Isis Unveiled by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 1
Theosophical University Press Online Edition
[[Vol. 1, Page 205]]
CHAPTER VII.
"Thou great First Cause, least understood." -- POPE.
"Whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?
Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror
Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself, and startles at destruction?
'Tis the divinity that stirs within us;
'Tis heaven itself that points out our hereafter
And intimates eternity to man.
ETERNITY! Thou pleasing, dreadful thought!"
-- ADDISON.
"There is another and a better world." -- KOTZEBUE:
The Stranger.
AFTER according so much space to the conflicting
opinions of our men of science about certain occult phenomena
of our modern period, it is but just that we give attention to
the speculations of mediaeval alchemists and certain other illustrious
men. Almost without exception, ancient and mediaeval scholars
believed in the arcane doctrines of wisdom. These included Alchemy,
the Chaldeo-Jewish Kabala, the esoteric systems of Pythagoras
and the old Magi, and those of the later Platonic philosophers
and theurgists. We also propose in subsequent pages to treat of
the Indian gymnosophists and the Chaldean astrologers. We must
not neglect to show the grand truths underlying the misunderstood
religions of the past. The four elements of our fathers, earth,
air, water, and fire, contain for the student of alchemy and ancient
psychology -- or as it is now termed, magic -- many things
of which our philosophy has never dreamed. We must not forget
that what is now called Necromancy by the Church, and
Spiritualism by modern believers, and that includes the
evoking of departed spirits, is a science which has, from remote
antiquity, been almost universally diffused over the face of the
globe.
Although neither an alchemist, magician, nor astrologer, but simply
a great philosopher, Henry More, of Cambridge University -- a
man universally esteemed, may be named as a shrewd logician, scientist,
and metaphysician. His belief in witchcraft was firm throughout
his life. His faith in immortality and able arguments in demonstration
of the survival of man's spirit after death are all based on the
Pythagorean system, adopted by Cardan, Van Helmont, and other
mystics. The infinite and
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 206 THE VEIL OF ISIS.
uncreated spirit that we usually call GOD, a
substance of the highest virtue and excellency, produced everything
else by emanative causality. God thus is the primary
substance, the rest, the secondary; if the former created matter
with a power of moving itself, he, the primary substance, is still
the cause of that motion as well as of the matter, and yet we
rightly say that it is matter which moves itself. "We may
define this kind of spirit we speak of to be a substance indiscernible,
that can move itself, that can penetrate, contract, and dilate
itself, and can also penetrate, move, and alter matter,"*
which is the third emanation. He firmly believed in apparitions,
and stoutly defended the theory of the individuality of every
soul in which "personality, memory, and conscience will surely
continue in the future state." He divided the astral spirit
of man after its exit from the body into two distinct entities:
the "aerial" and the "aethereal vehicle."
During the time that a disembodied man moves in its aerial clothing,
he is subject to Fate -- i.e., evil and temptation,
attached to its earthly interests, and therefore is not utterly
pure; it is only when he casts off this garb of the first spheres
and becomes ethereal that he becomes sure of his immortality.
"For what shadow can that body cast that is a pure and transparent
light, such as the ethereal vehicle is? And therefore that oracle
is then fulfilled, when the soul has ascended into that condition
we have already described, in which alone it is out of the reach
of fate and mortality." He concludes his work by stating
that this transcendent and divinely-pure condition was the only
aim of the Pythagoreans.
As to the skeptics of his age, his language is contemptuous and
severe. Speaking of Scot, Adie, and Webster, he terms them "our
new inspired saints . . . sworn advocates of the witches, who
thus madly and boldly, against all sense and reason, against all
antiquity, all interpreters, and against the Scripture itself,
will have even no Samuel in the scene, but a confederate knave!
Whether the Scripture, or these inblown buffoons, puffed up with
nothing but ignorance, vanity, and stupid infidelity, are to be
believed, let any one judge," he adds.**
What kind of language would this eminent divine have used against
our skeptics of the nineteenth century?
Descartes, although a worshipper of matter, was one of the most
devoted teachers of the magnetic doctrine and, in a certain sense,
even of Alchemy. His system of physics was very much like that
of other great philosophers. Space, which is infinite, is composed,
or rather filled up with a fluid and elementary matter, and is
the sole fountain of all life,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Antidote," lib. i., cap. 4.
** "Letter to Glanvil, the author of 'Sadducismus Triumphatus,'
May, 25, 1678."
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 207 THE NOSE CUT FROM A PORTER'S BACK.
enclosing all the celestial globes and keeping them in perpetual
motion. The magnet-streams of Mesmer are disguised by him into
the Cartesian vortices, and both rest on the same principle. Ennemoser
does not hesitate to say that both have more in common "than
people suppose, who have not carefully examined the subject."*
The esteemed philosopher, Pierre Poiret Naude, was the warmest
defender of the doctrines of occult magnetism and its first propounders,**
in 1679. The magico-theosophical philosophy is fully vindicated
in his works.
The well-known Dr. Hufeland has written a work on magic*** in
which he propounds the theory of the universal magnetic sympathy
between men, animals, plants, and even minerals. The testimony
of Campanella, Van Helmont, and Servius, is confirmed by him in
relation to the sympathy existing between the different parts
of the body as well as between the parts of all organic and even
inorganic bodies.
Such also was the doctrine of Tenzel Wirdig. It may even be found
expounded in his works, with far more clearness, logic, and vigor,
than in those of other mystical authors who have treated of the
same subject. In his famous treatise, The New Spiritual Medicine,
he demonstrates, on the ground of the later-accepted fact
of universal attraction and repulsion -- now called "gravitation"
-- that the whole nature is ensouled. Wirdig calls this
magnetic sympathy "the accordance of spirits." Everything
is drawn to its like, and converges with natures congenial to
itself. Out of this sympathy and antipathy arises a constant movement
in the whole world, and in all its parts, and uninterrupted communion
between heaven and earth, which produces universal harmony. Everything
lives and perishes through magnetism; one thing affects another
one, even at great distances, and its "congenitals"
may be influenced to health and disease by the power of this sympathy,
at any time, and notwithstanding the intervening space.**** "Hufeland,"
says Ennemoser, "gives the account of a nose which had been
cut from the back of a porter, but which, when the porter died,
died too and fell off from its artificial position. A piece of
skin," adds Hufeland, "taken from a living head, had
its hair turn gray at the same time as that on the head from which
it was taken."*****
Kepler, the forerunner of Newton in many great truths, even in
that of the universal "gravitation" which he very justly
attributed to magnetic attraction, notwithstanding that he terms
astrology "the insane daughter of a most wise mother"
-- Astronomy, shares the kabalistic belief
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "History of Magic," vol. ii., p. 272.
** "Apologie pour tous les grands personnages faussement
accuses de magie."
*** Berlin, 1817.
**** "Nova Medicina Spirituum," 1675.
***** "History of Magic."
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 208 THE VEIL OF ISIS.
that the spirits of the stars are so many "intelligences."
He firmly believes that each planet is the seat of an intelligent
principle, and that they are all inhabited by spiritual beings,
who exercise influences over other beings inhabiting more gross
and material spheres than their own and especially our earth.*
As Kepler's spiritual starry influences were superseded
by the vortices of the more materialistic Descartes, whose atheistical
tendencies did not prevent him from believing that he had found
out a diet that would prolong his life five hundred years and
more, so the vortices of the latter and his astronomical doctrines
may some day give place to the intelligent magnetic streams
which are directed by the Anima Mundi.
Baptista Porta, the learned Italian philosopher, notwithstanding
his endeavors to show to the world the groundlessness of their
accusations of magic being a superstition and sorcery, was treated
by later critics with the same unfairness as his colleagues. This
celebrated alchemist left a work on Natural Magic,**
in which he bases all of the occult phenomena possible to
man upon the world-soul which binds all with all. He shows that
the astral light acts in harmony and sympathy with all nature;
that it is the essence out of which our spirits are formed; and
that by acting in unison with their parent-source, our sidereal
bodies are rendered capable of producing magic wonders. The whole
secret depends on our knowledge of kindred elements. He believed
in the philosopher's stone, "of which the world hath so great
an opinion of, which hath been bragged of in so many ages and
happily attained unto by some." Finally,
he throws out many valuable hints as to its "spiritual meaning."
In 1643, there appeared among the mystics a monk, Father Kircher,
who taught a complete philosophy of universal magnetism. His numerous
works*** embrace many of the subjects merely hinted at by Paracelsus.
His definition of magnetism is very original, for he contradicted
Gilbert's theory that the earth was a great magnet. He asserted
that although every particle of matter, and even the intangible
invisible "powers" were magnetic, they did not themselves
constitute a magnet. There is but one MAGNET in the
universe, and from it proceeds the magnetization of everything
existing. This magnet is of course what the kabalists term
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* It would be a useless and too long labor to enter here upon
the defence of Kepler's theory of relation between the five regular
solids of geometry and the magnitudes of the orbits of five principal
planets, rather derided by Prof. Draper in his "Conflict."
Many are the theories of the ancients that have been avenged by
modern discovery. For the rest, we must bide our time.
** "Magia Naturalis," Lugduni, 1569.
*** Athanasius Kircher: "Magnes sive de arte magnetici, opus
tripartitum." Coloniae, 1654.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 209 ATTRACTIONS AND ANTIPATHIES IN PLANTS.
the central Spiritual Sun, or God. The sun, moon, planets, and
stars he affirmed are highly magnetic; but they have become so
by induction from living in the universal magnetic fluid -- the
Spiritual light. He proves the mysterious sympathy existing between
the bodies of the three principal kingdoms of nature, and strengthens
his argument by a stupendous catalogue of instances. Many of these
were verified by naturalists, but still more have remained unauthenticated;
therefore, according to the traditional policy and very equivocal
logic of our scientists, they are denied. For instance, he shows
a difference between mineral magnetism and zoomagnetism, or animal
magnetism. He demonstrates it in the fact that except in the case
of the lodestone all the minerals are magnetized by the higher
potency, the animal magnetism, while the latter enjoys it as the
direct emanation from the first cause -- the Creator. A needle
can be magnetized by simply being held in the hand of a strong-willed
man, and amber develops its powers more by the friction of the
human hand than by any other object; therefore man can impart
his own life, and, to a certain degree, animate inorganic
objects. This, "in the eyes of the foolish, is sorcery."
"The sun is the most magnetic of all bodies," he says;
thus anticipating the theory of General Pleasonton by more than
two centuries. "The ancient philosophers never denied the
fact," he adds; "but have at all times perceived that
the sun's emanations were binding all things to itself, and that
it imparts this binding power to everything falling under its
direct rays."
As a proof of it he brings the instance of a number of plants
being especially attracted to the sun, and others to the moon,
and showing their irresistible sympathy to the former by following
its course in the heavens. The plant known as the Githymal,*
faithfully follows its sovereign, even when it is invisible
on account of the fog. The acacia uncloses its petals at its rising,
and closes them at its setting. So does the Egyptian lotos and
the common sunflower. The nightshade exhibits the same predilection
for the moon.
As examples of antipathies or sympathies among plants, he instances
the aversion which the vine feels for the cabbage, and its fondness
toward the olive-tree; the love of the ranunculus for the water-lily,
and of the rue for the fig. The antipathy which sometimes exists
even among kindred substances is clearly demonstrated in the case
of the Mexican pomegranate, whose shoots, when cut to pieces,
repel each other with the "most extraordinary ferocity."
Kircher accounts for every feeling in human nature as results
of changes in our magnetic condition. Anger, jealousy, friendship,
love, and
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Lib. iii., p. 643.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 210 THE VEIL OF ISIS.
hatred, are all modifications of the magnetic atmosphere which
is developed in us and constantly emanates from us. Love is one
of the most variable, and therefore the aspects of it are numberless.
Spiritual love, that of a mother for her child, of an artist for
some particular art, love as pure friendship, are purely magnetic
manifestations of sympathy in congenial natures. The magnetism
of pure love is the originator of every created thing. In
its ordinary sense love between the sexes is electricity, and
he calls it amor febris species, the fever of species.
There are two kinds of magnetic attraction: sympathy and fascination;
the one holy and natural, the other evil and unnatural. To the
latter, fascination, we must attribute the power of the poisonous
toad, which upon merely opening its mouth, forces the passing
reptile or insect to run into it to its destruction. The deer,
as well as smaller animals, are attracted by the breath of the
boa, and are made irresistibly to come within its reach. The electric
fish, the torpedo, repels the arm with a shock that for a time
benumbs it. To exercise such a power for beneficent purposes,
man requires three conditions: 1, nobility of soul; 2, strong
will and imaginative faculty; 3, a subject weaker than the magnetizer;
otherwise he will resist. A man free from worldly incentives and
sensuality, may cure in such a way the most "incurable"
diseases, and his vision may become clear and prophetic.
A curious instance of the above-mentioned universal attraction
between all the bodies of the planetary system and everything
organic as well as inorganic pertaining to them, is found in a
quaint old volume of the seventeenth century. It contains notes
of travel and an official report to the King of France, by his
Ambassador, de la Loubere, upon what he has seen in the kingdom
of Siam. "At Siam," he says, "there are two species
of fresh-water fish, which they respectively call pal-out
and pla-cadi fish. Once salted and placed uncut
(whole) in the pot, they are found to exactly follow the flux
and reflux of the sea, growing higher and lower in the pot as
the sea ebbs or flows."* De la Loubere experimented with
this fish for a long time, together with a government engineer,
named Vincent, and, therefore, vouches for the truth of this assertion,
which at first had been dismissed as an idle fable. So powerful
is this mysterious attraction that it affected the fishes even
when their bodies became totally rotten and fell to pieces.
It is especially in the countries unblessed with civilization
that we should seek for an explanation of the nature, and observe
the effects of that subtile power, which ancient philosophers
called the "world's soul."
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Notes from a New Historical Relation of the Kingdom of
Siam," by de la Louere, French Ambassador to Siam in the
years 1687-8. Edition of 1692.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 211 THE COLOR-INSTINCT OF THE CASHMERE GIRLS.
