PART I.—RALPH’S STORY.

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Transcriber’s Note:

This text is a compilation of the six numbers of the first Volume of

LUCIFER, spanning September 1887 through February 1888.

This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical effects.

Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_. Certain

headings were printed in a blackletter font, indicated with a ‘=’

delimiter.

Footnotes have been moved to follow the paragraphs in which they are

referenced. They have been resequenced for uniqueness across the text.

Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please

see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding

the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation.

LUCIFER

=A Theosophical Magazine,=

DESIGNED TO “BRING TO LIGHT THE HIDDEN THINGS OF DARKNESS.”

EDITED BY

H. P. BLAVATSKY AND MABEL COLLINS.

THE LIGHT-BEARER IS THE MORNING STAR OR LUCIFER, AND “LUCIFER IS NO

PROFANE OR SATANIC TITLE. IT IS THE LATIN LUCIFERUS. THE

LIGHT-BRINGER, THE MORNING STAR, EQUIVALENT TO THE GREEK φωσφορος ...

THE NAME OF THE PURE PALE HERALD OF DAYLIGHT.”—YONGE.

_VOLUME I._

SEPTEMBER 1887-FEBRUARY 1888.

--------------

=London=:

GEORGE REDWAY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.

KELLY & CO., PRINTERS

1 & 3, GATE STREET, LINCOLNS INN FIELDS, LONDON, W.C.

AND MIDDLE MILL, KINGSTON-ON-THAMES.

CONTENTS.

Astrological Notes 158, 512

Auto-Hypnotic Rhapsody, An 472

Birth of Light, The 52

Blood Covenanting 216

Blossom and the Fruit, The. The True 23, 123, 193, 258,

Story of a Magician 347, 443

Brotherhood 212

Buddhism, The Four Noble Truths of 49

Christian Dogma, Esotericism of the 368

Christmas Eve, A Remarkable 274

Correspondence 76, 136, 228, 311,

412, 502

Emerson and Occultism 252

Evil, The Origin of 109

Fear 298

Freedom 185

Ghost’s Revenge, A 63, 102

God Speaks for Law and Order 292

Gospels, The Esoteric Character of the 173, 299, 490

Hand, The “Square” in the 181

Hauntings, A Theory of 486

Healing, The Spirit of 267

Hylo-Idealism and “The Adversary” 507

Infant Genius 296

Interlaced Triangles, The Relation of 481

Colour to the

Invisible World, The 186

Lady of Light, The 81

Lama, The Last of a Good 51

Law of Life, A: Karma 39, 97

Let Every Man Prove His Own Work 161

“Light on the Path,” Comments on 8, 90, 170, 379

Literary Jottings 71, 329

Love with an Object 391

“LUCIFER” To the Archbishop of 340

Canterbury Greeting, 241; To the Readers

of

Luniolatry 440

Morning Star, To the 339

Mystery of all Time, The 46

Mystic Thought, The 192

Paradox, The Great 120

Planet, History of a 15

Quest, The Great 288, 375

Reviews 143, 232, 395, 497

Science of Life, The 203

Signs of the Times, The 83

Soldier’s Daughter, The 432

Some Words on Daily Life 344

Theosophical and Mystic Publications 77, 156, 335

Theosophist, A True (Count Tolstoi) 55

Theosophy, Thoughts on, 134; and 282

Socialism

Three Desires, The 476

Twilight Visions 365, 461

Unpopular Philosopher, From the 80, 160, 238

Note-Book of an

What is Truth? 425

What’s in a Name? Why is the Magazine 1

called “LUCIFER”?

White Monk, The 384, 466

1888 337

LUCIFER

------------------------------------------------------------------------

VOL. I. LONDON, SEPTEMBER 15TH, 1887. NO. 1.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

WHY THE MAGAZINE IS CALLED “LUCIFER.”

What’s in a name? Very often there is more in it than the profane is

prepared to understand, or the learned mystic to explain. It is an

invisible, secret, but very potential influence that every name carries

about with it and “leaveth wherever it goeth.” Carlyle thought that

“there is much, nay, almost all, in names.” “Could I unfold the

influence of names, which are the most important of all clothings, I

were a second great Trismegistus,” he writes.

The name or title of a magazine started with a definite object, is,

therefore, all important; for it is, indeed, the invisible seedgrain,

which will either grow “to be an all-over-shadowing tree” on the fruits

of which must depend the nature of the results brought about by the said

object, or the tree will wither and die. These considerations show that

the name of the present magazine—rather equivocal to orthodox Christian

ears—is due to no careless selection, but arose in consequence of much

thinking over its fitness, and was adopted as the best symbol to express

that object and the results in view.

Now, the first and most important, if not the sole object of the

magazine, is expressed in the line from the 1st Epistle to the

Corinthians, on its title page. It is to bring light to “the hidden

things of darkness,” (iv. 5); to show in their true aspect and their

original real meaning things and names, men and their doings and

customs; it is finally to fight prejudice, hypocrisy and shams in every

nation, in every class of Society, as in every department of life. The

task is a laborious one but it is neither impracticable nor useless, if

even as an experiment.

Thus, for an attempt of such nature, no better title could ever be found

than the one chosen. “Lucifer,” is the pale morning-star, the precursor

of the full blaze of the noon-day sun—the “Eosphoros” of the Greeks. It

shines timidly at dawn to gather forces and dazzle the eye after sunset

as its own brother ‘Hesperos’—the radiant evening star, or the planet

Venus. No fitter symbol exists for the proposed work—that of throwing a

ray of truth on everything hidden by the darkness of prejudice, by

social or religious misconceptions; especially by that idiotic routine

in life, which, once that a certain action, a thing, a name, has been

branded by slanderous inventions, however unjust, makes _respectable_

people, so called, turn away shiveringly, refusing to even look at it

from any other aspect than the one sanctioned by public opinion. Such an

endeavour then, to force the weak-hearted to look truth straight in the

face, is helped most efficaciously by a title belonging to the category

of branded names.

