manifestations with de Gasparin in 1854, nor Mr. Crookes, who conceded
their undeniable genuineness in 1874, have reached anything definite.
Both are chemists, physicists, and very learned men. Both have given
all their attention to the puzzling question; and besides these two {114}
scientists there were many others who, while coming to the same
conclusion, have hitherto been as unable to furnish the world with
a final solution. It follows then, that in twenty years none of the
scientists have made a single step toward the unravelling of the
mystery, which remains as immovable and impregnable as the walls of an
enchanted castle in a fairy tale.
Would it be too impertinent to surmise that perhaps our modern
scientists have got in what the French term _un cercle vicieux_? That,
hampered by the weight of their materialism, and the insufficiency of
what they name “the exact sciences” to demonstrate to them tangibly the
existence of a spiritual universe, peopled and inhabited much more than
our visible one, they are doomed forever to creep around _inside_ that
circle, unwilling rather than unable to penetrate beyond its enchanted
ring, and explore it in its length and breadth? It is but prejudice
which keeps them from making a compromise with well-established facts
and seek alliance with such expert magnetists and mesmerizers as were
Du Potet and Regazzoni.
“What, then, is produced from death?” inquired Socrates of Cebes.
“_Life_,” was the reply.[214] ... Can the soul, since it is immortal,
be anything else than imperishable?[215] The “seed cannot develop
unless it is in part consumed,” says Prof. Lecomte; “it is not
quickened unless it die,” says St. Paul.
A flower blossoms; then withers and dies. It leaves a fragrance behind,
which, long after its delicate petals are but a little dust, still
lingers in the air. Our material sense may not be cognizant of it, but
it nevertheless exists. Let a note be struck on an instrument, and the
faintest sound produces an eternal echo. A disturbance is created on
the invisible waves of the shoreless ocean of space, and the vibration
is never wholly lost. Its energy being once carried from the world of
matter into the immaterial world will live for ever. And man, we are
asked to believe, man, the living, thinking, reasoning entity, the
indwelling deity of our nature’s crowning masterpiece, will evacuate
his casket and be no more! Would the principle of continuity which
exists even for the so-called _inorganic_ matter, for a floating atom,
be denied to the spirit, whose attributes are consciousness, memory,
mind, LOVE! Really, the very idea is preposterous. The more we think
and the more we learn, the more difficult it becomes for us to account
for the atheism of the scientist. We may readily understand that a
man ignorant of the laws of nature, unlearned in either chemistry
or physics, may be fatally drawn into materialism through his very {115}
ignorance; his incapacity of understanding the philosophy of the exact
sciences, or drawing any inference by analogy from the _visible_ to
the _invisible_. A natural-born metaphysician, an ignorant dreamer,
may awake abruptly and say to himself: “I dreamed it; I have no
tangible proof of that which I imagined; it is all illusion,” etc.
But for a man of science, acquainted with the characteristics of the
universal energy, to maintain that _life_ is merely a phenomenon of
matter, a species of energy, amounts simply to a confession of his own
incapability of analyzing and properly understanding the alpha and the
omega even of that—matter.
Sincere skepticism as to the immortality of man’s soul is a malady; a
malformation of the physical brain, and has existed in every age. As
there are infants born with a caul upon their heads, so there are men
who are incapable to their last hour of ridding themselves of that
kind of caul evidently enveloping their organs of spirituality. But
it is quite another feeling which makes them reject the possibility
of spiritual and magical phenomena. The true name for that feeling
is—_vanity_. “We can neither produce nor explain it—hence, it _does
not_ exist, and moreover, could _never_ have existed.” Such is the
irrefutable argument of our present-day philosophers. Some thirty years
ago, E. Salverte startled the world of the “credulous” by his work,
_The Philosophy of Magic_. The book claimed to unveil the whole of the
miracles of the Bible as well as those of the Pagan sanctuaries. Its
_resumé_ ran thus: Long ages of observation; a great knowledge (for
those days of ignorance) of natural sciences and philosophy; imposture;
legerdemain; optics; phantasmagoria; exaggeration. Final and logical
conclusion: Thaumaturgists, prophets, magicians, rascals, and knaves;
the rest of the world, fools.
Among many other conclusive proofs, the reader can find him offering
the following: “The enthusiastic disciples of Iamblichus affirmed that
when he prayed, he was raised to the height of ten cubits from the
ground; and _dupes_ to the same metaphor, although Christians, have had
the simplicity to attribute a similar miracle to St. Clare, and St.
Francis of Assisi.”[216]
Hundreds of travellers claimed to have seen fakirs produce the same
phenomena, and they were all thought either liars or hallucinated.
But it was but yesterday that the same phenomenon was witnessed
and endorsed by a well-known scientist; it was produced under test
conditions; declared by Mr. Crookes to be genuine, and to be _beyond_
the possibility of an illusion or a trick. And so was it manifested
many a time before and attested by numerous witnesses, though the
latter are now invariably disbelieved.
Peace to thy scientific ashes, O credulous Eusebe Salverte! Who knows {116}
but before the close of the present century popular wisdom will have
invented a new proverb: “As incredibly credulous as a scientist.”
Why should it appear so impossible that when the spirit is once
separated from its body, it may have the power to animate some
evanescent form, created out of that magical “psychic” or “ectenic” or
“ethereal” force, with the help of the elementaries who furnish it with
the sublimated matter of their own bodies? The only difficulty is, to
realize the fact that surrounding space is not an empty void, but a
reservoir filled to repletion with the models of all things that ever
were, that are, and that will be; and with beings of countless races,
unlike our own. Seemingly supernatural facts—supernatural in that they
openly contradict the demonstrated natural laws of gravitation, as
in the above-mentioned instance of levitation—are recognized by many
scientists. Every one who has dared to investigate with thoroughness
has found himself compelled to admit their existence; only in their
unsuccessful efforts to account for the phenomena on theories based
on the laws of such forces as were already known, some of the highest
representatives of science have involved themselves in inextricable
difficulties!
In his _Resumé_ de Mirville describes the argumentation of these
adversaries of spiritualism as consisting of five paradoxes, which he
terms _distractions_.
_First distraction_: that of Faraday, who explains the table
phenomenon, by the table which _pushes_ you “in consequence of the
resistance which _pushes it back_.”
_Second distraction_: that of Babinet, explaining all the
communications (by raps) which are produced, as he says, “in good faith
and with perfect conscientiousness, correct in every way and sense—by
_ventriloquism_,” the use of which faculty implies of necessity—_bad
faith_.
_Third distraction_: That of Dr. Chevreuil, explaining the faculty of
moving furniture _without_ contact, by the preliminary acquisition of
that faculty.
_Fourth distraction_: that of the French Institute and its members, who
consent to accept the miracles, on condition that the latter will not
contradict in any way those natural laws with which they are acquainted.
_Fifth distraction_: that of M. de Gasparin, introducing as a very
_simple_ and perfectly _elementary_ phenomenon that which every one
rejects, precisely because no one ever saw the like of it.[217]
While the great, world-known scientists indulge in such fantastic
theories, some less known neurologists find an explanation for occult {117}
phenomena of every kind in an abnormal effluvium resulting from
epilepsy.[218] Another would treat mediums—and poets, too, we may
infer—with assafœtida and ammonia,[219] and declare every one of the
believers in spiritual manifestations lunatics and hallucinated mystics.
To the latter lecturer and professed pathologist is commended that
sensible bit of advice to be found in the New Testament: “Physician,
heal thyself.” Truly, no sane man would so sweepingly charge insanity
upon four hundred and forty-six millions of people in various parts of
the world, who believe in the intercourse of spirits with ourselves!
Considering all this, it remains to us but to wonder at the
preposterous presumption of these men, who claim to be regarded
by right of learning as the high priests of science, to classify
a phenomenon they know nothing about. Surely, several millions of
their countrymen and women, if deluded, deserve at least as much
attention as potato-bugs or grasshoppers! But, instead of that, what
do we find? The Congress of the United States, at the demand of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, enacts statutes
for organization of National Insect Commissions; chemists are busying
themselves in boiling frogs and bugs; geologists amuse their leisure
by osteological surveys of armor-plated _ganoids_, and discuss the
odontology of the various species of _dinichtys_; and entomologists
suffer their enthusiasm to carry them to the length of supping on
grasshoppers boiled, fried, and in soup.[220] Meanwhile, millions
of Americans are either losing themselves in the maze of “crazy
delusions,” according to the opinion of some of these very learned
encyclopædists, or perishing physically from “nervous disorders,”
brought on or brought out by mediumistic diathesis.
At one time, there was reason to hope that Russian scientists would
have undertaken the task of giving the phenomena a careful and
impartial study. A commission was appointed by the Imperial University
of St. Petersburg, with Professor Mendeleyeff, the great physicist,
at its head. The advertised programme provided for a series of
forty seances to test mediums, and invitations were extended to all
of this class who chose to come to the Russian capital and submit
their powers to examination. As a rule they refused—doubtless from
a prevision of the trap that had been laid for them. After _eight_
sittings, upon a shallow pretext, and just when the manifestations
were becoming interesting, the commission prejudged the case, and
published a decision adverse to the claims of mediumism. Instead of
pursuing dignified, scientific methods, they set spies to peep through {118}
key-holes. Professor Mendeleyeff declared in a public lecture that
spiritualism, or any such belief in our souls’ immortality, was a
mixture of _superstition_, _delusion_, and _fraud_; adding that every
“manifestation” of such nature—including mind-reading, trance, and
other psychological phenomena, we must suppose—could be, and _was_
produced by means of clever apparatus and machinery concealed under the
clothing of mediums!
After such a public exhibition of ignorance and prejudice, Mr.
Butlerof, Professor of Chemistry at the St. Petersburg University, and
Mr. Aksakof, Counsellor of State in the same city, who had been invited
to assist on the committee for mediums, became so disgusted that they
withdrew. Having published their protests in the Russian papers, they
were supported by the majority of the press, who did not spare either
Mendeleyeff or his officious committee with their sarcasms. The public
acted fairly in that case. One hundred and thirty names, of the most
influential persons of the best society of St. Petersburg, many of
them no spiritualists at all, but simply investigators, added their
signatures to the well-deserved protest.
The inevitable result of such a procedure followed; universal attention
was drawn to the question of spiritualism; private circles were
organized throughout the empire; some of the most liberal journals
began to discuss the subject; and, as we write, a new commission is
being organized to finish the interrupted task.
But now—as a matter of course—they will do their duty less than ever.
They have a better pretext than they ever had in the pretended _exposé_
of the medium Slade, by Professor Lankester, of London. True, to
the evidence of one scientist and his friend,—Messrs. Lankester and
Donkin—the accused opposed the testimony of Wallace, Crookes, and a
host of others, which totally nullifies an accusation based merely on
circumstantial evidence and prejudice. As the _London Spectator_ very
pertinently observes:
“It is really a pure superstition and nothing else to assume that we
are so fully acquainted with the laws of nature, that even carefully
examined facts, attested by an experienced observer, ought to be cast
aside as utterly unworthy of credit, only because they do not, at
first sight, seem to be in keeping with what is most clearly known
already. To assume, as Professor Lankester appears to do, that because
there are fraud and credulity in plenty to be found in connection with
these facts—as there is, no doubt, in connection with all nervous
diseases—fraud and credulity will account for all the carefully
attested statements of accurate and conscientious observers, is to saw
away at the very branch of the tree of knowledge on which inductive
science necessarily rests, and to bring the whole structure toppling to
the ground.”
But what matters all this to scientists? The torrent of superstition, {119}
which, according to them, sweeps away millions of bright intellects
in its impetuous course, cannot reach them. The modern deluge called
spiritualism is unable to affect their strong minds; and the muddy
waves of the flood must expend their raging fury without wetting
even the soles of their boots. Surely it must be but traditional
stubbornness on the part of the Creator that prevents him from
confessing what a poor chance his miracles have in our day in blinding
professed scientists. By this time even He ought to know and take
notice that long ago they decided to write on the porticoes of their
universities and colleges:
Science commands that God shall not
Do miracles upon this spot![221]
Both the infidel spiritualists and the orthodox Roman Catholics
seem to have leagued themselves this year against the iconoclastic
pretensions of materialism. Increase of skepticism has developed of
late a like increase of credulity. The champions of the Bible “divine”
miracles rival the panegyrist’s mediumistic phenomena, and the middle
ages revive in the nineteenth century. Once more we see the Virgin
Mary resume her epistolary correspondence with the faithful children
of her church; and while the “angel friends” scribble messages to
spiritualists through their mediums, the “mother of God” drops letters
direct from heaven to earth. The shrine of Notre Dame de Lourdes has
turned into a spiritualistic cabinet for “materializations,” while
the cabinets of popular American mediums are transformed into sacred
shrines, into which Mohammed, Bishop Polk, Joan of Arc and other
aristocratic spirits from over the “dark river,” having descended,
“materialize” in full light. And if the Virgin Mary is seen taking
her daily walk in the woods about Lourdes in full human form, why
not the Apostle of Islam, and the late Bishop of Louisiana? Either
both “miracles” are possible, or both kinds of these manifestations,
the “divine” as well as the “spiritual,” are arrant impostures. Time
alone will prove which; but meanwhile, as science refuses the loan of
her magic lamp to illuminate these mysteries, common people must go
stumbling on whether they be mired or not.
The recent “miracles” at Lourdes having been unfavorably discussed in
the London papers, Monsignor Capel communicates to the _Times_ the
views of the Roman Church in the following terms:
“As to the miraculous cures which are effected, I would refer your {120}
readers to the calm, judicious work, _La Grotte de Lourdes_, written
by Dr. Dozous, an eminent resident practitioner, inspector of epidemic
diseases for the district, and medical assistant of the Court of
Justice. He prefaces a number of detailed cases of miraculous cures,
which he says he has studied with great care and perseverance, with
these words: ‘I declare that these cures effected at the Sanctuary of
Lourdes by means of the water of the fountain, have established their
supernatural character in the eyes of men of good faith. I ought to
confess that without these cures, my mind, little prone to listen to
miraculous explanations of any kind, would have had great difficulty
in accepting even this fact (the apparition), remarkable as it is from
so many points of view. But the cures, of which I have been so often
an ocular witness, have given to my mind a light which does not permit
me to ignore the importance of the visits of Bernadette to the Grotto,
and the reality of the apparitions with which she was favored.’ The
testimony of a distinguished medical man, who has carefully watched
from the beginning Bernadette, and the miraculous cures at the Grotto,
is at least worthy of respectful consideration. I may add, that the
vast number of those who come to the Grotto do so to repent of their
sins, to increase their piety, to pray for the regeneration of their
country, to profess publicly their belief in the Son of God and his
Immaculate Mother. Many come to be cured of bodily ailments; and on
the testimony of eye-witnesses several return home freed from their
sickness. To upbraid with non-belief, as does your article, those who
use also the waters of the Pyrenees, is as reasonable as to charge
with unbelief the magistrates who inflict punishment on the peculiar
people for neglecting to have medical aid. Health obliged me to pass
the winters of 1860 to 1867 at Pau. This gave me the opportunity of
making the most minute inquiry into the apparition at Lourdes. After
frequent and lengthened examinations of Bernadette and of some of the
miracles effected, I am convinced that, _if facts are to be received
on human testimony, then has the apparition at Lourdes every claim to
be received as an undeniable fact_. It is, however, no part of the
Catholic faith, and may be accepted or rejected by any Catholic without
the least praise or condemnation.”