In the East only, and on the boundless tracts of unexplored Africa,
will the student of psychology find abundant food for his truth-hungering
soul. The reason is obvious. The atmosphere in populous neighborhoods
is badly vitiated by the smoke and fumes of manufactories, steam-engines,
railroads, and steamboats, and especially by the miasmatic exhalations
of the living and the dead. Nature is as dependent as a human
being upon conditions before she can work, and her mighty breathing,
so to say, can be as easily interfered with, impeded, and arrested,
and the correlation of her forces destroyed in a given spot, as
though she were a man. Not only climate, but also occult influences
daily felt not only modify the physio-psychological nature of
man, but even alter the constitution of so-called inorganic matter
in a degree not fairly realized by European science. Thus the
London Medical and Surgical Journal advises surgeons
not to carry lancets to Calcutta, because it has been found by
personal experience "that English steel could not bear the
atmosphere of India"; so a bunch of English or American keys
will be completely covered with rust twenty-four hours after having
been brought to Egypt; while objects made of native steel in those
countries remain unoxidized. So, too, it has been found that a
Siberian Shaman who has given stupendous proofs of his occult
powers among his native Tschuktschen, is gradually and often completely
deprived of such powers when coming into smoky and foggy London.
Is the inner organism of man less sensitive to climatic influences
than a bit of steel? If not, then why should we cast doubt upon
the testimony of travellers who may have seen the Shaman, day
after day, exhibit phenomena of the most astounding character
in his native country, and deny the possibility of such powers
and such phenomena, only because he cannot do as much in London
or Paris? In his lecture on the Lost Arts, Wendell Phillips
proves that besides the psychological nature of man being affected
by a change of climate, Oriental people have physical senses far
more acute than the Europeans. The French dyers of Lyons, whom
no one can surpass in skill, he says, "have a theory that
there is a certain delicate shade of blue that Europeans cannot
see. . . . And in Cashmere, where the girls make shawls worth
$30,000, they will show him (the dyer of Lyons) three hundred
distinct colors, which he not only cannot make, but cannot
even distinguish." If there is such a vast difference
between the acuteness of the external senses of two races, why
should there not be the same in their psychological powers? Moreover,
the eye of a Cashmere girl is able to see objectively
a color which does exist, but which being inappreciable by the
European, is therefore non-existent for him. Why then not concede,
that some peculiarly-endowed organisms, which are thought to be
possessed of that mysterious faculty called second sight,
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 212 THE VEIL OF ISIS.
see their pictures as objectively as the girl sees the colors;
and that therefore the former, instead of mere objective hallucinations
called forth by imagination are, on the contrary, reflections
of real things and persons impressed upon the astral ether, as
explained by the old philosophy of the Chaldean Oracles, and
surmised by those modern discoverers, Babbage, Jevons, and the
authors of the Unseen Universe?
"Three spirits live and actuate man," teaches Paracelsus;
"three worlds pour their beams upon him; but all three only
as the image and echo of one and the same all-constructing and
uniting principle of production. The first is the spirit of the
elements (terrestrial body and vital force in its brute condition);
the second, the spirit of the stars (sidereal or astral body --
the soul); the third is the Divine spirit (Augoeides)."
Our human body, being possessed of "primeval earth-stuff,"
as Paracelsus calls it, we may readily accept the tendency of
modern scientific research "to regard the processes of both
animal and vegetable life as simply physical and chemical."
This theory only the more corroborates the assertions of old philosophers
and the Mosaic Bible, that from the dust of the ground
our bodies were made, and to dust they will return. But we must
remember that
" 'Dust thou art, to dust returnest,'
Was not spoken of the soul."
Man is a little world -- a microcosm inside the great universe.
Like a foetus, he is suspended, by all his three spirits,
in the matrix of the macrocosmos; and while his terrestrial body
is in constant sympathy with its parent earth, his astral soul
lives in unison with the sidereal anima mundi. He is
in it, as it is in him, for the world-pervading element fills
all space, and is space itself, only shoreless and infinite.
As to his third spirit, the divine, what is it but an infinitesimal
ray, one of the countless radiations proceeding directly from
the Highest Cause -- the Spiritual Light of the World? This is
the trinity of organic and inorganic nature -- the spiritual and
the physical, which are three in one, and of which Proclus says
that "The first monad is the Eternal God; the second, eternity;
the third, the paradigm, or pattern of the universe"; the
three constituting the Intelligible Triad. Everything in this
visible universe is the outflow of this Triad, and a microcosmic
triad itself. And thus they move in majestic procession in the
fields of eternity, around the spiritual sun, as in the heliocentric
system the celestial bodies move round the visible suns. The Pythagorean
Monad, which lives "in solitude and darkness,"
may remain on this earth forever invisible, impalpable, and undemonstrated
by experimental science. Still the whole universe will be gravitating
around it, as it did from the "beginning of time," and
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 213 THE TALAPOIN OF SIAM.
with every second, man and atom approach nearer to that solemn
moment in the eternity, when the Invisible Presence will become
clear to their spiritual sight. When every particle of matter,
even the most sublimated, has been cast off from the last shape
that forms the ultimate link of that chain of double evolution
which, throughout millions of ages and successive transformations,
has pushed the entity onward; and when it shall find itself reclothed
in that primordial essence, identical with that of its Creator,
then this once impalpable organic atom will have run its race,
and the sons of God will once more "shout for joy" at
the return of the pilgrim.
"Man," says Van Helmont, "is the mirror of the
universe, and his triple nature stands in relationship to all
things." The will of the Creator, through which all things
were made and received their first impulse, is the property of
every living being. Man, endowed with an additional spirituality,
has the largest share of it on this planet. It depends on the
proportion of matter in him whether he will exercise its magical
faculty with more or less success. Sharing this divine potency
in common with every inorganic atom, he exercises it through the
course of his whole life, whether consciously or otherwise. In
the former case, when in the full possession of his powers, he
will be the master, and the magnale magnum (the universal
soul) will be controlled and guided by him. In the cases of animals,
plants, minerals, and even of the average of humanity, this ethereal
fluid which pervades all things, finding no resistance, and being
left to itself, moves them as its impulse directs. Every created
being in this sublunary sphere, is formed out of the magnale
magnum, and is related to it. Man possesses a double celestial
power, and is allied to heaven. This power is "not only in
the outer man, but to a degree also in the animals, and perhaps
in all other things, as all things in the universe stand in a
relation to each other; or, at least, God is in all things, as
the ancients have observed it with a worthy correctness. It is
necessary that the magic strength should be awakened in the outer
as well as in the inner man. . . . And if we call this a magic
power, the uninstructed only can be terrified by the expression.
But, if you prefer it, you can call it a spiritual power --
spirituale robur vocitaveris. There is, therefore, such magic
power in the inner man. But, as there exists a certain relationship
between the inner and the outer man, this strength must be diffused
through the whole man."*
In an extended description of the religious rites, monastic life,
and "superstitions" of the Siamese, de la Loubere cites
among other things the wonderful power possessed by the Talapoin
(the monks, or the holy
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Baptist Van Helmont: "Opera Omnia," 1682, p. 720,
and others.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 214 THE VEIL OF ISIS.
men of Buddha) over the wild beasts. "The Talapoin of Siam,"
he says, "will pass whole weeks in the dense woods under
a small awning of branches and palm leaves, and never make a fire
in the night to scare away the wild beasts, as all other people
do who travel through the woods of this country." The people
consider it a miracle that no Talapoin is ever devoured. The tigers,
elephants, and rhinoceroses -- with which the neighborhood abounds
-- respect him; and travellers placed in secure ambuscade have
often seen these wild beasts lick the hands and feet of the sleeping
Talapoin. "They all use magic," adds the French gentleman,
"and think all nature animated (ensouled);* they believe
in tutelar geniuses." But that which seems to shock the author
most is the idea which prevails among the Siamese, "that
all that man was in his bodily life, he will be after death."
"When the Tartar, which now reigns at China," remarks
de la Loubere, "would force the Chinese to shave their hair
after the Tartarian fashion, several of them chose rather to suffer
death than to go, they said, into the other world and appear before
their ancestors without hair; imagining that they shaved the head
of the soul also!"** "Now, what is altogether impertinent,"
adds the Ambassador, "in this absurd opinion is, that the
Orientals attribute the human figure rather than any other to
the soul." Without enlightening his reader as to the particular
shape these benighted Orientals ought to select for their disembodied
souls, de la Loubere proceeds to pour out his wrath on these "savages."
Finally, he attacks the memory of the old king of Siam, the father
of the one to whose court he was sent, by accusing him of having
foolishly spent over two million livres in search of the philosopher's
stone. "The Chinese," he says, "reputed so wise,
have for three or four thousand years had the folly of believing
in the existence, and of seeking out a universal remedy by which
they hope to exempt themselves from the necessity of dying. They
base themselves on some foolish traditions, concerning some rare
persons that are reported to have made gold, and to have lived
some ages; there are some very strongly established facts among
the Chinese, the Siamese, and other Orientals, concerning those
that know how to render themselves immortal, either absolutely,
or in such a manner that they can die no otherwise than by violent
death.*** Wherefore, they name some persons who have withdrawn
themselves from the sight of men to enjoy free and peaceable life.
They relate wonders concerning the knowledge of these pretended
immortals."
If Descartes, a Frenchman and a scientist, could, in the midst
of civilization, firmly believe that such a universal remedy had
been found,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* De la Loubere: "Notes," etc. (see ante),
p. 115.
** Ibid., p. 120.
*** Ibid., p. 63.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 215 THE MAGICAL POWER OF MUSIC.
and that if possessed of it he could live at least five hundred
years, why are not the Orientals entitled to the same belief?
The master-problems of both life and death are still unsolved
by occidental physiologists. Even sleep is a phenomenon about
whose cause there is a great divergence of opinion among them.
How, then, can they pretend to set limits to the possible, and
define the impossible?
From the remotest ages the philosophers have maintained the singular
power of music over certain diseases, especially of the nervous
class. Kircher recommends it, having experienced its good effects
in himself, and he gives an elaborate description of the instrument
he employed. It was a harmonica composed of five tumblers of a
very thin glass, placed in a row. In two of them were two different
varieties of wine; in the third, brandy; in the fourth, oil; in
the fifth, water. He extracted five melodious sounds from them
in the usual way, by merely rubbing his finger on the edges of
the tumblers. The sound has an attractive property; it draws out
disease, which streams out to encounter the musical wave, and
the two, blending together, disappear in space. Asclepiades employed
music for the same purpose, some twenty centuries ago; he blew
a trumpet to cure sciatica, and its prolonged sound making the
fibres of the nerves to palpitate, the pain invariably subsided.
Democritus in like manner affirmed that many diseases could be
cured by the melodious sounds of a flute. Mesmer used this very
harmonica described by Kircher for his magnetic cures. The celebrated
Scotchman, Maxwell, offered to prove to various medical faculties
that with certain magnetic means at his disposal, he would cure
any of the diseases abandoned by them as incurable; such as epilepsy,
impotence, insanity, lameness, dropsy, and the most obstinate
fevers.*
The familiar story of the exorcism of the "evil spirit from
God" that obsessed Saul, will recur to every one in this
connection. It is thus related: "And it came to pass, when
the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took an harp,
and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well,
and the evil spirit departed from him."**
Maxwell, in his Medicina Magnetica, expounds the following
propositions, all which are the very doctrines of the alchemists
and kabalists.
"That which men call the world-soul, is a life, as fire,
spiritual, fleet, light, and ethereal as light itself. It is a
life-spirit everywhere; and everywhere the same. . . . All matter
is destitute of action, except as it is ensouled by this spirit.
This spirit maintains all things in their peculiar condition.
It is found in nature free from all fetters; and he
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See his "Conf.," xiii., 1. c. in praefatione.
** I Samuel, xvi., 14-23.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 216 THE VEIL OF ISIS.
who understands how to unite it with a harmonizing body, possesses
a treasure which exceeds all riches."
"This spirit is the common bond of all quarters of the earth,
and lives through and in all -- adest in mundo quid commune
omnibus mextis, in quo ipsa permanent."
"He who knows this universal life-spirit and its application
can prevent all injuries."*
"If thou canst avail thyself of this spirit and fix it on
some particular body thou wilt perform the mystery of magic."
"He who knows how to operate on men by this universal spirit,
can heal, and this at any distance that he pleases."**
"He who can invigorate the particular spirit through the
universal one, might continue his life to eternity."***
"There is a blending together of spirits, or of emanations,
even when they are far separated from each other. And what is
this blending together? It is an eternal and incessant outpouring
of the rays of one body into another."
"In the meantime," says Maxwell, "it is not without
danger to treat of this. Many abominable abuses of this may
take place."
And now let us see what are these abuses of mesmeric and magnetic
powers in some healing mediums.
Healing, to deserve the name, requires either faith in the patient,
or robust health united with a strong will, in the operator. With
expectancy supplemented by faith, one can cure himself of almost
any morbific condition. The tomb of a saint; a holy relic;
a talisman; a bit of paper or a garment that has been handled
by the supposed healer; a nostrum; a penance, or a ceremonial;
the laying on of hands, or a few words impressively pronounced
-- either will do. It is a question of temperament, imagination,
self-cure. In thousands of instances, the doctor, the priest,
or the relic has had credit for healings that were solely and
simply due to the patient's unconscious will. The woman with the
bloody issue who pressed through the throng to touch the robe
of Jesus, was told that her "faith" had made her whole.
The influence of mind over the body is so powerful that it has
effected miracles at all ages.
"How many unhoped-for, sudden, and prodigious cures have
been effected by imagination," says Salverte. "Our medical
books are filled with facts of this nature which would easily
pass for miracles."****
But, if the patient has no faith, what then? If he is physically
nega-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Aphorisms," 22.
** Ibid., p. 69.
*** Ibid., p. 70.
**** "Philosophie des Sciences Occultes."
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 217 THE VAMPIRISM OF SOME HEALING-MEDIUMS.
tive and receptive, and the healer strong, healthy, positive,
determined, the disease may be extirpated by the imperative will
of the operator, which, consciously or unconsciously, draws to
and reinforces itself with the universal spirit of nature, and
restores the disturbed equilibrium of the patient's aura. He may
employ as an auxiliary, a crucifix -- as Gassner did; or impose
the hands and "will," like the French Zouave Jacob,
like our celebrated American, Newton, the healer of many thousands
of sufferers, and like many others; or like Jesus, and some apostles,
he may cure by the word of command. The process in each case is
the same.