Piously inclined readers may argue that “Lucifer” is accepted by all the

churches as one of the many names of the Devil. According to Milton’s

superb fiction, Lucifer is _Satan_, the “rebellious” angel, the enemy of

God and man. If one analyzes his rebellion, however, it will be found of

no worse nature than an assertion of free-will and independent thought,

as if Lucifer had been born in the XIXth century. This epithet of

“rebellious,” is a theological calumny, on a par with that other slander

of God by the Predestinarians, one that makes of deity an “Almighty”

fiend worse than the “rebellious” Spirit himself; “an omnipotent Devil

desiring to be ‘complimented’ as all merciful when he is exerting the

most fiendish cruelty,” as put by J. Cotter Morison. Both the

foreordaining and predestining fiend-God, and his subordinate agent are

of human invention; they are two of the most morally repulsive and

horrible theological dogmas that the nightmares of light-hating monks

have ever evolved out of their unclean fancies.

They date from the Mediæval age, the period of mental obscuration,

during which most of the present prejudices and superstitions have been

forcibly inoculated on the human mind, so as to have become nearly

ineradicable in some cases, one of which is the present prejudice now

under discussion.

So deeply rooted, indeed, is this preconception and aversion to the name

of Lucifer—meaning no worse than “light-bringer” (from _lux_, _lucis_,

“light,” and _ferre_ “to bring”)[1]—even among the educated classes,

that by adopting it for the title of their magazine the editors have the

prospect of a long strife with public prejudice before them. So absurd

and ridiculous is that prejudice, indeed, that no one has seemed to ever

ask himself the question, how came Satan to be called a _light-bringer_,

unless the silvery rays of the morning-star can in any way be made

suggestive of the glare of the infernal flames. It is simply, as

Henderson showed, “one of those gross perversions of sacred writ which

so extensively obtain, and which are to be traced to a proneness to seek

for more in a given passage than it really contains—a disposition to be

influenced by sound rather than sense, and an implicit faith in received

interpretation”—which is not quite one of the weaknesses of our present

age. Nevertheless, the prejudice is there, to the shame of our century.

-----

Footnote 1:

“It was Gregory the Great who was the first to apply this passage of

Isaiah, “How art thou fallen from Heaven, Lucifer, son of the

morning,” etc., to Satan, and ever since the bold metaphor of the

prophet, which referred, after all, but to an Assyrian king inimical

to the Israelites, has been applied to the Devil.”

-----

This cannot be helped. The two editors would hold themselves as

recreants in their own sight, as traitors to the very spirit of the

proposed work, were they to yield and cry craven before the danger. If

one would fight prejudice, and brush off the ugly cobwebs of

superstition and materialism alike from the noblest ideals of our

forefathers, one has to prepare for opposition. “The crown of the

reformer and the innovator is a crown of thorns” indeed. If one would

rescue Truth in all her chaste nudity from the almost bottomless well,

into which she has been hurled by cant and hypocritical propriety, one

should not hesitate to descend into the dark, gaping pit of that well.

No matter how badly the blind bats—the dwellers in darkness, and the

haters of light—may treat in their gloomy abode the intruder, unless one

is the first to show the spirit and courage he preaches to others, he

must be justly held as a hypocrite and a seceder from his own

principles.

Hardly had the title been agreed upon, when the first premonitions of

what was in store for us, in the matter of the opposition to be

encountered owing to the title chosen, appeared on our horizon. One of

the editors received and recorded some spicy objections. The scenes that

follow are sketches from nature.

I.

_A Well-known Novelist._ Tell me about your new magazine. What class

do you propose to appeal to?

_Editor._ No class in particular: we intend to appeal to the public.

_Novelist._ I am very glad of that. For once I shall be one of the

public, for I don’t understand your subject in the least, and I want

to. But you must remember that if your public is to understand you, it

must necessarily be a very small one. People talk about occultism

nowadays as they talk about many other things, without the least idea

of what it means. We are so ignorant and—so prejudiced.

_Editor._ Exactly. That is what calls the new magazine into existence.

We propose to educate you, and to tear the mask from every prejudice.

_Novelist._ That really is good news to me, for I want to be educated.

What is your magazine to be called?

_Editor._ Lucifer.

_Novelist._ What! Are you going to educate us in vice? We know enough

about that. Fallen angels are plentiful. You may find popularity, for

soiled doves are in fashion just now, while the white-winged angels

are voted a bore, because they are not so amusing. But I doubt your

being able to teach us much.

II.

_A Man of the World_ (_in a careful undertone, for the scene is a

dinner-party_). I hear you are going to start a magazine, all about

occultism. Do you know, I’m very glad. I don’t say anything about such

matters as a rule, but some queer things have happened in my life

which can’t be explained in any ordinary manner. I hope you will go in

for explanations.

_Editor._ We shall try, certainly. My impression is, that when

occultism is in any measure apprehended, its laws are accepted by

everyone as the only intelligible explanation of life.

_A M. W._ Just so, I want to know all about it, for ’pon my honour,

life’s a mystery. There are plenty of other people as curious as

myself. This is an age which is afflicted with the Yankee disease of

‘wanting to know.’ I’ll get you lots of subscribers. What’s the

magazine called?