Let the reader observe the sentence we have italicized. This makes
it clear that the Catholic Church, despite her infallibility and her
liberal postage convention with the Kingdom of Heaven, is content to
accept even the validity of _divine_ miracles upon human testimony. Now
when we turn to the report of Mr. Huxley’s recent New York lectures
on evolution, we find him saying that it is upon “human historical
evidence that we depend for the greater part of our knowledge for the {121}
doings of the past.” In a lecture on Biology, he has said “ ... every
man who has the interest of truth at heart must earnestly desire that
every well-founded and just criticism that can be made should be made;
but it is essential ... that the critic should know what he is talking
about.” An aphorism that its author should recall when he undertakes
to pronounce upon psychological subjects. Add this to his views, as
expressed above, and who could ask a better platform upon which to meet
him?
Here we have a representative materialist, and a representative
Catholic prelate, enunciating an identical view of the sufficiency
of _human testimony_ to prove facts that it suits the prejudices of
each to believe. After this, what need for either the student of
occultism, or even the spiritualist, to hunt about for endorsements
of the argument they have so long and so persistently advanced, that
the psychological phenomena of ancient and modern thaumaturgists being
superabundantly proven upon human testimony must be accepted as facts?
Church and College having appealed to the tribunal of human evidence,
they cannot deny the rest of mankind an equal privilege. One of the
fruits of the recent agitation in London of the subject of mediumistic
phenomena, is the expression of some remarkably liberal views on
the part of the secular press. “In any case, we are for admitting
spiritualism to a place among tolerated beliefs, and letting it alone
accordingly,” says the London _Daily News_, in 1876. “It has many
votaries who are as intelligent as most of us, and to whom any obvious
and palpable defect in the evidence meant to convince must have been
obvious and palpable long ago. Some of _the wisest men in the world
believed in ghosts_, and would have continued to do so even though
half-a-dozen persons in succession had been convicted of frightening
people with sham goblins.”
It is not for the first time in the history of the world, that the
invisible world has to contend against the materialistic skepticism of
soul-blind Sadducees. Plato deplores such an unbelief, and refers to
this pernicious tendency more than once in his works.
From Kapila, the Hindu philosopher, who many centuries before Christ
demurred to the claim of the mystic Yogins, that in ecstasy a man
has the power of seeing Deity face to face and conversing with the
“highest” beings, down to the Voltaireans of the eighteenth century,
who laughed at everything that was held sacred by other people, each
age had its unbelieving Thomases. Did they ever succeed in checking the
progress of truth? No more than the ignorant bigots who sat in judgment
over Galileo checked the progress of the earth’s rotation. No exposures
whatever are able to vitally affect the stability or instability of a
belief which humanity inherited from the first races of men, those, {122}
who—if we can believe in the evolution of spiritual man as in that of
the physical one—had the great truth from the lips of their ancestors,
the _gods of their fathers_, “that were on the other side of the
flood.” The identity of the Bible with the legends of the Hindu sacred
books and the cosmogonies of other nations, must be demonstrated at
some future day. _The fables of the mythopœic ages will be found to
have but allegorized the greatest truths of geology and anthropology._
It is in these ridiculously expressed fables that science will have to
look for her “missing links.”
Otherwise, whence such strange “coincidences” in the respective
histories of nations and peoples so widely thrown apart? Whence
that identity of primitive conceptions which, fables and legends
though they are termed now, contain in them nevertheless the kernel
of historical facts, of a truth thickly overgrown with the husks of
popular embellishment, but still a truth? Compare only this verse of
_Genesis_ vi.: “And it came to pass, when _men began to multiply_ on
the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the
sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they
took them wives of all which they chose.... There were _giants in the
earth in those days_,” etc., with this part of the Hindu cosmogony, in
the _Vedas_, which speaks of the descent of the Brahmans. The first
Brahman complains of being _alone_ among all his brethren without a
wife. Notwithstanding that the Eternal advises him to devote his days
solely to the study of the Sacred Knowledge (_Veda_), the _first-born_
of mankind insists. Provoked at such ingratitude, the eternal gave
Brahman a wife of the race of the _Daints_, or _giants_, from whom
all the Brahmans maternally descend. Thus the entire Hindu priesthood
is descended, on the one hand, from the _superior_ spirits (the sons
of God), and from _Daintany_, a daughter of the earthly giants, the
primitive men.[222] “And they bare children to them; the same became
mighty men which were of old; men of renown.”[223]
The same is found in the Scandinavian cosmogonical fragment. In
the _Edda_ is given the description to Gangler by Har, one of the
three informants (Har, Jafuhar, and Tredi) of the first man, called
Bur, “the father of Bör, who took for wife Besla, a daughter of the
giant Bölthara, of the race of the primitive giants.” The full and
interesting narrative may be found in the _Prose Edda_, sects. 4-8, in
Mallett’s _Northern Antiquities_.[224]
The same groundwork underlies the Grecian fables about the Titans; and
may be found in the legend of the Mexicans—the four successive races
of _Popol-Vuh_. It constitutes one of the many ends to be found in {123}
the entangled and seemingly inextricable skein of mankind, viewed as a
psychological phenomenon. Belief in supernaturalism would be otherwise
inexplicable. To say that it sprang up, and grew and developed
throughout the countless ages, without either cause or the least firm
basis to rest upon, but merely as an empty fancy, would be to utter as
great an absurdity as the theological doctrine that the universe sprang
into creation out of nothing.
It is too late now to kick against an evidence which manifests itself
as in the full glare of noon. Liberal, as well as Christian papers,
and the organs of the most advanced scientific authorities, begin to
protest unanimously against the dogmatism and narrow prejudices of
sciolism. The _Christian World_, a religious paper, adds its voice to
that of the unbelieving London press. Following is a good specimen of
its common sense:
“If a medium,” it says,[225] “can be shown ever so conclusively to
be an impostor, we shall still object to the disposition manifested
by persons of some authority in scientific matters, to pooh-pooh and
knock on the head all careful inquiry into those subjects of which Mr.
Barrett took note in his paper before the British Association. Because
spiritualists have committed themselves to many absurdities, that is
no reason why the phenomena to which they appeal should be scouted
as unworthy of examination. They may be mesmeric, or clairvoyant, or
something else. But let our wise men tell us what they are, and not
snub us, as ignorant people too often snub inquiring youth, by the easy
but unsatisfactory apothegm, “Little children should not ask questions.”
Thus the time has come when the scientists have lost all right to be
addressed with the Miltonian verse, “O thou who, for the testimony
of truth, hast borne universal reproach!” Sad degeneration, and one
that recalls the exclamation of that “doctor of physic” mentioned one
hundred and eighty years ago by Dr. Henry More, and who, upon hearing
the story told of the drummer of Tedworth and of Ann Walker, “_cryed_
out presently, _If this be true, I have been in a wrong box all this
time, and must begin my account anew_.”[226]
But in our century, notwithstanding Huxley’s endorsement of the value
of “human testimony,” even Dr. Henry More has become “an enthusiast and
a visionary, both of which, united in the same person, constitute a
_canting madman_.”[227]
What psychology has long lacked to make its mysterious laws better {124}
understood and applied to the ordinary as well as extraordinary affairs
of life, is not facts. These it has had in abundance. The need has
been for their recording and classification—for trained observers and
competent analysts. From the scientific body these ought to have been
supplied. If error has prevailed and superstition run riot these many
centuries throughout Christendom, it is the misfortune of the common
people, the reproach of science. The generations have come and gone,
each furnishing its quota of martyrs to conscience and moral courage,
and psychology is little better understood in our day than it was when
the heavy hand of the Vatican sent those brave unfortunates to their
untimely doom and branded their memories with the stigma of heresy and
sorcery.
CHAPTER V. {125}
“Ich bin der geist der stets verneint.”
(I am the spirit which still denies.)
—(_Mephisto_ in FAUST.)
“The Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it
seeth Him not; neither knoweth Him.”—_Gospel according to John_,
xiv. 17.
“Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.”
—MILTON.
“Mere intellectual enlightenment cannot recognize the
spiritual. As the sun puts out a fire, so spirit puts out the
eyes of mere intellect.”—W. HOWITT.
There has been an infinite confusion of names to express one and the
same thing.
The chaos of the ancients; the Zoroastrian sacred fire, or the
_Antusbyrum_ of the Parsees; the Hermes-fire; the Elmes-fire of
the ancient Germans; the lightning of Cybelè; the burning torch of
Apollo; the flame on the altar of Pan; the inextinguishable fire in
the temple on the Acropolis, and in that of Vesta; the fire-flame of
Pluto’s helm; the brilliant sparks on the hats of the Dioscuri, on the
Gorgon head, the helm of Pallas, and the staff of Mercury; the πύρ
ἄσβεστος; the Egyptian Phtha, or Ra; the Grecian _Zeus Cataibates_
(the descending);[228] the pentacostal fire-tongues; the burning
bush of Moses; the pillar of fire of the _Exodus_, and the “burning
lamp” of Abram; the eternal fire of the “bottomless pit;” the Delphic
oracular vapors; the Sidereal light of the Rosicrucians; the AKASA of
the Hindu adepts; the Astral light of Eliphas Levi; the nerve-aura and
the fluid of the magnetists; the _od_ of Reichenbach; the fire-globe,
or meteor-_cat_ of Babinet; the _Psychod_ and ectenic force of Thury;
the psychic force of Sergeant Cox and Mr. Crookes; the atmospheric
magnetism of some naturalists; galvanism; and finally, electricity, are
but various names for many different manifestations, or effects of the
same mysterious, all-pervading cause—the Greek _Archeus_, or Αρχαῖος.
Sir E. Bulwer-Lytton, in his _Coming Race_, describes it as the
VRIL,[229] used by the subterranean populations, and allowed his {126}
readers to take it for a fiction. “These people,” he says, “consider
that in the vril they had arrived at the unity in natural energic
agencies;” and proceeds to show that Faraday intimated them “under the
more cautious term of correlation,” thus:
“I have long held an opinion, almost amounting to a conviction, in
common, I believe, with many other lovers of natural knowledge, that
the various forms under which the forces of matter are made manifest,
HAVE ONE COMMON ORIGIN; or, in other words, are so directly related and
naturally dependent, that they are convertible, as it were, into one
another, and possess equivalents of power in their action.”
Absurd and unscientific as may appear our comparison of a fictitious
_vril_ invented by the great novelist, and the primal force of the
equally great experimentalist, with the kabalistic astral light, it
is nevertheless the true definition of this force. Discoveries are
constantly being made to corroborate the statement thus boldly put
forth. Since we began to write this part of our book, an announcement
has been made in a number of papers of the supposed discovery of a new
force by Mr. Edison, the electrician, of Newark, New Jersey, which
force seems to have little in common with electricity, or galvanism,
except the principle of conductivity. If demonstrated, it may remain
for a long time under some pseudonymous scientific name; but,
nevertheless, it will be but one of the numerous family of children
brought forth from the commencement of time by our kabalistic mother,
the _Astral Virgin_. In fact, the discoverer says that, “it is as
distinct, and has as regular laws as heat, magnetism, or electricity.”
The journal which contains the first account of the discovery adds
that, “Mr. Edison thinks that it exists in connection with heat, and
that it can also be generated by independent and _as yet undiscovered
means_.”
Another of the most startling of recent discoveries, is the possibility
of annihilating distance between human voices—by means of the
_telephone_ (distance-sounder), an instrument invented by Professor A.
Graham Bell. This possibility, first suggested by the little “lovers’
telegraph,” consisting of small tin cups with vellum and drug-twine
apparatus, by which a conversation can be carried on at a distance of
two hundred feet, has developed into the telephone, which will become
the wonder of this age. A long conversation has taken place between
Boston and Cambridgeport by telegraph; “every word being distinctly
heard and perfectly understood, and the modulations of voices being
quite distinguishable,” according to the official report. _The voice
is seized upon_, so to say, _and held in form by a magnet, and the
sound-wave transmitted by electricity acting in unison and co-operating
with the magnet_. The whole success depends upon a perfect control of {127}
the electric currents and the power of the magnets used, with which
the former must co-operate. “The invention,” reports the paper, “may
be rudely described as a sort of trumpet, over the bell-mouth of which
is drawn a delicate membrane, which, when the voice is thrown into the
tube, swells outward in proportion to the force of the sound-wave. To
the outer side of the membrane is attached a piece of metal, which, as
the membrane swells outward, connects with a magnet, and this, with the
electric circuit, is controlled by the operator. By some principle, not
yet fully understood, the electric current transmits the sound-wave
just as delivered by the voice in the trumpet, and the listener at the
other end of the line, with a twin or fac-simile trumpet at his ear,
hears every word distinctly, and readily detects the modulations of the
speaker’s voice.”
Thus, in the presence of such wonderful discoveries of our age, and
the further magical possibilities lying latent and yet undiscovered
in the boundless realm of nature, and further, in view of the great
probability that Edison’s Force and Professor Graham Bell’s Telephone
may unsettle, if not utterly upset all our ideas of the imponderable
fluids, would it not be well for such persons as may be tempted
to traverse our statements, to wait and see whether they will be
corroborated or refuted by further discoveries.
