The description of the earth in the shape of a _round_ and _bald_ head,

which was _soft_ at first, and became _hard_ only from being breathed

upon by the god Vâyu, the lord of the air, forcibly suggests the idea

that the authors of the sacred Vedic books knew the earth to be _round_

or spherical; moreover, that it had been a _gelatinous_ mass at first,

which gradually cooled off under the influence of the air and time. So

much for their knowledge about our globe’s sphericity; and now we will

present the testimony upon which we base our assertion, that the Hindus

were perfectly acquainted with the Heliocentric system, at least 2000

years B.C.

In the same treatise the _Hotar_, (priest), is taught how the

_Shastras_ should be repeated, and how the phenomena of sunrise and

sunset are to be explained. It says: “The Agnishtoma is that one (that

god) who burns. The sun _never sets nor rises_. When people think the

sun is setting, it is _not so_; they are mistaken. For after having

arrived at the end of the day, it produces two opposite effects, making

night to what is below, and day to what is on the other side. When

they (the people) believe it rises in the morning, the sun only does

thus: having reached the end of the night, it makes itself produce two

opposite effects, making day to what is below, and night to what is on

the other side. In fact the sun never sets; nor does it set for him who

has such a knowledge....”[58]

This sentence is so conclusive, that even the translator of the

_Rig-Veda_, Dr. Haug, was forced to remark it. He says this passage

contains “the _denial_ of the existence of sunrise and sunset,”

and that the author supposes the sun “to remain always in its high

position.”[59]

In one of the earliest _Nivids_, Rishi Kutsa, a Hindu sage of the {11}

remotest antiquity, explains the allegory of the first laws given to

the celestial bodies. For doing “what she ought not to do,” Anâhit

(Anaïtis or Nana, the Persian Venus), representing the earth in

the legend, is sentenced to turn round the sun. The _Sattras_, or

sacrificial sessions[60] prove undoubtedly that so early as in the

eighteenth or twentieth century B.C., the Hindus had made considerable

progress in astronomical science. The _Sattras_ lasted one year, and

were “nothing but an imitation of the sun’s yearly course. They were

divided, says Haug, into two distinct parts, each consisting of six

months of thirty days each; in the midst of both was the _Vishuvan_

(equator or central day), cutting the whole _Sattras_ into two halves,

etc.”[61] This scholar, although he ascribes the composition of the

bulk of the _Brahmanas_ to the period 1400-1200 B.C., is of opinion

that the oldest of the hymns may be placed at the very commencement of

Vedic literature, between the years 2400-2000, B.C. He finds no reason

for considering the _Vedas_ less ancient than the sacred books of the

Chinese. As the _Shu-King_ or _Book of History_, and the sacrificial

songs of the _Shi-King_, or _Book of Odes_, have been proved to have

an antiquity as early as 2200, B.C., our philologists may yet be

compelled before long to acknowledge, that in astronomical knowledge,

the antediluvian Hindus were their masters.

At all events, there are facts which prove that certain astronomical

calculations were as correct with the Chaldeans in the days of Julius

Cæsar as they are now. When the calendar was reformed by the Conqueror,

the civil year was found to correspond so little with the seasons, that

summer had merged into the autumn months, and the autumn months into

full winter. It was Sosigenes, the Chaldean astronomer, who restored

order into the confusion, by putting back the 25th of March ninety

days, thus making it correspond with the vernal equinox; and it was

Sosigenes, again, who fixed the lengths of the months _as they now

remain_.

In America, it was found by the Motezuman army, that the calendar of

the Aztecs gave an equal number of days and weeks to each month. The

extreme accuracy of their astronomical calculations was so great,

that _no error_ has been discovered in their reckoning by subsequent

verifications; while the Europeans, who landed in Mexico in 1519, were,

by the Julian calendar, nearly eleven days in advance of the exact time.

It is to the priceless and accurate translations of the Vedic Books,

and to the personal researches of Dr. Haug, that we are indebted for {12}

the corroboration of the claims of the hermetic philosophers. That the

period of Zarathustra Spitama (Zoroaster) was of untold antiquity, can

be easily proved. The _Brahmanas_, to which Haug ascribes four thousand

years, describe the religious contest between the ancient Hindus, who

lived in the pre-Vedic period, and the Iranians. The battles between

the _Devas_ and the _Asuras_—the former representing the _Hindus_ and

the latter the Iranians—are described at length in the sacred books.

As the Iranian prophet was the first to raise himself against what

he called the “idolatry” of the Brahmans, and to designate them as

the _Devas_ (devils), how far back must then have been this religious

crisis?

“This contest,” answers Dr. Haug, “must have appeared to the authors of

the _Brahmanas_ as old as the feats of King Arthur appear to English

writers of the nineteenth century.”

There was not a philosopher of any notoriety who did not hold to this

doctrine of metempsychosis, as taught by the Brahmans, Buddhists, and

later by the Pythagoreans, in its esoteric sense, whether he expressed

it more or less intelligibly. Origen and Clemens Alexandrinus,

Synesius and Chalcidius, all believed in it; and the Gnostics, who are

unhesitatingly proclaimed by history as a body of the most refined,

learned, and enlightened men,[62] were all believers in metempsychosis.

Socrates entertained opinions identical with those of Pythagoras; and

both, as the penalty of their divine philosophy, were put to a violent

death. The rabble has been the same in all ages. Materialism has been,

and will ever be blind to spiritual truths. These philosophers held,

with the Hindus, that God had infused into matter a portion of his own

Divine Spirit, which animates and moves every particle. They taught

that men have _two souls_, of separate and quite different natures:

the one perishable—the Astral Soul, or the inner, fluidic body—the

other incorruptible and immortal—the _Augoeides_, or portion of the

Divine Spirit; that the mortal or Astral Soul perishes at each gradual

change at the threshold of every new sphere, becoming with every

transmigration more purified. The astral man, intangible and invisible

as he might be to our mortal, earthly senses, is still constituted

of matter, though sublimated. Aristotle, notwithstanding that for

political reasons of his own he maintained a prudent silence as to

certain esoteric matters, expressed very clearly his opinion on the

subject. It was his belief that human souls are emanations of God, that

are finally reabsorbed into Divinity. Zeno, the founder of the Stoics,

taught that there are “two eternal qualities throughout nature: the

one active; or male, the other passive, or female: that the former {13}

is pure, subtile ether, or Divine Spirit; the other entirely inert in

itself till united with the active principle. That the Divine Spirit

acting upon matter produced fire, water, earth, and air; and that it is

the sole efficient principle by which all nature is moved. The Stoics,

like the Hindu sages, believed in the final absorption. St. Justin

believed in the emanation of these souls from Divinity, and Tatian,

the Assyrian, his disciple, declared that “man was as immortal as God

himself.”[63]

That profoundly significant verse of the _Genesis_, “And to every beast

of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to everything that

creepeth upon the earth, I gave _a living soul_, ...” should arrest the

attention of every Hebrew scholar capable of reading the Scripture in

its original, instead of following the erroneous translation, in which

the phrase reads, “wherein _there is life_.”[64]

From the first to the last chapters, the translators of the Jewish

Sacred Books misconstrued this meaning. They have even changed the

spelling of the name of God, as Sir W. Drummond proves. Thus _El_,

if written correctly, would read _Al_, for it stands in the original

אל—Al, and, according to Higgins, this word means the god Mithra, the

_Sun_, the preserver and savior. Sir W. Drummond shows that _Beth-El_

means the House of the _Sun_ in its literal translation, and not of

God. “_El_, in the composition of these Canaanite names, does not

signify _Deus_, but _Sol_.”[65] Thus Theology has disfigured ancient

Theosophy, and Science ancient Philosophy.[66]

For lack of comprehension of this great philosophical principle, the

methods of modern science, however exact, must end in nullity. In

no one branch can it demonstrate the origin and ultimate of things.

Instead of tracing the effect from its primal source, its progress is

the reverse. Its higher types, as it teaches, are all evolved from

antecedent lower ones. It starts from the bottom of the cycle, led on

step by step in the great labyrinth of nature by a thread of matter.

As soon as this breaks and the clue is lost, it recoils in affright {14}

from the Incomprehensible, and confesses itself _powerless_. Not

so did Plato and his disciples. With him _the lower types were but

the concrete images of the higher abstract ones_. The soul, which

is immortal, has an arithmetical, as the body has a geometrical,

beginning. This beginning, as the reflection of the great universal

ARCHÆUS, is self-moving, and from the centre diffuses itself over the

whole body of the microcosm.

It was the sad perception of this truth that made Tyndall confess

how powerless is science, even over the world of matter. “The first

marshalling of the atoms, on which all subsequent action depends,

baffles a keener power than that of the microscope.” “Through pure

excess of complexity, and long before observation can have any voice

in the matter, the most highly trained intellect, the most refined

and disciplined imagination, _retires in bewilderment from the

contemplation of the problem_. We are struck dumb by an astonishment

which no microscope can relieve, doubting not only the power of our

instrument, but even whether we ourselves possess the intellectual

elements which will ever enable us to grapple with the ultimate

structural energies of nature.”

The fundamental geometrical figure of the Kabala—that figure which

tradition and the esoteric doctrines tell us was given by the Deity

itself to Moses on Mount Sinai[67]—contains in its grandiose, because

simple combination, the key to the universal problem. This figure

contains in itself all the others. For those who are able to master it,

there is no need to exercise imagination. No earthly microscope can be

compared with the keenness of the spiritual perception.

And even for those who are unacquainted with the GREAT SCIENCE, the

description given by a well-trained child-psychometer of the genesis of

a grain, a fragment of crystal, or any other object—is worth all the

telescopes and microscopes of “exact science.”

There may be more truth in the adventurous pangenesis of Darwin—whom

Tyndall calls a “soaring speculator” than in the cautious, line-bound

hypothesis of the latter; who, in common with other thinkers of his

class, surrounds his imagination “by the firm frontiers of reason.” The

theory of a microscopic germ which contains in itself “a world of minor

germs,” soars in one sense at least into the infinite. It oversteps the

world of matter, and begins unconsciously busying itself in the world

of spirit.

If we accept Darwin’s theory of the development of species, we find

that his starting-point is placed in front of an open door. We are at

liberty with him, to either remain within, or cross the threshold, {15}

beyond which lies the limitless and the incomprehensible, or rather

the _Unutterable_. If our mortal language is inadequate to express what

our spirit dimly foresees in the great “_Beyond_” while on this earth—it

_must_ realize it at some point in the timeless Eternity.

Not so with Professor Huxley’s theory of the “Physical Basis of

Life.” Regardless of the formidable majority of “nays” from his

German brother-scientists, he creates a universal _protoplasm_ and

appoints its cells to become henceforth the sacred founts of the

principle of all _life_. By making the latter identical in living man,

“dead mutton,” a nettle-sting, and a lobster; by shutting in, in the

molecular cell of the protoplasm, the life-principle, and by shutting

out from it the divine influx which comes with subsequent evolution, he

closes every door against any possible escape. Like an able tactician

he converts his “_laws_ and _facts_” into sentries whom he causes to

mount guard over every issue. The standard under which he rallies them

is inscribed with the word “necessity;” but hardly is it unfurled

when he mocks the legend and calls it “an empty shadow of my own

imagination.”[68]

The fundamental doctrines of spiritualism, he says, “lie outside the

limits of philosophical inquiry.” We will be bold enough to contradict

this assertion, and say that they lie a great deal more within such

inquiry than Mr. Huxley’s protoplasm. Insomuch that they present

evident and palpable facts of the existence of _spirit_, and the

protoplasmic cells, _once dead_, present none whatever of being the

originators or the bases of life, as this one of the few “foremost

thinkers of the day” wants us to believe.[69]

The ancient Kabalist rested upon no hypothesis till he could lay its

basis upon the firm rock of recorded experiment.

But the too great dependence upon physical facts led to a growth of

materialism and a decadence of spirituality and faith. At the time of

Aristotle, this was the prevailing tendency of thought. And though the

Delphic commandment was not as yet completely eliminated from Grecian

thought; and some philosophers still held that “in order to know what

man _is_, we ought to know what man _was_”— still materialism had already

begun to gnaw at the root of faith. The Mysteries themselves had

degenerated in a very great degree into mere priestly speculations and

religious fraud. Few were the true adepts and initiates, the heirs and

descendants of those who had been dispersed by the conquering swords of

various invaders of Old Egypt.

The time predicted by the great Hermes in his dialogue with Æsculapius {16}

had indeed come; the time when impious foreigners would accuse Egypt

of adoring monsters, and naught but the letters engraved in stone

upon her monuments would survive—enigmas incredible to posterity.

Their sacred scribes and hierophants were wanderers upon the face of

the earth. Obliged from fear of a profanation of the sacred mysteries

to seek refuge among the Hermetic fraternities—known later as the

_Essenes_—their esoteric knowledge was buried deeper than ever. The

triumphant brand of Aristotle’s pupil swept away from his path of

conquest every vestige of a once pure religion, and Aristotle himself,

the type and child of his epoch, though instructed in the secret

science of the Egyptians, knew but little of this crowning result of

millenniums of esoteric studies.

As well as those who lived in the days of the Psammetics, our

present-day philosophers “lift the Veil of Isis”—for Isis is but the

symbol of nature. But, they see only her physical forms. The soul

within escapes their view; and the Divine Mother has no answer for

them. There are anatomists, who, uncovering to sight no indwelling

spirit under the layers of muscles, the net-work of nerves, or the

cineritious matter, which they lift with the point of the scalpel,

assert that man has no soul. Such are as purblind in sophistry as

the student, who, confining his research to the cold letter of the

Kabala, dares say it has no vivifying spirit. To see the true man who

once inhabited the subject which lies before him, on the dissecting

table, the surgeon must use other eyes than those of his body. So,

the glorious truth covered up in the hieratic writings of the ancient

papyri can be revealed only to him who possesses the faculty of

intuition—which, if we call reason the eye of the mind, may be defined

as the eye of the soul.