_Editor._ Lucifer—and (_warned by former experience_) don’t

misunderstand the name. It is typical of the divine spirit which

sacrificed itself for humanity—it was Milton’s doing that it ever

became associated with the devil. We are sworn enemies to popular

prejudices, and it is quite appropriate that we should attack such a

prejudice as this—Lucifer, you know, is the Morning Star—the

Lightbearer,...

_A M. W._ (_interrupting_). Oh, I know all that—at least I don’t know,

but I take it for granted you’ve got some good reason for taking such

a title. But your first object is to have readers; you want the public

to buy your magazine, I suppose. That’s in the programme, isn’t it?

_Editor._ Most decidedly.

_A M. W._ Well, listen to the advice of a man who knows his way about

town. Don’t mark your magazine with the wrong colour at starting. It’s

quite evident, when one stays an instant to think of its derivation

and meaning, that Lucifer is an excellent word. But the public don’t

stay to think of derivations and meanings; and the first impression is

the most important. Nobody will buy the magazine if you call it

Lucifer.

III.

_A Fashionable Lady Interested in Occultism._ I want to hear some more

about the new magazine, for I have interested a great many people in

it, even with the little you have told me. But I find it difficult to

express its actual purpose. What is it?

_Editor._ To try and give a little light to those that want it.

_A F. L._ Well, that’s a simple way of putting it, and will be very

useful to me. What is the magazine to be called?

_Editor._ Lucifer.

_A F. L._ (_After a pause_) You can’t mean it.

_Editor._ Why not?

_A F. L._ The associations are so dreadful! What can be the object of

calling it that? It sounds like some unfortunate sort of joke, made

against it by its enemies.

_Editor._ Oh, but Lucifer, you know, means Light-bearer; it is typical

of the Divine Spirit——

_A F. L._ Never mind all that—I want to do your magazine good and make

it known, and you can’t expect me to enter into explanations of that

sort every time I mention the title? Impossible! Life is too short and

too busy. Besides, it would produce such a bad effect; people would

think me priggish, and then I couldn’t talk at all, for I couldn’t

bear them to think that. Don’t call it Lucifer—please don’t. Nobody

knows what the word is typical of; what it means now is the devil,

nothing more or less.

_Editor._ But then that is quite a mistake, and one of the first

prejudices we propose to do battle with. Lucifer is the pale, pure

herald of dawn——

_Lady_ (_interrupting_). I thought you were going to do something more

interesting and more important than to whitewash mythological

characters. We shall all have to go to school again, or read up Dr.

Smith’s Classical Dictionary. And what is the use of it when it is

done? I thought you were going to tell us things about our own lives

and how to make them better. I suppose Milton wrote about Lucifer,

didn’t he?—but nobody reads Milton now. Do let us have a modern title

with some human meaning in it.

IV.

_A Journalist_ (_thoughtfully, while rolling his cigarette_). Yes, it

is a good idea, this magazine of yours. We shall all laugh at it, as a

matter of course: and we shall cut it up in the papers. But we shall

all read it, because secretly everybody hungers after the mysterious.

What are you going to call it?

_Editor._ Lucifer.

_Journalist_ (_striking a light_). Why not _The Fusee_? Quite as good

a title and not so pretentious.

The “Novelist,” the “Man of the World,” the “Fashionable Lady,” and the

“Journalist,” should be the first to receive a little instruction. A

glimpse into the real and primitive character of Lucifer can do them no

harm and may, perchance, cure them of a bit of ridiculous prejudice.

They ought to study their Homer and Hesiod’s Theogony if they would do

justice to Lucifer, “_Eosphoros and Hesperos_,” the Morning and the

Evening beautiful star. If there are more useful things to do in this

life than “to whitewash mythological characters,” to slander and blacken

them is, at least, as useless, and shows, moreover, a narrow-mindedness

which can do honour to no one.

To object to the title of LUCIFER, only because its “associations are so

dreadful,” is pardonable—if it can be pardonable in any case—only in an

ignorant American missionary of some dissenting sect, in one whose

natural laziness and lack of education led him to prefer ploughing the

minds of heathens, as ignorant as he is himself, to the more profitable,

but rather more arduous, process of ploughing the fields of his own

father’s farm. In the English clergy, however, who receive all a more or

less classical education, and are, therefore, supposed to be acquainted

with the _ins_ and _outs_ of theological sophistry and casuistry, this

kind of opposition is absolutely unpardonable. It not only smacks of

hypocrisy and deceit, but places them directly on a lower moral level

than him they call the apostate angel. By endeavouring to show the

theological Lucifer, fallen through the idea that

“To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell;

Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven,”

they are virtually putting into practice the supposed crime they would

fain accuse him of. They prefer reigning over the spirit of the masses

by means of a pernicious dark LIE, productive of many an evil, than

serve heaven by serving TRUTH. Such practices are worthy only of the

Jesuits.

But their sacred writ is the first to contradict their interpretations

and the association of Lucifer, the Morning Star, with Satan. Chapter

XXII. of _Revelation_, verse 16th, says: “I, Jesus ... am the root ...

and the bright and _Morning Star_” (ὀρθρινὸς “early rising”): hence

Eosphoros, or the Latin Lucifer. The opprobrium attached to this name is

of such a very late date, that the Roman Church found itself forced to

screen the theological slander behind a two-sided interpretation—as

usual. Christ, we are told, is the “Morning Star,” the _divine_ Lucifer;

and Satan the _usurpator_ of the _Verbum_, the “infernal Lucifer.”[2]

“The great Archangel Michael, the conqueror of Satan, is identical in

paganism[3] with Mercury-Mithra, to whom, after defending the Sun

(symbolical of God) from the attacks of Venus-Lucifer, was given the

possession of this planet, _et datus est ei locus Luciferi_. And since

the Archangel Michael is the ‘Angel of the Face,’ and ‘the Vicar of the

_Verbum_’ he is now considered in the Roman Church as the regent of that

planet Venus which ‘the vanquished fiend had usurped.’” _Angelus faciei

Dei sedem superbi humilis obtinuit_, says Cornelius à Lapide (in Vol.