Only in connection with these _discoveries_, we may, perhaps, well
remind our readers of the many hints to be found in the ancient
histories as to a certain secret in the possession of the Egyptian
priesthood, who could instantly communicate, during the celebration of
the Mysteries, from one temple to another, even though the former were
at Thebes and the latter at the other end of the country; the legends
attributing it, as a matter of course, to the “invisible tribes” of
the air, which carry messages for mortals. The author of _Pre-Adamite
Man_ quotes an instance, which being given merely on his own authority,
and he seeming uncertain whether the story comes from Macrinus or
some other writer, may be taken for what it is worth. He found
good evidence, he says, during his stay in Egypt, that “one of the
Cleopatras (?) sent news by a wire to all the cities, from Heliopolis
to Elephantine, on the Upper Nile.”[230]
It is not so long since Professor Tyndall ushered us into a new world,
peopled with airy shapes of the most ravishing beauty.
“The discovery consists,” he says, “in subjecting the vapors of
volatile liquids to the action of concentrated sunlight, or to the
concentrated beam of the electric light.” The vapors of certain
nitrites, iodides, and acids are subjected to the action of the light
in an _experimental tube_, lying horizontally, and so arranged that {128}
the axis of the tube and that of the parallel beams issuing from the
lamp are coincident. The vapors form clouds of gorgeous tints, and
arrange themselves into the shapes of vases, of bottles and cones, in
nests of six or more; of shells, of tulips, roses, sunflowers, leaves,
and of involved scrolls. “In one case,” he tells us, “the cloud-bud
grew rapidly into a serpent’s head; a mouth was formed, and from the
cloud, a cord of cloud resembling a tongue was discharged.” Finally, to
cap the climax of marvels, “once it positively assumed the form of a
fish, with eyes, gills, and feelers. The twoness of the animal form was
displayed throughout, and no _disk, coil, or speck existed on one side
that did not exist on the other_.”
These phenomena may possibly be explained in part by the mechanical
action of a beam of light, which Mr. Crookes has recently demonstrated.
For instance, it is a supposable case, that the beams of light may have
constituted a horizontal axis, about which the disturbed molecules
of the vapors gathered into the forms of globes and spindles. But
how account for the fish, the serpent’s head, the vases, the flowers
of different varieties, the shells? This seems to offer a dilemma to
science as baffling as the meteor-cat of Babinet. We do not learn
that Tyndall ventured as absurd an explanation of his extraordinary
phenomena as that of the Frenchman about his.
Those who have not given attention to the subject may be surprised to
find how much was known in former days of that all-pervading, subtile
principle which has recently been baptized THE UNIVERSAL ETHER.
Before proceeding, we desire once more to enunciate in two categorical
propositions, what was hinted at before. These propositions were
demonstrated laws with the ancient theurgists.
I. The so-called miracles, to begin with Moses and end with Cagliostro,
when genuine, were as de Gasparin very justly insinuates in his
work on the phenomena, “perfectly in accordance with natural law;”
hence—no miracles. Electricity and magnetism were unquestionably
used in the production of some of the prodigies; but now, the same
as then, they are put in requisition by every sensitive, who is made
to use _unconsciously_ these powers by the peculiar nature of his
or her organization, which serves as a conductor for some of these
imponderable fluids, as yet so imperfectly known to science. This force
is the prolific parent of numberless attributes and properties, many,
or rather, most of which, are as yet unknown to modern physics.
II. The phenomena of natural magic to be witnessed in Siam, India,
Egypt, and other Oriental countries, bear no relationship whatever to
sleight of hand; the one being an absolute physical effect, due to the
action of occult natural forces, the other, a mere deceptive result {129}
obtained by dexterous manipulations supplemented with confederacy.[231]
The thaumaturgists of all periods, schools, and countries, produced
their wonders, because they were perfectly familiar with the
imponderable—in their effects—but otherwise perfectly tangible waves
of the astral light. They controlled the currents by guiding them with
their will-power. The wonders were both of physical and psychological
character; the former embracing effects produced upon material objects,
the latter the mental phenomena of Mesmer and his successors. This
class has been represented in our time by two illustrious men, Du Potet
and Regazzoni, whose wonderful powers were well attested in France and
other countries. Mesmerism is the most important branch of magic; and
its phenomena are the effects of the universal agent which underlies
all magic and has produced at all ages the so-called miracles.
The ancients called it _Chaos_; Plato and the Pythagoreans named
it _the Soul of the World_. According to the Hindus, the Deity in
the shape of Æther pervades all things. It is the invisible, but,
as we have said before, too tangible Fluid. Among other names this
universal Proteus—or “the nebulous Almighty,” as de Mirville calls
it in derision—was termed by the theurgists “the living fire,”[232]
the “Spirit of Light,” and _Magnes_. This last appellation indicates
its magnetic properties and shows its magical nature. For, as truly
expressed by one of its enemies—μάγος and μάγνης are two branches
growing from the same trunk, and shooting forth the same resultants.
Magnetism is a word for the derivation of which we have to look to an
incredibly early epoch. The stone called _magnet_ is believed by many
to owe its name to Magnesia, a city or district in Thessaly, where
these stones were found in quantity. We believe, however, the opinion
of the Hermetists to be the correct one. The word _Magh_, _magus_,
is derived from the Sanskrit _Mahaji_, the _great_ or _wise_ (the
anointed by the divine wisdom). “Eumolpus is the _mythic_ founder {130}
of the Eumolpidæ (priests); the priests traced their own wisdom to
the Divine Intelligence.”[233] The various cosmogonies show that the
Archæal Universal Soul was held by every nation as the “mind” of the
Demiurgic Creator, the _Sophia_ of the Gnostics, or _the Holy Ghost as
a female principle_. As the Magi derived their name from it, so the
Magnesian stone or Magnet was called in their honor, for they were
the first to discover its wonderful properties. Their temples dotted
the country in all directions, and among these were some temples of
Hercules,[234]—hence the stone, when it once became known that the
priests used it for their curative and magical purposes, received
the name of the Magnesian or Heraclean stone. Socrates, speaking of
it, remarks: “Euripides calls it the Magnesian stone, but the common
people, the Heraclean.[235]” It was the country and stone which were
called after the Magi, not the Magi after one or the other. Pliny
informs us that the wedding-ring among the Romans was magnetized by the
priests before the ceremony. The old Pagan historians are careful to
keep silent on certain Mysteries of the “wise” (Magi) and Pausanias was
warned in a dream, he says, not to unveil the holy rites of the temple
of Demeter and Persephoneia at Athens.[236]
Modern science, after having ineffectually denied _animal magnetism_,
has found herself forced to accept it as a fact. It is now a recognized
property of human and animal organization; as to its psychological,
occult influence, the Academies battle with it, in our century, more
ferociously than ever. It is the more to be regretted and even wondered
at, as the representatives of “exact science” are unable to either
explain or even offer us anything like a reasonable hypothesis for the
undeniable mysterious potency contained in a simple magnet. We begin to
have daily proofs that these potencies underlie the theurgic mysteries,
and therefore might perhaps explain the occult faculties possessed by
ancient and modern thaumaturgists as well as a good many of their most
astounding achievements. Such were the gifts transmitted by Jesus to {131}
some of his disciples. At the moment of his miraculous cures, the
Nazarene felt a _power_ issuing from him. Socrates, in his dialogue
with Theages,[237] telling him of his familiar god (demon), and his
power of either imparting his (Socrates’) wisdom to his disciples or
preventing it from benefiting those he associates with, brings the
following instance in corroboration of his words: “I will tell you,
Socrates,” says Aristides, “a thing incredible, indeed, by the gods,
but true. I made a proficiency when I associated with you, even if
I was only in the same house, though not in the same room; but more
so, when I _was in the same room_ ... and much more when I _looked at
you_.... But I made by far the greatest proficiency when I sat near you
and _touched you_.”
This is the modern magnetism and mesmerism of Du Potet and other
masters, who, when they have subjected a person to their _fluidic_
influence, can impart to them all their thoughts even at a distance,
and with an irresistible power force their subject to obey their
_mental_ orders. But how far better was this psychic force known
to the ancient philosophers! We can glean some information on that
subject from the earliest sources. Pythagoras taught his disciples
that God is the universal _mind_ diffused through all things, and
that this mind by the sole virtue of its universal sameness could be
communicated from one object to another and be made to create all
things by the sole will-power of man. With the ancient Greeks, _Kurios_
was the god-Mind (_Nous_). “Now Koros (Kurios) signifies the pure
and unmixed nature of intellect—wisdom,” says Plato.[238] Kurios is
Mercury, the Divine Wisdom, and “Mercury is the Sol” (Sun),[239] from
whom Thaut—Hermes—received this divine wisdom, which, in his turn,
he imparted to the world in his books. Hercules is also the Sun—the
celestial storehouse of the universal magnetism;[240] or rather
Hercules is the magnetic light which, when having made its way through
the “opened eye of heaven,” enters into the regions of our planet and
thus becomes the Creator. Hercules passes through the twelve labors,
the valiant Titan! He is called “Father of All” and “self-born” {132}
“(_autophues_).”[241] Hercules, the Sun, is killed by the Devil,
Typhon,[242] and so is Osiris, who is the father and brother of Horus,
and at the same time is identical with him; and we must not forget
that the magnet was called the “bone of Horus,” and iron the “bone of
Typhon.” He is called “Hercules _Invictus_,” only when he descends to
Hades (the subterranean garden), and plucking the “golden apples” from
the “tree of life,” slays the dragon.[243] The rough Titanic power, the
“lining” of every sun-god, opposes its force of blind matter to the
divine magnetic spirit, which tries to harmonize everything in nature.
All the sun-gods, with their symbol, the visible sun, are the
creators of _physical_ nature only. The _spiritual_ is the work of
the Highest God—the Concealed, the Central, Spiritual SUN, and of his
Demiurge—the Divine Mind of Plato, and the Divine Wisdom of Hermes
Trismegistus[244]—the wisdom effused from Oulom or Kronos.
“After the distribution of pure Fire, in the Samothracian Mysteries,
a new life began.”[245] This was the “new birth,” that is alluded to
by Jesus, in his nocturnal conversation with Nicodemus. “Initiated
into the most blessed of all Mysteries, being ourselves pure ... we
become just and holy with wisdom.”[246] “He _breathed_ on them and
saith unto them, ‘Take the Holy Pneuma.’”[247] And this simple act of
will-power was sufficient to impart vaticination in its nobler and most
perfect form if both the initiator and the initiated were worthy of
it. To deride this gift, even in its present aspect, “as the corrupt
offspring and lingering remains of an ignorant age of superstition,
and hastily to condemn it as unworthy of sober investigation, would
be as unphilosophical as it is wrong,” remarks the Rev. J. B. Gross.
“To remove the veil which hides our vision from the future, has been
attempted—in all ages of the world; and therefore the propensity to pry
into the lap of time, contemplated as one of the faculties of human
mind, comes recommended to us under the sanction of God.... Zuinglius,
the Swiss reformer, attested the comprehensiveness of his faith in the
providence of the Supreme Being, in the cosmopolitan doctrine that the
Holy Ghost was not entirely excluded from the more worthy portion of {133}
the heathen world. Admitting its truth, we cannot easily conceive a
valid reason why a heathen, thus favored, should not be capable of true
prophecy.”[248]
Now, what is this mystic, primordial substance? In the book of
_Genesis_, at the beginning of the first chapter, it is termed the
“face of the waters,” said to have been incubated by the “Spirit of
God.” Job mentions, in chap. xxvi., 5, that “dead things are formed
from under the waters, and inhabitants thereof.” In the original text,
instead of “dead things,” it is written dead _Rephaim_ (giants, or
mighty primitive men), from whom “Evolution” may one day trace our
present race. In the Egyptian mythology, Kneph the Eternal _unrevealed_
God is represented by a snake-emblem of eternity encircling a
water-urn, with his head hovering over the waters, which it incubates
with his breath. In this case the serpent is the Agathodaimon, the
good spirit; in its opposite aspect it is the Kakothodaimon—the bad
one. In the Scandinavian _Eddas_, the honey-dew—the food of the gods
and of the creative, busy Yggdrasill—bees—falls during the hours of
night, when the atmosphere is impregnated with humidity; and in the
Northern mythologies, as the passive principle of creation, it typifies
the creation of the universe _out of water_; this dew is the astral
light in one of its combinations and possesses creative as well as
destructive properties. In the Chaldean legend of Berosus, Oännes or
Dagon, the man-fish, instructing the people, shows the infant world
created out of _water_ and all beings originating from this _prima
materia_. Moses teaches that only earth and _water_ can bring a living
soul; and we read in the Scriptures that herbs could not grow until
the Eternal caused it to _rain_ upon earth. In the Mexican _Popol-Vuh_
man is created out of _mud_ or clay (_terre glaise_), taken from under
the water. Brahma creates Lomus, the great Muni (or first man), seated
on his lotus, only after having called into being, _spirits_, who
thus enjoyed among mortals a priority of existence, and he creates
him out of water, air, and earth. Alchemists claim that primordial
or pre-Adamic earth when reduced to its first substance is in its
_second_ stage of transformation like clear-water, the first being the
_alkahest_[249] proper. This primordial substance is said to contain
within itself the essence of all that goes to make up man; it has not
only all the elements of his physical being, but even the “breath of
life” itself in a latent state, ready to be awakened. This it derives
from the “incubation” of the Spirit of God upon the face of the
waters—chaos; in fact, this substance is chaos itself. From this it was
that Paracelsus claimed to be able to make his “homunculi;” and this {134}
is why Thales, the great natural philosopher, maintained that _water_
was the principle of all things in nature.
What is the primordial Chaos but Æther? The _modern_ Ether; not such
as is recognized by our scientists, but such as it _was_ known to the
ancient philosophers, long before the time of Moses; Ether, with all
its mysterious and occult properties, containing in itself the germs
of universal creation; Ether, the celestial virgin, the spiritual
mother of every existing form and being, from whose bosom as soon as
“incubated” by the Divine Spirit, are called into existence Matter
and Life, Force and Action. Electricity, magnetism, heat, light, and
chemical action are so little understood even now that fresh facts
are constantly widening the range of our knowledge. Who knows where
ends the power of this protean giant—Ether; or whence its mysterious
origin?—Who, we mean, that denies the spirit that works in it and
evolves out of it all visible forms?
It is an easy task to show that the cosmogonical legends all over
the world are based on a knowledge by the ancients of those sciences
which have allied themselves in our days to support the doctrine of
evolution; and that further research may demonstrate that they were
far better acquainted with the fact of evolution itself, embracing
both its physical and spiritual aspects, than we are now. With the
old philosophers, evolution was a universal theorem, a doctrine
embracing the _whole_, and an established principle; while our modern
evolutionists are enabled to present us merely with speculative
theoretics; with _particular_, if not wholly _negative_ theorems. It is
idle for the representatives of our modern wisdom to close the debate
and pretend that the question is settled, merely because the obscure
phraseology of the Mosaic account clashes with the definite exegesis of
“exact science.”
