Writings
of H P Blavatsky
Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24 -1DL
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831 – 1891)
The Founder of Modern Theosophy
Thoughts
on the
Elementals
By
H
P Blavatsky
YEARS have been
devoted by the writer to the study of those invisible Beings--conscious,
semi-conscious and entirely senseless--called by a number of names in every
country under the sun, and known under the generic name of "Spirits."
The nomenclature applied to these denizens of spheres good or bad in the Roman
Catholic Church, alone, is--endless. The great kyriology of their symbolic
names--is a study. Open any account of creation in the first Purâna that comes
to hand, and see the variety of appellations bestowed upon these divine and
semi-divine creatures (the product of the two kinds of creation--the Prakrita
and the Vaikrita or Padma, the primary and the secondary) all evolved from the
body of Brahmâ. The Urdhwasrota only,1 of the third creation, embrace a variety
of beings with characteristics and idiosyncrasies sufficient for a life-study.
The same in the
Egyptian, Chaldean, Greek, Phoenician or any other account. The hosts of those
creatures are numberless. The old Pagans, however, and especially the
Neo-Platonists of Alexandria knew what they believed, and discriminated between
the orders. None regarded them from such a sectarian stand-point as do the
Christian Churches. They dealt with them far more wisely, on the contrary, as
they made a better and a greater discrimination between the natures of these
beings than the Fathers of the Church did. According to the policy of the
latter, all those Angels that were not recognised as the attendants upon the Jewish
Jehovah--were proclaimed Devils.
The effects of
this belief, afterwards erected into a dogma, we find asserting themselves now
in the Karma of the many millions of Spiritualists, brought up and bred in the
respective beliefs of their Churches. Though a Spiritualist may have divorced
himself for years from theological and clerical beliefs; though he be a liberal
or an illiberal Christian, a Deist or an Atheist, having rejected very wisely
belief in devils, and, too reasonable to regard his visitors as pure angels,
has accepted what he thinks a reasonable mean ground--still he will acknowledge
no other Spirits save those of the dead.
This is his
Karma, and also that of the Churches collectively. In the latter such a
stubborn fanaticism, such parti pris is only natural; it is their policy. In
free Spiritualism, it is unpardonable. There cannot be two opinions upon this
subject. It is either belief in, or a full rejection of the existence of any
"Spirits." If a man is a sceptic and an unbeliever, we have nothing
to say. Once he believes in Spooks and Spirits at all--the question changes.
Where is that man or woman free from prejudice and preconceptions, who can
believe that in an infinite universe of life and being--let us say in our solar
system alone--that in all this boundless space in which the Spiritualist
locates his "Summer-land"--there are only two orders of conscious
beings--men and their spirits; embodied mortals and disembodied Immortals.
The future has
in store for Humanity strange surprises, and Theosophy, or rather its
adherents, will be vindicated fully in no very distant days. No use arguing
upon a question that has been so fully discussed by Theosophists and brought
only opprobrium, persecution, and enmity on the writers. Therefore we will not
go out of our way to say much more. The Elementals and the Elementaries of the
Kabalists, and Theosophists were sufficiently ridiculed. From Porphyry down to
the demonologists of the past centuries, fact after fact was given, and proofs
heaped upon proofs, but with as little effect as might be had from a fairy tale
told in some nursery room.
A queer book
that of the old Count de Gabalis, immortalized by the Abbé de Villars, and now
translated and published in Bath. Those humorously inclined are advised to read
it, and to ponder over it. This advice is offered with the object of making a
parallel. The writer read it years ago, and has read it now again with as much,
and much more attention than formerly. Her humble opinion as regards the work
is--if any one cares to hear it--that one may search for months and never find
the demarcation in it between the "Spirits" of the Séance rooms and
the Sylphs and Undines of the French satire.
There is a
sinister ring in the merry quips and jests of its writer, who while pointing
the finger of ridicule at that which he believed, had probably a presentiment
of his own speedy Karma2 in the shape of assassination.
