disembodied spirits; whereas, but one-third of them may be produced by the
latter, another third by elementals, and the rest by the astral double of the
medium himself.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Boulogne (France)
correspondent of an English journal says that he knows of a gentleman who has
had an arm amputated at the shoulder, "who is certain that he has a
spiritual arm, which he sees and actually feels with his other hand. He can
touch anything, and even pull up things with the spiritual or phantom arm and
hand." The party knows nothing of spiritualism. We give this as we get it,
without verification, but it merely corroborates what we have seen in the case
of an Eastern adept. This eminent scholar and practical kabalist can at will
project his astral arm, and with the hand take up, move, and carry objects,
even at a considerable distance from where he may be sitting or standing. We
have often seen him thus minister to the wants of a favorite elephant.
** Answer to a question at
"The National Association of Spiritualists," May 14th, 1877.
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BODY.
But, while it is our firm
belief that most of the physical manifestations, i.e., those which neither need
nor show intelligence nor great discrimination, are produced mechanically by
the scin-lecca (double) of the medium, as a person in sound sleep will when
apparently awake do things of which he will retain no remembrance. The purely
subjective phenomena are but in a very small proportion of cases due to the
action of the personal astral body. They are mostly, and according to the
moral, intellectual, and physical purity of the medium, the work of either the
elementary, or sometimes very pure human spirits. Elementals have naught to do
with subjective manifestations. In rare cases it is the divine spirit of the
medium himself that guides and produces them.
As Baboo Peary Chand Mittra
says, in a letter* to the President of the National Association of
Spiritualists, Mr. Alexander Calder,** "a spirit is an essence or power,
and has no form. . . . The very idea of form implies 'materialism.' The spirits
[astral souls, we should say] . . . can assume forms for a time, but form is
not their permanent state. The more material is our soul, the more material is
our conception of spirits."
Epimenides, the Orphikos, was
renowned for his "sacred and marvellous nature," and for the faculty
his soul possessed of quitting its body " as long and as often as it
pleased." The ancient philosophers who have testified to this ability may
be reckoned by dozens. Apollonius left his body at a moment's notice, but it
must be remembered Apollonius was an adept -- a "magician." Had he
been simply a medium, he could not have performed such feats at will.
Empedocles of Agrigentum, the Pythagorean thaumaturgist, required no conditions
to arrest a waterspout which had broken over the city. Neither did he need any
to recall a woman to life, as he did. Apollonius used no darkened room in which
to perform his aethrobatic feats. Vanishing suddenly in the air before the eyes
of Domitian and a whole crowd of witnesses (many thousands), he appeared an
hour after in the grotto of Puteoli. But investigation would have shown that
his physical body having become invisible by the concentration of akasa about
it, he could walk off unperceived to some secure retreat in the neighborhood,
and an hour after his astral form appear at Puteoli to his friends, and seem to
be the man himself.
No more did Simon Magus wait
to be entranced to fly off in the air before the apostles and crowds of
witnesses. "It requires no conjuration and ceremonies; circle-making and
incensing are mere nonsense and juggling," says Paracelsus. The human
spirit "is so great a thing that no man can express it; as God Himself is
eternal and unchangeable, so also
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "A Buddhist's Opinions
of the Spiritual States."
** See the "London
Spiritualist," May 25, 1877, p. 246.
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is the mind of man. If we rightly
understood its powers, nothing would be impossible to us on earth. The
imagination is strengthened and developed through faith in our will. Faith must
confirm the imagination, for faith establishes the will."
A singular account of the
personal interview of an English ambassador in 1783, with a reincarnated Buddha
-- barely mentioned in volume i. -- an infant of eighteen months old at that
time, is given in the Asiatic Journal from the narrative of an eye-witness
himself, Mr. Turner, the author of The Embassy to Thibet. The cautious
phraseology of a skeptic dreading public ridicule ill conceals the amazement of
the witness, who, at the same time, desires to give facts as truthfully as
possible. The infant lama received the ambassador and his suite with a dignity
and decorum so natural and unconstrained that they remained in a perfect maze
of wonder. The behavior of this infant, says the author, was that of an old
philosopher, grave and sedate and exceedingly courteous. He contrived to make
the young pontiff understand the inconsolable grief into which the
Governor-General of Galagata (Calcutta) the City of Palaces and the people of
India were plunged when he died, and the general rapture when they found that
he had resurrected in a young and fresh body again; at which compliment the
young lama regarded him and his suite with looks of singular complacency, and
courteously treated them to confectionery from a golden cup. "The
ambassador continued to express the Governor-General's hope that the lama might
long continue to illumine the world with his presence, and that the friendship
which had heretofore subsisted between them might be yet more strongly
cemented, for the benefit and advantage of the intelligent votaries of the lama
. . . all which made the little creature look steadfastly at the speaker, and
graciously bow and nod -- and bow and nod -- as if he understood and approved
of every word that was uttered."*
As if he understood! If the
infant behaved in the most natural and dignified way during the reception, and
"when their cups were empty of tea became uneasy and throwing back his
head and contracting the skin of his brow, continued making a noise till they
were filled again," why could he not understand as well what was said to
him?
Years ago, a small party of
travellers were painfully journeying from Kashmir to Leh, a city of Ladahk
(Central Thibet). Among our guides we had a Tartar Shaman, a very mysterious
personage, who spoke Russian a little and English not at all, and yet who
managed, nevertheless, to converse with us, and proved of great service. Having
learned that some of our party were Russians, he had imagined that our protec-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Coleman's "Hindu
Mythology."
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THIBETAN BIKSHU.
tion was all-powerful, and
might enable him to safely find his way back to his Siberian home, from which,
for reasons unknown, some twenty years before, he had fled, as he told us, via
Kiachta and the great Gobi Desert, to the land of the Tcha-gars.* With such an
interested object in view, we believed ourselves safe under his guard. To
explain the situation briefly: Our companions had formed the unwise plan of
penetrating into Thibet under various disguises, none of them speaking the
language, although one, a Mr. K----, had picked up some Kasan Tartar, and
thought he did. As we mention this only incidentally, we may as well say at
once that two of them, the brothers N----, were very politely brought back to
the frontier before they had walked sixteen miles into the weird land of
Eastern Bod; and Mr. K----, an ex-Lutheran minister, could not even attempt to
leave his miserable village near Leh, as from the first days he found himself
prostrated with fever, and had to return to Lahore via Kashmere. But one sight
seen by him was as good as if he had witnessed the reincarnation of Buddha
itself. Having heard of this "miracle" from some old Russian
missionary in whom he thought he could have more faith than in Abbe Huc, it had
been for years his desire to expose the "great heathen" jugglery, as
he expressed it. K---- was a positivist, and rather prided himself on this
anti-philosophical neologism. But his positivism was doomed to receive a
death-blow.
About four days journey from
Islamabad, at an insignificant mud village, whose only redeeming feature was
its magnificent lake, we stopped for a few days' rest. Our companions had
temporarily separated from us, and the village was to be our place of meeting.
It was there that we were apprised by our Shaman that a large party of Lamaic
"Saints," on pilgrimage to various shrines, had taken up their abode
in an old cave-temple and established a temporary Vihara therein. He added
that, as the "Three Honorable Ones"** were said to travel along with
them, the holy Bikshu (monks) were capable of producing the greatest miracles.
Mr. K-----, fired with the prospect of exposing this humbug of the ages,
proceeded at once to pay them a visit, and from that moment the most friendly
relations were established between the two camps.
The Vihar was in a secluded
and most romantic spot secured against all intrusion. Despite the effusive
attentions, presents, and protestations of Mr. K----, the Chief, who was
Pase-Budhu (an ascetic of great
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Russian subjects are not
allowed to cross the Tartar territory, neither the subjects of the Emperor of
China to go to the Russian factories.
** These are the
representatives of the Buddhist Trinity, Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, or Fo, Fa,
and Sengh, as they are called in Thibet.
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sanctity), declined to exhibit
the phenomenon of the "incarnation" until a certain talisman in
possession of the writer was exhibited.* Upon seeing this, however,
preparations were at once made, and an infant of three or four months was
procured from its mother, a poor woman of the neighborhood. An oath was first
of all exacted of Mr. K----, that he would not divulge what he might see or
hear, for the space of seven years. The talisman is a simple agate or carnelian
known among the Thibetans and others as A-yu, and naturally possessed, or had
been endowed with very mysterious properties. It has a triangle engraved upon
it, within which are contained a few mystical words.**
Several days passed before
everything was ready; nothing of a mysterious character occurring, meanwhile,
except that, at the bidding of a Bikshu, ghastly faces were made to peep at us
out of the glassy bosom of the lake, as we sat at the door of the Vihar, upon
its bank. One of these was the countenance of Mr. K----'s sister, whom he had
left well and happy at home, but who, as we subsequently learned, had died some
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* A Bikshu is not allowed to
accept anything directly even from laymen of his own people, least of all from
a foreigner. The slightest contact with the body and even dress of a person not
belonging to their special community is carefully avoided. Thus even the
offerings brought by us and which comprised pieces of red and yellow pou-lou, a
sort of woollen fabric the lamas generally wear, had to pass through strange
ceremonies. They are forbidden, 1, to ask or beg for anything -- even were they
starving -- having to wait until it is voluntarily offered; 2, to touch either
gold or silver with their hands; 3, to eat a morsel of food, even when
presented, unless the donor distinctly says to the disciple, "This is for
your master to eat." Thereupon, the disciple turning to the pazen has to
offer the food in his turn, and when he has said, "Master, this is
allowed; take and eat," then only can the lama take it with the right
hand, and partake of it. All our offerings had to pass through such
purifications. When the silver pieces, and a few handfuls of annas (a coin
equal to four cents) were at different occasions offered to the community, a
disciple first wrapped his hand in a yellow handkerchief, and receiving it on
his palm, conveyed the sum immediately into the Badir, called elsewhere Sabait,
a sacred basin, generally wooden, kept for offerings.
** These stones are highly
venerated among Lamaists and Buddhists; the throne and sceptre of Buddha are
ornamented with them, and the Taley Lama wears one on the fourth finger of the
right hand. They are found in the Altai Mountains, and near the river Yarkuh.
Our talisman was a gift from the venerable high-priest, a Heiloung, of a
Kalmuck tribe. Though treated as apostates from their primitive Lamaism, these
nomads maintain friendly intercourse with their brother Kalmucks, the Chokhots
of Eastern Thibet and Kokonor, but even with the Lamaists of Lha-Ssa. The
ecclesiastical authorities however, will have no relations with them. We have
had abundant opportunities to become acquainted with this interesting people of
the Astrakhan Steppes, having lived in their Kibitkas in our early years, and
partaken of the lavish hospitality of the Prince Tumene, their late chief, and
his Princess. In their religious ceremonies, the Kalmucks employ trumpets made
from the thigh and arm bones of deceased rulers and high priests.
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 601 AN ADEPT'S SOUL IN
AN INFANT BODY.
time before he had set out on
the present journey. The sight affected him at first, but he called his
skepticism to his aid, and quieted himself with theories of cloud-shadows,
reflections of tree-branches, etc., such as people of his kind fall back upon.
On the appointed afternoon,
the baby being brought to the Vihara, was left in the vestibule or
reception-room, as K---- could go no further into the temporary sanctuary. The
child was then placed on a bit of carpet in the middle of the floor, and every
one not belonging to the party being sent away, two "mendicants" were
placed at the entrance to keep out intruders. Then all the lamas seated
themselves on the floor, with their backs against the granite walls, so that
each was separated from the child by a space, at least, of ten feet. The chief,
having had a square piece of leather spread for him by the desservant, seated
himself at the farthest corner. Alone, Mr. K---- placed himself close by the infant,
and watched every movement with intense interest. The only condition exacted of
us was that we should preserve a strict silence, and patiently await further
developments. A bright sunlight streamed through the open door. Gradually the
"Superior" fell into what seemed a state of profound meditation,
while the others, after a sotto voce short invocation, became suddenly silent,
and looked as if they had been completely petrified. It was oppressively still,
and the crowing of the child was the only sound to be heard. After we had sat
there a few moments, the movements of the infant's limbs suddenly ceased, and
his body appeared to become rigid. K---- watched intently every motion, and
both of us, by a rapid glance, became satisfied that all present were sitting
motionless. The superior, with his gaze fixed upon the ground, did not even
look at the infant; but, pale and motionless, he seemed rather like a bronze
statue of a Talapoin in meditation than a living being. Suddenly, to our great
consternation, we saw the child, not raise itself, but, as it were, violently
jerked into a sitting posture! A few more jerks, and then, like an automaton
set in motion by concealed wires, the four months' baby stood upon his feet!
Fancy our consternation, and, in Mr. K----'s case, horror. Not a hand had been
outstretched, not a motion made, nor a word spoken; and yet, here was a
baby-in-arms standing erect and firm as a man!
The rest of the story we will
quote from a copy of notes written on this subject by Mr. K----, the same
evening, and given to us, in case it should not reach its place of destination,
or the writer fail to see anything more.
"After a minute or two of
hesitation," writes K----, "the baby turned his head and looked at me
with an expression of intelligence that was simply awful! It sent a chill
through me. I pinched my hands and
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bit my lips till the blood
almost came, to make sure that I did not dream. But this was only the
beginning. The miraculous creature, making, as I fancied, two steps toward me,
resumed his sitting posture, and, without removing his eyes from mine,
repeated, sentence by sentence, in what I supposed to be Thibetan language, the
very words, which I had been told in advance, are commonly spoken at the
incarnations of Buddha, beginning with 'I am Buddha; I am the old Lama; I am
his spirit in a new body,' etc. I felt a real terror; my hair rose upon my
head, and my blood ran cold. For my life I could not have spoken a word. There
was no trickery here, no ventriloquism. The infant lips moved, and the eyes
seemed to search my very soul with an expression that made me think it was the
face of the Superior himself, his eyes, his very look that I was gazing upon.
It was as if his spirit had entered the little body, and was looking at me
through the transparent mask of the baby's face. I felt my brain growing dizzy.
The infant reached toward me, and laid his little hand upon mine. I started as
if I had been touched by a hot coal; and, unable to bear the scene any longer,
covered my face with my hands. It was but for an instant; but when I removed
them, the little actor had become a crowing baby again, and a moment after,
lying upon his back, set up a fretful cry. The superior had resumed his normal
condition, and conversation ensued.
"It was only after a
series of similar experiments, extending over ten days, that I realized the fact
that I had seen the incredible, astounding phenomenon described by certain
travellers, but always by me denounced as an imposture. Among a multitude of
questions unanswered, despite my cross-examination, the Superior let drop one
piece of information, which must be regarded as highly significant. 'What would
have happened,' I inquired, through the shaman, 'if, while the infant was
speaking, in a moment of insane fright, at the thought of its being the
"Devil," I had killed it?' He replied that, if the blow had not been
instantly fatal, the child alone would have been killed.' 'But,' I continued,
'suppose that it had been as swift as a lightning-flash?' 'In such case,' was
the answer, 'you would have killed me also.' "
In Japan and Siam there are
two orders of priests, of which one are public, and deal with the people, the
other strictly private. The latter are never seen; their existence is known but
to very few natives, never to foreigners. Their powers are never displayed in
public, nor ever at all except on rare occasions of the utmost importance, at
which times the ceremonies are performed in subterranean or otherwise
inaccessible temples, and in the presence of a chosen few whose heads answer
for their secrecy. Among such occasions are deaths in the Royal family, or
those of high dignitaries affiliated with the Order. One of the most
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SOUL FROM ONE'S ASHES.
weird and impressive
exhibitions of the power of these magicians is that of the withdrawal of the
astral soul from the cremated remains of human beings, a ceremony practiced
likewise in some of the most important lamaseries of Thibet and Mongolia.
In Siam, Japan, and Great
Tartary, it is the custom to make medallions, statuettes, and idols out of the
ashes of cremated persons;* they are mixed with water into a paste, and after
being moulded into the desired shape, are baked and then gilded. The Lamasery
of Ou-Tay, in the province of Chan-Si, Mongolia, is the most famous for that
work, and rich persons send the bones of their defunct relatives to be ground
and fashioned there. When the adept in magic proposes to facilitate the
withdrawal of the astral soul of the deceased, which otherwise they think might
remain stupefied for an indefinite period within the ashes, the following
process is resorted to: The sacred dust is placed in a heap, upon a metallic
plate, strongly magnetized, of the size of a man's body. The adept then slowly
and gently fans it with the Talapat Nang,** a fan of a peculiar shape and
inscribed with certain signs, muttering, at the same time, a form of
invocation. The ashes soon become, as it were, imbued with life, and gently
spread themselves out into a thin layer which assumes the outline of the body
before cremation. Then there gradually arises a sort of whitish vapor which
after a time forms into an erect column, and compacting itself, is finally
transformed into the "double," or ethereal, astral counterpart of the
dead, which in its turn dissolves away into thin air, and disappears from
mortal sight.***
The "Magicians" of
Kashmir, Thibet, Mongolia, and Great Tartary are too well known to need
comments. If jugglers they be, we invite the most expert jugglers of Europe and
America to match them if they can.
If our scientists are unable
to imitate the mummy-embalming of the Egyptians, how much greater would be
their surprise to see, as we have, dead bodies preserved by alchemical art, so
that after the lapse of centuries, they seem as though the individuals were but
sleeping. The complexions were as fresh, the skin as elastic, the eyes as
natural and sparkling as though they were in the full flush of health, and the
wheels of life had been stopped but the instant before. The bodies of certain
very eminent personages are laid upon catafalques, in rich mausoleums,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Buddhist Kalmucks of the
Astrakhan steppes are accustomed to make their idols out of the cremated ashes
of their princes and priests. A relative of the author has in her collection
several small pyramids composed of the ashes of eminent Kalmucks and presented
to her by the Prince Tumene himself in 1836.
** The sacred fan used by the
chief priests instead of an umbrella.
*** See vol. i., p. 476.
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sometimes overlaid with
gilding or even with plates of real gold; their favorite arms, trinkets, and
articles of daily use gathered about them, and a suite of attendants, blooming
young boys and girls, but still corpses, preserved like their masters, stand as
if ready to serve when called. In the convent of Great Kouren, and in one
situated upon the Holy Mountain (Bohte Oula) there are said to be several such
sepulchres, which have been respected by all the conquering hordes that have
swept through those countries. Abbe Huc heard that such exist, but did not see
one, strangers of all kinds being excluded, and missionaries and European
travellers not furnished with the requisite protection, being the last of all
persons who would be permitted to approach the sacred places. Huc's statement
that the tombs of Tartar sovereigns are surrounded with children "who were
compelled to swallow mercury until they were suffocated," by which means
"the color and freshness of the victims is preserved so well that they
appear alive," is one of these idle missionary fables which impose only
upon the most ignorant who accept on hearsay. Buddhists have never immolated
victims, whether human or animal. It is utterly against the principles of their
religion, and no Lamaist was ever accused of it. When a rich man desired to be
interred in company, messengers were sent throughout the country with the
Lama-embalmers, and children just dead in the natural way were selected for the
purpose. Poor parents were but too glad to preserve their departed children in
this poetic way, instead of abandoning them to decay and wild beasts.
At the time when Abbe Huc was
living in Paris, after his return from Thibet, he related, among other
unpublished wonders, to a Mr. Arsenieff, a Russian gentleman, the following
curious fact that he had witnessed during his long sojourn at the lamasery of
Kounboum. One day while conversing with one of the lamas, the latter suddenly
stopped speaking, and assumed the attentive attitude of one who is listening to
a message being delivered to him, although he (Huc) heard never a word.