VI. p. 229).

-----

Footnote 2:

Mirville’s Memoirs to the Academy of France, Vol. IV., quoting

Cardinal Ventura.

Footnote 3:

Which paganism has passed long milleniums, it would seem, in _copying

beforehand_ Christian dogmas to come.

-----

This gives the reason why one of the early Popes was called Lucifer, as

Yonge and ecclesiastical records prove. It thus follows that the title

chosen for our magazine is as much associated with divine and pious

ideas as with the supposed rebellion of the hero of Milton’s “Paradise

Lost.” By choosing it, _we throw the first ray of light and truth_ on a

ridiculous prejudice which ought to have no room made for it in this our

“age of facts and discovery.” We work for true Religion and Science, in

the interest of fact as against fiction and prejudice. It is our duty,

as it is that of physical Science—professedly its mission—to throw light

on facts in Nature hitherto surrounded by the darkness of ignorance. And

since ignorance is justly regarded as the chief promoter of

superstition, that work is, therefore, a noble and beneficent work. But

natural Sciences are only one aspect of SCIENCE and TRUTH. Psychological

and moral Sciences, or theosophy, the knowledge of divine truth,

wheresoever found, are still more important in human affairs, and real

Science should not be limited simply to the physical aspect of life and

nature. Science is an abstract of every fact, a comprehension of every

truth within the scope of human research and intelligence.

“Shakespeare’s deep and accurate science in mental philosophy”

(Coleridge), has proved more beneficent to the true philosopher in the

study of the human heart—therefore, in the promotion of truth—than the

more accurate, but certainly less deep, science of any Fellow of the

Royal Institution.

Those readers, however, who do not find themselves convinced that the

Church had no right to throw a slur upon a beautiful star, and that it

did so through a mere necessity of accounting for one of its numerous

loans from Paganism with all its poetical conceptions of the truths in

Nature, are asked to read our article “The History of a Planet.”

Perhaps, after its perusal, they will see how far Dupuis was justified

in asserting that “all the theologies have their origin in astronomy.”

With the modern Orientalists every myth is _solar_. This is one more

prejudice, and a preconception in favour of materialism and physical

science. It will be one of our duties to combat it with much of the

rest.

--------------

Occultism is not magic, though magic is one of its tools.

Occultism is not the acquirement of powers, whether psychic or

intellectual, though both are its servants. Neither is occultism the

pursuit of happiness, as men understand the word; for the first step is

sacrifice, the second, renunciation.

--------------

Life is built up by the sacrifice of the individual to the whole. Each

cell in the living body must sacrifice itself to the perfection of the

whole; when it is otherwise, disease and death enforce the lesson.

--------------

Occultism is the science of life, the art of living.

COMMENTS ON “LIGHT ON THE PATH.”

BY THE AUTHOR.

“Before the eyes can see they must be incapable of tears.”

It should be very clearly remembered by all readers of this volume that

it is a book which may appear to have some little philosophy in it, but

very little sense, to those who believe it to be written in ordinary

English. To the many, who read in this manner it will be—not caviare so

much as olives strong of their salt. Be warned and read but a little in

this way.

There is another way of reading, which is, indeed, the only one of any

use with many authors. It is reading, not between the lines but within

the words. In fact, it is deciphering a profound cipher. All alchemical

works are written in the cipher of which I speak; it has been used by

the great philosophers and poets of all time. It is used systematically

by the adepts in life and knowledge, who, seemingly giving out their

deepest wisdom, hide in the very words which frame it its actual

mystery. They cannot do more. There is a law of nature which insists

that a man shall read these mysteries for himself. By no other method

can he obtain them. A man who desires to live must eat his food himself:

this is the simple law of nature—which applies also to the higher life.

A man who would live and act in it cannot be fed like a babe with a

spoon; he must eat for himself.

I propose to put into new and sometimes plainer language parts of “Light

on the Path”; but whether this effort of mine will really be any

interpretation I cannot say. To a deaf and dumb man, a truth is made no

more intelligible if, in order to make it so, some misguided linguist

translates the words in which it is couched into every living or dead

language, and shouts these different phrases in his ear. But for those

who are not deaf and dumb one language is generally easier than the

rest; and it is to such as these I address myself.

The very first aphorisms of “Light on the Path,” included under Number

I. have, I know well, remained sealed as to their inner meaning to many

who have otherwise followed the purpose of the book.

There are four proven and certain truths with regard to the entrance to

occultism. The Gates of Gold bar that threshold; yet there are some who

pass those gates and discover the sublime and illimitable beyond. In the

far spaces of Time all will pass those gates. But I am one who wish that

Time, the great deluder, were not so over-masterful. To those who know

and love him I have no word to say; but to the others—and there are not

so very few as some may fancy—to whom the passage of Time is as the

stroke of a sledge-hammer, and the sense of Space like the bars of an

iron cage, I will translate and re-translate until they understand

fully.