The way he
introduces the Count de Gabalis is worthy of attention.
"I was
astonished one Remarkable Day, when I saw a man come in of a most exalted mien;
who, saluting me gravely, said to me in the French Tongue but, in the accent of
a Foreigner, 'Adore my son; adore the most great God of the Sages; and let not
thy self be puffed up with Pride, that he sends to thee one of the children of
Wisdom, to constitute thee a Fellow of their Society, and make thee partaker of
the wonders of Omnipotency."3
There is only
one answer to be made to those who, taking advantage of such works, laugh at
Occultism. "Servitissimo" gives it himself in his own chaffing way in
his introductory "Letter to my Lord" in the above-named work. "I
would have persuaded him (the author of Gabalis) to have changed the whole form
of his work," he writes, "for this drolling way of carrying it thus
on does not to me seem proper to his subject. These mysteries of the Cabal are
serious matters, which many of my friends do seriously study . . . the which
are certainly most dangerous to jest with." Verbum sat sapienti.
They are
"dangerous," most undeniably. But since history began to record
thoughts and facts, one-half of Humanity has ever been sneering as the other
half and ridiculing its most cherished beliefs. This, however, cannot change a
fact into a fiction, nor can it destroy the Sylphs, Undines, and Gnomes, if
any, in Nature; for, in league with Salamanders, the latter are more likely to
destroy the unbelievers and damage Insurance companies, notwithstanding that
these believe still less in revengeful Salamanders than in fires produced by chance
and accident.
Theosophists
believe in Spirits no less than Spiritualists do, but, as dissimilar in their
variety as are the feathered tribes in the air. There are bloodthirsty hawks
and vampire bats among them, as there are doves and nightingales. They believe
in "Angels," for many have seen them
. . . . . by the sick one's pillow--
Whose was the soft tone and the soundless
tread!
Where smitten hearts were drooping like
the willow,
They stood between the living and the
dead.
But these were
not the three-toed materialization of the modern medium. And if our doctrines
were all piece-mealed by the "drolleries" of a de Villars, they would
and could not interfere with the claims of the Occultists that their teachings
are historical and scientific facts, whatever the garb they are presented in to
the profane. Since the first kings began reigning "by the grace of
God," countless generations of buffoons appointed to amuse Majesties and
Highnesses have passed away; and most of these graceless individuals had more
wisdom at the bottoms of their hunches and at their fingers' ends, than all
their royal masters put together had in their brainless heads. They alone had
the inestimable privilege of speaking truth at the Courts, and those truths have
always been laughed at . . . . . .
This is a
digression; but such works as the Count de Gabalis have to be quietly analyzed
and their true character shown, lest they should be made to serve as a sledge
hammer to pulverize those works which do not assume a humorous tone in speaking
of mysterious, if not altogether sacred, things, and say what they have to. And
it is most positively maintained that there are more truths uttered in the
witty railleries and gasconades of that "satire," full of pre-eminently
occult and actual facts, than most people, and Spiritualists especially, would
care to learn.
One single fact
instanced, and shown to exist now, at the present moment among the Mediums will
be sufficient to prove that we are right.
It has been
said elsewhere, that white magic differed very little from practices of sorcery
except in effects and results--good or bad motive being everything. Many of the
preliminary rules and conditions to enter societies of adepts, whether of the
Right or the Left Path, are also identical in many things. Thus Gabalis says to
the author: "The Sages will never admit you into their society if you do
not renounce from this very present a Thing which cannot stand in competition
with Wisdom. You must renounce all carnal Commerce with Women" (p. 27).