"Then, I must go"; suddenly broke forth the lama, as if in response
to the message.
"Go where?" inquired
the astonished "lama of Jehovah" (Huc). "And with whom are you
talking?"
"To the lamasery of * *
*," was the quiet answer. "The Shaberon wants me; it was he who
summoned me."
Now this lamasery was many
days' journey from that of Kounboum, in which the conversation was taking
place. But what seemed to astonish Huc the most was, that, instead of setting
off on his journey, the lama simply walked to a sort of cupola-room on the roof
of the house in which they lived, and another lama, after exchanging a few
words, fol-
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SOUND.
lowed them to the terrace by
means of the ladder, and passing between them, locked and barred his companion
in. Then turning to Huc after a few seconds of meditation, he smiled and
informed the guest that "he had gone."
"But how could he? Why
you have locked him in, and the room has no issue?" insisted the
missionary.
"And what good would a
door be to him?" answered the custodian. "It is he himself who went
away; his body is not needed, and so he left it in my charge."
Notwithstanding the wonders
which Huc had witnessed during his perilous journey, his opinion was that both
of the lamas had mystified him. But three days later, not having seen his
habitual friend and entertainer, he inquired after him, and was informed that
he would be back in the evening. At sunset, and just as the "other
lamas" were preparing to retire, Huc heard his absent friend's voice
calling as if from the clouds, to his companion to open the door for him.
Looking upward, he perceived the "traveller's" outline behind the
lattice of the room where he had been locked in. When he descended he went
straight to the Grand Lama of Kounboum, and delivered to him certain messages
and "orders," from the place which he "pretended" he had
just left. Huc could get no more information from him as to his aerial voyage.
But he always thought, he said, that this "farce" had something to do
with the immediate and extraordinary preparations for the polite expulsion of
both the missionaries, himself and Father Gabet, to Chogor-tan, a place
belonging to the Kounboum. The suspicion of the daring missionary may have been
correct, in view of his impudent inquisitiveness and indiscretion.
If the Abbe had been versed in
Eastern philosophy, he would have found no great difficulty in comprehending
both the flight of the lama's astral body to the distant lamasery while his
physical frame remained behind, or the carrying on of a conversation with the
Shaberon that was inaudible to himself. The recent experiments with the
telephone in America, to which allusion was made in Chapter V. of our first
volume, but which have been greatly perfected since those pages went to press,
prove that the human voice and the sounds of instrumental music may be conveyed
along a telegraphic wire to a great distance. The Hermetic philosophers taught,
as we have seen, that the disappearance from sight of a flame does not imply
its actual extinction. It has only passed from the visible to the invisible
world, and may be perceived by the inner sense of vision, which is adapted to
the things of that other and more real universe. The same rule applies to sound.
As the physical ear discerns the vibrations of the atmosphere up to a certain
point, not yet
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definitely fixed, but varying
with the individual, so the adept whose interior hearing has been developed,
can take the sound at this vanishing-point, and hear its vibrations in the
astral light indefinitely. He needs no wires, helices, or sounding-boards; his
will-power is all-sufficient. Hearing with the spirit, time and distance offer
no impediments, and so he may converse with another adept at the antipodes with
as great ease as though they were in the same room.
Fortunately, we can produce numerous
witnesses to corroborate our statement, who, without being adepts at all, have,
nevertheless, heard the sound of aerial music and of the human voice, when
neither instrument nor speaker were within thousands of miles of the place
where we sat. In their case they actually heard interiorly, though they
supposed their physical organs of hearing alone were employed. The adept had,
by a simple effort of will-power, given them for the brief moment the same
perception of the spirit of sound as he himself constantly enjoys.
If our men of science could
only be induced to test instead of deriding the ancient philosophy of the
trinity of all the natural forces, they would go by leaps toward the dazzling
truth, instead of creeping, snail-like, as at present. Prof. Tyndall's
experiments off the South Foreland, at Dover, in 1875, fairly upset all
previous theories of the transmission of sound, and those he has made with
sensitive flames* bring him to the very threshold of arcane science. One step
further, and he would comprehend how adepts can converse at great distances.
But that step will not be taken. Of his sensitive -- in truth, magical --
flame, he says: "The slightest tap on a distant anvil causes it to fall to
seven inches. When a bunch of keys is shaken, the flame is violently agitated,
and emits a loud roar. The dropping of a sixpence into a hand already
containing coin, knocks the flame down. The creaking of boots sets it in
violent commotion. The crumpling or tearing of a bit of paper, or the rustle of
a silk dress does the same. Responsive to every tick of a watch held near it,
it falls and explodes. The winding up of a watch produces tumult. From a
distance of thirty yards we may chirrup to this flame, and cause it to fall and
roar. Repeating a passage from the Faerie Queene, the flame sifts and selects
the manifold sounds of my voice, noticing some by a slight nod, others by a
deeper bow, while to others it responds by violent agitation."
Such are the wonders of modern
physical science; but at what cost of apparatus, and carbonic acid and coal
gas; of American and Canadian whistles, trumpets, gongs, and bells! The poor
heathen have none such impedimenta, but -- will European science believe it --
nevertheless,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See his "Lectures on
Sound."
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THE BIKSIIU.
produce the very same
phenomena. Upon one occasion, when, in a case of exceptional importance, an
"oracle" was required, we saw the possibility of what we had
previously vehemently denied -- namely, a simple mendicant cause a sensitive
flame to give responsive flashes without a particle of apparatus. A fire was
kindled of branches of the Beal-tree, and some sacrificial herbs were sprinkled
upon it. The mendicant sat near by, motionless, absorbed in contemplation.
During the intervals between the questions the fire burned low and seemed ready
to go out, but when the interrogatories were propounded, the flames leaped,
roaring, skyward, flickered, bowed, and sent fiery tongues flaring toward the
east, west, north, or south; each motion having its distinct meaning in a code
of signals well understood. Between whiles it would sink to the ground, and the
tongues of flame would lick the sod in every direction, and suddenly disappear,
leaving only a bed of glowing embers. When the interview with the flame-spirits
was at an end, the Bikshu (mendicant) turned toward the jungle where he abode,
keeping up a wailing, monotonous chant, to the rhythm of which the sensitive
flame kept time, not merely like Prof. Tyndall's, when he read the Faerie
Queene, by simple motions, but by a marvellous modulation of hissing and
roaring until he was out of sight. Then, as if its very life were extinguished,
it vanished, and left a bed of ashes before the astonished spectators.
Both in Western and Eastern
Thibet, as in every other place where Buddhism predominates, there are two
distinct religions, the same as it is in Brahmanism -- the secret philosophy
and the popular religion. The former is that of the followers of the doctrine
of the sect of the Sutrantika.* They closely adhere to the spirit of Buddha's
original teachings which show the necessity of intuitional perception, and all
deductions therefrom. These do not proclaim their views, nor allow them to be
made public.
"All compounds are
perishable," were the last words uttered by the lips of the dying Gautama,
when preparing under the Sal-tree to enter into Nirvana. "Spirit is the
sole, elementary, and primordial unity, and each of its rays is immortal,
infinite, and indestructible. Beware of the illusions of matter." Buddhism
was spread far and wide over Asia, and even farther, by Dharm-Asoka. He was the
grandson of the miracle-worker Chandragupta, the illustrious king who rescued
the Punjab from the Macedonians -- if they ever were at Punjab at all -- and
received Megasthenes at his court in Pataliputra. Dharm-Asoka was the greatest
King of the Maurya dynasty. From a reckless profligate and atheist,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* From the compound word
sutra, maxim or precept, and antika, close or near.
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he had become Pryadasi, the
"beloved of the gods," and never was the purity of his philanthropic
views surpassed by any earthly ruler. His memory has lived for ages in the
hearts of the Buddhists, and has been perpetuated in the humane edicts engraved
in several popular dialects on the columns and rocks of Allahabad, Delhi,
Guzerat, Peshawur, Orissa, and other places.* His famous grandfather had united
all India under his powerful sceptre. When the Nagas, or serpent-worshippers of
Kashmere had been converted through the efforts of the apostles sent out by the
Sthaviras of the third councils, the religion of Gautama spread like wild-fire.
Gandhara, Cabul, and even many of the Satrapies of Alexander the Great,
accepted the new philosophy. The Buddhism of Nepal being the one which may be
said to have diverged less than any other from the primeval ancient faith, the
Lamaism of Tartary, Mongolia, and Thibet, which is a direct offshoot of this
country, may be thus shown to be the purest Buddhism; for we say it again,
Lamaism properly is but an external form of rites.
The Upasakas and Upasakis, or
male and female semi-monastics and semi-laymen, have equally with the
lama-monks themselves, to strictly abstain from violating any of Buddha's
rules, and must study Meipo and every psychological phenomenon as much. Those who
become guilty of any of the "five sins" lose all right to congregate
with the pious community. The most important of these is not to curse upon any
consideration, for the curse returns upon the one that utters it, and often
upon his innocent relatives who breathe the same atmosphere with him. To love
each other, and even our bitterest enemies; to offer our lives even for
animals, to the extent of abstaining from defensive arms; to gain the greatest
of victories by conquering one's self; to avoid all vices; to practice all
virtues, especially humility and mildness; to be obedient to superiors, to
cherish and respect parents, old age, learning, virtuous and holy men; to
provide food, shelter, and comfort for men and animals; to plant trees on the
roads and dig wells for the comfort of travellers; such are the moral duties of
Buddhists. Every Ani or Bikshuni (nun) is subjected to these laws.
Numerous are the Buddhist and
Lamaic saints who have been renowned for the unsurpassed sanctity of their
lives and their "miracles." So Tissu, the Emperor's spiritual
teacher, who consecrated Kublai-Khan, the Nadir Shah, was known far and wide as
much for the extreme holiness of his life as for the many wonders he wrought.
But
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It sounds like injustice to
Asoka to compare him with Constantine, as is done by several Orientalists. If,
in the religious and political sense, Asoka did for India what Constantine is
alleged to have achieved for the Western World, all similarity stops there.
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SOULS OF FLOWERS.
he did not stop at fruitless
miracles, but did better than that. Tissu purified completely his religion; and
from one single province of Southern Mongolia is said to have forced Kublai to
expel from convents 500,000 monkish impostors, who made a pretext of their
profession, to live in vice and idleness. Then the Lamaists had their great
reformer, the Shaberon Son-Ka-po, who is claimed to have been immaculately
conceived by his mother, a virgin from Koko-nor (fourteenth century), who is
another wonder-worker. The sacred tree of Kounboum, the tree of the 10,000
images, which, in consequence of the degeneration of the true faith had ceased
budding for several centuries, now shot forth new sprouts and bloomed more
vigorously than ever from the hair of this avatar of Buddha, says the legend. The
same tradition makes him (Son-Ka-po) ascend to heaven in 1419. Contrary to the
prevailing idea, few of these saints are Khubilhans, or Shaberons --
reincarnations.
Many of the lamaseries contain
schools of magic, but the most celebrated is the collegiate monastery of the
Shu-tukt, where there are over 30,000 monks attached to it, the lamasery
forming quite a little city. Some of the female nuns possess marvellous
psychological powers. We have met some of these women on their way from Lha-Ssa
to Candi, the Rome of Buddhism, with its miraculous shrines and Gautama's
relics. To avoid encounters with Mussulmans and other sects they travel by
night alone, unarmed, and without the least fear of wild animals, for these
will not touch them. At the first glimpses of dawn, they take refuge in caves
and viharas prepared for them by their co-religionists at calculated distances;
for notwithstanding the fact that Buddhism has taken refuge in Ceylon, and
nominally there are but few of the denomination in British India, yet the
secret Byauds (Brotherhoods) and Buddhist viharas are numerous, and every Jain
feels himself obliged to help, indiscriminately, Buddhist or Lamaist.
Ever on the lookout for occult
phenomena, hungering after sights, one of the most interesting that we have
seen was produced by one of these poor travelling Bikshu. It was years ago, and
at a time when all such manifestations were new to the writer. We were taken to
visit the pilgrims by a Buddhist friend, a mystical gentleman born at Kashmir,
of Katchi parents, but a Buddha-Lamaist by conversion, and who generally
resides at Lha-Ssa.
"Why carry about this
bunch of dead plants?" inquired one of the Bikshuni, an emaciated, tall
and elderly woman, pointing to a large nosegay of beautiful, fresh, and fragrant
flowers in the writer's hands.
"Dead?" we asked,
inquiringly. "Why they just have been gathered in the garden?"
"And yet, they are
dead," she gravely answered. "To be born in
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this world, is this not death?
See, how these herbs look when alive in the world of eternal light, in the
gardens of our blessed Foh?"
Without moving from the place
where she was sitting on the ground, the Ani took a flower from the bunch, laid
it in her lap, and began to draw together, by large handfuls as it were,
invisible material from the surrounding atmosphere. Presently a very, very
faint nodule of vapor was seen, and this slowly took shape and color, until,
poised in mid-air, appeared a copy of the bloom we had given her. Faithful to
the last tint and the last petal it was, and lying on its side like the
original, but a thousand-fold more gorgeous in hue and exquisite in beauty, as
the glorified human spirit is more beauteous than its physical capsule. Flower
after flower to the minutest herb was thus reproduced and made to vanish,
reappearing at our desire, nay, at our simple thought. Having selected a full-blown
rose we held it at arm's length, and in a few minutes our arm, hand, and the
flower, perfect in every detail, appeared reflected in the vacant space, about
two yards from where we sat. But while the flower seemed immeasurably
beautified and as ethereal as the other spirit flowers, the arm and hand
appeared like a mere reflection in a looking-glass, even to a large spot on the
fore arm, left on it by a piece of damp earth which had stuck to one of the
roots. Later we learned the reason why.
A great truth was uttered some
fifty years ago by Dr. Francis Victor Broussais, when he said: "If
magnetism were true, medicine would be an absurdity." Magnetism is true,
and so we shall not contradict the learned Frenchman as to the rest. Magnetism,
as we have shown, is the alphabet of magic. It is idle for any one to attempt
to understand either the theory or the practice of the latter until the
fundamental principle of magnetic attractions and repulsions throughout nature
is recognized.
Many so-called popular superstitions
are but evidences of an instinctive perception of this law. An untutored people
are taught by the experience of many generations that certain phenomena occur
under fixed conditions; they give these conditions and obtain the expected
results. Ignorant of the laws, they explain the fact by supernaturalism, for
experience has been their sole teacher.
In India, as well as in Russia
and some other countries, there is an instinctive repugnance to stepping across
a man's shadow, especially if he have red hair; and in the former country,
natives are extremely reluctant to shake hands with persons of another race.
These are not idle fancies. Every person emits a magnetic exhalation or aura,
and a man may be in perfect physical health, but at the same time his
exhalation may have a morbific character for others, sensitive to such subtile
influences. Dr. Esdaile and other mesmerists long since taught us that Oriental
peo-
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ple, especially Hindus, are
more susceptible than the white-skinned races. Baron Reichenbach's experiments --
and, in fact, the world's entire experience -- prove that these magnetic
exhalations are most intense from the extremities. Therapeutic manipulations
show this; hand-shaking is, therefore, most calculated to communicate
antipathetic magnetic conditions, and the Hindus do wisely in keeping their
ancient "superstition" -- derived from Manu -- constantly in mind.
The magnetism of a red-haired
man, we have found, in almost every nation, is instinctively dreaded. We might
quote proverbs from the Russian, Persian, Georgian, Hindustani, French,
Turkish, and even German, to show that treachery and other vices are popularly
supposed to accompany the rufous complexion. When a man stands exposed to the
sun, the magnetism of that luminary causes his emanations to be projected
toward the shadow, and the increased molecular action develops more
electricity. Hence, an individual to whom he is antipathetic -- though neither
might be sensible of the fact -- would act prudently in not passing through the
shadow. Careful physicians wash their hands upon leaving each patient; why,
then, should they not be charged with superstition, as well as the Hindus? The
sporules of disease are invisible, but no less real, as European experience
demonstrates. Well, Oriental experience for a hundred centuries has shown that
the germs of moral contagion linger about localities, and impure magnetism can
be communicated by the touch.
Another prevalent belief in
some parts of Russia, particularly Georgia (Caucasus), and in India, is that in
case the body of a drowned person cannot be otherwise found, if a garment of
his be thrown into the water it will float until directly over the spot, and
then sink. We have even seen the experiment successfully tried with the sacred
cord of a Brahman. It floated hither and thither, circling about as though in
search of something, until suddenly darting in a straight line for about fifty
yards, it sank, and at that exact spot the divers brought up the body. We find
this "superstition" even in America. A Pittsburg paper, of very
recent date, describes the finding of the body of a young boy, named Reed, in
the Monongahela, by a like method. All other means having failed, it says,
"a curious superstition was employed. One of the boy's shirts was thrown
into the river where he had gone down, and, it is said, floated on the surface
for a time, and finally settled to the bottom at a certain place, which proved
to be the resting-place of the body, and which was then drawn out. The belief
that the shirt of a drowned person when thrown into the water will follow the
body is well-spread, absurd as it appears."
This phenomenon is explained
by the law of the powerful attraction existing between the human body and
objects that have been long worn
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upon it. The oldest garment is
most effective for the experiment; a new one is useless.
From time immemorial, in Russia,
in the month of May, on Trinity Day, maidens from city and village have been in
the habit of casting upon the river wreaths of green leaves -- which each girl
has to form for herself -- and consulting their oracles. If the wreath sinks,
it is a sign that the girl will die unmarried within a short time; if it
floats, she will be married, the time depending upon the number of verses she
can repeat during the experiment. We positively affirm that we have personal
knowledge of several cases, two of them our intimate friends, where the augury
of death proved true, and the girls died within twelve months. Tried on any
other day than Trinity, the result would doubtless be the same. The sinking of
the wreath is attributable to its being impregnated with the unhealthy
magnetism of a system which contains the germs of early death; such magnetisms
having an attraction for the earth at the bottom of the stream. As for the
rest, we are willing to abandon it to the friends of coincidence.
The same general remark as to
superstition having a scientific basis applies to the phenomena produced by
fakirs and jugglers, which skeptics heap into the common category of trickery.
And yet, to a close observer, even to the uninitiated, an enormous difference
is presented between the kimiya (phenomenon) of a fakir, and the batte-bazi
(jugglery) of a trickster, and the necromancy of a jadugar, or sahir, so
dreaded and despised by the natives. This difference, imperceptible -- nay
incomprehensible -- to the skeptical European, is instinctively appreciated by
every Hindu, whether of high or low caste, educated or ignorant. The kangalin,
or witch, who uses her terrible abhi-char (mesmeric powers) with intent to
injure, may expect death at any moment, for every Hindu finds it lawful to kill
her; a bukka-baz, or juggler, serves to amuse. A serpent-charmer, with his
ba-ini full of venomous snakes, is less dreaded, for his powers of fascination
extend but to animals and reptiles; he is unable to charm human beings, to
perform that which is called by the natives mantar phunkna, to throw spells on
men by magic. But with the yogi, the sannyasi, the holy men who acquire
enormous psychological powers by mental and physical training, the question is
totally different. Some of these men are regarded by the Hindus as demi-gods.
Europeans cannot judge of these powers but in rare and exceptional cases.