The four truths written on the first page of “Light on the Path,” refer

to the trial initiation of the would-be occultist. Until he has passed

it, he cannot even reach to the latch of the gate which admits to

knowledge. Knowledge is man’s greatest inheritance; why, then, should he

not attempt to reach it by every possible road? The laboratory is not

the only ground for experiment; _science_, we must remember, is derived

from _sciens_, present participle of _scire_, “to know,”—its origin is

similar to that of the word “discern,” “to ken.” Science does not

therefore deal only with matter, no, not even its subtlest and obscurest

forms. Such an idea is born merely of the idle spirit of the age.

Science is a word which covers all forms of knowledge. It is exceedingly

interesting to hear what chemists discover, and to see them finding

their way through the densities of matter to its finer forms; but there

are other kinds of knowledge than this, and it is not every one who

restricts his (strictly scientific) desire for knowledge to experiments

which are capable of being tested by the physical senses.

Everyone who is not a dullard, or a man stupefied by some predominant

vice, has guessed, or even perhaps discovered with some certainty, that

there are subtle senses lying within the physical senses. There is

nothing at all extraordinary in this; if we took the trouble to call

Nature into the witness box we should find that everything which is

perceptible to the ordinary sight, has something even more important

than itself hidden within it; the microscope has opened a world to us,

but within those encasements which the microscope reveals, lies a

mystery which no machinery can probe.

The whole world is animated and lit, down to its most material shapes,

by a world within it. This inner world is called Astral by some people,

and it is as good a word as any other, though it merely means starry;

but the stars, as Locke pointed out, are luminous bodies which give

light of themselves. This quality is characteristic of the life which

lies within matter; for those who see it, need no lamp to see it by. The

word star, moreover, is derived from the Anglo-Saxon “stir-an,” to

steer, to stir, to move, and undeniably it is the inner life which is

master of the outer, just as a man’s brain guides the movements of his

lips. So that although Astral is no very excellent word in itself, I am

content to use it for my present purpose.

The whole of “Light on the Path” is written in an astral cipher and can

therefore only be deciphered by one who reads astrally. And its teaching

is chiefly directed towards the cultivation and development of the

astral life. Until the first step has been taken in this development,

the swift knowledge, which is called intuition with certainty, is

impossible to man. And this positive and certain intuition is the only

form of knowledge which enables a man to work rapidly or reach his true

and high estate, within the limit of his conscious effort. To obtain

knowledge by experiment is too tedious a method for those who aspire to

accomplish real work; he who gets it by certain intuition, lays hands on

its various forms with supreme rapidity, by fierce effort of will; as a

determined workman grasps his tools, indifferent to their weight or any

other difficulty which may stand in his way. He does not stay for each

to be tested—he uses such as he sees are fittest.

All the rules contained in “Light on the Path,” are written for all

disciples, but only for disciples—those who “take knowledge.” To none

else but the student in this school are its laws of any use or interest.

To all who are interested seriously in Occultism, I say first—take

knowledge. To him who hath shall be given. It is useless to wait for it.

The womb of Time will close before you, and in later days you will

remain unborn, without power. I therefore say to those who have any

hunger or thirst for knowledge, attend to these rules.

They are none of my handicraft or invention. They are merely the

phrasing of laws in super-nature, the putting into words truths as

absolute in their own sphere, as those laws which govern the conduct of

the earth and its atmosphere.

The senses spoken of in these four statements are the astral, or inner

senses.

No man desires to see that light which illumines the spaceless soul

until pain and sorrow and despair have driven him away from the life of

ordinary humanity. First he wears out pleasure; then he wears out

pain—till, at last, his eyes become incapable of tears.

This is a truism, although I know perfectly well that it will meet with

a vehement denial from many who are in sympathy with thoughts which

spring from the inner life. _To see_ with the astral sense of sight is a

form of activity which it is difficult for us to understand immediately.

The scientist knows very well what a miracle is achieved by each child

that is born into the world, when it first conquers its eye-sight and

compels it to obey its brain. An equal miracle is performed with each

sense certainly, but this ordering of sight is perhaps the most

stupendous effort. Yet the child does it almost unconsciously, by force

of the powerful heredity of habit. No one now is aware that he has ever

done it at all; just as we cannot recollect the individual movements

which enabled us to walk up a hill a year ago. This arises from the fact

that we move and live and have our being in matter. Our knowledge of it

has become intuitive.

With our astral life it is very much otherwise. For long ages past, man

has paid very little attention to it—so little, that he has practically

lost the use of his senses. It is true, that in every civilization the

star arises, and man confesses, with more or less of folly and

confusion, that he knows himself to be. But most often he denies it, and

in being a materialist becomes that strange thing, a being which cannot

see its own light, a thing of life which will not live, an astral animal

which has eyes, and ears, and speech, and power, yet will use none of

these gifts. This is the case, and the habit of ignorance has become so

confirmed, that now none will see with the inner vision till agony has

made the physical eyes not only unseeing, but without tears—the moisture

of life. To be incapable of tears is to have faced and conquered the

simple human nature, and to have attained an equilibrium which cannot be

shaken by personal emotions. It does not imply any hardness of heart, or

any indifference. It does not imply the exhaustion of sorrow, when the

suffering soul seems powerless to suffer acutely any longer; it does not

mean the deadness of old age, when emotion is becoming dull because the

strings which vibrate to it are wearing out. None of these conditions

are fit for a disciple, and if any one of them exist in him, it must be

overcome before the path can be entered upon. Hardness of heart belongs

to the selfish man, the egotist, to whom the gate is for ever closed.

Indifference belongs to the fool and the false philosopher; those whose

lukewarmness makes them mere puppets, not strong enough to face the

realities of existence. When pain or sorrow has worn out the keenness of

suffering, the result is a lethargy not unlike that which accompanies

old age, as it is usually experienced by men and women. Such a condition

makes the entrance to the path impossible, because the first step is one

of difficulty and needs a strong man, full of psychic and physical

vigour, to attempt it.

