CHAPTER XV.

INDIA THE CRADLE OF THE RACE.

Acquisition of the “secret doctrine” 575

Two relics owned by a Pali scholar 577

Jealous exclusiveness of the Hindus 581

Lydia Maria Child on Phallic symbolism 583

The age of the Vedas and Manu 587

Traditions of pre-diluvian races 589

Atlantis and its peoples 593

Peruvian relics 597

The Gobi desert and its secrets 599

Thibetan and Chinese legends 600

The magician aids, not impedes, nature 617

Philosophy, religion, arts and sciences bequeathed by Mother

India to posterity 618

PREFACE. {v}

The work now submitted to public judgment is the fruit of a somewhat

intimate acquaintance with Eastern adepts and study of their science.

It is offered to such as are willing to accept truth wherever it may

be found, and to defend it, even looking popular prejudice straight

in the face. It is an attempt to aid the student to detect the vital

principles which underlie the philosophical systems of old.

The book is written in all sincerity. It is meant to do even justice,

and to speak the truth alike without malice or prejudice. But it shows

neither mercy for enthroned error, nor reverence for usurped authority.

It demands for a spoliated past, that credit for its achievements which

has been too long withheld. It calls for a restitution of borrowed

robes, and the vindication of calumniated but glorious reputations.

Toward no form of worship, no religious faith, no scientific hypothesis

has its criticism been directed in any other spirit. Men and parties,

sects and schools are but the mere ephemera of the world’s day. TRUTH,

high-seated upon its rock of adamant, is alone eternal and supreme.

We believe in no Magic which transcends the scope and capacity of

the human mind, nor in “miracle,” whether divine or diabolical, if

such imply a transgression of the laws of nature instituted from all

eternity. Nevertheless, we accept the saying of the gifted author

of _Festus_, that the human heart has not yet fully uttered itself,

and that we have never attained or even understood the extent of its

powers. Is it too much to believe that man should be developing new

sensibilities and a closer relation with nature? The logic of evolution

must teach as much, if carried to its legitimate conclusions. If,

somewhere, in the line of ascent from vegetable or ascidian to the

noblest man a soul was evolved, gifted with intellectual qualities,

it cannot be unreasonable to infer and believe that a faculty of

perception is also growing in man, enabling him to descry facts and

truths even beyond our ordinary ken. Yet we do not hesitate to accept

the assertion of Biffé, that “the essential is forever the same.

Whether we cut away the marble inward that hides the statue in the {vi}

block, or pile stone upon stone outward till the temple is completed,

our NEW result is only an _old idea_. The latest of all the eternities

will find its destined other half-soul in the earliest.”

When, years ago, we first travelled over the East, exploring

the penetralia of its deserted sanctuaries, two saddening and

ever-recurring questions oppressed our thoughts: _Where_, WHO, WHAT

_is_ GOD? _Who ever saw the_ IMMORTAL SPIRIT _of man, so as to be able

to assure himself of man’s immortality_?

It was while most anxious to solve these perplexing problems that

we came into contact with certain men, endowed with such mysterious

powers and such profound knowledge that we may truly designate them as

the sages of the Orient. To their instructions we lent a ready ear.

They showed us that by combining science with religion, the existence

of God and immortality of man’s spirit may be demonstrated like a

problem of Euclid. For the first time we received the assurance that

the Oriental philosophy has room for no other faith than an absolute

and immovable faith in the omnipotence of man’s own immortal self.

We were taught that this omnipotence comes from the kinship of man’s

spirit with the Universal Soul—God! The latter, they said, can never be

demonstrated but by the former. Man-spirit proves God-spirit, as the

one drop of water proves a source from which it must have come. Tell

one who had never seen water, that there is an ocean of water, and he

must accept it on faith or reject it altogether. But let one drop fall

upon his hand, and he then has the fact from which all the rest may be

inferred. After that he could by degrees understand that a boundless

and fathomless ocean of water existed. Blind faith would no longer be

necessary; he would have supplanted it with KNOWLEDGE. When one sees

mortal man displaying tremendous capabilities, controlling the forces

of nature and opening up to view the world of spirit, the reflective

mind is overwhelmed with the conviction that if one man’s spiritual

_Ego_ can do this much, the capabilities of the FATHER SPIRIT must be

relatively as much vaster as the whole ocean surpasses the single drop

in volume and potency. _Ex nihilo nihil fit_; prove the soul of man by

its wondrous powers—you have proved God!

In our studies, mysteries were shown to be no mysteries. Names and

places that to the Western mind have only a significance derived from

Eastern fable, were shown to be realities. Reverently we stepped in

spirit within the temple of Isis; to lift aside the veil of “the

one that is and was and shall be” at Saïs; to look through the rent

curtain of the Sanctum Sanctorum at Jerusalem; and even to interrogate

within the crypts which once existed beneath the sacred edifice, the

mysterious Bath-Kol. The _Filia Vocis_—the daughter of the divine {vii}

voice—responded from the mercy-seat within the veil,[1] and science,

theology, every human hypothesis and conception born of imperfect

knowledge, lost forever their authoritative character in our sight.

The one-living God had spoken through his oracle—man, and we were

satisfied. Such knowledge is priceless; and it has been hidden only

from those who overlooked it, derided it, or denied its existence.

From such as these we apprehend criticism, censure, and perhaps

hostility, although the obstacles in our way neither spring from the

validity of proof, the authenticated facts of history, nor the lack

of common sense among the public whom we address. The drift of modern

thought is palpably in the direction of liberalism in religion as well

as science. Each day brings the reactionists nearer to the point where

they must surrender the despotic authority over the public conscience,

which they have so long enjoyed and exercised. When the Pope can go

to the extreme of fulminating anathemas against all who maintain the

liberty of the Press and of speech, or who insist that in the conflict

of laws, civil and ecclesiastical, the civil law should prevail, or

that any method of instruction solely secular, may be approved;[2]

and Mr. Tyndall, as the mouthpiece of nineteenth century science,

says, “... the impregnable position of science may be stated in a few

words: we claim, and we shall wrest from theology, the entire domain of

cosmological theory”[3]—the end is not difficult to foresee.

Centuries of subjection have not quite congealed the life-blood of men

into crystals around the nucleus of blind faith; and the nineteenth is

witnessing the struggles of the giant as he shakes off the Liliputian

cordage and rises to his feet. Even the Protestant communion of England

and America, now engaged in the revision of the text of its _Oracles_,

will be compelled to show the origin and merits of the text itself. The

day of domineering over men with dogmas has reached its gloaming.

Our work, then, is a plea for the recognition of the Hermetic

philosophy, the anciently universal Wisdom-Religion, as the only

possible key to the Absolute in science and theology. To show that we

do not at all conceal from ourselves the gravity of our undertaking,

we may say in advance that it would not be strange if the following

classes should array themselves against us:

The Christians, who will see that we question the evidences of the {viii}

genuineness of their faith.

The Scientists, who will find their pretensions placed in the same

bundle with those of the Roman Catholic Church for infallibility, and,

in certain particulars, the sages and philosophers of the ancient world

classed higher than they.

Pseudo-Scientists will, of course, denounce us furiously.

Broad Churchmen and Freethinkers will find that we do not accept what

they do, but demand the recognition of the whole truth.

Men of letters and various _authorities_, who hide their real belief in

deference to popular prejudices.

The mercenaries and parasites of the Press, who prostitute its more

than royal power, and dishonor a noble profession, will find it easy to

mock at things too wonderful for them to understand; for to them the

price of a paragraph is more than the value of sincerity. From many

will come honest criticism; from many—cant. But we look to the future.

The contest now going on between the party of public conscience and the

party of reaction, has already developed a healthier tone of thought.

It will hardly fail to result ultimately in the overthrow of error and

the triumph of Truth. We repeat again—we are laboring for the brighter

morrow.

And yet, when we consider the bitter opposition that we are called

upon to face, who is better entitled than we upon entering the arena

to write upon our shield the hail of the Roman gladiator to Cæsar:

MORITURUS TE SALUTAT!

_New York, September, 1877._

BEFORE THE VEIL. {ix}

_Joan._—Advance our waving colors on the walls!

—_King Henry VI._ Act IV.

“My life has been devoted to the study of man, his destiny and his

happiness.”—J. R. BUCHANAN, M.D., _Outlines of Lectures on

Anthropology_.

It is nineteen centuries since, as we are told, the night of Heathenism

and Paganism was first dispelled by the divine light of Christianity;

and two-and-a-half centuries since the bright lamp of Modern Science

began to shine on the darkness of the ignorance of the ages. Within

these respective epochs, we are required to believe, the true moral

and intellectual progress of the race has occurred. The ancient

philosophers were well enough for their respective generations, but

they were illiterate as compared with modern men of science. The

ethics of Paganism perhaps met the wants of the uncultivated people

of antiquity, but not until the advent of the luminous “Star of

Bethlehem,” was the true road to moral perfection and the way to

salvation made plain. Of old, brutishness was the rule, virtue and

spirituality the exception. Now, the dullest may read the will of God

in His revealed word; men have every incentive to be good, and are

constantly becoming better.

This is the assumption; what are the facts? On the one hand an

unspiritual, dogmatic, too often debauched clergy; a host of sects, and

three warring great religions; discord instead of union, dogmas without

proofs, sensation-loving preachers, and wealth and pleasure-seeking

parishioners’ hypocrisy and bigotry, begotten by the tyrannical

exigencies of respectability, the rule of the day, sincerity and real

piety exceptional. On the other hand, scientific hypotheses built

on sand; no accord upon a single question; rancorous quarrels and

jealousy; a general drift into materialism. A death-grapple of Science

with Theology for infallibility—“a conflict of ages.”

At Rome, the self-styled seat of Christianity, the putative successor

to the chair of Peter is undermining social order with his invisible

but omnipresent net-work of bigoted agents, and incites them to

revolutionize Europe for his temporal as well as spiritual supremacy.

We see him who calls himself the “Vicar of Christ,” fraternizing

with the anti-Christian Moslem against another Christian nation,

publicly invoking the blessing of God upon the arms of those who

have for centuries withstood, with fire and sword, the pretensions {x}

of his Christ to Godhood! At Berlin—one of the great seats of

learning—professors of modern _exact_ sciences, turning their backs on

the boasted results of enlightenment of the post-Galileonian period,

are quietly snuffing out the candle of the great Florentine; seeking,

in short, to prove the heliocentric system, and even the earth’s

rotation, but the dreams of deluded scientists, Newton a visionary, and

all past and present astronomers but clever calculators of unverifiable

problems.[4]

Between these two conflicting Titans—Science and Theology—is

a bewildered public, fast losing all belief in man’s personal

immortality, in a deity of any kind, and rapidly descending to the

level of a mere animal existence. Such is the picture of the hour,

illumined by the bright noon-day sun of this Christian and scientific

era!

Would it be strict justice to condemn to critical lapidation the most

humble and modest of authors for _entirely rejecting the authority

of both these combatants_? Are we not bound rather to take as the

true aphorism of this century, the declaration of Horace Greeley: “I

accept _unreservedly_ the views of no man, living or dead”?[5] Such,

at all events, will be our motto, and we mean that principle to be our

constant guide throughout this work.

Among the many phenomenal outgrowths of our century, the strange creed

of the so-called Spiritualists has arisen amid the tottering ruins of

self-styled revealed religions and materialistic philosophies; and yet

it alone offers a possible last refuge of compromise between the two.

That this unexpected ghost of pre-Christian days finds poor welcome

from our sober and positive century, is not surprising. Times have

strangely changed; and it is but recently that a well-known Brooklyn

preacher pointedly remarked in a sermon, that could Jesus come back and

behave in the streets of New York, as he did in those of Jerusalem, he

would find himself confined in the prison of the Tombs.[6] What sort

of welcome, then, could Spiritualism ever expect? True enough, the

weird stranger seems neither attractive nor promising at first sight.

Shapeless and uncouth, like an infant attended by seven nurses, it is

coming out of its teens lame and mutilated. The name of its enemies is

legion; its friends and protectors are a handful. But what of that?

When was ever truth accepted _à priori_? Because the champions of

Spiritualism have in their fanaticism magnified its qualities, and

remained blind to its imperfections, that gives no excuse to doubt

its reality. A forgery is impossible when we have no model to forge

after. The fanaticism of Spiritualists is itself a proof of the {xi}

genuineness and possibility of their phenomena. They give us facts

that we may investigate, not assertions that we must believe without

proof. Millions of reasonable men and women do not so easily succumb to

collective hallucination. And so, while the clergy, following their own

interpretations of the _Bible_, and science its self-made _Codex_ of

possibilities in nature, refuse it a fair hearing, _real_ science and

_true_ religion are silent, and gravely wait further developments.

The whole question of phenomena rests on the correct comprehension of

old philosophies. Whither, then, should we turn, in our perplexity, but

to the ancient sages, since, on the pretext of superstition, we are

refused an explanation by the modern? Let us ask them what they know of

genuine science and religion; not in the matter of mere details, but in

all the broad conception of these twin truths—so strong in their unity,

so weak when divided. Besides, we may find our profit in comparing this

boasted modern science with ancient ignorance; this improved modern

theology with the “Secret doctrines” of the ancient universal religion.

Perhaps we may thus discover a neutral ground whence we can reach and

profit by both.

It is the Platonic philosophy, the most elaborate compend of the

abstruse systems of old India, that can alone afford us this middle

ground. Although twenty-two and a quarter centuries have elapsed since

the death of Plato, the great minds of the world are still occupied

with his writings. He was, in the fullest sense of the word, the

world’s interpreter. And the greatest philosopher of the pre-Christian

era mirrored faithfully in his works the spiritualism of the Vedic

philosophers who lived thousands of years before himself, and its

metaphysical expression. Vyasa, Djeminy, Kapila, Vrihaspati, Sumati,

and so many others, will be found to have transmitted their indelible

imprint through the intervening centuries upon Plato and his school.

Thus is warranted the inference that to Plato and the ancient Hindu

sages was alike revealed the same wisdom. So surviving the shock of

time, what can this wisdom be but divine and eternal?