In all these instances, the cure is radical and real, and without
secondary ill-effects. But, when one who is himself physically
diseased, attempts healing, he not only fails of that, but often
imparts his illness to his patient, and robs him of what strength
he may have. The decrepit King David reinforced his failing vigor
with the healthy magnetism of the young Abishag;* and the medical
works tell us of an aged lady of Bath, England, who broke down
the constitutions of two maids in succession, in the same way.
The old sages, and Paracelsus also, removed disease by applying
a healthy organism to the afflicted part, and in the works of
the above-said fire-philosopher, their theory is boldly and categorically
set forth. If a diseased person -- medium or not -- attempts to
heal, his force may be sufficiently robust to displace the disease,
to disturb it in the present place, and cause it to shift to another,
where shortly it will appear; the patient, meanwhile, thinking
himself cured.
But, what if the healer be morally diseased? The consequences
may be infinitely more mischievous; for it is easier to cure a
bodily disease than cleanse a constitution infected with moral
turpitude. The mystery of Morzine, Cevennes, and that of the Jansenists,
is still as great a mystery for physiologists as for psychologists.
If the gift of prophecy, as well as hysteria and convulsions,
can be imparted by "infection," why not every vice?
The healer, in such a case, conveys to his patient -- who is now
his victim -- the moral poison that infects his own mind and heart.
His magnetic touch is defilement; his glance, profanation. Against
this insidious taint, there is no protection for the passively-receptive
subject. The healer holds him under his power, spell-bound and
powerless, as the serpent holds a poor, weak bird. The evil that
one such "healing medium" can effect is incalculably
great; and such healers there are by the hundred.
But, as we have said before, there are real and God-like healers,
who, notwithstanding all the malice and skepticism of their bigoted
opponents,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* I Kings, i. 1-4, 15.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 218 THE VEIL OF ISIS.
have become famous in the world's history. Such are the Cure d'Ars,
of Lyons, Jacob, and Newton. Such, also, were Gassner, the clergyman
of Klorstele, and the well-known Valentine Greatrakes, the ignorant
and poor Irishman, who was endorsed by the celebrated Robert Boyle,
President of the Royal Society of London, in 1670. In 1870, he
would have been sent to Bedlam, in company with other healers,
if another president of the same society had had the disposal
of the case, or Professor Lankester would have "summoned"
him under the Vagrant Act for practicing upon Her Majesty's
subjects "by palmistry or otherwise."
But, to close a list of witnesses which might be extended indefinitely,
it will suffice to say that, from first to last, from Pythagoras
down to Eliphas Levi, from highest to humblest, every one teaches
that the magical power is never possessed by those addicted
to vicious indulgences. Only the pure in heart "see
God," or exercise divine gifts -- only such can heal the
ills of the body, and allow themselves, with relative security,
to be guided by the "invisible powers." Such only can
give peace to the disturbed spirits of their brothers and sisters,
for the healing waters come from no poisonous source; grapes do
not grow on thorns, and thistles bear no figs. But, for all this,
"magic has nothing supernal in it"; it is a science,
and even the power of "casting out devils" was a branch
of it, of which the Initiates made a special study. "That
skill which expels demons out of human bodies, is a science useful
and sanative to men," says Josephus.*
The foregoing sketches are sufficient to show why we hold fast
to the wisdom of the ages, in preference to any new theories that
may have been hatched from the occurrences of our later days,
respecting the laws of intermundane intercourse and the occult
powers of man. While phenomena of a physical nature may have their
value as a means of arousing the interest of materialists, and
confirming, if not wholly, at least inferentially, our belief
in the survival of our souls and spirits, it is questionable whether,
under their present aspect, the modern phenomena are not doing
more harm than good. Many minds, hungering after proofs of immortality,
are fast falling into fanaticism; and, as Stow remarks, "fanatics
are governed rather by imagination than judgment."
Undoubtedly, believers in the modern phenomena can claim for themselves
a diversity of endowments, but the "discerning of spirits"
is evidently absent from this catalogue of "spiritual"
gifts. Speaking of the "Diakka," whom he one fine morning
had discovered in a shady corner of the "Summer Land,"
A. J. Davis, the great American seer, remarks: "A Diakka
is one who takes insane delight in playing parts, in
juggling
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Josephus: "Antiquities," viii., 2.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 219 THE DIAKKA, AND PORPHYRY'S BAD DEMONS.
tricks, in personating opposite characters;
to whom prayer and profane utterances are of equi-value; surcharged
with a passion for lyrical narrations; . . . morally deficient,
he is without the active feelings of justice, philanthropy, or
tender affection. He knows nothing of what men call the sentiment
of gratitude; the ends of hate and love are the same to him; his
motto is often fearful and terrible to others -- SELF
is the whole of private living, and exalted annihilation the
end of all private life.* Only yesterday, one said to a lady
medium, signing himself Swedenborg, this: 'Whatsoever
is, has been, will be, or may be, that I AM;
and private life is but the aggregative phantasms of thinking
throblets, rushing in their rising onward to the central heart
of eternal death!' "**
Porphyry, whose works -- to borrow the expression of an irritated
phenomenalist -- "are mouldering like every other antiquated
trash in the closets of oblivion," speaks thus of these Diakka
-- if such be their name -- rediscovered in the nineteenth century:
"It is with the direct help of these bad demons, that every
kind of sorcery is accomplished . . . it is the result of their
operations, and men who injure their fellow-creatures by enchantments,
usually pay great honors to these bad demons, and especially to
their chief. These spirits pass their time in deceiving us, with
a great display of cheap prodigies and illusions; their
ambition is to be taken for gods, and their leader demands to
be recognized as the supreme god."***
The spirit signing himself Swedenborg -- just quoted from Davis's
Diakka, and hinting that he is the I
AM, singularly resembles this chief leader of Porphyry's bad demons.
What more natural than this vilification of the ancient and experienced
theurgists by certain mediums, when we find Iamblichus, the expositor
of spiritualistic theurgy, strictly forbidding all endeavors to
procure such phenomenal manifestations; unless, after a long preparation
of moral and physical purification, and under the guidance of
experienced theurgists. When, furthermore, he declares that, with
very few exceptions, for a person "to appear
elongated or thicker, or be borne aloft in the air,"
is a sure mark of obsession by bad demons.****
Everything in this world has its time, and truth, however based
upon unimpeachable evidence, will not root or grow, unless, like
a plant, it is thrown into soil in its proper season. "The
age must be prepared,"
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "The Diakka and their Victims; an Explanation of the False
and Repulsive in Spiritualism."
** See Chapter on the human spirits becoming the denizens of the
eighth sphere, whose end is generally the annihilation
of personal individuality.
*** Porphyry: "On the Good and Bad Demons."
**** "De Mysteriis Egyptorum," lib. iii., c. 5.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 220 THE VEIL OF ISIS.
says Professor Cooke; and some thirty years ago this humble work
would have been doomed to self-destruction by its own contents.
But the modern phenomenon, notwithstanding the daily exposes,
the ridicule with which it is crowned at the hand of every
materialist, and its own numerous errors, grows and waxes strong
in facts, if not in wisdom and spirit. What would have appeared
twenty years ago simply preposterous, may well be listened to
now that the phenomena are endorsed by great scientists. Unfortunately,
if the manifestations increase in power daily, there is no corresponding
improvement in philosophy. The discernment of spirits is still
as wanting as ever.
Perhaps, among the whole body of spiritualist writers of our day,
not one is held in higher esteem for character, education, sincerity,
and ability, than Epes Sargent, of Boston, Massachusetts. His
monograph entitled The Proof Palpable of Immortality, deservedly
occupies a high rank among works upon the subject. With every
disposition to be charitable and apologetic for mediums and their
phenomena, Mr. Sargent is still compelled to use the following
language: "The power of spirits to reproduce simulacra of
persons who have passed from the earth-life, suggests the question
-- How far can we be assured of the identity of any spirit,
let the tests be what they may? We have not yet arrived at that
stage of enlightenment that would enable us to reply confidently
to this inquiry. . . . There is much that is yet a puzzle in the
language and action of this class of materialized spirits."
As to the intellectual calibre of most of the spirits which lurk
behind the physical phenomena, Mr. Sargent will unquestionably
be accepted as a most competent judge, and he says, "the
great majority, as in this world, are of the unintellectual sort."
If it is a fair question, we would like to ask why they should
be so lacking in intelligence, if they are human spirits? Either
intelligent human spirits cannot materialize, or, the
spirits that do materialize have not human intelligence, and,
therefore, by Mr. Sargent's own showing, they may just as well
be "elementary" spirits, who have ceased to be human
altogether, or those demons, which, according to the Persian Magi
and Plato, hold a middle rank between gods and disembodied men.
There is good evidence, that of Mr. Crookes for one, to show that
many "materialized" spirits talk in an audible voice.
Now, we have shown, on the testimony of ancients, that the voice
of human spirits is not and cannot be articulated; being,
as Emanuel Swedenborg declares, "a deep suspiration."
Who of the two classes of witnesses may be trusted more safely?
Is it the ancients who had the experience of so many ages in theurgical
practices, or modern spiritualists, who have had none at all,
and who have no facts upon which to base an opinion, except such
as have been communicated by "spirits," whose identity
they have no means
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 221 THE CHILD-PROPHETS OF CEVENNES.
of proving? There are mediums whose organisms have called out
sometimes hundreds of these would-be "human" forms.
And yet we do not recollect to have seen or heard of one expressing
anything but the most commonplace ideas. This fact ought surely
to arrest the attention of even the most uncritical spiritualist.
If a spirit can speak at all, and if the way is opened to intelligent
as well as to unintellectual beings, why should they not sometimes
give us addresses in some remote degree approximating in quality
to the communications we receive through the "direct writing"?
Mr. Sargent puts forward a very suggestive and important idea
in this sentence. "How far they are limited in their mental
operations and in their recollections by the act of materialization,
or how far by the intellectual horizon of the medium is still
a question."* If the same kind of "spirits" materialize
that produce the direct writing, and both manifest through mediums,
and the one talk nonsense, while the other often give us sublime
philosophical teachings, why should their mental operations be
limited "by the intellectual horizon of the medium"
in the one instance more than in the other? The materializing
mediums -- at least so far as our observation extends -- are no
more uneducated than many peasants and mechanics who at different
times have, under supernal influences, given profound and sublime
ideas to the world. The history of psychology teems with examples
in illustration of this point, among which that of Boehme, the
inspired but ignorant shoemaker, and our own Davis, are conspicuous.
As to the matter of unintellectuality we presume that no more
striking cases need be sought than those of the child-prophets
of Cevennes, poets and seers, such as have been mentioned in previous
chapters. When spirits have once furnished themselves with vocal
organs to speak at all, it surely ought to be no more difficult
for them to talk as persons of their assumed respective education,
intelligence, and social rank would in life, instead of falling
invariably into one monotonous tone of commonplace and, but too
often, platitude. As to Mr. Sargent's hopeful remark, that "the
science of Spiritualism being still in its infancy, we may hope
for more light on this question," we fear we must reply,
that it is not through "dark cabinets"
that this light will ever break.**
It is simply ridiculous and absurd to require from every investigator
who comes forward as a witness to the marvels of the day and psychological
phenomena the diploma of a master of arts and sciences. The experience
of the past forty years is an evidence that it is not always the
minds which are the most "scientifically trained" that
are the best in matters of simple common sense and honest truth.
Nothing blinds like
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Epes Sargent: "Proof Palpable of Immortality," p.
45.
** See Matthew xxiv. 26.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 222 THE VEIL OF ISIS.
fanaticism, or a one-sided view of a question. We may take as
an illustration Oriental magic or ancient spiritualism, as well
as the modern phenomena. Hundreds, nay thousands of perfectly
trustworthy witnesses, returning from residence and travels in
the East, have testified to the fact that uneducated fakirs, sheiks,
dervishes, and lamas have, in their presence, without confederates
or mechanical appliances, produced wonders. They have affirmed
that the phenomena exhibited by them were in contravention of
all the known laws of science, and thus tended to prove
the existence of many yet unknown occult potencies in nature,
seemingly directed by preterhuman intelligences. What has been
the attitude assumed by our scientists toward this subject? How
far did the testimony of the most "scientifically" trained
minds make impression on their own? Did the investigations of
Professors Hare and de Morgan, of Crookes and Wallace, de Gasparin
and Thury, Wagner and Butlerof, etc., shake for one moment their
skepticism? How were the personal experiences of Jacolliot with
the fakirs of India received, or the psychological elucidations
of Professor Perty, of Geneva, viewed? How far does the loud cry
of mankind, craving for palpable and demonstrated signs of a God,
an individual soul, and of eternity, affect them; and what is
their response? They pull down and destroy every vestige of spiritual
things, but they erect nothing. "We cannot get such signs
with either retorts or crucibles," they say; "hence,
it's all but a delusion!" In this age of cold reason and
prejudice, even the Church has to look to science for help. Creeds
built on sand, and high-towering but rootless dogmas, crumble
down under the cold breath of research, and pull down true
religion in their fall. But the longing for some outward sign
of a God and a life hereafter, remains as tenaciously as ever
in the human heart. In vain is all sophistry of science; it can
never stifle the voice of nature. Only her representatives have
poisoned the pure waters of simple faith, and now humanity mirrors
itself in waters made turbid with all the mud stirred up from
the bottom of the once pure spring. The anthropomorphic God of
our fathers is replaced by anthropomorphic monsters; and what
is still worse, by the reflection of humanity itself in these
waters, whose ripples send it back the distorted images of truth
and facts as evoked by its misguided imagination. "It is
not a miracle that we want," writes the Reverend Brooke Herford,
"but to find palpable evidence of the spiritual and the divine.
It is not to the prophets that men cry for such a 'sign,' but
rather to the scientists. Men feel as if all that groping about
in the foremost verge or innermost recesses of creation should
bring the investigator at length close to the deep, underlying
facts of all things, to some unmistakable signs of God."
The signs are there, and the scientists too; what can we expect
more of them, now
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 223 THE NEW GOD -- PROTOPLASM.
that they have done so well their duty? Have they not, these Titans
of thought, dragged down God from His hiding-place, and given
us instead a protoplasm?