The British resident who has
encountered in the maidans and public places what he regards as frightful and
loathsome human beings, sitting motionless in the self-inflicted torture of the
urddwa bahu, with arms raised above the head for months, and even years, need
not suppose they are the wonder-working fakirs. The phenomenon of the latter
are visible only through the friendly protection of a Brahman, or under
peculiarly
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HINDU TODAS.
fortuitous circumstances. Such
men are as little accessible as the real Nautch girls, of whom every traveller
talks, but very few have actually seen, since they belong exclusively to the
pagodas.
It is surpassingly strange,
that with the thousands of travellers and the millions of European residents
who have been in India, and have traversed it in every direction, so little is
yet known of that country and the lands which surround it. It may be that some
readers will feel inclined not merely to doubt the correctness but even openly
contradict our statement? Doubtless, we will be answered that all that it is
desirable to know about India is already known? In fact this very reply was
once made to us personally. That resident Anglo-Indians should not busy
themselves with inquiries is not strange; for, as a British officer remarked to
us upon one occasion, "society does not consider it well-bred to care
about Hindus or their affairs, or even show astonishment or desire information
upon anything they may see extraordinary in that country." But it really
surprises us that at least travellers should not have explored more than they
have this interesting realm. Hardly fifty years ago, in penetrating the jungles
of the Blue or Neilgherry Hills in Southern Hindustan, a strange race,
perfectly distinct in appearance and language from any other Hindu people, was
discovered by two courageous British officers who were tiger-hunting. Many
surmises, more or less absurd, were set on foot, and the missionaries, always
on the watch to connect every mortal thing with the Bible, even went so far as
to suggest that this people was one of the lost tribes of Israel, supporting
their ridiculous hypothesis upon their very fair complexions and
"strongly-marked Jewish features." The latter is perfectly erroneous,
the Todas, as they are called, not bearing the remotest likeness to the Jewish
type; either in feature, form, action, or language. They closely resemble each
other, and, as a friend of ours expresses himself, the handsomest of the Todas
resemble the statue of the Grecian Zeus in majesty and beauty of form more than
anything he had yet seen among men.
Fifty years have passed since
the discovery; but though since that time towns have been built on these hills
and the country has been invaded by Europeans, no more has been learned of the
Todas than at the first. Among the foolish rumors current about this people,
the most erroneous are those in relation to their numbers and to their
practicing polyandry. The general opinion about them is that on account of the
latter custom their number has dwindled to a few hundred families, and the race
is fast dying out. We had the best means of learning much about them, and
therefore state most positively that the Todas neither practice polyandry nor
are they as few in number as supposed. We are
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ready to show that no one has
ever seen children belonging to them. Those that may have been seen in their
company have belonged to the Badagas, a Hindu tribe totally distinct from the
Todas, in race, color, and language, and which includes the most direct
"worshippers" of this extraordinary people. We say worshippers, for
the Badagas clothe, feed, serve, and positively look upon every Toda as a
divinity. They are giants in stature, white as Europeans, with tremendously
long and generally brown, wavy hair and beard, which no razor ever touched from
birth. Handsome as a statue of Pheidias or Praxiteles, the Toda sits the whole
day inactive, as some travellers who have had a glance at them affirm. From the
many conflicting opinions and statements we have heard from the very residents
of Ootakamund and other little new places of civilization scattered about the
Neilgherry Hills, we cull the following:
"They never use water;
they are wonderfully handsome and noble looking, but extremely unclean; unlike
all other natives they despise jewelry, and never wear anything but a large
black drapery or blanket of some woollen stuff, with a colored stripe at the
bottom; they never drink anything but pure milk; they have herds of cattle but
neither eat their flesh, nor do they make their beasts of labor plough or work;
they neither sell nor buy; the Badagas feed and clothe them; they never use nor
carry weapons, not even a simple stick; the Todas can't read and won't learn.
They are the despair of the missionaries and apparently have no sort of
religion, beyond the worship of themselves as the Lords of Creation."*
We will try to correct a few
of these opinions, as far as we have learned from a very holy personage, a
Brahmanam-guru, who has our great respect.
Nobody has ever seen more than
five or six of them at one time; they will not talk with foreigners, nor was
any traveller ever inside their peculiar long and flat huts, which apparently
are without either windows or chimney and have but one door; nobody ever saw
the funeral of a Toda, nor very old men among them; nor are they taken sick
with cholera, while thousands die around them during such periodical epidemics;
finally, though the country all around swarms with tigers and other wild
beasts, neither tiger, serpent, nor any other animal so ferocious in those
parts, was ever known to touch either a Toda or one of their cattle, though, as
said above, they never use even a stick.
Furthermore the Todas do not
marry at all. They seem few in number, for no one has or ever will have a
chance of numbering them; as soon as their solitude was profaned by the avalanche
of civilization --
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Indian
Sketches"; Appleton's "New Cyclopedia," etc.
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SHAMANISM AND LAMAISM.
which was, perchance, due to
their own carelessness -- the Todas began moving away to other parts as unknown
and more inaccessible than the Neilgherry hills had formerly been; they are not
born of Toda mothers, nor of Toda parentage; they are the children of a certain
very select sect, and are set apart from their infancy for special religious
purposes. Recognized by a peculiarity of complexion, and certain other signs,
such a child is known as what is vulgarly termed a Toda, from birth. Every
third year, each of them must repair to a certain place for a certain period of
time, where each of them must meet; their "dirt" is but a mask, such
as a sannyasi puts on in public in obedience to his vow; their cattle are, for
the most part, devoted to sacred uses; and, though their places of worship have
never been trodden by a profane foot, they nevertheless exist, and perhaps
rival the most splendid pagodas -- goparams -- known to Europeans. The Badagas
are their special vassals, and -- as has been truly remarked -- worship them as
half-deities; for their birth and mysterious powers entitle them to such a
distinction.
The reader may rest assured
that any statements concerning them, that clash with the little that is above
given, are false. No missionary will ever catch one with his bait, nor any
Badaga betray them, though he were cut to pieces. They are a people who fulfill
a certain high purpose, and whose secrets are inviolable.
Furthermore, the Todas are not
the only such mysterious tribe in India. We have named several in a preceding
chapter, but how many are there besides these, that will remain unnamed,
unrecognized, and yet ever present!
What is now generally known of
Shamanism is very little; and that has been perverted, like the rest of the
non-Christian religions. It is called the "heathenism" of Mongolia,
and wholly without reason, for it is one of the oldest religions of India. It
is spirit-worship, or belief in the immortality of the souls, and that the
latter are still the same men they were on earth, though their bodies have lost
their objective form, and man has exchanged his physical for a spiritual
nature. In its present shape, it is an offshoot of primitive theurgy, and a
practical blending of the visible with the invisible world. Whenever a denizen
of earth desires to enter into communication with his invisible brethren, he
has to assimilate himself to their nature, i.e., he meets these beings
half-way, and, furnished by them with a supply of spiritual essence, endows
them, in his turn, with a portion of his physical nature, thus enabling them
sometimes to appear in a semi-objective form. It is a temporary exchange of
natures, called theurgy. Shamans are called sorcerers, because they are said to
evoke the "spirits" of the dead for purposes of necromancy. The true
Shamanism -- striking features of which prevailed in India in the days
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of Megasthenes (300 B.C.) --
can no more be judged by its degenerated scions among the Shamans of Siberia,
than the religion of Gautama-Buddha can be interpreted by the fetishism of some
of his followers in Siam and Burmah. It is in the chief lamaseries of Mongolia
and Thibet that it has taken refuge; and there Shamanism, if so we must call
it, is practiced to the utmost limits of intercourse allowed between man and
"spirit." The religion of the lamas has faithfully preserved the
primitive science of magic, and produces as great feats now as it did in the
days of Kublai-Khan and his barons. The ancient mystic formula of the King
Srong-ch-Tsans-Gampo, the "Aum mani padme houm,"* effects its wonders
now as well as in the seventh century. Avalokitesvara, highest of the three
Boddhisattvas, and patron saint of Thibet, projects his shadow, full in the
view of the faithful, at the lamasery of Dga-G'Dan, founded by him; and the
luminous form of Son-Ka-pa, under the shape of a fiery cloudlet, that separates
itself from the dancing beams of the sunlight, holds converse with a great
congregation of lamas, numbering thousands; the voice descending from above,
like the whisper of the breeze through foliage. Anon, say the Thibetans, the
beautiful appearance vanishes in the shadows of the sacred trees in the park of
the lamasery.
At Garma-Khian (the
mother-cloister) it is rumored that bad and unprogressed spirits are made to
appear on certain days, and forced to give an account of their evil deeds; they
are compelled by the lamaic adepts to redress the wrongs done by them to
mortals. This is what Huc naively terms "personating evil spirits,"
i.e., devils. Were the skeptics of various European countries permitted to
consult the accounts printed daily** at Moru, and in the "City of
Spirits," of the business-like intercourse which takes place between the
lamas and the invisible world, they would certainly feel more interest in the
phenomena described so triumphantly in the spiritualistic journals. At
Buddha-Ila, or rather Foht-lla (Buddha's Mount), in the most important of the
many thousand lamaseries of that country, the sceptre of the Boddhisgat is seen
floating, unsupported, in the air, and its motions regulate the actions of the
community. Whenever a lama is called to account in the presence of the Superior
of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Aum (mystic Sanscrit term of
the Trinity), mani (holy jewel), padme (in the lotus, padma being the name for
lotus), houm (be it so). The six syllables in the sentence correspond to the
six chief powers of nature emanating from Buddha (the abstract deity, not
Gautama), who is the seventh, and the Alpha and Omega of being.
** Moru (the pure) is one of
the most famous lamaseries of Lha-Ssa, directly in the centre of the city.
There the Shaberon, the Taley Lama, resides the greater portion of the winter
months; during two or three months of the warm season his abode is at Foht-lla.
At Moru is the largest typographical establishment of the country.
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COLLEGE.
the monastery, he knows
beforehand it is useless for him to tell an untruth; the "regulator of
justice" (the sceptre) is there, and its waving motion, either approbatory
or otherwise, decides instantaneously and unerringly the question of his guilt.
We do not pretend to have witnessed all this personally -- we wish to make no
pretensions of any kind. Suffice it, with respect to any of these phenomena,
that what we have not seen with our own eyes has been so substantiated to us
that we indorse its genuineness.
A number of lamas in Sikkin
produce meipo -- "miracle" -- by magical powers. The late Patriarch
of Mongolia, Gegen Chutuktu, who resided at Urga, a veritable paradise, was the
sixteenth incarnation of Gautama, therefore a Boddhisattva. He had the
reputation of possessing powers that were phenomenal, even among the
thaumaturgists of the land of miracles par excellence. Let no one suppose that
these powers are developed without cost. The lives of most of these holy men,
miscalled idle vagrants, cheating beggars, who are supposed to pass their
existence in preying upon the easy credulity of their victims, are miracles in
themselves. Miracles, because they show what a determined will and perfect
purity of life and purpose are able to accomplish, and to what degree of
preternatural ascetism a human body can be subjected and yet live and reach a
ripe old age. No Christian hermit has ever dreamed of such refinement of
monastic discipline; and the aerial habitation of a Simon Stylite would appear
child's play before the fakir's and the Buddhist's inventions of will-tests.
But the theoretical study of magic is one thing; the possibility of practicing
it quite another. At Bras-ss-Pungs, the Mongolian college where over three
hundred magicians (sorciers, as the French missionaries call them) teach about
twice as many pupils from twelve to twenty, the latter have many years to wait
for their final initiation. Not one in a hundred reaches the highest goal; and
out of the many thousand lamas occupying nearly an entire city of detached
buildings clustering around it, not more than two per cent. become
wonder-workers. One may learn by heart every line of the 108 volumes of
Kadjur,* and still make but a poor practical magician. There is but one thing
which leads surely to it, and this particular study is hinted at by more than
one Hermetic writer. One, the Arabian alchemist Abipili, speaks thus: "I
admonish thee, whosoever thou art that desirest to dive into the inmost parts
of nature; if that thou seekest thou findest not within thee, thou wilt never
find it without thee. If thou knowest not the excellency of thine own house,
why dost thou seek after the ex-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Buddhist great canon,
containing 1,083 works in several hundred volumes, many of which treat of
magic.
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cellency of other things? . .
. O MAN, KNOW THYSELF! IN THEE IS HID THE TREASURE OF TREASURES."
In another alchemic tract, De
manna Benedicto, the author expresses his ideas of the philosopher's stone, in
the following terms: "My intent is for certain reasons not to prate too
much of the matter, which yet is but one only thing, already too plainly
described; for it shows and sets down such magical and natural uses of it [the
stone] as many that have had it never knew nor heard of; and such as, when I
beheld them, made my knees to tremble and my heart to shake, and I to stand
amazed at the sight of them!"
Every neophyte has experienced
more or less such a feeling; but once that it is overcome, the man is an ADEPT.
Within the cloisters of
Dshashi-Lumbo and Si-Dzang, these powers, inherent in every man, called out by
so few, are cultivated to their utmost perfection. Who, in India, has not heard
of the Banda-Chan Ramboutchi, the Houtouktou of the capital of Higher Thibet?
His brotherhood of Khe-lan was famous throughout the land; and one of the most
famous "brothers" was a Peh-ling (an Englishman) who had arrived one
day during the early part of this century, from the West, a thorough Buddhist,
and after a month's preparation was admitted among the Khe-lans. He spoke every
language, including the Thibetan, and knew every art and science, says the
tradition. His sanctity and the phenomena produced by him caused him to be
proclaimed a shaberon after a residence of but a few years. His memory lives to
the present day among the Thibetans, but his real name is a secret with the
shaberons alone.
The greatest of the meipo --
said to be the object of the ambition of every Buddhist devotee -- was, and yet
is, the faculty of walking in the air. The famous King of Siam, Pia Metak, the
Chinese, was noted for his devotion and learning. But he attained this
"supernatural gift" only after having placed himself under the direct
tuition of a priest of Gautama-Buddha. Crawfurd and Finlayson, during their
residence at Siam, followed with great interest the endeavors of some Siamese
nobles to acquire this faculty.*
Numerous and varied are the
sects in China, Siam, Tartary, Thibet, Kashmir, and British India, which devote
their lives to the cultivation of "supernatural powers," so called.
Discussing one of such sects, the Taosse, Semedo says: "They pretend that
by means of certain exercises and meditations one shall regain his youth, and
others will attain to be Shien-sien, i.e., 'Terrestrial Beati,' in whose state
every desire is gratified, whilst they have the power to transport themselves
from one place to
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Crawfurd's Mission to
Siam," p. 182.
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FROM RECENT DISCOVERIES.
another, however distant, with
speed and facility."* This faculty relates but to the projection of the
astral entity, in a more or less corporealized form, and certainly not to
bodily transportation. This phenomenon is no more a miracle than one's
reflection in a looking-glass. No one can detect in such an image a particle of
matter, and still there stands our double, faithfully representing, even to
each single hair on our heads. If, by this simple law of reflection, our double
can be seen in a mirror, how much more striking a proof of its existence is
afforded in the art of photography! It is no reason, because our physicists
have not yet found the means of taking photographs, except at a short distance,
that the acquirement should be impossible to those who have found these means
in the power of the human will itself, freed from terrestrial concern.** Our
thoughts are matter, says science; every energy produces more or less of a
disturbance in the atmospheric waves. Therefore, as every man -- in common with
every other living, and even inert object -- has an aura of his own emanations
surrounding him; and, moreover, is enabled, by a trifling effort, to transport
himself in imagination wherever he likes, why is it scientifically impossible
that his thought, regulated, intensified, and guided by that powerful magician,
the educated WILL, may become corporealized for the time being, and appear to
whom it likes, a faithful double of the original? Is the proposition, in the
present state of science, any more unthinkable than the photograph or telegraph
were less than forty years ago, or the telephone less than fourteen months ago?
If the sensitized plate can so
accurately seize upon the shadow of our faces, then this shadow or reflection,
although we are unable to perceive it, must be something substantial. And, if
we can, with the help of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Semedo," vol.
iii., p. 114.
** There was an anecdote
current among Daguerre's friends between 1838 and 1840. At an evening party, Madame
Daguerre, some two months previous to the introduction of the celebrated
Daguerrean process to the Academie des Sciences, by Arago (January, 1839), had
an earnest consultation with one of the medical celebrities of the day about
her husband's mental condition. After explaining to the physician the numerous
symptoms of what she believed to be her husband's mental aberration, she added,
with tears in her eyes, that the greatest proof to her of Daguerre's insanity
was his firm conviction that he would succeed in nailing his own shadow to the
wall, or fixing it on magical metallic plates. The physician listened to the
intelligence very attentively, and answered that he had himself observed in
Daguerre lately the strongest symptoms of what, to his mind, was an undeniable
proof of madness. He closed the conversation by firmly advising her to send her
husband quietly and without delay to Bicetre, the well-known lunatic asylum.
Two months later a profound interest was created in the world of art and
science by the exhibition of a number of pictures taken by the new process. The
shadows were fixed, after all, upon metallic plates, and the
"lunatic" proclaimed the father of photography.
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optical instruments, project
our semblances upon a white wall, at several hundred feet distance, sometimes,
then there is no reason why the adepts, the alchemists, the savants of the
secret art, should not have already found out that which scientists deny
to-day, but may discover true tomorrow, i.e., how to project electrically their
astral bodies, in an instant, through thousands of miles of space, leaving their
material shells with a certain amount of animal vital principle to keep the
physical life going, and acting within their spiritual, ethereal bodies as
safely and intelligently as when clothed with the covering of flesh? There is a
higher form of electricity than the physical one known to experimenters; a
thousand correlations of the latter are as yet veiled to the eye of the modern
physicist, and none can tell where end its possibilities.
Schott explains that by Sian
or Shin-Sian are understood in the old Chinese conception, and particularly in
that of the Tao-Kiao (Taosse) sect, "persons who withdraw to the hills to
lead the life of anchorites, and who have attained, either through their
ascetic observances or by the power of charms and elixirs, to the possession of
miraculous gifts and of terrestrial immortality."* (?) This is exaggerated
if not altogether erroneous. What they claim, is merely their ability to
prolong human life; and they can do so, if we have to believe human testimony.
What Marco Polo testifies to in the thirteenth century is corroborated in our
own days. "There are another class of people called Chughi" (Yogi),
he says, "who are indeed properly called Abraiamans (Brahmans?) who are
extremely long-lived, every man of them living to 150 or 200 years. They eat
very little, rice and milk chiefly. And these people make use of a very strange
beverage, a potion of sulphur and quicksilver mixed together, and this they
drink twice every month. . . . This, they say, gives them long life; and it is a
potion they are used to take from their childhood."** Bernier shows, says
Colonel Yule, the Yogis very skilful in preparing mercury "so admirably
that one or two grains taken every morning restored the body to perfect
health"; and adds that the mercurius vitae of Paracelsus was a compound in
which entered antimony and quicksilver.** This is a very careless statement, to
say the least, and we will explain what we know of it.
The longevity of some lamas
and Talapoins is proverbial; and it is generally known that they use some
compound which "renews the old blood," as they call it. And it was
equally a recognized fact with alchemists that a judicious administration,
"of aura of silver does restore
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Schott: "Uber den
Buddhismus," p. 71.
** "The Book of Ser Marco
Polo," vol. ii., p. 352.
*** Ibid., vol. ii., p. 130,
quoted by Col. Yule in vol. ii., p. 353.
