Isis Unveiled by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 1
Theosophical University Press Online Edition
[[Vol. 1, Page i]]
ISIS
UNVEILED:
A MASTER-KEY
TO THE
MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT AND MODERN
SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY.
BY
H. P. BLAVATSKY,
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.
"Cecy est un livre de bonne Foy." -- MONTAIGNE.
VOL. I. -- SCIENCE.
THEOSOPHICAL UNIVERSITY PRESS
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA
[[Vol. 1, Page ii]]
THE present edition is a faithful reprinting
of Isis Unveiled as originally published in New York
in 1877.
The Index has been considerably enlarged, and an Appendix added,
containing a Bibliographical Index of works and authors quoted
and two articles by HPB on the writing of Isis Unveiled: "Theories
about Reincarnation and Spirits" (1886) and "My Books"
(1891).
[[Vol. 1, Page iii]]
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
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
[[Vol. 1]] CONTENTS.
Lost arts . . . 49
The human will the master-force of forces . . . 57
Superficial generalizations of the French savants . . . 60
Mediumistic phenomena, to what attributable . . . 67
Their relation to crime . . . 71
CHAPTER III.
BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND.
Huxley's derivation from the Orohippus . . . 74
Comte, his system and disciples . . . 75
The London materialists . . . 85
Borrowed robes . . . 89
Emanation of the objective universe from the subjective . . .
92
CHAPTER IV.
THEORIES RESPECTING PSYCHIC PHENOMENA.
Theory of de Gasparin . . . 100
[[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
[[Vol. 1]] CONTENTS.
"Psychometry" . . . 183
Time, space, eternity . . . 184
Transfer of energy from the visible to the invisible universe
. . . 186
The Crookes experiments and Cox theory . . . 195
CHAPTER VII
THE ELEMENTS, ELEMENTALS, AND ELEMENTARIES.
Attraction and repulsion universal in all the kingdoms of nature
. . . 206
Psychical phenomena depend on physical surroundings . . . 211
Observations in Siam . . . 214
Music in nervous disorders . . . 215
The "world-soul" and its potentialities . . . 216
Healing by touch, and healers . . . 217
"Diakka" and Porphyry's bad demons . . . 219
The quenchless lamp . . . 224
Modern ignorance of vital force . . . 237
Antiquity of the theory of force-correlation . . . 241
Universality of belief in magic . . . 247
CHAPTER VIII.
SOME MYSTERIES OF NATURE.
Do the planets affect human destiny? . . . 253
Very curious passage from Hermes . . . 254
The restlessness of matter . . . 257
Prophecy of Nostradamus fulfilled . . . 260
Sympathies between planets and plants . . . 264
Hindu knowledge of the properties of colors . . . 265
"Coincidences" the panacea of modern science . . . 268
The moon and the tides . . . 273
Epidemic mental and moral disorders . . . 274
The gods of the Pantheons only natural forces . . . 280
Proofs of the magical powers of Pythagoras . . . 283
The viewless races of ethereal space . . . 284
The "four truths" of Buddhism . . . 291
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
[[Vol. 1]] CONTENTS.
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 India . . . 369
Case of the Cevennois . . . 371
CHAPTER XI.
PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PHYSICAL MARVELS.
Invulnerability attainable by man . . . 379
Projecting the force of the will . . . 380
Insensibility to snake-poison . . . 381
Charming serpents by music . . . 383
Teratological phenomena discussed . . . 385
The psychological domain confessedly unexplored . . . 407
Despairing regrets of Berzelius . . . 411
Turning a river into blood a vegetable phenomenon . . . 413
CHAPTER XII.
THE "IMPASSABLE CHASM."
Confessions of ignorance by men of science . . . 417
The Pantheon of nihilism . . . 421
Triple composition of fire . . . 423
Instinct and reason defined . . . 425
Philosophy of the Hindu 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
[[Vol. 1]] CONTENTS.
Vampirism -- its phenomena explained . . . 449
Bengalese jugglery . . . 457
CHAPTER XIII.
REALITIES AND ILLUSION.