This is a sine
quâ non with practical Occultists--Rosicrucians or Yogis, Europeans or
Asiatics. But it is also one with the Dugpas; and Fadoos of Bhutan and India
one with the Voodoos and Nagals of New Orleans and Mexico,4 with an additional
clause to it, however, in the statutes of the latter. And this is to have
carnal commerce with male and female Djins, Elementals, or Demons, call them by
whatever names you will.5
"I am
making known nothing to you but the Principles of the Ancient Cabal,"
explains de Gabalis to his pupil. And he informs him that the Elementals (whom
he calls Elementaries), the inhabitants of the four Elements, namely, the
Sylphs, Undines, Salamanders, and Gnomes, live many Ages, but that their souls
are not immortal. "In respect of Eternity . . . . they must finally
resolve into nothing." . . . . "Our Fathers, the philosophers,"
goes on the soi-disant Rosicrucian, "speaking to God Face to Face,
complained to him of the Unhappiness of these People (the Elementals), and God,
whose Mercy is without Bounds, revealed to them that it was not impossible to
find out a Remedy for this Evil. He inspired them, that by the same means as
Man, by the Alliance which he contracted with God, has been made Partaker of
the Divinity: the Sylphs, the Gnomes, the Nymphs, and the Salamanders, by the
Alliance which they might Contract with Man, might be made Partakers of
Immortality. So a she-Nymph or a Sylphide becomes Immortal and capable of the
Blessing to which we aspire, when they shall be so happy as to be married to a
Sage; a Gnome or a Sylphe ceases to be Mortal from the moment that he Espouses
one of our Daughters."
Having
delivered himself of this fine piece of advice on practical sorcery, the
"Sage" closes as follows:
"No, no!
Our Sages have never erred so as to attribute the Fall of the first Angels to
their love of women, no more than they have put Men under the Power of the
Devil. . . . There was nothing criminal in all that. They were Sylphs which
endeavored to become Immortal. Their innocent Pursuits, far enough from being
able to scandalize the Philosophers, have appeared so Just to us that we are
all resolved by common consent utterly to Renounce Women; and entirely to give
ourselves to Immortalizing of the Nymphs and Sylphs" (p. 33).
And so are
certain mediums, especially those of America and France, who boast of Spirit
husbands and wives. We know such mediums personally, men and women, and it is
not those of Holland who will deny the fact, with a recent event among their
colleagues and co-religionists fresh in their memory, concerning some who
escaped death and madness only by becoming Theosophists. It is only by
following our advice that they got finally rid of their spiritual consorts of
both sexes.
Shall we be
told in this case also, that it is a calumny and an invention? Then let those
outsiders who are inclined to see, with the Spiritualists, nought but a holy,
an innocent pastime at any rate, in that nightly and daily intercourse with the
so-called "Spirits of the Dead," watch. Let those who ridicule our
warnings and doctrine and make merry over them--explain after analysing it
dispassionately, the mystery and the rationale of such facts as the existence
in the minds of certain Mediums and Sensitives of their actual marriage with
male and female Spirits. Explanations of lunacy and hallucination will never
do, when placed face to face with the undeniable facts of SPIRIT
MATERIALIZATIONS. If there are "Spirits" capable of drinking tea and
wine, of eating apples and cakes, of kissing and touching the visitors of
Séance rooms, all of which facts have been proven as well as the existence of
those visitors themselves--why should not those same Spirits perform
matrimonial duties as well? And who are those "Spirits" and what is
their nature? Shall we be told by the Spiritists that the spooks of Mme. de
Sévigné or of Delphine _____, ___ one of which authoresses we abstain from
naming out of regard to the surviving relatives--that they are the actual
"Spirits" of those two deceased ladies; and that the latter felt a
"Spiritual affinity" for an idiotic, old, and slovenly Canadian
medium and thus became his happy wife as he boasts publicly, the result of
which union is a herd of "spiritual" children bred with this holy
Spirit? And who is the astral husband--the nightly consort of a well-known New
York lady medium whom the writer knows personally? Let the reader get every
information he can about this last development of Spiritual (?!) intercourse.