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REMEDIES OF THE YOGIS.
health and prolongs life
itself to a wonderful extent." But we are fully prepared to oppose the
statements of both Bernier and Col. Yule who quotes him, that it is mercury or
quicksilver which the Yogis and the alchemists used. The Yogis, in the days of
Marco Polo, as well as in our modern times, do use that which may appear to be
quicksilver, but is not. Paracelsus, the alchemists, and other mystics, meant
by mercurius vitae, the living spirit of silver, the aura of silver, not the
argent vive; and this aura is certainly not the mercury known to our physicians
and druggists. There can be no doubt that the imputation that Paracelsus
introduced mercury into medical practice is utterly incorrect. No mercury,
whether prepared by a mediaeval fire-philosopher or a modern self-styled
physician, can or ever did restore the body to perfect health. Only an
unmitigated charlatan ever will use such a drug. And it is the opinion of many
that it is just with the wicked intention of presenting Paracelsus in the eyes
of posterity as a quack, that his enemies have invented such a preposterous
lie.
The Yogis of the olden times,
as well as modern lamas and Talapoins, use a certain ingredient with a minimum
of sulphur, and a milky juice which they extract from a medicinal plant. They
must certainly be possessed of some wonderful secrets, as we have seen them
healing the most rebellious wounds in a few days; restoring broken bones to
good use in as many hours as it would take days to do by means of common
surgery. A fearful fever contracted by the writer near Rangoon, after a flood
of the Irrawaddy River, was cured in a few hours by the juice of a plant
called, if we mistake not, Kukushan, though there may be thousands of natives
ignorant of its virtues who are left to die of fever. This was in return for a
trifling kindness we had done to a simple mendicant; a service which can
interest the reader but little.
We have heard of a certain
water, also, called ab-i-hayat, which the popular superstition thinks hidden
from every mortal eye, except that of the holy sannyasi; the fountain itself
being known as the ab-i-haiwan-i. It is more than probable though, that the
Talapoins will decline to deliver up their secrets, even to academicians and
missionaries; as these remedies must be used for the benefit of humanity, never
for money.*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* No country in the world can
boast of more medicinal plants than Southern India, Cochin, Burmah, Siam, and
Ceylon. European physicians -- according to time-honored practice -- settle the
case of professional rivalship, by treating the native doctors as quacks and
empirics; but this does not prevent the latter from being often successful in
cases in which eminent graduates of British and French schools of Medicine have
signally failed. Native works on Materia Medica do not certainly contain the
secret remedies known, and successfully applied by the native doctors (the
Atibba), from time immemorial; and yet the best febrifuges have been learned by
British physicians from the
[[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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At the great festivals of
Hindu pagodas, at the marriage feasts of rich high-castes, everywhere where
large crowds are gathered, Europeans find guni -- or serpent-charmers,
fakirs-mesmerizers, thaum-working sannyasi, and so-called "jugglers."
To deride is easy -- to explain, rather more troublesome -- to science
impossible. The British residents of India and the travellers prefer the first
expedient. But let any one ask one of these Thomases how the following results
-- which they cannot and do not deny -- are produced? When crowds of guni and
fakirs appear with their bodies encircled with cobras-de-capello, their arms
ornamented with bracelets of corallilos -- diminutive snakes inflicting certain
death in a few seconds -- and their shoulders with necklaces of trigonocephali,
the most terrible enemy of naked Hindu feet, whose bite kills like a flash of
lightning, the sceptic witness smiles and gravely proceeds to explain how these
reptiles, having been thrown in cataleptic torpor, were all deprived by the
guni of their fangs. "They are harmless and it is ridiculous to fear
them." "Will the Saeb caress one of my nag?" asked once a guni
approaching our interlocutor, who had been thus humbling his listeners with his
herpetological achievements for a full half hour. Rapidly jumping back -- the
brave warrior's feet proving no less nimble than his tongue -- Captain B----'s
angry answer could hardly be immortalized by us in print. Only the guni's
terrible body-guard saved him from an unceremonious thrashing. Besides, say a
word, and for a half-roupee any professional serpent-charmer will begin
creeping about and summon around in a few moments numbers of untamed serpents
of the most poisonous species, and will handle them and encircle his body with
them. On two occasions in the neighborhood of Trinkemal a serpent was ready to
strike at the writer, who had once nearly sat on its tail, but both times, at a
rapid whistle of the guni whom we had hired to accompany us, it stopped --
hardly a few inches from our body, as if arrested by lightning and slowly
sinking its menacing head to the ground, remained stiff and motionless as a
dead branch, under the charm of the kilna.*
Will any European juggler,
tamer, or even mesmerizer, risk repeating just once an experiment that may be
daily witnessed in India, if you know where to go to see it? There is nothing
in the world more ferocious than a royal Bengal tiger. Once the whole
population of a small village, not far from Dakka, situated on the confines of
a jungle, was
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] Hindus, and where patients, deafened and swollen by abuse of
quinine, were slowly dying of fever under the treatment of enlightened
physicians, the bark of the Margosa, and the Chiretta herb have cured them
completely, and these now occupy an honorable place among European drugs.
* The Hindu appellation for
the peculiar mantram or charm which prevents the serpent from biting.
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TIGRESS.
thrown into a panic at the
appearance of an enormous tigress, at the dawn of the day. These wild beasts
never leave their dens but at night, when they go searching for prey and for
water. But this unusual circumstance was due to the fact that the beast was a
mother, and she had been deprived of her two cubs, which had been carried away
by a daring hunter, and she was in search of them. Two men and a child had
already become her victims, when an aged fakir, bent on his daily round,
emerging from the gate of the pagoda, saw the situation and understood it at a
glance. Chanting a mantram he went straight to the beast, which with flaming
eye and foaming mouth crouched near a tree ready for a new victim. When at
about ten feet from the tigress, without interrupting his modulated prayer, the
words of which no layman comprehends, he began a regular process of
mesmerization, as we understood it; he made passes. A terrific howl which
struck a chill into the heart of every human being in the place, was then
heard. This long, ferocious, drawling howl gradually subsided into a series of
plaintive broken sobs, as if the bereaved mother was uttering her complaints,
and then, to the terror of the crowd which had taken refuge on trees and in the
houses, the beast made a tremendous leap -- on the holy man as they thought.
They were mistaken, she was at his feet, rolling in the dust, and writhing. A
few moments more and she remained motionless, with her enormous head laid on
her fore-paws, and her bloodshot but now mild eye riveted on the face of the
fakir. Then the holy man of prayers sat beside the tigress and tenderly
smoothed her striped skin, and patted her back, until her groans became fainter
and fainter, and half an hour later all the village was standing around this
group; the fakir's head lying on the tigress's back as on a pillow, his right
hand on her head, and his left thrown on the sod under the terrible mouth, from
which the long red protruding tongue was gently licking it.
This is the way the fakirs
tame the wildest beasts in India. Can European tamers, with their white-hot
iron rods, do as much? Of course every fakir is not endowed with such a power;
comparatively very few are. And yet the actual number is large. How they are
trained to these requirements in the pagodas will remain an eternal secret, to
all except the Brahmans and the adepts in occult mysteries. The stories,
hitherto considered fables, of Christna and Orpheus charming the wild beasts,
thus receives its corroboration in our day. There is one fact which remains
undeniable. There is not a single European in India who could have, or has ever
boasted of having, penetrated into the enclosed sanctuary within the pagodas.
Neither authority nor money has ever induced a Brahman to allow an uninitiated
foreigner to pass the threshold of the reserved precinct. To use authority in
such a case would be equivalent
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to throwing a lighted taper
into a powder magazine. The Hindus, mild, patient, long-suffering, whose very
apathy saved the British from being driven out of the country in 1857, would
raise their hundred millions of devotees as one man, at such a profanation;
regardless of sects or castes, they would exterminate every Christian. The East
India Company knew this well and built her stronghold on the friendship of the
Brahmans, and by paying subsidy to the pagodas; and the British Government is
as prudent as its predecessor. It is the castes, and non-interference with the
prevailing religions, that secure its comparative authority in India. But we
must once more recur to Shamanism, that strange and most despised of all surviving
religions -- "Spirit-worship."
Its followers have neither
altars nor idols, and it is upon the authority of a Shaman priest that we state
that their true rites, which they are bound to perform only once a year, on the
shortest day of winter, cannot take place before any stranger to their faith.
Therefore, we are confident that all descriptions hitherto given in the Asiatic
Journal and other European works, are but guess-work. The Russians, who, from
constant intercourse with the Shamans in Siberia and Tartary, would be the most
competent of all persons to judge of their religion, have learned nothing
except of the personal proficiency of these men in what they are half inclined
to believe clever jugglery. Many Russian residents, though, in Siberia, are firmly
convinced of the "supernatural" powers of the Shamans. Whenever they
assemble to worship, it is always in an open space, or a high hill, or in the
hidden depths of a forest -- in this reminding us of the old Druidical rites.
Their ceremonies upon the occasions of births, deaths, and marriages are but
trifling parts of their worship. They comprise offerings, the sprinkling of the
fire with spirits and milk, and weird hymns, or rather, magical incantations,
intoned by the officiating Shaman, and concluding with a chorus of the persons
present.
The numerous small bells of
brass and iron worn by them on the priestly robe of deerskin,* or the pelt of
some other animal reputed magnetic, are used to drive away the malevolent
spirits of the air, a super-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Between the bells of the
"heathen" worshippers, and the bells and pomegranates of the Jewish
worship, the difference is this: the former, besides purifying the soul of man with
their harmonious tones, kept evil demons at a distance, "for the sound of
pure bronze breaks the enchantment," says Tibullius (i., 8-22), and the
latter explained it by saying that the sound of the bells "should be heard
[by the Lord] when he [the priest] goeth in unto the holy place before the
Lord, and when he goeth out, that he die not" (Exodus xxviii. 33; Eccles.
xiv. 9). Thus, one sound served to keep away evil spirits, and the other, the
Spirit of Jehovah. The Scandinavian traditions affirm that the Trolls were
always driven from their abodes by the bells of the churches. A similar
tradition is in existence in relation to the fairies of Great Britain.
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SIBERIAN SHAMANS.
stition shared by all the
nations of old, including Romans, and even the Jews, whose golden bells tell
the story. They have iron staves also covered with bells, for the same reason.
When, after certain ceremonies, the desired crisis is reached, and "the
spirit has spoken," and the priest (who may be either male or female)
feels its overpowering influence, the hand of the Shaman is drawn by some occult
power toward the top of the staff, which is commonly covered with
hieroglyphics. With his palm pressing upon it, he is then raised to a
considerable height in the air, where he remains for some time. Sometimes he
leaps to an extraordinary height, and, according to the control -- for he is
often but an irresponsible medium -- pours out prophecies and describes future
events. Thus, it was that, in 1847, a Shaman in a distant part of Siberia
prophesied and accurately detailed the issue of the Crimean war. The particulars
of the prognostication being carefully noted by those present at the time, were
all verified six years after this occurrence. Although usually ignorant of even
the name of astronomy, let alone having studied this science, they often
prophesy eclipses and other astronomical phenomena. When consulted about thefts
and murders, they invariably point out the guilty parties.
The Shamans of Siberia are all
ignorant and illiterate. Those of Tartary and Thibet -- few in number -- are
mostly learned men in their own way, and will not allow themselves to fall
under the control of spirits of any kind. The former are mediums in the full
sense of the word; the latter, "magicians." It is not surprising that
pious and superstitious persons, after seeing one of such crises, should
declare the Shaman to be under demoniacal possession. As in the instances of
Corybantic and Bacchantic fury among the ancient Greeks, the
"spiritual" crisis of the Shaman exhibits itself in violent dancing
and wild gestures. Little by little the lookers-on feel the spirit of imitation
aroused in them; seized with an irresistible impulse, they dance, and become,
in their turn, ecstatics; and he who begins by joining the chorus, gradually
and unconsciously takes part in the gesticulations, until he sinks to the
ground exhausted, and often dying.
"O, young girl, a god
possesses thee! it is either Pan, or Hekate, or, the venerable Corybantes, or
Cybele that agitates thee!" the chorus says, addressing Phaedra, in
Euripides. This form of psychological epidemic has been too well known from the
time of the middle ages to cite instances from it. The Choroea sancti Viti is
an historical fact, and spread throughout Germany. Paracelsus cured quite a
number of persons possessed of such a spirit of imitation. But he was a
kabalist, and therefore accused, by his enemies, of having cast out the devils
by the power of a stronger demon, which he was believed to carry about with
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him in the hilt of his sword.
The Christian judges of those days of horror found a better and a surer remedy.
Voltaire states that, in the district of Jura, between 1598 and 1600, over 600
Lycanthropes were put to death by a pious judge.
But, while the illiterate
Shaman is a victim, and during his crisis sometimes sees the persons present,
under the shape of various animals, and often makes them share his
hallucination, his brother Shaman, learned in the mysteries of the priestly
colleges of Thibet, expels the elementary creature, which can produce the
hallucination as well as a living mesmerizer, not through the help of a
stronger demon, but simply through his knowledge of the nature of the invisible
enemy. Where academicians have failed, as in the cases of the Cevennois, a
Shaman or a lama would have soon put an end to the epidemic.
We have mentioned a kind of
carnelian stone in our possession, which had such an unexpected and favorable
effect upon the Shaman's decision. Every Shaman has such a talisman, which he
wears attached to a string, and carries under his left arm.
"Of what use is it to
you, and what are its virtues?" was the question we often offered to our
guide. To this he never answered directly, but evaded all explanation,
promising that as soon as an opportunity was offered, and we were alone, he
would ask the stone to answer for himself. With this very indefinite hope, we
were left to the resources of our own imagination.
But the day on which the stone
"spoke" came very soon. It was during the most critical hours of our
life; at a time when the vagabond nature of a traveller had carried the writer
to far-off lands, where neither civilization is known, nor security can be
guaranteed for one hour. One afternoon, as every man and woman had left the
yourta (Tartar tent), that had been our home for over two months, to witness
the ceremony of the Lamaic exorcism of a Tshoutgour,* accused of breaking and
spiriting away every bit of the poor furniture and earthenware of a family
living about two miles distant, the Shaman, who had become our only protector
in those dreary deserts, was reminded of his promise. He sighed and hesitated;
but, after a short silence, left his place on the sheepskin, and, going
outside, placed a dried-up goat's head with its prominent horns over a wooden
peg, and then dropping down the felt curtain of the tent, remarked that now no
living person would venture in, for the goat's head was a sign that he was
"at work."
After that, placing his hand
in his bosom, he drew out the little stone, about the size of a walnut, and,
carefully unwrapping it, proceeded, as it
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* An elemental daemon, in
which every native of Asia believes.
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TARTAR YOURTA.
appeared, to swallow it. In a
few moments his limbs stiffened, his body became rigid, and he fell, cold and
motionless as a corpse. But for a slight twitching of his lips at every
question asked, the scene would have been embarrassing, nay -- dreadful. The
sun was setting, and were it not that dying embers flickered at the centre of
the tent, complete darkness would have been added to the oppressive silence
which reigned. We have lived in the prairies of the West, and in the boundless
steppes of Southern Russia; but nothing can be compared with the silence at
sunset on the sandy deserts of Mongolia; not even the barren solitudes of the
deserts of Africa, though the former are partially inhabited, and the latter
utterly void of life. Yet, there was the writer alone with what looked no
better than a corpse lying on the ground. Fortunately, this state did not last
long.
"Mahandu!" uttered a
voice, which seemed to come from the bowels of the earth, on which the Shaman
was prostrated. "Peace be with you . . . what would you have me do for
you?"
Startling as the fact seemed,
we were quite prepared for it, for we had seen other Shamans pass through
similar performances. "Whoever you are," we pronounced mentally,
"go to K----, and try to bring that person's thought here. See what that
other party does, and tell * * * what we are doing and how situated."
"I am there";
answered the same voice. "The old lady (kokona)* is sitting in the garden
. . . she is putting on her spectacles and reading a letter."
"The contents of it, and
hasten," was the hurried order while preparing note-book and pencil. The
contents were given slowly, as if, while dictating, the invisible presence
desired to afford us time to put down the words phonetically, for we recognized
the Valachian language of which we know nothing beyond the ability to recognize
it. In such a way a whole page was filled.
"Look west . . . toward
the third pole of the yourta," pronounced the Tartar in his natural voice,
though it sounded hollow, and as if coming from afar. "Her thought is here."
Then with a convulsive jerk,
the upper portion of the Shaman's body seemed raised, and his head fell heavily
on the writer's feet, which he clutched with both his hands. The position was
becoming less and less attractive, but curiosity proved a good ally to courage.
In the west corner was standing, life-like but flickering, unsteady and
mist-like, the form of a dear old friend, a Roumanian lady of Valachia, a
mystic by disposition, but a thorough disbeliever in this kind of occult
phenomena.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Lady, or Madam, in
Moldavian.
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"Her thought is here, but
her body is lying unconscious. We could not bring her here otherwise,"
said the voice.
We addressed and supplicated
the apparition to answer, but all in vain. The features moved, and the form
gesticulated as if in fear and agony, but no sound broke forth from the shadowy
lips; only we imagined -- perchance it was a fancy -- hearing as if from a long
distance the Roumanian words, "Non se pote" (it cannot be done).
For over two hours, the most
substantial, unequivocal proofs that the Shaman's astral soul was travelling at
the bidding of our unspoken wish, were given us. Ten months later, we received
a letter from our Valachian friend in response to ours, in which we had
enclosed the page from the note-book, inquiring of her what she had been doing
on that day, and describing the scene in full. She was sitting -- she wrote --
in the garden on that morning* prosaically occupied in boiling some conserves;
the letter sent to her was word for word the copy of the one received by her
from her brother; all at once -- in consequence of the heat, she thought -- she
fainted, and remembered distinctly dreaming she saw the writer in a desert
place which she accurately described, and sitting under a "gypsy's
tent," as she expressed it. "Henceforth," she added, "I can
doubt no longer!"
But our experiment was proved
still better. We had directed the Shaman's inner ego to the same friend
heretofore mentioned in this chapter, the Kutchi of Lha-Ssa, who travels
constantly to British India and back. We know that he was apprised of our
critical situation in the desert; for a few hours later came help, and we were
rescued by a party of twenty-five horsemen who had been directed by their chief
to find us at the place where we were, which no living man endowed with common
powers could have known. The chief of this escort was a Shaberon, an
"adept" whom we had never seen before, nor did we after that, for he
never left his soumay (lamasery), and we could have no access to it. But he was
a personal friend of the Kutchi.
The above will of course
provoke naught but incredulity in the general reader. But we write for those
who will believe; who, like the writer, understand and know the illimitable
powers and possibilities of the human astral soul. In this case we willingly
believe, nay, we know, that the "spiritual double" of the Shaman did
not act alone, for he was no adept, but simply a medium. According to a
favorite expression of his, as soon as he placed the stone in his mouth, his
"father appeared, dragged him out of his skin, and took him wherever he
wanted," and at his bidding.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The hour in Bucharest
corresponded perfectly with that of the country in which the scene had taken
place.
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INDIA.
one who has only witnessed the
chemical, optical, mechanical, and sleight-of-hand performances of European
prestidigitateurs, is not prepared to see, without amazement, the open-air and
off-hand exhibitions of Hindu jugglers, to say nothing of fakirs. Of the mere
displays of deceptive dexterity we make no account, for Houdin and others far
excel them in that respect; or do we dwell upon feats that permit of
confederacy, whether resorted to or not. It is unquestionably true that
non-expert travellers, especially if of an imaginative turn of mind, exaggerate
inordinately. But our remark is based upon a class of phenomena not to be
accounted for upon any of the familiar hypotheses. "I have seen,"
says a gentleman who resided in India, "a man throw up into the air a
number of balls numbered in succession from one upwards. As each went up -- and
there was no deception about their going up -- the ball was seen clearly in the
air, getting smaller and smaller, till it disappeared altogether out of sight.