Our modern science acknowledges a Supreme Power, an Invisible

Principle, but denies a Supreme Being, or Personal God.[70] Logically,

the difference between the two might be questioned; for in this case

_the Power and the Being are identical_. Human reason can hardly

imagine to itself an Intelligent Supreme Power without associating

it with the idea of an Intelligent Being. The masses can never be

expected to have a clear conception of the omnipotence and omnipresence

of a Supreme God, without investing with those attributes a gigantic

projection of their own personality. But the kabalists have never

looked upon the invisible EN-SOPH otherwise than as a _Power_.

So far our modern positivists have been anticipated by thousands of

ages, in their cautious philosophy. What the hermetic adept claims to

demonstrate is, that simple common sense precludes the possibility {17}

that the universe is the result of mere chance. Such an idea appears

to him more absurd than to think that the problems of Euclid were

unconsciously formed by a monkey playing with geometrical figures.

Very few Christians understand, if indeed they know anything at all,

of the Jewish Theology. The _Talmud_ is the darkest of enigmas even

for most Jews, while those Hebrew scholars who do comprehend it do

not boast of their knowledge. Their kabalistic books are still less

understood by them; for in our days more Christian than Jewish students

are engrossed in the elimination of their great truths. How much less

is definitely known of the Oriental, or the universal Kabala! Its

adepts are few; but these heirs elect of the sages who first discovered

“the starry truths which shone on the great Shemaïa of the Chaldean

lore”[71] have solved the “absolute” and are now resting from their

grand labor. They cannot go beyond that which is given to mortals of

this earth to know; and no one, not even these elect, can trespass

beyond the line drawn by the finger of the Divinity itself. Travellers

have met these adepts on the shores of the sacred Ganges, brushed

against them in the silent ruins of Thebes, and in the mysterious

deserted chambers of Luxor. Within the halls upon whose blue and golden

vaults the weird signs attract attention, but whose secret meaning is

never penetrated by the idle gazers, they have been seen but seldom

recognized. Historical memoirs have recorded their presence in the

brilliantly illuminated _salons_ of European aristocracy. They have

been encountered again on the arid and desolate plains of the Great

Sahara, as in the caves of Elephanta. They may be found everywhere, but

make themselves known only to those who have devoted their lives to

unselfish study, and are not likely to turn back.

Maimonides, the great Jewish theologian and historian, who at one

time was almost deified by his countrymen and afterward treated as a

heretic, remarks, that the more absurd and void of sense the _Talmud_

seems the more sublime is the secret meaning. This learned man has

successfully demonstrated that the Chaldean Magic, the science of Moses

and other learned thaumaturgists was wholly based on an extensive

knowledge of the various and now forgotten branches of natural science.

Thoroughly acquainted with all the resources of the vegetable, animal,

and mineral kingdoms, experts in occult chemistry and physics,

psychologists as well as physiologists, why wonder that the graduates

or adepts instructed in the mysterious sanctuaries of the temples,

could perform wonders, which even in our days of enlightenment would {18}

appear supernatural? It is an insult to human nature to brand magic

and the occult science with the name of imposture. To believe that for

so many thousands of years, one-half of mankind practiced deception and

fraud on the other half, is equivalent to saying that the human race

was composed only of knaves and incurable idiots. Where is the country

in which magic was not practiced? At what age was it wholly forgotten?

In the oldest documents now in our possession—the _Vedas_ and the

older laws of Manu—we find many magical rites practiced and permitted

by the Brahmans.[72] Thibet, Japan and China teach in the present age

that which was taught by the oldest Chaldeans. The clergy of these

respective countries, prove moreover what they teach, namely: that the

practice of moral and physical purity, and of certain austerities,

developes the vital soul power of self-illumination. Affording to man

the control over his own immortal spirit, it gives him truly magical

powers over the elementary spirits inferior to himself. In the West we

find magic of as high an antiquity as in the East. The Druids of Great

Britain practiced it in the silent crypts of their deep caves; and

Pliny devotes many a chapter to the “wisdom”[73] of the leaders of the

Celts. The Semothees,—the Druids of the Gauls, expounded the physical

as well as the spiritual sciences. They taught the secrets of the

universe, the harmonious progress of the heavenly bodies, the formation

of the earth, and above all—the immortality of the soul.[74] Into their

sacred groves—natural academies built by the hand of the Invisible

Architect—the initiates assembled at the still hour of midnight to

learn about what man once was and what he will be.[75] They needed

no artificial illumination, nor life-drawing gas, to light up their

temples, for the chaste goddess of night beamed her most silvery rays

on their oak-crowned heads; and their white-robed sacred bards knew how

to converse with the solitary queen of the starry vault.[76]

On the dead soil of the long bygone past stand their sacred oaks,

now dried up and stripped of their spiritual meaning by the venomous

breath of materialism. But for the student of occult learning, their

vegetation is still as verdant and luxuriant, and as full of deep

and sacred truths, as at that hour when the arch-druid performed his

magical cures, and waving the branch of misletoe, severed with his

golden sickle the green bough from its mother oak-tree. _Magic is as

old as man._ It is as impossible to name the time when it sprang {19}

into existence as to indicate on what day the first man himself was

born. Whenever a writer has started with the idea of connecting its

first foundation in a country with some historical character, further

research has proved his views groundless. Odin, the Scandinavian priest

and monarch, was thought by many to have originated the practice of

magic some seventy years B.C. But it was easily demonstrated that the

mysterious rites of the priestesses called _Voïlers_, _Valas_, were

greatly anterior to his age.[77] Some modern authors were bent on

proving that Zoroaster was the founder of magic, because he was the

founder of the Magian religion. Ammianus Marcellinus, Arnobius, Pliny,

and other ancient historians demonstrated conclusively that he was but

a reformer of Magic as practiced by the Chaldeans and Egyptians.[78]

The greatest teachers of divinity agree that nearly all ancient books

were written symbolically and in a language intelligible only to the

initiated. The biographical sketch of Apollonius of Tyana affords an

example. As every Kabalist knows, it embraces the whole of the Hermetic

philosophy, being a counterpart in many respects of the traditions left

us of King Solomon. It reads like a fairy story, but, as in the case of

the latter, sometimes facts and historical events are presented to the

world under the colors of a fiction. The journey to India represents

allegorically the trials of a neophyte. His long discourses with the

Brahmans, their sage advice, and the dialogues with the Corinthian

Menippus would, if interpreted, give the esoteric catechism. His visit

to the empire of the wise men, and interview with their king Hiarchas,

the oracle of Amphiaraüs, explain symbolically many of the secret

dogmas of Hermes. They would disclose, if understood, some of the

most important secrets of nature. Eliphas Levi points out the great

resemblance which exists between King Hiarchas and the fabulous Hiram,

of whom Solomon procured the cedars of Lebanon and the gold of Ophir.

We would like to know whether modern Masons, even “Grand Lecturers”

and the most intelligent craftsmen belonging to important lodges,

understand who the _Hiram_ is whose death they combine together to

avenge?

Putting aside the purely metaphysical teachings of the _Kabala_, if one

would devote himself but to physical occultism, to the so-called branch

of therapeutics, the results might benefit some of our modern sciences;

such as chemistry and medicine. Says Professor Draper: “Sometimes, {20}

not without surprise, we meet with ideas _which we flatter ourselves

originated in our own times_.” This remark, uttered in relation to the

scientific writings of the Saracens, would apply still better to the

more secret _Treatises_ of the ancients. Modern medicine, while it

has gained largely in anatomy, physiology, and pathology, and even in

therapeutics, has lost immensely by its narrowness of spirit, its rigid

materialism, its sectarian dogmatism. One school in its purblindness

sternly ignores whatever is developed by other schools; and all unite

in ignoring every grand conception of man or nature, developed by

Mesmerism, or by American experiments on the brain—every principle

which does not conform to a stolid materialism. It would require a

convocation of the hostile physicians of the several different schools

to bring together what is now known of medical science, and it too

often happens that after the best practitioners have vainly exhausted

their art upon a patient, a mesmerist or a “healing medium” will effect

a cure! The explorers of old medical literature, from the time of

Hippocrates to that of Paracelsus and Van Helmont, will find a vast

number of well-attested physiological and psychological facts and of

measures or medicines for healing the sick which modern physicians

superciliously refuse to employ.[79] Even with respect to surgery,

modern practitioners have humbly and publicly confessed the total

impossibility of their approximating to anything like the marvellous

skill displayed in the art of bandaging by ancient Egyptians. The many

hundred yards of ligature enveloping a mummy from its ears down to

every separate toe, were studied by the chief surgical operators in

Paris, and, notwithstanding that the models were before their eyes,

they were unable to accomplish anything like it.

In the Abbott Egyptological collection, in New York City, may be seen

numerous evidences of the skill of the ancients in various handicrafts;

among others the art of lace-making; and, as it could hardly be

expected but that the signs of woman’s vanity should go side by side {21}

with those of man’s strength, there are also specimens of artificial

hair, and gold ornaments of different kinds. The New York _Tribune_,

reviewing the contents of the _Ebers Papyrus_, says:—“Verily, there

is no new thing under the sun.... Chapters 65, 66, 79, and 89 show

that hair-invigorators, hair dyes, pain-killers, and flea-powders were

desiderata 3,400 years ago.”

How few of our recent alleged discoveries are in reality new, and how

many belong to the ancients, is again most fairly and eloquently though

but in part stated by our eminent philosophical writer, Professor John

W. Draper. His _Conflict between Religion and Science_—a great book

with a very bad title—swarms with such facts. At page 13, he cites a

few of the achievements of ancient philosophers, which excited the

admiration of Greece. In Babylon was a series of Chaldean astronomical

observations, ranging back through nineteen hundred and three

years, which Callisthenes sent to Aristotle. Ptolemy, the Egyptian

king-astronomer possessed a Babylonian record of eclipses going back

seven hundred and forty-seven years before our era. As Prof. Draper

truly remarks: “Long-continued and close observations were necessary

before some of these astronomical results that have reached our times

could have been ascertained. Thus, the Babylonians had fixed the length

of a tropical year within twenty-five seconds of the truth; their

estimate of the sidereal year was barely two minutes in excess. They

had detected the precession of the equinoxes. They knew the causes of

eclipses, and, by the aid of their cycle, called _saros_, could predict

them. Their estimate of the value of that cycle, which is more than

6,585 days, was within nineteen and a half minutes of the truth.”

“Such facts furnish incontrovertible proof of the patience and skill

with which astronomy had been cultivated in Mesopotamia, and that, with

very inadequate instrumental means, it had reached no inconsiderable

perfection. These old observers had made a catalogue of the stars, had

divided the zodiac into twelve signs; they had parted the day into

twelve hours, the night into twelve. They had, as Aristotle says, for

a long time devoted themselves to observations of star-occultations by

the moon. They had correct views of the structure of the solar system,

and knew the order of emplacement of the planets. They constructed

sundials, clepsydras, astrolabes, gnomons.”

Speaking of the world of eternal truths that lies “within the world

of transient delusions and unrealities,” Professor Draper says: “That

world is not to be discovered through the vain traditions that have

brought down to us the opinion of men who lived in the morning of

civilization, nor in the _dreams of mystics_ who thought that they were

inspired. It is to be discovered by the investigations _of geometry, {22}

and by the practical interrogations of nature_.”

Precisely. The issue could not be better stated. This eloquent writer

tells us a profound truth. He does not, however, tell us _the whole_

truth, because he does not know it. He has not described the nature or

extent of the knowledge imparted in the Mysteries. No subsequent people

has been so proficient in geometry as the builders of the Pyramids and

other Titanic monuments, antediluvian and postdiluvian. On the other

hand, none has ever equalled them in the practical interrogation of

nature.

An undeniable proof of this is the significance of their countless

symbols. _Every one of these symbols is an embodied idea,—combining the

conception of the Divine Invisible with the earthly and visible._ The

former is derived from the latter strictly through analogy according

to the hermetic formula—“as below, so it is above.” Their symbols show

great knowledge of natural sciences and a practical study of cosmical

power.

As to practical results to be obtained by “the investigations of

geometry,” very fortunately for students who are coming upon the

stage of action, we are no longer forced to content ourselves with

mere conjectures. In our own times, an American, Mr. George H. Felt,

of New York, who, if he continues as he has begun, may one day be

recognized as the greatest geometer of the age, has been enabled, by

the sole help of the premises established by the ancient Egyptians, to

arrive at results which we will give in his own language. “Firstly,”

says Mr. Felt, “the fundamental diagram to which all science of

elementary geometry, both plane and solid, is referable; to produce

arithmetical systems of proportion in a geometrical manner; to identify

this figure with all the remains of architecture and sculpture, in

all which it had been followed in a marvellously exact manner; to

determine that the Egyptians had used it as the basis of all their

astronomical calculations, on which their religious symbolism was

almost entirely founded; to find its traces among all the remnants of

art and architecture of the Greeks; to discover its traces so strongly

among the Jewish sacred records, as to prove conclusively that it was

founded thereon; to find that the whole system had been discovered

by the Egyptians after researches of tens of thousands of years into

the laws of nature, and that it might truly be called the science of

the Universe.” Further it enabled him “to determine with precision

problems in physiology heretofore only surmised; to first develop such

a Masonic philosophy as showed it to be conclusively the first science

and religion, as it will be the last;” and we may add, lastly, to prove

by ocular demonstrations that the Egyptian sculptors and architects {23}

obtained the models for the quaint figures which adorn the façades

and vestibules of their temples, not in the disordered fantasies of

their own brains, but from the “viewless races of the air,” and other

kingdoms of nature, whom he, like them, _claims_ to make visible by

resort to their own chemical and kabalistical processes.

Schweigger proves that the symbols of all the mythologies have a

scientific foundation and substance.[80] It is only through recent

discoveries of the physical electro-magnetical powers of nature

that such experts in Mesmerism as Ennemoser, Schweigger and Bart,

in Germany, Baron Du Potet and Regazzoni, in France and Italy, were

enabled to trace with almost faultless accuracy the true relation which

each _Theomythos_ bore to some one of these powers. The Idæic finger,

which had such importance in the magic art of healing, means an iron

finger, which is attracted and repulsed in turn by magnetic, natural

forces. It produced, in Samothrace, wonders of healing by restoring

affected organs to their normal condition.