At the Edinburgh meeting of the British Association, in 1871,
Sir William Thomson said: "Science is bound by the everlasting
law of honor to face fearlessly every problem which can fairly
be presented to it." In his turn, Professor Huxley remarks:
"With regard to the miracle-question, I can only say that
the word 'impossible' is not, to my mind, applicable to matters
of philosophy." The great Humboldt remarks that "a presumptuous
skepticism that rejects facts without examination of their truth
is, in some respects, more injurious than unquestioning credulity."
These men have proved untrue to their own teachings. The opportunity
afforded them by the opening of the Orient, to investigate for
themselves the phenomena alleged by every traveller to take place
in those countries, has been rejected. Did our physiologists and
pathologists ever so much as think of availing themselves of it
to settle this most momentous subject of human thought? Oh, no;
for they would never dare. It is not to be expected that the principal
Academicians of Europe and America should undertake a joint journey
to Thibet and India, and investigate the fakir marvel on the spot!
And were one of them to go as a solitary pilgrim and witness all
the miracles of creation, in that land of wonders, who, of his
colleagues, could be expected to believe his testimony?
It would be as tedious as superfluous to begin a restatement of
facts, so forcibly put by others, Mr. Wallace and W. Howitt,*
have repeatedly and cleverly described the thousand and one absurd
errors into which the learned societies of France and England
have fallen, through their blind skepticism. If Cuvier could throw
aside the fossil excavated in 1828 by Boue, the French geologist,
only because the anatomist thought himself wiser than his colleague,
and would not believe that human skeletons could be found eighty
feet deep in the mud of the Rhine; and if the French Academy could
discredit the assertions of Boucher de Perthes, in 1846, only
to be criticised in its turn in 1860, when the truth of de Perthes'
discoveries and observations was fully confirmed by the whole
body of geologists finding flint weapons in the drift-gravels
of northern France; and if McEnery's testimony, in 1825, to the
fact that he had discovered worked flints, together with the remains
of extinct animals, in Kent's Hole Cavern** was laughed at; and
that of
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See Wallace, "Miracles and Modern Spiritualism," and
W. Howitt, "History of the Supernatural," vol. ii.
** See Wallace's paper read before the Dialectical Society, in
1871: "Answer to Hume, etc."
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 224 THE VEIL OF ISIS.
Godwin Austen to the same effect, in 1840, ridiculed still more,
if that were possible; and all that excess of scientific skepticism
and merriment could, in 1865, finally come to grief, and be shown
to have been entirely uncalled for; when -- says Mr. Wallace "all
the previous reports for forty years were confirmed and shown
to be even less wonderful than the reality;" -- who can be
so credulous as to believe in the infallibility of our science?
And why wonder at the exhibition of such a lack of moral courage
in individual members of this great and stubborn body known as
modern science?
Thus fact after fact has been discredited. From all sides we hear
constant complaints. "Very little is known of psychology!"
sighs one F. R. S. "We must confess that we know little,
if anything, in physiology," says another. "Of all sciences,
there is none which rests upon so uncertain a basis as medicine,"
reluctantly testifies a third. "What do we know about the
presumed nervous fluids? . . . Nothing, as yet," puts in
a fourth one; and so on in every branch of science. And, meanwhile,
phenomena, surpassing in interest all others of nature, and to
be solved only by physiology, psychology, and the "as yet
unknown" fluids, are either rejected as delusions, or, if
even true, "do not interest" scientists. Or, what is
still worse, when a subject, whose organism exhibits
in itself the most important features of such occult though natural
potencies, offers his person for an investigation, instead of
an honest experiment being attempted with him he finds himself
entrapped by a scientist (?) and paid for his trouble with a sentence
of three months' imprisonment! This is indeed promising.
It is easy to comprehend that a fact given in 1731, testifying
to another fact which happened during the papacy of Paul III.,
for instance, is disbelieved in 1876. And when scientists are
told that the Romans preserved lights in their sepulchres for
countless years by the oiliness of gold; and that one
of such ever-burning lamps was found brightly burning in the tomb
of Tullia, the daughter of Cicero, notwithstanding that the tomb
had been shut up fifteen hundred and fifty years,* -- they have
a certain right to doubt, and even disbelieve the statement, until
they assure themselves, on the evidence of their own senses, that
such a thing is possible. In such a case they can reject the testimony
of all the ancient and medieval philosophers. The burial of living
fakirs and their subsequent resuscitation, after thirty days of
inhumation, may have a suspicious look to them. So also with the
self-infliction of mortal wounds, and the exhibition of their
own bowels to the persons present by various lamas, who heal such
wounds almost instantaneously.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* [["Philologos"]] (Bailey's), second edition.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 225 THE QUENCHLESS LAMPS OF ALCHEMY.
For certain men who deny the evidence of their own senses as to
phenomena produced in their own country, and before numerous witnesses,
the narratives to be found in classical books, and in the notes
of travellers, must of course seem absurd. But what we will never
be able to understand is the collective stubbornness of the Academies,
in the face of such bitter lessons in the past, to these institutions
which have so often "darkened counsel by words without knowledge."
Like the Lord answering Job "out of the whirlwind,"
magic can say to modern science: "Where wast thou when I
laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding!"
And, who art thou who dare say to nature, "Hitherto shalt
thou come, but no further; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed"?
But what matters it if they do deny? Can they prevent phenomena
taking place in the four corners of the world, if their skepticism
were a thousand times more bitter? Fakirs will still be buried
and resuscitated, gratifying the curiosity of European travellers;
and lamas and Hindu ascetics will wound, mutilate, and even disembowel
themselves, and find themselves all the better for it; and the
denials of the whole world will not blow sufficiently to extinguish
the perpetually-burning lamps in certain of the subterranean crypts
of India, Thibet, and Japan. One of such lamps is mentioned by
the Rev. S. Mateer, of the London Mission. In the temple of Trevandrum,
in the kingdom of Travancore, South India, "there is a deep
well inside the temple, into which immense riches are thrown year
by year, and in another place, in a hollow covered by a stone,
a great golden lamp, which was lit over 120 years ago, still continues
burning," says this missionary in his description of the
place. Catholic missionaries attribute these lamps, as a matter
of course, to the obliging services of the devil. The more prudent
Protestant divine mentions the fact, and makes no commentary.
The Abbe Huc has seen and examined one of such lamps, and so have
other people whose good luck it has been to win the confidence
and friendship of Eastern lamas and divines. No more can be denied
the wonders seen by Captain Lane in Egypt; the Benares experiences
of Jacolliot and those of Sir Charles Napier; the levitations
of human beings in broad daylight, and which can be accounted
for only on the explanation given in the Introductory chapter
of the present work.* Such levitations are testified to -- besides
Mr. Crookes -- by Professor Perty, who shows them produced in
open air, and lasting sometimes twenty minutes; all these phenomena
and many more have happened, do, and will happen in every country
of this globe, and that in spite of all the skeptics and scientists
that ever were evolved out of the Silurian mud.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See Art. on "AEthrobacy."
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 226 THE VEIL OF ISIS.
Among the ridiculed claims of alchemy is that of the perpetual
lamps. If we tell the reader that we have seen such, we may
be asked -- in case that the sincerity of our personal belief
is not questioned -- how we can tell that the lamps we have observed
are perpetual, as the period of our observation was but limited?
Simply that, as we know the ingredients employed, and the manner
of their construction, and the natural law applicable to the case,
we are confident that our statement can be corroborated upon investigation
in the proper quarter. What that quarter is, and from whom that
knowledge can be learned, our critics must discover, by taking
the pains we did. Meanwhile, however, we will quote a few of the
173 authorities who have written upon the subject. None of these,
as we recollect, have asserted that these sepulchral lamps would
burn perpetually, but only for an indefinite number of years,
and instances are recorded of their continuing alight for many
centuries. It will not be denied that, if there is a natural law
by which a lamp can be made without replenishment to burn ten
years, there is no reason why the same law could not cause the
combustion to continue one hundred or one thousand years.
Among the many well-known personages who firmly believed and strenuously
asserted that such sepulchral lamps burned for several hundreds
of years, and would have continued to burn may be forever,
had they not been extinguished, or the vessels broken by some
accident, we may reckon the following names: Clemens Alexandrinus,
Hermolaus Barbarus, Appian, Burattinus, Citesius, Coelius, Foxius,
Costaeus, Casalius, Cedrenus, Delrius, Ericius, Gesnerus, Jacobonus,
Leander, Libavius, Lazius, P. della Mirandola, Philalethes, Licetus,
Maiolus, Maturantius, Baptista Porta, Pancirollus, Ruscellius,
Scardeonius, Ludovicus Vives, Volateranus, Paracelsus, several
Arabian alchemists, and finally, Pliny, Solinus, Kircher, and
Albertus Magnus.
The discovery is claimed by the ancient Egyptians, those sons
of the Land of Chemistry.* At least, they were a people who used
these lamps far more than any other nation, on account of their
religious doctrines. The astral soul of the mummy was believed
to be lingering about the body for the whole space of the three
thousand years of the circle of necessity. Attached to it by a
magnetic thread, which could be broken but by its own exertion,
the Egyptians hoped that the ever-burning lamp, symbol of their
incorruptible and immortal spirit, would at last decide the more
material soul to part with its earthly dwelling, and unite forever
with its divine SELF. Therefore lamps were hung in the sepulchres
of the rich. Such lamps are often found in the subterranean caves
of the dead,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Psalm cv. 23. "The Land of Ham," or chem, Greek
[[chemi]], whence the terms alchemy and chemistry.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 227 THE WONDERFUL LAMP AT ATTESTE.
and Licetus has written a large folio to prove that in his time,
whenever a sepulchre was opened, a burning lamp was found within
the tomb, but was instantaneously extinguished on account of the
desecration. T. Livius, Burattinus, and Michael Schatta,
in their letters to Kircher,* affirm that they found many lamps
in the subterranean caves of old Memphis. Pausanias speaks of
the golden lamp in the temple of Minerva at Athens, which he says
was the workmanship of Callimachus, and burnt a whole year. Plutarch**
affirms that he saw one in the temple of Jupiter Amun, and that
the priests assured him that it had burnt continually for years,
and though it stood in the open air, neither wind nor water could
extinguish it. St. Augustine, the Catholic authority, also describes
a lamp in the fane of Venus, of the same nature as the others,
unextinguishable either by the strongest wind or by water. A lamp
was found at Edessa, says Kedrenus, "which, being hidden
at the top of a certain gate, burned 500 years." But of all
such lamps, the one mentioned by Olybius Maximus of Padua is by
far the more wonderful. It was found near Atteste, and Scardeonius***
gives a glowing description of it: "In a large earthen urn
was contained a lesser, and in that a burning lamp, which had
continued so for 1500 years, by means of a most pure liquor contained
in two bottles, one of gold and the other of silver. These are
in the custody of Franciscus Maturantius, and are by him valued
at an exceeding rate."
Taking no account of exaggerations, and putting aside as mere
unsupported negation the affirmation by modern science of the
impossibility of such lamps, we would ask whether, in case these
inextinguishable fires are found to have really existed in the
ages of "miracles," the lamps burning at Christian shrines
and those of Jupiter, Minerva, and other Pagan deities, ought
to be differently regarded. According to certain theologians,
it would appear that the former (for Christianity also claims
such lamps) have burned by a divine, miraculous power,
and that the light of the latter, made by "heathen"
art, was supported by the wiles of the devil. Kircher and Licetus
show that they were ordered in these two diverse ways. The lamp
at Antioch, which burned 1500 years, in an open and public place,
over the door of a church, was preserved by the "power
of God," who "hath made so infinite a
number of stars to burn with perpetual light." As to the
Pagan lamps, St. Augustine assures us they were the work of the
devil, "who deceives us in a thousand ways." What more
easy for Satan to do than represent a flash of light, or a bright
flame to them who first enter into such a subterranean cave? This
was as-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "OEdipi AEgyptiaci Theatrum Hieroglyphicum," p. 544.
** "Lib. de Defectu Oraculorum."
*** Lib. i., Class 3, Cap. ult.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 228 THE VEIL OF ISIS.
serted by all good Christians during the Papacy of Paul III.,
when upon opening a tomb in the Appian Way, at Rome, there was
found the entire body of a young girl swimming in a bright liquor
which had so well preserved it, that the face was beautiful and
like life itself. At her feet burned a lamp, whose flame vanished
upon opening the sepulchre. From some engraved signs it was found
to have been buried for over 1500 years, and supposed to have
been the body of Tulliola, or Tullia, Cicero's daughter.*
Chemists and physicists deny that perpetual lamps are possible,
alleging that whatever is resolved into vapor or smoke cannot
be permanent, but must consume; and as the oily nutriment of a
lighted lamp is exhaled into a vapor, hence the fire cannot be
perpetual for want of food. Alchemists, on the other hand, deny
that all the nourishment of kindled fire must of necessity be
converted into vapor. They say that there are things in nature
which will not only resist the force of fire and remain inconsumable,
but will also prove inextinguishable by either wind or water.
In an old chemical work of the year 1700, called [[Nekrokedeia]],
the author gives a number of refutations of the claims of various
alchemists. But though he denies that a fire can be made to burn
perpetually, he is half-inclined to believe it possible
that a lamp should burn several hundred years. Besides, we have
a mass of testimony from alchemists who devoted years to these
experiments and came to the conclusion that it was possible.
There are some peculiar preparations of gold, silver, and mercury;
also of naphtha, petroleum, and other bituminous oils. Alchemists
also name the oil of camphor and amber, the Lapis asbestos
seu Amianthus, the Lapis Carystius, Cyprius, and
Linum vivum seu Creteum, as employed for such lamps. They
affirm that such matter can be prepared either of gold or silver,
reduced to fluid, and indicate that gold is the fittest pabulum
for their wondrous flame, as, of all metals, gold wastes
the least when either heated or melted, and, moreover, can be
made to reabsorb its oily humidity as soon as exhaled, so continuously
feeding its own flame when it is once lighted. The Kabalists assert
that the secret was known to Moses, who had learned it from the
Egyptians; and that the lamp ordered by the "Lord" to
burn on the tabernacle, was an inextinguishable lamp. "And
thou shalt command the children of Israel, that they bring thee
pure oil-olive beaten for the light, to cause the lamp to
burn always" (Exod. xxvii. 20).