It is a truth, that, as Edgar Allan Poe said, the eyes are the windows

for the soul, the windows of that haunted palace in which it dwells.

This is the very nearest interpretation into ordinary language of the

meaning of the text. If grief, dismay, disappointment or pleasure, can

shake the soul so that it loses its fixed hold on the calm spirit which

inspires it, and the moisture of life breaks forth, drowning knowledge

in sensation, then all is blurred, the windows are darkened, the light

is useless. This is as literal a fact as that if a man, at the edge of a

precipice, loses his nerve through some sudden emotion he will certainly

fall. The poise of the body, the balance, must be preserved, not only in

dangerous places, but even on the level ground, and with all the

assistance Nature gives us by the law of gravitation. So it is with the

soul, it is the link between the outer body and the starry spirit

beyond; the divine spark dwells in the still place where no convulsion

of Nature can shake the air; this is so always. But the soul may lose

its hold on that, its knowledge of it, even though these two are part of

one whole; and it is by emotion, by sensation, that this hold is loosed.

To suffer either pleasure or pain, causes a vivid vibration which is, to

the consciousness of man, life. Now this sensibility does not lessen

when the disciple enters upon his training; it increases. It is the

first test of his strength; he must suffer, must enjoy or endure, more

keenly than other men, while yet he has taken on him a duty which does

not exist for other men, that of not allowing his suffering to shake him

from his fixed purpose. He has, in fact, at the first step to take

himself steadily in hand and put the bit into his own mouth; no one else

can do it for him.

The first four aphorisms of “Light on the Path,” refer entirely to

astral development. This development must be accomplished to a certain

extent—that is to say it must be fully entered upon—before the remainder

of the book is really intelligible except to the intellect; in fact,

before it can be read as a practical, not a metaphysical treatise.

In one of the great mystic Brotherhoods, there are four ceremonies, that

take place early in the year, which practically illustrate and elucidate

these aphorisms. They are ceremonies in which only novices take part,

for they are simply services of the threshold. But it will show how

serious a thing it is to become a disciple, when it is understood that

these are all ceremonies of sacrifice. The first one is this of which I

have been speaking. The keenest enjoyment, the bitterest pain, the

anguish of loss and despair, are brought to bear on the trembling soul,

which has not yet found light in the darkness, which is helpless as a

blind man is, and until these shocks can be endured without loss of

equilibrium the astral senses must remain sealed. This is the merciful

law. The “medium,” or “spiritualist,” who rushes into the psychic world

without preparation, is a law-breaker, a breaker of the laws of

super-nature. Those who break Nature’s laws lose their physical health;

those who break the laws of the inner life, lose their psychic health.

“Mediums” become mad, suicides, miserable creatures devoid of moral

sense; and often end as unbelievers, doubters even of that which their

own eyes have seen. The disciple is compelled to become his own master

before he adventures on this perilous path, and attempts to face those

beings who live and work in the astral world, and whom we call masters,

because of their great knowledge and their ability to control not only

themselves but the forces around them.

The condition of the soul when it lives for the life of sensation as

distinguished from that of knowledge, is vibratory or oscillating, as

distinguished from fixed. That is the nearest literal representation of

the fact; but it is only literal to the intellect, not to the intuition.

For this part of man’s consciousness a different vocabulary is needed.

The idea of “fixed” might perhaps be transposed into that of “at home.”

In sensation no permanent home can be found, because change is the law

of this vibratory existence. That fact is the first one which must be

learned by the disciple. It is useless to pause and weep for a scene in

a kaleidoscope which has passed.

It is a very well-known fact, one with which Bulwer Lytton dealt with

great power, that an intolerable sadness is the very first experience of

the neophyte in Occultism. A sense of blankness falls upon him which

makes the world a waste, and life a vain exertion. This follows his

first serious contemplation of the abstract. In gazing, or even in

attempting to gaze, on the ineffable mystery of his own higher nature,

he himself causes the initial trial to fall on him. The oscillation

between pleasure and pain ceases for—perhaps an instant of time; but

that is enough to have cut him loose from his fast moorings in the world

of sensation. He has experienced, however briefly, the greater life; and

he goes on with ordinary existence weighted by a sense of unreality, of

blank, of horrid negation. This was the nightmare which visited Bulwer

Lytton’s neophyte in “Zanoni”; and even Zanoni himself, who had learned

great truths, and been entrusted with great powers, had not actually

passed the threshold where fear and hope, despair and joy seem at one

moment absolute realities, at the next mere forms of fancy.

This initial trial is often brought on us by life itself. For life is

after all, the great teacher. We return to study it, after we have

acquired power over it, just as the master in chemistry learns more in

the laboratory than his pupil does. There are persons so near the door

of knowledge that life itself prepares them for it, and no individual

hand has to invoke the hideous guardian of the entrance. These must

naturally be keen and powerful organizations, capable of the most vivid

pleasure; then pain comes and fills its great duty. The most intense

forms of suffering fall on such a nature, till at last it arouses from

its stupor of consciousness, and by the force of its internal vitality

steps over the threshold into a place of peace. Then the vibration of

life loses its power of tyranny. The sensitive nature must suffer still;

but the soul has freed itself and stands aloof, guiding the life towards

its greatness. Those who are the subjects of Time, and go slowly through

all his spaces, live on through a long-drawn series of sensations, and

suffer a constant mingling of pleasure and of pain. They do not dare to

take the snake of self in a steady grasp and conquer it, so becoming

divine; but prefer to go on fretting through divers experiences,

suffering blows from the opposing forces.