The rationale of talismans . . . 462
Unexplained mysteries . . . 466
Magical experiment in Bengal . . . 467
Chibh Chondor's surprising feats . . . 471
The Indian tape-climbing trick an illusion . . . 473
Resuscitation of buried fakirs . . . 477
Limits of suspended animation . . . 481
Mediumship totally antagonistic to adeptship . . . 487
What are "materialized spirits"? . . . 493
The Shudala Madan . . . 495
Philosophy of levitation . . . 497
The elixir and alkahest . . . 503
Origin of the Egyptians . . . 515
Their mighty engineering works . . . 517
The ancient land of the Pharaohs . . . 521
Antiquity of the Nilotic monuments . . . 529
Arts of war and peace . . . 531
Mexican myths and ruins . . . 545
Resemblances to the Egyptian . . . 551
Moses a priest of Osiris . . . 555
The lessons taught by the ruins of Siam . . . 563
The Egyptian Tau at Palenque . . . 573
CHAPTER XV.
INDIA THE CRADLE OF THE RACE.
Acquisition of the "secret doctrine" . . . 575
Two relics owned by a Pali scholar . . . 577
Jealous exclusiveness of the Hindus . . . 581
Lydia Maria Child on Phallic symbolism . . . 583
The age of the Vedas and Manu . . . 587
Traditions of pre-diluvian races . . . 589
Atlantis and its peoples . . . 593
Peruvian relics . . . 597
The Gobi desert and its secrets . . . 599
Thibetan and Chinese legends . . . 600
The magician aids, not impedes, nature . . . 617
Philosophy, religion, arts and sciences bequeathed by Mother India
to posterity . . . 618
-----------------------
[[To Contents Volume 2]]
[[Vol. 1, Page v]]
-----------------------
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
[[Vol. 1, Page]] vi PREFACE.
block, or pile stone upon stone outward till the temple is completed,
our NEW result is only an old idea. The latest of all
the eternities will find its destined other half-soul in the earliest."
When, years ago, we first travelled over the East, exploring the
penetralia of its deserted sanctuaries, two saddening and ever-recurring
questions oppressed our thoughts: Where, WHO, WHAT is
GOD? Who ever saw the IMMORTAL
SPIRIT of man, so as to be able to assure
himself of man's immortality?
It was while most anxious to solve these perplexing problems that
we came into contact with certain men, endowed with such mysterious
powers and such profound knowledge that we may truly designate
them as the sages of the Orient. To their instructions we lent
a ready ear. They showed us that by combining science with religion,
the existence of God and immortality of man's spirit may be demonstrated
like a problem of Euclid. For the first time we received the assurance
that the Oriental philosophy has room for no other faith than
an absolute and immovable faith in the omnipotence of man's own
immortal self. We were taught that this omnipotence comes from
the kinship of man's spirit with the Universal Soul -- God! The
latter, they said, can never be demonstrated but by the former.
Man-spirit proves God-spirit, as the one drop of water proves
a source from which it must have come. Tell one who had never
seen water, that there is an ocean of water, and he must accept
it on faith or reject it altogether. But let one drop fall upon
his hand, and he then has the fact from which all the rest may
be inferred. After that he could by degrees understand that a
boundless and fathomless ocean of water existed. Blind faith would
no longer be necessary; he would have supplanted it with KNOWLEDGE.
When one sees mortal man displaying tremendous capabilities, controlling
the forces of nature and opening up to view the world of spirit,
the reflective mind is overwhelmed with the conviction that if
one man's spiritual Ego can do this much, the capabilities
of the FATHER SPIRIT must be
relatively as much vaster as the whole ocean surpasses the single
drop in volume and potency. Ex nihilo nihil fit;
prove the soul of man by its wondrous powers -- you have
proved God!
In our studies, mysteries were shown to be no mysteries. Names
and places that to the Western mind have only a significance derived
from Eastern fable, were shown to be realities. Reverently we
stepped in spirit within the temple of Isis; to lift aside the
veil of "the one that is and was and shall be" at 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 --
[[Vol. 1, Page]] vii PREFACE.
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."
[[Vol. 1, Page]] viii PREFACE.
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.
[[Vol. 1, Page ix]]
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
[[Vol. 1, Page]] x BEFORE THE VEIL.