Bart goes deeper than Schweigger into the significations of the old

myths, and studies the subject from both its spiritual and physical

aspects. He treats at length of the Phrygian Dactyls, those “magicians

and exorcists of sickness,” and of the Cabeirian Theurgists. He says:

“While we treat of the close union of the Dactyls and magnetic forces,

we are not necessarily confined to the magnetic stone, and our views

of nature but take a glance at magnetism in its whole meaning. Then it

is clear how the initiated, who called themselves _Dactyls_, created

astonishment in the people through their magic arts, working as they

did, miracles of a healing nature. To this united themselves many

other things which the priesthood of antiquity was wont to practice;

the cultivation of the land and of morals, the advancement of art and

science, mysteries, and secret consecrations. All this was done by the

priestly Cabeirians, and _wherefore not guided and supported by the

mysterious spirits of nature_?”[81] Schweigger is of the same opinion,

and demonstrates that the phenomena of ancient Theurgy were produced by

magnetic powers “under the guidance of spirits.”

Despite their apparent Polytheism, the ancients—those of the educated

class at all events—were entirely monotheistical; and this, too, ages

upon ages before the days of Moses. In the _Ebers Papyrus_ this fact is

shown conclusively in the following words, translated from the first

four lines of Plate I.: “I came from Heliopolis with the great ones {24}

from Het-aat, the Lords of Protection, the masters of eternity and

salvation. I came from Sais with the Mother-goddesses, who extended

to me protection. _The Lord of the Universe_ told me how to free the

gods from all murderous diseases.” _Eminent men were called gods by

the ancients._ The deification of mortal men and supposititious gods

is no more a proof against their monotheism than the monument-building

of modern Christians, who erect statues to their heroes, is proof of

their polytheism. Americans of the present century would consider

it absurd in their posterity 3,000 years hence to classify them as

idolaters for having built statues to their god Washington. So shrouded

in mystery was the Hermetic Philosophy that Volney asserted that the

ancient peoples worshipped their gross material symbols as divine in

themselves; whereas these were only considered as representing esoteric

principles. Dupuis, also, after devoting many years of study to the

problem, mistook the symbolic circle, and attributed their religion

solely to astronomy. Eberhart (_Berliner Monatschriff_) and many other

German writers of the last and present centuries, dispose of magic

most unceremoniously, and think it due to the Platonic mythos of the

_Timæus_. But how, without possessing a knowledge of the mysteries,

was it possible for these men or any others not endowed with the finer

intuition of a Champollion, to discover the esoteric half of that which

was concealed, behind the veil of Isis, from all except the adepts?

The merit of Champollion as an Egyptologist none will question. He

declares that everything demonstrates the ancient Egyptians to have

been profoundly monotheistical. The accuracy of the writings of the

mysterious Hermes Trismegistus, whose antiquity runs back into the

night of time, is corroborated by him to their minutest details.

Ennemoser also says: “Into Egypt and the East went Herodotus, Thales,

Parmenides, Empedocles, Orpheus, and Pythagoras, to instruct themselves

in Natural Philosophy and Theology.” There, too, Moses acquired his

wisdom, and Jesus passed the earlier years of his life.

Thither gathered the students of all countries before Alexandria was

founded. “How comes it,” Ennemoser goes on to say, “that so little has

become known of these mysteries? through so many ages and amongst so

many different times and people? The answer is that it is owing to the

universally strict silence of the initiated. Another cause may be found

in the destruction and total loss of all the written memorials of the

secret knowledge of the remotest antiquity.” Numa’s books, described by

Livy, consisting of treatises upon natural philosophy, were found in

his tomb; but they were not allowed to be made known, lest they should

reveal the most secret mysteries of the state religion. The senate and {25}

the tribune of the people determined that the books themselves should

be burned, which was done in public.[82]

_Magic was considered a divine science which led to a participation

in the attributes of Divinity itself._ “It unveils the operations

of nature,” says Philo Judæus, “and leads to the contemplation of

celestial powers.”[83] In later periods its abuse and degeneration into

sorcery made it an object of general abhorrence. We must therefore

deal with it only as it was in the remote past, during those ages when

every true religion was based on a knowledge of the occult powers

of nature. It was not the sacerdotal class in ancient Persia that

established magic, as it is commonly thought, but the Magi, who derive

their name from it. The Mobeds, priests of the Parsis—the ancient

Ghebers—are named, even at the present day, _Magoï_, in the dialect of

the Pehlvi.[84] _Magic appeared in the world with the earlier races of

men._ Cassien mentions a treatise, well-known in the fourth and fifth

centuries, which was accredited to Ham, the son of Noah, who in his

turn was reputed to have received it from Jared, the fourth generation

from Seth, the son of Adam.[85]

Moses was indebted for his knowledge to the mother of the Egyptian

princess, Thermuthis, who saved him from the waters of the Nile. The

wife of Pharaoh,[86] Batria, was an initiate herself, and the Jews owe

to her the possession of their prophet, “learned in all the wisdom

of the Egyptians, and mighty in words and deeds.”[87] Justin Martyr,

giving as his authority Trogus Pompeius, shows Joseph as having

acquired a great knowledge in magical arts with the high priests of

Egypt.[88]

_The ancients knew more concerning certain sciences than our modern

savants have yet discovered._ Reluctant as many are to confess as

much, it has been acknowledged by more than one scientist. “The degree

of scientific knowledge existing in an early period of society was

much greater than the moderns are willing to admit;” says Dr. A. Todd

Thomson, the editor of _Occult Sciences_, by Salverte; “but,” he adds,

“it was confined to the temples, carefully veiled from the eyes of the

people and opposed only to the priesthood.” Speaking of the _Kabala_,

the learned Franz von Baader remarks that “not only our salvation and

wisdom, but our science itself came to us from the Jews.” But why not

complete the sentence and tell the reader from whom the Jews got their

wisdom?

Origen, who had belonged to the Alexandrian school of Platonists, {26}

declares that Moses, besides the teachings of the covenant,

communicated some very important secrets “from the hidden depths of the

law” to the seventy elders. These he enjoined them to impart only to

persons whom they found worthy.

St. Jerome names the Jews of Tiberias and Lydda as the only teachers of

the mystical manner of interpretation. Finally, Ennemoser expresses a

strong opinion that “the writings of Dionysius Areopagita have palpably

been grounded on the Jewish _Kabala_.” When we take in consideration

that the Gnostics, or early Christians, were but the followers of the

old Essenes under a new name, this fact is nothing to be wondered at.

Professor Molitor gives the _Kabala_ its just due. He says:

“The age of inconsequence and shallowness, in theology as well as in

sciences, is past, and since that revolutionary rationalism has left

nothing behind but its own emptiness, after having destroyed everything

positive, it seems now to be the time to direct our attention anew

to that mysterious revelation which is the living spring whence our

salvation must come ... the Mysteries of ancient Israel, which contain

all secrets of modern Israel, would be particularly calculated to ...

found the fabric of theology upon its deepest theosophical principles,

and to gain _a firm basis_ to all ideal sciences. It would open a

new path ... to the obscure labyrinth of the myths, mysteries and

constitutions of primitive nations.... In these traditions alone are

contained the system of the schools of the prophets, which the prophet

Samuel did not found, _but only restored_, whose end was no other than

to lead the scholars to wisdom and the highest knowledge, and when they

had been found worthy, to induct them _into deeper mysteries_. Classed

with these mysteries was _magic_, which was of a double nature—divine

magic, and evil magic, or the black art. Each of these is again

divisible into two kinds, the active and seeing; in the first, man

endeavors to place himself _en rapport_ with the world to learn hidden

things; in the latter he endeavors to gain power over spirits; in the

former, to perform _good and beneficial_ acts; in the latter to do all

kinds of diabolical and unnatural deeds.”[89]

The clergy of the three most prominent Christian bodies, the Greek,

Roman Catholic, and Protestant, discountenance every spiritual

phenomenon manifesting itself through the so-called “mediums.” A

very brief period, indeed, has elapsed since both the two latter

ecclesiastical corporations burned, hanged, and otherwise murdered

every helpless victim through whose organism spirits—and sometimes

blind and as yet unexplained forces of nature—manifested themselves. {27}

At the head of these three churches, pre-eminent stands the Church

of Rome. Her hands are scarlet with the innocent blood of countless

victims shed in the name of the Moloch-like divinity at the head of her

creed. She is ready and eager to begin again. But she is bound hand

and foot by that nineteenth century spirit of progress and religious

freedom which she reviles and blasphemes daily. The Græco-Russian

Church is the most amiable and Christ-like in her primitive, simple,

though blind faith. Despite the fact that there has been no practical

union between the Greek and Latin Churches, and that the two parted

company long centuries ago, the Roman Pontiffs seem to invariably

ignore the fact. They have in the most impudent manner possible

arrogated to themselves jurisdiction not only over the countries within

the Greek communion but also over all Protestants as well. “The Church

insists,” says Professor Draper, “that the state has no rights over any

thing which it declares to be within its domain, and that Protestantism

being a mere rebellion, has no rights at all; that even in Protestant

communities the Catholic bishop _is the only lawful_ spiritual

pastor.”[90] Decrees unheeded, encyclical letters unread, invitations

to ecumenical councils unnoticed, excommunications laughed at—all these

have seemed to make no difference. Their persistence has only been

matched by their effrontery. In 1864, the culmination of absurdity

was attained when Pius IX. excommunicated and fulminated publicly his

anathemas against the Russian Emperor, as a “_schismatic_ cast out from

the bosom of the Holy Mother Church.”[91] Neither he nor his ancestors,

nor Russia since it was Christianized, a thousand years ago, have ever

consented to join the Roman Catholics. Why not claim ecclesiastical

jurisdiction over the Buddhists of Thibet, or the shadows of the

ancient Hyk-Sos?

The mediumistic phenomena have manifested themselves at all times in

Russia as well as in other countries. This force ignores religious

differences; it laughs at nationalities; and invades unasked any

individuality, whether of a crowned head or a poor beggar.

Not even the present Vice-God, Pius IX., himself, could avoid the

unwelcome guest. For the last fifty years his Holiness has been known

to be subject to very extraordinary fits. Inside the Vatican they are

termed _Divine visions_; outside, physicians call them epileptic fits;

and popular rumor attributes them to an obsession by the ghosts of

Peruggia, Castelfidardo, and Mentana!

“The lights burn blue: it is now dead midnight, {28}

Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh,

Methought the souls of all that I caused to be murdered

Came....”[92]

The Prince of Hohenlohe, so famous during the first quarter of our

century for his healing powers, was himself a great medium. Indeed,

these phenomena and powers belong to no particular age or country. They

form a portion of the psychological attributes of man—the Microcosmos.

For centuries have the _Klikouchy_,[93] the _Yourodevoÿ_,[94] and other

miserable creatures been afflicted with strange disorders, which the

Russian clergy and the populace attribute to possession by the devil.

They throng the entrances of the cathedrals, without daring to trust

themselves inside, lest their self-willed controlling demons might

fling them on the ground. Voroneg, Kiew, Kazan, and all cities which

possess the thaumaturgical relics of canonized saints, abound with such

unconscious mediums. One can always find numbers of them, congregating

in hideous groups, and hanging about the gates and porches. At certain

stages of the celebration of the mass by the officiating clergy, such

as the appearance of the sacraments, or the beginning of the prayer and

chorus, “_Ejey Cherouvim_,” these half-maniacs, half-mediums, begin

crowing like cocks, barking, bellowing and braying, and, finally, fall

down in fearful convulsions. “The _unclean one_ cannot bear the holy

prayer,” is the pious explanation. Moved by pity, some charitable souls

administer restoratives to the “afflicted ones,” and distribute alms

among them. Occasionally, a priest is invited to exorcise, in which

event he either performs the ceremony for the sake of love and charity,

or the alluring prospect of a twenty-copeck silver bit, according

to his Christian impulses. But these miserable creatures—who are

mediums, for they prophesy and see visions sometimes, when the fit is

genuine[95]—are never molested because of their misfortune. Why should

the clergy persecute them, or people hate and denounce them as damnable

witches or wizards? Common sense and justice surely suggest that if

any are to be punished it is certainly not the victims who cannot help

themselves, but the demon who is alleged to control their actions. The

worst that happens to the patient is, that the priest inundates him or

her with holy water, and causes the poor creature to catch cold. This

failing in efficacy, the _Klikoucha_ is left to the will of God, and {29}

taken care of in love and pity. Superstitious and blind as it is, a

faith conducted on such principles certainly deserves some respect, and

can never be offensive, either to man or the _true_ God. Not so with

that of the Roman Catholics; and hence, it is they, and secondarily,

the Protestant clergy—with the exception of some foremost thinkers

among them—that we purpose questioning in this work. We want to know

upon what grounds they base their right to treat Hindus and Chinese

spiritualists and kabalists in the way they do; denouncing them, in

company with the infidels—creatures of their own making—as so many

convicts sentenced to the inextinguishable fires of hell.

Far from us be the thought of the slightest irreverence—let alone

blasphemy—toward the Divine Power which called into being all things,

visible and invisible. Of its majesty and boundless perfection we dare

not even think. It is enough for us to know that _It_ exists and that

_It_ is all wise. Enough that in common with our fellow creatures we

possess a spark of _Its_ essence. The supreme power whom we revere is

the boundless and endless one—the grand “CENTRAL SPIRITUAL SUN” by

whose attributes and the visible effects of whose inaudible WILL we

are surrounded—the God of the ancient and the God of modern seers. His

nature can be studied only in the worlds called forth by his mighty

FIAT. His revelation is traced with his own finger in imperishable

figures of universal harmony upon the face of the Cosmos. It is the

only INFALLIBLE gospel we recognize.

Speaking of ancient geographers, Plutarch remarks in _Theseus_, that

they “crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world which

they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect that

beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts _full of wild beasts_ and

_unapproachable bogs_.” Do not our theologians and scientists do the

same? While the former people the invisible world with either angels

or devils, our philosophers try to persuade their disciples that where

there is no _matter_ there is _nothing_.