Licetus also denies that these lamps were prepared of metal, but
on
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The details of this story may be found in the work of Erasmus
Franciscus, who quotes from Pflaumerus, Pancirollus, and many
others.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 229 HOW TO MAKE THE UNQUENCHABLE LIGHT.
page 44 of his work mentions a preparation of quicksilver filtrated
seven times through white sand by fire, of which, he says, lamps
were made that would burn perpetually. Both Maturantius and Citesius
firmly believe that such a work can be done by a purely chemical
process. This liquor of quicksilver was known among alchemists
as Aqua Mercurialis, Materia Metallorum, Perpetua Dispositio,
and Materia prima Artis, also Oleum Vitri. Tritenheim
and Bartolomeo Korndorf both made preparations for the inextinguishable
fire, and left their recipes for it.*
Asbestos, which was known to the Greeks under the name of [[Asbestos]],
or inextinguishable, is a kind of stone, which once set
on fire
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Sulphur. Alum ust. a 
iv.; sublime them into flowers to
ij., of which add of crystalline Venetian borax (powdered)
j.; upon these affuse high rectified spirit of wine and digest
it, then abstract it and pour on fresh; repeat this so often till
the sulphur melts like wax without any smoke, upon a hot plate
of brass: this is for the pabulum, but the wick is to
be prepared after this manner: gather the threads or thrums of
the Lapis asbestos, to the thickness of your middle and
the length of your little finger, then put them into a Venetian
glass, and covering them over with the aforesaid depurated sulphur
or aliment, set the glass in sand for the space of twenty-four
hours, so hot that the sulphur may bubble all the while. The wick
being thus besmeared and anointed, is to be put into a glass like
a scallop-shell, in such manner that some part of it may lie above
the mass of prepared sulphur; then setting this glass upon hot
sand, you must melt the sulphur, so that it may lay hold of the
wick, and when it is lighted, it will burn with a perpetual flame
and you may set this lamp in any place where you please."
The other is as follows:
"
. Solis tosti,
lb. j.; affuse over it strong wine vinegar, and abstract
it to the consistency of oil; then put on fresh vinegar and macerate
and distill it as before. Repeat this four times successively,
then put into this vinegar vitr. antimonii subtilis loevigat,
lb. j.; set it on ashes in a close vessel for the space of
six hours, to extract its tincture, decant the liquor, and put
on fresh, and then extract it again; this repeat so often till
you have got out all the redness. Coagulate your extractions to
the consistency of oil, and then rectify them in Balneo Mariae
(bain Marie). Then take the antimony, from which the tincture
was extracted, and reduce it to a very fine meal, and so put it
into a glass bolthead; pour upon it the rectified oil, which abstract
and cohobate seven times, till such time as the powder has imbibed
all the oil, and is quite dry. This extract again with spirit
of wine, so often, till all the essence be got out of it, which
put into a Venice matrass, well luted with paper five-fold, and
then distill it so that the spirit being drawn off, there may
remain at the bottom an inconsumable oil, to be used with a wick
after the same manner with the sulphur we have described before."
"These are the eternal lights of Tritenheimus," says
Libavius, his commentator, "which indeed, though they do
not agree with the pertinacy of naphtha, yet these things can
illustrate one another. Naphtha is not so durable as not to be
burned, for it exhales and deflagrates, but if it be fixed by
adding the juice of the Lapis asbestinos it can afford
perpetual fuel," says this learned person.
We may add that we have ourselves seen a lamp so prepared, and
we are told that since it was first lighted on May 2, 1871, it
has not gone out. As we know the person who is making the experiment
incapable to deceive any one, being himself an ardent experimenter
in hermetic secrets, we have no reason to doubt his assertion.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 230 THE VEIL OF ISIS.
cannot be quenched, as Pliny and Solinus tell us. Albertus Magnus
describes it as a stone of an iron color, found mostly in Arabia.
It is generally found covered with a hardly-perceptible oleaginous
moisture, which upon being approached with a lighted candle will
immediately catch fire. Many were the experiments made by chemists
to extract from it this indissoluble oil, but they are alleged
to have all failed. But, are our chemists prepared to say that
the above operation is utterly impracticable? If this oil could
once be extracted there can be no question but it would afford
a perpetual fuel. The ancients might well boast of having had
the secret of it, for, we repeat, there are experimenters living
at this day who have done so successfully. Chemists who have vainly
tried it, have asserted that the fluid or liquor chemically extracted
from that stone was more of a watery than oily nature, and so
impure and feculent that it could not burn; others affirmed, on
the contrary, that the oil, as soon as exposed to the air, became
so thick and solid that it would hardly flow, and when lighted
emitted no flame, but escaped in dark smoke; whereas the lamps
of the ancients are alleged to have burned with the purest and
brightest flame, without emitting the slightest smoke. Kircher,
who shows the practicability of purifying it, thinks it so difficult
as to be accessible only to the highest adepts of alchemy.
St. Augustine, who attributes the whole of these arts to the Christian
scapegoat, the devil, is flatly contradicted by Ludovicus Vives,*
who shows that all such would-be magical operations are the work
of man's industry and deep study of the hidden secrets of nature,
wonderful and miraculous as they may seem. Podocattarus, a Cypriote
knight,** had both flax and linen made out of another asbestos,
which Porcacchius says*** he saw at the house of this
knight. Pliny calls this flax linum vinum, and Indian
flax, and says it is done out of asbeston sive asbestinum,
a kind of flax of which they made cloth that was to be cleaned
by throwing it in the fire. He adds that it was as precious as
pearls and diamonds, for not only was it very rarely found but
exceedingly difficult to be woven, on account of the shortness
of the threads. Being beaten flat with a hammer, it is soaked
in warm water, and when dried its filaments can be easily divided
into threads like flax and woven into cloth. Pliny asserts he
has seen some towels made of it, and assisted in an experiment
of purifying them by fire. Baptista Porta also states that he
found the same, at Venice, in the hands of a Cyprian lady; he
calls this discovery of Alchemy a secretum optimum.
Dr. Grew, in his description of the curiosities in Gresham College
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Commentary upon St. Augustine's 'Treatise de Civitate
Dei.' "
** The author of "De Rebus Cypriis," 1566 A. D.
*** "Book of Ancient Funerals."
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 231 THE WICK OF THE LAMP, ASBESTOS.
(seventeenth century), believes the art, as well as the use of
such linen, altogether lost, but it appears that it was not quite
so, for we find the Museum Septalius boasting of the possession
of thread, ropes, paper, and net-work done of this material as
late as 1726; some of these articles made, moreover, by the own
hand of Septalius, as we learn in Greenhill's Art of Embalming,
p. 361. "Grew," says the author, "seems to
make Asbestinus Lapis and Amianthus all one,
and calls them in English the thrum-stone"; he says it grows
in short threads or thrums, from about a quarter of an inch to
an inch in length, parallel and glossy, as fine as those small,
single threads the silk-worms spin, and very flexible like to
flax or tow. That the secret is not altogether lost is proved
by the fact that some Buddhist convents in China and Thibet are
in possession of it. Whether made of the fibre of one or the other
of such stones, we cannot say, but we have seen in a monastery
of female Talapoins, a yellow gown, such as the Buddhist monks
wear, thrown into a large pit, full of glowing coals, and taken
out two hours afterward as clear as if it had been washed with
soap and water.
Similar severe trials of asbestos having occurred in Europe and
America in our own times, the substance is being applied to various
industrial purposes, such as roofing-cloth, incombustible dresses
and fireproof safes. A very valuable deposit on Staten Island,
in New York harbor, yields the mineral in bundles, like dry wood,
with fibres of several feet in length. The finer variety of asbestos,
called [[amiantos]] (undefiled) by the ancients, took
its name from its white, satin-like lustre.
The ancients made the wick of their perpetual lamps from another
stone also, which they called Lapis Carystius. The inhabitants
of the city of Carystos seemed to have made no secret of it, as
Matthaeus Raderus says in his work* that they "kemb'd,
spun, and wove this downy stone into mantles, table-linen, and
the like, which when foul they purified again with fire instead
of water." Pausanias, in Atticus, and Plutarch**
also assert that the wicks of lamps were made from this stone;
but Plutarch adds that it was no more to be found in his time.
Licetus is inclined to believe that the perpetual lamps used by
the ancients in their sepulchres had no wicks at all, as very
few have been found; but Ludovicus Vives is of a contrary opinion
and affirms that he has seen quite a number of them.
Licetus, moreover, is firmly persuaded that a "pabulum for
fire may be given with such an equal temperament as cannot be
consumed but after a long series of ages, and so that neither
the matter shall exhale
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Comment. on the 77th Epigram of the IXth
Book of Martial."
** "De Defectu Oraculorum."
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 232 THE VEIL OF ISIS.
but strongly resist the fire, nor the fire consume the matter,
but be restrained by it, as it were with a chain, from flying
upward." To this, Sir Thomas Browne,* speaking of lamps which
have burned many hundred years, included in small bodies, observes
that "this proceeds from the purity of the oil, which yields
no fuliginous exhalations to suffocate the fire; for if air had
nourished the flame, then it had not continued many minutes, for
it would certainly in that case have been spent and wasted by
the fire." But he adds, "the art of preparing this inconsumable
oil is lost."
Not quite; and time will prove it, though all that we now write
should be doomed to fail, like so many other truths.
We are told, in behalf of science, that she accepts no other mode
of investigation than observation and experiment. Agreed; and
have we not the records of say three thousand years of observation
of facts going to prove the occult powers of man? As to experiment,
what better opportunity could have been asked than the so-called
modern phenomena have afforded? In 1869, various scientific Englishmen
were invited by the London Dialectical Society to assist in an
investigation of these phenomena. Let us see what our philosophers
replied. Professor Huxley wrote: "I have no time for such
an inquiry, which would involve much trouble and (unless it were
unlike all inquiries of that kind I have known) much annoyance.
. . . I take no interest in the subject . . . but supposing the
phenomena to be genuine -- they do not interest me."** Mr.
George H. Lewes expresses a wise thing in the following sentence:
"When any man says that phenomena are produced by no known
physical laws, he declares he knows the laws by which they are
produced."*** Professor Tyndall expresses doubt as to the
possibility of good results at any seance which he might attend.
His presence, according to the opinion of Mr. Varley, throws everything
in confusion.**** Professor Carpenter writes, "I have satisfied
myself by personal investigation, that, whilst a great number
of what pass as such (i.e., spiritual manifestations)
are the results of intentional imposture, and many others of self-deception,
there are certain phenomena which are quite genuine, and must
be considered as fair subjects of scientific study . . . the source
of these phenomena does not lie in any communication ab-extra,
but depends upon the subjective condition of the individual
which operates according to certain recognized physiological laws
. . . the process to which I have given the name 'unconscious
cerebration' . . . performs a
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Vulgar Errors," p. 124.
** "London Dialectical Society's Report on Spiritualism,"
p. 229.
*** Ibid., p. 230.
**** Ibid., p. 265.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 233 DO FLYING GUITARS UNCONSCIOUSLY CEREBRATE?
large part in the production of the phenomena known as spiritualistic."*
And it is thus that the world is apprised through the organ of
exact science, that unconscious cerebration has acquired
the faculty of making the guitars fly in the air and forcing furniture
to perform various clownish tricks!
So much for the opinions of the English scientists. The Americans
have not done much better. In 1857, a committee of Harvard University
warned the public against investigating this subject, which "corrupts
the morals and degrades the intellect." They called it, furthermore,
"a contaminating influence, which surely tends to lessen
the truth of man and the purity of woman." Later, when Professor
Robert Hare, the great chemist, defying the opinions of his contemporaries,
investigated spiritualism, and became a believer, he was immediately
declared non compos mentis; and in 1874, when one of
the New York daily papers addressed a circular letter to the principal
scientists of this country, asking them to investigate, and offering
to pay the expenses, they, like the guests bidden to the supper,
"with one consent, began to make excuses."
Yet, despite the indifference of Huxley, the jocularity of Tyndall,
and the "unconscious cerebration" of Carpenter, many
a scientist as noted as either of them, has investigated the unwelcome
subject, and, overwhelmed with the evidence, become converted.
And another scientist, and a great author -- although not a spiritualist
-- bears this honorable testimony: "That the spirits of the
dead occasionally revisit the living, or haunt their former abodes,
has been in all ages, in all European countries, a fixed belief,
not confined to rustics, but participated in by the intelligent.
. . . If human testimony on such subjects can be of any value,
there is a body of evidence reaching from the remotest ages to
the present time, as extensive and unimpeachable as is to
be found in support of anything whatever."**
Unfortunately, human skepticism is a stronghold capable of defying
any amount of testimony. And to begin with Mr. Huxley, our men
of science accept of but so much as suits them, and no more.
"Oh shame to men! devil with devil damn'd
Firm concord holds, -- men only disagree
Of creatures rational. . . ."***
How can we account for such divergence of views among men taught
out of the same text-books and deriving their knowledge from the
same
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Ibid., p. 266.
** Draper: "Conflict between Religion and Science,"
p. 121.
*** Milton: "Paradise Lost."
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 234 THE VEIL OF ISIS.
source? Clearly, this is but one more corroboration of the truism
that no two men see the same thing exactly alike. This idea is
admirably formulated by Dr. J. J. Garth Wilkinson, in a letter
to the Dialectical Society.
"I have long," says he, "been convinced, by the
experience of my life as a pioneer in several heterodoxies which
are rapidly becoming orthodoxies, that nearly all truth is temperamental
to us, or given in the affections and intuitions, and that discussion
and inquiry do little more than feed temperament."
This profound observer might have added to his experience that
of Bacon, who remarks that ". . . a little philosophy
inclineth a man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy
bringeth man's mind about to religion."