Let him think seriously over this, and then read the "Count de
Gabalis," especially the Appendix to it, with ; its Latin portions; and
then perchance he will be better able to appreciate the full gravity of the
supposed chaff, in the work in question,6 and understand the true value of the
raillery in it. He will then see dearly the ghastly connection there is between
the Fauns, Satyrs and Incubi of St. Hieronymus, the Sylphs and Nymphs of the
Count de Gabalis, the "Elementaries" of the Kabalists--and all those
poetical, spiritual "Lillies" of the "Harris Community,"
the astral "Napoleons," and other departed Don Juans from the
"Summer-Land," the "spiritual affinities from beyond the
grave" of the modern world of mediums.
Notwithstanding
this ghastly array of facts, we are told week after week in the Spiritual
journals that, at best, we know not what we are talking about.
"Platon"--(a presumptuous pseudonym to assume, by the bye) a
dissatisfied ex-theosophist, tells the Spiritualists (see Light, Jan. 1, 1887)
that not only is there no re-incarnation--because the astral "spirit"
of a deceased friend told him so (a valuable and trustworthy evidence indeed),
but that all our philosophy is proved worthless by that very fact! Karma, we
are notified, is tom-foolery. "Without Karma re-incarnation cannot
stand," and, since his astral informant "has inquired in the realm of
his present existence as to the theory of re-incarnation, and he says he cannot
get one fact or a trace of one as to the truth of it . . . ." this
"astral" informant has to be believed. He cannot lie. For "a man
who has studied chemistry has a right to an opinion, and earned a right to
speak upon its various theories and facts . . . . especially if he, during earth-life,
was respected and admired for his researches into the mysteries of nature, and
for his truthfulness."7
Let us hope
that the "astrals" of such eminent chemists as Messrs. Crookes and
Butlerof--when disembodied, will abstain from returning too often to talk with
mortals. For having studied chemistry so much and so well, their post mortem
communications would acquire a reputation for infallibility more than would be
good, perhaps, for the progress of mankind, and the development of its
intellectual powers. But the proof is sufficiently convincing, no doubt for the
present generation of Spiritualists, since the name assumed by the "astral
control of a friend" was that of a truthful and honorable man. It thus
appears that an experience of over forty years with Spirits, who lied more than
they told truth, and did far more mischief than good--goes for nought. And thus
the "spirit-husbands and wives" must be also believed when they say
they are this or that. Because, as "Platon" justly argues: "There
is no progress without knowledge, and the knowledge of truth founded upon fact
is progress of the highest degree, and if astrals progress, as this spirit says
they do, the philosophy of Occultism in regard to re-incarnation is wrong upon
this point; and how do we know that the many other points are correct, as they
are without proof?"
This is high
philosophy and logic. "The end of wisdom is consultation and
deliberation"--with "Spirits," Demosthenes might have added, had
he known where to look for them--but all this leaves still the question,
"who are those spirits"--an open one. For, "where doctors
disagree," there must be room for doubt. And besides the ominous fact that
Spirits are divided in their views upon reincarnation--just as Spiritualists
and Spiritists are, "every man is not a proper champion for the truth, nor
fit to take up the gauntlet in the cause of verity," says Sir T. Browne.
This is no disrespectful cut at "Platon," whoever he may be, but an
axiom. An eminent man of science, Prof. W. Crookes, gave once a very wise
definition of Truth, by showing how necessary it is to draw a distinction
between truth and accuracy. A person may be very truthful--he observed--that is
to say, may be filled with the desire both to receive truth and to teach it;
but unless that person have great natural powers of observation, or have been
trained by scientific study of some kind to observe, note, compare, and report
accurately and in detail, he will not be able to give a trustworthy, accurate
and therefore true account of his experiences. His intentions may be honest,
but if he have a spark of enthusiasm, he will be always apt to proceed to
generalizations, which may be both false and dangerous. In short as another
eminent man of science, Sir John Herschell, puts it, "The grand and, indeed,
the only character of truth, is its capability of enduring the test of
universal experience, and coming unchanged out of every possible form of fair
discussion."