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.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xi BEFORE THE VEIL.
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
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xii BEFORE THE VEIL.
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]]
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xiii BEFORE THE VEIL.
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.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xiv BEFORE THE VEIL.
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
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xv BEFORE THE VEIL.
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.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xvi BEFORE THE VEIL.
"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.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xvii BEFORE THE VEIL.
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."
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xviii BEFORE THE VEIL.
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.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xix BEFORE THE VEIL.
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.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xx BEFORE THE VEIL.
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."
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxi BEFORE THE VEIL.
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.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxii BEFORE THE VEIL.
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
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxiii BEFORE THE VEIL.
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)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "The Sun and the Earth."
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxiv BEFORE THE VEIL.
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
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxv BEFORE THE VEIL.
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.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxvi BEFORE THE VEIL.
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.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxvii BEFORE THE VEIL.
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
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxviii BEFORE THE VEIL.
soul, both as an entity distinct from the spirit and in its relations
with the spirit and body. In modern science, psychology relates
only or principally to conditions of the nervous system, and almost
absolutely ignores the psychical essence and nature. Physicians
denominate the science of insanity psychology, and name
the lunatic chair in medical colleges by that designation.
CHALDEANS, or Kasdim. -- At first a tribe, then
a caste of learned kabalists. They were the savants, the magians
of Babylonia, astrologers and diviners. The famous Hillel, the
precursor of Jesus in philosophy and in ethics, was a Chaldean.
Franck in his Kabbala points to the close resemblance
of the "secret doctrine" found in the Avesta and
the religious metaphysics of the Chaldees.
DACTYLS (daktulos, a finger). -- A name
given to the priests attached to the worship of Kybele (Cybele).
Some archaeologists derive the name from [[daktulos]],
finger, because they were ten, the same in number as the fingers
of the hand. But we do not believe the latter hypothesis is the
correct one.
DAEMONS. -- A name given by the ancient people,
and especially the philosophers of the Alexandrian school, to
all kinds of spirits, whether good or bad, human or otherwise.
The appellation is often synonymous with that of gods or angels.
But some philosophers tried, with good reason, to make a just
distinction between the many classes.
DEMIURGOS, or Demiurge. -- Artificer; the Supernal
Power which built the universe. Freemasons derive from this word
their phrase of "Supreme Architect." The chief magistrates
of certain Greek cities bore the title.
DERVISHES, or the "whirling charmers,"
as they are called. Apart from the austerities of life, prayer
and contemplation, the Mahometan devotee presents but little similarity
with the Hindu fakir. The latter may become a sannyasi, or saint
and holy mendicant; the former will never reach beyond his second
class of occult manifestations. The dervish may also be a strong
mesmerizer, but he will never voluntarily submit to the abominable
and almost incredible self-punishment which the fakir invents
for himself with an ever-increasing avidity, until nature succumbs
and he dies in slow and excruciating tortures. The most dreadful
operations, such as flaying the limbs alive; cutting off the toes,
feet, and legs; tearing out the eyes; and causing one's self to
be buried alive up to the chin in the earth, and passing whole
months in this posture, seem child's play to them. One of the
most common tortures is that of Tshiddy-Parvady.* It consists
in suspending the fakir to one of the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Or more commonly charkh puja.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxix BEFORE THE VEIL.
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.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxx BEFORE THE VEIL.
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,
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxxi BEFORE THE VEIL.
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."
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxxii BEFORE THE VEIL.
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.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxxiii BEFORE THE VEIL.
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.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxxiv BEFORE THE VEIL.
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
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxxv BEFORE THE VEIL.
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.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxxvi BEFORE THE VEIL.
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
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxxvii BEFORE THE VEIL.
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.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxxviii BEFORE THE VEIL.
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
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxxix BEFORE THE VEIL.
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.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xl BEFORE THE VEIL.
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.)
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xli BEFORE THE VEIL.
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!
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xlii BEFORE THE VEIL.
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
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xliii BEFORE THE VEIL.
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.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xliv BEFORE THE VEIL.
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."
-------
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.
[[Vol. 1, Page xlv]] BEFORE THE VEIL.
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.
Chapter 1
Isis Unveiled Homepage