Professor Carpenter vaunts the advanced philosophy of the present
day which "ignores no fact however strange that can be attested
by valid evidence"; and yet he would be the first to reject
the claims of the ancients to philosophical and scientific knowledge,
although based upon evidence quite "as valid" as that
which supports the pretensions of men of our times to philosophical
or scientific distinction. In the department of science, let us
take for example the subjects of electricity and electro-magnetism,
which have exalted the names of Franklin and Morse to so high
a place upon our roll of fame. Six centuries before the Christian
era, Thales is said to have discovered the electric properties
of amber; and yet the later researches of Schweigger, as given
in his extensive works on Symbolism, have thoroughly demonstrated
that all the ancient mythologies were based on the science of
natural philosophy, and show that the most occult properties of
electricity and magnetism were known to the theurgists of the
earliest Mysteries recorded in history, those of Samothrace. Diodorus,
of Sicily, Herodotus, and Sanchoniathon, the Phoenician -- the
oldest of historians -- tell us that these Mysteries originated
in the night of time, centuries and probably thousands of years
prior to the historical period. One of the best proofs of it we
find in a most remarkable picture, in Raoul-Rochette's Monuments
d'Antiquite Figures, in which, like the "erect-haired
Pan," all the figures have their hair streaming out in every
direction -- except the central figure of the Kabeirian Demeter,
from whom the power issues, and one other, a kneeling man.* The
picture, according to Schweigger, evidently represents a part
of the ceremony of initiation. And yet it is not so long since
the elementary works on natural philosophy began to be ornamented
with cuts of electrified heads, with hair
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See Ennemoser: "History of Magic," vol. ii., and Schweigger:
"Introduction to Mythology through Natural History."
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 235 THE LOST KEY TO THE THEURGIC ARCANA.
standing out in all directions, under the influence of the electric
fluid. Schweigger shows that a lost natural philosophy of
antiquity was connected with the most important religious
ceremonies. He demonstrates in the amplest manner, that magic
in the prehistoric periods had a part in the mysteries and
that the greatest phenomena, the so-called miracles -- whether
Pagan, Jewish, or Christian -- rested in fact on the arcane knowledge
of the ancient priests of physics and all the branches of chemistry,
or rather alchemy.
In chapter xi., which is entirely devoted to the wonderful achievements
of the ancients, we propose to demonstrate our assertions more
fully. We will show, on the evidence of the most trustworthy classics,
that at a period far anterior to the siege of Troy, the learned
priests of the sanctuaries were thoroughly acquainted with electricity
and even lightning-conductors. We will now add but a few more
words before closing the subject.
The theurgists so well understood the minutest properties of magnetism,
that, without possessing the lost key to their arcana, but depending
wholly upon what was known in their modern days of electro-magnetism,
Schweigger and Ennemoser have been able to trace the identity
of the "twin brothers," the Dioskuri, with the polarity
of electricity and magnetism. Symbolical myths, previously supposed
to be meaningless fictions, are now found to be "the cleverest
and at the same time most profound expressions of a strictly scientifically
defined truth of nature," according to Ennemoser.*
Our physicists pride themselves on the achievements of our century
and exchange antiphonal hymns of praise. The eloquent diction
of their class-lectures, their flowery phraseology, require but
a slight modification to change these lectures into melodious
sonnets. Our modern Petrarchs, Dantes, and Torquato Tassos rival
with the troubadours of old in poetical effusion. In their unbounded
glorification of matter, they sing the amorous commingling of
the wandering atoms, and the loving interchange of protoplasms,
and lament the coquettish fickleness of "forces" which
play so provokingly at hide-and-seek with our grave professors
in the great drama of life, called by them "force-correlation."
Proclaiming matter sole and autocratic sovereign of the Boundless
Universe, they would forcibly divorce her from her consort, and
place the widowed queen on the great throne of nature made vacant
by the exiled spirit. And now, they try to make her appear as
attractive as they can by incensing and worshipping at the shrine
of their own building. Do they forget, or are they utterly unaware
of the fact, that in the absence of its
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "History of Magic," vol. ii.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 236 THE VEIL OF ISIS.
legitimate sovereign, this throne is but a whitened sepulchre,
inside of which all is rottenness and corruption! That matter
without the spirit which vivifies it, and of which it is but the
"gross purgation," to use a hermetic expression, is
nothing but a soulless corpse, whose limbs, in order to be moved
in predetermined directions, require an intelligent operator at
the great galvanic battery called LIFE!
In what particular is the knowledge of the present century so
superior to that of the ancients? When we say knowledge we do
not mean that brilliant and clear definition of our modern scholars
of particulars to the most trifling detail in every branch of
exact science; of that tuition which finds an appropriate term
for every detail insignificant and microscopic as it may be; a
name for every nerve and artery in human and animal organisms,
an appellation for every cell, filament, and rib in a plant; but
the philosophical and ultimate expression of every truth in nature.
The greatest ancient philosophers are accused of shallowness and
a superficiality of knowledge of those details in exact sciences
of which the moderns boast so much. Plato is declared by his various
commentators to have been utterly ignorant of the anatomy and
functions of the human body; to have known nothing of the uses
of the nerves to convey sensations; and to have had nothing better
to offer than vain speculations concerning physiological questions.
He has simply generalized the divisions of the human body, they
say, and given nothing reminding us of anatomical facts. As to
his own views on the human frame, the microcosmos being in his
ideas the image in miniature of the macrocosmos, they are much
too transcendental to be given the least attention by our exact
and materialistic skeptics. The idea of this frame being, as well
as the universe, formed out of triangles, seems preposterously
ridiculous to several of his translators. Alone of the latter,
Professor Jowett, in his introduction to the Timaeus, honestly
remarks that the modern physical philosopher "hardly allows
to his notions the merit of being 'the dead men's bones' out of
which he has himself risen to a higher knowledge";* forgetting
how much the metaphysics of olden times has helped the "physical"
sciences of the present day. If, instead of quarrelling with the
insufficiency and at times absence of terms and definitions strictly
scientific in Plato's works, we analyze them carefully, the
Timaeus, alone, will be found to contain within its limited
space the germs of every new discovery. The circulation of the
blood and the law of gravitation are clearly mentioned, though
the former fact, it may be, is not so clearly defined as to withstand
the reiterated attacks of modern
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* B. Jowett, M.A.: "The Dialogues of Plato,"
vol. ii., p. 508.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 237 THE HONEST MASTER OF BALLIOL COLLEGE.
science; for according to Prof. Jowett, the specific discovery
that the blood flows out at one side of the heart through the
arteries, and returns through the veins at the other, was unknown
to him, though Plato was perfectly aware "that blood is a
fluid in constant motion."
Plato's method, like that of geometry, was to descend from universals
to particulars. Modern science vainly seeks a first cause among
the permutations of molecules; the former sought and found it
amid the majestic sweep of worlds. For him it was enough to know
the great scheme of creation and to be able to trace the mightiest
movements of the universe through their changes to their ultimates.
The petty details, whose observation and classification have so
taxed and demonstrated the patience of modern scientists, occupied
but little of the attention of the old philosophers. Hence, while
a fifth-form boy of an English school can prate more learnedly
about the little things of physical science than Plato himself,
yet, on the other hand, the dullest of Plato's disciples could
tell more about great cosmic laws and their mutual relations,
and demonstrate a familiarity with and control over the occult
forces which lie behind them, than the most learned professor
in the most distinguished academy of our day.
This fact, so little appreciated and never dwelt upon by Plato's
translators, accounts for the self-laudation in which we moderns
indulge at the expense of that philosopher and his compeers. Their
alleged mistakes in anatomy and physiology are magnified to an
inordinate extent to gratify our self-love, until, in acquiring
the idea of our own superior learning, we lose sight of the intellectual
splendor which adorns the ages of the past; it is as if one should,
in fancy, magnify the solar spots until he should believe the
bright luminary to be totally eclipsed.
The unprofitableness of modern scientific research is evinced
in the fact that while we have a name for the most trivial particle
of mineral, plant, animal, and man, the wisest of our teachers
are unable to tell us anything definite about the vital force
which produces the changes in these several kingdoms. It is necessary
to seek further for corroboration of this statement than the works
of our highest scientific authorities themselves.
It requires no little moral courage in a man of eminent professional
position to do justice to the acquirements of the ancients, in
the face of a public sentiment which is content with nothing else
than their abasement. When we meet with a case of the kind we
gladly lay a laurel at the feet of the bold and honest scholar.
Such is Professor Jowett, Master of Balliol College, and Regius
Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford, who, in his translation
of Plato's works, speaking of "the physical philosophy of
the ancients as a whole," gives them the following
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 238 THE VEIL OF ISIS.
credit: 1. "That the nebular theory was the received belief
of the early physicists." Therefore it could not have rested,
as Draper asserts,* upon the telescopic discovery made by Herschel
I. 2. "That the development of animals out of frogs who came
to land, and of man out of the animals, was held by Anaximenes
in the sixth century before Christ." The professor might
have added that this theory antedated Anaximenes by some thousands
of years, perhaps; that it was an accepted doctrine among Chaldeans,
and that Darwin's evolution of species and monkey theory are of
an antediluvian origin. 3. " . . . that,
even by Philolaus and the early Pythagoreans, the earth was held
to be a body like the other stars revolving in space."**
Thus Galileo, studying some Pythagorean fragments, which are shown
by Reuchlin to have yet existed in the days of the Florentine
mathematician;*** being, moreover, familiar with the doctrines
of the old philosophers, but reasserted an astronomical doctrine
which prevailed in India at the remotest antiquity. 4. The ancients
" . . . thought that there was a sex in plants as well as
in animals." Thus our modern naturalists had but to follow
in the steps of their predecessors. 5. "That musical notes
depended on the relative length or tension of the strings from
which they were emitted, and were measured by ratios of number."
6. "That mathematical laws pervaded the world and even qualitative
differences were supposed to have their origin in number";
and 7. "The annihilation of matter was denied by them, and
held to be a transformation only."**** "Although
one of these discoveries might have been supposed to be a happy
guess," adds Mr. Jowett, "we can hardly attribute them
all to mere coincidences."*****
In short, the Platonic philosophy was one of order, system, and
proportion; it embraced the evolution of worlds and species, the
correlation and conservation of energy, the transmutation of material
form, the indestructibility of matter and of spirit. Their position
in the latter respect being far in advance of modern science,
and binding, the arch of their
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Conflict between Religion and Science," p. 240.
** "Plutarch," translated by Langhorne.
*** Some kabalistic scholars assert that the Greek original Pythagoric
sentences of Sextus, which are now said to be lost, existed still,
in a convent at Florence, at that time, and that Galileo was acquainted
with these writings. They add, moreover, that a treatise on astronomy,
a manuscript by Archytas, a direct disciple of Pythagoras, in
which were noted all the most important doctrines of their school,
was in the possession of Galileo. Had some Ruffinas got
hold of it, he would no doubt have perverted it, as Presbyter
Ruffinas has perverted the above-mentioned sentences of Sextus,
replacing them with a fraudulent version, the authorship of which
he sought to ascribe to a certain Bishop Sextus. See Taylor's
Introduction to Iamblichus' "Life of Pythagoras," p.
xvii.
**** Jowett: Introduction to the "Timaeus," vol. ii.,
p. 508.
***** Ibid.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 239 THE UNFADING COLORS OF LUXOR.
philosophical system with a keystone at once perfect and immovable.
If science has made such colossal strides during these latter
days -- if we have such clearer ideas of natural law than the
ancients -- why are our inquiries as to the nature and source
of life unanswered? If the modern laboratory is so much richer
in the fruits of experimental research than those of the olden
time, how comes it that we make no step except on paths that were
trodden long before the Christian era? How does it happen that
the most advanced standpoint that has been reached in our times
only enables us to see in the dim distance up the Alpine path
of knowledge the monumental proofs that earlier explorers have
left to mark the plateaux they had reached and occupied?
If modern masters are so much in advance of the old ones, why
do they not restore to us the lost arts of our postdiluvian forefathers?
Why do they not give us the unfading colors of Luxor -- the Tyrian
purple; the bright vermilion and dazzling blue which decorate
the walls of this place, and are as bright as on the first day
of their application? The indestructible cement of the pyramids
and of ancient aqueducts; the Damascus blade, which can be turned
like a corkscrew in its scabbard without breaking; the gorgeous,
unparalleled tints of the stained glass that is found amid the
dust of old ruins and beams in the windows of ancient cathedrals;
and the secret of the true malleable glass? And if chemistry is
so little able to rival even with the early mediaeval ages in
some arts, why boast of achievements which, according to strong
probability, were perfectly known thousands of years ago? The
more archaeology and philology advance, the more humiliating to
our pride are the discoveries which are daily made, the more glorious
testimony do they bear in behalf of those who, perhaps on account
of the distance of their remote antiquity, have been until now
considered ignorant flounderers in the deepest mire of superstition.
Why should we forget that, ages before the prow of the adventurous
Genoese clove the Western waters, the Phoenician vessels had circumnavigated
the globe, and spread civilization in regions now silent and deserted?
What archaeologist will dare assert that the same hand which planned
the Pyramids of Egypt, Karnak, and the thousand ruins now crumbling
to oblivion on the sandy banks of the Nile, did not erect
the monumental Nagkon-Wat of Cambodia? or trace the hieroglyphics
on the obelisks and doors of the deserted Indian village, newly
discovered in British Columbia by Lord Dufferin? or those on the
ruins of Palenque and Uxmal, of Central America? Do not the relics
we treasure in our museums -- last mementos of the long "lost
arts" -- speak loudly in favor of ancient civilization? And
do they not prove, over and over again, that nations and continents
that have passed away have buried
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 240 THE VEIL OF ISIS.
along with them arts and sciences, which neither the first crucible
ever heated in a mediaeval cloister, nor the last cracked by a
modern chemist have revived, nor will -- at least, in the present
century.
"They were not without some knowledge of optics," Professor
Draper magnanimously concedes to the ancients; others positively
deny to them even that little. "The convex lens found at
Nimroud shows that they were not unacquainted with magnifying
instruments."* Indeed? If they were not, all the classical
authors must have lied. For, when Cicero tells us that he had
seen the entire Iliad written on skin of such a miniature
size, that it could easily be rolled up inside a nut-shell, and
Pliny asserts that Nero had a ring with a small glass in it, through
which he watched the performance of the gladiators at a distance
-- could audacity go farther? Truly, when we are told that Mauritius
could see from the promontory of Sicily over the entire sea to
the coast of Africa, with an instrument called nauscopite,
we must either think that all these witnesses lied, or that
the ancients were more than slightly acquainted with optics and
magnifying glasses. Wendell Phillips states that he has a friend
who possesses an extraordinary ring "perhaps three-quarters
of an inch in diameter, and on it is the naked figure of the god
Hercules. By the aid of glasses, you can distinguish the interlacing
muscles, and count every separate hair on the eyebrows.