One fact at least is proved: there is not a cosmogonical fragment, to
whatever nation it may belong, but proves by this universal allegory
of water and the spirit brooding over it, that no more than our modern
physicists did any of them hold the universe to have sprung into
existence out of nothing; for all their legends begin with that period
when nascent vapors and Cimmerian darkness lay brooding over a fluid
mass ready to start on its journey of activity at the first flutter
of the breath of Him, who is the Unrevealed One. Him they felt, if
they saw Him not. Their spiritual intuitions were not so darkened by
the subtile sophistry of the forecoming ages as ours are now. If they
talked less of the Silurian age slowly developing into the Mammalian,
and if the Cenozoic time was only recorded by various allegories of the
primitive man—the Adam of _our_ race—it is but a negative proof after
all that their “wise men” and leaders did not know of these successive {135}
periods as well as we do now. In the days of Democritus and Aristotle,
the cycle had already begun to enter on its downward path of progress.
And if these two philosophers could discuss so well the atomic theory
and trace the atom to its material or physical _point_, their ancestors
may have gone further still and followed its genesis far beyond that
limit where Mr. Tyndall and others seem rooted to the spot, not daring
to cross the line of the “Incomprehensible.” The _lost arts_ are a
sufficient proof that if even their achievements in physiography are
now doubted, because of the unsatisfactory writings of their physicists
and naturalists,—on the other hand their practical knowledge in
phytochemistry and mineralogy far exceeded our own. Furthermore, they
might have been perfectly acquainted with the physical history of our
globe without publishing their knowledge to the ignorant masses in
those ages of religious Mysteries.
[Illustration: Possibly a _fac-simile_ of some amulets ]
Therefore, it is not only from the Mosaic books that we mean to adduce
proof for our further arguments. The ancient Jews got all their
knowledge—religious as well as profane—from the nations with which
we see them mixed up from the earliest periods. Even the oldest of
all sciences, their kabalistic “secret doctrine,” may be traced in
each detail to its primeval source, Upper India, or Turkestan, far
before the time of a distinct separation between the Aryan and Semitic
nations. The King Solomon so celebrated by posterity, as Josephus the
historian says,[250] for his magical skill, got his secret learning
from India through Hiram, the king of Ophir, and perhaps Sheba. His
ring, commonly known as “Solomon’s seal,” so celebrated for the potency
of its sway over the various kinds of genii and demons, in all the
popular legends, is equally of Hindu origin. Writing on the pretentious
and abominable skill of the “devil-worshippers” of Travancore, the Rev.
Samuel Mateer, of the London Missionary Society, claims at the same
time to be in possession of a very old manuscript volume of magical
incantations and spells in the Malayâlim language, giving directions
for effecting a great variety of purposes. Of course he adds, that
“many of these are _fearful_ in their malignity and obscenity,”
and gives in his work the _fac-simile_ of some amulets bearing the
magical figures and designs on them. We find among them one with
the following legend: “To remove trembling arising from demoniacal {136}
possession—write this figure on a plant that has milky juice, and drive
a nail through it; the trembling will cease.”[251] The figure is the
identical Solomon’s _seal_, or double triangle of the Kabalists. Did
the Hindu get it from the Jewish kabalist, or the latter from India, by
inheritance from their great king-kabalist, the wise Solomon?[252] But
we will leave this trifling dispute to continue the more interesting
question of the astral light, and its unknown properties.
Admitting, then, that this mythical agent is Ether, we will proceed to
see what and how much of it is known to science.
With respect to the various effects of the different solar rays, Robert
Hunt, F.R.S., remarks, in his _Researches on Light in its Chemical
Relations_, that:
“Those rays which give the _most_ light—the yellow and the orange
rays—will not produce change of color in the chloride of silver;” while
“those rays which have the _least_ illuminating power—the blue and
violet—produce the greatest change, and in exceedingly short time.... {137}
The yellow glasses obstruct scarcely any light; the blue glasses may
be so dark as to admit of the permeation of a very small quantity.”
And still we see that under the _blue_ ray both vegetable and animal
life manifest an inordinate development, while under the yellow ray it
is proportionately arrested. How is it possible to account for this
satisfactorily upon any other hypothesis than that both animal and
vegetable life are differently modified electrico-magnetic phenomena,
as yet unknown in their fundamental principles?
Mr. Hunt finds that the undulatory theory does not account for the
results of his experiments. Sir David Brewster, in his _Treatise on
Optics_, showing that “the colors of vegetable life arise ... from a
specific attraction which the particles of these bodies exercise over
the differently-colored rays of light,” and that “it is by the light
of the sun that the colored juices of plants are elaborated, that the
colors of bodies are changed, etc....” remarks that it is not easy
to allow “that such effects can be produced by the mere vibration of
an ethereal medium.” And he is _forced_, he says, “by this class of
facts, to reason as if light was _material_(?).” Professor Josiah P.
Cooke, of Harvard University, says that he “cannot agree ... with those
who regard the wave-theory of light as an established principle of
science.”[253] Herschel’s doctrine, that the intensity of light, in
effect of each undulation, “is inversely as the square of the distance
from the luminous body,” if correct, damages a good deal if it does not
kill the undulatory theory. That he is right, was proved repeatedly by
experiments with photometers; and, though it begins to be much doubted,
the undulatory theory is still alive.
As General Pleasanton, of Philadelphia, has undertaken to combat this
anti-Pythagorean hypothesis, and has devoted to it a whole volume, we
cannot do any better than refer the reader to his recent work on the
_Blue Ray_, etc. We leave the theory of Thomas Young, who, according to
Tyndall, “placed on an immovable basis the undulatory theory of light,”
to hold its own if it can, with the Philadelphia experimenter.
Eliphas Levi, the modern magician, describes the astral light in the
following sentence: “We have said that to acquire magical power, two
things are necessary: to disengage the will from all servitude, and to
exercise it in control.”
“The sovereign will is represented in our symbols by the woman who
crushes the serpent’s head, and by the resplendent angel who represses
the dragon, and holds him under his foot and spear; the great magical
agent, the dual current of light, the living and astral _fire_ of the
earth, has been represented in the ancient theogonies by the serpent {138}
with the head of a bull, a ram, or a dog. It is the double serpent of
the _caduceus_, it is the Old Serpent of the _Genesis_, but it is also
the _brazen serpent of Moses_ entwined around the _tau_, that is to
say, the generative _lingha_. It is also the goat of the witch-sabbath,
and the Baphomet of the Templars; it is the _Hylé_ of the Gnostics; it
is the double-tail of serpent which forms the legs of the solar cock of
the Abraxas; finally, it is the Devil of M. Eudes de Mirville. But in
very fact it is the blind force which souls have to conquer to liberate
themselves from the bonds of the earth; for if their will does not
free “them from this _fatal attraction_, they will be absorbed in the
current by the force which has produced them, and _will return to the
central and eternal fire_.”
This last kabalistic figure of speech, notwithstanding its strange
phraseology, is precisely the one used by Jesus; and in his mind it
could have had no other significance than the one attributed to it
by the Gnostics and the Kabalists. Later the Christian theologians
interpreted it differently, and with them it became the doctrine of
Hell. Literally, though, it simply means what it says—the astral light,
or the generator and destroyer of all forms.
“All the magical operations,” continues Levi, “consist in freeing one’s
self from the coils of the Ancient Serpent; then to place the foot on
its head, and lead it according to the operator’s will. ‘I will give
unto thee,’ says the Serpent, in the Gospel myth, ‘all the kingdoms
of the earth, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.’ The initiate
should reply to him, ‘I will not fall down, but thou shalt crouch at
my feet; thou wilt give me nothing, but I will make use of thee and
take whatever I wish. For _I am thy Lord and Master_!’ This is the real
meaning of the ambiguous response made by Jesus to the tempter....
Thus, the Devil is not an Entity. It is an errant force, as the name
signifies. An _odic or magnetic current_ formed by a chain (a circle)
of pernicious wills must create this evil spirit which the Gospel
calls _legion_, and which forces into the sea a herd of swine—another
evangelical allegory showing how base natures can be driven headlong by
the blind forces set in motion by error and sin.”[254]
In his extensive work on the mystical manifestations of human nature,
the German naturalist and philosopher, Maximilian Perty, has devoted
a whole chapter to the _Modern forms of Magic_. “The manifestations
of magical life,” he says in his Preface, “partially repose on quite
another order of things than the nature in which we are acquainted with
time, space, and causality; these manifestations can be experimented
with but little; they cannot be called out at our bidding, but may be {139}
observed and carefully followed whenever they occur in our presence;
we can only group them by analogy under certain divisions, and deduce
from them general principles and laws.” Thus, for Professor Perty,
who evidently belongs to the school of Schopenhauer, the possibility
and _naturalness_ of the phenomena which took place in the presence
of Kavindasami, the fakir, and are described by Louis Jacolliot, the
Orientalist, are fully demonstrated on that principle. The fakir was a
man who, through the entire subjugation of the matter of his corporeal
system has attained to that state of purification at which the spirit
becomes nearly freed from its prison,[255] and can produce wonders.
His _will_, nay, a simple desire of his has become creative force,
and he can command the elements and powers of nature. His body is no
more an impediment to him; hence he can converse “spirit to spirit,
breath to breath.” Under his extended palms, a seed, unknown to him
(for Jacolliot has chosen it at random among a variety of seeds, from a
bag, and planted it himself, after _marking_ it, in a flower pot), will
germinate instantly, and push its way through the soil. Developing in
less than two hours’ time to a size and height which, perhaps, under
ordinary circumstances, would require several days or weeks, it grows
miraculously under the very eyes of the perplexed experimenter, and
mockingly upsets every accepted formula in Botany. Is this a miracle?
By no means; it may be one, perhaps, if we take Webster’s definition,
that a miracle is “every event contrary to the _established_
constitution and course of things—a deviation from the _known_ laws of
nature.” But are our naturalists prepared to support the claim that
what they have once _established_ on observation is infallible? Or that
_every_ law of nature is known to them? In this instance, the “miracle”
is but a little _more_ prominent than the now well-known experiments
of General Pleasanton, of Philadelphia. While the vegetation and
fruitage of his vines were stimulated to an incredible activity by the
artificial violet light, the magnetic fluid emanating from the hands
of the fakir effected still more intense and rapid changes in the
vital function of the Indian plants. It attracted and concentrated the
_akasa_, or life-principle, on the germ.[256] His magnetism, obeying {140}
his will, drew up the _akasa_ in a concentrated current through the
plant towards his hands, and by keeping up an unintermitted flow for
the requisite space of time, the life-principle of the plant built
up cell after cell, layer after layer, with preternatural activity,
until the work was done. The life-principle is but a blind force
obeying a controlling influence. In the ordinary course of nature the
plant-protoplasm would have concentrated and directed it at a certain
established rate. This rate would have been controlled by the prevalent
atmospheric conditions; its growth being rapid or slow, and, in stalk
or head, in proportion to the amount of light, heat, and moisture
of the season. But the fakir, coming to the help of nature with his
powerful will and spirit purified from the contact with matter,[257]
condenses, so to speak, the essence of plant-life into its germ,
and forces it to maturity ahead of its time. This blind force being
totally submissive to his will, obeys it with servility. If he chose
to _imagine_ the plant as a monster, it would as surely become such,
as ordinarily it would grow in its natural shape; for the concrete
image—slave to the subjective model outlined in the imagination of the
fakir—is forced to follow the original in its least detail, as the hand
and brush of the painter follow the image which they copy from his
mind. The will of the fakir-conjurer forms an invisible but yet, to it,
perfectly objective matrix, in which the vegetable matter is caused to
deposit itself and assume the fixed shape. The will creates; for the
will in motion is _force_, and force produces _matter_.
If some persons object to the explanation on the ground that the fakir {141}
could by no means create the model in his imagination, since he was
kept ignorant by Jacolliot of the kind of seed he had selected for the
experiment; to these we will answer that the spirit of man is like that
of his Creator—omniscient in its essence. While in his natural state
the fakir did _not_, and _could not_ know whether it was a melon-seed,
or seed of any other plant; once entranced, _i.e._, bodily dead to all
outward appearance—the spirit, for which there exist neither distance,
material obstacle, nor space of time, experienced no difficulty in
perceiving the melon-seed, whether as it lay deeply buried in the
mud of the flower-pot, or reflected in the faithful picture-gallery
of Jacolliot’s brain. Our visions, portents, and other psychological
phenomena, all of which exist in nature, are corroborative of the above
fact.
And now, perhaps, we might as well meet at once another impending
objection. Indian _jugglers_, they will tell us, do the same, and
as well as the fakir, if we can believe newspapers and travellers’
narratives. Undoubtedly so; and moreover these strolling jugglers are
neither pure in their modes of living nor considered holy by any one;
neither by foreigners nor their own people. _They are generally_ FEARED
_and despised by the natives_, for they are _sorcerers_; men practising
the _black art_. While such a holy man as Kavindasami requires but the
help of his own divine soul, closely united with the astral spirit, and
the help of a few familiar _pitris_—pure, ethereal beings, who rally
around their elect brother in flesh—the sorcerer can summon to his
help but that class of spirits which we know as the elementals. Like
attracts like; and greed for money, impure purposes, and selfish views,
cannot attract any other spirits than those that the Hebrew kabalists
know as the _klippoth_, dwellers of _Asiah_, the fourth world, and the
Eastern magicians as the _afrits_, or elementary spirits of error, or
the _devs_.