Now very few
Spiritualists, if any, unite in themselves the precious qualities demanded by
Prof. Crookes; in other words their truthfulness is always tempered by
enthusiasm; therefore, it has led them into error for the last forty years. In
answer to this we may be told and with great justice, it must be confessed,
that this scientific definition cuts both ways; i.e., that Theosophists are, to
say the least, in the same box with the Spiritualists; that they are
enthusiastic, and therefore also credulous. But in the present case the
situation is changed. The question is not what either Spiritualists or
Theosophists think personally of the nature of Spirits and their degree of
truthfulness; but what the "universal experience," demanded by Sir
John Herschell, says. Spiritualism is a philosophy (if one, which so far we
deny) of but yesterday. Occultism and the philosophy of the East, whether true
absolutely, or relatively, are teachings coming to us from an immense
antiquity: and since--whether in the writings and traditions of the East; in
the numberless Fragments, and MSS. left to us by the Neo-Platonic Theosophists;
in the life observations of such philosophers as Porphyry and Iamblichus; in
those of the mediæval Theosophists and so on, ad infinitum,--since we find in
all these, the same identical testimony as to the extremely various, and often
dangerous nature of all those Genii, Demons, Gods, Lares, and
"Elementaries," now all confused into one heap under the name of
"Spirits"; we cannot fail to recognize in all this something
"enduring the test of universal experience, and "coming
unchanged" out of every possible form of observation and experience.
Theosophists
give only the product of an experience hoary with age; Spiritualists hold to
their own views, born some forty years ago, and based on their unflinching
enthusiasm and emotionalism. But let any impartial, fair minded witness to the
doings of the "Spirits" in America, one that is neither a Theosophist
nor a Spiritualist, be asked: "What may be the difference between the
vampire-bride from whom Apollonius of Tyana is said to have delivered a young
friend of his, whom the nightly succubus was slowly killing, and the
Spirit-wives and husbands of the mediums?" Surely none--would be the
correct answer. Those who do not shudder at this hideous revival of mediæval
Demonology and Witchcraft, may, at any rate, understand the reason why of all
the numerous enemies of Theosophy--which unveils the mysteries of the
"Spirit World" and unmasks the Spirits masquerading under eminent
names--none are so bitter and so implacable as the Spiritualists of Protestant,
and the Spiritists of Roman Catholic countries.
"Monstrum
horrendum informe cui lumen ademptum" . . . . is the fittest epithet to be
applied to most of the "Lillies" and "Joes" of the Spirit
World. But we do not mean at all--following in this the example of
Spiritualists, who are determined to believe in no other "Spirits"
than those of the "dear departed" ones--to maintain that save Nature
Spirits or Elementals, Shells, or Elementaries, and "Gods" and genii,
there are no other Spirits from the invisible realms; or no really holy and
grand Spirits--who communicate with mortals. For it is not so. What the
Occultists and Kabalists said all along, and the Theosophists now repeat, is,
that holy Spirits will not visit promiscuous séance-rooms, nor will they intermarry
with living men and women.
Belief in the
existence of invisible but too often present visitants from better and worse
worlds than our own, is too deeply rooted in men's hearts to be easily torn out
by the cold hand of Materialism, or even of Science. Charges of superstition,
coupled with ridicule, have at best served to breed additional hypocrisy and
social cant, among the educated classes. For there are few men, if any, at the
bottom of whose souls belief in such superhuman and supersensous creatures does
not lie latent, to awaken into existence at the first good opportunity. Many
are those Men of Science who, having abandoned with their nursery pinafores
belief in Kings of Elves and Fairy Queens, and who would blush at being accused
of believing in witchcraft, have, nevertheless, fallen victims to the wiles of
"Joes," and "Daisies," and other spooks and
"controls." And once they have crossed the Rubicon, they fear
ridicule no longer. These Scientists defend as desperately the reality of
materialized and other Spirits, as if these were a mathematical law. Those
soul-aspirations that seem innate in human nature, and that slumber only to
awaken to intensified activity; those yearnings to cross the boundary of matter
that make many a hardened sceptic turn into a rabid believer at the first
appearance of that which to him is undeniable proof--all these complete
psychological phenomena of human temperament--have our modern physiologists
found a key to them? Will the verdict remain "non compos mentis" or
"victim to fraud and psychology"? &c., &c. When we say with
regard to unbelievers that they are "a handful" the statement is no
undervaluation; for it is not those who shout the loudest against degrading
superstitions, the "Occult craze" and so on, who are the strongest in
their scepticism. At the first opportunity, they will be foremost amongst those
who fall and surrender. And when one counts seriously the ever-increasing
millions of the Spiritualists, Occultists, and Mystics in Europe and America,
one may well refuse to lament with Carrington over the "Departure of the
Fairies." They are gone, says the poet:
. . .