Plato taught justice as subsisting in the soul of its possessor and his

greatest good. “Men, in proportion to their intellect, have admitted

his transcendent claims.” Yet his commentators, almost with one

consent, shrink from every passage which implies that his metaphysics

are based on a solid foundation, and not on ideal conceptions.

But Plato could not accept a philosophy destitute of spiritual

aspirations; the two were at one with him. For the old Grecian sage

there was a single object of attainment: REAL KNOWLEDGE. He considered

those only to be genuine philosophers, or students of truth, who

possess the knowledge of the really-existing, in opposition to the mere {xii}

seeing; of the _always-existing_, in opposition to the transitory; and

of that which exists _permanently_, in opposition to that which waxes,

wanes, and is developed and destroyed alternately. “Beyond all finite

existences and secondary causes, all laws, ideas, and principles,

there is an INTELLIGENCE or MIND [νοῦς, _nous_, the spirit], the first

principle of all principles, the Supreme Idea on which all other ideas

are grounded; the Monarch and Lawgiver of the universe; the ultimate

substance from which all things derive their being and essence, the

first and efficient Cause of all the order, and harmony, and beauty,

and excellency, and goodness, which pervades the universe—who is

called, by way of preëminence and excellence, the Supreme Good, the

God (ὁ θεός) ‘the God over all’ (ὁ επι πασι θεός).”[7] He is not the

truth nor the intelligence, but “the father of it.” Though this eternal

essence of things may not be perceptible by our physical senses, it

may be apprehended by the mind of those who are not wilfully obtuse.

“To you,” said Jesus to his elect disciples, “it is given to know the

mysteries of the Kingdom of God, but to them [the πολλοὶ] it is not

given; ... therefore speak I to them in parables [or allegories];

because they seeing, see not, and hearing, they hear not, neither do

they understand.”[8]

The philosophy of Plato, we are assured by Porphyry, of the

Neo-platonic School was taught and illustrated in the MYSTERIES. Many

have questioned and even denied this; and Lobeck, in his _Aglaophomus_,

has gone to the extreme of representing the sacred orgies as little

more than an empty show to captivate the imagination. As though Athens

and Greece would for twenty centuries and more have repaired every

fifth year to Eleusis to witness a solemn religious farce! Augustine,

the papa-bishop of Hippo, has resolved such assertions. He declares

that the doctrines of the Alexandrian Platonists were the original

esoteric doctrines of the first followers of Plato, and describes

Plotinus as a Plato resuscitated. He also explains the motives of the

great philosopher for veiling the interior sense of what he taught.[9]

As to the _myths_, Plato declares in the _Gorgias_ and the _Phædon_ {xiii}

that they were the vehicles of great truths well worth the seeking.

But commentators are so little _en rapport_ with the great philosopher

as to be compelled to acknowledge that they are ignorant where “the

doctrinal ends, and the mythical begins.” Plato put to flight the

popular superstition concerning magic and dæmons, and developed

the exaggerated notions of the time into rational theories and

metaphysical conceptions. Perhaps these would not quite stand the

inductive method of reasoning established by Aristotle; nevertheless

they are satisfactory in the highest degree to those who apprehend the

existence of that higher faculty of insight or intuition, as affording

a criterion for ascertaining truth.

Basing all his doctrines upon the presence of the Supreme Mind,

Plato taught that the _nous_, spirit, or rational soul of man, being

“generated by the Divine Father,” possessed a nature kindred, or

even homogeneous, with the Divinity, and was capable of beholding

the eternal realities. This faculty of contemplating reality in a

direct and immediate manner belongs to God alone; the aspiration for

this knowledge constitutes what is really meant by _philosophy_—the

love of wisdom. The love of truth is inherently the love of good;

and so predominating over every desire of the soul, purifying it

and assimilating it to the divine, thus governing every act of the

individual, it raises man to a participation and communion with

Divinity, and restores him to the likeness of God. “This flight,” says

Plato in the _Theætetus_, “consists in becoming like God, and this

assimilation is the becoming just and holy with wisdom.”

The basis of this assimilation is always asserted to be the

preëxistence of the spirit or _nous_. In the allegory of the chariot

and winged steeds, given in the _Phædrus_, he represents the psychical

nature as composite and two-fold; the _thumos_, or _epithumetic_

part, formed from the substances of the world of phenomena; and the

θυμοειδές, _thumoeides_, the essence of which is linked to the eternal

world. The present earth-life is a fall and punishment. The soul dwells

in “the grave which we call _the body_,” and in its incorporate state,

and previous to the discipline of education, the noëtic or spiritual

element is “asleep.” Life is thus a dream, rather than a reality. Like

the captives in the subterranean cave, described in _The Republic_, the

back is turned to the light, we perceive only the shadows of objects,

and think them the actual realities. Is not this the idea of _Maya_, {xiv}

or the illusion of the senses in physical life, which is so marked a

feature in Buddhistical philosophy? But these shadows, if we have not

given ourselves up absolutely to the sensuous nature, arouse in us the

reminiscence of that higher world that we once inhabited. “The interior

spirit has some dim and shadowy recollection of its antenatal state of

bliss, and some instinctive and proleptic yearnings for its return.” It

is the province of the discipline of philosophy to disinthrall it from

the bondage of sense, and raise it into the empyrean of pure thought,

to the vision of eternal truth, goodness, and beauty. “The soul,” says

Plato, in the _Theætetus_, “cannot come into the form of a man if

it has never seen the truth. This is a recollection of those things

which our soul formerly saw when journeying with Deity, despising the

things which we now say _are_, and looking up to that which REALLY IS.

Wherefore the _nous_, or spirit, of the philosopher (or student of the

higher truth) alone is furnished with wings; because he, to the best

of his ability, keeps these things in mind, of which the contemplation

renders even Deity itself divine. By making the right use of these

things remembered from the former life, by constantly perfecting

himself in the perfect mysteries, a man becomes truly perfect—an

initiate into the diviner wisdom.”

Hence we may understand why the sublimer scenes in the Mysteries were

always in the night. The life of the interior spirit is the death

of the external nature; and the night of the physical world denotes

the day of the spiritual. Dionysus, the night-sun, is, therefore,

worshipped rather than Helios, orb of day. In the Mysteries were

symbolized the preëxistent condition of the spirit and soul, and the

lapse of the latter into earth-life and Hades, the miseries of that

life, the purification of the soul, and its restoration to divine

bliss, or reünion with spirit. Theon, of Smyrna, aptly compares the

philosophical discipline to the mystic rites: “Philosophy,” says he,

“may be called the initiation into the true arcana, and the instruction

in the genuine Mysteries. There are five parts of this initiation:

I., the previous purification; II., the admission to participation in

the arcane rites; III., the epoptic revelation; IV., the investiture

or enthroning; V.—the fifth, which is produced from all these, is

friendship and interior communion with God, and the enjoyment of that

felicity which arises from intimate converse with divine beings....

Plato denominates the _epopteia_, or personal view, the perfect

contemplation of things which are apprehended intuitively, absolute

truths and ideas. He also considers the binding of the head and

crowning as analogous to the authority which any one receives from

his instructors, of leading others into the same contemplation. The

fifth gradation is the most perfect felicity arising from hence, and, {xv}

according to Plato, an assimilation to divinity as far as is possible

to human beings.”[10]

Such is Platonism. “Out of Plato,” says Ralph Waldo Emerson, “come

all things that are still written and debated among men of thought.”

He absorbed the learning of his times—of Greece from Philolaus to

Socrates; then of Pythagoras in Italy; then what he could procure from

Egypt and the East. He was so broad that all philosophy, European and

Asiatic, was in his doctrines; and to culture and contemplation he

added the nature and qualities of the poet.

The followers of Plato generally adhered strictly to his psychological

theories. Several, however, like Xenocrates, ventured into bolder

speculations. Speusippus, the nephew and successor of the great

philosopher, was the author of the _Numerical Analysis_, a treatise

on the Pythagorean numbers. Some of his speculations are not found in

the written _Dialogues_; but as he was a listener to the unwritten

lectures of Plato, the judgment of Enfield is doubtless correct, that

he did not differ from his master. He was evidently, though not named,

the antagonist whom Aristotle criticised, when professing to cite the

argument of Plato against the doctrine of Pythagoras, that all things

were in themselves numbers, or rather, inseparable from the idea of

numbers. He especially endeavored to show that the Platonic doctrine of

ideas differed essentially from the Pythagorean, in that it presupposed

numbers and magnitudes to exist apart from things. He also asserted

that Plato taught that there could be no _real_ knowledge, if the

object of that knowledge was not carried beyond or above the sensible.

But Aristotle was no trustworthy witness. He misrepresented Plato,

and he almost caricatured the doctrines of Pythagoras. There is a

canon of interpretation, which should guide us in our examinations of

every philosophical opinion: “The human mind has, under the necessary

operation of its own laws, been compelled to entertain the same

fundamental ideas, and the human heart to cherish the same feelings

in all ages.” It is certain that Pythagoras awakened the deepest

intellectual sympathy of his age, and that his doctrines exerted a

powerful influence upon the mind of Plato. His cardinal idea was

that there existed a permanent principle of unity beneath the forms,

changes, and other phenomena of the universe. Aristotle asserted that

he taught that “numbers are the first principles of all entities.”

Ritter has expressed the opinion that the formula of Pythagoras should

be taken symbolically, which is doubtless correct. Aristotle goes on

to associate these _numbers_ with the “forms” and “ideas” of Plato. He

even declares that Plato said: “forms are numbers,” and that “ideas {xvi}

are substantial existences—real beings.” Yet Plato did not so teach.

He declared that the final cause was the Supreme Goodness—το ἀγαθόν.

“Ideas are objects of pure conception for the human reason, and they

are attributes of the Divine Reason.”[11] Nor did he ever say that

“forms are numbers.” What he did say may be found in the _Timæus_: “God

formed things as they first arose according to forms and numbers.”

It is recognized by modern science that all the higher laws of nature

assume the form of quantitative statement. This is perhaps a fuller

elaboration or more explicit affirmation of the Pythagorean doctrine.

Numbers were regarded as the best representations of the laws of

harmony which pervade the cosmos. We know too that in chemistry the

doctrine of atoms and the laws of combination are actually and, as

it were, arbitrarily defined by numbers. As Mr. W. Archer Butler

has expressed it: “The world is, then, through all its departments,

a living arithmetic in its development, a realized geometry in its

repose.”

The key to the Pythagorean dogmas is the general formula of unity in

multiplicity, the one evolving the many and pervading the many. This

is the ancient doctrine of emanation in few words. Even the apostle

Paul accepted it as true. “Εξ αυτοὺ, και δι᾽ αυτοῦ, και εις αυτὸν τὰ

πάντα”—Out of him and through him and in him all things are. This, as

we can see by the following quotation, is purely Hindu and Brahmanical:

“When the dissolution—Pralaya—had arrived at its term, the great

Being—Para-Atma or Para-Purusha—the Lord existing through himself,

out of whom and through whom all things were, and are and will be ...

resolved to emanate from his own substance the various creatures”

(_Manava-Dharma-Sastra_, book i., slokas 6 and 7).

The mystic Decad 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10 is a way of expressing this idea.

The One is God, the Two, matter; the Three, combining Monad and Duad,

and partaking of the nature of both, is the phenomenal world; the

Tetrad, or form of perfection, expresses the emptiness of all; and the

Decad, or sum of all, involves the entire cosmos. The universe is the

combination of a thousand elements, and yet the expression of a single

spirit—a chaos to the sense, a cosmos to the reason.

The whole of this combination of the progression of numbers in the idea

of creation is Hindu. The Being existing through himself, Swayambhu

or Swayambhuva, as he is called by some, is one. He emanates from

himself the _creative faculty_, Brahma or Purusha (the divine male),

and the one becomes _Two_; out of this Duad, union of the purely {xvii}

intellectual principle with the principle of matter, evolves a third,

which is Viradj, the phenomenal world. It is out of this invisible

and incomprehensible trinity, the Brahmanic Trimurty, that evolves

the second triad which represents the three faculties—the creative,

the conservative, and the transforming. These are typified by Brahma,

Vishnu, and Siva, but are again and ever blended into one. _Unity_,

Brahma, or as the _Vedas_ called him, Tridandi, is the god triply

manifested, which gave rise to the symbolical _Aum_ or the abbreviated

Trimurty. It is but under this trinity, ever active and tangible to all

our senses, that the invisible and unknown Monas can manifest itself

to the world of mortals. When he becomes _Sarira_, or he who puts on

a visible form, he typifies all the principles of matter, all the

germs of life, he is Purusha, the god of the three visages, or triple

power, the essence of the Vedic triad. “Let the Brahmas know the sacred

Syllable (Aum), the three words of the Savitri, and read the _Vedas_

daily” (_Manu_, book iv., sloka 125).

“After having produced the universe, He whose power is incomprehensible

vanished again, absorbed in the Supreme Soul.... Having retired into

the primitive darkness, the great Soul remains within the unknown, and

is void of all form....

“When having again reünited the subtile elementary principles, it

introduces itself into either a vegetable or animal seed, it assumes at

each a new form.”

“It is thus that, by an alternative waking and rest, the Immutable

Being causes to revive and die eternally all the existing creatures,

active and inert” (_Manu_, book i., sloka 50, and others).

He who has studied Pythagoras and his speculations on the Monad, which,

after having emanated the Duad retires into silence and darkness, and

thus creates the Triad can realize whence came the philosophy of the

great Samian Sage, and after him that of Socrates and Plato.

Speusippus seems to have taught that the psychical or thumetic soul

was immortal as well as the spirit or rational soul, and further

on we will show his reasons. He also—like Philolaus and Aristotle,

in his disquisitions upon the soul—makes of æther an element; so

that there were five principal elements to correspond with the five

regular figures in Geometry. This became also a doctrine of the

Alexandrian school.[12] Indeed, there was much in the doctrines of

the _Philaletheans_ which did not appear in the works of the older

Platonists, but was doubtless taught in substance by the philosopher

himself, but with his usual reticence was not committed to writing as

being too arcane for promiscuous publication. Speusippus and Xenocrates

after him, held, like their great master, that the _anima mundi_, or {xviii}

world-soul, was not the Deity, but a manifestation. Those philosophers

never conceived of the One as an _animate nature_.[13] The original One

did not _exist_, as we understand the term. Not till he had united with

the many—emanated existence (the monad and duad) was a being produced.