This is how an English paper describes the astounding _trick_ of
plant-growth, as performed by Indian _jugglers_:
“An empty flower-pot was now placed upon the floor by the juggler, who
requested that his comrades might be allowed to bring up some garden
mould from the little plot of ground below. Permission being accorded,
the man went, and in two minutes returned with a small quantity of
fresh earth tied up in a corner of his chudder, which was deposited
in the flower-pot and lightly pressed down. Taking from his basket a
dry mango-stone, and handing it round to the company that they might
examine it, and satisfy themselves that it was really what it seemed
to be, the juggler scooped out a little earth from the centre of the
flower-pot and placed the stone in the cavity. He then turned the earth
lightly over it, and, having poured a little water over the surface, {142}
shut the flower-pot out of view by means of a sheet thrown over a
small triangle. And now, amid a full chorus of voices and rat-tat-tat
accompaniment of the tabor, the stone germinated; presently a section
of the cloth was drawn aside, and gave to view the tender shoot,
characterized by two long leaves of a blackish-brown color. The cloth
was readjusted, and the incantation resumed. Not long was it, however,
before the cloth was a second time drawn aside, and it was then seen
that the two first leaves had given place to several green ones, and
that the plant now stood nine or ten inches high. A third time, and the
foliage was much thicker, the sapling being about thirteen to fourteen
inches in height. A fourth time, and the little miniature tree, now
about eighteen inches in height, had ten or twelve mangoes about the
size of walnuts hanging about its branches. Finally, after the lapse of
three of four minutes, the cloth was altogether removed, and the fruit,
having the perfection of size, though not of maturity, was plucked
and handed to the spectators, and, on being tasted, was found to be
approaching ripeness, being sweetly acid.”
We may add to this, that we have witnessed the same experiment in
India and Thibet, and that more than once we provided the flower-pot
ourselves, by emptying an old tin box of some Liebig extracts. We
filled it with earth with our own hands, and planted in it a small root
handed to us by the conjurer, and until the experiment was ended never
once removed our eyes from the pot, which was placed _in our own room_.
The result was invariably the same as above described. Does the reader
imagine that any prestidigitator could produce the same manifestation
under the same conditions?
The learned Orioli, Corresponding Member of the Institute of France,
gives a number of instances which show the marvellous effects produced
by the will-power acting upon the invisible Proteus of the mesmerists.
“I have seen,” says he, “certain persons, who simply by pronouncing
certain words, arrest wild bulls and horses at headlong speed, and
suspend in its flight the arrow which cleaves the air.” Thomas
Bartholini affirms the same.
Says Du Potet: “When I trace upon the floor with chalk or charcoal this
figure ... a _fire_, a _light_ fixes itself on it. Soon it attracts to
itself the person who approaches it; it detains and fascinates him ...
and it is useless for him to try to cross the line. A _magic_ power
compels him to stand still. At the end of a few moments he yields,
uttering sobs.... _The cause is not in me_, it is in this entirely
kabalistic sign; in vain would you employ violence.”[258]
In a series of remarkable experiments made by Regazzoni in the {143}
presence of certain well-known French physicians, at Paris, on the 18th
of May, 1856, they assembled on one night together, and Regazzoni,
with his finger, traced an imaginary kabalistic line upon the floor,
over which he made a few rapid passes. It was agreed that the mesmeric
subjects, selected by the investigators and the committee for the
experiments, and all strangers to him, should be brought blindfold into
the room, and caused to walk toward the line, without a word being
spoken to indicate what was expected of them. The subjects moved along
unsuspiciously till they came to the invisible barrier, when, as it
is described, “their feet, _as if they had been suddenly seized and
riveted_, adhere to the ground, while their bodies, carried forward by
the rapid impulse of the motion, fall and strike the floor. The sudden
rigidity of their limbs was like that of a frozen corpse, and their
heels were rooted with mathematical precision upon the fatal line!”[259]
In another experiment it was agreed that upon one of the physicians
giving a certain signal by a glance of the eye, the blindfolded girl
should be made to fall on the ground, as if struck by lightning, by
the magnetic fluid emitted by Regazzoni’s will. She was placed at a
distance from the magnetizer; the signal was given, and instantly
the subject was felled to the earth, without a word being spoken or
a gesture made. Involuntarily one of the spectators stretched out
his hand as if to catch her; but Regazzoni, in a voice of thunder,
exclaimed, “Do not touch her! Let her fall; a magnetized subject is
never hurt by falling.” Des Mousseaux, who tells the story, says that
“marble is not more rigid than was her body; her head did not touch the
ground; one of her arms remained stretched in the air; one of her legs
was raised and the other horizontal. She remained in this unnatural
posture an indefinite time. Less rigid is a statue of bronze.”[260]
All the effects witnessed in the experiments of public lecturers upon
mesmerism, were produced by Regazzoni in perfection, and without one
spoken word to indicate what the subject was to do. He even by his
silent will produced the most surprising effects upon the physical
systems of persons totally unknown to him. Directions whispered by the
committee in Regazzoni’s ear were immediately obeyed by the subjects,
whose ears were stuffed with cotton, and whose eyes were bandaged.
Nay, in some cases it was not even necessary for them to express to
the magnetizer what they desired, for their own mental requests were
complied with with perfect fidelity.
Experiments of a similar character were made by Regazzoni in England,
at a distance of three hundred paces from the subject brought to him. {144}
The _jettatura_, or evil eye, is nothing but the direction of this
invisible fluid, charged with malicious will and hatred, from one
person to another, and sent out with the intention of harming him. It
may equally be employed for a good or evil purpose. _In the former case
it is magic; in the latter, sorcery._
What is the WILL? Can “exact science” tell? What is the nature of that
intelligent, intangible, and powerful something which reigns supreme
over all inert matter? The great Universal Idea willed, and the cosmos
sprang into existence. I _will_, and my limbs obey. I _will_, and, my
thought traversing space, which does not exist for it, envelops the
body of another individual who is not a part of myself, penetrates
through his pores, and, superseding his own faculties, if they are
weaker, forces him to a predetermined action. It acts like the fluid
of a galvanic battery on the limbs of a corpse. The mysterious effects
of attraction and repulsion are the _unconscious_ agents of that will;
fascination, such as we see exercised by some animals, by serpents over
birds, for instance, is a _conscious_ action of it, and the result
of thought. Sealing-wax, glass, and amber, when rubbed, _i.e._, when
the latent heat which exists in every substance is awakened, attract
light bodies; they exercise unconsciously, _will_; for inorganic as
well as organic matter possesses a particle of the _divine_ essence in
itself, however infinitesimally small it may be. And how could it be
otherwise? Notwithstanding that in the progress of its evolution it may
from beginning to end have passed through millions of various forms,
it must ever retain its germ-point of that _preëxistent matter_, which
is the first manifestation and emanation of the Deity itself. What is
then this inexplicable power of attraction but an atomical portion of
that essence that scientists and kabalists equally recognize as the
“principle of life” the _akasa_? Granted that the attraction exercised
by such bodies may be blind; but as we ascend higher the scale of the
organic beings in nature, we find this principle of life developing
attributes and faculties which become more determined and marked with
every rung of the endless ladder. Man, the most perfect of organized
beings on earth, in whom matter and spirit—_i.e._, _will_—are the most
developed and powerful, is alone allowed to give a conscious impulse to
that principle which emanates from him; and only he can impart to the
magnetic fluid opposite and various impulses without limit as to the
direction. “He wills,” says Du Potet, “and _organized_ matter obeys. It
has _no poles_.”
Dr. Brierre de Boismont, in his volume on _Hallucinations_, reviews a
wonderful variety of visions, apparitions, and ecstasies, generally
termed hallucinations. “We cannot deny,” he says, “that in certain
diseases we see developed a great surexcitation of sensibility, which {145}
lends to the senses a prodigious acuteness of perception. Thus, some
individuals will perceive at considerable distances, others will
announce the approach of persons who are really on their way, although
those present can neither hear nor see them coming.”[261]
A lucid patient, lying in his bed, announces the arrival of persons
to see whom he must possess _transmural vision_, and this faculty is
termed by Brierre de Boismont—_hallucination_. In our ignorance, we
have hitherto innocently supposed that in order to be rightly termed a
_hallucination_, a vision must be subjective. It must have an existence
only in the delirious brain of the patient. But if the latter announces
the visit of a person, miles away, and this person arrives at the very
moment predicted by the _seer_, then his vision was no more subjective,
but on the contrary perfectly _objective_, for he saw that person in
the act of coming. And how could the patient see, through solid bodies
and space, an object shut out from the reach of our mortal sight, if he
had not exercised his _spiritual_ eyes on that occasion? Coincidence?
Cabanis speaks of certain nervous disorders in which the patients
easily distinguished with the naked eye infusoria and other
microscopical beings which others could only perceive through powerful
lenses. “I have met subjects,” he says, “who saw in Cimmerian darkness
as well as in a lighted room; ...” others “who followed persons,
tracing them out like dogs, and recognizing by the smell objects
belonging to such persons or even such as had been only touched by
them, with a sagacity which was hitherto observed only in animals.”[262]
Exactly; because reason, which, as Cabanis says, develops only at the
expense and loss of natural instinct, is a Chinese wall slowly rising
on the soil of sophistry, and which finally shuts out man’s spiritual
perceptions of which the instinct is one of the most important
examples. Arrived at certain stages of physical prostration, when mind
and the reasoning faculties seem paralyzed through weakness and bodily
exhaustion, instinct—the spiritual _unity_ of the five senses—sees,
hears, feels, tastes, and smells, unimpaired by either time or space.
What do we know of the exact limits of mental action? How can a
physician take upon himself to distinguish the imaginary from the
real senses in a man who may be living a spiritual life, in a body so
exhausted of its usual vitality that it actually is unable to prevent
the soul from _oozing_ out from its prison?
The divine light through which, unimpeded by matter, the soul {146}
perceives things past, present, and to come, as though their rays
were focused in a mirror; the death-dealing bolt projected in an
instant of fierce anger or at the climax of long-festering hate; the
blessing wafted from a grateful or benevolent heart; and the curse
hurled at an object—offender or victim—all have to pass through that
universal agent, which under one impulse is the breath of God, and
under another—the venom of the devil. It was _discovered_ (?) by Baron
Reichenbach and called OD, whether intentionally or otherwise we cannot
say, but it is singular that a name should have been chosen which is
mentioned in the most ancient books of the Kabala.
Our readers will certainly inquire what then is this invisible _all_?
How is it that our scientific methods, however perfected, have never
discovered any of the magical properties contained in it? To this we
can answer, that it is no reason because modern scientists are ignorant
of them that it should not possess all the properties with which the
ancient philosophers endowed it. Science rejects many a thing to-day
which she may find herself forced to accept to-morrow. A little less
than a century ago the Academy denied Franklin’s electricity, and, at
the present day, we can hardly find a house without a conductor on its
roof. Shooting at the barn-door, the Academy missed the barn itself.
Modern scientists, by their wilful skepticism and learned ignorance, do
this very frequently.
Emepht, the supreme, first principle, produced an egg; by brooding
over which, and permeating the substance of it with its own vivifying
essence, the germ contained within was developed; and _Phtha_, the
active creative principle proceeded from it, and began his work.
From the boundless expanse of cosmic matter, which had formed itself
under his breath, or _will_, this cosmic matter—astral light, æther,
fire-mist, principle of life—it matters not how we may call it, this
creative principle, or, as our modern philosophy terms it, law of
evolution, by setting in motion the potencies latent in it, formed
suns and stars, and satellites; controlled their emplacement by the
immutable law of harmony, and peopled them “with every form and
quality of life.” In the ancient Eastern mythologies, the cosmogonic
myth states that there was but water (the father) and the prolific
slime (the mother, _Ilus_ or _Hylè_), from which crept forth the
mundane snake-_matter_. It was the god _Phanes_, the revealed one,
the Word, or _logos_. How willingly this myth was accepted, even by
the Christians who compiled the New Testament, may be easily inferred
from the following fact: Phanes, the revealed god, is represented in
this snake-symbol as a _protogonos_, a being furnished with the heads
of a _man_, a hawk or an eagle, a bull—_taurus_, and a lion, with
wings on both sides. The heads relate to the zodiac, and typify the
four seasons of the year, for the _mundane_ serpent is the _mundane_ {147}
year, while the serpent itself is the symbol of Kneph, the hidden,
or _unrevealed_ deity—God the Father. Time is winged, therefore the
serpent is represented with wings. If we remember that each of the four
evangelists is represented as having near him one of the described
animals—grouped together in Solomon’s triangle in the pentacle of
Ezekiel, and to be found in the four cherubs or sphinxes of the sacred
arch—we will perhaps understand the secret meaning, as well as the
reason why the early Christians adopted this symbol; and how it is
that the present Roman Catholics and the Greeks of the Oriental Church
still represent these animals in the pictures of their evangelists
which sometimes accompany the four _Gospels_. We will also understand
why Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons, had so insisted upon the necessity of
the _fourth_ gospel; giving as a reason that there could not be less
than four of them, as there were _four_ zones in the world, and four
principal winds coming from the four cardinal points, etc.[263]
According to one of the Egyptian myths, the phantom-form of the isle of
Chemmis (_Chemi_, ancient Egypt), which floats on the ethereal waves
of the empyrean sphere, was called into being by Horus-Apollo, the
sun-god, who caused it to evolve out of the mundane egg.
In the cosmogonical poem of _Völuspa_ (the song of the prophetess),
which contains the Scandinavian legends of the very dawn of ages,
the phantom-germ of the universe is represented as lying in the
_Ginnunga-gap_—or the cup of illusion, a boundless and void abyss.
In this world’s matrix, formerly a region of night and desolation,
_Nebelheim_ (the Mist-place) dropped a ray of cold light (æther),
which overflowed this cup and froze in it. Then the Invisible blew a
scorching wind which dissolved the frozen waters and cleared the mist.
These waters, called the streams of _Elivâgar_, distilled in vivifying
drops which, falling down, created the earth and the giant _Ymir_, who
only had “the semblance of man” (male principle). With him was created
the cow, _Audhumla_[264] (female principle), from whose udder flowed
_four_ streams of milk,[265] which diffused themselves throughout space
(the astral light in its purest emanation). The cow Audhumla produces a
_superior_ being, called _Bur_, handsome and powerful, by licking the
stones that were covered with _mineral salt_.
Now, if we take into consideration that this mineral was universally {148}
regarded by ancient philosophers as one of the chief formative
principles in organic creation; by the alchemists as the universal
menstruum, which, they said, was to be wrought from water; and by every
one else, even as it is regarded now by science as well as in the
popular ideas, to be an indispensable ingredient for man and beast;
we may readily comprehend the hidden wisdom of this allegory of the
creation of man. Paracelsus calls salt “the centre of water, wherein
metals ought to die,” etc., and Van Helmont terms the _Alkahest_,
“_summum et felicissimum omnium salium_,” the most successful of all
salts.
In the _Gospel according to Matthew_, Jesus says: “Ye are the _salt of
the earth_: but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it
be salted?” and following the parable he adds: “Ye are _the light_ of
the world” (v. 14). This is more than an allegory; these words point
to a direct and unequivocal meaning in relation to the spiritual and
physical organisms of man in his dual nature, and show, moreover, a
knowledge of the “secret doctrine,” the direct traces of which we find
equally in the oldest ancient and current popular traditions, in both
the Old and New Testaments, and in the writings of the ancient and
mediæval mystics and philosophers.