They are flown,
Beautiful fictions of our fathers, wove
In Superstition's web when Time was young,
And fondly loved and cherished--they are
flown,
Before the Wand of Science! . . . .
We maintain
that they have done nothing of the kind; and that on the contrary it is these
"Fairies"--the beautiful, far more than the hideous--who are
seriously threatening under their new masks and names to disarm Science and
break its "Wand."
Belief in
"Spirits" is legitimate, because it rests on the authority of
experiment and observation, it vindicates, moreover, another belief, also
regarded as a superstition: namely, Polytheism. The latter is based upon a fact
in nature: Spirits mistaken for Gods, have been seen in every age by
men--hence, belief in many and various Gods. Monotheism, on the other hand,
rests upon a pure abstraction. Who has seen GOD--that God we mean, the Infinite
and the Omnipotent, the one about whom Monotheists talk so much?
Polytheism--once man claims the right of divine interference on his behalf--is
logical and consistent with the philosophies of the East, all of which, whether
Pantheistic or Deistic, proclaim the ONE an infinite abstraction, an absolute
Something which utterly transcends the conception of the finite. Surely such a
creed is more philosophical than that religion, whose theology, proclaiming in
one place God, a mysterious and even Incomprehensible Being, whom "no man
shall see and live" (Exodus xxxiii. 20), shows him at the same time so
human and so petty a God as to concern himself with the breeches8 of his chosen
people, while neglecting to say anything definite about the immortality of their
souls, or their survival after death!
Thus, belief in
a Host and Hosts of Spiritual entities, dwelling on various planes and spheres
in the Universe, in conscious intra-Kosmic Beings, in fact, is logical and
reasonable, while belief in an extra-Kosmic God is an absurdity. And if
Jehovah, who was so jealous about his Jews and commanded that they should have
no other God save himself, was generous enough to bestow upon Pharaoh Moses
("See I have made thee a God to Pharaoh, and Aaron . . . . . thy prophet"
Exodus vii. 7) as the Egyptian monarch's deity, why should not
"Pagans" be allowed the choice of their own Gods? Once we believe in
the existence of our Egos, we may well believe in Dhyan Chohans. As Hare has
it: "man is a mixed being made up of a spiritual and of a fleshly body;
the angels are pure Spirits, herein nearer to God, only that they are created
and finite in all respects, whereas God is infinite and uncreated." And if
God is the latter, then God is not a "Being" but an incorporeal Principle,
not to be blasphemously anthropomorphized. The angels or Dhyan Chohans are the
"Living Ones"; that Principle the "Self-Existent," the
eternal, and all pervading CAUSE of all causes, is only the abstract noumenon
of the "River of Life," whose ever rolling waves create angels and
men alike, the former being simply "men of a superior kind," as Young
intuitionally remarks.
The masses of
mankind are thus well justified in believing in a plurality of Gods; nor is it
by calling them now, spirits, angels, and demons, that Christian nations are
less polytheistic than their Pagan brethren. The twenty or thirty millions of
the now existing Spiritualists and Spiritists, minister to their dead as
jealously as the modern Chinamen and the Hindus minister to their Houen,9
Bhoots, and Pisachas--the Pagan, however, only to keep them quiet from
post-mortem mischief.