How many of our inveterate skeptics belong, notwithstanding their

materialism, to Masonic Lodges? The brothers of the Rosie-Cross,

mysterious practitioners of the mediæval ages, still live—but in name

only. They may “shed tears at the grave of their respectable Master,

Hiram Abiff;” but vainly will they search for the true locality, “where

the sprig of myrtle was placed.” The dead letter remains alone, the

spirit has fled. They are like the English or German chorus of the

Italian opera, who descend in the fourth act of _Ernani_ into the crypt

of Charlemagne, singing their conspiracy in a tongue utterly unknown

to them. So, our modern knights of the Sacred Arch may descend every {30}

night if they choose “through the nine arches into the bowels of the

earth,“they “will never discover the sacred Delta of Enoch.” The “Sir

Knights in the South Valley” and those in “the North Valley” may try

to assure themselves that “enlightenment dawns upon their minds,” and

that as they progress in Masonry “the veil of superstition, despotism,

tyranny” and so on, no longer obscures the visions of their minds. But

these are all empty words so long as they neglect their mother Magic,

and turn their backs upon its twin sister, Spiritualism. Verily, “Sir

Knights of the Orient,” you may “leave your stations and sit upon the

floor in attitudes of grief, with your heads resting upon your hands,”

for you have cause to bewail and mourn your fate. Since Phillipe le

Bel destroyed the Knights-Templars, not one has appeared to clear up

your doubts notwithstanding all claims to the contrary. Truly, you

are “wanderers from Jerusalem, seeking the lost treasure of the holy

place.” Have you found it? Alas, no! for the holy place is profaned;

the pillars of wisdom, strength and beauty are destroyed. Henceforth,

“you must wander in darkness,” and “travel in humility,” among the

woods and mountains in search of the “lost word.” “Pass on!“you will

never find it so long as you limit your journeys to _seven_ or even

seven times seven; because you are “travelling in darkness,” and this

darkness can only be dispelled by the light of the blazing torch of

truth which alone the right descendants of Ormazd carry. They alone can

teach you the true pronunciation of the name revealed to Enoch, Jacob

and Moses. “Pass on!” Till your R. S. W. shall learn to multiply 333,

and _strike_ instead 666—the number of the Apocalyptic Beast, you may

just as well observe prudence and act “_sub rosa_.”

In order to demonstrate that the notions which the ancients entertained

about dividing human history into cycles were not utterly devoid of a

philosophical basis, we will close this chapter by introducing to the

reader one of the oldest traditions of antiquity as to the evolution of

our planet.

At the close of each “great year,” called by Aristotle—according to

Censorinus—the _greatest_, and which consists of six _sars_[96] our

planet is subjected to a thorough physical revolution. The polar and

equatorial climates gradually exchange places; the former moving slowly

toward the Line, and the tropical zone, with its exuberant vegetation

and swarming animal life, replacing the forbidding wastes of the icy {31}

poles. This change of climate is necessarily attended by cataclysms,

earthquakes, and other cosmical throes.[97] As the beds of the ocean

are displaced, at the end of every decimillennium and about one neros,

a semi-universal deluge like the legendary Noachian flood is brought

about. This year was called the _Heliacal_ by the Greeks; but no one

outside the sanctuary knew anything certain either as to its duration

or particulars. The winter of this year was called the Cataclysm or the

Deluge,—the Summer, the Ecpyrosis. The popular traditions taught that

at these alternate seasons the world was in turn burned and deluged.

This is what we learn at least from the _Astronomical Fragments_

of Censorinus and Seneca. So uncertain were the commentators about

the length of this year, that none except Herodotus and Linus, who

assigned to it, the former 10,800, and the latter 13,984, came near

the truth.[98] According to the claims of the Babylonian priests,

corroborated by Eupolemus,[99] “the city of Babylon, owes its

foundation to those who were saved from the catastrophe of the deluge;

_they were the giants_ and they built the tower which is noticed in

history.”[100] These giants who were great astrologers and had received

moreover from their fathers, “the sons of God,” every instruction

pertaining to secret matters, instructed the priests in their turn, and

left in the temples all the records of the periodical cataclysm that

they had witnessed themselves. This is how the high priests came by

the knowledge of the _great_ years. When we remember, moreover, that

Plato in the _Timæus_ cites the old Egyptian priest rebuking Solon for

his ignorance of the fact that there were several such deluges as the

great one of Ogyges, we can easily ascertain that this belief in the

_Heliakos_ was a doctrine held by the initiated priests the world over.

The Neroses, the Vrihaspati, or the periods called yugas or kalpas,

are life-problems to solve. The Satya-yug and Buddhistic cycles of

chronology would make a mathematician stand aghast at the array of

ciphers. The Maha-kalpa embraces an untold number of periods far back {32}

in the antediluvian ages. Their system comprises a kalpa or grand

period of 4,320,000,000 years, which they divide into four lesser

yugas, running as follows:

1st.—Satya-yug 1,728,000 years.

2d.—Trêtya yug 1,296,000 “

3d.—Dvâpa yug 864,000 “

4th.—Kali yug 432,000 “

———————

Total 4,320,000

which make one divine age or Maha-yug; seventy-one Maha-yugs make

306,720,000 years, to which is added a sandhi (or the time when day and

night border on each other, morning and evening twilight), equal to

a Satya-yug, 1,728,000, make a manwantara of 308,448,000 years;[101]

fourteen manwantaras make 4,318,272,000 years; to which must be added a

sandhi to begin the kalpa, 1,728,000 years, making the kalpa or grand

period of 4,320,000,000 of years. As we are now only in the Kali-yug of

the twenty-eighth age of the seventh manwantara of 308,448,000 years,

we have yet sufficient time before us to wait before we reach even half

of the time allotted to the world.

These ciphers are not fanciful, but founded upon actual astronomical

calculations, as has been demonstrated by S. Davis.[102] Many a

scientist, Higgins among others, notwithstanding their researches,

has been utterly perplexed as to which of these was the _secret_

cycle. Bunsen has demonstrated that the Egyptian priests, who made the

cyclic notations, kept them always in the profoundest mystery.[103]

Perhaps their difficulty arose from the fact that the calculations of

the ancients applied equally to the spiritual progress of humanity

as to the physical. It will not be difficult to understand the close

correspondence drawn by the ancients between the cycles of nature

and of mankind, if we keep in mind their belief in the constant and

all-potent influences of the planets upon the fortunes of humanity.

Higgins justly believed that the cycle of the Indian system, of

432,000, is the true key of the secret cycle. But his failure in trying

to decipher it was made apparent; for as it pertained to the mystery

of the creation, this cycle was the most inviolable of all. It was

repeated in symbolic figures only in the Chaldean _Book of Numbers_, {33}

the original of which, if now extant, is certainly not to be found in

libraries, as it formed one of the most ancient Books of Hermes,[104]

the number of which is at present undetermined.

Calculating by the secret period of the Great Neros and the Hindu

Kalpas, some kabalists, mathematicians and archæologists who knew

naught of the secret computations made the above number of 21,000 years

to be 24,000 years, for the length of the great year, as it was to the

renewal only of our globe that they thought the last period of 6,000

years applied. Higgins gives as a reason for it, that it was anciently

thought that the equinoxes preceded only after the rate of 2,000, not

2,160, years in a sign; for thus it would allow for the length of the

great year four times 6,000 or 24,000 years. “Hence,” he says, “might

arise their immensely-lengthened cycles; because, it would be the same

with this great year as with the common year, till it travelled round

an immensely-lengthened circle, when it would come to the old point

again.” He therefore accounts for the 24,000 in the following manner:

“If the angle which the plane of the ecliptic makes with the plane of

the equator had decreased gradually and regularly, as it was till very

lately supposed to do, the two planes would have coincided in about ten {34}

ages, 6,000 years; in ten ages, 6,000 years more, the sun would have

been situated relatively to the Southern Hemisphere as he is now to the

Northern; in ten ages, 6,000 years more, the two planes would coincide

again; and, in ten ages, 6,000 years more, he would be situated as he

is now, after a lapse of about twenty-four or twenty-five thousand

years in all. When the sun arrived at the equator, the ten ages or six

thousand years would end, and the world would be destroyed _by fire_;

when he arrived at the southern point, it would be destroyed by water.

And thus, it would be destroyed at the end of every 6,000 years, or ten

neroses.”[105]

This method of calculating by the _neroses_, without allowing any

consideration for the secrecy in which the ancient philosophers, who

were exclusively of the sacerdotal order, held their knowledge, gave

rise to the greatest errors. It led the Jews, as well as some of the

Christian Platonists, to maintain that the world would be destroyed

at the end of six thousand years. Gale shows how firmly this belief

was rooted in the Jews. It has also led modern scientists to discredit

entirely the hypothesis of the ancients. It has given rise to the

formation of different religious sects, which, like the Adventists of

our century, are always living in the expectation of the approaching

destruction of the world.

As our planet revolves once every year around the sun and at the same

time turns once in every twenty-four hours upon its own axis, thus

traversing minor circles within a larger one, so is the work of the

smaller cyclic periods accomplished and recommenced, within the Great

Saros.

The revolution of the physical world, according to the ancient

doctrine, is attended by a like revolution in the world of

intellect—the spiritual evolution of the world proceeding in cycles,

like the physical one.

Thus we see in history a regular alternation of ebb and flow in the

tide of human progress. The great kingdoms and empires of the world,

after reaching the culmination of their greatness, descend again, in

accordance with the same law by which they ascended; till, having

reached the lowest point, humanity reasserts itself and mounts up once

more, the height of its attainment being, by this law of ascending

progression by cycles, somewhat higher than the point from which it had

before descended.

The division of the history of mankind into Golden, Silver, Copper and

Iron Ages, is not a fiction. We see the same thing in the literature of

peoples. An age of great inspiration and unconscious productiveness is

invariably followed by an age of criticism and consciousness. The one

affords material for the analyzing and critical intellect of the other.

Thus, all those great characters who tower like giants in the history

of mankind, like Buddha-Siddârtha, and Jesus, in the realm of {35}

spiritual, and Alexander the Macedonian and Napoleon the Great, in

the realm of physical conquests, were but reflexed images of human

types which had existed ten thousand years before, in the preceding

decimillennium, reproduced by the mysterious powers controlling the

destinies of our world. There is no prominent character in all the

annals of sacred or profane history whose prototype we cannot find in

the half-fictitious and half-real traditions of bygone religions and

mythologies. As the star, glimmering at an immeasurable distance above

our heads, in the boundless immensity of the sky, reflects itself

in the smooth waters of a lake, so does the imagery of men of the

antediluvian ages reflect itself in the periods we can embrace in an

historical retrospect.

“_As above, so it is below. That which has been, will return again. As

in heaven, so on earth._”

The world is always ungrateful to its great men. Florence has built

a statue to Galileo, but hardly even mentions Pythagoras. The former

had a ready guide in the treatises of Copernicus, who had been obliged

to contend against the universally established Ptolemaic system. But

neither Galileo nor modern astronomy discovered the emplacement of the

planetary bodies. Thousands of ages before, it was taught by the sages

of Middle Asia, and brought thence by Pythagoras, not as a speculation,

but as a demonstrated science. “The numerals of Pythagoras,” says

Porphyry, “were hieroglyphical symbols, by means whereof he explained

_all_ ideas concerning the nature of all things.”[106]

Verily, then, to antiquity alone have we to look for the origin of all

things. How well Hargrave Jennings expresses himself when speaking

of Pyramids, and how true are his words when he asks: “Is it at all

reasonable to conclude, at a period when knowledge was at the highest,

and when the human powers were, in comparison with ours at the present

time, prodigious, that all these indomitable, _scarcely believable_

physical effects—that such achievements as those of the Egyptians—were

devoted to a mistake? that the myriads of the Nile were fools laboring

in the dark, and that all the magic of their great men was forgery,

and that we, in despising that which we call their superstition and

wasted power, are alone the wise? No! there is much more in these

old religions than probably—in the audacity of modern denial, in the

confidence of these superficial-science times, and in the derision

of these days without faith—is in the least degree supposed. We do

not understand the old time.... Thus we see how classic practice and

heathen teaching may be made to reconcile—how even the Gentile and the {36}

Hebrew, the mythological and the Christian doctrine harmonize in the

general faith founded on Magic. That Magic is indeed possible is the

moral of this book.”[107]

It is possible. Thirty years ago, when the first rappings of Rochester

awakened slumbering attention to the reality of an invisible world;

when the gentle shower of raps gradually became a torrent which

overflowed the whole globe, spiritualists had to contend but against

two potencies—theology and science. But the theosophists have, in

addition to these, to meet the world at large and the spiritualists

first of all.

“There is a _personal_ God, and there is a _personal_ Devil!” thunders

the Christian preacher. “Let him be anathema who dares say nay!”

“There is no personal God, except the gray matter in our brain,”

contemptuously replies the materialist. “And there is no Devil. Let him

be considered thrice an idiot who says aye.” Meanwhile the occultists

and _true_ philosophers heed neither of the two combatants, but keep

perseveringly at their work. None of them believe in the absurd,

passionate, and fickle God of superstition, but all of them believe

in good and evil. Our human reason, the emanation of our finite

mind, is certainly incapable of comprehending a divine intelligence,

an endless and infinite entity; and, according to strict logic,

that which transcends our understanding and would remain thoroughly

incomprehensible to our senses cannot exist for us; hence, it does

_not_ exist. So far finite reason agrees with science, and says: “There

is no God.” But, on the other hand, our _Ego_, that which lives and

thinks and feels independently of us in our mortal casket, does more

than believe. It _knows_ that there exists a God in nature, for the

sole and invincible Artificer of all lives in us as we live in Him.

No dogmatic faith or exact science is able to uproot that intuitional

feeling inherent in man, when he has once fully realized it in himself.