The τίμιον, honored—the something manifested, dwells in the centre as

in the circumference, but it is only the reflection of the Deity—the

World-Soul.[14] In this doctrine we find the spirit of esoteric

Buddhism.

A man’s idea of God, is that image of blinding light that he sees

reflected in the concave mirror of his own soul, and yet this is not,

in very truth, God, but only His reflection. His glory is there, but,

it is the light of his own Spirit that the man sees, and it is all he

can bear to look upon. _The clearer the mirror, the brighter will be

the divine image._ But the external world cannot be witnessed in it

at the same moment. In the ecstatic Yogin, in the illuminated Seer,

the spirit will shine like the noon-day sun; in the debased victim of

earthly attraction, the radiance has disappeared, for the mirror is

obscured with the stains of matter. Such men deny their God, and would

willingly deprive humanity of soul at one blow.

NO GOD, NO SOUL? Dreadful, annihilating thought! The maddening

nightmare of a lunatic—Atheist; presenting before his fevered vision,

a hideous, ceaseless procession of sparks of cosmic matter created by

_no one_; self-appearing, self-existent, and self-developing; this

Self _no_ Self, for it is _nothing_ and _nobody_; floating onward

from _nowhence_, it is propelled by no Cause, for there is none, and

it rushes _nowhither_. And this in a circle of Eternity blind, inert,

and—CAUSELESS. What is even the erroneous conception of the Buddhistic

Nirvana in comparison! The Nirvana is preceded by numberless spiritual

transformations and metempsychoses, during which the entity loses not

for a second the sense of its own individuality, and which may last for

millions of ages before the Final _No_-thing is reached.

Though some have considered Speusippus as inferior to Aristotle, the

world is nevertheless indebted to him for defining and expounding many

things that Plato had left obscure in his doctrine of the Sensible and

Ideal. His maxim was “The Immaterial is known by means of scientific

thought, the Material by scientific perception.”[15]

Xenocrates expounded many of the unwritten theories and teachings of

his master. He too held the Pythagorean doctrine, and his system of

numerals and mathematics in the highest estimation. Recognizing but

three degrees of knowledge—_Thought_, _Perception_, and _Envisagement_

(or knowledge by _Intuition_), he made the former busy itself with all {xix}

that which is _beyond_ the heavens; Perception with things in the

heavens; Intuition with the heavens themselves.

We find again these theories, and nearly in the same language in the

_Manava-Dharma-Sastra_, when speaking of the creation of man: “He (the

Supreme) drew from his own essence the immortal breath which _perisheth

not in the being_, and to this soul of the being he gave the Ahancara

(conscience of the _ego_) sovereign guide. Then he gave to that soul of

the being (man) the intellect formed of _the three qualities_, and the

five organs of the outward perception.”

These three qualities are Intelligence, Conscience, and Will; answering

to the Thought, Perception, and Envisagement of Xenocrates. The

relation of numbers to Ideas was developed by him further than by

Speusippus, and he surpassed Plato in his definition of the doctrine of

Invisible Magnitudes. Reducing them to their ideal primary elements, he

demonstrated that every figure and form originated out of the smallest

indivisible line. That Xenocrates held the same theories as Plato

in relation to the human soul (supposed to be a number) is evident,

though Aristotle contradicts this, like every other teaching of this

philosopher.[16] This is conclusive evidence that many of Plato’s

doctrines were delivered orally, even were it shown that Xenocrates

and not Plato was the first to originate the theory of indivisible

magnitudes. He derives the Soul from the first Duad, and calls it

a self-moved number.[17] Theophrastus remarks that he entered and

eliminated this Soul-theory more than any other Platonist. He built

upon it the cosmological doctrine, and proved the necessary existence

in every part of the universal space of a successive and progressive

series of animated and thinking though spiritual beings.[18] The

Human Soul with him is a compound of the most spiritual properties of

the Monad and the Duad, possessing the highest principles of both.

If, like Plato and Prodicus, he refers to the Elements as to Divine

Powers, and calls them gods, neither himself nor others connected

any anthropomorphic idea with the appellation. Krische remarks that

he called them gods only that these elementary powers should not be

confounded with the dæmons of the nether world[19] (the Elementary

Spirits). As the Soul of the World permeates the whole Cosmos, even

beasts must have in them something divine.[20] This, also, is the

doctrine of Buddhists and the Hermetists, and Manu endows with a living

soul even the plants and the tiniest blade of grass.

The dæmons, according to this theory, are intermediate beings between {xx}

the divine perfection and human sinfulness,[21] and he divides them

into classes, each subdivided in many others. But he states expressly

that the individual or personal soul is the leading guardian dæmon

of every man, and that no dæmon has more power over us than our own.

Thus the _Daimonion_ of Socrates is the god or Divine Entity which

inspired him all his life. It depends on man either to open or close

his perceptions to the Divine voice. Like Speusippus he ascribed

immortality to the ψυχη, psychical body, or irrational soul. But

some Hermetic philosophers have taught that the soul has a separate

continued existence only so long as in its passage through the spheres

any material or earthly particles remain incorporated in it; and

that when absolutely purified, the latter are _annihilated_, and the

quintessence of the soul alone becomes blended with its _divine_ spirit

(the _Rational_), and the two are thenceforth one.

Zeller states that Xenocrates forbade the eating of animal food, not

because he saw in beasts something akin to man, as he ascribed to

them a dim consciousness of God, but, “for the opposite reason, lest

the irrationality of animal souls might thereby obtain a certain

influence over us.”[22] But we believe that it was rather because,

like Pythagoras, he had had the Hindu sages for his masters and

models. Cicero depicted Xenocrates utterly despising everything

except the highest virtue;[23] and describes the stainlessness and

severe austerity of his character.[24] “To free ourselves from the

subjection of sensuous existence, to conquer the Titanic elements in

our terrestrial nature through the Divine one, is our problem.” Zeller

makes him say:[25] “Purity, even in the secret longings of our heart,

is the greatest duty, and only philosophy and the initiation into the

Mysteries help toward the attainment of this object.”

Crantor, another philosopher associated with the earliest days of

Plato’s Academy, conceived the human soul as formed out of the primary

substance of all things, the Monad or _One_, and the Duad or the _Two_.

Plutarch speaks at length of this philosopher, who like his master

believed in souls being distributed in earthly bodies as an exile and

punishment.

Herakleides, though some critics do not believe him to have strictly

adhered to Plato’s primal philosophy,[26] taught the same ethics.

Zeller presents him to us imparting, like Hicetas and Ecphantus, the

Pythagorean doctrine of the diurnal rotation of the earth and the

immobility of the fixed stars, but adds that he was ignorant of the {xxi}

annual revolution of the earth around the sun, and of the heliocentric

system.[27] But we have good evidence that the latter system was taught

in the Mysteries, and that Socrates died for _atheism_, _i. e._,

for divulging this sacred knowledge. Herakleides adopted fully the

Pythagorean and Platonic views of the human soul, its faculties and its

capabilities. He describes it as a luminous, highly ethereal essence.

He affirms that souls inhabit the milky way before descending “into

generation” or sublunary existence. His dæmons or spirits are airy and

vaporous bodies.

In the _Epinomis_ is fully stated the doctrine of the Pythagorean

numbers in relation to created things. As a true Platonist, its author

maintains that wisdom can only be attained by a thorough inquiry into

the occult nature of the creation; it alone assures us an existence of

bliss after death. The immortality of the soul is greatly speculated

upon in this treatise; but its author adds that we can attain to this

knowledge only through a complete comprehension of the numbers; for

the man, unable to distinguish the straight line from a curved one

will never have wisdom enough to secure a mathematical demonstration

of the _invisible_, _i. e._, we must assure ourselves of the objective

existence of our soul (astral body) before we learn that we are in

possession of a divine and immortal spirit. Iamblichus says the same

thing; adding, moreover, that it is a secret belonging to the highest

initiation. The Divine Power, he says, always felt indignant with those

“who rendered manifest the composition of the _icostagonus_,” viz., who

delivered the method of inscribing in a sphere the dodecahedron.[28]

The idea that “numbers” possessing the greatest virtue, produce always

what is good and never what is evil, refers to justice, equanimity

of temper, and everything that is harmonious. When the author speaks

of every star as an individual soul, he only means what the Hindu

initiates and the Hermetists taught before and after him, viz.: that

every star is an independent planet, which, like our earth, has a soul

of its own, every atom of matter being impregnated with the divine

influx of the soul of the world. It breathes and lives; it feels

and suffers as well as enjoys life in its way. What naturalist is

prepared to dispute it on good evidence? Therefore, we must consider

the celestial bodies as the images of gods; as partaking of the divine

powers in their substance; and though they are not immortal in their

soul-entity, their agency in the economy of the universe is entitled

to divine honors, such as we pay to minor gods. The idea is plain, and

one must be malevolent indeed to misrepresent it. If the author of

_Epinomis_ places these fiery gods higher than the animals, plants,

and even mankind, all of which, as earthly creatures, are assigned by {xxii}

him a lower place, who can prove him wholly wrong? One must needs go

deep indeed into the profundity of the abstract metaphysics of the old

philosophies, who would understand that their various embodiments of

their conceptions are, after all, based upon an identical apprehension

of the nature of the First Cause, its attributes and method.

Again when the author of _Epinomis_ locates between these highest and

lowest gods (embodied souls) three classes of dæmons, and peoples the

universe with invisible beings, he is more rational than our modern

scientists, who make between the two extremes one vast hiatus of being,

the playground of blind forces. Of these three classes the first

two are invisible; their bodies are pure ether and fire (_planetary

spirits_); the dæmons of the third class are clothed with vapory

bodies; they are usually invisible, but sometimes making themselves

concrete become visible for a few seconds. These are the earthly

spirits, or our astral souls.

It is these doctrines, which, studied analogically, and on the

principle of correspondence, led the ancient, and may now lead the

modern Philaletheian step by step toward the solution of the greatest

mysteries. On the brink of the dark chasm separating the spiritual from

the physical world stands modern science, with eyes closed and head

averted, pronouncing the gulf impassable and bottomless, though she

holds in her hand a torch which she need only lower into the depths to

show her her mistake. But across this chasm, the patient student of

Hermetic philosophy has constructed a bridge.

In his _Fragments of Science_ Tyndall makes the following sad

confession: “If you ask me whether science has solved, or is likely in

our day to solve the problem of this universe, I must shake my head

in doubt.” If moved by an afterthought, he corrects himself later,

and assures his audience that experimental evidence has helped him to

discover, in the opprobrium-covered matter, the “promise and potency

of every quality of life,” he only jokes. It would be as difficult for

Professor Tyndall to offer any ultimate and irrefutable proofs of what

he asserts, as it was for Job to insert a hook into the nose of the

leviathan.

To avoid confusion that might easily arise by the frequent employment

of certain terms in a sense different from that familiar to the reader,

a few explanations will be timely. We desire to leave no pretext

either for misunderstanding or misrepresentation. Magic may have one

signification to one class of readers and another to another class. We

shall give it the meaning which it has in the minds of its Oriental

students and practitioners. And so with the words _Hermetic Science_,

_Occultism_, _Hierophant_, _Adept_, _Sorcerer_, etc.; there has been

little agreement of late as to their meaning. Though the distinctions {xxiii}

between the terms are very often insignificant—merely ethnic—still, it

may be useful to the general reader to know just what that is. We give

a few alphabetically.

ÆTHROBACY, is the Greek name for walking or being lifted in the air;

_levitation_, so called, among modern spiritualists. It may be either

conscious or unconscious; in the one case, it is magic; in the other,

either disease or a power which requires a few words of elucidation.

A symbolical explanation of æthrobacy is given in an old Syriac

manuscript which was translated in the fifteenth century by one

Malchus, an alchemist. In connection with the case of Simon Magus, one

passage reads thus:

“Simon, laying his face upon the ground, whispered in her ear, ‘O

mother Earth, give me, I pray thee, some of thy breath; and I will give

thee mine; _let me loose_, O mother, that I may carry thy words to the

stars, and I will return faithfully to thee after a while.’ And the

Earth strengthening her status, none to her detriment, sent her genius

to breathe of her _breath_ on Simon, _while he breathed on her_; and

the stars rejoiced to be visited by the mighty One.”

The starting-point here is the recognized electro-chemical principle

that bodies similarly electrified repel each other, while those

differently electrified mutually attract. “The most elementary

knowledge of chemistry,” says Professor Cooke, “shows that, while

radicals of opposite natures combine most eagerly together, two metals,

or two closely-allied metalloids, show but little affinity for each

other.”

The earth is a magnetic body; in fact, as some scientists have found,

it is one vast magnet, as Paracelsus affirmed some 300 years ago. It

is charged with one form of electricity—let us call it positive—which

it evolves continuously by spontaneous action, in its interior or

centre of motion. Human bodies, in common with all other forms of

matter, are charged with the opposite form of electricity—negative.

That is to say, organic or inorganic bodies, if left to themselves will

constantly and involuntarily charge themselves with, and evolve the

form of electricity opposed to that of the earth itself. Now, what is

weight? Simply the attraction of the earth. “Without the attractions of

the earth you would have no weight,” says Professor Stewart;[29] “and

if you had an earth twice as heavy as this, you would have double the

attraction.” How then, can we get rid of this attraction? According to

the electrical law above stated, there is an attraction between our

planet and the organisms upon it, which holds them upon the surface

of the ground. But the law of gravitation has been counteracted in

many instances, by levitations of persons and inanimate objects; how {xxiv}

account for this? The condition of our physical systems, say theurgic

philosophers, is largely dependent upon the action of our will. If

well-regulated, it can produce “miracles;” among others a change of

this electrical polarity from negative to positive; the man’s relations

with the earth-magnet would then become repellent, and “gravity” for

him would have ceased to exist. It would then be as natural for him to

rush into the air until the repellent force had exhausted itself, as,

before, it had been for him to remain upon the ground. The altitude

of his levitation would be measured by his ability, greater or less,

to charge his body with positive electricity. This control over the

physical forces once obtained, alteration of his levity or gravity

would be as easy as breathing.