Although these
Gods are said to be "superior to man in some respects," it must not
be concluded that the latent potencies of the human spirit are at all inferior
to those of the Devas. Their faculties are more expanded than those of ordinary
man; but with the ultimate effect of prescribing a limit to their expansion, to
which the human spirit is not subjected. This fact has been well symbolized in
the Mahâbhârata by the single-handed victory of Arjuna, under the name of Nara
(a man) over the whole host of Devas and Deva-yonis (the lower Elementals). And
we find reference to the same power in man in the Bible, for St. Paul
distinctly says to his audience "Know ye not that we shall judge
angels?" (I Corinth. vi., 3.,) and speaks of the astral body of man, the
soma psychikon, and the spiritual body, soma pneumatikon, which "hath not
flesh and bones," but has still an external form.
The order of Beings
called the Devas--whose variety is so great that no description of it can be
attempted here--is given in some Occult treatises. There are high Devas and
lower ones, higher Elementals and those far below man and even animals. But all
these have been or will be men, and the former will again be reborn on higher
planets and in other manvantaras. One thing may, however, be mentioned. The
Pitris, or our "lunar ancestors," and the communication of mortals
with them, have been several times mentioned by Spiritualists as an argument
that Hindoos do believe in, and even worship "Spirits." This is a
great mistake. It is not the Pitris individually that were ever consulted, but
their stored wisdom collectively; that wisdom being shown mystically and allegorically
on the bright side of the moon.
What the
Brahmans invoke are not "the spirits" of the departed ancestors--the
full significance of which name will be found in Vol. II. of the "Secret
Doctrine," where the genesis of man is given. The most highly developed
human spirit will always declare, while leaving its tenement of clay
"nacha purarâvarti"--"I shall not come back"--and is thus
placed beyond the reach of any living man. But to comprehend fully the nature
of the "lunar" ancestors and their connection with the
"moon" would necessitate the revelation of occult secrets which are
not intended for public hearing. Therefore no more will be given than the few
hints that follow.
One of the
names of the moon in Sanskrit is Soma, which is also the name, as is well
known, of the mystic drink of the Brahmans and shows the connection between the
two. A "soma-drinker" attains the power of placing himself in direct
rapport with the bright side of the moon, thus deriving inspiration from the
concentrated intellectual energy of the blessed ancestors. This
"concentration," and the moon being a store-house of that Energy, is
the secret, the meaning of which must not be revealed, beyond the mere fact of
mentioning the continuous pouring out upon the earth from the bright side of
the orb of a certain influence.
This which
seems one stream (to the ignorant) is of a dual nature--one giving life and
wisdom, the other being lethal. He who can separate the former from the latter,
as Kalahamsa separated the milk from the water, which was mixed with it, thus
showing great wisdom--will have his reward. The word Pitri does mean, no doubt,
the ancestor; but that which is invoked is the lunar wisdom esoterically, and
not the "Lunar ancestor." It is this Wisdom that was invoked by
Qu-ta-my, the Chaldean, in the "Nabathean Agriculture," who wrote
down "the revelations of the Moon." But there is the other side to
this. If most of the Brahmanical religious ceremonials are connected with the
full moon, so do the dark ceremonials of the sorcerers take place at the new
moon and its last quarter. For similarly when the lost human being, or
sorcerer, attains the consummation of his depraved career, all the evil Karma,
and the evil inspiration, comes down upon him as a dark incubus of iniquity
from "the dark side of the moon," which is a terra incognita to
Science, but a well explored land to the Adept. The Sorcerer, the Dugpa, who
always performs his hellish rites on the day of the new moon, when the
benignant influence of the Pitris is at its lowest ebb, crystallizes some of
the Satanic energy of his predecessors in evil, and turns it to his own vile
ends; while the Brahman, on the other hand, pursues a corresponding benevolent
course with the energy bequeathed him by his Pitris . . . . Therefore, this is
the true Spiritualism of which the heart and soul have been entirely missed by
the modern Spiritualists. When the day of the full revelation comes, it will be
seen that the so-called "superstitions" of Brahmanism and the ancient
Pagans in general were merely natural and psychical sciences, veiled from the
profane eyes of the ignorant multitudes, for fear of desecration and abuse, by
allegorical and symbolical disguises that modern science has failed to
discover.