But to return to our _Edda_-legend. Ymir, the giant, falls asleep, and
sweats profusely. This perspiration causes the pit of his left arm to
generate out of that place a man and a woman, while his foot produces
a son for them. Thus, while the mythic “cow” gives being to a race
of superior spiritual men, the giant Ymir begets a race of evil and
depraved men, the Hrimthursen, or frost-giants. Comparing notes with
the Hindu _Vedas_, we find it then, with slight modifications, the
same cosmogonic legend in substance and details. Brahma, as soon as
Bhagaveda, the Supreme God, endows him with creative powers, produces
animated beings, wholly spiritual at first. The Dejotas, inhabitants
of the Surg’s (the celestial) region, are unfit to live on earth,
therefore Brahma creates the Daints (giants, who become the dwellers of
the Patals, the lower regions of space), who are also unfit to inhabit
Mirtlok (the earth). To palliate the evil, the creative power evolves
_from his mouth_ the first Brahman, who thus becomes the progenitor
of our race; from his right arm Brahma creates Raettris, the warrior,
and from his left Shaterany, the wife of Raettris. Then their son
Bais springs from the right foot of the creator, and his wife Basany
from the left. While in the Scandinavian legend Bur (the son of the
cow Audhumla), a _superior_ being, marries Besla, a daughter of the
depraved race of giants, in the Hindu tradition the first Brahman
marries Daintary, also a daughter of the race of the giants; and in
_Genesis_ we see the sons of God taking for wives the daughters of men, {149}
and likewise producing mighty men of old; the whole establishing an
unquestionable identity of origin between the Christian inspired Book,
and the heathen “fables” of Scandinavia and Hindustan. The traditions
of nearly every other nation, if examined, will yield a like result.
What modern cosmogonist could compress within so simple a symbol as the
Egyptian serpent in a circle such a world of meaning? Here we have, in
this creature, the whole philosophy of the universe: matter vivified by
spirit, and the two conjointly evolving out of chaos (Force) everything
that was to be. To signify that the elements are fast bound in this
cosmic matter, which the serpent symbolizes, the Egyptians tied its
tail _into a knot_.
There is one more important emblem connected with the sloughing of
the serpent’s skin, which, so far as we are aware, has never been
heretofore noticed by our symbolists. As the reptile upon casting
his coat becomes freed from a casing of gross matter, which cramped
a body grown too large for it, and resumes its existence with
renewed activity, so _man, by casting off the gross material body,
enters upon the next stage of his existence with enlarged powers and
quickened vitality_. Inversely, the Chaldean Kabalists tell us that
primeval man, who, contrary to the Darwinian theory was purer, wiser,
and far more spiritual, as shown by the myths of the Scandinavian
Bur, the Hindu Dejotas, and the Mosaic “sons of God,“in short, of a
far higher nature than the man of the present Adamic race, became
_despiritualized_ or tainted with matter, and then, for the first
time, was given the _fleshly body_, which is typified in _Genesis_ in
that profoundly-significant verse: “Unto Adam also and to his wife did
the Lord God _make coats of skin_, and clothed them.”[266] Unless the
commentators would make of the First Cause a _celestial tailor_, what
else can the apparently absurd words mean, but that the spiritual man
had reached, through the progress of involution, to that point where
matter, predominating over and conquering spirit, had transformed him
into the physical man, or the second Adam, of the second chapter of
_Genesis_?
This kabalistical doctrine is much more elaborated in the _Book of
Jasher_.[267] In chapter vii., these garments of skin are taken by Noah
into the ark, he having obtained them by inheritance from Methuselah
and Enoch, who had them from Adam and his wife. Ham steals them from {150}
his father Noah; gives them “in secret” to Cush, who conceals them from
his sons and brothers, and passes them to Nimrod.
While some Kabalists, and even archæologists say that “Adam, Enoch,
and Noah might, in outward appearance, be different men, but they were
really the self-same divine person.”[268] Others explain that between
Adam and Noah there intervened several cycles. That is to say, that
every one of the antediluvian patriarchs stood as the representative of
a race which had its place in a succession of cycles; and each of which
races was less spiritual than its predecessor. Thus Noah, though a good
man, could not have borne comparison with his ancestor, Enoch, who
“walked with God and did not die.” Hence the allegorical interpretation
which makes Noah have this coat of skin by inheritance from the second
Adam and Enoch, but not wear it himself, for if otherwise, Ham could
not have stolen it. But Noah and his children bridged the flood; and
while the former belonged to the old and still spiritual antediluvian
generation, insomuch as he was selected from all mankind for his
purity, his children were _post_-diluvian. The coat of skin worn by
Cush “in secret,“_i. e._, when his spiritual nature began to be tainted
by the material—is placed on Nimrod, the most powerful and strongest
of physical men on this side of the flood—the last remnant of the
antediluvian giants.[269]
In the Scandinavian legend, Ymir, the giant, is slain by the sons of
Bur, and the streams of blood flowing from his wounds were so copious
that the flood drowned the whole race of ice and frost giants, and
Bergelmir alone of that race was saved, with his wife, by taking refuge
in a bark; which fact permitted him to transmit a new branch of giants
from the old stock. But all the sons of Bur remained untouched by the
flood.[270]
When the symbolism of this diluvian legend is unravelled, one perceives
at once the real meaning of the allegory. The giant Ymir typifies
the primitive rude organic _matter_, the blind cosmical forces, in
their chaotic state, before they received the intelligent impulse of
the Divine Spirit which set them into a regular motion dependent on
immovable laws. The progeny of Bur are the “sons of God,” or the minor
gods mentioned by Plato in the _Timæus_, and who were intrusted, as
he expresses it, with the creation of men; for we see them taking the
mangled remains of Ymir to the Ginnunga-gap, the chaotic abyss, and
employing them for the creation of our world. His blood goes to form
oceans and rivers; his bones, the mountains; his teeth, the rocks and {151}
cliffs; his hair, the trees, etc.; while his skull forms the heavenly
vault, supported by four pillars representing the four cardinal points.
From the eyebrows of Ymir was created the future abode of man—Midgard.
This abode (the earth), says the _Edda_, in order to be correctly
described in all its minute particulars, must be conceived as _round
as a ring_, or as a disk, floating in the midst of the Celestial
Ocean (Ether). It is encircled by Yörmungand, the gigantic Midgard
or Earth Serpent, holding its tail in its mouth. This is the mundane
snake, matter and spirit, combined product and emanation of Ymir, the
gross rudimental matter, and of the spirit of the “sons of God,” who
fashioned and created all forms. This emanation is the astral light of
the Kabalists, and the as yet problematical, and hardly known, æther,
or the “hypothetical agent of great elasticity” of our physicists.
How sure the ancients were of this doctrine of man’s trinitarian nature
may be inferred from the same Scandinavian legend of the creation
of mankind. According to the _Völuspa_, Odin, Hönir, and Lodur, who
are the progenitors of our race, found in one of their walks on the
ocean-beach, two sticks floating on the waves, “powerless and without
destiny.” Odin breathed in them the breath of life; Hönir endowed
them with soul and motion; and Lodur with beauty, speech, sight,
and hearing. The man they called _Askr_—the ash,[271] and the woman
_Embla_—the alder. These first men are placed in Midgard (mid-garden,
or Eden) and thus inherit, from their creators, matter or inorganic
life; mind, or soul; and pure spirit; the first corresponding to that
part of their organism which sprung from the remains of Ymir, the
giant-matter, the second from the _Æsir_, or gods, the descendants
of Bur, and the third from the _Vanr_, or the representative of pure
spirit.
Another version of the _Edda_ makes our visible universe spring from
beneath the luxuriant branches of the mundane tree—the Yggdrasill, the
tree with the _three_ roots. Under the first root runs the fountain
of life, Urdar; under the second is the famous well of Mimer, in
which lie deeply buried Wit and Wisdom. Odin, the Alfadir, asks for
a draught of this water; he gets it, but finds himself obliged to
pledge one of his eyes for it; the eye being in this case the symbol
of the Deity revealing itself in the wisdom of its own creation; for
Odin leaves it at the bottom of the deep well. The care of the mundane
tree is intrusted to three maidens (the Norns or Parcæ), Urdhr,
Verdandi, and Skuld—or the Present, the Past, and the Future. Every {152}
morning, while fixing the term of human life, they draw water from the
Urdar-fountain, and sprinkle with it the roots of the mundane tree,
that it may live. The exhalations of the ash, Yggdrasill, condense,
and falling down upon our earth call into existence and change of
form every portion of the inanimate matter. This tree is the symbol
of the _universal_ Life, organic as well as inorganic; its emanations
represent the spirit which vivifies every form of creation; and of
its three roots, one extends to heaven, the second to the dwelling of
the magicians—giants, inhabitants of the _lofty mountains_—and at the
third, under which is the spring Hvergelmir, gnaws the monster Nidhögg,
who constantly leads mankind into evil. The Thibetans have also their
mundane tree, and the legend is of an untold antiquity. With them
it is called _Zampun_. The first of its three roots also extends to
heaven, to the top of the highest mountains; the second passes down to
the lower region; the third remains midway, and reaches the east. The
mundane tree of the Hindus is the _Aswatha_.[272] Its branches are the
components of the visible world; and its leaves the _Mantras_ of the
Vedas, symbols of the universe in its intellectual or moral character.
Who can study carefully the ancient religious and cosmogonic myths
without perceiving that this striking similitude of conceptions, in
their exoteric form and esoteric spirit, is the result of no mere
coincidence, but manifests a concurrent design? It shows that already
in those ages which are shut out from our sight by the impenetrable
mist of tradition, human religious thought developed in uniform
sympathy in every portion of the globe. Christians call this adoration
of nature in her most concealed verities—Pantheism. But if the latter,
which worships and reveals to us God in space in His only possible
objective form—that of visible nature—perpetually reminds humanity of
Him who created it, and a religion of theological dogmatism only serves
to conceal Him the more from our sight, which is the better adapted to
the needs of mankind?
Modern science insists upon the doctrine of evolution; so do human
reason and the “secret doctrine,” and the idea is corroborated by
the ancient legends and myths, and even by the Bible itself when it
is read between the lines. We see a flower slowly developing from
a bud, and the bud from its seed. But whence the latter, with all
its predetermined programme of physical transformation, and its
invisible, therefore _spiritual_ forces which gradually develop its
form, color, and odor? The word _evolution_ speaks for itself. The
germ of the present human race must have preëxisted in the parent {153}
of this race, as the seed, in which lies hidden the flower of next
summer, was developed in the capsule of its parent-flower; the parent
may be but _slightly_ different, but it still differs from its future
progeny. The antediluvian ancestors of the present elephant and lizard
were, perhaps, the mammoth and the plesiosaurus; why should not the
progenitors of our human race have been the “giants” of the _Vedas_,
the _Völuspa_, and the Book of _Genesis_? While it is positively
absurd to believe the “transformation of species” to have taken place
according to some of the more materialistic views of the evolutionists,
it is but natural to think that each genus, beginning with the mollusks
and ending with monkey-man, has modified from its own primordial
and distinctive form. Supposing that we concede that “animals have
descended from at most only four or five progenitors;”[273] and that
even _à la rigueur_ “all the organic beings which have ever lived
on _this earth_ have descended from some one primordial form;”[274]
still no one but a stone-blind materialist, one utterly devoid of
intuitiveness, can seriously expect to see “in the distant future ...
psychology based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement
of each mental power and capacity by gradation.”[275]
Physical man, as a product of evolution, may be left in the hands
of the man of exact science. None but he can throw light upon the
_physical_ origin of the race. But, we must positively deny the
materialist the same privilege as to the question of man’s psychical
and spiritual evolution, for he and his highest faculties _cannot_ be
proved on any conclusive evidence to be “as much products of evolution
as the humblest plant or the lowest worm.”[276]
Having said so much, we will now proceed to show the
evolution-hypothesis of the old Brahmans, as embodied by them in the
allegory of the mundane tree. The Hindus represent their mythical
tree, which they call _Aswatha_, in a way which differs from that of
the Scandinavians. It is described by them as growing in a reversed
position, the branches extending downward and the roots upward; the
former typifying the external world of sense, _i.e._, the visible
cosmical universe, and the latter the invisible world of spirit,
because the roots have their _genesis_ in the heavenly regions where,
from the world’s creation, humanity has placed its invisible deity.
The creative energy having originated in the primordial point, the
religious symbols of every people are so many illustrations of this
metaphysical hypothesis expounded by Pythagoras, Plato, and other {154}
philosophers. “These Chaldeans,” says Philo,[277] “were of opinion that
the Kosmos, among the things that exist, is a single point, either
being itself God (Theos) or that in it is God, comprehending the soul
of all the things.”
The Egyptian Pyramid also symbolically represents this idea of the
mundane tree. Its apex is the mystic link between heaven and earth, and
stands for the root, while the base represents the spreading branches,
extending to the four cardinal points of the universe of matter. It
conveys the idea that all things had their origin in spirit—evolution
having originally begun from above and proceeded downward, instead
of the reverse, as taught in the Darwinian theory. In other words,
there has been a gradual materialization of forms until a fixed
ultimate of debasement is reached. This point is that at which the
doctrine of modern evolution enters into the arena of speculative
hypothesis. Arrived at this period we will find it easier to understand
Haeckel’s _Anthropogeny_, which traces the pedigree of man “from its
protoplasmic root, sodden in the mud of seas which existed before
the oldest of the fossiliferous rocks were deposited,” according to
Professor Huxley’s exposition. We may believe man evolved “by gradual
modification of a mammal of ape-like organization” still easier when we
remember that (though in a more condensed and less elegant, but still
as comprehensible, phraseology) the same theory was said by Berosus
to have been taught many thousands of years before his time by the
man-fish Oannes or Dagon, the semi-demon of Babylonia.[278] We may add,
as a fact of interest, that this ancient theory of evolution is not
only embalmed in allegory and legend, but also depicted upon the walls
of certain temples in India, and, in a fragmentary form, has been found
in those of Egypt and on the slabs of Nimroud and Nineveh, excavated by
Layard.
But what lies back of the Darwinian line of descent? So far as he is
concerned nothing but “unverifiable hypotheses.” For, as he puts it,
he views all beings “as the lineal descendants of some few beings
which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was
deposited.”[279] He does not attempt to show us who these “few beings”
were. But it answers our purpose quite as well, for in the admission of
their existence at all, resort to the ancients for corroboration and
elaboration of the idea receives the stamp of scientific approbation.