When one of these subjects of Time decides to enter on the path of

Occultism, it is this which is his first task. If life has not taught it

to him, if he is not strong enough to teach himself, and if he has power

enough to demand the help of a master, then this fearful trial, depicted

in Zanoni, is put upon him. The oscillation in which he lives, is for an

instant stilled; and he has to survive the shock of facing what seems to

him at first sight as the abyss of nothingness. Not till he has learned

to dwell in this abyss, and has found its peace, is it possible for his

eyes to have become incapable of tears.

The difficulty of writing intelligibly on these subjects is so great

that I beg of those who have found any interest in this article, and are

yet left with perplexities and doubts, to address me in the

correspondence column of this magazine. I ask this because thoughtful

questions are as great an assistance to the general reader as the

answers to them.

Δ

(_To be continued_.)

--------------

Harmony is the law of life, discord its shadow, whence springs

suffering, the teacher, the awakener of consciousness.

--------------

Through joy and sorrow, pain and pleasure, the soul comes to a knowledge

of itself; then begins the task of learning the laws of life, that the

discords may be resolved, and the harmony be restored.

------------------

The eyes of wisdom are like the ocean depths; there is neither joy nor

sorrow in them; therefore the soul of the occultist must become stronger

than joy, and greater than sorrow.

THE HISTORY OF A PLANET.

No star, among the countless myriads that twinkle over the sidereal

fields of the night sky, shines so dazzlingly as the planet Venus—not

even Sirius-Sothis, the dog-star, beloved by Isis. Venus is the queen

among our planets, the crown jewel of our solar system. She is the

inspirer of the poet, the guardian and companion of the lonely shepherd,

the lovely morning and the evening star. For,

“Stars teach as well as shine.”

although their secrets are still untold and unrevealed to the majority

of men, including astronomers. They are “a beauty and a mystery,”

verily. But “where there is a mystery, it is generally supposed that

there must also be evil,” says Byron. Evil, therefore, was detected by

evilly-disposed human fancy, even in those bright luminous eyes peeping

at our wicked world through the veil of ether. Thus there came to exist

slandered stars and planets as well as slandered men and women. Too

often are the reputation and fortune of one man or party sacrificed for

the benefit of another man or party. As on earth below, so in the

heavens above, and Venus, the sister planet of our Earth,[4] was

sacrificed to the ambition of our little globe to show the latter the

“chosen” planet of the Lord. She became the scapegoat, the _Azaziel_ of

the starry dome, for the sins of the Earth, or rather for those of a

certain class in the human family—the clergy—who slandered the bright

orb, in order to prove what their ambition suggested to them as the best

means to reach power, and exercise it unswervingly over the

superstitious and ignorant masses.

-----

Footnote 4:

“Venus is a second Earth,” says Reynaud, in _Terre et Ciel_ (p. 74),

“so much so that were there any communication possible between the two

planets, their inhabitants might take their respective earths for the

two hemispheres of the same world.... They seem on the sky, _like two

sisters_. Similar in conformation, these two worlds are also similar

in the character assigned to them in the Universe.”

-----

This took place during the middle ages. And now the sin lies black at

the door of Christians and their scientific inspirers, though the error

was successfully raised to the lofty position of a religious dogma, as

many other fictions and inventions have been.

Indeed, the whole sidereal world, planets and their regents—the ancient

gods of poetical paganism—the sun, the moon, the elements, and the

entire host of incalculable worlds—those at least which happened to be

known to the Church Fathers—shared in the same fate. They have all been

slandered, all bedevilled by the insatiable desire of proving one little

system of theology—built on and constructed out of old pagan

materials—the only right and holy one, and all those which preceded or

followed it utterly wrong. Sun and stars, the very air itself, we are

asked to believe, became pure and “redeemed” from original sin and the

Satanic element of heathenism, only after the year I, A.D. Scholastics

and scholiasts, the spirit of whom “spurned laborious investigation and

slow induction,” had shown, to the satisfaction of infallible Church,

the whole Kosmos in the power of Satan—a poor compliment to God—before

the year of the Nativity; and Christians had to believe or be condemned.

Never have subtle sophistry and casuistry shown themselves so plainly in

their true light, however, as in the questions of the ex-Satanism and

later redemption of various heavenly bodies. Poor beautiful Venus got

worsted in that war of so-called divine proofs to a greater degree than

any of her sidereal colleagues. While the history of the other six

planets, and their gradual transformation from Greco-Aryan gods into

Semitic devils, and finally into “divine attributes of the _seven eyes_

of the Lord,” is known but to the educated, that of Venus-Lucifer has

become a household story among even the most illiterate in Roman

Catholic countries.

This story shall now be told for the benefit of those who may have

neglected their astral mythology.

Venus, characterised by Pythagoras as the _sol alter_, a second Sun, on

account of her magnificent radiance—equalled by none other—was the first

to draw the attention of ancient Theogonists. Before it began to be

called Venus, it was known in _pre_-Hesiodic theogony as Eosphoros (or

Phosphoros) and Hesperos, the children of the dawn and twilight. In

Hesiod, moreover, the planet is decomposed into two divine beings, two

brothers—Eosphoros (the _Lucifer_ of the Latins) the morning, and

Hesperos, the evening star. They are the children of Astrœos and Eos,

the starry heaven and the dawn, as also of Kephalos and Eos (_Theog:_

381, _Hyg: Poet: Astron_: 11, 42). Preller, quoted by Decharme, shows

Phaeton identical with Phosphoros or Lucifer (_Griech: Mythol_: 1. 365).

And on the authority of Hesiod he also makes Phaeton the son of the

latter two divinities—Kephalos and Eos.