The study of nervous diseases has established that even in ordinary

somnambulism, as well as in mesmerized somnambulists, the weight

of the body seems to be diminished. Professor Perty mentions a

somnambulist, Koehler, who when in the water could not sink, but

floated. The seeress of Prevorst rose to the surface of the bath and

could not be kept seated in it. He speaks of Anna Fleisher, who being

subject to epileptic fits, was often seen by the Superintendent to

rise in the air; and was once, in the presence of two trustworthy

witnesses (two deans) and others, raised two and a half yards from

her bed in a horizontal position. The similar case of Margaret Rule

is cited by Upham in his _History of Salem Witchcraft_. “In ecstatic

subjects,” adds Professor Perty, “the rising in the air occurs much

more frequently than with somnambulists. We are so accustomed to

consider gravitation as being a something absolute and unalterable,

that the idea of a complete or partial rising in opposition to it seems

inadmissible; nevertheless, there are phenomena in which, by means

of material forces, gravitation is overcome. In several diseases—as,

for instance, nervous fever—the weight of the human body seems to be

increased, but in all ecstatic conditions to be diminished. And there

may, likewise, be other forces than material ones which can counteract

this power.”

A Madrid journal, _El Criterio Espiritista_, of a recent date, reports

the case of a young peasant girl near Santiago, which possesses a

peculiar interest in this connection. “Two bars of magnetized iron held

over her horizontally, half a metre distant, was sufficient to suspend

her body in the air.”

Were our physicians to experiment on such levitated subjects, it

would be found that they are strongly charged with a similar form

of electricity to that of the spot, which, according to the law

of gravitation, ought to _attract_ them, or rather prevent their

levitation. And, if some physical nervous disorder, as well as

spiritual ecstasy produce unconsciously to the subject the same {xxv}

effects, it proves that if this force in nature were properly studied,

it could be regulated at will.

ALCHEMISTS.—From _Al_ and _Chemi_, fire, or the god and patriarch,

_Kham_, also, the name of Egypt. The Rosicrucians of the middle ages,

such as Robertus de Fluctibus (Robert Fludd), Paracelsus, Thomas

Vaughan (Eugenius Philalethes), Van Helmont, and others, were all

alchemists, who sought for the _hidden spirit_ in every inorganic

matter. Some people—nay, the great majority—have accused alchemists

of charlatanry and false pretending. Surely such men as Roger Bacon,

Agrippa, Henry Kunrath, and the Arabian Geber (the first to introduce

into Europe some of the secrets of chemistry), can hardly be treated

as impostors—least of all as fools. Scientists who are reforming the

science of physics upon the basis of the atomic theory of Demokritus,

as restated by John Dalton, conveniently forget that Demokritus,

of Abdera, was an alchemist, and that the mind that was capable

of penetrating so far into the secret operations of nature in one

direction must have had good reasons to study and become a Hermetic

philosopher. Olaus Borrichias says, that the cradle of alchemy is to be

sought in the most distant times.

ASTRAL LIGHT.—The same as the _sidereal light_ of Paracelsus and other

Hermetic philosophers. Physically, it is the ether of modern science.

Metaphysically, and in its spiritual, or occult sense, ether is a great

deal more than is often imagined. In occult physics, and alchemy, it

is well demonstrated to enclose within its shoreless waves not only

Mr. Tyndall’s “_promise_ and potency of every quality of life,” but

also the _realization_ of the potency of every quality of spirit.

Alchemists and Hermetists believe that their astral, or sidereal ether,

besides the above properties of sulphur, and white and red magnesia,

or _magnes_, is the _anima mundi_, the workshop of Nature and of all

the cosmos, spiritually, as well as physically. The “grand magisterium”

asserts itself in the phenomenon of mesmerism, in the “levitation” of

human and inert objects; and may be called the ether from its spiritual

aspect.

The designation _astral_ is ancient, and was used by some of the

Neo-platonists. Porphyry describes the celestial body which is always

joined with the soul as “immortal, luminous, and star-like.” The root

of this word may be found, perhaps, in the Scythic _aist-aer_—which

means star, or the Assyrian _Istar_, which, according to Burnouf has

the same sense. As the Rosicrucians regarded the real, as the direct

opposite of the apparent, and taught that what seems light to _matter_,

is darkness to _spirit_, they searched for the latter in the astral

ocean of invisible fire which encompasses the world; and claim to have

traced the equally invisible divine spirit, which overshadows every man

and is erroneously called _soul_, to the very throne of the Invisible {xxvi}

and Unknown God. As the great cause must always remain invisible and

imponderable, they could prove their assertions merely by demonstration

of its effects in this world of matter, by calling them forth from the

unknowable down into the knowable universe of effects. That this astral

light permeates the whole cosmos, lurking in its latent state even

in the minutest particle of rock, they demonstrate by the phenomenon

of the spark from flint and from every other stone, whose spirit

when forcibly disturbed springs to sight spark-like, and immediately

disappears in the realms of the unknowable.

Paracelsus named it the _sidereal light_, taking the term from the

Latin. He regarded the starry host (our earth included) as the

_condensed_ portions of the astral light which “fell down into

generation and matter,” but whose magnetic or spiritual emanations kept

constantly a never-ceasing intercommunication between themselves and

the parent-fount of all—the astral light. “The stars attract from us to

themselves, and we again from them to us,” he says. The body is wood

and the life is fire, which comes like the light from the stars and

from heaven. “Magic is the philosophy of alchemy,” he says again.[30]

Everything pertaining to the spiritual world must come to us through

the stars, and if we are in friendship with them, we may attain the

greatest _magical_ effects.

“As fire passes through an iron stove, so do the stars pass through

man with all their properties and go into him as the rain into the

earth, which gives fruit out of that same rain. Now observe that the

stars _surround_ the whole earth, _as a shell does the egg_; through

the shell comes the air, and penetrates to the centre of the world.”

The human body is subjected as well as the earth, and planets, and

stars, to a double law; it attracts and repels, for it is saturated

through with double magnetism, the influx of the astral light.

Everything is double in nature; magnetism is positive and negative,

active and passive, male and female. Night rests humanity from the

day’s activity, and restores the equilibrium of human as well as of

cosmic nature. When the mesmerizer will have learned the grand secret

of polarizing the action and endowing his fluid with a bi-sexual force

he will have become the greatest magician living. Thus the astral

light is androgyne, for equilibrium is the resultant of two opposing

forces eternally reacting upon each other. The result of this is LIFE.

_When the two forces are expanded and remain so long inactive, as to

equal one another and so come to a complete rest, the condition is_

DEATH. A human being can blow either a hot or a cold breath; and can

absorb either cold or hot air. Every child knows how to regulate the {xxvii}

temperature of his breath; but how to protect one’s self from either

hot or cold air, no physiologist has yet learned with certainty. The

astral light alone, as the chief agent in magic, can discover to us

all secrets of nature. The astral light is identical with the Hindu

_akâsa_, a word which we will now explain.

AKÂSA.—Literally the word means in Sanscrit _sky_, but in its mystic

sense it signifies the _invisible_ sky; or, as the Brahmans term it in

the Soma-sacrifice (the _Gyotishtoma Agnishtoma_), the god Akâsa, or

god Sky. The language of the _Vedas_ shows that the Hindus of fifty

centuries ago ascribed to it the same properties as do the Thibetan

lamas of the present day; that they regarded it as the source of

life, the reservoir of all energy, and the propeller of every change

of matter. In its latent state, it tallies exactly with our idea of

the universal ether; in its active state it became the Akâsa, the

all-directing and omnipotent god. In the Brahmanical sacrificial

mysteries it plays the part of Sadasya, or superintendent over the

magical effects of the religious performance, and it had its own

appointed Hotar (or priest), who took its name. In India, as in other

countries in ancient times, the priests are the representatives on

earth of different gods; each taking the name of the deity in whose

name he acts.

The Akâsa is the indispensable agent of every Krityâ, (magical

performance) either religious or profane. The Brahmanical expression

“to stir up the Brahma” _Brahma jinvati_—means to stir up the power

which lies latent at the bottom of every such magical operation, for

the Vedic sacrifices are but ceremonial magic. This power is the Akâsa

or the _occult_ electricity; the alkahest of the alchemists in one

sense, or the universal solvent, the same _anima mundi_ as the astral

light. At the moment of the sacrifice, the latter becomes imbued with

the spirit of Brahma, and so for the time being is Brahma himself. This

is the evident origin of the Christian dogma of transubstantiation. As

to the most general effects of the Akâsa, the author of one of the most

modern works on the occult philosophy, _Art-Magic_, gives for the first

time to the world a most intelligible and interesting explanation of

the Akâsa in connection with the phenomena attributed to its influence

by the fakirs and lamas.

ANTHROPOLOGY—the science of man; embracing among other things:

_Physiology_, or that branch of natural science which discloses the

mysteries of the organs and their functions in men, animals, and

plants; and also, and especially,

_Psychology_, or the great, and in our days, so neglected science {xxviii}

of the soul, both as an entity distinct from the spirit and in its

relations with the spirit and body. In modern science, psychology

relates only or principally to conditions of the nervous system, and

almost absolutely ignores the psychical essence and nature. Physicians

denominate the science of insanity _psychology_, and name the lunatic

chair in medical colleges by that designation.

CHALDEANS, or Kasdim.—At first a tribe, then a caste of learned

kabalists. They were the savants, the magians of Babylonia, astrologers

and diviners. The famous Hillel, the precursor of Jesus in philosophy

and in ethics, was a Chaldean. Franck in his _Kabbala_ points to the

close resemblance of the “secret doctrine” found in the _Avesta_ and

the religious metaphysics of the Chaldees.

DACTYLS (_daktulos_, a finger).—A name given to the priests attached to

the worship of _Kybelé_ (Cybelè). Some archæologists derive the name

from δάκτυλος, finger, because they were ten, the same in number as the

fingers of the hand. But we do not believe the latter hypothesis is the

correct one.

DÆMONS.—A name given by the ancient people, and especially the

philosophers of the Alexandrian school, to all kinds of spirits,

whether good or bad, human or otherwise. The appellation is often

synonymous with that of gods or angels. But some philosophers tried,

with good reason, to make a just distinction between the many classes.

DEMIURGOS, or Demiurge.—Artificer; the Supernal Power which built the

universe. Freemasons derive from this word their phrase of “Supreme

Architect.” The chief magistrates of certain Greek cities bore the

title.

DERVISHES, or the “whirling charmers,” as they are called. Apart from

the austerities of life, prayer and contemplation, the Mahometan

devotee presents but little similarity with the Hindu fakir. The latter

may become a sannyasi, or saint and holy mendicant; the former will

never reach beyond his second class of occult manifestations. The

dervish may also be a strong mesmerizer, but he will never voluntarily

submit to the abominable and almost incredible self-punishment which

the fakir invents for himself with an ever-increasing avidity, until

nature succumbs and he dies in slow and excruciating tortures. The most

dreadful operations, such as flaying the limbs alive; cutting off the

toes, feet, and legs; tearing out the eyes; and causing one’s self to

be buried alive up to the chin in the earth, and passing whole months

in this posture, seem child’s play to them. One of the most common

tortures is that of Tshiddy-Parvâdy.[31] It consists in suspending the

fakir to one of the mobile arms of a kind of gallows to be seen in {xxix}

the vicinity of many of the temples. At the end of each of these arms

is fixed a pulley over which passes a rope terminated by an iron hook.

This hook is inserted into the bare back of the fakir, who inundating

the soil with blood is hoisted up in the air and then whirled round

the gallows. From the first moment of this cruel operation until he is

either unhooked or the flesh of his back tears out under the weight

of the body and the fakir is hurled down on the heads of the crowd,

not a muscle of his face will move. He remains calm and serious and as

composed as if taking a refreshing bath. The fakir will laugh to scorn

every imaginable torture, persuaded that the more his outer body is

mortified, the brighter and holier becomes his _inner_, spiritual body.

But the Dervish, neither in India, nor in other Mahometan lands, will

ever submit to such operations.

DRUIDS.—A sacerdotal caste which flourished in Britain and Gaul.

ELEMENTAL SPIRITS.—The creatures evolved in the four kingdoms of earth,

air, fire, and water, and called by the kabalists gnomes, sylphs,

salamanders, and undines. They may be termed the forces of nature, and

will either operate effects as the servile agents of general law, or

may be employed by the disembodied spirits—whether pure or impure—and

by living adepts of magic and sorcery, to produce desired phenomenal

results. Such beings never become men.[32]

Under the general designation of fairies, and fays, these spirits of

the elements appear in the myth, fable, tradition, or poetry of all

nations, ancient and modern. Their names are legion—peris, devs, djins,

sylvans, satyrs, fauns, elves, dwarfs, trolls, norns, nisses, kobolds,

brownies, necks, stromkarls, undines, nixies, salamanders, goblins,

ponkes, banshees, kelpies, pixies, moss people, good people, good

neighbors, wild women, men of peace, white ladies—and many more. They

have been seen, feared, blessed, banned, and invoked in every quarter

of the globe and in every age. Shall we then concede that all who have

met them were hallucinated?

These elementals are the principal agents of disembodied but _never {xxx}

visible_ spirits at seances, and the producers of all the phenomena

except the subjective.

ELEMENTARY SPIRITS.—Properly, the disembodied _souls_ of the

depraved; these souls having at some time prior to death separated

from themselves their divine spirits, and so lost their chance for

immortality. Eliphas Levi and some other kabalists make little

distinction between elementary spirits who have been men, and those

beings which people the elements, and are the blind forces of nature.

Once divorced from their bodies, these souls (also called “astral

bodies”) of purely materialistic persons, are irresistibly attracted to

the earth, where they live a temporary and finite life amid elements

congenial to their gross natures. From having never, during their

natural lives, cultivated their spirituality, but subordinated it to

the material and gross, they are now unfitted for the lofty career

of the pure, disembodied being, for whom the atmosphere of earth is

stifling and mephitic, and whose attractions are all away from it.