When they were all up, twenty or more, the operator would politely ask which
ball you wanted to see, and then would shout out, 'No. 1,' 'No. 15,' and so on,
as instructed by the spectators, when the ball demanded would bound to his feet
violently from some remote distance. . . . These fellows have very scanty
clothing, and apparently no apparatus whatever. Then, I have seen them swallow
three different colored powders, and then, throwing back the head, wash them
down with water, drunk, in the native fashion, in a continuous stream from a
lotah, or brass-pot, held at arm's length from the lips, and keep on drinking
till the swollen body could not hold another drop, and water overflowed from
the lips. Then, these fellows, after squirting out the water in their mouths,
have spat out the three powders on a clean piece of paper, dry and unmixed."*
In the eastern portion of
Turkey and Persia, have dwelt, from time immemorial, the warlike tribes of the
Koordistan. This people of purely Indo-European origin, and without a drop of
Semitic blood in them (though some ethnologists seem to think otherwise),
notwithstanding their brigand-like disposition, unite in themselves the
mysticism of the Hindu and the practices of the Assyrio-Chaldean magians, vast
portions of whose territory they have helped themselves to, and will not give
up, to please either Turkey or even all Europe.** Nominally, Mahometans of the
sect of Omar, their rites and doctrines are purely magical and magian. Even
those who are Christian Nestorians, are Christians but in name. The Kaldany,
numbering nearly 100,000 men,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Capt. W. L. D. O'Grady:
"Life in India."
** Neither Russia nor England
succeeded in 1849 in forcing them to recognize and respect the Turkish from the
Persian territory.
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and with their two Patriarchs,
are undeniably rather Manicheans than Nestorians. Many of them are Yezids.
One of these tribes is noted
for its fire-worshipping predilections. At sunrise and sunset, the horsemen
alight and, turning towards the sun, mutter a prayer; while at every new moon
they perform mysterious rites throughout the whole night. They have a tent set apart
for the purpose, and its thick, black, woolen fabric is decorated with weird
signs, worked in bright red and yellow. In the centre is placed a kind of
altar, encircled by three brass bands, to which are suspended numerous rings by
ropes of camel's hair, which every worshipper holds with his right hand during
the ceremony. On the altar burns a curious, old-fashioned silver lamp, a relic
found possibly among the ruins of Persepolis.* This lamp, with three wicks, is
an oblong cup with a handle to it, and is evidently of the class of Egyptian
sepulchral lamps, once found in such profusion in the subterranean caves of
Memphis, if we may believe Kircher.** It widened from its end toward the
middle, and its upper part was of the shape of a heart; the apertures for the
wicks forming a triangle, and its centre being covered by an inverted
heliotrope attached to a gracefully-curved stalk proceeding from the handle of
the lamp. This ornament clearly bespoke its origin. It was one of the sacred
vessels used in sun-worship. The Greeks gave the heliotrope its name from its
strange propensity to ever incline towards the sun. The ancient Magi used it in
their worship; and who knows but Darius had performed the mysterious rites with
its triple light illuminating the face of the king-hierophant!
If we mention the lamp at all,
it is because there happened to be a strange story in connection with it. What
the Koords do, during their nocturnal rites of lunar-worship, we know but from
hearsay; for they conceal it carefully, and no stranger could be admitted to
witness the ceremony. But every tribe has one old man, sometimes several,
regarded as "holy beings," who know the past, and can divulge the
secrets of the future. These are greatly honored, and generally resorted to for
information in cases of theft, murders, or danger.
Travelling from one tribe to
the other, we passed some time in company with these Koords. As our object is
not autobiographical, we omit all details that have no immediate bearing upon
some occult fact, and even of these, have room but for a few. We will then
simply state
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Persepolis is the Persian
Istakhaar, northeast of Shiraz; it stood on a plain now called Merdusht. At the
confluence of the ancient Medus and the Araxes, now Pulwan and Bend-emir.
** "AEgyptiaci Theatrum
Hierogliphicum," p. 544.
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A KOORDISH SEER.
that a very expensive saddle,
a carpet, and two Circassian daggers, richly mounted and chiselled in gold, had
been stolen from the tent, and that the Koords, with the chief of the tribe at
the head, had come, taking Allah for their witness that the culprit could not
belong to their tribe. We believed it, for it would have been unprecedented
among these nomadic tribes of Asia, as famed for the sacredness in which they
hold their guests, as for the ease with which they plunder and occasionally
murder them, when once they have passed the boundaries of their aoul.
A suggestion was then made by
a Georgian belonging to our caravan to have resort to the light of the koodian
(sorcerer) of their tribe. This was arranged in great secrecy and solemnity,
and the interview appointed to take place at midnight, when the moon would be
at its full. At the stated hour we were conducted to the above-described tent.
A large hole, or square
aperture, was managed in the arched roof of the tent, and through it poured in
vertically the radiant moonbeams, mingling with the vacillating triple flame of
the little lamp. After several minutes of incantations, addressed, as it seemed
to us, to the moon, the conjurer, an old man of tremendous stature, whose
pyramidal turban touched the top of the tent, produced a round looking-glass,
of the kind known as "Persian mirrors." Having unscrewed its cover,
he then proceeded to breathe on it, for over ten minutes, and wipe off the moisture
from the surface with a package of herbs, muttering incantations the while
sotto voce. After every wiping the glass became more and more brilliant, till
its crystal seemed to radiate refulgent phosphoric rays in every direction. At
last the operation was ended; the old man, with the mirror in his hand,
remained as motionless as if he had been a statue. "Look, Hanoum . . .
look steadily," he whispered, hardly moving his lips. Shadows and dark
spots began gathering, where one moment before nothing was reflected but the
radiant face of the full moon. A few more seconds, and there appeared the
well-known saddle, carpet, and daggers, which seemed to be rising as from a
deep, clear water, and becoming with every instant more definitely outlined.
Then a still darker shadow appeared hovering over these objects, which
gradually condensed itself, and then came out, as visibly as at the small end
of a telescope, the full figure of a man crouching over them.
"I know him!"
exclaimed the writer. "It is the Tartar who came to us last night,
offering to sell his mule!"
The image disappeared, as if
by enchantment. The old man nodded assent, but remained motionless. Then he
muttered again some strange words, and suddenly began a song. The tune was slow
and monotonous, but after he had sung a few stanzas in the same unknown tongue,
without
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changing either rhythm or
tune, he pronounced, recitative-like, the following words, in his broken
Russian:
"Now, Hanoum, look well,
whether we will catch him -- the fate of the robber -- we will learn this
night," etc.
The same shadows began
gathering, and then, almost without transition, we saw the man lying on his
back, in a pool of blood, across the saddle, and two other men galloping off at
a distance. Horror-stricken, and sick at the sight of this picture, we desired
to see no more. The old man, leaving the tent, called some of the Koords
standing outside, and seemed to give them instructions. Two minutes later, a
dozen of horsemen were galloping off at full speed down the side of the
mountain on which we were encamped.
Early in the morning they
returned with the lost objects. The saddle was all covered with coagulated
blood, and of course abandoned to them. The story they told was, that upon
coming in sight of the fugitive, they saw disappearing over the crest of a
distant hill two horsemen, and upon riding up, the Tartar thief was found dead
upon the stolen property, exactly as we had seen him in the magical glass. He
had been murdered by the two banditti, whose evident design to rob him was
interrupted by the sudden appearance of the party sent by the old Koodian.
The most remarkable results
are produced by the Eastern "wise men," by the simple act of
breathing upon a person, whether with good or evil intent. This is pure
mesmerism; and among the Persian dervishes who practice it the animal magnetism
is often reinforced by that of the elements. If a person happens to stand
facing a certain wind, there is always danger, they think; and many of the
"learned ones" in occult matters can never be prevailed upon to go at
sunset in a certain direction from whence blows the wind. We have known an old
Persian from Baku,* on the Caspian Sea, who had the most unenviable reputation
for throwing spells through the timely help of this wind, which blows but too
often at that town, as its Persian name itself shows.** If a victim, against
whom the wrath of the old fiend was kindled, happened to be
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* We have twice assisted at
the strange rites of the remnants of that sect of fire-worshippers known as the
Guebres, who assemble from time to time at Baku, on the "field of
fire." This ancient and mysterious town is situated near the Caspian Sea.
It belongs to Russian Georgia. About twelve miles northeast from Baku stands
the remnant of an ancient Guebre temple, consisting of four columns, from whose
empty orifices issue constantly jets of flame, which gives it, therefore, the
name of Temple of the Perpetual Fire. The whole region is covered with lakes
and springs of naphtha. Pilgrims assemble there from distant parts of Asia, and
a priesthood, worshipping the divine principle of fire, is kept by some tribes,
scattered hither and thither about the country.
** Baadey-ku-Ba -- literally
"a gathering of winds."
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GIRARD AND OTHERS.
facing this wind, he would
appear, as if by enchantment, cross the road rapidly, and breathe in his face.
From that moment, the latter would find himself afflicted with every evil -- he
was under the spell of the "evil eye."
The employment of the human
breath by the sorcerer as an adjunct for the accomplishment of his nefarious
purpose, is strikingly illustrated in several terrible cases recorded in the
French annals -- notably those of several Catholic priests. In fact, this
species of sorcery was known from the oldest times. The Emperor Constantine (in
Statute iv., Code de Malef., etc.) prescribed the severest penalties against
such as should employ sorcery to do violence to chastity and excite unlawful
passion. Augustine (Cite de Dieu) warns against it; Jerome, Gregory, Nazianzen,
and many other ecclesiastical authorities, lend their denunciation of a crime
not uncommon among the clergy. Baffet (book v., tit. 19, chap. 6) relates the
case of the cure of Peifane, who accomplished the ruin of a highly-respected
and virtuous lady parishioner, the Dame du Lieu, by resort to sorcery, and was
burned alive for it by the Parliament of Grenoble. In 1611, a priest named
Gaufridy was burned by the Parliament of Provence for seducing a penitent at
the confessional, named Magdelaine de la Palud, by breathing upon her, and thus
throwing her into a delirium of sinful love for him.
The above cases are cited in
the official report of the famous case of Father Girard, a Jesuit priest of
very great influence, who, in 1731, was tried before the Parliament of Aix,
France, for the seduction of his parishioner, Mlle. Catherine Cadiere, of Toulon,
and certain revolting crimes in connection with the same. The indictment
charged that the offence was brought about by resort to sorcery. Mlle. Cadiere
was a young lady noted for her beauty, piety, and exemplary virtues. Her
attention to her religious duties was exceptionally rigorous, and that was the
cause of her perdition. Father Girard's eye fell upon her, and he began to
manoeuvre for her ruin. Gaining the confidence of the girl and her family by
his apparent great sanctity, he one day made a pretext to blow his breath upon
her. The girl became instantly affected with a violent passion for him. She
also had ecstatic visions of a religious character, stigmata, or blood-marks of
the "Passion," and hysterical convulsions. The long-sought
opportunity of seclusion with his penitent finally offering, the Jesuit
breathed upon her again, and before the poor girl recovered her senses, his
object had been accomplished. By sophistry and the excitation of her religious
fervor, he kept up this illicit relation for months, without her suspecting
that she had done anything wrong. Finally, however, her eyes were opened, her
parents informed, and the priest was arraigned. Judgment was rendered October
12th, 1731. Of twenty-five judges,
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twelve voted to send him to
the stake. The criminal priest was defended by all the power of the Society of
Jesus, and it is said that a million francs were spent in trying to suppress
the evidence produced at the trial. The facts, however, were printed in a work
(in 5 vols., 16mo), now rare, entitled Recueil General des Pieces contenues au
Procez du Pere Jean-Baptiste Girard, Jeuite, etc., etc.*
We have noted the circumstance
that, while under the sorcerous influence of Father Girard, and in illicit
relations with him, Mlle. Cadiere's body was marked with the stigmata of the
Passion, viz.: the bleeding wounds of thorns on her brow, of nails in her hands
and feet, and of a lance-cut in her side. It should be added that the same
marks were seen upon the bodies of six other penitents of this priest, viz.:
Mesdames Guyol, Laugier, Grodier, Allemande, Batarelle, and Reboul. In fact, it
became commonly remarked that Father Girard's handsome parishioners were
strangely given to ecstasies and stigmata! Add this to the fact that, in the
case of Father Gaufridy, above noted, the same thing was proved, upon surgical
testimony, to have happened to Mlle. de Palud, and we have something worth the
attention of all (especially spiritualists) who imagine these stigmata are
produced by pure spirits. Barring the agency of the Devil, whom we have quietly
put to rest in another chapter, Catholics would be puzzled, we fancy, despite
all their infallibility, to distinguish between the stigmata of the sorcerers
and those produced through the intervention of the Holy Ghost or the angels.
The Church records abound in instances of alleged diabolical imitations of
these signs of saintship, but, as we have remarked, the Devil is out of court.
By those who have followed us
thus far, it will naturally be asked, to what practical issue this book tends;
much has been said about magic and its potentiality, much of the immense
antiquity of its practice. Do we wish to affirm that the occult sciences ought
to be studied and practiced throughout the world? Would we replace modern
spiritualism with the ancient magic? Neither; the substitution could not be made,
nor the study universally prosecuted, without incurring the risk of enormous
public dangers. At this moment, a well-known spiritualist and lecturer on
mesmerism is imprisoned on the charge of raping a subject whom he had
hypnotized. A sorcerer is a public enemy, and mesmerism may most readily be
turned into the worst of sorceries.
We would have neither
scientists, theologians, nor spiritualists turn practical magicians, but all to
realize that there was true science, profound
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See also "Magic and
Mesmerism," a novel reprinted by the Harpers, thirty years ago.
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INCAPABLE OF MAGIC.
religion, and genuine
phenomena before this modern era. We would that all who have a voice in the
education of the masses should first know and then teach that the safest guides
to human happiness and enlightenment are those writings which have descended to
us from the remotest antiquity; and that nobler spiritual aspirations and a
higher average morality prevail in the countries where the people take their
precepts as the rule of their lives. We would have all to realize that magical,
i.e., spiritual powers exist in every man, and those few to practice them who
feel called to teach, and are ready to pay the price of discipline and
self-conquest which their development exacts.
Many men have arisen who had
glimpses of the truth, and fancied they had it all. Such have failed to achieve
the good they might have done and sought to do, because vanity has made them
thrust their personality into such undue prominence as to interpose it between
their believers and the whole truth that lay behind. The world needs no
sectarian church, whether of Buddha, Jesus, Mahomet, Swedenborg, Calvin, or any
other. There being but ONE Truth, man requires but one church -- the Temple of
God within us, walled in by matter but penetrable by any one who can find the
way; the pure in heart see God.
The trinity of nature is the
lock of magic, the trinity of man the key that fits it. Within the solemn
precincts of the sanctuary the SUPREME had and has no name. It is unthinkable
and unpronounceable; and yet every man finds in himself his god. "Who art
thou, O fair being?" inquires the disembodied soul, in the Khordah-Avesta,
at the gates of Paradise. "I am, O Soul, thy good and pure thoughts, thy
works and thy good law . . . thy angel . . . and thy god." Then man, or
the soul, is reunited with ITSELF, for this "Son of God" is one with
him; it is his own mediator, the god of his human soul and his
"Justifier." "God not revealing himself immediately to man, the
spirit is his interpreter," says Plato in the Banquet.
Besides, there are many good
reasons why the study of magic, except in its broad philosophy, is nearly
impracticable in Europe and America. Magic being what it is, the most difficult
of all sciences to learn experimentally -- its acquisition is practically
beyond the reach of the majority of white-skinned people; and that, whether
their effort is made at home or in the East. Probably not more than one man in
a million of European blood is fitted -- either physically, morally, or
psychologically -- to become a practical magician, and not one in ten millions
would be found endowed with all these three qualifications as required for the
work. Civilized nations lack the phenomenal powers of endurance, both mental and
physical, of the Easterns; the favoring temperamental idiosyncrasies of the
Orientals are utterly wanting in them. In the Hindu, the
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Arabian, the Thibetan, an
intuitive perception of the possibilities of occult natural forces in
subjection to human will, comes by inheritance; and in them, the physical
senses as well as the spiritual are far more finely developed than in the
Western races. Notwithstanding the notable difference of thickness between the
skulls of a European and a Southern Hindu, this difference, being a purely
climatic result, due to the intensity of the sun's rays, involves no
psychological principles. Furthermore, there would be tremendous difficulties
in the way of training, if we can so express it. Contaminated by centuries of
dogmatic superstition, by an ineradicable -- though quite unwarranted -- sense
of superiority over those whom the English term so contemptuously
"niggers," the white European would hardly submit himself to the
practical tuition of either Kopt, Brahman, or Lama. To become a neophyte, one
must be ready to devote himself heart and soul to the study of mystic sciences.
Magic -- most imperative of mistresses -- brooks no rival. Unlike other
sciences, a theoretical knowledge of formulai without mental capacities or soul
powers, is utterly useless in magic. The spirit must hold in complete
subjection the combativeness of what is loosely termed educated reason, until
facts have vanquished cold human sophistry.
Those best prepared to
appreciate occultism are the spiritualists, although, through prejudice, until
now they have been the bitterest opponents to its introduction to public
notice. Despite all foolish negations and denunciations, their phenomena are
real. Despite, also, their own assertions they are wholly misunderstood by
themselves. The totally insufficient theory of the constant agency of disembodied
human spirits in their production has been the bane of the Cause. A thousand
mortifying rebuffs have failed to open their reason or intuition to the truth.
Ignoring the teachings of the past, they have discovered no substitute. We
offer them philosophical deduction instead of unverifiable hypothesis,
scientific analysis and demonstration instead of undiscriminating faith. Occult
philosophy gives them the means of meeting the reasonable requirements of
science, and frees them from the humiliating necessity to accept the oracular
teachings of "intelligences," which as a rule have less intelligence
than a child at school. So based and so strengthened, modern phenomena would be
in a position to command the attention and enforce the respect of those who
carry with them public opinion. Without invoking such help, spiritualism must
continue to vegetate, equally repulsed -- not without cause -- both by
scientists and theologians. In its modern aspect, it is neither a science, a
religion, nor a philosophy.
Are we unjust; does any
intelligent spiritualist complain that we have misstated the case? To what can
he point us but to a confusion of theories, a tangle of hypotheses mutually
contradictory? Can he affirm that
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OF SPIRITUALISM.
spiritualism, even with its
thirty years of phenomena, has any defensible philosophy; nay, that there is
anything like an established method that is generally accepted and followed by
its recognized representatives?
And yet, there are many
thoughtful, scholarly, earnest writers among the spiritualists, scattered the
world over. There are men who, in addition to a scientific mental training and
a reasoned faith in the phenomena per se, possess all the requisites of leaders
of the movement. How is it then, that, except throwing off an isolated volume
or so, or occasional contributions to journalism, they all refrain from taking
any active part in the formation of a system of philosophy? This is from no
lack of moral courage, as their writings well show. Nor because of
indifference, for enthusiasm abounds, and they are sure of their facts. Nor is
it from lack of capacity, because many are men of mark, the peers of our best
minds. It is simply for the reason that, almost without exception, they are
bewildered by the contradictions they encounter, and wait for their tentative
hypotheses to be verified by further experience. Doubtless this is the part of
wisdom. It is that adopted by Newton, who, with the heroism of an honest,
unselfish heart, withheld for seventeen years the promulgation of his theory of
gravitation, only because he had not verified it to his own satisfaction.