With all the changes that our globe has passed through as regards
temperature, climate, soil, and—if we may be pardoned, in view of
recent developments—its electro-magnetic condition, he would be bold {155}
indeed who dare say that anything in present science contradicts the
ancient hypothesis of ante-Silurian man. The flint-axes first found by
Boucher de Perthes, in the valley of the Sômme, prove that men must
have existed at a period so remote as to be beyond calculation. If we
believe Büchner, man must have lived even during and before the glacial
epoch, a subdivision of the quaternary or diluvial period probably
extending very far back in it. But who can tell what the next discovery
has in store for us?
Now, if we have indisputable proof that man has existed so long as
this, there must have been wonderful modifications of his physical
system, corresponding with the changes of climate and atmosphere. Does
not this seem to show by analogy that, tracing backward, there may have
been other modifications, which fitted the most remote progenitors of
the “frost-giants” to live even contemporaneously with the Devonian
fishes or the Silurian mollusks? True, they left no flint-hatchets
behind them, nor any bones or cave-deposits; but, if the ancients are
correct, the races at that time were composed not only of giants,
or “mighty men of renown,” but also of “sons of God.” If those who
believe in the evolution of _spirit_ as firmly as the materialists
believe in that of _matter_ are charged with teaching “unverifiable
hypotheses,” how readily can they retort upon their accusers by saying
that, by _their_ own confession, their physical evolution is still
“an unverified, if not actually an unverifiable hypothesis.”[280] The
former have at least the inferential proof of legendary myth, the vast
antiquity of which is admitted by both philologists and archæologists;
while their antagonists have nothing of a similar nature, _unless they
help themselves to a portion of the ancient picture-writings, and
suppress the rest_.
It is more than fortunate that, while the works of some men of
science—who have justly won their great reputations—will flatly
contradict our hypotheses, the researches and labors of others not
less eminent seem to fully confirm our views. In the recent work of
Mr. Alfred R. Wallace, _The Geographical Distribution of Animals_, we
find the author seriously favoring the idea of “some slow process of
development” of the present species from others which have preceded
them, his idea extending back over an innumerable series of cycles.
And if animals, why not animal man, preceded still farther back by a
thoroughly “spiritual” one—a “son of God”?
And now, we may once more return to the symbolology of the olden times,
and their physico-religious myths. Before we close this work, we hope
to demonstrate more or less successfully how closely the conceptions of
the latter were allied with many of the achievements of modern science {156}
in physics and natural philosophy. Under the emblematical devices and
peculiar phraseology of the priesthood of old lie latent hints of
sciences as yet undiscovered during the present cycle. Well acquainted
as may be a scholar with the hieratic writing and hieroglyphical
system of the Egyptians, he must first of all learn to sift their
records. He has to assure himself, compasses and rule in hand, that
the picture-writing he is examining fits, to a line, certain fixed
geometrical figures which are the hidden keys to such records, before
he ventures on an interpretation.
But there are myths which speak for themselves. In this class we may
include the double-sexed first creators, of every cosmogony. The Greek
Zeus-Zēn (æther), and Chthonia (the chaotic earth) and Metis (the
water), his wives; Osiris and Isis-Latona—the former god representing
also ether—the first emanation of the Supreme Deity, Amun, the primeval
source of light; the goddess earth and water again; Mithras,[281] the
rock-born god, the symbol of the male mundane-fire, or the personified
primordial light, and Mithra, the fire-goddess, at once his mother and
his wife; the pure element of fire (the active, or male principle)
regarded as light and heat, in conjunction with earth and water, or
matter (female or passive elements of cosmical generation). Mithras
is the son of Bordj, the Persian mundane mountain,[282] from which he
flashes out as a radiant ray of light. Brahma, the fire-god, and his
prolific consort; and the Hindu _Unghi_, the refulgent deity, from
whose body issue a thousand streams of glory and _seven_ tongues of
flame, and in whose honor the Sagniku Brahmans preserve to this day
a _perpetual_ fire; Siva, personated by the mundane mountain of the
Hindus—the _Meru_ (Himalaya). This terrific fire-god, who is said in
the legend to have descended from heaven, like the Jewish Jehovah, _in
a pillar of fire_, and a dozen of other archaic, double-sexed deities,
all loudly proclaim their hidden meaning. And what can these dual
myths mean but the physico-chemical principle of primordial creation?
The first revelation of the Supreme Cause in its triple manifestation
of spirit, force, and matter; the divine _correlation_, at its
starting-point of evolution, allegorized as the marriage of _fire_
and water, products of electrifying spirit, union of the male active
principle with the female passive element, which become the parents of
their tellurian child, cosmic matter, the _prima materia_, whose spirit
is ether, the ASTRAL LIGHT!
Thus all the world-mountains and mundane eggs, the mundane trees, and
the mundane snakes and pillars, may be shown to embody scientifically {157}
demonstrated truths of natural philosophy. All of these mountains
contain, with very trifling variations, the allegorically-expressed
description of primal cosmogony; the mundane trees, that of subsequent
evolution of spirit and matter; the mundane snakes and pillars,
symbolical memorials of the various attributes of this double evolution
in its endless correlation of cosmic forces. Within the mysterious
recesses of the mountain—the matrix of the universe—the gods (powers)
prepare the atomic germs of organic life, and at the same time the
life-drink, which, when tasted, awakens in man-matter the man-_spirit_.
The soma, the sacrificial drink of the Hindus, is that sacred beverage.
For, at the creation of the _prima materia_, while the grossest
portions of it were used for the physical embryo-world, the more
divine essence of it pervaded the universe, invisibly permeating and
enclosing within its ethereal waves the newly-born infant, developing
and stimulating it to activity as it slowly evolved out of the eternal
chaos.
From the poetry of abstract conception, these mundane myths gradually
passed into the concrete images of cosmic symbols, as archæology now
finds them. The snake, which plays such a prominent part in the imagery
of the ancients, was degraded by the absurd interpretation of the
serpent of the Book of _Genesis_ into a synonym of Satan, the Prince
of Darkness, whereas it is the most ingenious of all the myths in its
various symbolisms. For one, as _agathodaimon_, it is the emblem of
the healing art and of the immortality of man. It encircles the images
of most of the sanitary or hygienic gods. The _cup of health_, in the
Egyptian Mysteries, was entwined by serpents. As evil can only arise
from an extreme in good, the serpent, under some other aspects, became
typical of matter; which, the more it recedes from its primal spiritual
source, the more it becomes subject of evil. In the oldest Egyptian
imagery, as in the cosmogonic allegories of Kneph, the mundane snake,
when typifying matter, is usually represented as contained within a
circle; he lies straight across its equator, thus indicating that the
universe of astral light, out of which the physical world evolved,
while bounding the latter, is itself bound by Emepht, or the Supreme
First Cause. _Phtha_ producing _Ra_, and the myriad forms to which he
gives life, are shown as creeping out of the mundane egg, because it
is the most familiar form of that in which is deposited and developed
the germ of every living being. When the serpent represents eternity
and immortality, it encircles the world, biting its tail, and thus
offering no solution of continuity. It then becomes the astral light.
The disciples of the school of Pherecydes taught that ether (Zeus or
Zēn) is the highest empyrean heaven, which encloses the supernal world,
and its light (the astral) is the concentrated primordial element.
Such is the origin of the serpent, metamorphosed in Christian ages {158}
into Satan. It is the _Od_, the _Ob_, and the _Aour_ of Moses and the
Kabalists. When in its passive state, when it acts on those who are
unwittingly drawn within its current, the astral light is the _Ob_, or
Python. Moses was determined to exterminate all those who, sensitive
to its influence, allowed themselves to fall under the easy control
of the vicious beings which move in the astral waves like fish in the
water; beings who surround us, and whom Bulwer-Lytton calls in _Zanoni_
“the dwellers of the threshold.” It becomes the _Od_, as soon as it is
vivified by the _conscious efflux_ of an immortal soul; for then the
astral currents are acting under the guidance of either an adept, a
pure spirit, or an able mesmerizer, who is pure himself and knows how
to direct the blind forces. In such cases even a high Planetary Spirit,
one of the class of beings that have never been embodied (though there
are many among these hierarchies who have lived on our earth), descends
occasionally to our sphere, and purifying the surrounding atmosphere
enables the _subject_ to see, and opens in him the springs of true
divine prophecy. As to the term _Aoûr_, the word is used to designate
certain occult properties of the universal agent. It pertains more
directly to the domain of the alchemist, and is of no interest to the
general public.
The author of the _Homoiomerian_ system of philosophy, Anaxagoras
of Clazomenè, firmly believed that the spiritual prototypes of all
things, as well as their elements, were to be found in the boundless
ether, where they were generated, whence they evolved, and whither they
returned from earth. In common with the Hindus who had personified
their Akas’a (sky or ether) and made of it a deific entity, the Greeks
and Latins had deified Æther. Virgil calls Zeus, _pater omnipotens
æther_;[283] _Magnus_, the great god, Ether.
These beings above alluded to are the elemental spirits of the
Kabalists,[284] whom the Christian clergy denounce as “devils,” the
enemies of mankind.
“Already Tertullian,” gravely remarks Des Mousseaux, in his chapter on {159}
the devils, “has _formally_ discovered the secret of their cunning.”
A priceless discovery, that. And now that we have learned so much of
the mental labors of the holy fathers and their achievements in astral
anthropology, need we be surprised at all, if, in the zeal of their
spiritual explorations, they have so far neglected their own planet as
at times to deny not only its right to motion but even its sphericity?
And this is what we find in Langhorne, the translator of _Plutarch_:
“Dionysius of Halicarnassus [L. ii.] is of opinion that Numa built
the temple of Vesta in a _round_ form, to represent the figure of the
earth, for by Vesta they meant the earth.” Moreover, Philolaüs, in
common with all other Pythagoreans, held that the element of fire was
placed in the centre of the universe; and Plutarch, speaking on the
subject, remarks of the Pythagoreans that “the earth they suppose not
to be without motion, _nor_ situated in the centre of the world, but to
make its revolution round the sphere of fire, being neither one of the
most valuable, nor principal parts of the great machine.” Plato, too,
is reported to have been of the same opinion. It appears, therefore,
that the Pythagoreans anticipated Galileo’s _discovery_.
The existence of such an invisible universe being once admitted—as
seems likely to be the fact if the speculations of the authors of the
_Unseen Universe_ are ever accepted by their colleagues—many of the
phenomena, hitherto mysterious and inexplicable, become plain. It acts
on the organism of the magnetized mediums, it penetrates and saturates
them through and through, either directed by the powerful will of a
mesmerizer, or by unseen beings who achieve the same result. Once that
the silent operation is performed, the astral or sidereal phantom of
the mesmerized subject quits its paralyzed, earthly casket, and, after
having roamed in the boundless space, alights at the threshold of the
mysterious “bourne.” For it, the gates of the portal which marks the
entrance to the “silent land,” are now but partially ajar; they will
fly wide open before the soul of the entranced somnambulist only on
that day when, united with its higher immortal essence, it will have
quitted forever its mortal frame. Until then, the seer or seeress
can look but through a chink; it depends on the acuteness of the
clairvoyant’s spiritual sight to see more or less through it.
The trinity in unity is an idea which all the ancient nations held in {160}
common. The three Dejotas—the Hindu Trimurti; the _Three Heads_ of the
Jewish Kabala.[285] “Three heads are hewn in one another and over one
another.” The trinity of the Egyptians and that of the mythological
Greeks were alike representations of the first triple emanation
containing two male and one female principles. It is the union of
the male _Logos_, or wisdom, the revealed Deity, with the female
_Aura_ or _Anima Mundi_—“the holy _Pneuma_,” which is the _Sephira_
of the Kabalists and the _Sophia_ of the refined Gnostics—that
produced all things visible and invisible. While the true metaphysical
interpretation of this universal dogma remained within the sanctuaries,
the Greeks, with their poetical instincts, impersonated it in many
charming myths. In the _Dionysiacs_ of Nonnus, the god Bacchus, among
other allegories, is represented as in love with the soft, genial
breeze (the Holy Pneuma), under the name of _Aura Placida_.[286] And
now we will leave Godfrey Higgins to speak: “When the _ignorant_
Fathers were constructing their calendar, they made out of this gentle
zephyr two Roman Catholic saints!!” SS. Aura and Placida;—nay, they
even went so far as to transfer the jolly god into St. Bacchus, and
actually _show his coffin and relics at Rome_. The festival of the two
“blessed saints,” Aura and Placida, occurs on the 5th of October, close
to the festival of St. Bacchus.[287]
How far more poetical, and how much greater the religious spirit to
be found in the “heathen” Norse legends of creation! In the boundless
abyss of the mundane pit, the Ginnunga-gap, where rage in blind fury
and conflict cosmic matter and the primordial forces, suddenly blows
the thaw-wind. It is the “unrevealed God,” who sends his beneficent
breath from Muspellheim, the sphere of empyreal fire, within whose
glowing rays dwells this great Being, far beyond the limits of the
world of matter; and the _animus_ of the Unseen, the Spirit brooding
over the dark, abysmal waters, calls order out of chaos, and once
having given the impulse to all creation the FIRST CAUSE retires, and
remains for evermore in _statu abscondito_![288]
There is both religion and science in these Scandinavian songs of
heathendom. As an example of the latter, take the conception of Thor,
the son of Odin. Whenever this Hercules of the North would grasp the
handle of his terrible weapon, the thunderbolt or electric hammer,
he is obliged to put on his _iron_ gantlets. He also wears a magical {161}
belt known as the “_girdle of strength_,” which, whenever girded about
his person, greatly augments his celestial power. He rides upon a car
drawn by two rams with silver bridles, and his awful brow is encircled
by a wreath of stars. His chariot has a pointed iron pole, and the
spark-scattering wheels continually roll over rumbling thunder-clouds.
He hurls his hammer with resistless force against the rebellious
frost-giants, whom he dissolves and annihilates. When he repairs to the
Urdar fountain, where the gods meet in conclave to decide the destinies
of humanity, he alone goes on foot, the rest of the deities being
mounted. He walks, for fear that in crossing Bifrost (the rainbow), the
many-hued Æsir-bridge, he might set it on fire with his thunder-car, at
the same time causing the Urdar waters to boil.