After a more or less prolonged period of time these material souls

will begin to disintegrate, and finally, like a column of mist, be

dissolved, atom by atom, in the surrounding elements.

ESSENES—from _Asa_, a healer. A sect of Jews said by Pliny to have

lived near the Dead Sea “_per millia sæculorum_” for thousands of ages.

Some have supposed them to be extreme Pharisees; and others—which

may be the true theory—the descendants of the _Benim nabim_ of the

_Bible_, and think they were “Kenites” and “_Nazarites_.” They had many

Buddhistic ideas and practices; and it is noteworthy that the priests

of the _Great Mother_ at Ephesus, Diana-Bhavani with many breasts, were

also so denominated. Eusebius, and after him De Quincey, declared them

to be the same as the early Christians, which is more than probable.

The title “brother,” used in the early Church, was Essenean: they were

a fraternity, or a _koinobion_ or community like the early converts. It

is noticeable that only the Sadducees, or Zadokites, the priest-caste

and their partisans, persecuted the Christians; the Pharisees were

generally scholastic and mild, and often sided with the latter. James

the Just was a Pharisee till his death; but Paul or _Aher_ was esteemed

a schismatic.

EVOLUTION.—The development of higher orders of animals from the

lower. Modern, or so-called _exact_ science, holds but to a one-sided

physical evolution, prudently avoiding and ignoring the higher or

spiritual evolution, which would force our contemporaries to confess

the superiority of the ancient philosophers and psychologists over

themselves. The ancient sages, ascending to the UNKNOWABLE, made

their starting-point from the first manifestation of the unseen, the

unavoidable, and from a strict logical reasoning, the absolutely {xxxi}

necessary creative Being, the Demiurgos of the universe. Evolution

began with them from pure spirit, which descending lower and lower

down, assumed at last a visible and comprehensible form, and became

matter. Arrived at this point, they speculated in the Darwinian method,

but on a far more large and comprehensive basis.

In the _Rig-Veda-Sanhita_, the oldest book of the World[33] (to which

even our most prudent Indiologists and Sanscrit scholars assign an

antiquity of between two and three thousand years B.C.), in the first

book, “Hymns to the Maruts,” it is said:

“_Not-being_ and _Being_ are in the highest heaven, in the birthplace

of Daksha, in the lap of Aditi” (_Mandala_, i., Sûkta 166).

“In the first age of the gods, Being (the comprehensible Deity) was

born from Not-being (whom no intellect can comprehend); after it were

born the Regions (the invisible), from them Uttânapada.”

“From Uttânapad the Earth was born, the Regions (those that are

visible) were born from the Earth. Daksha was born of Aditi, and Aditi

from Daksha” (Ibid.).

Aditi is the Infinite, and Daksha is _dáksha-pitarah_, literally

meaning _the father of gods_, but understood by Max Müller and

Roth to mean _the fathers of strength_, “preserving, possessing,

granting faculties.” Therefore, it is easy to see that “Daksha, born

of Aditi and Aditi from Daksha,” means what the moderns understand

by “correlation of forces;” the more so as we find in this passage

(translated by Prof. Müller):

“I place Agni, the source of all beings, the father of strength”

(iii., 27, 2), a clear and identical idea which prevailed so much

in the doctrines of the Zoroastrians, the Magians, and the mediæval

fire-philosophers. Agni is god of fire, of the Spiritual Ether, the

very substance of the divine essence of the Invisible God present

in every atom of His creation and called by the Rosicrucians the

“Celestial Fire.” If we only carefully compare the verses from this

Mandala, one of which runs thus: “The Sky is your father, the Earth

your mother, Soma your brother, Aditi your sister” (i., 191, 6),[34]

with the inscription on the _Smaragdine Tablet_ of Hermes, we will find

the same substratum of metaphysical philosophy, the identical doctrines!

“As all things were produced by the mediation of one being, so all

things were produced from this one thing by adaptation: ‘Its father

is the sun; its mother is the moon’ ... etc. Separate the earth from {xxxii}

the fire, the _subtile from the gross_.... What I had to say about the

operation of the _sun_ is completed” (_Smaragdine Tablet_).[35]

Professor Max Müller sees in this _Mandala_ “at last, something like

a theogony, though full of contradictions.”[36] The alchemists,

kabalists, and students of mystic philosophy will find therein a

perfectly defined system of Evolution in the Cosmogony of a people who

lived a score of thousands of years before our era. They will find in

it, moreover, a perfect identity of thought and even doctrine with the

Hermetic philosophy, and also that of Pythagoras and Plato.

In Evolution, as it is now beginning to be understood, there is

supposed to be in all matter an impulse to take on a higher form—a

supposition clearly expressed by Manu and other Hindu philosophers

of the highest antiquity. The philosopher’s tree illustrates it in

the case of the zinc solution. The controversy between the followers

of this school and the Emanationists may be briefly stated thus: The

Evolutionist stops all inquiry at the borders of “the Unknowable;”

the Emanationist believes that nothing can be evolved—or, as the

word means, unwombed or born—except it has first been involved, thus

indicating that life is from a spiritual potency above the whole.

FAKIRS.—Religious devotees in East India. They are generally attached

to Brahmanical pagodas and follow the laws of Manu. A strictly

religious fakir will go absolutely naked, with the exception of a

small piece of linen called _dhoti_, around his loins. They wear their

hair long, and it serves them as a pocket, as they stick in it various

objects—such as a pipe, a small flute called _vagudah_, the sounds of

which throw the serpents into a cataleptic torpor, and sometimes their

bamboo-stick (about one foot long) with _the seven mystical knots_ on

it. This magical stick, or rather _rod_, the fakir receives from his

guru on the day of his initiation, together with the three _mantrams_,

which are communicated to him “mouth to ear.” No fakir will be seen

without this powerful adjunct of his calling. It is, as they all

claim, the divining rod, the cause of every occult phenomenon produced {xxxiii}

by them.[37] The Brahmanical fakir is entirely distinct from the

Mussulman mendicant of India, also called fakirs in some parts of the

British territory.

HERMETIST.—From Hermes, the god of Wisdom, known in Egypt, Syria, and

Phœnicia as Thoth, Tat, Adad, Seth, and Sat-an (the latter _not to be

taken_ in the sense applied to it by Moslems and Christians), and in

Greece as Kadmus. The kabalists identify him with Adam _Kadmon_, the

first manifestation of the Divine Power, and with Enoch. There were two

Hermes: the elder was the Trismegistus, and the second an emanation, or

“permutation” of himself; the friend and instructor of Isis and Osiris.

Hermes is the god of the priestly wisdom, like Mazeus.

HIEROPHANT.—Discloser of sacred learning. The Old Man, the Chief of

the Adepts at the initiations, who explained the arcane knowledge to

the neophytes, bore this title. In Hebrew and Chaldaic the term was

_Peter_, or opener, discloser; hence, the Pope, as the successor of

the hierophant of the ancient Mysteries, sits in the Pagan chair of

“St. Peter.” The vindictiveness of the Catholic Church toward the

alchemists, and to arcane and astronomical science, is explained by the

fact that such knowledge was the ancient prerogative of the hierophant,

or representative of Peter, who kept the mysteries of life and death.

Men like Bruno, Galileo, and Kepler, therefore, and even Cagliostro,

trespassed on the preserves of the Church, and were accordingly

murdered.

Every nation had its Mysteries and hierophants. Even the Jews had

their Peter—Tanaïm or Rabbin, like Hillel, Akiba,[38] and other famous

kabalists, who alone could impart the awful knowledge contained in the

_Merkaba_. In India, there was in ancient times one, and now there

are several hierophants scattered about the country, attached to the

principal pagodas, who are known as the Brahma-âtmas. In Thibet the

chief hierophant is the Dalay, or Taley-Lama of Lha-ssa.[39] Among

Christian nations, the Catholics alone have preserved this “heathen”

custom, in the person of their Pope, albeit they have sadly disfigured

its majesty and the dignity of the sacred office.

INITIATES.—In times of antiquity, those who had been initiated into the

arcane knowledge taught by the hierophants of the Mysteries; and in

our modern days those who have been initiated by the adepts of mystic

lore into the mysterious knowledge, which, notwithstanding the lapse of

ages, has yet a few real votaries on earth.

KABALIST, from קבלה, KABALA; an unwritten or oral tradition. The {xxxiv}

kabalist is a student of “secret science,” one who interprets the

hidden meaning of the Scriptures with the help of the symbolical

_Kabala_, and explains the real one by these means. The Tanaïm were the

first kabalists among the Jews; they appeared at Jerusalem about the

beginning of the third century before the Christian era. The Books of

_Ezekiel_, _Daniel_, _Henoch_, and the _Revelation_ of St. John, are

purely kabalistical. This secret doctrine is identical with that of the

Chaldeans, and includes at the same time much of the Persian wisdom, or

“magic.”

LAMAS.—Buddhist monks belonging to the Lamaic religion of Thibet, as,

for instance, friars are the monks belonging to the Popish or Roman

Catholic religion. Every lama is subject to the grand Taley-Lama, the

Buddhist pope of Thibet, who holds his residence at Lha-ssa, and is a

reïncarnation of Buddha.

MAGE, or _Magian_; from _Mag_ or _Maha_. The word is the root of the

word magician. The Maha-âtma (the great Soul or Spirit) in India

had its priests in the pre-Vedic times. The Magians were priests of

the fire-god; we find them among the Assyrians and Babylonians, as

well as among the Persian fire-worshippers. The three magi, also

denominated kings, that are said to have made gifts of gold, incense,

and myrrh to the infant Jesus, were fire-worshippers like the rest,

and astrologers; for they saw his star. The high priest of the Parsis,

at Surat, is called _Mobed_, others derived the word from Megh; Meh-ab

signifying something grand and noble. Zoroaster’s disciples were called

_Meghestom_, according to Kleuker.

MAGICIAN.—This term, once a title of renown and distinction, has come

to be wholly perverted from its true meaning. Once the synonym of

all that was honorable and reverent, of a possessor of learning and

wisdom, it has become degraded into an epithet to designate one who is

a pretender and a juggler; a charlatan, in short, or one who has “sold

his soul to the Evil One;” who misuses his knowledge, and employs it

for low and dangerous uses, according to the teachings of the clergy,

and a mass of superstitious fools who believe the magician a sorcerer

and an enchanter. But Christians forget, apparently, that Moses was

also a magician, and Daniel, “_Master_ of the magicians, astrologers,

Chaldeans, and soothsayers” (_Daniel_, v. 11).

The word magician then, scientifically speaking, is derived from

_Magh_, _Mah_, Hindu or _Sanscrit_ Maha—great; a man well versed in the

secret or esoteric knowledge; properly a sacerdote.

MANTICISM, or mantic frenzy. During this state was developed the

gift of prophecy. The two words are nearly synonymous. One was as

honored as the other. Pythagoras and Plato held it in high esteem, and {xxxv}

Socrates advised his disciples to study Manticism. The Church Fathers,

who condemned so severely the _mantic frenzy_ in Pagan priests and

Pythiæ, were not above applying it to their own uses. The Montanists,

who took their name from Montanus, a bishop of Phrygia, who was

considered divinely inspired, rivalled with the μάντεις (manteis) or

prophets. “Tertullian, Augustine, and the martyrs of Carthage, were

of the number,” says the author of _Prophecy, Ancient and Modern_.

“The Montanists seem to have resembled the _Bacchantes_ in the wild

enthusiasm that characterized their orgies,” he adds. There is a

diversity of opinion as to the origin of the word _Manticism_. There

was the famous Mantis the Seer, in the days of Melampus and Prœtus,

King of Argos; and there was Manto, the daughter of the prophet of

Thebes, herself a prophetess. Cicero describes prophecy and mantic

frenzy by saying that “in the inner recesses of the mind is divine

prophecy hidden and confined, a divine impulse, which when it burns

more vividly is called furor” (frenzy, madness).

But there is still another etymology possible for the word _mantis_,

and to which we doubt if the attention of the philologists was ever

drawn. The mantic frenzy may, perchance, have a still earlier origin.

The two sacrificial cups of the Soma-mystery used during the religious

rites, and generally known as grahâs, are respectively called _Sukra_

and _Manti_.[40]

It is in the latter manti or manthi cup that Brahma is said to be

“stirred up.” While the initiate drinks (albeit sparingly) of this

sacred soma-juice, the Brahma, or rather his “spirit,” personified

by the god Soma, enters into the man and takes _possession_ of him.

Hence, ecstatic vision, clairvoyance, and the gift of prophecy. Both

kinds of divination—the natural and the artificial—are aroused by

the Soma. The _Sukra_-cup awakens that which is given to every man

by nature. It unites both spirit and soul, and these, from their own

nature and essence, which are divine, have a foreknowledge of future

things, as dreams, unexpected visions, and presentiments, well prove.

The contents of the other cup, the _manti_, which “stirs the Brahma,”

put there by the soul in communication not only with the minor gods—the

well-informed but not omniscient spirits—but actually with the highest

divine essence itself. The soul receives a direct illumination from the

presence of its “god;” but as it is not allowed to remember certain

things, well known only in heaven, the initiated person is generally

seized with a kind of sacred frenzy, and upon recovering from it, only

remembers that which is allowed to him. As to the other kind of seers {xxxvi}

and diviners—those who make a profession of and a living by it—they

are usually held to be possessed by a _gandharva_, a deity which is

nowhere so little honored as in India.

MANTRA.—A _Sanskrit_ word conveying the same idea as the “Ineffable

Name.” Some mantras, when pronounced according to magical formula

taught in the _Atharva-Veda_, produce an instantaneous and wonderful

effect. In its general sense, though, a mantra is either simply a

prayer to the gods and powers of heaven, as taught by the Brahmanical

books, and especially Manu, or else a magical charm. In its esoteric

sense, the “word” of the mantra, or mystic speech, is called by the

Brahmans _Vâch_. It resides in the mantra, which literally means those

parts of the sacred books which are considered as the _Sruti_, or

direct divine revelation.

MARABUT.—A Mahometan pilgrim who has been to Mekka; a saint, after

whose death his body is placed in an open sepulchre built on the

surface, like other buildings, but in the middle of the streets and

public places of populated cities. Placed inside the small and only

room of the tomb (and several such public sarcophagi of brick and

mortar may be seen to this day in the streets and squares of Cairo),

the devotion of the wayfarers keeps a lamp ever burning at his head.