Spiritualism, whose aspect is
rather that of aggression than of defense, has tended toward iconoclasm, and so
far has done well. But, in pulling down, it does not rebuild. Every really
substantial truth it erects is soon buried under an avalanche of chimeras,
until all are in one confused ruin. At every step of advance, at the
acquisition of every new vantage-ground of FACT, some cataclysm, either in the
shape of fraud and exposure, or of premeditated treachery, occurs, and throws
the spiritualists back powerless because they cannot and their invisible
friends will not (or perchance can, less than themselves) make good their
claims. Their fatal weakness is that they have but one theory to offer in
explanation of their challenged facts -- the agency of human disembodied
spirits, and the medium's complete subjection to them. They will attack those
who differ in views with them with a vehemence only warranted by a better
cause; they will regard every argument contradicting their theory as an
imputation upon their common sense and powers of observation; and they will
positively refuse even to argue the question.
How, then, can spiritualism be
ever elevated to the distinction of a science? This, as Professor Tyndall
shows, includes three absolutely necessary elements: observation of facts;
induction of laws from these facts; and verification of those laws by constant
practical experience. What experienced observer will maintain that spiritualism
presents either one of these three elements? The medium is not uniformly
surrounded
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by such test conditions that we
may be sure of the facts; the inductions from the supposed facts are
unwarranted in the absence of such verification; and, as a corollary, there has
been no sufficient verification of those hypotheses by experience. In short,
the prime element of accuracy has, as a rule, been lacking.
That we may not be charged
with desire to misrepresent the position of spiritualism, at the date of this
present writing, or accused of withholding credit for advances actually made,
we will cite a few passages from the London Spiritualist of March 2, 1877. At
the fortnightly meeting, held February 19, a debate occurred upon the subject
of "Ancient Thought and Modern Spiritualism." Some of the most
intelligent Spiritualists of England participated. Among these was Mr. W. Stainton
Moses, M. A., who has recently given some attention to the relation between
ancient and modern phenomena. He said: "Popular spiritualism is not
scientific; it does very little in the way of scientific verification.
Moreover, exoteric spiritualism is, to a large extent, devoted to presumed
communion with personal friends, or to the gratification of curiosity, or the
mere evolution of marvels. . . . The truly esoteric science of spiritualism is
very rare, and not more rare than valuable. To it we must look to the
origination of knowledge which may be developed exoterically. . . . We proceed
too much on the lines of the physicists; our tests are crude, and often
illusory; we know too little of the Protean power of spirit. Here the ancients
were far ahead of us, and can teach us much. We have not introduced any
certainty into the conditions -- a necessary prerequisite for true scientific
experiment. This is largely owing to the fact that our circles are constructed
on no principle. . . . We have not even mastered the elementary truths which
the ancients knew and acted on, e.g., the isolation of mediums. We have been so
occupied with wonder-hunting that we have hardly tabulated the phenomena, or
propounded one theory to account for the production of the simplest of them. .
. . We have never faced the question: What is the intelligence? This is the
great blot, the most frequent source of error, and here we might learn with
advantage from the ancients. There is the strongest disinclination among
spiritualists to admit the possibility of the truth of occultism. In this
respect they are as hard to convince as is the outer world of spiritualism.
Spiritualists start with a fallacy, viz.: that all phenomena are caused by the
action of departed human spirits; they have not looked into the powers of the
human spirit; they do not know the extent to which spirit acts, how far it
reaches, what it underlies."
Our position could not be
better defined. If Spiritualism has a future, it is in the keeping of such men
as Mr. Stainton Moses.
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Our work is done -- would that
it were better done! But, despite our inexperience in the art of book-making,
and the serious difficulty of writing in a foreign tongue, we hope we have
succeeded in saying some things that will remain in the minds of the
thoughtful. The enemies of truth have been all counted, and all passed in
review. Modern science, powerless to satisfy the aspirations of the race, makes
the future a void, and bereaves man of hope. In one sense, it is like the
Baital Pachisi, the Hindu vampire of popular fancy, which lives in dead bodies,
and feeds but on the rottenness of matter. The theology of Christendom has been
rubbed threadbare by the most serious minds of the day. It is found to be, on
the whole, subversive, rather than promotive of spirituality and good morals.
Instead of expounding the rules of divine law and justice, it teaches but
itself. In place of an ever-living Deity, it preaches the Evil One, and makes
him indistinguishable from God Himself! "Lead us not into temptation"
is the aspiration of Christians. Who, then, is the tempter? Satan? No; the
prayer is not addressed to him. It is that tutelar genius who hardened the
heart of Pharaoh, put an evil spirit into Saul, sent lying messengers to the
prophets, and tempted David to sin; it is -- the Bible-God of Israel!
Our examination of the multitudinous
religious faiths that mankind, early and late, have professed, most assuredly
indicates that they have all been derived from one primitive source. It would
seem as if they were all but different modes of expressing the yearning of the
imprisoned human soul for intercourse with supernal spheres. As the white ray
of light is decomposed by the prism into the various colors of the solar
spectrum, so the beam of divine truth, in passing through the three-sided prism
of man's nature, has been broken up into vari-colored fragments called
RELIGIONS. And, as the rays of the spectrum, by imperceptible shadings, merge
into each other, so the great theologies that have appeared at different
degrees of divergence from the original source, have been connected by minor
schisms, schools, and off-shoots from the one side or the other. Combined,
their aggregate represents one eternal truth; separate, they are but shades of
human error and the signs of imperfection. The worship of the Vedic pitris is
fast becoming the worship of the spiritual portion of mankind. It but needs the
right perception of things objective to finally discover that the only world of
reality is the subjective.
What has been contemptuously
termed Paganism, was ancient wisdom replete with Deity; and Judaism and its
offspring, Christianity and Islamism, derived whatever of inspiration they
contained from this ethnic parent. Pre-Vedic Brahmanism and Buddhism are the
double source from which all religions sprung; Nirvana is the ocean to which
all tend.
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For the purposes of a
philosophical analysis, we need not take account of the enormities which have
blackened the record of many of the world's religions. True faith is the
embodiment of divine charity; those who minister at its altars, are but human.
As we turn the blood-stained pages of ecclesiastical history, we find that,
whoever may have been the hero, and whatever costumes the actors may have worn,
the plot of the tragedy has ever been the same. But the Eternal Night was in
and behind all, and we pass from what we see to that which is invisible to the
eye of sense. Our fervent wish has been to show true souls how they may lift
aside the curtain, and, in the brightness of that Night made Day, look with
undazzled gaze upon the UNVEILED TRUTH.
THE END.
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THEORIES ABOUT REINCARNATION
AND SPIRITS
(Reprinted from The Path,
November, 1886.)
OVER and over again the
abstruse and mooted question of Rebirth or Reincarnation has crept out during
the first ten years of the Theosophical Society's existence. It has been
alleged on prima facie evidence that a notable discrepancy was found between
statements made in "Isis Unveiled," Vol. 1, 351-2, and later
teachings from the same pen and under the inspiration of the same master.*
In Isis, it was held,
reincarnation is denied. An occasional return only of "depraved
spirits" is allowed. "Exclusive of that rare and doubtful
possibility, 'Isis' allows only three cases -- abortion, very early death, and
idiocy -- in which reincarnation on this earth occurs." ("C. C.
M." in Light, 1882.)
The charge was answered then
and there as every one who will turn to the Theosophist of August, 1882, can
see for himself. Nevertheless, the answer either failed to satisfy some readers
or passed unnoticed. Leaving aside the strangeness of the assertion that
reincarnation -- i.e., the serial and periodical rebirth of every individual
monad from pralaya to pralaya** -- is denied, in the face of the fact that the
doctrine is part and parcel and one of the fundamental features of Hinduism and
Buddhism, the charge amounted virtually to this: the writer of the present, a
professed admirer and student of Hindu philosophy, and as professed a follower
of Buddhism years before Isis was written, by rejecting reincarnation must
necessarily reject KARMA likewise! For the latter is the very corner-stone of
Esoteric philosophy and Eastern religions; it is the grand and one pillar on
which hangs the whole philosophy of rebirths, and, once the latter is denied,
the whole doctrine of Karma falls into meaningless verbiage.
Nevertheless the opponents,
without stopping to think of the evident "discrepancy" between charge
and fact, accused a Buddhist by profession of faith of denying reincarnation,
hence also by implication -- Karma. Adverse to wrangling with one who was a
friend and undesirous at the time to enter upon a defence of details and
internal evidence -- a loss of time indeed, -- the writer answered merely with
a few sentences. But it now becomes necessary to well define the doctrine.
Other critics have taken
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See charge and answer, in
Theosophist, August, 1882.
** The cycle of existence during
the manvantara -- period before and after the beginning and completion of which
every such "monad" is absorbed and reabsorbed in the ONE soul, anima
mundi.
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the same line, and by
misunderstanding the passages to that effect in Isis they have reached the same
rather extraordinary conclusions.
To put an end to such useless
controversies, it is proposed to explain the doctrine more clearly.
Although, in view of the later
more minute renderings of the esoteric doctrines, it is quite immaterial what
may have been written in Isis -- an encyclopedia of occult subjects in which
each of these is hardly sketched -- let it be known at once that the writer
maintains the correctness of every word given out upon the subject in her
earlier volumes. What was said in the Theosophist of August, 1882, may now be
repeated here. The passage quoted from it may be, and is most likely,
"incomplete, chaotic, vague, perhaps clumsy, as are many more passages in
that work, the first literary production of a foreigner who even now can hardly
boast of her knowledge of the English language." Nevertheless it is quite
correct so far as that collateral feature of reincarnation is therein
concerned.
I will now give extracts from
Isis and proceed to explain every passage criticised, wherein it was said that
"a few fragments of this mysterious doctrine of reincarnation as distinct
from metempsychosis" -- would be then presented. Sentences now explained
are in italics.
Reincarnation, 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. (Vol. I, p. 351.)
Here the "astral
monad" or body of the deceased personality -- say of John or Thomas -- is
meant. It is that which, in the teachings of the Esoteric philosophy of
Hinduism, is known under its name of bhoot; in the Greek philosophy is called
the simulacrum or umbra, and in all other philosophies worthy of the name is
said, as taught in the former, to disappear after a certain period more or less
prolonged in Kama-loka -- the
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Limbus of the Roman Catholics,
or Hades of the Greeks.* It is "a violation of the laws of harmony of
nature," though it be so decreed by those of Karma -- every time that the
astral monad, or the simulacrum of the personality -- of John or Thomas --
instead of running down to the end of its natural period of time in a body,
finds itself (a) violently thrown out of it whether by early death or accident;
or (b) is compelled in consequence of its unfinished task to reappear, (i.e. the
same astral body wedded to the same immortal monad) on earth again, in order to
complete the unfinished task. Thus "it must try a second time to carry out
the purpose of creative intelligence" or law.
If reason has been so far
developed as to become active and discriminative there is no** (immediate)
reincarnation 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 on earth and therefore cannot be so after death,
the immortal spark which illuminates it, has to re-enter 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*** (Devachan). Spirit follows a line parallel with that of
matter; and the spiritual evolution goes hand in hand with the physical.
The Occult Doctrine teaches
that: --
(1) There is no immediate
reincarnation on Earth for the Monad, as falsely taught by the Reincarnationist
Spiritists; nor is there any second incarnation at all for the
"personal" or false Ego -- the perisprit -- save the exceptional
cases mentioned. But that (a) there are re-births, or periodical reincarnations
for the immortal Ego ("Ego" during the cycle of rebirths, and
non-Ego, in Nirvana or Moksha when it becomes impersonal and absolute); for
that Ego is the root of every new incarnation, the string on which are
threaded, one after the other, the false personalities or illusive bodies
called men, in which the Monad-Ego incarnates itself during the cycle of
births; and (b) that such reincarnations take place not before 1,500, 2,000,
and even 3,000 years of Devachanic life.
(2) That Manas -- the seat of
Jiv, that spark which runs the round of the cycle of births and rebirths with
the Monad, from the beginning to the end of a Manvantara, -- is the real Ego.
That (a) the Jiv follows the di-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Hades has surely never been
meant for Hell. It was always the abode of the sorrowing shadows of astral
bodies of the dead personalities. Western readers should remember Kama-loka is
not Karma-loka, for Kama means desire, and Karma does not.
** Had this word
"immediate" been put at the time of publishing Isis between the two
words "no" and "reincarnation" there would have been less
room for dispute and controversy.
*** By "sphere
above," of course "Devachan" was meant.
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vine monad that gives it
spiritual life and immortality into Devachan, -- that therefore, it can neither
be reborn before its appointed period, nor reappear on Earth visibly or
invisibly in the interim; and (b) that, unless the fruition, the spiritual
aroma of the Manas, or all these highest aspirations and spiritual qualities
and attributes that constitute the higher SELF of man, become united to its
monad, the latter becomes as Non-existent; since it is in esse
"impersonal" and per se Ego-less, so to say, and gets its spiritual
colouring or flavour of Ego-tism only from each Manas during incarnation and
after it is disembodied and separated from all its lower principles.
(3) That the remaining four
principles, or rather the 2 1/2 -- as they are composed of the terrestrial
portion of Manas, of its vehicle Kama-Rupa and Lingha Sarira, -- the body
dissolving immediately, and prana or the life principle along with it, -- that
these principles having belonged to the false personality are unfit for
Devachan. The latter is the state of Bliss, the reward for all the undeserved
miseries of life,* and that which prompted man to sin, namely his terrestrial
passionate nature, can have no room in it.
Therefore the
non-reincarnating principles (the false personality) are left behind in
Kama-loka, firstly as a material residue, then later on as a reflection on the
mirror of Astral light. Endowed with illusive action, to the day when having
gradually faded out they disappear, what is it but the Greek Eidolon and the
simulacrum of the Greek and Latin poets and classics?
What reward or punishment can
there be in that sphere of disembodied human entities for a foetus or a human
embryo which had not even time to breathe on this earth, still less an
opportunity to exercise the divine faculties of its 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 any
other person to death? Or again for one idiotic from birth, the number of whose
cerebral circumvolutions is only from twenty to thirty per cent of those of
sane persons, and who therefore is irresponsible for either his disposition,
acts, or for the imperfections of his vagrant, half-developed intellect. (Isis,
Vol. I, p. 352.)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The reader must bear in mind
that the esoteric teaching maintains that save in cases of wickedness when
man's nature attains the acme of Evil, and human terrestrial sin reaches
Satanic universal character, so to say, as some Sorcerers do -- there is no
punishment for the majority of mankind after death. The law of retribution as
Karma, waits man at the threshold of his new incarnation. Man is at best a
wretched tool of evil, unceasingly forming new causes and circumstances. He is
not always (if ever) responsible. Hence a period of rest and bliss in Devachan,
with an utter temporary oblivion of all the miseries and sorrows of life.
Avitchi is a spiritual state of the greatest misery and is only in store for
those who have devoted consciously their lives to doing injury to others and
have thus reached its highest spirituality of EVIL.
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These are then the
"exceptions" spoken of in Isis, and the doctrine is maintained now as
it was then. Moreover, there is no "discrepancy" but only
incompleteness -- hence, misconceptions arising from later teachings. Then
again, there are several important mistakes in Isis which, as the plates of the
work had been stereotyped, were not corrected in subsequent editions.
One of such is on page 346,
and another in connection with it and as a sequence on page 347.
The discrepancy between the
first portion of the statement and the last, ought to have suggested the idea
of an evident mistake. It is addressed to the spiritists, reincarnationists who
take the more than ambiguous words of Apuleius as a passage that corroborates
their claims for their "spirits" and reincarnation. Let the reader
judge* whether Apuleius does not justify rather our assertions. We are charged
with denying reincarnation, and this is what we said there and then in Isis!
The 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. (Isis, Vol. 1, p. 345 et seq.)
Clear enough this, one should
say. Nature baffled tries again. No one can pass out of this world (our earth)
without becoming perfected "physically, morally, and spiritually."
How can this be done, unless there
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Says Apuleius: "The
soul is born in this world upon leaving the soul of the 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 (one portion of) it into a lemur. 'Lemures' are the manes, or
ghosts, which we know under the name lares. When they keep away and show us a
beneficent protection, we honour in them the protecting divinities of the
family hearth; but if their crimes sentence them to err, we call them larvae.
They become a plague for the wicked, and the vain terror of the good."
("Du Dieu de Socrate," Apul. class., pp. 143-145.)
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is a series of rebirths
required, for the necessary perfection in each department -- to evolute in the
"circle of necessity" -- can surely never be found in one human life?
and yet this sentence is followed without any break by the following
parenthetical statement: "This is what the Hindu dreads above all things
-- transmigration and reincarnation; only on other and inferior planets, never
on this one."!!!
The last "sentence"
is a fatal mistake, and one to which the writer pleads "not guilty."
It is evidently the blunder of some "reader" who had no idea of Hindu
philosophy and who was led into a subsequent mistake on the next page, wherein
the unfortunate word "planet" is put for cycle. Isis was hardly, if
ever, looked into after its publication by its writer, who had other work to
do; otherwise there would have been an apology and a page pointing to the
errata, and the sentence made to run: "The Hindu dreads transmigration in
other inferior forms, on this planet."
This would have dove-tailed
with the preceding sentence, and would show a fact, as the Hindu exoteric views
allow him to believe and fear the possibility of reincarnation -- human and
animal in turn by jumps, from man to beast and even to plant, and vice versa;
whereas esoteric philosophy teaches that nature never proceeding backward in
her evolutionary progress, once that man has evoluted from every kind of lower
forms -- the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms -- into the human form, he
can never become an animal except morally, hence -- metaphorically. Human
incarnation is a cyclic necessity and law; and no Hindu dreads it -- however
much he may deplore the necessity. And this law and the periodical recurrence
of man's rebirth is shown on the same page (346) and in the same unbroken
paragraph, where it is closed by saying that:
But there is a way to avoid
it. 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 reincarnation 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.
This ought to settle the
question and show there must have been some carelessly unnoticed mistake, and
if this is not sufficient, there is something else to demonstrate it, for it is
stated further on:
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "The cause of
reincarnation is ignorance" -- therefore there is
"reincarnation" once the writer explained the causes of it.
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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. Freedom from evil desire insures the
possession of a miraculous power. At his death, the Arhat is never
reincarnated; he invariably attains nirvana -- a word, by the way, falsely
interpreted by the Christian scholar 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 reincarnated 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?
And just after this we are
again made to say of Buddha and his Doctrine of "Merit and Demerit,"
or Karma:
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.
Correct "life on this
planet" by "life in the same cycle," and you will have the
correct reading: for what would appreciation of "the great doctrine of
cycles" have to do with Buddha's philosophy, had the great sage believed
but in one short life on this Earth and in the same cycle. But to return to the
real theory of reincarnation as in the esoteric teaching and its unlucky
rendering in Isis.