_Human nature is like universal nature in its abhorrence of a vacuum._

It feels an intuitional yearning for a Supreme Power. Without a God,

the cosmos would seem to it but like a soulless corpse. Being forbidden

to search for Him where alone His traces would be found, man filled

the aching void with the personal God whom his spiritual teachers

built up for him from the crumbling ruins of heathen myths and hoary

philosophies of old. How otherwise explain the mushroom growth of new

sects, some of them absurd beyond degree? Mankind have one innate,

irrepressible craving, that _must_ be satisfied in any religion

that would supplant the dogmatic, undemonstrated and undemonstrable

theology of our Christian ages. This is the yearning after the proofs

of immortality. As Sir Thomas Browne has expressed it: ... “it is the {37}

heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him that

he is at the end of his nature, or that there is no future state to

come, unto which this seems progressive, and otherwise made in vain.”

Let any religion offer itself that can supply these proofs in the shape

of scientific facts, and the established system will be driven to the

alternative of fortifying its dogmas with such facts, or of passing out

of the reverence and affection of Christendom. Many a Christian divine

has been forced to acknowledge that there is _no authentic_ source

whence the assurance of a future state could have been derived by man.

How could then such a belief have stood for countless ages, were it not

that among all nations, whether civilized or savage, man _has been_

allowed the demonstrative proof? Is not the very existence of such a

belief an evidence that thinking philosopher and unreasoning savage

have both been compelled to acknowledge the testimony of their senses?

That if, in isolated instances, spectral illusion may have resulted

from physical causes, on the other hand, in thousands of instances,

apparitions of persons have held converse with several individuals at

once, who saw and heard them collectively, and could not all have been

diseased in mind?

The greatest thinkers of Greece and Rome regarded such matters as

demonstrated facts. They distinguished the apparitions by the names of

_manes_, _anima_ and _umbra_: the _manes_ descending after the decease

of the individual into the Underworld; the _anima_, or pure spirit,

ascending to heaven; and the restless _umbra_ (earth-bound spirit),

hovering about its tomb, because the attraction of matter and love of

its earthly body prevailed in it and prevented its ascension to higher

regions.

“Terra legit _carnem_ tumulum circumvolet _umbra_,

Orcus habet _manes_, _spiritus_ astra petit,”

says Ovid, speaking of the threefold constituents of souls.

But all such definitions must be subjected to the careful analysis

of philosophy. Too many of our thinkers do not consider that the

numerous changes in language, the allegorical phraseology and evident

secretiveness of old Mystic writers, who were generally under an

obligation never to divulge the solemn secrets of the sanctuary,

might have sadly misled translators and commentators. The phrases

of the mediæval alchemist they read literally; and even the veiled

symbolology of Plato is commonly misunderstood by the modern scholar.

One day they may learn to know better, and so become aware that the

method of extreme necessarianism was practiced in ancient as well as

in modern philosophy; that from the first ages of man, the fundamental

truths of all that we are permitted to know on earth was in the safe

keeping of the adepts of the sanctuary; that the difference in creeds {38}

and religious practice was only external; and that those guardians of

the primitive divine revelation, who had solved every problem that is

within the grasp of human intellect, were bound together by a universal

freemasonry of science and philosophy, which formed one unbroken chain

around the globe. It is for philology and psychology to find the end of

the thread. That done, it will then be ascertained that, by relaxing

one single loop of the old religious systems, the chain of mystery may

be disentangled.

The neglect and withholding of these proofs have driven such eminent

minds as Hare and Wallace, and other men of power, into the fold

of modern spiritualism. At the same time it has forced others,

congenitally devoid of spiritual intuitions, into a gross materialism

that figures under various names.

But we see no utility in prosecuting the subject further. For, though

in the opinion of most of our contemporaries, there has been but one

day of learning, in whose twilight stood the older philosophers, and

whose noontide brightness is all our own; and though the testimony

of scores of ancient and mediæval thinkers has proved valueless to

modern experimenters, as though the world dated from A.D. 1, and all

knowledge were of recent growth, we will not lose hope or courage. The

moment is more opportune than ever for the review of old philosophies.

Archæologists, philologists, astronomers, chemists and physicists

are getting nearer and nearer to the point where they will be forced

to consider them. Physical science has already reached its limits of

exploration; dogmatic theology sees the springs of its inspiration

dry. Unless we mistake the signs, the day is approaching when the

world will receive the proofs that only ancient religions were in

harmony with nature, and ancient science embraced all that can be

known. Secrets long kept may be revealed; books long forgotten and

arts long time lost may be brought out to light again; papyri and

parchments of inestimable importance will turn up in the hands of men

who pretend to have unrolled them from mummies, or stumbled upon them

in buried crypts; tablets and pillars, whose sculptured revelations

will stagger theologians and confound scientists, may yet be excavated

and interpreted. Who knows the possibilities of the future? An era of

disenchantment and rebuilding will soon begin—nay, has already begun.

The cycle has almost run its course; a new one is about to begin, and

the future pages of history may contain full evidence, and convey full

proof that

“If ancestry can be in aught believed,

Descending spirits have conversed with man,

And told him secrets of the world unknown.”

CHAPTER II. {39}

“Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence

And fills up all the mighty void of sense....”

—POPE.

“But why should the operations of nature be changed? There

may be a deeper philosophy than we dream of—a philosophy that

discovers the secrets of nature, _but does not alter, by

penetrating them, its course_.”—BULWER.

Is it enough for man to know that he exists? Is it enough to be formed

a human being to enable him to deserve the appellation of MAN? It

is our decided impression and conviction, that to become a genuine

spiritual entity, which that designation implies, man must first

_create_ himself anew, so to speak—_i.e._, thoroughly eliminate from

his mind and spirit, not only the dominating influence of selfishness

and other impurity, but also the infection of superstition and

prejudice. The latter is far different from what we commonly term

_antipathy_ or _sympathy_. We are at first irresistibly or unwittingly

drawn within its dark circle by that peculiar influence, that powerful

current of magnetism which emanates from ideas as well as from physical

bodies. By this we are surrounded, and finally prevented through moral

cowardice—fear of public opinion—from stepping out of it. It is rare

that men regard a thing in either its true or false light, accepting

the conclusion by the free action of their own judgment. Quite the

reverse. The conclusion is more commonly reached by blindly adopting

the opinion current at the hour among those with whom they associate.

A church member will not pay an absurdly high price for his pew any

more than a materialist will go twice to listen to Mr. Huxley’s talk

on evolution, because they think that it is right to do so; but merely

because Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so have done it, and these personages are

THE S—AND S—’S.

The same holds good with everything else. If psychology had had its

Darwin, the descent of man as regards moral qualities might have been

found inseparably linked with that of his physical form. Society in

its servile condition suggests to the intelligent observer of its

mimicry a kinship between the Simia and human beings even more striking

than is exhibited in the external marks pointed out by the great {40}

anthropologist. The many varieties of the ape—“mocking presentments of

ourselves” appear to have been evolved on purpose to supply a certain

class of expensively-dressed persons with the material for genealogical

trees.

Science is daily and rapidly moving toward the great discoveries in

chemistry and physics, organology, and anthropology. Learned men ought

to be free from preconceptions and prejudices of every kind; yet,

although thought and opinion are now free, scientists are still the

same men as of old. An Utopian dreamer is he who thinks that man ever

changes with the evolution and development of new ideas. The soil may

be well fertilized and made to yield with every year a greater and

better variety of fruit; but, dig a little deeper than the stratum

required for the crop, and the same earth will be found in the subsoil

as was there before the first furrow was turned.

Not many years ago, the person who questioned the infallibility of some

theological dogma was branded at once an iconoclast and an infidel. _Væ

victis!_ ... Science has conquered. But in its turn the victor claims

the same infallibility, though it equally fails to prove its right.

“_Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis_,” the saying of the good

old Lotharius, applies to the case. Nevertheless, we feel as if we had

some right to question the high-priests of science.

For many years we have watched the development and growth of that

apple of discord—MODERN SPIRITUALISM. Familiar with its literature

both in Europe and America, we have closely and eagerly witnessed its

interminable controversies and compared its contradictory hypotheses.

Many educated men and women—heterodox spiritualists, of course—have

tried to fathom the Protean phenomena. The only result was that they

came to the following conclusion: whatever may be the reason of these

constant failures—whether such are to be laid at the door of the

investigators themselves, or of the secret Force at work—it is at least

proved that, in proportion as the psychological manifestations increase

in frequency and variety, the darkness surrounding their origin becomes

more impenetrable.

_That phenomena are actually witnessed, mysterious in their

nature—generally and perhaps wrongly termed spiritual—it is now idle

to deny._ Allowing a large discount for clever fraud, what remains is

quite serious enough to demand the careful scrutiny of science. “_E

pur se muove_,” the sentence spoken ages since, has passed into the

category of household words. The courage of Galileo is not now required

to fling it into the face of the Academy. Psychological phenomena are

already on the offensive.

The position assumed by modern scientists is that even though the

occurrence of certain mysterious phenomena in the presence of the {41}

mediums be a fact, there is no proof that they are not due to some

abnormal nervous condition of those individuals. The possibility that

they may be produced by returning human spirits need not be considered

until the other question is decided. Little exception can be taken to

this position. Unquestionably, the burden of proof rests upon those

who assert the agency of spirits. If the scientists would grapple

with the subject in good faith, showing an earnest desire to solve

the perplexing mystery, instead of treating it with undignified and

unprofessional contempt, they would be open to no censure. True, the

great majority of “spiritual” communications are calculated to disgust

investigators of even moderate intelligence. Even when genuine they

are trivial, commonplace, and often vulgar. During the past twenty

years we have received through various mediums messages purporting

to be from Shakspere, Byron, Franklin, Peter the Great, Napoleon and

Josephine, and even from Voltaire. The general impression made upon us

was that the French conqueror and his consort seemed to have forgotten

how to spell words correctly; Shakspere and Byron had become chronic

inebriates; and Voltaire had turned an imbecile. Who can blame men

trained to habits of exactitude, or even simply well-educated persons,

for hastily concluding that when so much palpable fraud lies upon

the surface, there could hardly be truth if they should go to the

bottom? The huckstering about of pompous names attached to idiotic

communications has given the scientific stomach such an indigestion

that it cannot assimilate even the great truth which lies on the

telegraphic plateaux of this ocean of psychological phenomena. They

judge by its surface, covered with froth and scum. But they might with

equal propriety deny that there is any clear water in the depths of

the sea when an oily scum was floating upon the surface. Therefore, if

on one hand we cannot very well blame them for stepping back at the

first sight of what seems really repulsive, we do, and have a right to

censure them for their unwillingness to explore deeper. Neither pearls

nor cut diamonds are to be found lying loose on the ground; and these

persons act as unwisely as would a professional diver, who should

reject an oyster on account of its filthy and slimy appearance, when by

opening it he might find a precious pearl inside the shell.

Even the just and severe rebukes of some of their leading men are of

no avail; and the fear on the part of men of science to investigate

such an unpopular subject, seems to have now become a general panic.

“_The phenomena chase the scientists, and the scientists run away from

the phenomena_,” very pointedly remarks M. A. N. Aksakof in an able

article on Mediumism and the St. Petersburg Scientific Committee. The {42}

attitude of this body of professors toward the subject which they had

pledged themselves to investigate was throughout simply disgraceful.

Their premature and _prearranged_ report was so evidently partial and

inconclusive as to call out a scornful protest even from unbelievers.

The inconsistency of the logic of our learned gentlemen against the

philosophy of spiritualism proper is admirably pointed out by Professor

John Fisk—one of their own body. In a recent philosophical work,

_The Unseen World_, while showing that from the very definition of

the terms, _matter_ and _spirit_, the existence of spirit cannot be

demonstrated to the senses, and that thus no theory is amenable to

_scientific tests_, he deals a severe blow at his colleagues in the

following lines:

“The testimony in such a case,” he says, “must, under the conditions

of the present life, be forever inaccessible. It lies wholly outside

the range of experience. However abundant it may be, we cannot expect

to meet it. And, accordingly, our failure to produce it does not raise

even the slightest presumption against our theory. When conceived in

this way, the belief in the future life is without scientific support,

but at the same time it is placed beyond the need of scientific

support and the range of scientific criticism. It is a belief which

no imaginable future advance of physical discovery can in any way

impugn. It is a belief which is in no sense irrational, and which may

be logically entertained without in the least affecting our scientific

habit of mind, or influencing our scientific conclusions.” “If now,”

he adds, “men of science will accept the position that spirit is

not matter, nor governed by the laws of matter, and refrain from

speculations concerning it restricted by their knowledge of material

things, they will withdraw what is to men of religion, at present,

their principal cause of irritation.”

But, they will do no such thing. They feel incensed at the brave,

loyal, and highly commendable surrender of such superior men as

Wallace, and refuse to accept even the prudent and restrictive policy

of Mr. Crookes.

_No other claim is advanced for a hearing of the opinions contained

in the present work than that they are based upon many years’ study

of both ancient magic and its modern form, Spiritualism._ The former,

even now, when phenomena of the same nature have become so familiar

to all, is commonly set down as clever jugglery. The latter, when

overwhelming evidence precludes the possibility of truthfully declaring

it charlatanry, is denominated an universal hallucination.

Many years of wandering among “heathen” and “Christian” magicians,

occultists, mesmerisers and the _tutti quanti_ of white and black

art, ought to be sufficient, we think, to give us a certain right {43}

to feel competent to take a practical view of this doubted and very

complicated question. We have associated with the fakirs, the holy

men of India, and seen them when in intercourse with the _Pitris_. We

have watched the proceedings and _modus operandi_ of the howling and

dancing dervishes; held friendly communications with the marabouts

of European and Asiatic Turkey; and the serpent-charmers of Damascus

and Benares have but few secrets that we have not had the fortune to

study. Therefore, when scientists who have never had an opportunity

of living among these oriental jugglers and can judge at the best but

superficially, tell us that there is naught in their performances but

mere tricks of prestidigitation, we cannot help feeling a profound

regret for such hasty conclusions. That such pretentious claims should

be made to a thorough analysis of the powers of nature, and at the

same time such unpardonable neglect displayed of questions of purely

physiological and psychological character, and astounding phenomena

rejected without either examination or appeal, is an exhibition of

inconsistency, strongly savoring of timidity, if not of moral obliquity.