The tombs of some of these marabuts have a great fame for the miracles

they are alleged to perform.

MATERIALIZATION.—A word employed by spiritualists to indicate the

phenomenon of “a spirit clothing himself with a material form.” The

far less objectionable term, “form-manifestation,” has been recently

suggested by Mr. Stainton-Moses, of London. When the real nature of

these apparitions is better comprehended, a still more appropriate

name will doubtless be adopted. To call them materialized spirits is

inadmissible, for they are not spirits but animated portrait-statues.

MAZDEANS, from (Ahura) Mazda. (See Spiegel’s _Yasna_, xl.) They were

the ancient Persian nobles who worshipped Ormazd, and, rejecting

images, inspired the Jews with the same horror for every concrete

representation of the Deity. “They seem in Herodotus’s time to have

been superseded by the Magian religionists. The Parsis and Ghebers

(גברים _geberim_, mighty men, of _Genesis_ vi. and x. 8) appear to be

Magian religionists.... By a curious muddling of ideas, Zoro-Aster

(_Zero_, a circle, a son or priest, Aster, Ishtar, or Astartè—in

Aryan dialect, a star), the title of the head of the Magians and

fire-worshippers, or Surya-ishtara, the sun-worshipper, is often

confounded in modern times with Zara-tustra, the reputed Mazdean

apostle” (Zoroaster).

METEMPSYCHOSIS.—The progress of the soul from one stage of existence

to another. Symbolized and vulgarly believed to be rebirths in animal

bodies. A term generally misunderstood by every class of European and {xxxvii}

American society, including many scientists. The kabalistic axiom,

“A stone becomes a plant, a plant an animal, an animal a man, a man

a spirit, and a spirit a god,” receives an explanation in Manu’s

_Manava-Dharma-Sastra_, and other Brahmanical books.

MYSTERIES.—Greek _teletai_, or finishings, as analogous to _teleuteia_

or death. They were observances, generally kept secret from the profane

and uninitiated, in which were taught by dramatic representation

and other methods, the origin of things, the nature of the human

spirit, its relations to the body, and the method of its purification

and restoration to higher life. Physical science, medicine, the

laws of music, divination, were all taught in the same manner. The

Hippocratic oath was but a mystic obligation. Hippocrates was a priest

of Asklepios, some of whose writings chanced to become public. But

the Asklepiades were initiates of the Æsculapian serpent-worship, as

the Bacchantes were of the Dionysia; and both rites were eventually

incorporated with the Eleusinia. We will treat of the Mysteries fully

in the subsequent chapters.

MYSTICS.—Those initiated. But in the mediæval and later periods the

term was applied to men like Bœhmén the Theosophist, Molinos the

Quietist, Nicholas of Basle, and others who believed in a direct

interior communion with God, analogous to the inspiration of the

prophets.

NABIA.—Seership, soothsaying. This oldest and most respected of

mystic phenomena, is the name given to prophecy in the _Bible_, and

is correctly included among the spiritual powers, such as divination,

clairvoyant visions, trance-conditions, and oracles. But while

enchanters, diviners, and even astrologers are strictly condemned in

the Mosaic books, prophecy, seership, and nabia appear as the special

gifts of heaven. In early ages they were all termed _Epoptai_, the

Greek word for seers, clairvoyants; after which they were designated

as _Nebim_, “the plural of Nebo, the Babylonian god of wisdom.” The

kabalist distinguishes between the _seer_ and the _magician_; one is

passive, the other active; _Nebirah_, is one who looks into futurity

and a clairvoyant; _Nebi-poel_, he who possesses _magic powers_. We

notice that Elijah and Apollonius resorted to the same means to isolate

themselves from the disturbing influences of the outer world, viz.:

wrapping their heads entirely in a woolen mantle: from its being an

electric non-conductor we must suppose.

OCCULTIST.—One who studies the various branches of occult science.

The term is used by the French kabalists (See Eliphas Levi’s works).

Occultism embraces the whole range of psychological, physiological,

cosmical, physical, and spiritual phenomena. From the word _occult_

hidden or secret; applying therefore to the study of the _Kabala_,

astrology, alchemy, and all arcane sciences.

PAGAN GODS.—This term gods is erroneously understood by most of the {xxxviii}

reading public, to mean idols. The idea attached to them is _not_ that

of something objective or anthropomorphical. With the exception of

occasions when “gods” mean either divine planetary entities (angels),

or disembodied spirits of pure men, the term simply conveys to the mind

of the mystic—whether Hindu Hotar, Mazdean Mage, Egyptian hierophant,

or disciple of the Greek philosophers—the idea of a visible or cognized

manifestation of an invisible potency of nature. And such occult

potencies are invoked under the appellation of various gods, who, for

the time being, are personating these powers. Thus every one of the

numberless deities of the Hindu, Greek, and Egyptian Pantheons, are

simply Powers of the “Unseen Universe.” When the officiating Brahman

invokes Aditya—who, in her cosmic character, is the goddess-sun—he

simply _commands_ that potency (personified in some god), which, as

he asserts, “resides in the Mantra, as the sacred _Vâch_.” These

god-powers are allegorically regarded as the divine _Hotars_ of

the Supreme One; while the priest (Brahman) is the human Hotar who

officiates on earth, and representing that particular Power becomes,

ambassador-like, invested with the very potency which he personates.

PITRIS.—It is generally believed that the Hindu term _Pitris_ means

the spirits of our direct ancestors; of disembodied people. Hence

the argument of some spiritualists that fakirs, and other Eastern

wonder-workers, are _mediums_; that they themselves confess to being

unable to produce anything without the help of the _Pitris_, of whom

they are the obedient instruments. This is in more than one sense

erroneous. The _Pitris_ are not the ancestors of the present living

men, but those of the human kind or Adamic race; the spirits of _human_

races which, on the great scale of descending evolution, preceded our

races of men, and were physically, as well as spiritually, far superior

to our modern pigmies. In _Manava-Dharma-Sastra_ they are called the

_Lunar_ ancestors.

PYTHIA, or Pythoness.—Webster dismisses the word very briefly by saying

that it was the name of one who delivered the oracles at the Temple

of Delphi, and “any female supposed to have the spirit of divination

in her—_a witch_,” which is neither complimentary, exact, nor just.

A Pythia, upon the authority of Plutarch, Iamblichus, Lamprias, and

others, was a nervous sensitive; she was chosen from among the poorest

class, young and pure. Attached to the temple, within whose precincts

she had a room, secluded from every other, and to which no one but the

priest, or seer, had admittance, she had no communications with the

outside world, and her life was more strict and ascetic than that of a

Catholic nun. Sitting on a tripod of brass placed over a fissure in the

ground, through which arose intoxicating vapors, these subterranean {xxxix}

exhalations penetrating her whole system produced the prophetic mania.

In this abnormal state she delivered oracles. She was sometimes called

_ventriloqua vates_,[41] the ventriloquist-prophetess.

The ancients placed the astral soul of man, ψυχη, or his

self-consciousness, in the pit of the stomach. The Brahmans shared this

belief with Plato and other philosophers. Thus we find in the fourth

verse of the second _Nâbhânedishtha Hymn_ it is said: “Hear, O sons

of the gods (spirits) one who speaks through his navel (nâbhâ) for he

hails you in your dwellings!”

Many of the Sanscrit scholars agree that this belief is one of the most

ancient among the Hindus. The modern fakirs, as well as the ancient

gymnosophists, unite themselves with their Âtman and the Deity by

remaining motionless in contemplation and concentrating their whole

thought on their navel. As in modern somnambulic phenomena, the navel

was regarded as “the circle of the sun,” the seat of internal divine

light.[42] Is the fact of a number of modern somnambulists being

enabled to read letters, hear, smell, and see, through that part of

their body to be regarded again as a simple “coincidence,” or shall we

admit at last that the old sages knew something more of physiological

and psychological mysteries than our modern Academicians? In modern

Persia, when a “magician” (often simply a mesmerizer) is consulted

upon occasions of theft and other puzzling occurrences, he makes his

manipulations over the pit of his stomach, and so brings himself into

a state of clairvoyance. Among the modern Parsis, remarks a translator

of the _Rig-vedas_, there exists a belief up to the present day that

their adepts have a flame in their navel, which enlightens to them

all darkness and discloses the spiritual world, as well as all things

unseen, or at a distance. They call it the lamp of _the Deshtur_, or

high priest; the light of the Dikshita (the initiate), and otherwise

designate it by many other names.

SAMOTHRACES.—A designation of the Fane-gods worshipped at Samothracia

in the Mysteries. They are considered as identical with the Kabeiri,

Dioskuri, and Korybantes. Their names were mystical—denoting Pluto,

Ceres or Proserpina, Bacchus, and Æsculapius or Hermes.

SHAMANS, or Samaneans.—An order of Buddhists among the Tartars,

especially those of Siberia. They are possibly akin to the {xl}

philosophers anciently known as _Brachmanes_, mistaken sometimes for

Brahmans.[43] They are all _magicians_, or rather sensitives or mediums

artificially developed. At present those who act as priests among

the Tartars are generally very ignorant, and far below the fakirs in

knowledge and education. Both men and women may be Shamans.

SOMA.—This Hindu sacred beverage answers to the Greek ambrosia or

nectar, drunk by the gods of Olympus. A cup of kykeon was also quaffed

by the mysta at the Eleusinian initiation. He who drinks it easily

reaches _Bradhna_, or place of splendor (Heaven). The soma-drink known

to Europeans is not the _genuine_ beverage, but its substitute; for

the initiated priests alone can taste of the real soma; and even kings

and rajas, when sacrificing, receive the substitute. Haug shows by his

own confession, in his _Aytareya Brahmanan_, that it was not the Soma

that he tasted and found nasty, but the juice from the roots of the

Nyagradha, a plant or bush which grows on the hills of Poona. We were

positively informed that the majority of the sacrificial priests of the

Dekkan have lost the secret of the true soma. It can be found neither

in the ritual books nor through oral information. The true followers

of the primitive Vedic religion are very few; these are the alleged

descendants from the _Rishis_, the real Agnihôtris, the initiates of

the great Mysteries. The soma-drink is also commemorated in the Hindu

Pantheon, for it is called the King-Soma. He who drinks of it is made

to participate in the heavenly king, because he becomes filled with it,

as the Christian apostles and their converts became filled with the

Holy Ghost, and purified of their sins. The soma makes a new man of

the initiate; he is reborn and transformed, and his spiritual nature

overcomes the physical; it gives the divine power of inspiration,

and develops the clairvoyant faculty to the utmost. According to the

exoteric explanation the soma is a plant, but, at the same time it is

an angel. It forcibly connects the _inner_, highest “spirit” of man,

which spirit is an angel like the mystical soma, with his “irrational

soul,” or astral body, and thus united by the power of the magic drink,

they soar together above physical nature, and participate during life

in the beatitude and ineffable glories of Heaven.

Thus the Hindu soma is mystically, and in all respects the same that

the Eucharistic supper is to the Christian. The idea is similar. By {xli}

means of the sacrificial prayers—the mantras—this liquor is supposed

to be transformed on the spot into real soma—or the angel, and even

into Brahma himself. Some missionaries have expressed themselves very

indignantly about this ceremony, the more so that, generally speaking,

the Brahmans use a _kind of spirituous liquor_ as a substitute. But do

the Christians believe less fervently in the transubstantiation of the

communion-wine into the blood of Christ, because this wine happens to

be more or less spirituous? Is not the idea of the symbol attached to

it the same? But the missionaries say that this hour of soma-drinking

is the golden hour of Satan, who lurks at the bottom of the Hindu

sacrificial cup.[44]

SPIRIT.—The lack of any mutual agreement between writers in the use

of this word has resulted in dire confusion. It is commonly made

synonymous with _soul_; and the lexicographers countenance the usage.

This is the natural result of our ignorance of the other word, and

repudiation of the classification adopted by the ancients. Elsewhere we

attempt to make clear the distinction between the terms “spirit” and

“soul.” There are no more important passages in this work. Meanwhile,

we will only add that “spirit” is the νοῦς of Plato, the immortal,

immaterial, and purely _divine_ principle in man—the crown of the human

_Triad_; whereas,

SOUL is the ψυχη, or the _nephesh_ of the _Bible_; the vital principle,

or the breath of life, which every animal, down to the infusoria,

shares with man. In the translated _Bible_ it stands indifferently

for _life_, blood, and soul. “Let us _not kill_ his nephesh,” says

the original text: “let us not kill _him_,” translate the Christians

(_Genesis_ xxxvii. 21), and so on.

THEOSOPHISTS.—In the mediæval ages it was the name by which were known

the disciples of Paracelsus of the sixteenth century, the so-called

fire-philosophers or _Philosophi per ignem_. As well as the Platonists

they regarded the soul (ψυχη) and the divine spirit, _nous_ (νοῦς), as

a particle of the great Archos—a fire taken from the eternal ocean of

light.

The Theosophical Society, to which these volumes are dedicated by the

author as a mark of affectionate regard, was organized at New York

in 1875. The object of its founders was to experiment practically in

the occult powers of Nature, and to collect and disseminate among

Christians information about the Oriental religious philosophies.

Later, it has determined to spread among the “poor benighted heathen” {xlii}

such evidences as to the practical results of Christianity as will

at least give both sides of the story to the communities among which

missionaries are at work. With this view it has established relations

with associations and individuals throughout the East, to whom it

furnishes authenticated reports of the ecclesiastical crimes and

misdemeanors, schisms and heresies, controversies and litigations,

doctrinal differences and biblical criticisms and revisions, with

which the press of Christian Europe and America constantly teems.

Christendom has been long and minutely informed of the degradation

and brutishness into which Buddhism, Brahmanism, and Confucianism

have plunged their deluded votaries, and many millions have been

lavished upon foreign missions under such false representations. The

Theosophical Society, seeing daily exemplifications of this very

state of things as the sequence of Christian teaching and example—the

latter especially—thought it simple justice to make the facts known in

Palestine, India, Ceylon, Cashmere, Tartary, Thibet, China, and Japan,

in all which countries it has influential correspondents. It may also

in time have much to say about the conduct of the missionaries to those

who contribute to their support.