. . . Rawlinson brought home a stone about twenty inches long
and ten wide, containing an entire treatise on mathematics. It
would be perfectly illegible without glasses. . . . In Dr. Abbott's
Museum, there is a ring of Cheops, to which Bunsen assigns 500
B.C. The signet of the ring is about the size of a quarter of
a dollar, and the engraving is invisible without the
aid of glasses. . . . At Parma, they will show you a gem once
worn on the finger of Michael Angelo, of which the engraving is
2,000 years old, and on which there are the figures of seven
women. You must have the aid of powerful glasses in order
to distinguish the forms at all. . . . So the microscope,"
adds the learned lecturer, "instead of dating from our time,
finds its brothers in the Books of Moses -- and these are infant
brothers."
The foregoing facts do not seem to show that the ancients had
merely "some knowledge of optics."
Therefore, totally disagreeing in this particular with Professor
Fiske and his criticism of Professor Draper's Conflict in
his Unseen World, the only fault we find with the admirable
book of Draper is that, as an historical critic, he sometimes
uses his own optical instruments in the wrong place. While, in
order to magnify the atheism of the Pythagorean Bruno, he looks
through convex lenses; when-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Conflict between Religion and Science," p. 14.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 241 IS THIS THE CENTURY OF DISCOVERY?
ever talking of the knowledge of the ancients, he evidently sees
things through concave ones.
It is simply worthy of admiration to follow in various modern
works the cautious attempts of both pious Christians and skeptical,
albeit very learned men, to draw a line of demarcation between
what we are and what we are not to believe, in ancient authors.
No credit is ever allowed them without being followed by a qualifying
caution. If Strabo tells us that ancient Nineveh was forty-seven
miles in circumference, and his testimony is accepted, why should
it be otherwise the moment he testifies to the accomplishment
of Sibylline prophecies? Where is the common sense in calling
Herodotus the "Father of History," and then accusing
him, in the same breath, of silly gibberish, whenever he recounts
marvellous manifestations, of which he was an eye-witness? Perhaps,
after all, such a caution is more than ever necessary, now that
our epoch has been christened the Century of Discovery. The disenchantment
may prove too cruel for Europe. Gunpowder, which has long been
thought an invention of Bacon and Schwartz, is now shown in the
school-books to have been used by the Chinese for levelling hills
and blasting rocks, centuries before our era. "In the Museum
of Alexandria," says Draper, "there was a machine invented
by Hero, the mathematician, a little more than 100 years B.C.
It revolved by the agency of steam, and was of the form that we
should now call a reaction-engine. . . . Chance had nothing to
do with the invention of the modern steam-engine."* Europe
prides herself upon the discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo,
and now we are told that the astronomical observations of the
Chaldeans extend back to within a hundred years of the flood;
and Bunsen fixes the flood at not less than 10,000 years before
our era.** Moreover, a Chinese emperor, more than 2,000 years
before the birth of Christ (i.e., before Moses) put to
death his two chief astronomers for not predicting an eclipse
of the sun.
It may be noted, as an example of the inaccuracy of current notions
as to the scientific claims of the present century, that the discoveries
of the indestructibility of matter and force-correlation, especially
the latter, are heralded as among our crowning triumphs. It is
"the most important discovery of the present century,"
as Sir William Armstrong expressed it in his famous address as
president of the British Association. But, this "important
discovery" is no discovery after all. Its origin, apart from
the undeniable traces of it to be found among the old philosophers,
is lost in the dense shadows of prehistoric days. Its first vestiges
are dis-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Conflict between Religion and Science," p. 311.
** "Egypt's Place in Universal History," vol. v., p.
88.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 242 THE VEIL OF ISIS.
covered in the dreamy speculations of Vedic theology, in the doctrine
of emanation and absorption, the nirvana in short. John Erigena
outlined it in his bold philosophy in the eighth century, and
we invite any one to read his De Divisione Naturae, who
would convince himself of this truth. Science tells that when
the theory of the indestructibility of matter (also a very, very
old idea of Demokritus, by the way) was demonstrated, it became
necessary to extend it to force. No material particle can ever
be lost; no part of the force existing in nature can vanish; hence,
force was likewise proved indestructible, and its various manifestations
or forces, under divers aspects, were shown to be mutually convertible,
and but different modes of motion of the material particles. And
thus was rediscovered the force-correlation. Mr. Grove, so far
back as 1842, gave to each of these forces, such as heat, electricity,
magnetism, and light, the character of convertibility; making
them capable of being at one moment a cause, and at the next an
effect.* But whence come these forces, and whither do they go,
when we lose sight of them? On this point science is silent.
The theory of "force-correlation," though it may be
in the minds of our contemporaries "the greatest discovery
of the age," can account for neither the beginning nor the
end of one of such forces; neither can the theory point out the
cause of it. Forces may be convertible, and one may produce the
other, still, no exact science is able to explain the alpha and
omega of the phenomenon. In what particular are we then in advance
of Plato who, discussing in the Timaeus the primary and
secondary qualities of matter** and the feebleness of human intellect,
makes Timaeus say: "God knows the original qualities of things;
man can only hope to attain to probability." We have but
to open one of the several pamphlets of Huxley and Tyndall to
find precisely the same confession; but they improve upon Plato
by not allowing even God to know more than themselves; and perhaps
it may be upon this that they base their claims of superiority?
The ancient Hindus founded their doctrine of emanation and absorption
on precisely that law. The [[To On]], the primordial
point in the boundless circle, "whose circumference is nowhere,
and the centre everywhere," emanating from itself all things,
and manifesting them in the visible universe under multifarious
forms; the forms interchanging, commingling, and, after a gradual
transformation from the pure spirit (or the Buddhistic "nothing"),
into the grossest matter, beginning to recede and as gradually
re-emerge into their primitive state, which is the absorption
into Nirvana*** -- what else is this but correlation of forces?
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* W. R. Grove: "Preface to the Correlation of Physical Forces."
** "Timaeus," p. 22.
*** Beginning with Godfrey Higgins and ending with Max Muller,
every archaeologist [[Footnote continued on next page]]
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 243 FORCE-CORRELATION THE A B C OF OCCULTISM.
Science tells us that heat may be shown to develop electricity,
electricity produce heat; and magnetism to evolve electricity,
and vice versa. Motion, they tell us, results from motion
itself, and so on, ad infinitum. This is the A B C of
occultism and of the earliest alchemists. The indestructibility
of matter and force being discovered and proved, the great problem
of eternity is solved. What need have we more of spirit? its uselessness
is henceforth scientifically demonstrated!
Thus modern philosophers may be said not to have gone one step
beyond what the priests of Samothrace, the Hindus, and even the
Christian Gnostics well knew. The former have shown it in that
wonderfully ingenious mythos of the Dioskuri, or "the sons
of heaven"; the twin brothers, spoken of by Schweigger, "who
constantly die and return to life together, while it is absolutely
necessary that one should die that the other may live."
They knew as well as our physicists, that when a force has
disappeared it has simply been converted into another force. Though
archaeology may not have discovered any ancient apparatus for
such special conversions, it may nevertheless be affirmed with
perfect reason and upon analogical deductions that nearly all
the ancient religions were based on such indestructibility of
matter and force -- plus the emanation of the whole from an ethereal,
spiritual fire -- or the central sun, which is God or spirit,
on the knowledge of whose potentiality is based ancient theurgic
magic.
In the manuscript commentary of Proclus on magic he gives the
following account: "In the same manner as lovers gradually
advance from that beauty which is apparent in sensible forms,
to that which is divine; so the ancient priests, when they considered
that there is a certain alliance and sympathy in natural things
to each other, and of things manifest to occult powers, and discovered
that all things subsist in all, they fabricated a sacred science
from this mutual sympathy and similarity. Thus they recognized
things supreme in such as are subordinate, and the subordinate
in the supreme; in the celestial regions, terrene properties subsisting
in a causal and celestial manner; and in earth celestial properties,
but according to a terrene condition."
Proclus then proceeds to point to certain mysterious peculiarities
of
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] and philologist who
has fairly and seriously studied the old religions, has perceived
that taken literally they could only lead them on a false track.
Dr. Lardner disfigured and misrepresented the old doctrines --
whether unwittingly or otherwise -- in the grossest manner. The
pravritti, or the existence of nature when alive, in
activity, and the nirvritti, or the rest, the state of
non-living, is the Buddhistic esoteric doctrine. The "pure
nothing," or non-existence, if translated according to the
esoteric sense, would mean the "pure spirit," the NAMELESS
or something our intellect is unable to grasp, hence nothing.
But we will speak of it further.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 244 THE VEIL OF ISIS.
plants, minerals, and animals, all of which are well known to
our naturalists, but none of which are explained. Such are the
rotatory motion of the sunflower, of the heliotrope, of the lotos
-- which, before the rising of the sun, folds its leaves, drawing
the petals within itself, so to say, then expands them gradually,
as the sun rises, and draws them in again as it descends to the
west -- of the sun and lunar stones and the helioselenus, of the
cock and lion, and other animals. "Now the ancients,"
he says, "having contemplated this mutual sympathy of things
(celestial and terrestrial) applied them for occult purposes,
both celestial and terrene natures, by means of which, through
a certain similitude, they deduced divine virtues into this inferior
abode. . . . All things are full of divine natures; terrestrial
natures receiving the plenitude of such as are celestial, but
celestial of supercelestial essences, while every order
of things proceeds gradually in a beautiful descent from the
highest to the lowest.* For whatever particulars are collected
into one above the order of things, are afterwards dilated in
descending, various souls being distributed under their various
ruling divinities."**
Evidently Proclus does not advocate here simply a superstition,
but science; for notwithstanding that it is occult, and unknown
to our scholars, who deny its possibilities, magic is still a
science. It is firmly and solely based on the mysterious affinities
existing between organic and inorganic bodies, the visible productions
of the four kingdoms, and the invisible powers of the universe.
That which science calls gravitation, the ancients and the mediaeval
hermetists called magnetism, attraction, affinity. It is the universal
law, which is understood by Plato and explained in Timaeus
as the attraction of lesser bodies to larger ones, and of
similar bodies to similar, the latter exhibiting a magnetic power
rather than following the law of gravitation. The anti-Aristotelean
formula that gravity causes all bodies to descend with equal
rapidity, without reference to their weight, the difference
being caused by some other unknown agency, would seem
to point a great deal more forcibly to magnetism than
to gravitation, the former attracting rather in virtue of the
substance than of the weight. A thorough familiarity with the
occult faculties of everything existing in nature, visible as
well as invisible; their mutual relations, attractions, and repulsions;
the cause of these, traced to the spiritual principle
which pervades and animates all things; the ability to furnish
the best conditions for this principle to manifest itself, in
other words a profound and exhaustive knowledge of natural law
-- this was and is the basis of magic.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* This is the exact opposite of the modern theory of evolution.
** Ficinus: See "Excerpta" and "Dissertation on
Magic"; Taylor: "Plato," vol. i., p. 63.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 245 GHOSTS, GOBLINS, AND NIGHT-CROWING COCKS.
In his notes on Ghosts and Goblins, when reviewing some
facts adduced by certain illustrious defenders of the spiritual
phenomena, such as Professor de Morgan, Mr. Robert Dale Owen,
and Mr. Wallace, among others -- Mr. Richard A. Proctor says that
he "cannot see any force in the following remarks by Professor
Wallace: 'How is such evidence as this,' he (Wallace) says, speaking
of one of Owen's stories, 'refuted or explained away? Scores,
and even hundreds, of equally-attested facts are on record, but
no attempt is made to explain them. They are simply ignored, and
in many cases admitted to be inexplicable.' " To this Mr.
Proctor jocularly replies that as "our philosophers declare
that they have long ago decided these ghost stories to be all
delusions; therefore they need only be ignored; and they
feel much 'worritted' that fresh evidence should be adduced, and
fresh converts made, some of whom are so unreasonable as to ask
for a new trial on the ground that the former verdict was contrary
to the evidence."
"All this," he goes on to say, "affords excellent
reason why the 'converts' should not be ridiculed for their belief;
but something more to the purpose must be urged before 'the philosophers'
can be expected to devote much of their time to the inquiry suggested.
It ought to be shown that the well-being of the human race
is to some important degree concerned in the matter, whereas
the trivial nature of all ghostly conduct hitherto recorded is
admitted even by converts!"
Mrs. Emma Hardinge Britten has collected a great number of authenticated
facts from secular and scientific journals, which show with what
serious questions our scientists sometimes replace the vexed subject
of "Ghosts and Goblins." She quotes from a Washington
paper a report of one of these solemn conclaves, held on the evening
of April 29th, 1854. Professor Hare, of Philadelphia, the venerable
chemist, who was so universally respected for his individual character,
as well as for his life-long labors for science, "was bullied
into silence" by Professor Henry, as soon as he had
touched the subject of spiritualism. "The impertinent action
of one of the members of the 'American Scientific Association,'
" says the authoress, "was sanctioned by the majority
of that distinguished body and subsequently endorsed by all of
them in their proceedings."* On the following morning, in
the report of the session, the Spiritual Telegraph thus
commented upon the events:
"It would seem that a subject like this" -- (presented
by Professor Hare) "was one which would lie peculiarly within
the domain of 'science.' But the 'American Association for the
Promotion of Science'** decided
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Modern American Spiritualism," p. 119.
** The full and correct name of this learned Society is -- "The
American Association [[Footnote continued on next page]]
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 246 THE VEIL OF ISIS.
that it was either unworthy of their attention or dangerous for
them to meddle with, and so they voted to put the invitation on
the table. . . . We cannot omit in this connection to mention
that the 'American Association for the Promotion of Science'
held a very learned, extended, grave, and profound discussion
at the same session, upon the cause why 'roosters crow between
twelve and one o'clock at night!' " A subject worthy
of philosophers; and one, moreover, which must have been shown
to effect "the well-being of the human race" in a very
"important degree."
It is sufficient for one to express belief in the existence of
a mysterious sympathy between the life of certain plants and that
of human beings, to assure being made the subject of ridicule.