If, therefore, we should ever receive from some contemporaneous

Faraday the same fling that that gentleman made years since, when,

with more sincerity than good breeding, he said that “many _dogs_

have the power of coming to much more logical conclusions than some

spiritualists,”[108] we fear we must still persist. Abuse is not

argument, least of all, proof. Because such men as Huxley and Tyndall

denominate spiritualism “a degrading belief” and oriental magic

“jugglery,” they cannot thereby take from truth its verity. Skepticism,

whether it proceeds from a scientific or an ignorant brain, is unable

to overturn the immortality of our souls—if such immortality is a

fact—and plunge them into _post-mortem_ annihilation. “Reason is

subject to error,” says Aristotle; so is opinion; and the personal

views of the most learned philosopher are often more liable to be

proved erroneous, than the plain common sense of his own illiterate

cook. In the _Tales of the Impious Khalif_, Barrachias-Hassan-Oglu,

the Arabian sage holds a wise discourse: “Beware, O my son, of

self-incense,” he says. “It is the most dangerous, on account of its

agreeable intoxication. Profit by thy own wisdom, but learn to respect

the wisdom of thy fathers likewise. And remember, O my beloved, that

the light of Allah’s truth will often penetrate much easier an empty

head, than one that is so crammed with learning that many a silver

ray is crowded out for want of space; ... such is the case with our

over-wise Kadi.”

These representatives of modern science in both hemispheres seem never {44}

to have exhibited more scorn, or to have felt more bitterly toward the

unsolvable mystery, than since Mr. Crookes began the investigation of

the phenomena, in London. This courageous gentleman was the first to

introduce to the public one of those alleged “materialized” sentries

that guard the forbidden gates. Following after him, several other

learned members of the scientific body had the rare integrity, combined

with a degree of courage, which, in view of the unpopularity of the

subject, may be deemed heroic, to take the phenomena in hand.

But, alas! although the spirit, indeed, was willing, the mortal flesh

proved weak. Ridicule was more than the majority of them could bear;

and so, the heaviest burden was thrown upon the shoulders of Mr.

Crookes. An account of the benefit this gentleman reaped from his

disinterested investigations, and the thanks he received from his own

brother scientists, can be found in his three pamphlets, entitled,

_Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism_.

After a while, the members appointed on the Committee of the

Dialectical society and Mr. Crookes, who had applied to his mediums

the most crucial tests, were forced by an impatient public to report

in so many plain words what they had seen. But what could they say,

except the truth? Thus, they were compelled to acknowledge: 1st. That

the phenomena which _they_, at least, had witnessed, were genuine,

and impossible to simulate; thus showing that manifestations produced

by some unknown force, could and did happen. 2d. That, whether the

phenomena were produced by disembodied spirits or other analogous

entities, they could not tell; but that manifestations, thoroughly

upsetting many preconceived theories as to natural laws, did happen

and were undeniable. Several of these occurred in their own families.

3d. That, notwithstanding all their combined efforts to the contrary,

beyond the indisputable fact of the reality of the phenomena, “glimpses

of natural action not yet reduced to law,”[109] they, to borrow the

expression of the Count de Gabalis, “could make neither head nor tail

on’t.”

Now this was precisely what a skeptical public had not bargained for.

The discomfiture of the believers in spiritualism had been impatiently

anticipated before the conclusions of Messrs. Crookes, Varley, and

the Dialectical Society were announced. Such a confession on the part

of their brother-scientists was too humiliating for the pride of even

those who had timorously abstained from investigation. It was regarded

as really too much, that such vulgar and repulsive manifestations of {45}

phenomena which had always, by common consent of educated people, been

regarded as nursery tales, fit only to amuse hysterical servant-girls

and afford revenue to professional somnambulists—that manifestations

which had been consigned by the Academy and Institute of Paris to

oblivion, should so impertinently elude detection at the hands of

experts in physical sciences.

A tornado of indignation followed the confession. Mr. Crookes depicts

it in his pamphlet on _Psychic Force_. He heads it very pointedly

with the quotation from Galvani: “I am attacked by two very opposite

sects—the scientists and the _know-nothings_, yet I know that I have

discovered one of the greatest forces in nature....” He then proceeds:

“It was taken for granted that the results of my experiments would

be in accordance with their preconceptions. What they really desired

was not _the truth_, but an additional witness in favor of their

own foregone conclusions. When they found the facts which that

investigation established could not be made to fit those opinions, why,

... so much the worse for the facts. They try to creep out of their

own confident recommendations of the inquiry, by declaring ‘that Mr.

Home is a clever conjurer who has duped us all.’ ‘Mr. Crookes might,

with equal propriety, examine the performances of an Indian juggler.’

‘Mr. Crookes must get better witnesses before he can be believed.’

‘The thing is too absurd to be treated seriously.’ ‘It is impossible,

and therefore can’t be.’ ... (I never said it was impossible, I only

said it was true.) ‘The observers have all been biologized, and fancy

they saw things occur which really _never_ took place,’ etc., etc.,

etc.”[110]

After expending their energy on such puerile theories as “unconscious

cerebration,” “involuntary muscular contraction,” and the sublimely

ridiculous one of the “cracking knee-joints” (_le muscle craqueur_);

after meeting ignominious failures by the obstinate survival of the

new force, and finally, after every desperate effort to compass its

obliteration, these _filii diffidentiæ_—as St. Paul calls their

class—thought best to give up the whole thing in disgust. Sacrificing

their courageously persevering brethren as a holocaust on the altar

of public opinion, they withdrew in dignified silence. Leaving the

arena of investigation to more fearless champions, these unlucky

experimenters are not likely to ever enter it again.[111] It is

easier by far to deny the reality of such manifestations from a

secure distance, than find for them a proper place among the classes {46}

of natural phenomena accepted by exact science. And how can they,

since all such phenomena pertain to psychology, and the latter, with

its occult and mysterious powers, is a _terra incognita_ for modern

science. Thus, powerless to explain that which proceeds directly from

the nature of the human soul itself—the existence of which most of them

deny—unwilling at the same time to confess their ignorance, scientists

retaliate very unjustly on those who believe in the evidence of their

senses without any pretence to science.

“A kick from thee, O Jupiter! is sweet,” says the poet Tretiakowsky,

in an old Russian tragedy. Rude as those Jupiters of science may be

occasionally toward us credulous mortals, their vast learning—in less

abstruse questions, we mean—if not their manners, entitles them to

public respect. But unfortunately it is not the gods who shout the

loudest.

The eloquent Tertullian, speaking of Satan and his imps, whom he

accuses of ever mimicking the Creator’s works, denominates them the

“monkeys of God.” It is fortunate for the philosophicules that we have

no modern Tertullian to consign them to an immortality of contempt as

the “monkeys of science.”

But to return to genuine scientists. “Phenomena of a merely

objective character,” says A. N. Aksakof, “force themselves upon the

representatives of exact sciences for investigation and explanation;

but the high-priests of science, in the face of apparently such a

simple question ... are totally disconcerted! This subject seems to

have the privilege of forcing them to betray, not only the highest code

of morality—truth, but also the supreme law of science—_experiment_!...

They feel that there is something too serious underlying it. The cases

of Hare, Crookes, de Morgan, Varley, Wallace, and Butleroff create a

panic! They fear that as soon as they concede one step, they will have

to yield the whole ground. Time-honored principles, the contemplative

speculations of a whole life, of a long line of generations, are all

staked on a single card!“[112]

In the face of such experience as that of Crookes and the Dialectical

Society, of Wallace and the late Professor Hare, what can we

expect from our luminaries of erudition? Their attitude toward

the undeniable phenomena is in itself another phenomenon. It is

simply incomprehensible, unless we admit the possibility of another

psychological disease, as mysterious and contagious as hydrophobia.

Although we claim no honor for this new discovery, we nevertheless

propose to recognize it under the name of _scientific psychophobia_.

They ought to have learned by this time, in the school of bitter {47}

experience, that they can rely on the self-sufficiency of the positive

sciences only to a certain point; and that, so long as there remains

one single unexplained mystery in nature, the word ”_impossible_” is a

dangerous word for them to pronounce.

In the _Researches on the Phenomena of Spiritualism_, Mr. Crookes

submits to the option of the reader eight theories “to account for the

phenomena observed.”

These theories run as follows:

“_First Theory._—The phenomena are all the result of tricks, clever

mechanical arrangements, or legerdemain; the mediums are impostors, and

the rest of the company fools.

“_Second Theory._—The persons at a seance are the victims of a sort of

mania, or delusion, and imagine phenomena to occur which have no real

objective existence.

“_Third Theory._—The whole is the result of conscious or unconscious

cerebral action.

“_Fourth Theory._—The result of the spirit of the medium, perhaps in

association with the spirits of some or all of the people present.

“_Fifth Theory._—The actions of evil spirits, or devils, personifying

whom or what they please, in order to undermine Christianity, and ruin

men’s souls. (Theory of our theologians.)

“_Sixth Theory._—The actions of a separate order of beings living

on this earth, but invisible and immaterial to us. Able, however,

occasionally to manifest their presence, known in almost all countries

and ages as demons (not necessarily bad), gnomes, fairies, kobolds,

elves, goblins, Puck, etc. (One of the claims of the kabalists.)

“_Seventh Theory._—The actions of departed human beings. (The spiritual

theory par excellence.)

“_Eighth Theory._—(The psychic force) ... an adjunct to the fourth,

fifth, sixth, and seventh theories.“

The first of these theories having been proved valid only in

exceptional, though unfortunately still too frequent cases, must be

ruled out as having no material bearing upon the phenomena themselves.

Theories the _second_ and the _third_ are the last crumbling

entrenchments of the guerilla of skeptics and materialists, and remain,

as lawyers say, ”_Adhuc sub judice lis est_.” Thus, we can deal in this

work but with the four remaining ones, the last, eighth, theory being

according to Mr. Crookes’s opinion, but “a necessary adjunct” of the

others.

How subject even a scientific opinion is to error, we may see, if we

only compare the several articles on spiritual phenomena from the able {48}

pen of that gentleman, which appeared from 1870 to 1875. In one of the

first we read: ... “the increased employment of scientific methods will

promote exact observations and greater love of truths among inquirers,

and will produce a race of observers _who will drive the worthless

residuum of spiritualism hence into the unknown limbo of magic and

necromancy_.” And in 1875, we read, over his own signature, minute

and most interesting descriptions of the materialized spirit—Katie

King![113]

It is hardly possible to suppose that Mr. Crookes could be under

electro-biological influence or hallucination for two or three

consecutive years. The “spirit” appeared in his own house, in his

library, under the most crucial tests, and was seen, felt, and heard by

hundreds of persons.

But Mr. Crookes denies that he ever took Katie King for a disembodied

spirit. What was it then? If it was not Miss Florence Cook, and his

word is our sufficient guarantee for it—then it was either the spirit

of one who had lived on earth, or one of those that come directly under

the sixth theory of the eight the eminent scientist offers to the

public choice. It must have been one of the classes named: “Fairies,

Kobolds, Gnomes, Elves, Goblins, or a Puck.”[114]

Yes; Katie King must have been a fairy—a Titania. For to a fairy only

could be applied with propriety the following poetic effusion which Mr.

Crookes quotes in describing this wonderful spirit:

“Round her she made an atmosphere of life;

The very air seemed lighter from her eyes;

They were so soft and beautiful and rife

With all we can imagine of the skies;

Her overpowering presence makes you feel

It would _not be idolatry to kneel_!”[115]

And thus, after having written, in 1870, his severe sentence against

spiritualism and magic; after saying that even at that moment he

believed “the whole affair a superstition, or, at least, an unexplained

trick—a delusion of the senses;”[116] Mr. Crookes, in 1875, closes

his letter with the following memorable words:—“To imagine, I say,

the Katie King of the last three years to be the result of imposture

does more violence to one’s reason and common sense than to believe

her to be what she herself affirms.”[117] This last remark, moreover, {49}

conclusively proves that: 1. Notwithstanding Mr. Crookes’s full

convictions that the somebody calling herself Katie King was neither

the medium nor some confederate, but on the contrary an unknown

force in nature, which—like love—“laughs at locksmiths;” 2. That

that hitherto unrecognized form of Force, albeit it had become with

him “not a matter of opinion, but of absolute knowledge,“the eminent

investigator still did not abandon to the last his skeptical attitude

toward the question. In short, he firmly believes in the phenomenon,

but cannot accept the idea of its being the human spirit of a departed

_somebody_.

It seems to us, that, as far as _public prejudice goes_, Mr. Crookes

solves one mystery by creating a still deeper one: the _obscurum per

obscurius_. In other words, rejecting “_the worthless residuum of

spiritualism_,” the courageous scientist fearlessly plunges into his

own “_unknown limbo of magic_ and _necromancy_!”

The recognized laws of physical science account for but a few of the

more objective of the so-called spiritual phenomena. While proving the

reality of certain visible effects of an unknown force, they have not

thus far enabled scientists to control at will even this portion of the

phenomena. The truth is that the professors have not yet discovered the

necessary conditions of their occurrence. They must go as deeply into

the study of the triple nature of man—physiological, psychological,

and _divine_—as did their predecessors, the magicians, theurgists,

and thaumaturgists of old. Until the present moment, even those who

have investigated the phenomena as thoroughly and impartially as Mr.

Crookes, have set aside the cause as something not to be discovered

now, if ever. They have troubled themselves no more about that than

about the first cause of the cosmic phenomena of the correlation of

forces, whose endless effects they are at such pains to observe and

classify. Their course has been as unwise as that of a man who should

attempt to discover the sources of a river by exploring toward its

mouth. It has so narrowed their views of the possibilities of natural

law that very simple forms of occult phenomena have necessitated

their denial that they can occur unless miracles were possible; and

this being a scientific absurdity the result has been that physical

science has latterly been losing prestige. If scientists had studied

the so-called “miracles” instead of denying them, many secret laws of

nature comprehended by the ancients would have been again discovered.

“Conviction,” says Bacon, “comes not through arguments but through

experiments.”