THEURGIST.—From Θεος, god, and εργον, work. The first school of

practical theurgy in the Christian period was founded by Iamblichus

among the Alexandrian Platonists; but the priests attached to the

temples of Egypt, Assyria, and Babylonia, and who took an active part

in the evocations of the gods during the Sacred Mysteries, were known

by this name from the earliest archaic period. The purpose of it was to

make spirits visible to the eyes of mortals. A theurgist was one expert

in the esoteric learning of the Sanctuaries of all the great countries.

The Neo-platonists of the school of Iamblichus were called theurgists,

for they performed the so-called “ceremonial magic,” and evoked the

“spirits” of the departed heroes, “gods,” and Daimonia (δαιμονια

divine, spiritual entities). In the rare cases when the presence of

a _tangible_ and _visible_ spirit was required, the theurgist had

to furnish the weird apparition with a portion of his own flesh and

blood—he had to perform the _theopæa_, or the “creation of gods,” by

a mysterious process well known to the modern fakirs and initiated

Brahmans of India. This is what is said in the _Book of Evocations_

of the pagodas. It shows the perfect identity of rites and ceremonial

between the oldest Brahmanic theurgy and that of the Alexandrian

Platonists:

“The Brahman Grihasta (the evocator) must be in a state of complete

purity before he ventures to call forth the Pitris.”

After having prepared a lamp, some sandal, incense, etc., and having

traced the magic circles taught to him by the superior guru, in order

to keep away _bad_ spirits, he “ceases to breathe, and calls _the fire_ {xliii}

to his help to disperse his body.” He pronounces a certain number of

times the sacred word, and “his soul escapes from his body, and his

body disappears, and the soul of the evoked spirit descends into the

_double_ body and animates it.” Then “His (Grihasta’s) soul reënters

into his body, whose subtile particles have again been aggregating,

after having formed of their emanations an aërial body to the spirit he

evoked.”

And now, that he has formed for the Pitri a body with the particles

the most essential and pure of his own, the grihasta is allowed, after

the ceremonial sacrifice is over, to “converse with the souls of the

ancestors and the Pitris, and offer them questions on the mysteries of

the _Being_ and the transformations of the _imperishable_.”

“Then after having blown out his lamp he must light it again, and set

at liberty the bad spirits shut out from the place by the magical

circles, and leave the sanctuary of the Pitris.”[45]

The school of Iamblichus was distinct from that of Plotinus and

Porphyry, who were strongly against ceremonial magic and practical

theurgy as dangerous, though these two eminent men firmly believed in

both. “The _theurgic_ or _benevolent_ magic, the Goëtic, or dark and

evil necromancy, were alike in preëminent repute _during the first

century_ of the Christian era.”[46] But never have any of the highly

moral and pious philosophers, whose fame has descended to us spotless

of any evil deed, practiced any other kind of magic than the theurgic,

or _benevolent_, as Bulwer-Lytton terms it. “Whoever is acquainted with

the nature _of divinely luminous appearances_ (φασματα) knows also on

what account it is requisite to abstain from all birds (animal food),

and especially for him who hastens to be liberated from terrestrial

concerns and to be established with the celestial gods,” says

Porphyry.[47]

Though he refused to practice theurgy himself, Porphyry, in his _Life

of Plotinus_, mentions a priest of Egypt, who, “at the request of a

certain friend of Plotinus (which friend was perhaps Porphyry himself,

remarks T. Taylor), exhibited to Plotinus, in the temple of Isis at

Rome, the familiar daimon, or, in modern language, the _guardian angel_

of that philosopher.”[48]

The popular, prevailing idea was that the theurgists, as well as the

magicians, worked wonders, such as evoking the souls or shadows of the

heroes and gods, and doing other thaumaturgic works by supernatural

powers.

YAJNA.—“The Yajna,” say the Brahmans, exists from eternity, for it {xliv}

proceeded forth from the Supreme One, the _Brahma-Prajapâti_, in whom

it lay dormant from “_no_ beginning.” It is the key to the TRAIVIDYA,

the thrice sacred science contained in the Rig verses, which teaches

the Yagus or sacrificial mysteries. “The Yajna” exists as an invisible

thing at all times; it is like the latent power of electricity in

an electrifying machine, requiring only the operation of a suitable

apparatus in order to be elicited. It is supposed to extend from the

_Ahavaniya_ or sacrificial fire to the heavens, forming a bridge or

ladder by means of which the sacrificer can communicate with the world

of gods and spirits, and even ascend when alive to their abodes.[49]

This _Yajna_ is again one of the forms of the Akása, and the mystic

word calling it into existence and pronounced mentally by the initiated

Priest is the _Lost Word_ receiving impulse through WILL-POWER.

To complete the list, we will now add that in the course of the

following chapters, whenever we use the term _Archaic_, we mean before

the time of Pythagoras; when _Ancient_, before the time of Mahomet; and

when _Mediæval_, the period between Mahomet and Martin Luther. It will

only be necessary to infringe the rule when from time to time we may

have to speak of nations of a pre-Pythagorean antiquity, and will adopt

the common custom of calling them “ancient.”

* * * * *

Before closing this initial chapter, we venture to say a few words in

explanation of the plan of this work. Its object is not to force upon

the public the personal views or theories of its author; nor has it the

pretensions of a scientific work, which aims at creating a revolution

in some department of thought. It is rather a brief summary of the

religions, philosophies, and universal traditions of human kind, and

the exegesis of the same, in the spirit of those secret doctrines, of

which none—thanks to prejudice and bigotry—have reached Christendom

in so unmutilated a form, as to secure it a fair judgment. Since the

days of the unlucky mediæval philosophers, the last to write upon these

secret doctrines of which they were the depositaries, few men have

dared to brave persecution and prejudice by placing their knowledge

upon record. And these few have never, as a rule, written for the

public, but only for those of their own and succeeding times who

possessed the key to their jargon. The multitude, not understanding

them or their doctrines, have been accustomed to regard them _en

masse_ as either charlatans or dreamers. Hence the unmerited contempt

into which the study of the noblest of sciences—that of the spiritual

man—has gradually fallen.

In undertaking to inquire into the assumed infallibility of Modern {xlv}

Science and Theology, the author has been forced, even at the risk of

being thought discursive, to make constant comparison of the ideas,

achievements, and pretensions of their representatives, with those

of the ancient philosophers and religious teachers. Things the most

widely separated as to time, have thus been brought into immediate

juxtaposition, for only thus could the priority and parentage of

discoveries and dogmas be determined. In discussing the merits of

our scientific contemporaries, their own confessions of failure in

experimental research, of baffling mysteries, of missing links in

their chains of theory, of inability to comprehend natural phenomena,

of ignorance of the laws of the causal world, have furnished the

basis for the present study. Especially (since Psychology has been

so much neglected, and the East is so far away that few of our

investigators will ever get there to study that science where alone it

is understood), we will review the speculations and policy of noted

authorities in connection with those modern psychological phenomena

which began at Rochester and have now overspread the world. _We wish

to show how inevitable were their innumerable failures, and how they

must continue until these pretended authorities of the West go to the

Brahmans and Lamaists of the far Orient, and respectfully ask them to

impart the alphabet of true science._ We have laid no charge against

scientists that is not supported by their own published admissions, and

if our citations from the records of antiquity rob some of what they

have hitherto viewed as well-earned laurels, the fault is not ours but

Truth’s. No man worthy of the name of philosopher would care to wear

honors that rightfully belong to another.

Deeply sensible of the Titanic struggle that is now in progress between

materialism and the spiritual aspirations of mankind, our constant

endeavor has been to gather into our several chapters, like weapons

into armories, every fact and argument that can be used to aid the

latter in defeating the former. Sickly and deformed child as it now is,

the materialism of To-Day is born of the brutal Yesterday. Unless its

growth is arrested, it may become our master. It is the bastard progeny

of the French Revolution and its reaction against ages of religious

bigotry and repression. To prevent the crushing of these spiritual

aspirations, the blighting of these hopes, and the deadening of that

intuition which teaches us of a God and a hereafter, we must show our

false theologies in their naked deformity, and distinguish between

divine religion and human dogmas. Our voice is raised for spiritual

freedom, and our plea made for enfranchisement from all tyranny,

whether of SCIENCE or THEOLOGY.

THE VEIL OF ISIS. {1}

_PART ONE.—SCIENCE._

CHAPTER I.

“Ego sum qui sum.”

—_An axiom of Hermetic Philosophy._

“We commenced research where modern conjecture closes its

faithless wings. And with us, these were the common elements of

science which the sages of to-day disdain as wild chimeras, or

despair of as unfathomable mysteries.“BULWER’S “ZANONI.”

There exists somewhere in this wide world an old Book—so very old that

our modern antiquarians might ponder over its pages an indefinite time,

and still not quite agree as to the nature of the fabric upon which it

is written. It is the only original copy now in existence. The most

ancient Hebrew document on occult learning—the _Siphra Dzeniouta_—was

compiled from it, and that at a time when the former was already

considered in the light of a literary relic. One of its illustrations

represents the Divine Essence emanating from ADAM[50] like a luminous

arc proceeding to form a circle; and then, having attained the highest

point of its circumference, the ineffable Glory bends back again, and

returns to earth, bringing a higher type of humanity in its vortex. As

it approaches nearer and nearer to our planet, the Emanation becomes

more and more shadowy, until upon touching the ground it is as black as

night.

A conviction, founded upon _seventy_ thousand years of experience,[51]

as they allege, has been entertained by hermetic philosophers of all

periods that matter has in time become, through sin, more gross and

dense than it was at man’s first formation; that, at the beginning, {2}

the human body was of a half-ethereal nature; and that, before the

fall, mankind communed freely with the now unseen universes. But since

that time matter has become the formidable barrier between us and the

world of spirits. The oldest esoteric traditions also teach that,

before the mystic Adam, many races of human beings lived and died

out, each giving place in its turn to another. Were these precedent

types more perfect? Did any of them belong to the _winged_ race of men

mentioned by Plato in _Phædrus_? It is the special province of science

to solve the problem. The caves of France and the relics of the stone

age afford a point at which to begin.

As the cycle proceeded, man’s eyes were more and more opened, until

he came to know “good and evil” as well as the Elohim themselves.

Having reached its summit, the cycle began to go downward. When the arc

attained a certain point which brought it parallel with the fixed line

of our terrestrial plane, the man was furnished by nature with “coats

of _skin_,” and the Lord God “clothed them.”

This same belief in the pre-existence of a far more spiritual race

than the one to which we now belong can be traced back to the earliest

traditions of nearly every people. In the ancient Quiché manuscript,

published by Brasseur de Bourbourg—the _Popol Vuh_—the first men are

mentioned as a race that could reason and speak, whose sight was

unlimited, and who knew all things at once. According to Philo Judæus,

the air is filled with an invisible host of spirits, some of whom are

free from evil and immortal, and others are pernicious and mortal.

“From the sons of EL we are descended, and sons of El must we become

again.” And the unequivocal statement of the anonymous Gnostic who

wrote _The Gospel according to John_, that “as many as received Him,”

_i.e._, who followed practically the esoteric doctrine of Jesus, would

“become the sons of God,” points to the same belief. (i., 12.) “Know ye

not, ye are _gods_?” exclaimed the Master. Plato describes admirably

in _Phædrus_ the state in which man once was, and what he will become

again: before, and after the “loss of his wings;” when “he lived among

the gods, a god himself in the airy world.” From the remotest periods

religious philosophies taught that the whole universe was filled with

divine and spiritual beings of divers races. From one of these evolved,

in the course of time, ADAM, the primitive man.

The Kalmucks and some tribes of Siberia also describe in their legends

earlier creations than our present race. These beings, they say, were

possessed of almost boundless knowledge, and in their audacity even

threatened rebellion against the Great Chief Spirit. To punish their

presumption and humble them, he imprisoned them _in bodies_, and so {3}

shut in their senses. From these they can escape but through long

repentance, self-purification, and development. Their _Shamans_, they

think, occasionally enjoy the divine powers originally possessed by all

human beings.

The Astor Library of New York has recently been enriched by a

fac-simile of an Egyptian Medical Treatise, written in the sixteenth

century B.C. (or, more precisely, 1552 B.C.), which, according to

the commonly received chronology, is the time when Moses was just

twenty-one years of age. The original is written upon the inner bark

of _Cyperus papyrus_, and has been pronounced by Professor Schenk, of

Leipsig, not only genuine, but also the most perfect ever seen. It

consists of a single sheet of yellow-brown papyrus of finest quality,

three-tenths of a metre wide, more than twenty metres long, and

forming one roll divided into one hundred and ten pages, all carefully

numbered. It was purchased in Egypt, in 1872-3, by the archæologist

Ebers, of “a well-to-do Arab from Luxor.” The New York _Tribune_,

commenting upon the circumstance, says: The papyrus “bears internal

evidence of being one of the six _Hermetic Books on Medicine_, named by

Clement of Alexandria.”

The editor further says: “At the time of Iamblichus, A.D. 363, the

priests of Egypt showed forty-two books which they attributed to Hermes

(Thuti). Of these, according to that author, thirty-six contained the

history of all human knowledge; the last six treated of anatomy, of

pathology, of affections of the eye, instruments of surgery, and of

medicines.[52] The _Papyrus Ebers_ is indisputably one of these ancient

Hermetic works.”

If so clear a ray of light has been thrown upon ancient Egyptian

science, by the accidental (?) encounter of the German archæologist

with one “well-to-do Arab” from Luxor, how can we know what sunshine

may be let in upon the dark crypts of history by an equally accidental

meeting between some other prosperous Egyptian and another enterprising

student of antiquity!

_The discoveries of modern science do not disagree with the oldest

traditions which claim an incredible antiquity for our race._ Within

the last few years geology, which previously had only conceded that

man could be traced as far back as the tertiary period, has found

unanswerable proofs that human existence antedates the last glaciation

of Europe—over 250,000 years! A hard nut, this, for Patristic Theology

to crack; but an accepted fact with the ancient philosophers.