Rendered into plain English, how can this myth be interpreted but as
showing that the Norse legend-makers were thoroughly acquainted with
electricity? Thor, the euhemerization of electricity, handles his
peculiar element only when protected by gloves of _iron_, which is its
natural conductor. His belt of strength is a closed circuit, around
which the isolated current is compelled to run instead of diffusing
itself through space. When he rushes with his car through the clouds,
he is electricity in its _active_ condition, as the sparks scattering
from his wheels and the rumbling thunder of the clouds testify. The
pointed iron pole of the chariot is suggestive of the lightning-rod;
the two rams which serve as his coursers are the familiar ancient
symbols of the male or generative power; their silver bridles typify
the female principle, for silver is the metal of Luna, Astartè, Diana.
Therefore in the ram and his bridle we see combined the active and
passive principles of nature in opposition, one rushing forward,
and the other restraining, while both are in subordination to the
world-permeating, electrical principle, which gives them their impulse.
With the electricity supplying the impulse, and the male and female
principles combining and recombining in endless correlation, the
result is—evolution of visible nature, the crown-glory of which is
the planetary system, which in the mythic Thor is allegorized by the
circlet of glittering orbs which bedeck his brow. When in his active
condition, his awful thunderbolts destroy everything, even the lesser
other Titanic forces. But he goes afoot over the rainbow bridge,
Bifrost, because to mingle with other less powerful gods than himself,
he is obliged to be in a _latent_ state, which he could not be in his
car; otherwise he would set on fire and annihilate all. The meaning of
the Urdar-fountain, that Thor is afraid to make boil, and the cause
of his reluctance, will only be comprehended by our physicists when
the reciprocal electro-magnetic relations of the innumerable members
of the planetary system, now just suspected, shall be thoroughly
determined. Glimpses of the truth are given in the recent scientific {162}
essays of Professors Mayer and Sterry Hunt. The ancient philosophers
believed that not only volcanos, but boiling springs were caused by
concentrations of underground electric currents, and that this same
cause produced mineral deposits of various natures, which form curative
springs. If it be objected that this fact is not distinctly stated by
the ancient authors, who, in the opinion of our century were hardly
acquainted with electricity, we may simply answer that not all the
works embodying ancient wisdom are now extant among our scientists. The
clear and cool waters of Urdar were required for the daily irrigation
of the mystical mundane tree; and if they had been disturbed by Thor,
or active electricity, they would have been converted into mineral
springs unsuited for the purpose. Such examples as the above will
support the ancient claim of the philosophers that _there is a logos in
every mythos_, or a groundwork of truth in every fiction.
CHAPTER VI. {163}
“Hermes, who is of my ordinances ever the bearer ...
Then taking his staff, with which he the eyelids of mortals
Closes at will, and the sleeper, at will, reawakens.”—_Odyssey_,
Book V.
“I saw the Samothracian rings
Leap, and steel-filings boil in a brass dish
So soon as underneath it there was placed
The magnet-stone; and with wild terror seemed
The iron to flee from it in stern hate....”—_Lucretius_, Book VI.
“But that which especially distinguishes the Brotherhood is
their marvellous knowledge of the resources of the medical art.
They work not by charms but by simples.”
(_MS. Account of the Origin and Attributes of the True
Rosicrucians._)
One of the truest things ever said by a man of science is the remark
made by Professor Cooke in his _New Chemistry_. “The history of Science
shows that the age must be prepared before scientific truths can take
root and grow. The barren premonitions of science have been barren
because these seeds of truth fell upon unfruitful soil; and, as soon as
the fulness of the time has come, the seed has taken root and the fruit
has ripened ... every student is surprised to find how very little is
the share of new truth which even the greatest genius has added to the
previous stock.”
The revolution through which chemistry has recently passed, is well
calculated to concentrate the attention of chemists upon this fact;
and it would not be strange, if, in less time than it has required
to effect it, the claims of the alchemists would be examined with
impartiality, and studied from a rational point of view. To bridge over
the narrow gulf which now separates the _new_ chemistry from _old_
alchemy, is little, if any harder than what they have done in going
from dualism to the law of Avogadro.
As Ampère served to introduce Avogadro to our contemporary chemists, so
Reichenbach will perhaps one day be found to have paved the way with
his OD for the just appreciation of Paracelsus. It was more than fifty
years before molecules were accepted as units of chemical calculations;
it may require less than half that time to cause the superlative merits
of the Swiss mystic to be acknowledged. The warning paragraph about
healing mediums,[289] which will be found elsewhere, might have been {164}
written by one who had read his works. “You must understand,” he says,
“that the magnet is that spirit of life in man which the infected
seeks, as both unite themselves with chaos from without. And thus the
healthy are infected by the unhealthy through magnetic attraction.”
The primal causes of the diseases afflicting mankind; the secret
relations between physiology and psychology, vainly tortured by men
of modern science for some clew to base their speculations upon; the
specifics and remedies for every ailment of the human body—all are
described and accounted for in his voluminous works. Electro-magnetism,
the so-called _discovery_ of Professor Oersted, had been used by
Paracelsus three centuries before. This may be demonstrated by
examining critically his mode of curing disease. Upon his achievements
in chemistry there is no need to enlarge, for it is admitted by fair
and unprejudiced writers that he was one of the greatest chemists of
his time.[290] Brierre de Boismont terms him a “genius” and agrees with
Deleuze that he created a new epoch in the history of medicine. The
secret of his successful and, as they were called, magic cures lies in
his sovereign contempt for the so-called learned “authorities” of his
age. “Seeking for truth,” says Paracelsus, “I considered with myself
that if there were no teachers of medicine in this world, how would
I set to learn the art? No otherwise than in the great open book of
nature, written with the finger of God.... I am accused and denounced
for not having entered in at the right door of art. But which is the
right one? Galen, Avicenna, Mesue, Rhasis, or honest nature? I believe,
the last! Through this door I entered, and the light of nature, and no
apothecary’s lamp directed me on my way.”
This utter scorn for established laws and scientific formulas, this
aspiration of mortal clay to commingle with the spirit of nature, and
look to it alone for health, and help, and the light of truth, was the
cause of the inveterate hatred shown by the contemporary pigmies to
the fire-philosopher and alchemist. No wonder that he was accused of
charlatanry and even drunkenness. Of the latter charge, Hemmann boldly
and fearlessly exonerates him, and proves that the foul accusation
proceeded from “Oporinus, who lived with him some time in order to
learn his secrets, but his object was defeated; hence, the evil reports
of his disciples and apothecaries.” He was the founder of the School
of Animal Magnetism and the discoverer of the occult properties of the
magnet. He was branded by his age as a sorcerer, because the cures
he made were marvellous. Three centuries later, Baron Du Potet was
also accused of sorcery and demonolatry by the Church of Rome, and of {165}
charlatanry by the academicians of Europe. As the fire-philosophers
say, it is not the chemist who will condescend to look upon the “living
fire” otherwise than his colleagues do. “Thou hast forgotten what thy
fathers taught thee about it—or rather, thou hast never known ... it is
_too loud_ for thee!”[291]
A work upon magico-spiritual philosophy and occult science would
be incomplete without a particular notice of the history of animal
magnetism, as it stands since Paracelsus staggered with it the
schoolmen of the latter half of the sixteenth century.
We will observe briefly its appearance in Paris when imported from
Germany by Anton Mesmer. Let us peruse with care and caution the old
papers now mouldering in the Academy of Sciences of that capital,
for there we will find that, after having rejected in its turn every
discovery that was ever made since Galileo, the _Immortals_ capped
the climax by turning their backs upon magnetism and mesmerism. They
voluntarily shut the doors before themselves, the doors which led to
those greatest mysteries of nature, which lie hid in the dark regions
of the psychical as well as the physical world. The great universal
solvent, the Alkahest, was within their reach—they passed it by; and
now, after nearly a hundred years have elapsed, we read the following
confession:
“Still it is true that, beyond the limits of direct observation, our
science (chemistry) is not infallible, and our theories and systems,
although they _may_ all contain a kernel of truth, undergo frequent
changes, and are often revolutionized.”[292]
To assert so dogmatically that mesmerism and animal magnetism are
but hallucinations, implies that it can be proved. But where are
these proofs, which alone ought to have authority in science?
Thousands of times the chance was given to the academicians to assure
themselves of its truth; but, they have invariably declined. Vainly
do mesmerists and healers invoke the testimony of the deaf, the lame,
the diseased, the dying, who were cured or restored to life by simple
manipulations and the apostolic “laying on of hands.” “Coincidence”
is the usual reply, when the fact is too evident to be absolutely
denied; “will-o’-the-wisp,” “exaggeration,” “quackery,” are favorite
expressions, with our but too numerous Thomases. Newton, the well-known
American healer, has performed more instantaneous cures than many a
famous physician of New York City has had patients in all his life;
Jacob, the Zouave, has had a like success in France. Must we then
consider the accumulated testimony of the last forty years upon this
subject to be all illusion, confederacy with clever charlatans, and {166}
lunacy? Even to breathe such a stupendous fallacy would be equivalent
to a self-accusation of lunacy.
Notwithstanding the recent sentence of Leymarie, the scoffs of the
skeptics and of a vast majority of physicians and scientists, the
unpopularity of the subject, and, above all, the indefatigable
persecutions of the Roman Catholic clergy, fighting in mesmerism
woman’s traditional enemy, so evident and unconquerable is the truth
of its phenomena that even the French magistrature was forced tacitly,
though very reluctantly, to admit the same. The famous _clairvoyante_,
Madame Roger, was charged with obtaining money under false pretenses,
in company with her mesmerist, Dr. Fortin. On May 18th, 1876, she
was arraigned before the _Tribunal Correctionnel_ of the Seine.
Her witness was Baron Du Potet, the grand master of mesmerism in
France for the last fifty years; her advocate, the no less famous
Jules Favre. Truth for once triumphed—the accusation was abandoned.
Was it the extraordinary eloquence of the orator, or bare facts
incontrovertible and unimpeachable that won the day? But Leymarie,
the editor of the _Revue Spirite_, had also facts in his favor; and,
moreover, the evidence of over a hundred respectable witnesses,
among whom were the first names of Europe. To this there is but one
answer—the magistrates dared not question the facts of mesmerism.
Spirit-photography, spirit-rapping, writing, moving, talking, and even
spirit-materializations can be simulated; there is hardly a physical
phenomenon now in Europe and America but could be imitated—with
apparatus—by a clever juggler. The wonders of mesmerism and subjective
phenomena alone defy tricksters, skepticism, stern science, and
dishonest mediums; _the cataleptic state it is impossible to feign_.
Spiritualists who are anxious to have their truths proclaimed and
forced on science, cultivate the mesmeric phenomena. Place on the stage
of Egyptian Hall a somnambulist plunged in a deep mesmeric sleep. Let
her mesmerist send her freed spirit to all the places the public may
suggest; test her clairvoyance and clairaudience; stick pins into any
part of her body which the mesmerist may have made his passes over;
thrust needles through the skin below her eyelids; burn her flesh and
lacerate it with a sharp instrument. “Do not fear!” exclaim Regazzoni
and Du Potet, Teste and Pierrard, Puysegur and Dolgorouky—“a mesmerized
or entranced subject _is never hurt_!” And when all this is performed,
invite any popular wizard of the day who thirsts for puffery, and is,
or pretends to be, clever at mimicking every spiritual phenomenon, to
submit _his_ body to the same tests![293]
The speech of Jules Favre is reported to have lasted an hour and a {167}
half, and to have held the judges and the public spellbound by its
eloquence. We who have heard Jules Favre believe it most readily;
only the statement embodied in the last sentence of his argument was
unfortunately premature and erroneous at the same time. “We are in the
presence of a phenomenon which _science admits_ without attempting
to explain. _The public may smile at_ it, but our most illustrious
physicians regard it with gravity. Justice can no longer ignore what
_science has acknowledged_!”
Were this sweeping declaration based upon fact and had mesmerism
been impartially investigated by many instead of a few true men of
science, more desirous of questioning nature than mere expediency, the
public would _never_ smile. The public is a docile and pious child,
and readily goes whither the nurse leads it. It chooses its idols and
fetishes, and worships them in proportion to the noise they make; and
then turns round with a timid look of adulation to see whether the
nurse, old Mrs. Public Opinion, is satisfied.
Lactantius, the old Christian father, is said to have remarked that
no skeptic in his days would have dared to maintain before a magician
that the soul did not survive the body, but died together with it; “for
he would refute them on the spot by calling up the souls of the dead,
rendering them visible to human eyes, and making them foretell future
events.”[294] So with the magistrates and bench in Madame Roger’s
case. Baron Du Potet was there, and they were _afraid_ to see him
mesmerize the somnambulist, and so force them not only to believe in
the phenomenon, but to acknowledge it—which was far worse.
And now to the doctrine of Paracelsus. His incomprehensible, though
lively style must be read like the biblio-rolls of Ezekiel, “_within
and without_.” The peril of propounding heterodox theories was great
in those days; the Church was powerful, and sorcerers were burnt by
the dozens. For this reason, we find Paracelsus, Agrippa, and Eugenius
Philalethes as notable for their pious declarations as they were
famous for their achievements in alchemy and magic. The full views
of Paracelsus on the occult properties of the magnet are explained
partially in his famous book, _Archidaxarum_, in which he describes the {168}
wonderful tincture, a medicine extracted from the magnet and called
_Magisterium Magnetis_, and partially in the _De Ente Dei_, and _De
Ente Astrorum_, Lib. I. But the explanations are all given in a diction
unintelligible to the profane. “Every peasant sees,” said he, “that a
magnet will attract iron, but a wise man must inquire for himself....
I have discovered that the magnet, besides this visible power, that of
attracting iron, possesses another _and concealed_ power.”
He demonstrates further that in man lies hidden a “_sidereal_ force,”
which is that emanation from the stars and celestial bodies of which
the spiritual form of man—the astral spirit—is composed. This identity
of essence, which we may term the spirit of cometary matter, always
stands in direct relation with the stars from which it was drawn, and
thus there exists a mutual attraction between the two, both being
magnets. The identical composition of the earth and all other planetary
bodies and man’s terrestrial body was a fundamental idea in his
philosophy. “The body comes from the elements, the [astral] spirit from
the stars.... Man eats and drinks of the elements, for the sustenance
of his blood and flesh; from the stars are the intellect and thoughts
sustained in his spirit.” _The spectroscope has made good his theory
as to the identical composition of man and stars; the physicists now
lecture to their classes upon the magnetic attractions of the sun and
planets._[295]