The ancients were always distinguished—especially the Chaldean

astrologers and Magians—for their ardent love and pursuit of knowledge

in every branch of science. They tried to penetrate the secrets of {50}

nature in the same way as our modern naturalists, and by the only

method by which this object can be obtained, namely: by experimental

researches and reason. If our modern philosophers cannot apprehend the

fact that they penetrated deeper than themselves into the mysteries of

the universe, this does not constitute a valid reason why the credit

of possessing this knowledge should be denied them or the imputation

of superstition laid at their door. Nothing warrants the charge; and

every new archæological discovery militates against the assumption.

As chemists they were unequalled, and in his famous lecture on _The

Lost Arts_, Wendell Phillips says: “The chemistry of the most ancient

period had reached a point which _we have never even approached_.” The

secret of the malleable glass, which, “if supported by one end by its

own weight, in twenty hours dwindles down to a fine line that you can

curve around your wrist,” would be as difficult to rediscover in our

civilized countries as to fly to the moon.

The fabrication of a cup of glass which was brought by an exile to

Rome in the reign of Tiberius,—a cup “which he dashed upon the marble

pavement, and it was not crushed nor broken by the fall,” and which, as

it got “dented some” was easily brought into shape again with a hammer,

is a historic fact. If it is doubted now it is merely because the

moderns cannot do the same. And yet, in Samarkand and some monasteries

of Thibet such cups and glassware may be found to this day; nay,

there are persons who claim that they can make the same by virtue of

their knowledge of the much-ridiculed and ever-doubted _alkahest_—the

universal solvent. This agent that Paracelsus and Van Helmont maintain

to be a certain fluid in nature, “capable of reducing all sublunary

bodies, as well homogeneous as mixed, into their _ens primum_, or

the original matter of which they are composed; or into an uniform,

equable, and potable liquor, that will unite with water, and the

juices of all bodies, and yet retain its own radical virtues; and, if

again mixed with itself will thereby be converted into pure elementary

water: “what impossibilities prevent our crediting the statement? Why

should it not exist and why the idea be considered Utopian? Is it

again because our modern chemists are unable to produce it? But surely

it may be conceived without any great effort of imagination that all

bodies must have originally come from some first matter, and that this

matter, according to the lessons of astronomy, geology and physics,

must have been a fluid. Why should not gold—of whose genesis our

scientists know so little—have been originally a primitive or _basic

matter of gold_, a ponderous fluid which, as says Van Helmont, “from

its own nature or a strong cohesion between its particles, acquired {51}

afterward a solid form?” There seems to be very little absurdity to

believe in a “universal _ens_ that resolves all bodies into their _ens

genitale_.” Van Helmont calls it “the highest and most successful of

all salts; which having obtained the supreme degree of simplicity,

purity, subtilty, enjoys alone the faculty of remaining unchanged

and unimpaired by the subjects it works upon, and of dissolving the

most stubborn and untractable bodies; as stones, gems, glass, earth,

sulphur, metals, etc., into red salt, equal in weight to the matter

dissolved; and this with as much ease as hot water melts down snow.”

It is into this fluid that the makers of malleable glass claimed,

and now claim, that they immersed common glass for several hours, to

acquire the property of malleability.

We have a ready and palpable proof of such possibilities. A foreign

correspondent of the Theosophical Society, a well-known medical

practitioner, and one who has studied the occult sciences for upward

of thirty years, has succeeded in obtaining what he terms the “true

oil of gold,” _i.e._, the primal element. Chemists and physicists have

seen and examined it, and were driven to confess that they neither knew

_how_ it was obtained nor could they do the same. That he desires his

name to remain unknown is not to be wondered at; ridicule and public

prejudice are more dangerous sometimes than the inquisition of old.

This “Adamic earth” is next-door neighbor to the alkahest, and one of

the most important secrets of the alchemists. No Kabalist will reveal

it to the world, for, as he expresses it in the well-known jargon:

“it would explain _the eagles_ of the alchemists, and how the eagles’

wings are clipped,” a secret that it took Thomas Vaughan (Eugenius

Philalethes) twenty years to learn.

As the dawn of physical science broke into a glaring daylight, the

spiritual sciences merged deeper and deeper into night, and in their

turn they were denied. So, now, these greatest masters in psychology

are looked upon as “ignorant and superstitious ancestors;” as

mountebanks and jugglers, because, forsooth, the sun of modern learning

shines to-day so bright, it has become an axiom that the philosophers

and men of science of the olden time knew nothing, and lived in a night

of superstition. But their traducers forget that the sun of to-day will

seem dark by comparison with the luminary of to-morrow, whether justly

or not; and as the men of our century think their ancestors ignorant,

so will perhaps their descendants count them for _know-nothings_. The

world moves in cycles. The coming races will be but the reproductions

of races long bygone; as we, perhaps, are the images of those who

lived a hundred centuries ago. The time will come when those who {52}

now in public slander the hermetists, but ponder in secret their

dust-covered volumes; who plagiarize their ideas, assimilate and give

them out as their own—will receive their dues. “Who,” honestly exclaims

Pfaff—“what man has ever taken more comprehensive views of nature than

Paracelsus? He was the bold creator of chemical medicines; the founder

of courageous parties; victorious in controversy, belonging to those

spirits who have created amongst us a new mode of thinking on the

natural existence of things. What he scattered through his writings on

the philosopher’s stone, on pigmies and spirits of the mines; on signs,

on homunculi, and the elixir of life, and which are employed by many to

lower his estimation, cannot extinguish our grateful remembrance of his

general works, nor our admiration of his free, bold exertions, and his

noble, intellectual life.”[118]

More than one pathologist, chemist, homoeopathist, and magnetist has

quenched his thirst for knowledge in the books of Paracelsus. Frederick

Hufeland got his theoretical doctrines on infection from this mediæval

“quack,” as Sprengel delights in calling one who was immeasurably

higher than himself. Hemman, who endeavors to vindicate this great

philosopher, and nobly tries to redress his slandered memory, speaks

of him as the “_greatest_ chemist of his time.”[119] So do Professor

Molitor,[120] and Dr. Ennemoser, the eminent German psychologist.[121]

According to their criticisms on the labors of this Hermetist,

Paracelsus is the most “wondrous intellect of his age,” a “noble

genius.” But our modern lights assume to know better, and the ideas

of the Rosicrucians about the elementary spirits, the goblins and the

elves, have sunk into the “limbo of magic” and fairy tales for early

childhood.[122]

We are quite ready to concede to skeptics that one-half, and even

more, of seeming phenomena, are but more or less clever fraud. Recent

exposures, especially of “materializing” mediums, but too well prove

the fact. Unquestionably numerous others are still in store, and this {53}

will continue until tests have become so perfect and spiritualists so

reasonable as no longer to furnish opportunity to mediums or weapons to

adversaries.

What should sensible spiritualists think of the character of _angel_

guides, who after monopolizing, perhaps for years, a poor medium’s

time, health and means, suddenly abandon him when he most needs

their help? None but creatures _without soul or conscience_ would be

guilty of such injustice. Conditions?—Mere sophistry. What sort of

spirits must they be who would not summon if necessary an army of

spirit-friends (if such there be) to snatch the innocent medium from

the pit dug for his feet? Such things happened in the olden time, such

may happen now. _There were apparitions before modern spiritualism, and

phenomena like ours in every previous age._ If modern manifestations

are a reality and palpable facts, so must have been the so-called

“miracles” and thaumaturgic exploits of old; or if the latter are but

fictions of superstition so must be the former, for they rest on no

better testimony.

But, in this daily-increasing torrent of occult phenomena that rushes

from one end of the globe to the other, though two-thirds of the

manifestations are proved spurious, what of those which are proved

genuine beyond doubt or cavil? Among these may be found communications

coming through non-professional as well as professional mediums, which

are sublime and divinely grand. Often, through young children, and

simple-minded ignorant persons, we receive philosophical teachings and

precepts, poetry and inspirational orations, music and paintings that

are fully worthy of the reputations of their alleged authors. Their

prophecies are often verified and their moral disquisitions beneficent,

though the latter is of rarer occurrence. Who are those spirits, what

those powers or intelligences which are evidently _outside_ of the

medium proper and entities _per se_? These _intelligences_ deserve the

appellation; and they differ as widely from the generality of spooks

and goblins that hover around the cabinets for physical manifestations,

as day from night.

We must confess that the situation appears to be very grave. The

control of mediums by such unprincipled and lying “spirits” is

constantly becoming more and more general; and the pernicious effects

of _seeming_ diabolism constantly multiply. Some of the best mediums

are abandoning the public rostrum and retiring from this influence;

and the movement is drifting churchward. We venture the prediction

that unless spiritualists set about the study, of ancient philosophy

so as to learn to discriminate between spirits and to guard themselves

against the baser sort, twenty-five years more will not elapse

before they will have to fly to the Romish communion to escape these

“guides” and “controls” that they have fondled so long. The signs of

this catastrophe already exhibit themselves. At a recent convention {54}

at Philadelphia, it was seriously proposed to organize a sect of

_Christian_ Spiritualists! This is because, having withdrawn from

the church and learned nothing of the philosophy of the phenomena,

or the nature of their spirits, they are drifting about on a sea of

uncertainty like a ship without compass or rudder. They cannot escape

the dilemma; they must choose between Porphyry and Pio Nono.

While men of genuine science, such as Wallace, Crookes, Wagner,

Butlerof, Varley, Buchanan, Hare, Reichenbach, Thury, Perty, de Morgan,

Hoffmann, Goldschmidt, W. Gregory, Flammarion, Sergeant Cox and many

others, firmly believe in the current phenomena, many of the above

named reject the theory of departed spirits. Therefore, it seems but

logical to think that if the London “Katie King,” the only materialized

_something_ which the public is obliged more or less to credit out

of respect to science,—is not the spirit of an ex-mortal, then it

must be the astral solidified shadow of either one of the Rosicrucian

spooks—“fantasies of superstition” or of some as yet unexplained force

in nature. Be it however a “spirit of health or goblin damn’d” it is

of little consequence; for if it be once proved that its organism is

not solid matter, then it must be and is a “spirit,” an apparition,

a _breath_. It is an intelligence which acts outside our organisms

and therefore must belong to some existing even though unseen race

of beings. But what is it? What is this something which thinks and

even speaks but yet is not human; that is impalpable and yet not

a disembodied spirit; that simulates affection, passion, remorse,

fear, joy, but yet feels neither? What is this canting creature which

rejoices in cheating the truthful inquirer and mocking at sacred human

feeling? For, if not Mr. Crookes’s Katie King, other similar creatures

have done all these. Who can fathom the mystery? The true psychologist

alone. And where should he go for his text-books but to the neglected

alcoves of libraries where the works of despised hermetists and

theurgists have been gathering dust these many years.

Says Henry More, the revered English Platonist, in his answer to an

attack on the believers of spiritual and magic phenomena by a skeptic

of that age, named Webster:[123] “As for that other opinion, that the {55}

greater part of the reformed divines hold, that it was the Devil that

appeared in Samuel’s shape, it is beneath contempt; for though I do

not doubt but that in many of these necromantic apparitions, they are

_ludicrous spirits, not the souls of the deceased that appear_, yet I

am clear for the appearing of the soul of Samuel, and as clear that

in other necromancies, it may be such kinds of spirits, as Porphyrius

above describes, ‘that change themselves into omnifarious forms and

shapes, and one while act the parts of dæmons, another while of angels

or gods, and another while _of the souls of the departed_.’ And I

confess such a spirit as this might _personate_ Samuel here, for

anything Webster alleged to the contrary, for his arguments indeed are

wonderfully weak and wooden.”

When such a metaphysician and philosopher as Henry More gives such

testimony as this, we may well assume our point to have been well

taken. Learned investigators, all very skeptical as to spirits in

general and “departed human spirits” in particular, during the last

twenty years have taxed their brains to invent new names for an old

thing. Thus, with Mr. Crookes and Sergeant Cox, it is the “psychic

force.” Professor Thury of Geneva calls it the “psychode” or _ectenic_

force; Professor Balfour Stewart, the “electro-biological power;”

Faraday, the “great master of experimental philosophy in physics,”

but apparently a novice in psychology, superciliously termed it an

“unconscious muscular action,” an “unconscious cerebration,” and what

not? Sir William Hamilton, a “latent thought;” Dr. Carpenter, “the

ideo-motor principle,” etc., etc. So many scientists—so many names.

Years ago the old German philosopher, Schopenhauer, disposed of this

force and matter at the same time; and since the conversion of Mr.

Wallace, the great anthropologist has evidently adopted his ideas.

Schopenhauer’s doctrine is that the universe is but the manifestation

of the will. Every force in nature is also an effect of will,

representing a higher or lower degree of its objectiveness. It is the

teaching of Plato, who stated distinctly that everything visible was

created or evolved out of the invisible and eternal WILL, and after

its fashion. Our Heaven—he says—was produced according to the eternal

pattern of the “Ideal World,” contained, as everything else, in the

dodecahedron, the geometrical model used by the Deity.[124] With Plato,

the Primal Being is an emanation of the Demiurgic Mind (_Nous_), which

contains from the eternity the “_idea_” of the “to be created world”

within itself, and which idea he produces out of himself.[125] The laws

of nature are the established relations of this _idea_ to the forms {56}

of its manifestations; “these forms,” says Schopenhauer, “are time,

space, and causality. Through time and space the idea varies in its

numberless manifestations.”

These ideas are far from being new, and even with Plato they were not

original. This is what we read in the _Chaldean Oracles_:[126] “The

works of nature co-exist with the intellectual [νοέρῳ], spiritual Light

of the Father. For it is the soul [ψυχη] which adorned the great

heaven, and which adorns it after the Father.”

“The incorporeal world then was already completed, having its seat in

the Divine Reason,” says Philo,[127] who is erroneously accused of

deriving his philosophy from Plato’s.

In the _Theogony_ of Mochus, we find Æther first, and then the air;

the two principles from which Ulom, the _intelligible_ [νοήτος] God (the

visible universe of matter) is born.[128]

In the Orphic hymns, the Eros-Phanes evolves from the Spiritual Egg,

which the Æthereal winds impregnate, Wind[129] being “the spirit of

God,” who is said to move in Æther, “brooding over the Chaos” the Divine

“Idea.” In the Hindu _Katakopanisâd_, Purusha, the Divine Spirit,

already stands before the original matter, from whose union springs the

great Soul of the World, “Maha=Atma, Brahm, the Spirit of Life;”[130]

these latter appellations are identical with the Universal Soul, or

_Anima Mundi_, and the Astral Light of the theurgists and kabalists.