Moreover, fossil implements have been exhumed together with human {4}

remains, which show that man hunted in those remote times, and knew how

to build a fire. But the forward step has not yet been taken in this

search for the origin of the race; science comes to a dead stop, and

waits for future proofs. Unfortunately, anthropology and psychology

possess no Cuvier; neither geologists nor archæologists are able to

construct, from the fragmentary bits hitherto discovered, the perfect

skeleton of the triple man—physical, intellectual, and spiritual.

Because the fossil implements of man are found to become more rough

and uncouth as geology penetrates deeper into the bowels of the earth,

it seems a proof to science that the closer we come to the origin of

man, the more savage and brute-like he must be. Strange logic! Does

the finding of the remains in the cave of Devon prove that there

were no contemporary races then who were highly civilized? When the

present population of the earth have disappeared, and some archæologist

belonging to the “coming race” of the distant future shall excavate the

domestic implements of one of our Indian or Andaman Island tribes, will

he be justified in concluding that mankind in the nineteenth century

was “just emerging from the Stone Age?”

It has lately been the fashion to speak of “the untenable conceptions

of an uncultivated past.” _As though it were possible to hide behind

an epigram the intellectual quarries out of which the reputations of

so many modern philosophers have been carved!_ Just as Tyndall is

ever ready to disparage ancient philosophers—for a dressing-up of

whose ideas more than one distinguished scientist has derived honor

and credit—so the geologists seem more and more inclined to take for

granted that all of the archaic races were contemporaneously in a state

of dense barbarism. But not all of our best authorities agree in this

opinion. Some of the most eminent maintain exactly the reverse. Max

Müller, for instance, says: “Many things are still unintelligible to

us, and the hieroglyphic language of antiquity records but half of the

mind’s unconscious intentions. Yet more and more the image of man, in

whatever clime we meet him, rises before us, noble and pure from the

very beginning; even his errors we learn to understand, even his dreams

we begin to interpret. As far as we can trace back the footsteps of

man, even on the lowest strata of history, we see the divine gift of

a sound and sober intellect belonging to him from the very first, and

the idea of a humanity emerging slowly from the depths of an animal

brutality can never be maintained again.”[53]

As it is claimed to be unphilosophical to inquire into first causes, {5}

scientists now occupy themselves with considering their physical

effects. The field of scientific investigation is therefore bounded by

physical nature. When once its limits are reached, enquiry must stop,

and their work be recommenced. With all due respect to our learned

men, they are like the squirrel upon its revolving wheel, for they

are doomed to turn their “matter” over and over again. Science is a

mighty potency, and it is not for us pigmies to question her. But the

“_scientists_” are not themselves science embodied any more than the

men of our planet are the planet itself. We have neither the right to

demand, nor power to compel our “modern-day philosopher” to accept

without challenge a geographical description of the dark side of the

moon. But, if in some lunar cataclysm one of her inhabitants should be

hurled thence into the attraction of our atmosphere, and land, safe and

sound, at Dr. Carpenter’s door, he would be indictable as recreant to

professional duty if he should fail to set the physical problem at rest.

For a man of science to refuse an opportunity to investigate any new

phenomenon, whether it comes to him in the shape of a man from the

moon, or a ghost from the Eddy homestead, is alike reprehensible.

Whether arrived at by the method of Aristotle, or that of Plato, we

need not stop to inquire; but it is a fact that both the inner and

outer natures of man are claimed to have been thoroughly understood by

the ancient andrologists. Notwithstanding the superficial hypotheses

of geologists, we are beginning to have almost daily proofs in

corroboration of the assertions of those philosophers.

_They divided the interminable periods of human existence on this

planet into cycles, during each of which mankind gradually reached

the culminating point of highest civilization and gradually relapsed

into abject barbarism._ To what eminence the race in its progress had

several times arrived may be feebly surmised by the wonderful monuments

of old, still visible, and the descriptions given by Herodotus of

other marvels of which no traces now remain. Even in his days the

gigantic structures of many pyramids and world-famous temples were

but masses of ruins. Scattered by the unrelenting hand of time, they

are described by the Father of History as “these venerable witnesses

of the long bygone glory of departed ancestors.” He “shrinks from

speaking of divine things,” and gives to posterity but an imperfect

description from hearsay of some marvellous subterranean chambers of

the Labyrinth, where lay—and now lie—concealed, the sacred remains of

the King-Initiates.

We can judge, moreover, of the lofty civilization reached in some {6}

periods of antiquity by the historical descriptions of the ages of the

Ptolemies, yet in that epoch the arts and sciences were considered to

be degenerating, and the secret of a number of the former had been

already lost. In the recent excavations of Mariette-Bey, at the foot of

the Pyramids, statues of wood and other relics have been exhumed, which

show that long before the period of the first dynasties the Egyptians

had attained to a refinement and perfection which is calculated to

excite the wonder of even the most ardent admirers of Grecian art.

Bayard Taylor describes these statues in one of his lectures, and tells

us that the beauty of the heads, ornamented with eyes of precious

stones and copper eyelids, is unsurpassed. Far below the stratum of

sand in which lay the remains gathered into the collections of Lepsius,

Abbott, and the British Museum, were found buried the tangible proofs

of the hermetic doctrine of cycles which has been already explained.

Dr. Schliemann, the enthusiastic Hellenist, has recently found, in his

excavations in the Troad, abundant evidences of the same gradual change

from barbarism to civilization, and from civilization to barbarism

again. Why then should we feel so reluctant to admit the possibility

that, if the antediluvians were so much better versed than ourselves in

certain sciences as to have been perfectly acquainted with important

arts, which we now term _lost_, they might have equally excelled in

psychological knowledge? Such a hypothesis must be considered as

reasonable as any other until some countervailing evidence shall be

discovered to destroy it.

Every true _savant_ admits that in many respects human knowledge is yet

in its infancy. Can it be that our cycle began in ages comparatively

recent? _These cycles_, according to the Chaldean philosophy, _do

not embrace all mankind at one and the same time_. Professor Draper

partially corroborates this view by saying that the periods into which

geology has “found it convenient to divide the progress of man in

civilization are not abrupt epochs which hold good simultaneously for

the whole human race;” giving as an instance the “wandering Indians of

America,” who “are only at the present moment emerging from the stone

age.” Thus more than once scientific men have unwittingly confirmed the

testimony of the ancients.

Any Kabalist well acquainted with the Pythagorean system of numerals

and geometry can demonstrate that the metaphysical views of Plato were

based upon the strictest mathematical principles. “True mathematics,”

says the _Magicon_, “is something with which all higher sciences are

connected; common mathematics is but a deceitful phantasmagoria, whose

much-praised infallibility only arises from this—that materials, {7}

conditions, and references are made its foundation.” Scientists who

believe they have adopted the Aristotelian method only because they

creep when they do not run from demonstrated particulars to universals,

glorify this method of inductive philosophy, and reject that of Plato,

which they treat as unsubstantial. Professor Draper laments that

such speculative mystics as Ammonius Saccas and Plotinus should have

taken the place “of the severe geometers of the old museum.”[54] He

forgets that geometry, of all sciences the only one which proceeds from

universals to particulars, was precisely the method employed by Plato

in his philosophy. As long as exact science confines its observations

to physical conditions and proceeds Aristotle-like, it certainly cannot

fail. But notwithstanding that the world of matter is boundless for

us, it still is finite; and thus materialism will turn forever in

this vitiated circle, unable to soar higher than the circumference

will permit. The cosmological theory of numerals which Pythagoras

learned from the Egyptian hierophants, is alone able to reconcile the

two units, matter and spirit, and cause each to demonstrate the other

mathematically.

The sacred numbers of the universe in their esoteric combination solve

the great problem and explain the theory of radiation and the cycle of

the emanations. The lower orders before they develop into higher ones

must emanate from the higher spiritual ones, and when arrived at the

turning-point, be reabsorbed again into the infinite.

Physiology, like everything else in this world of constant evolution,

is subject to the cyclic revolution. As it now seems to be hardly

emerging from the shadows of the lower arc, so it may be one day proved

to have been at the highest point of the circumference of the circle

far earlier than the days of Pythagoras.

Mochus, the Sidonian, the physiologist and teacher of the science of

anatomy, flourished long before the Sage of Samos; and the latter

received the sacred instructions from his disciples and descendants.

Pythagoras, the pure philosopher, the deeply-versed in the profounder

phenomena of nature, the noble inheritor of the ancient lore, whose

great aim was to free the soul from the fetters of sense and force it

to realize its powers, must live eternally in human memory.

_The impenetrable veil of arcane secrecy was thrown over the sciences

taught in the sanctuary._ This is the cause of the modern depreciating

of the ancient philosophies. Even Plato and Philo Judæus have been

accused by many a commentator of absurd inconsistencies, whereas the {8}

design which underlies the maze of metaphysical contradictions so

perplexing to the reader of the _Timæus_, is but too evident. But has

Plato ever been read understandingly by one of the expounders of the

classics? This is a question warranted by the criticisms to be found in

such authors as Stalbaüm, Schleirmacher, Ficinus (Latin translation),

Heindorf, Sydenham, Buttmann, Taylor and Burges, to say nothing of

lesser authorities. The covert allusions of the Greek philosopher to

esoteric things have manifestly baffled these commentators to the last

degree. They not only with unblushing coolness suggest as to certain

difficult passages that another phraseology was evidently intended, but

they audaciously make the changes! The Orphic line:

“Of the song, the order of the _sixth race_ close”

which can only be interpreted as a reference to the _sixth_ race

evolved in the consecutive evolution of the spheres,[55] Burges says: “

... was evidently taken from a cosmogony _where man was feigned to be

created the last_.”[56]—Ought not one who undertakes to edit another’s

works at least understand what his author means?

Indeed, the ancient philosophers seem to be generally held, even by the

least prejudiced of our modern critics, to have lacked that profundity

and thorough knowledge in the exact sciences of which our century is

so boastful. It is even questioned whether they understood that basic

scientific principle: _ex nihilo nihil fit_. If they suspected the

indestructibility of matter at all,—say these commentators—it was not

in consequence of a firmly-established formula but only through an

intuitional reasoning and by analogy.

We hold to the contrary opinion. The speculations of these philosophers

upon matter were open to public criticism: but their teachings in

regard to spiritual things were profoundly esoteric. Being thus sworn

to secrecy and religious silence upon abstruse subjects involving the

relations of spirit and matter, they rivalled each other in their

ingenious methods for concealing their real opinions.

The doctrine of _Metempsychosis_ has been abundantly ridiculed by men

of science and rejected by theologians, yet if it had been properly

understood in its application to the indestructibility of matter and

the immortality of spirit, it would have been perceived that it is

a sublime conception. Should we not first regard the subject from {9}

the standpoint of the ancients before venturing to disparage its

teachers? The solution of the great problem of _eternity_ belongs

neither to religious superstition nor to gross materialism. The harmony

and mathematical equiformity of the double evolution—spiritual and

physical—are elucidated only in the universal numerals of Pythagoras,

who built his system entirely upon the so-called “metrical speech”

of the Hindu _Vedas_. It is but lately that one of the most zealous

Sanskrit scholars, Martin Haug, undertook the translation of the

_Aitareya Brahmana_ of the _Rig-Veda_. It had been till that time

entirely unknown; these explanations indicate beyond dispute the

identity of the Pythagorean and Brahmanical systems. In both, the

esoteric significance is derived from the number: in the former,

from the mystic relation of every number to everything intelligible

to the human mind; in the latter, from the number of syllables

of which each verse in the _Mantras_ consists. Plato, the ardent

disciple of Pythagoras, realized it so fully as to maintain that the

Dodecahedron was the geometrical figure employed by the _Demiurgus_

in constructing the universe. Some of these figures had a peculiarly

solemn significance. For instance _four_, of which the Dodecahedron

is the trine, was held sacred by the Pythagoreans. It is the perfect

square, and neither of the bounding lines exceeds the other in length,

by a single point. It is the emblem of moral justice and divine equity

geometrically expressed. All the powers and great symphonies of

physical and spiritual nature lie inscribed within the perfect square;

and the ineffable name of Him, which name otherwise, would remain

unutterable, was replaced by this sacred number ~4~ the most binding

and solemn oath with the ancient mystics—the _Tetractys_.

If the Pythagorean metempsychosis should be thoroughly explained

and compared with the modern theory of evolution, it would be found

to supply every “missing link” in the chain of the latter. But who

of our scientists would consent to lose his precious time over the

vagaries of the ancients. Notwithstanding proofs to the contrary, they

not only deny that the nations of the archaic periods, but even the

ancient philosophers had any positive knowledge of the Heliocentric

system. The “Venerable Bedes,” the Augustines and Lactantii appear to

have smothered, with their dogmatic ignorance, all faith in the more

ancient theologists of the pre-Christian centuries. But now philology

and a closer acquaintance with Sanskrit literature have partially

enabled us to vindicate them from these unmerited imputations. In the

_Vedas_, for instance, we find positive proof that so long ago as 2000

B.C., the Hindu sages and scholars must have been acquainted with the

rotundity of our globe and the Heliocentric system. Hence, Pythagoras

and Plato knew well this astronomical truth; for Pythagoras obtained {10}

his knowledge in India, or from men who had been there, and Plato

faithfully echoed his teachings. We will quote two passages from the

_Aitareya Brahmana_:

In the “_Serpent-Mantra_,”[57] the _Brahmana_ declares as follows:

that this _Mantra_ is that one which was seen by the Queen of the

Serpents, _Sarpa-râjni_; because the earth (_iyam_) is the Queen of the

Serpents, as she is the mother and queen of all that moves (_sarpat_).

In the beginning she (the earth) was but one head (round), without

hair (_bald_), _i.e._, without vegetation. She then perceived this

_Mantra_ which confers upon him who knows it, the power of assuming

any form which he might desire. She “pronounced the _Mantra_,” _i.e._,

sacrificed to the gods; and, in consequence, immediately obtained a

motley appearance; she became variegated, and able to produce any form

she might like, _changing one form into another_. This _Mantra_ begins

with the words: “_Ayam gaûh pris’nir akramît_” (x., 189).