Nevertheless, there are many well-authenticated cases going to
show the reality of such an affinity. Persons have been known
to fall sick simultaneously with the uprooting of a tree planted
upon their natal day, and dying when the tree died. Reversing
affairs, it has been known that a tree planted under the same
circumstances withered and died simultaneously with the person
whose twin brother, so to speak, it was. The former would be called
by Mr. Proctor an "effect of the imagination"; the latter
a "curious coincidence."
Max Muller gives a number of such cases in his essay On Manners
and Customs. He shows this popular tradition existing in
Central America, in India, and Germany. He traces it over nearly
all Europe; finds it among the Maori Warriors, in British Guiana,
and in Asia. Reviewing Tyler's Researches into the Early History
of Mankind, a work in which are brought together quite a
number of such traditions, the great philologist very justly remarks
the following: "If it occurred in Indian and German tales
only, we might consider it as ancient Aryan property; but when
we find it again in Central America, nothing remains but either
to admit a later communication between European settlers and native
American story-tellers . . . or to inquire whether there is not
some intelligible and truly human element in this supposed sympathy
between the life of flowers and the life of man."
The present generation of men, who believe in nothing beyond the
superficial evidence of their senses, will doubtless reject the
very idea of such a sympathetic power existing in plants, animals,
and even stones. The caul covering their inner sight allows them
to see but that which they cannot well deny. The author of the
Asclepian Dialogue furnishes us with a reason for it,
that might perhaps fit the present period and account for this
epidemic of unbelief. In our century, as then, "there
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] for the Advancement
of Science." It is, however, often called for brevity's
sake, "The American Scientific Association."
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 247 CURRENTS IN THE ASTRAL LIGHT.
is a lamentable departure of divinity from man, when nothing worthy
of heaven or celestial concerns is heard or believed, and when
every divine voice is by a necessary silence dumb."*
Or, as the Emperor Julian has it, "the little soul"
of the skeptic "is indeed acute, but sees nothing with a
vision healthy and sound."
We are at the bottom of a cycle and evidently in a transitory
state. Plato divides the intellectual progress of the universe
during every cycle into fertile and barren periods. In the sublunary
regions, the spheres of the various elements remain eternally
in perfect harmony with the divine nature, he says; "but
their parts," owing to a too close proximity to earth, and
their commingling with the earthly (which is matter,
and therefore the realm of evil), "are sometimes according,
and sometimes contrary to (divine) nature." When those circulations
-- which Eliphas Levi calls "currents of the astral light"
-- in the universal ether which contains in itself every element,
take place in harmony with the divine spirit, our earth and everything
pertaining to it enjoys a fertile period. The occult powers of
plants, animals, and minerals magically sympathize with the "superior
natures," and the divine soul of man is in perfect intelligence
with these "inferior" ones. But during the barren periods,
the latter lose their magic sympathy, and the spiritual sight
of the majority of mankind is so blinded as to lose every notion
of the superior powers of its own divine spirit. We are in a barren
period: the eighteenth century, during which the malignant fever
of skepticism broke out so irrepressibly, has entailed unbelief
as an hereditary disease upon the nineteenth. The divine intellect
is veiled in man; his animal brain alone philosophizes.
Formerly, magic was a universal science, entirely in the hands
of the sacerdotal savant. Though the focus was jealously guarded
in the sanctuaries, its rays illuminated the whole of mankind.
Otherwise, how are we to account for the extraordinary identity
of "superstitions," customs, traditions, and even sentences,
repeated in popular proverbs so widely scattered from one pole
to the other that we find exactly the same ideas among the Tartars
and Laplanders as among the southern nations of Europe, the inhabitants
of the steppes of Russia, and the aborigines of North and South
America? For instance, Tyler shows one of the ancient Pythagorean
maxims, "Do not stir the fire with a sword," as popular
among a number of nations which have not the slightest connection
with each other. He quotes De Plano Carpini, who found this tradition
prevailing among the Tartars so far back as in 1246. A Tartar
will not consent for any amount of money to stick a knife into
the fire, or touch it with any sharp or pointed instrument, for
fear of cutting the "head of the fire."
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See Taylor's translation of "Select Works of Plotinus,"
p. 553, etc.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 248 THE VEIL OF ISIS.
The Kamtchadal of North-eastern Asia consider it a great sin so
to do. The Sioux Indians of North America dare not touch the fire
with either needle, knife, or any sharp instrument. The Kalmucks
entertain the same dread; and an Abyssinian would rather bury
his bare arms to the elbows in blazing coals than use a knife
or axe near them. All these facts Tyler also calls "simply
curious coincidences." Max Muller, however, thinks that they
lose much of their force by the fact "of the Pythagorean
doctrine being at the bottom of it."
Every sentence of Pythagoras, like most of the ancient maxims,
has a dual signification; and, while it had an occult physical
meaning, expressed literally in its words, it embodied a moral
precept, which is explained by Iamblichus in his Life of Pythagoras.
This "Dig not fire with a sword," is the ninth
symbol in the Protreptics of this Neo-platonist. "This
symbol," he says, "exhorts to prudence." It shows
"the propriety of not opposing sharp words to a man full
of fire and wrath -- not contending with him. For frequently by
uncivil words you will agitate and disturb an ignorant man, and
you will suffer yourself. . . . Herakleitus also testifies to
the truth of this symbol. For, he says, 'It is difficult to fight
with anger, for whatever is necessary to be done redeems the soul.'
And this he says truly. For many, by gratifying anger, have changed
the condition of their soul, and have made death preferable to
life. But by governing the tongue and being quiet, friendship
is produced from strife, the fire of anger being extinguished,
and you yourself will not appear to be destitute of intellect."*
We have had misgivings sometimes; we have questioned the impartiality
of our own judgment, our ability to offer a respectful criticism
upon the labors of such giants as some of our modern philosophers
-- Tyndall, Huxley, Spencer, Carpenter, and a few others. In our
immoderate love for the "men of old" -- the primitive
sages -- we were always afraid to trespass the boundaries of justice
and refuse their dues to those who deserve them. Gradually this
natural fear gave way before an unexpected reinforcement. We found
out that we were but the feeble echo of public opinion, which,
though suppressed, has sometimes found relief in able articles
scattered throughout the periodicals of the country. One of such
can be found in the National Quarterly Review of December,
1875, entitled "Our Sensational Present-Day Philosophers."
It is a very able article, discussing fearlessly the claims of
several of our scientists to new discoveries in regard to the
nature of matter, the human soul, the mind, the universe; how
the universe came into existence, etc. "The religious world
has been much startled," the author proceeds to say, "and
not a
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Iamblichus: "De Vita Pythag.," additional notes (Taylor).
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 249 THE NATIONAL QUARTERLY UPON MODERN SCIENTISTS.
little excited by the utterances of men like Spencer, Tyndall,
Huxley, Proctor, and a few others of the same school." Admitting
very cheerfully how much science owes to each of those gentlemen,
nevertheless the author "most emphatically" denies that
they have made any discoveries at all. There is nothing new in
the speculations, even of the most advanced of them; nothing which
was not known and taught, in one form or another, thousands of
years ago. He does not say that these scientists "put forward
their theories as their own discoveries, but they leave the fact
to be implied, and the newspapers do the rest. . . . The public,
which has neither time nor the inclination to examine the facts,
adopts the faith of the newspapers . . . and wonders what will
come next! . . . The supposed originators of such startling theories
are assailed in the newspapers. Sometimes the obnoxious scientists
undertake to defend themselves, but we cannot recall a single
instance in which they have candidly said, 'Gentlemen, be not
angry with us; we are merely revamping stories which
are nearly as old as the mountains.' " This would have been
the simple truth; "but even scientists or philosophers,"
adds the author, "are not always proof against the weakness
of encouraging any notion which they think may secure niches for
them among the immortal Ones."*
Huxley, Tyndall, and even Spencer have become lately the great
oracles, the "infallible popes" on the dogmas of protoplasm,
molecules, primordial forms, and atoms. They have reaped more
palms and laurels for their great discoveries than Lucretius,
Cicero, Plutarch, and Seneca had hairs on their heads. Nevertheless,
the works of the latter teem with ideas on the protoplasm, primordial
forms, etc., let alone the atoms, which caused Demokritus to be
called the atomic philosopher. In the same Review
we find this very startling denunciation:
"Who, among the innocent, has not been astonished,
even within the last year, at the wonderful results accomplished
by oxygen? What an excitement Tyndall and Huxley have created
by proclaiming, in their own ingenious, oracular way, just the
very doctrines which we have just quoted from Liebig; yet, as
early as 1840, Professor Lyon Playfair translated into English
the most 'advanced' of Baron Liebig's works."**
"Another recent utterance," he says, "which startled
a large number of innocent and pious persons, is, that every thought
we express, or attempt to express, produces a certain wonderful
change in the substance of the brain. But, for this and a good
deal more of its kind, our philosophers had only to turn to the
pages of Baron Liebig. Thus, for instance,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "The National Quarterly Review," Dec., 1875.
** Ibid., p. 94.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 250 THE VEIL OF ISIS.
that scientist proclaims: 'Physiology has sufficiently decisive
grounds for the opinions, that every thought, every sensation
is accompanied by a change in the composition of the substance
of the brain; that every motion, every manifestation of force
is the result of a transformation of the structure or of its substance.'
"*
Thus, throughout the sensational lectures of Tyndall, we can trace,
almost to a page, the whole of Liebig's speculations, interlined
now and then with the still earlier views of Demokritus and other
Pagan philosophers. A potpourri of old hypotheses elevated by
the great authority of the day into quasi-demonstrated formulas,
and delivered in that pathetic, picturesque, mellow, and thrillingly-eloquent
phraseology so preeminently his own.
Further, the same reviewer shows us many of the identical ideas
and all the material requisite to demonstrate the great discoveries
of Tyndall and Huxley, in the works of Dr. Joseph Priestley, author
of Disquisitions on Matter and Spirit, and even in Herder's
Philosophy of History.
"Priestley," adds the author, "was not molested
by government, simply because he had no ambition to obtain fame
by proclaiming his atheistic views from the house-top. This philosopher
. . . was the author of from seventy to eighty volumes, and the
discoverer of oxygen." It is in these works that "he
puts forward those identical ideas which have been declared so
'startling,' 'bold,' etc., as the utterances of our present-day
philosophers."
"Our readers," he proceeds to say, "remember what
an excitement has been created by the utterances of some of our
modern philosophers as to the origin and nature of ideas, but
those utterances, like others that preceded and followed them,
contain nothing new." "An idea," says Plutarch,
"is a being incorporeal, which has no subsistence
by itself, but gives figure and form unto shapeless matter, and
becomes the cause of its manifestation" (De
Placitio Philosophorum).
Verily, no modern atheist, Mr. Huxley included, can outvie Epicurus
in materialism; he can but mimic him. And what is his "protoplasm,"
but a rechauffe of the speculations of the Hindu Swabhavikas
or Pantheists, who assert that all things, the gods as well as
men and animals, are born from Swabhava or their own nature?**
As to Epicurus, this is what Lucretius makes him say: "The
soul, thus produced, must be material, because we trace
it issuing from a material source; because it exists, and exists
alone in a material system; is nourished by material food; grows
with the growth of the body; becomes matured with its maturity;
declines with its decay; and hence, whether belonging to man
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Force and Matter," p. 151.
** Burnouf: "Introduction," p. 118.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 251 EPICURUS THE DISCOVERER OF MUTTON-PROTOPLASM.
or brute, must die with its death." Nevertheless, we would
remind the reader that Epicurus is here speaking of the Astral
Soul, not of Divine Spirit. Still, if we rightly understand
the above, Mr. Huxley's "mutton-protoplasm" is of a
very ancient origin, and can claim for its birthplace, Athens,
and for its cradle, the brain of old Epicurus.
Further, still, anxious not to be misunderstood or found guilty
of depreciating the labor of any of our scientists, the author
closes his essay by remarking, "We merely want to show that,
at least, that portion of the public which considers itself intelligent
and enlightened should cultivate its memory, or remember the 'advanced'
thinkers of the past much better than it does. Especially should
those do so who, whether from the desk, the rostrum, or the pulpit,
undertake to instruct all willing to be instructed by them. There
would then be much less groundless apprehension, much less charlatanism,
and above all, much less plagiarism, than there is."*
Truly says Cudworth that the greatest ignorance of which our modern
wiseacres accuse the ancients is their belief in the soul's immortality.
Like the old skeptic of Greece, our scientists -- to use an expression
of the same Dr. Cudworth -- are afraid that if they admit spirits
and apparitions they must admit a God too; and there is nothing
too absurd, he adds, for them to suppose, in order to keep out
the existence of God. The great body of ancient materialists,
skeptical as they now seem to us, thought otherwise, and Epicurus,
who rejected the soul's immortality, believed still in a God,
and Demokritus fully conceded the reality of apparitions. The
preexistence and God-like powers of the human spirit were believed
in by most all the sages of ancient days. The magic of Babylon
and Persia based upon it the doctrine of their machagistia.
The Chaldean Oracles, on which Pletho and Psellus
have so much commented, constantly expounded and amplified their
testimony. Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Epicharmus, Empedocles, Kebes,
Euripides, Plato, Euclid, Philo, Boehius, Virgil, Marcus Cicero,
Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus, Psellus, Synesius, Origen, and,
finally, Aristotle himself, far from denying our immortality,
support it most emphatically. Like Cardon and Pompanatius, "who
were no friends to the soul's immortality," as says Henry
More, "Aristotle expressly concludes that the rational soul
is both a distinct being from the soul of the world, though of
the same essence," and that "it does preexist before
it comes into the body."**
Years have rolled away since the Count Joseph De Maistre wrote
a sentence which, if appropriate to the Voltairean epoch in which
he lived,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "The National Quarterly Review," Dec., 1875, p. 96.
** "De Anima," lib. i., cap. 3.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 252 THE VEIL OF ISIS.
applies with still more justice to our period of utter skepticism.
"I have heard," writes this eminent man, "I have
heard and read of myriads of good jokes on the ignorance of the
ancients, who were always seeing spirits everywhere; methinks
that we are a great deal more imbecile than our forefathers, in
never perceiving any such now, anywhere."*
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* De Maistre: "Soirees de St. Petersburg."
Chapter 8
Contents