We maintain
then that no Theosophist has ever believed in, or helped to spread
"degrading superstitions," any more than has any other philosophical
or scientific Society. The only difference between the "Spirits" of
other Societies, Sects and Bodies, and ours lies in their names, and in dogmatic
assertions with regard to their natures. In those whom the millions of
Spiritualists call the "Spirits of the Dead," and in whom the Roman
Church sees the devils of the Host of Satan--we see neither. We call them,
Dhyan Chohans, Devas, Pitris, Elementals high and low--and know them as the
"Gods" of the Gentiles, imperfect at times, never wholly. Each order
has its name, its place, its functions assigned to it in nature; and each host
is the complement and crown of its own particular sphere as man is the complement
and crown of his globe; hence, a natural and logical necessity in Kosmos.
H. P. B.
Lucifer, May,
1890
1 The
Urdhwasrota, the Gods, so called because the bare sight of ailment stands to
them, in place of eating; "for there is satisfaction from the mere
beholding of ambrosia," says the commentator of the Vishnu Purâna.
2 The work
was published in Paris in 1670, and in 1675 the author was cruelly murdered on
his way to Lyons from Languedoc his native country.
3
Sub-Mundanes; or the Elementaries of the Cabal: being the History of Spirits,
reprinted from the Text of the Abbé De Villars, Physio-Astro-Mysac, wherein it
is asserted that there are in existence on earth rational creatures besides
man, 1886: Bath, Robert H, Fryer.
4 We speak
here of the well-known ancient statutes in the Sorcery of the Asiatics as in
the Demonology of Europe. The Witch had to renounce her husband, the Wizard his
marital rights over his legitimate human wife, as the Dugpa renounces to this
day commerce with living women; and, as the New Orleans' Voodoo does, when in
the exercise of his powers. Every Kabalist knows this.
5 The Jewish
Kabalist of Poland and Galicia calls the female Spirit of Nergal, when bent on revenge,
to his help and to infuse into him power. The Mussulman Sorcerer a female
Djini; a Russian Koldoon a deceased Witch (Vyedma). The Chinese maleficer has a
female Houen in his house at his command. The above intercourse is said to give
magic powers and Supernal Force.
6
"Sub-Mundanes; or The Elementaries of the Cabala": with an
illustrative Appendix from the work "Demoniality" or "Incubi and
Succubi," by the Rev. Father Sinistrari, of Amando. The answer given (p.
133) by an alleged devil, to St. Anthony respecting the corporiety of the
Incubi and Succubi would do as well now, perhaps: "The blessed St.
Anthony" having inquired who he was, the little dwarf of the woods
answered: "I am a mortal, and one of the inhabitants of the Wilderness,
whom gentility, under its varied delusions. worships under the names of Fauns,
Satyrs and Incubi" or "Spirits of the Dead" might have added
this Elemental, the vehicle of some Elementary. This is a narrative of St.
Hieronymus, who fully believed in it, and so do we, with certain amendments.
7 The
arguments and evidence brought to bear against the philosophy of the East are
curious. Surely this is a good proof that the Occultists are right in saying
that most of those "Spirits" are not even "lying" Spirits,
but simply empty, senseless shells talking sense only with the help of the
brains of the sitters and the brain of the medium as a connecting link.
8 "And
thou shalt make them Enen breeches to cover their nakedness, from their loins
even Unto their thighs they shall reach" (Exodus xxviii, 42 et seq.). GOD
a linen-draper and a tailor!!!
9 The Houen
in China, is "the second Soul, or human Vitality, the principle, which
animates the ghost" as explained by missionaries from China; simply the
astral. The Houen, however, is as distinct from the "Ancestor" as the
Bhoots are from the Pitris in India.
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