Pythagoras brought his doctrines from the eastern sanctuaries, and

Plato compiled them into a form more intelligible than the mysterious

numerals of the sage—whose doctrines he had fully embraced—to the

uninitiated mind. Thus, the _Cosmos_ is “the Son” with Plato, having

for his father and mother the Divine Thought and Matter.[131]

“The Egyptians,” says Dunlap,[132] “distinguish between an older and

younger Horus, the former the _brother_ of Osiris, the latter the _son_

of Osiris and Isis.” The first is the _Idea_ of the world remaining

in the Demiurgic Mind, “born in darkness before the creation of the

world.” The second Horus is this “Idea” going forth from the _Logos_,

becoming clothed with matter, and assuming an actual existence.[133]

“The mundane God, eternal, boundless, young and old, of winding

form,”[134] say the _Chaldean oracles_.

This “winding form” is a figure to express the vibratory motion of

the Astral Light, with which the ancient priests were perfectly well {57}

acquainted, though they may have differed in views of ether, with

modern scientists; for in the Æther they placed the Eternal Idea

pervading the Universe, or the _Will_ which becomes _Force_, and

creates or organizes _matter_.

“The will,” says Van Helmont, “is the first of all powers. For through

the will of the Creator all things were made and put in motion....

The will is the property of all spiritual beings, and displays itself

in them the more actively the more they are freed from matter.” And

Paracelsus, “the divine,” as he was called, adds in the same strain:

“_Faith_ must confirm the imagination, for faith establishes the

_will_.... Determined will is a beginning of all magical operations....

Because men do not perfectly imagine and believe the result, is that

the arts are uncertain, while they might be perfectly certain.”

The opposing power alone of unbelief and skepticism, if projected in a

current of equal force, can check the other, and sometimes completely

neutralize it. Why should spiritualists wonder that the presence of

some strong skeptics, or of those who, feeling bitterly opposed to the

phenomenon, unconsciously exercise their will-power in opposition,

hinders and often stops altogether the manifestations? If there is no

_conscious_ power on earth but sometimes finds another to interfere

with or even counterbalance it, why wonder when the _unconscious_,

passive power of a medium is suddenly paralyzed in its effects by

another opposing one, though it also be as unconsciously exercised?

Professors Faraday and Tyndall boasted that their presence at a circle

would stop at once every manifestation. This fact alone ought to have

proved to the eminent scientists that there was some force in these

phenomena worthy to arrest their attention. As a scientist, Prof.

Tyndall was perhaps pre-eminent in the circle of those who were present

at the seance; as a shrewd observer, one not easily deceived by a

tricking medium, he was perhaps no better, if as clever, as others in

the room, and if the manifestations were but a fraud so ingenious as to

deceive the others, they would not have stopped, even on _his_ account.

What medium can ever boast of such phenomena as were produced by Jesus,

and the apostle Paul after him? Yet even Jesus met with cases where the

unconscious force of resistance overpowered even his so well directed

current of will. “And he did not many mighty works there, because of

their unbelief.”

There is a reflection of every one of these views in Schopenhauer’s

philosophy. Our “investigating” scientists might consult his works

with profit. They will find therein many a strange hypothesis founded

on old ideas, speculations on the “new” phenomena, which may prove

as reasonable as any, and be saved the useless trouble of inventing {58}

new theories. The psychic and ectenic forces, the “ideo-motor” and

“electro-biological powers;” “latent thought” and even “unconscious

cerebration” theories, can be condensed in two words: the kabalistic

ASTRAL LIGHT.

The bold theories and opinions expressed in Schopenhauer’s works

differ widely with those of the majority of our orthodox scientists.

“In reality,” remarks this daring speculator, “there is neither

_matter_ nor _spirit_. The tendency to gravitation in a stone is as

unexplainable as thought in human brain.... If matter can—no one knows

why—fall to the ground, then it can also—no one knows why—think.... As

soon, even in mechanics, as we trespass beyond the purely mathematical,

as soon as we reach the inscrutable, adhesion, gravitation, and so on,

we are faced by phenomena which are to our senses as mysterious as the

WILL and THOUGHT in man—we find ourselves facing the incomprehensible,

for such is every force in nature. Where is then that _matter_ which

you all pretend to know so well; and from which—being so familiar with

it—you draw all your conclusions and explanations, and attribute to

it all things?... That, which can be fully realized by our reason and

senses, is but the superficial: they can never reach the true inner

substance of things. Such was the opinion of Kant. If you consider that

there is in a human head some sort of a _spirit_, then you are obliged

to concede the same to a stone. If your dead and utterly passive matter

can manifest a tendency toward gravitation, or, like electricity,

attract and repel, and send out sparks—then, as well as the brain, it

can also think. In short, every particle of the so-called spirit, we

can replace with an equivalent of matter, and every particle of matter

replace with spirit.... Thus, it is not the Cartesian division of all

things into matter and spirit that can ever be found philosophically

exact; but only if we divide them into _will_ and _manifestation_,

which form of division has naught to do with the former, for it

spiritualizes every thing: all that, which is in the first instance

real and objective—body and matter—it transforms into a representation,

and every manifestation into will.”[135]

These views corroborate what we have expressed about the various names

given to the same thing. The disputants are battling about mere words.

Call the phenomena force, energy, electricity or magnetism, will, or

spirit-power, it will ever be the partial manifestation of the _soul_,

whether disembodied or imprisoned for a while in its body—of a portion

of that intelligent, omnipotent, and individual WILL, pervading all

nature, and known, through the insufficiency of human language to

express correctly psychological images, as—GOD.

The ideas of some of our schoolmen about matter are, from the {59}

kabalistic standing-point, in many a way erroneous. Hartmann calls

their views “an _instinctual_ prejudice.” Furthermore, he demonstrates

that no experimenter can have anything to do with matter properly

termed, but only with the forces into which he divides it. The visible

effects of matter are but the effects of force. He concludes thereby,

that that which is now called matter is nothing but the aggregation of

atomic forces, to express which the word _matter_ is used: outside of

that, for science matter is but a word void of sense. Notwithstanding

many an honest confession on the part of our specialists—physicists,

physiologists and chemists—that they know nothing whatever of

matter,[136] _they deify it_. Every new phenomenon which they find

themselves unable to explain, is triturated, compounded into incense,

and burned on the altar of the goddess who patronizes modern scientists.

No one can better treat his subject than does Schopenhauer in his

_Parerga_. In this work he discusses at length animal magnetism,

clairvoyance, sympathetic cures, seership, magic, omens, ghost-seeing,

and other spiritual matters. “All these manifestations,” he says, “are

branches of one and the same tree, and furnish us with irrefutable

proofs of the existence of a chain of beings which is based on

quite a different order of things than that nature which has at its

foundation laws of space, time and adaptability. This other order of

things is far deeper, for it is the original and the direct one; in

its presence the common laws of nature, which are simply formal, are

unavailing; therefore, under its immediate action neither time nor

space can separate any longer the individuals, and the separation

impendent on these forms presents no more insurmountable barriers for

the intercourse of thoughts and the immediate action of the will. In

this manner changes may be wrought by quite a different course than

the course of physical causality, _i.e._, through an action of the

manifestation of the will exhibited in a peculiar way and outside

the individual himself. Therefore the peculiar character of all the

aforesaid manifestations is the _visioin distante et actio in distante_

(vision and action at a distance) in its relation to time as well as

in its relation to space. Such an action at a distance is just what

constitutes the fundamental character of what is called _magical_; for

such is the immediate action of our will, an action liberated from the

causal conditions of physical action, viz., contact.”

“Besides that,” continues Schopenhauer, “these manifestations present

to us a substantial and perfectly logical contradiction to materialism,

and even to naturalism, because in the light of such manifestations, {60}

that order of things in nature which both these philosophies seek to

present as absolute and the only genuine, appears before us on the

contrary purely phenomenal and superficial, and containing at the

bottom of it a substance of things _à parte_ and perfectly independent

of its own laws. That is why these manifestations—at least from a

purely philosophical point of view—among all the facts which are

presented to us in the domain of experiment, are beyond any comparison

the most important. Therefore, it is the duty of every scientist to

acquaint himself with them.”[137]

To pass from the philosophical speculations of a man like Schopenhauer

to the superficial generalizations of some of the French Academicians,

would be profitless but for the fact that it enables us to estimate

the intellectual grasp of the two schools of learning. What the German

makes of profound psychological questions, we have seen. Compare with

it the best that the astronomer Babinet and the chemist Boussingault

can offer by way of explaining an important spiritualistic phenomenon.

In 1854-5 these distinguished specialists presented to the Academy

a _memoire_, or monograph, whose evident object was to corroborate

and at the same time make clearer Dr. Chevreuil’s too complicated

theory in explanation of the turning-tables, of the commission for the

investigation of which he was a member.

Here it is _verbatim_: “As to the movements and oscillations _alleged_

to happen with certain tables, they can have no cause other than the

_invisible_ and involuntary vibrations of the experimenter’s muscular

system; the extended contraction of the muscles manifesting itself

at such time by a series of vibrations, and becoming thus a _visible

tremor_ which communicates to the object a circumrotary motion. This

rotation is thus enabled to manifest itself with a considerable

energy, by a gradually quickening motion, or by a strong resistance,

whenever it is required to stop. Hence the physical explanation

of the phenomenon becomes clear and does not offer the slightest

difficulty.”[138]

None whatever. This scientific hypothesis—or demonstration shall we

say?—is as clear as one of M. Babinet’s nebulæ examined on a foggy

night.

And still, clear as it may be, it lacks an important feature, _i.e._,

common sense. We are at a loss to decide whether or not Babinet accepts

_en desespoir de cause_ Hartmann’s proposition that “the visible

_effects of matter_ are nothing but the _effects of a force_,” and,

that in order to form a clear conception of matter, one must first form

one of force. The philosophy to the school of which belongs Hartmann, {61}

and which is partly accepted by several of the greatest German

scientists, teaches that the problem of matter can only be solved by

that invisible Force, acquaintance with which Schopenhauer terms the

“magical knowledge,” and “magical effect or action of Will.” Thus,

we must first ascertain whether the “involuntary vibrations of the

experimenter’s muscular system,” which are but “actions of matter,” are

influenced by a will _within_ the experimenter or _without_. In the

former case Babinet makes of him an unconscious epileptic; the latter,

as we will further see, he rejects altogether, and attributes all

intelligent answers of the tipping or rapping tables to “unconscious

ventriloquism.”

We know that every exertion of will results in _force_, and that,

according to the above-named German school, the manifestations

of atomic forces are individual actions of will, resulting in

the unconscious rushing of atoms into the concrete image already

subjectively created by the will. Democritus taught, after his

instructor Leucippus, that the first principles of all things contained

in the universe were atoms and a _vacuum_. In its kabalistic sense, the

_vacuum_ means in this instance the _latent_ Deity, or latent force,

which at its first manifestation became WILL, and thus communicated

the first impulse to these atoms—whose agglomeration, is matter. This

vacuum was but another name for chaos, and an unsatisfactory one, for,

according to the Peripatetics “nature abhors a vacuum.”

That before Democritus the ancients were familiar with the idea of

the indestructibility of matter is proved by their allegories and

numerous other facts. Movers gives a definition of the Phœnician idea

of the ideal sunlight as a spiritual influence issuing from the highest

God, IAO, “the light conceivable only by intellect—the physical and

spiritual Principle of all things; out of which the soul emanates.” It

was the male Essence, or Wisdom, while the primitive matter or _Chaos_

was the female. Thus the two first principles—co-eternal and infinite,

were already with the primitive Phœnicians, spirit and matter.

Therefore the theory is as old as the world; for Democritus was not the

first philosopher who taught it; and intuition existed in man before

the ultimate development of his reason. But it is in the denial of the

boundless and endless Entity, possessor of that invisible Will which

we for lack of a better term call GOD, that lies the powerlessness

of every materialistic science to explain the occult phenomena. It

is in the rejection _a priori_ of everything which might force them

to cross the boundary of exact science and step into the domain of

psychological, or, if we prefer, metaphysical physiology, that we find

the secret cause of their discomfiture by the manifestations, and their

absurd theories to account for them. The ancient philosophy affirmed

that it is in consequence of the manifestation of that Will—termed by

Plato _the Divine Idea_—that everything visible and invisible sprung {62}

into existence. As that Intelligent Idea, which, by directing its

sole will-power toward a centre of localized forces called objective

forms into being, so can man, the microcosm of the great Macrocosm,

do the same in proportion with the development of his will-power.

The imaginary atoms—a figure of speech employed by Democritus, and

gratefully seized upon by the materialists—are like automatic workmen

moved inwardly by the influx of that Universal Will directed upon

them, and which, manifesting itself as force, sets them into activity.

The plan of the structure to be erected is in the brain of the

Architect, and reflects his will; abstract as yet, from the instant of

the conception it becomes concrete through these atoms which follow

faithfully every line, point and figure traced in the imagination of

the Divine Geometer.

As God creates, so man can create. Given a certain intensity of will,

and the shapes created by the mind become subjective. Hallucinations,

they are called, although to their creator they are real as any visible

object is to any one else. Given a more intense and intelligent

concentration of this will, and the form becomes concrete, visible,

objective; the man has learned the secret of secrets; he is a MAGICIAN.

The materialist should not object to this logic, for he regards thought

as matter. Conceding it to be so, the cunning mechanism contrived by

the inventor; the fairy scenes born in the poet’s brain; the gorgeous

painting limned by the artist’s fancy; the peerless statue chiselled

in ether by the sculptor; the palaces and castles built in air by the

architect—all these, though invisible and subjective, must exist, for

they are matter, shaped and moulded. Who shall say, then, that there

are not some men of such imperial will as to be able to drag these

air-drawn fancies into view, enveloped in the hard casing of gross

substance to make them tangible?