Thus, what was really meant
therein was that the principle which does not reincarnate -- save the
exceptions pointed out -- is the false personality, the illusive human Entity
defined and individualized during this short life of ours, under some specific
form and name; but that which does and has to reincarnate nolens volens under
the unflinching, stern rule of Karmic law -- is the real EGO. This confusing of
the real immortal Ego in man, with the false and ephemeral personalities it
inhabits during its Manvantaric progress, lies at the root of every such
misunderstanding. Now what is the one, and what is the other? The first group
is --
1. The immortal Spirit --
sexless, formless (arupa), an emanation from the One universal BREATH.
2. Its Vehicle -- the divine
Soul -- called the "Immortal Ego," the "Divine monad,"
etc., etc., which by accretions from Manas in which
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burns the ever-existing Jiv --
the undying spark -- adds to itself at the close of each incarnation the
essence of that individuality that was, the aroma of the culled flower that is
no more.
What is the false personality?
It is that bundle of desires, aspirations, affection and hatred, in short of
action, manifested by a human being on this earth during one incarnation and
under the form of one personality.* Certainly it is not all this (which is in
fact for us, the deluded, material, and materially thinking lot, Mr. So and So,
or Mrs. somebody else) that remains immortal, or is ever reborn.
All that bundle of Egotism,
that apparent and evanescent "I," disappears after death, as the costume
of the part he played disappears from the actor's body, after he leaves the
theatre and goes to bed. That actor rebecomes at once the same John Smith or
Gray he was from his birth, and is no longer the Othello or Hamlet that he had
represented for a few hours. Nothing remains now of that "bundle" to
go to the next incarnation, except the seed for future Karma that Manas may
have united to its immortal group, to form with it the disembodied Higher Self
in "Devachan." As to the four lower principles, what becomes of them
is found in most classics, from which we mean to quote at length for our
defence. The doctrine of the Perisprit, the "false personality," or
the remains of the deceased under their astral form -- fading out to disappear
in time, is terribly distasteful to the spiritualists, who insist upon
confusing the temporary with the immortal Ego.
Unfortunately for them and
happily for us, it is not the modern Occult-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* A proof how our theosophical
teachings have taken root in every class of Society and even in English
literature may be seen by reading Mr. Norman Pearson's article "Before
Birth," in the Nineteenth Century, for August, 1886. Therein, theosophical
ideas and teachings are speculated upon without acknowledgment or the smallest
reference to theosophy, and among others, we see with regard to the author's
theories on the Ego, the following: "How much of the individual
personality is supposed to go to heaven or hell? Does the whole of the mental
equipment, good and bad, noble qualities and unholy passions, follow the soul
to its hereafter? Surely not. But if not, and something has to be stripped off,
how and when are we to draw the line? If, on the other hand, the Soul is something
distinct from all our mental equipment, except the sense of self, are we not
confronted by the incomprehensible notion of a personality without any
attributes?"
To this query the author
answers as any true theosophist would: "The difficulties of the question
really spring from a misconception of the true nature of these attributes. The
components of our mental equipment -- appetites, aversions, feelings, tastes
and qualities generally -- are not absolute but relative existences. Hunger and
thirst for instance are states of consciousness which arise in response to the
stimuli of physical necessities. They are not inherent elements of the soul and
will disappear or become modified, etc." (pp. 356 and 357). In other words
the theosophical doctrine is adopted. Atma and Buddhi having culled off the
Manas the aroma of the personality or human soul -- go into Devachan; while the
lower principles, the astral simulacrum or false personality void of its Divine
monad or spirit, will remain in the Kamaloka -- the "Summerland."
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ists who have invented the
doctrine. They are on their defense. And they prove what they say, i.e., that
no "personality" has ever yet been "reincarnated" "on
the same planet" (our earth, this once there is no mistake) save in the
three exceptional cases above cited. Adding to these a fourth case, which is
the deliberate, conscious act of adeptship; and that such an astral body
belongs neither to the body nor the soul, still less to the immortal spirit of
man, the following is brought forward and proofs cited.
Before one brings out on the
strength of undeniable manifestations, theories as to what produces them, and
claims at once on prima facie evidence that it is the spirits of the departed
mortals that re-visit us, it behooves one to first study what antiquity has
declared upon the subject. Ghosts and apparitions, materialized and
semi-material "SPIRITS," have not originated with Allan Kardec, nor
at Rochester. If those beings whose invariable habit it is to give themselves
out for souls and the phantoms of the dead, choose to do so and succeed, it is
only because the cautious philosophy of old is now replaced by an a priori
conceit, and unproven assumptions. The first question to be settled is --
"Have spirits any kind of substance to clothe themselves with?"
Answer: That which is now called perisprit in France, and a "materialized
Form" in England and America, was called in days of old peri-psyche, and
peri-nous, hence was well known to the old Greeks. Have they a body whether
gaseous, fluidic, etherial, material or semi-material? No; we say this on the
authority of the occult teachings the world over. For with the Hindus atma or
spirit is Arupa (bodiless), and with the Greeks also. Even in the Roman
Catholic Church the angels of Light, as those of Darkness, are absolutely
incorporea; "meri spiritus, omnes corporis expertes," and in the
words of the "SECRET DOCTRINE," primordial. Emanations of the
undifferentiated Principle, the Dhyan Chohans of the ONE (First) category or
pure Spiritual Essence, are formed of the Spirit of the one Element; the second
category of the second Emanation, of the Soul of the Elements; the third have a
"mind body" to which they are not subject, but that they can assume
and govern as a body, subject to them, pliant to their will in form and
substance. Parting from this (third) category, they (the spirits, angels, Devas
or Dhyan Chohans) have BODIES, the first rupa group of which is composed of one
element -- Ether; the second, of two -- Ether and fire; the third, of three --
Ether, fire and water; the fourth, of four -- Ether, air, fire and water. Then
comes man, who, besides the four elements, has the fifth that predominates in
him -- Earth: therefore he suffers. Of the Angels, as said by St. Augustine and
Peter Lombard, their bodies are made to act not to suffer. "It is earth
and water, humor et humus, that gives an aptitude for suffering and passivity,
ad patientiam, and Ether and Fire for action." The spirits or human
monads, belonging
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to the first, or
undifferentiated essence, are thus incorporeal; but their third principle (or
the human Fifth -- Manas) can in conjunction with its vehicle become Kama rupa
and Mayavi rupa -- body of desire or "illusion body." After death,
the best, noblest, purest qualities of Manas or the human soul ascending along
with the divine Monad into Devachan, whence no one emerges from or returns,
except at the time of reincarnation -- what is that then which appears under
the double mask of the spiritual Ego or soul of the departed individual? The
Kama rupa element with the help of elementals. For we are taught that those
spiritual beings that can assume a form at will and appear, i.e., make
themselves objective and even tangible -- are the angels alone (the Dhyan
Chohans) and the nirmanakaya* of the adepts, whose spirits are clothed in
sublime matter. The astral bodies -- the remnants and dregs of a mortal being
which has been disembodied, when they do appear, are not the individuals they
claim to be, but only their simulachres. And such was the belief of the whole
of antiquity, from Homer to Swedenborg, from the third race down to our own
day.
More than one devoted
spiritualist has hitherto quoted Paul as corroborating his claim that spirits
do and can appear. "There is a natural and there is a spiritual
body," etc., etc., (1 Cor. xv, 44); but one has only to study closer the
verses preceding and following the one quoted, to perceive that what St. Paul
meant was quite different from the sense claimed for it. Surely there is a
spiritual body, but it is not identical with the astral form contained in the
"natural" man. The "spiritual" is formed only by our
individuality unclothed and transformed after death; for the apostle takes care
to explain in verses 51 and 52, "Immutabimur sed non omnes."
"Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall not all sleep but we shall all he
changed. This corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on
immortality."
But this is no proof except
for the Christians. Let us see what the old Egyptians and the Neo-Platonists --
both "theurgists" par excellence, thought on the subject: They
divided man into three principal groups subdivided into principles as we do:
pure immortal spirit; the "Spectral Soul" (a luminous phantom) and
the gross material body. Apart from the latter, which was considered as the
terrestrial shell, these groups were divided into six principles: (1) Kha,
"vital body," (2) Khaba, "astral
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Nirmanakaya is the name
given to the astral forms (in their completeness) of adepts, who have
progressed too high on the path of knowledge and absolute truth, to go into the
state of Devachan; and have on the other hand, deliberately refused the bliss
of nirvana, in order to help Humanity by invisibly guiding and helping on the
same path of progress elect men. But these astrals are not empty shells, but
complete monads made up of the 3d, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th principles. There is
another order of nirmanakaya, however, of which much will be said in the Secret
Doctrine. -- H. P. B.
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REINCARNATION AND SPIRITS.
form," or shadow, (3)
Khou, "animal soul," (4) Akh, "terrestrial intelligence,"
(5) Sa, "the divine soul" (or Buddhi), and (6) Sah or mummy, the
functions of which began after death. Osiris was the highest uncreated spirit,
for it was in one sense a generic name, every man becoming after his
translation Osirified, i.e., absorbed into Osiris -- Sun or into the glorious
divine state. It was Khou, with the lower portions of Akh or Kama rupa with the
addition of the dregs of Manas remaining all behind in the astral light of our
atmosphere -- that formed the counterparts of the terrible and so much dreaded
bhoots of the Hindus (our "elementaries"). This is seen in the rendering
made of the so-called "Harris Papyrus on Magic," (papyrus magique,
translated by Chabas), who calls them Kouey or Khou, and explains that
according to the hieroglyphics they were called Khou, or the "revivified
dead," the "resurrected shadows."*
When it was said of a person
that he "had a Khou," it meant that he was possessed by a
"Spirit." There were two kinds of Khous -- the justified ones, -- who
after living for a short time a second life (nam onk) faded out, disappeared;
and those Khous who were condemned to wandering without rest in darkness after
dying for a second time -- mut em nam -- and who were called the H'ou metre
("second time dead"), which did not prevent them from clinging to a
vicarious life after the manner of Vampires. How dreaded they were is explained
in our Appendices on Egyptian Magic and "Chinese Spirits" (Secret
Doctrine). They were exorcised by Egyptian priests as the evil spirit is
exorcised by the Roman Catholic cure; or again the Chinese houen, identical with
the Khou and the "Elementary," as also with the lares or larvae -- a
word derived from the former by Festus, the grammarian, who explains that they
were "the shadows of the dead who gave no rest in the house they were in,
either to the Masters or the servants." These creatures when evoked during
theurgic, and especially necromantic rites, were regarded, and are so regarded
still, in China -- as neither the Spirit, Soul nor any thing belonging to the
deceased personality they represented, but simply as his reflection --
simulacrum.
"The human soul,"
says Apuleius, "is an immortal God" (Buddhi), which nevertheless has
his beginning. When death rids it (the Soul) from its earthly corporeal
organism, it is called lemure. There are among the latter not a few which are
beneficent, and which become the gods or demons of the family, i.e., its
domestic gods; in which case they are called
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Placing these parallel with
the division in esoteric teaching we see that (1) Osiris is Atma; (2) Sa is
Buddhi; (3) Akh is Manas; (4) Khou is Kama-rupa, the seat of terrestrial
desires; (5) Khaba is Lingha Sarira; (6) Kha is Pranatma (vital principle); (7)
Sah is mummy or body.
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lares. But they are vilified
and spoken of as larvae when sentenced by fate to wander about; they spread
around them evil and plagues (Inane terriculamentum, ceterum noxium malis); or
if their real nature is doubtful, they are referred to as simply manes.
(Apuleius; see Du Dieu de Socrate, pp. 143-145, Edit. Niz.) Listen to
Jamblichus, Proclus, Porphyry, Psellus and to dozens of other writers on these
mystic subjects.
The Magi of Chaldea believed
and taught that the celestial or divine soul would participate in the bliss of
eternal light, while the animal or sensuous soul would, if good, rapidly
dissolve, and if wicked, go on wandering about in the Earth's sphere. In this
case, "it (the soul) assumes at times the forms of various human phantoms
and even those of animals." The same was said of the Eidolon of the
Greeks, and of their Nephesh by the Rabbins: (see Sciences Occultes, Count de
Resie, V. 11). All the Illuminati of the middle ages tell us of our astral
Soul, the reflection of the dead or his spectre. At Natal death (birth) the
pure spirit remains attached to the intermediate and luminous body, but as soon
as its lower form (the physical body) is dead, the former ascends heavenward,
and the latter descends into the nether worlds, or the Kama loka.
Homer shows us the body of
Patroclus -- the true image of the terrestrial body lying killed by Hector --
rising in its spiritual form, and Lucretius shows old Ennius representing Homer
himself, shedding bitter tears, amidst the shadows and the human simulachres on
the shores of Acherusia, "where live neither our bodies nor our souls, but
only our images."
" * * * Esse Acherusia
templa, Quo neque permanent animae, neque corpora nostra,
Sed quaedam simulacra * *
"
Virgil called it imago,
"image," and in the Odyssey (XI) the author refers to it as the type,
the model, and at the same time the copy of the body; since Telemachus will not
recognize Ulysses and seeks to drive him off by saying -- "No, thou art
not my father; thou art a demon, -- trying to seduce me!" (Odys., XVI, v.
194). "Latins do not lack significant proper names to designate the
varieties of their demons; and thus they called them in turn, lares, lemures,
genii and manes." Cicero, in translating Plato's Timaeus translates the
word daimones by lares; and Festus the grammarian explains that the inferior or
lower gods were the souls of men, making a difference between the two as Homer
did, and between anima bruta and anima divina (animal and divine souls).
Plutarch (in proble. Rom.) makes the lares preside and inhabit the (haunted)
houses, and calls them cruel, exacting, inquisitive, etc., etc. Festus thinks
that there are good and bad ones among the lares. For he calls them at one
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time praestites as they gave
occasionally and watched over things carefully (direct apports), and at another
-- hostileos.* "However it may be," says in his queer old French,
Leloyer, "they are no better than our devils, who, if they do appear
helping sometimes men, and presenting them with property, it is only to hurt
them the better and the more later on. Lemures are also devils and larvae, for
they appear at night in various human and animal forms, but still more
frequently with features that THEY borrow from dead men." (Livre des
Spectres, v. IV, p. 15 and 16).
After this little honour
rendered to his Christian preconceptions, that see Satan everywhere, Leloyer
speaks like an Occultist, and a very erudite one too.
"It is quite certain that
the genii and none other had mission to watch over every newly born man, and
that they were called genii, as says Censorinus, because they had in their
charge our race, and not only they presided over every mortal being but over
whole generations and tribes, being the genii of the people."
The idea of guardian angels of
men, races, localities, cities and nations, was taken by the Roman Catholics
from the prechristian occultists and pagans. Symmachus (Epist. I, X) writes:
"As souls are given to those who are born, so genii are distributed to the
nations. Every city had its protecting genius, to whom the people
sacrificed." There is more than one inscription found that reads: Genio
civitatis -- "to the genius of the city."
Only the ancient profane never
seemed sure, any more than the modern, whether an apparition was the eidolon of
a relative or the genius of the locality. AEneas while celebrating the
anniversary of the name of his father Anchises, seeing a serpent crawling on
his tomb, knew not whether that was the genius of his father or the genius of
the place (Virgil). "The manes** were numbered and divided between good
and bad; those that were sinister, and that Virgil calls numina larva, were
appeased by sacrifices that they should commit no mischief, such as sending bad
dreams to those who despised them, etc."
Tibullus shows this by his
line: --
Ne tibi neglecti mittant
insomnia manes. (Eleg., 1, II).
"Pagans thought that the
lower Souls were transformed after death into diabolical aerial spirits."
(Leloyer, p. 22).
The term Eteroprosopos, when
divided into its several compound words, will yield a whole sentence, "an
other than I under the features of my person."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Because they drove the
enemies away.
** From manus --
"good," an antiphrasis, as Festus explains.
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It is to this terrestrial principle,
the eidolon, the larva, the bhoot -- call it by whatever name -- that
reincarnation was refused in Isis.*
The doctrines of Theosophy are
simply the faithful echoes of Antiquity. Man is a Unity only at his origin and
at his end. All the Spirits, all the Souls, gods and demons emanate from and
have for their root-principle the SOUL OF THE UNIVERSE -- says Porphyry (De
Sacr.) Not a philosopher of any notoriety who did not believe (1) in
reincarnation (metempsychosis), (2) in the plurality of principles in man, or
that man had two Souls of separate and quite different natures; one perishable,
the Astral Soul, the other incorruptible and immortal; and (3) that the former
was not the man whom it represented -- "neither his spirit nor his body,
but his reflection, at best." This was taught by Brahmins, Buddhists,
Hebrews, Greeks, Egyptians and Chaldeans; by the postdiluvian heirs of the
prediluvian Wisdom, by Pythagoras and Socrates, Clemens Alexandrinus, Synesius
and Origen, the oldest Greek poets as much as the Gnostics, whom Gibbon shows
as the most refined, learned and enlightened men of all ages (see "Decline
and Fall," etc.). But the rabble was the same in every age: superstitious,
self-opinionated, materializing every most spiritual and noble idealistic
conception and dragging it down to its own low level, and -- ever adverse to
philosophy.
But all this does not
interfere with that fact, that our "Fifth Race" man, analyzed
esoterically as a septenary creature, was ever exoterically recognized as
mundane, sub-mundane, terrestrial and supra-mundane, Ovid graphically
describing him as --
"Bis duo sunt hominis:
manes, caro, spiritus, umbra;
Quatuor ista loca bis duo
suscipiunt.
Terra tegit carnem, tumulum
circumvolat umbra,
Orcus habet manes, spiritus
astra petit."
OSTENDE, Oct., 1886.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* On page 12, Vol. 1, of
"Isis Unveiled" belief in reincarnation is asserted from the very
beginning, as forming part and parcel of universal beliefs. "Metempsychosis"
(or transmigration of souls) and reincarnation being after all the same thing.
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MY BOOKS
(Reprinted from Lucifer, May
15, 1891.)
SOME time ago, a Theosophist,
Mr. R----, was traveling by rail with an American gentleman, who told him how
surprised he had been by his visit to our London Headquarters. He said that he
had asked Mme. Blavatsky what were the best Theosophical works for him to read,
and had declared his intention of procuring Isis Unveiled, when to his
astonishment she replied, "Don't read it, it is all trash."
Now I did not say
"trash" so far as I remember; but what I did say in substance was:
"Leave it alone; Isis will not satisfy you. Of all the books I have put my
name to, this particular one is, in literary arrangement, the worst and most
confused." And I might have added with as much truth that, carefully
analysed from a strictly literary and critical standpoint, Isis was full of
misprints and misquotations; that it contained useless repetitions, most
irritating digressions, and to the casual reader unfamiliar with the various
aspects of metaphysical ideas and symbols, as many apparent contradictions;
that much of the matter in it ought not to be there at all, and also that it
had some very gross mistakes due to the many alterations in proof-reading in
general, and word corrections in particular. Finally, that the work, for
reasons that will be now explained, has no system in it; and that it looks in
truth, as remarked by a friend, as if a mass of independent paragraphs having
no connection with each other, had been well shaken up in a waste-basket, and
then taken out at random and -- published.
Such is also now my sincere
opinion. The full consciousness of this sad truth dawned upon me when, for the
first time after its publication in 1877, I read the work through from the
first to the last page, in India in 1881. And from that date to the present, I
have never ceased to say what I thought of it, and to give my honest opinion of
Isis whenever I had an opportunity for so doing. This was done to the great
disgust of some, who warned me that I was spoiling its sale; but as my chief
object in writing it was neither personal fame nor gain, but something far
higher, I cared little for such warnings. For more than ten years this
unfortunate "masterpiece," this "monumental work," as some
reviews have called it, with its hideous metamorphoses of one word into
another, thereby entirely transforming the meaning,* with its misprints and
wrong quota-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Witness the word 'planet'
for 'cycle' as originally written, corrected by some unknown hand (Vol. I, p.
347, 2nd par.), a 'correction' which shows Buddha teaching that there is no
rebirth on this planet (!!) when the contrary is asserted on p. 346, and the
Lord Buddha is said to teach how to 'avoid' reincarnation; the use
[[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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tion-marks, has given me more
anxiety and trouble than anything else during a long life-time which has ever
been more full of thorns than of roses.
But in spite of these perhaps
too great admissions, I maintain that Isis Unveiled contains a mass of original
and never hitherto divulged information on occult subjects. That this is so, is
proved by the fact that the work has been fully appreciated by all those who
have been intelligent enough to discern the kernel, and pay little attention to
the shell, to give the preference to the idea and not to the form, regardless
of its minor shortcomings. Prepared to take upon myself -- vicariously as I
will show -- the sins of all the external, purely literary defects of the work,
I defend the ideas and teachings in it, with no fear of being charged with
conceit, since neither ideas nor teaching are mine, as I have always declared;
and I maintain that both are of the greatest value to mystics and students of
Theosophy. So true is this, that when Isis was first published, some of the best
American papers were lavish in its praise -- even to exaggeration, as is
evidenced by the quotations below.*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] of the word 'planet' for plane, of 'Monas' for Manas; and the
sense of whole ideas sacrificed to the grammatical form, and changed by the
substitution of wrong words and erroneous punctuation, etc., etc., etc.
* 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. 2 vols., royal
8vo., about 1500 pages, cloth, $7.50. Fifth Edition.
"This monumental work . .
. about everything relating to magic, mystery, witchcraft, religion, spiritualism,
which would be valuable in an encyclopaedia." -- North American Review
"It must be acknowledged
that she is a remarkable woman, who has read more, seen more, and thought more
than most wise men. Her work abounds in quotations from a dozen different languages,
not for the purpose of a vain display of erudition, but to substantiate her
peculiar views . . . her pages are garnished with foot-notes establishing, as
her authorities, some of the profoundest writers of the past. To a large class
of readers, this remarkable work will prove of absorbing interest . . . demands
the earnest attention of thinkers, and merits an analytic reading." --
Boston Evening Transcript
"The appearance of
erudition is stupendous. Reference to and quotations from the most unknown and
obscure writers in all languages abound, interspersed with allusions to writers
of the highest repute, which have evidently been more than skimmed
through." -- N. Y. Independent
"An extremely readable
and exhaustive essay upon the paramount importance of re-establishing the
Hermetic Philosophy in a world which blindly believes that it has outgrown
it." -- N. Y. World
"Most remarkable book of
the season." -- Com. Advertiser
"To readers who have not
made themselves acquainted with the literature of mysticism and alchemy, the
volume will furnish the materials for an interesting study -- a mine of curious
information." -- Evening Post
"They give evidence of
much and multifarious research on the part of the author, and contain a vast
number of interesting stories. Persons fond of the marvelous will find in them
an abundance of entertainment." -- New York Sun
"A marvelous book both in
matter and manner of treatment. Some idea may
[[Footnote continued on next
page]]
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The first enemies that my work
brought to the front were Spiritualists, whose fundamental theories as to the
spirits of the dead communicating in propria persona I upset. For the last
fifteen years -- ever since this first publication -- an incessant shower of
ugly accusations has been poured upon me. Every libelous charge, from
immorality and the 'Russian spy' theory down to my acting on false pretenses,
of being a chronic fraud and a living lie, an habitual drunkard, an emissary of
the Pope, paid to break down Spiritualism, and Satan incarnate. Every slander
that can be thought of has been brought to bear upon my private and public
life. The fact that not a single one of these charges has ever been
substantiated; that from the first day of January to the last of December, year
after year, I have lived surrounded by friends and foes like as in a
glass-house -- nothing could stop these wicked, venomous, and thoroughly
unscrupulous tongues. It has been said at various times by my ever-active
opponents that (1) Isis Unveiled was simply a rehash of Eliphas Levi and a few
old alchemists; (2) that it was written by me under the dictation of Evil
Powers and the departed spirits of Jesuits (sic); and finally (3) that my two
volumes had been compiled from MSS. (never before heard of) which Baron de Palm
-- he of the cremation and double-burial fame -- had left behind him, and which
I had found in his trunk!* On the other hand, friends, as unwise as they were
kind, spread abroad that which was really the truth, a little too
enthusiastically, about the connection of my Eastern Teacher and other
Occultists with the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from
previous page]] be formed of the rarity and extent of its contents when the
index alone comprises fifty pages, and we venture nothing in saying that such
an index of subjects was never before compiled by any human being. . . . But
the book is a curious one and will no doubt find its way into libraries because
of the unique subject matter it contains . . . will certainly prove attractive
to all who are interested in the history, theology, and the mysteries of the
ancient world." -- Daily Graphic
"The present work is the
fruit of her remarkable course of education, and amply confirms her claims to
the character of an adept in secret science, and even to the rank of a
hierophant in the exposition of its mystic lore." -- New York Tribune
"One who reads the book
carefully through, ought to know everything of the marvelous and mystical,
except perhaps, the passwords. Isis will supplement the Anacalypsis. Whoever
loves to read Godfrey Higgins will be delighted with Mme Blavatsky. There is a
great resemblance between their works. Both have tried hard to tell everything
apocryphal and apocalyptic. It is easy to forecast the reception of this book.
With its striking peculiarities, its audacity, its versatility, and the
prodigious variety of subjects which it notices and handles, it is one of the
remarkable productions of the century." -- New York Herald
* This Austrian nobleman, who
was in complete destitution at New York, and to whom Colonel Olcott had given
shelter and food, nursing him during the last weeks of his life -- left nothing
in MS. behind him but bills. The only effect of the baron was an old valise, in
which his "executors" found a battered bronze Cupid, a few foreign
Orders (imitations in pinchbeck and paste, as the gold and diamonds had been
sold); and a few shirts of Colonel Olcott's, which the ex-diplomat had annexed
without permission.
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work; and this was seized upon
by the enemy and exaggerated out of all limits of truth. It was said that the
whole of Isis had been dictated to me from cover to cover and verbatim by these
invisible Adepts. And, as the imperfections of my work were only too glaring,
the consequence of all this idle and malicious talk was, that my enemies and
critics inferred -- as well they might -- that either these invisible inspirers
had no existence, and were part of my 'fraud,' or that they lacked the
cleverness of even an average good writer.
Now, no one has any right to
hold me responsible for what any one may say, but only for that which I myself
state orally, or in public print over my signature. And what I say and maintain
is this: Save the direct quotations and the many afore-specified and mentioned
misprints, errors and misquotations, and the general make-up of Isis Unveiled,
for which I am in no way responsible, (a) every word of information found in
this work or in my later writings, comes from the teachings of our Eastern
Masters; and (b) that many a passage in these works has been written by me
under their dictation. In saying this no supernatural claim is urged, for no
miracle is performed by such a dictation. Any moderately intelligent person,
convinced by this time of the many possibilities of hypnotism (now accepted by
science and under full scientific investigation), and of the phenomena of
thought-transference, will easily concede that if even a hypnotized subject, a
mere irresponsible medium, hears the unexpressed thought of his hypnotizer, who
can thus transfer his thought to him -- even to repeating the words read by the
hypnotizer mentally from a book -- then my claim has nothing impossible in it.
Space and distance do not exist for thought; and if two persons are in perfect
mutual psychomagnetic rapport, and of these two, one is a great Adept in Occult
Sciences, then thought-transference and dictation of whole pages become as easy
and as comprehensible at the distance of ten thousand miles as the transference
of two words across a room.
Hitherto, I have abstained --
except on very rare occasions -- from answering any criticism on my works, and
have even left direct slanders and lies unrefuted, because in the case of Isis
I found almost every kind of criticism justifiable, and in that of 'slanders
and lies' my contempt for the slanderers was too great to permit me to notice
them. Especially was it the case with regard to the libelous matter emanating
from America. It has all come from one and the same source, well known to all
Theosophists, a person most indefatigable in attacking me personally for the
last twelve years, though I have never seen or met the creature.* Neither
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* I will not name him. There
are names which carry a moral stench about them, unfit for any decent journal
or publication. His words and deeds emanate from the cloaca maxima of the
Universe of matter and have to return to it, without touching me.
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do I intend to answer him now.
But, as Isis is now attacked for at least the tenth time, the day has come when
my perplexed friends and that portion of the public which may be in sympathy
with Theosophy, are entitled to the whole truth -- and nothing but the truth.
Not that I seek to excuse myself in anything even before them or to 'explain
things.' It is nothing of the kind. What I am determined to do is to give
facts, undeniable and not to be gainsaid, simply by stating the peculiar, well
known to many but now almost forgotten, circumstances, under which I wrote my
first English work. I give them seriatim.
(1) When I came to America in
1873, I had not spoken English -- which I had learned in my childhood
colloquially -- for over thirty years. I could understand when I read it, but
could hardly speak the language.
(2) I had never been at any
college, and what I knew I had taught myself; I have never pretended to any
scholarship in the sense of modern research; I had then hardly read any scientific
European works, knew little of Western philosophy and sciences. The little
which I had studied and learned of these, disgusted me with its materialism,
its limitations, narrow cut-and-dried spirit of dogmatism, and its air of
superiority over the philosophies and sciences of antiquity.
(3) Until 1874 I had never
written one word in English, nor had I published any work in any language.
Therefore --
(4) I had not the least idea
of literary rules. The art of writing books, of preparing them for print and
publication, reading and correcting proofs, were so many close secrets to me.
(5) When I started to write
that which developed later into Isis Unveiled, I had no more idea than the man
in the moon what would come of it. I had no plan; did not know whether it would
be an essay, a pamphlet, a book, or an article. I knew that I had to write it,
that was all. I began the work before I knew Colonel Olcott well, and some
months before the formation of the Theosophical Society.
Thus, the conditions for becoming
the author of an English theosophical and scientific work were hopeful, as
everyone will see. Nevertheless, I had written enough to fill four such volumes
as Isis, before I submitted my work to Colonel Olcott. Of course he said that
everything save the pages dictated -- had to be rewritten. Then we started on
our literary labors and worked together every evening. Some pages, the English
of which he had corrected, I copied: others which would yield to no mortal
correction, he used to read aloud from my pages, Englishing them verbally as he
went on, dictating to me from my almost undecipherable MSS. It is to him that I
am indebted for the English in Isis. It is he again who suggested that the work
should be divided into chapters, and the first volume devoted to SCIENCE and
the second to THEOLOGY.
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To do this, the matter had to
be re-shifted, and many of the chapters also; repetitions had to be erased, and
the literary connection of subjects attended to. When the work was ready, we
submitted it to Professor Alexander Wilder, the well-known scholar and
Platonist of New York, who after reading the matter, recommended it to Mr.
Bouton for publication. Next to Colonel Olcott, it is Professor Wilder who did
the most for me. It is he who made the excellent Index, who corrected the
Greek, Latin and Hebrew words, suggested quotations and wrote the greater part
of the Introduction 'Before the Veil.' If this was not acknowledged in the
work, the fault is not mine, but because it was Dr. Wilder's express wish that
his name should not appear except in footnotes. I have never made a secret of
it, and every one of my numerous acquaintances in New York knew it. When ready
the work went to press.
From that moment the real
difficulty began. I had no idea of correcting galley-proofs; Colonel Olcott had
little leisure to do so; and the result was that I made a mess of it from the
beginning. Before we were through with the first three chapters, there was a
bill for six hundred dollars for corrections and alterations, and I had to give
up the proof-reading. Pressed by the publisher, Colonel Olcott doing all that
he possibly could do, but having no time except in the evenings, and Dr. Wilder
far away at Jersey City, the result was that the proofs and pages of Isis
passed through a number of willing but not very careful hands, and were finally
left to the tender mercies of the publisher's proof-reader. Can one wonder
after this if 'Vaivaswata' (Manu) became transformed in the published volumes
into 'Viswamitra,' that thirty-six pages of the Index were irretrievably lost,
and quotation-marks placed where none were needed (as in some of my own
sentences!), and left out entirely in many a passage cited from various
authors? If asked why these fatal mistakes have not been corrected in a
subsequent edition, my answer is simple: the plates were stereotyped; and
notwithstanding all my desire to do so, I could not put it into practice, as
the plates were the property of the publisher; I had no money to pay for the
expenses, and finally the firm was quite satisfied to let things be as they
are, since, notwithstanding all its glaring defects, the work -- which has now
reached its seventh or eighth edition -- is still in demand.
And now -- and perhaps in
consequence of all this -- comes a new accusation: I am charged with wholesale
plagiarism in the Introductory Chapter 'Before the Veil'!
Well, had I committed
plagiarism, I should not feel the slightest hesitation in admitting the
'borrowing.' But all 'parallel passages' to the contrary, as I have not done
so, I do not see why I should confess it; even though 'thought transference' as
the Pall Mall Gazette wittily calls
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it, is in fashion, and at a
premium just now. Since the day when the American press raised a howl against
Longfellow, who, borrowing from some (then) unknown German translation of the
Finnish epic, the Kalevala, published it as his own superb poem, Hiawatha, and
forgot to acknowledge the source of his inspiration, the Continental press has
repeatedly brought out other like accusations. The present year is especially
fruitful in such 'thought transferences.' Here we have the Lord Mayor of the
City of London repeating word for word an old forgotten sermon by Mr. Spurgeon
and swearing he had never read or heard of it. The Rev. Robert Bradlaugh writes
a book, and forthwith the Pall Mall Gazette denounces it as a verbal copy from
somebody else's work. Mr. Harry de Windt, the Oriental traveler, and a F. R. G.
S. to boot, finds several pages, out of his just-published A Ride to India,
across Persia and Belochistan in the London Academy, paralleled with extracts
from The Country of Belochistan, by A. W. Hughes, which are identical verbatim
et literatim. Mrs. Parr denies in the British Weekly that her novel Sally was
borrowed consciously or unconsciously from Miss Wilkins' Sally, and states that
she had never read the said story, nor even heard the author's name, and so on.
Finally, every one who has read La Vie de Jesus, by Renan, will find that he
has plagiarized by anticipation some descriptive passages rendered in flowing
verse in The Light of the World. Yet even Sir Edwin Arnold, whose versatile and
recognised genius needs no borrowed imagery, has failed to thank the French
Academician for his pictures of Mount Tabor and Galilee in prose, which he has
so elegantly versified in his last poem. Indeed, at this stage of our
civilization and fin de siecle, one should feel highly honored to be placed in
such good and numerous company, even as a -- plagiarist. But I cannot claim
such a privilege and, simply for the reason already told that out of the whole
Introductory chapter 'Before the Veil,' I can claim as my own only certain
passages in the Glossary appended to it -- the Platonic portion of it, that
which is now denounced as a "bare-faced plagiarism," having been
written by Professor A. Wilder.
That gentleman is still living
in or near New York, and can be asked whether my statement is true or not. He
is too honorable, too great a scholar, to deny or fear anything. He insisted
upon a kind of Glossary, explaining the Greek and Sanskrit names and words with
which the work abounds, being appended to an Introduction, and furnished a few
himself. I begged him to give me a short summary of the Platonic philosophers,
which he kindly did. Thus from p. xi down to xxii the text is his, save a few
intercalated passages which break the Platonic narrative, to show the identity
of ideas in the Hindu Scriptures. Now who of those who know Dr. A. Wilder
personally, or by name, who are aware of the
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great scholarship of that
eminent Platonist, the editor of so many learned works,* would be insane enough
to accuse him of 'plagiarizing' from any author's work! I give in the footnote
the names of a few of the Platonic and other works he has edited. The charge
would be simply preposterous!
The fact is that Dr. Wilder
must have either forgotten to place quotes before and after the passages copied
by him from various authors in his Summary; or else, owing to his very
difficult handwriting, he has failed to mark them with sufficient clearness. It
is impossible, after the lapse of almost fifteen years, to remember or verify
the facts. To this day I had imagined that this disquisition on the Platonists
was his, and never gave a further thought to it. But now enemies have ferreted
out unquoted passages and proclaim louder than ever "the author of Isis
Unveiled" to be a plagiarist and a fraud. Very likely more may be found,
as that work is an inexhaustible mine of misquotations, errors, and blunders,
to which it is impossible for me to plead 'guilty' in the ordinary sense. Let
then the slanderers go on, only to find in another fifteen years as they have
found in the preceding period, that whatever they do, they cannot ruin
Theosophy, nor even hurt me. I have no author's vanity; and years of unjust persecution
and abuse have made me entirely callous to what the public may think of me --
personally.
But in view of the facts as
given above; and considering that --
(a) The language in Isis is
not mine; but (with the exception of that portion of the work which, as I
claim, was dictated) may be called only a sort of translation of my facts and
ideas into English;
(b) It was not written for the
public, -- the latter having always been only a secondary consideration with me
-- but for the use of Theosophists and members of the Theosophical Society to
which Isis is dedicated;
(c) Though I have since
learned sufficient English to have been enabled to edit two magazines -- The
Theosophist and Lucifer -- yet, to the present hour I never write an article,
an editorial or even a simple paragraph, without submitting its English to
close scrutiny and correction.
Considering all this and much
more, I ask now every impartial and honest man and woman whether it is just or
even fair to criticize my
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* A. Wilder, M.D., the editor
of Serpent and Siva Worship, by Hyde Clarke and C. Staniland Wake; of Ancient
Art and Mythology, by Richard Payne Knight, to which the editor has appended an
Introduction, Notes translated into English, and a new and complete Index; of
Ancient Symbol Worship, by Hodder M. Westropp and C. Staniland Wake, with an
Introduction, additional Notes and Appendix by the editor; and finally, of The
Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries: A Dissertation by Thomas Taylor, translator
of 'Plato,' 'Plotinus,' 'Porphyry,' 'Iamblichus,' 'Proclus,' 'Aristotle,' etc.,
etc., etc., edited with Introduction, Notes, Emendations, and Glossary, by
Alexander Wilder, M.D.; and the author of various learned works, pamphlets, and
articles for which we have no space here. Also the editor of the Older Academy,
a quarterly journal of New York, and the translator of The Mysteries, by
Iamblichus.
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works -- Isis, above all
others -- as one would the writings of a born American or English author! What
I claim in them as my own is only the fruit of my learning and studies in a
department hitherto left uninvestigated by Science, and almost unknown to the
European world. I am perfectly willing to leave the honor of the English
grammar in them, the glory of the quotations from scientific works brought
occasionally to me to be used as passages for comparison with, or refutation
by, the old Science, and finally the general make-up of the volumes, to every
one of those who have helped me. Even for The Secret Doctrine there are about
half a dozen Theosophists who have been busy in editing it, who have helped me
to arrange the matter, correct the imperfect English, and prepare it for print.
But that which none of them will ever claim from first to last, is the
fundamental doctrine, the philosophical conclusions and teachings. Nothing of
that have I invented, but have simply given it out as I have been taught; or as
quoted by me in The Secret Doctrine (Vol. 1, p. xlvi) from Montaigne: "I
have here made only a nosegay of culled [Eastern] flowers, and have brought nothing
of my own but the string that ties them."
Is any one of my helpers
prepared to say that I have not paid the full price for the string? -- H. P.
BLAVATSKY.
April 27, 1891.
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