Now Phaeton or Phosphoros, the “luminous morning orb,” is carried away

in his early youth by Aphrodite (Venus) who makes of him the night

guardian of her sanctuary (_Theog:_ 987-991). He is the “beautiful

morning star” (_Vide_ St. John’s _Revelation_ XXII. 16) loved for its

radiant light by the Goddess of the Dawn, Aurora, who, while gradually

eclipsing the light of her beloved, thus seeming to carry off the star,

makes it reappear on the evening horizon where it watches the gates of

heaven. In early morning, Phosphoros “issuing from the waters of the

Ocean, raises in heaven his sacred head to announce the approach of

divine light.” (_Iliad_, XXIII. 226; _Odyss:_ XIII. 93; Virg: _Æneid_,

VIII. 589; _Mythol: de la Grèce Antique_. 247). He holds a torch in his

hand and flies through space as he precedes the car of Aurora. In the

evening he becomes Hesperos, “the most splendid of the stars that shine

on the celestial vault” (_Iliad_, XXII. 317). He is the father of the

Hesperides, the guardians of the golden apples together with the Dragon;

the beautiful genius of the flowing golden curls, sung and glorified in

all the ancient _epithalami_ (the bridal songs of the early Christians

as of the pagan Greeks); he, who at the fall of the night, leads the

nuptial _cortège_ and delivers the bride into the arms of the

bridegroom. (_Carmen Nuptiale._ See _Mythol: de la Grèce Antique_.

Decharme.)

So far, there seems to be no possible _rapprochement_, no analogy to be

discovered between this poetical personification of a star, a purely

astronomical myth, and the _Satanism_ of Christian theology. True, the

close connection between the planet as Hesperos, the evening star, and

the Greek Garden of Eden with its Dragon and the golden apples may, with

a certain stretch of imagination, suggest some painful comparisons with

the third chapter of Genesis. But this is insufficient to justify the

building of a theological wall of defence against paganism made up of

slander and misrepresentations.

But of all the Greek _euhemerisations_, Lucifer-Eosphoros is, perhaps,

the most complicated. The planet has become with the Latins, Venus, or

Aphrodite-_Anadyomene_, the foam-born Goddess, the “Divine Mother,” and

one with the Phœnician Astarte, or the Jewish Astaroth. They were all

called “The Morning Star,” and the Virgins of the Sea, or _Mar_ (whence

Mary), the great Deep, titles now given by the Roman Church to their

Virgin Mary. They were all connected with the moon and the crescent,

with the Dragon and the planet Venus, as the mother of Christ has been

made connected with all these attributes. If the Phœnician mariners

carried, fixed on the prow of their ships, the image of the goddess

Astarte (or Aphrodite, Venus Erycina) and looked upon the evening and

the morning star as _their_ guiding star, “the eye of their Goddess

mother,” so do the Roman Catholic sailors the same to this day. They fix

a Madonna on the prows of their vessels, and the blessed Virgin Mary is

called the “Virgin of the Sea.” The accepted patroness of Christian

sailors, their star, “_Stella Del Mar_,” etc., she stands on the

crescent moon. Like the old pagan Goddesses, she is the “Queen of

Heaven,” and the “Morning Star” just as they were.

Whether this can explain anything, is left to the reader’s sagacity.

Meanwhile, Lucifer-Venus has nought to do with darkness, and everything

with light. When called _Lucifer_, it is the “light bringer,” the first

radiant beam which destroys the lethal darkness of night. When named

Venus, the planet-star becomes the symbol of dawn, the chaste Aurora.

Professor Max Müller rightly conjectures that Aphrodite, born of the

sea, is a personification of the Dawn of Day, and the most lovely of all

the sights in Nature (“Science of Language”) for, before her

naturalisation by the Greeks, Aphrodite was Nature personified, the life

and light of the Pagan world, as proven in the beautiful invocation to

Venus by Lucretius, quoted by Decharme. She is _divine_ Nature in her

entirety, _Aditi-Prakriti_ before she becomes Lakshmi. She is that

Nature before whose majestic and fair face, “the winds fly away, the

quieted sky pours torrents of light, and the sea-waves smile,”

(Lucretius). When referred to as the Syrian goddess Astarte, the

Astaroth of Hieropolis, the radiant planet was personified as a majestic

woman, holding in one outstretched hand a torch, in the other, a crooked

staff in the form of a cross. (_Vide_ Lucian’s _De Dea Syriê_, and

Cicero’s _De Nat: Deorum_, 3 c.23). Finally, the planet is represented

astronomically, as a globe _poised above the cross_—a symbol no devil

would like to associate with—while the planet Earth is a globe with a

cross _over it_.

But then, these crosses are not the symbols of Christianity, but the

Egyptian _crux ansata_, the attribute of Isis (who is Venus, and

Aphrodite, Nature, also) ♀ or ♀ the planet; the fact that the Earth has

the _crux ansata_ reversed, ♁ having a great occult significance upon

which there is no necessity of entering at present.

Now what says the Church and how does it explain the “dreadful

association.” The Church believes in the devil, of course, and could not

afford to lose him. “_The Devil is the chief pillar of the Church_”

confesses unblushingly an advocate[5] of the _Ecclesia Militans_. “All

the Alexandrian Gnostics speak to us of the fall of the Æons and their

Pleroma, and all attribute that fall _to the desire to know_,” writes

another volunteer in the same army, slandering the Gnostics as usual and

identifying _the desire to know_ or occultism, magic, with Satanism.[6]

And then, forthwith, he quotes from Schlegel’s _Philosophie de

l’Histoire_ to show that the seven rectors (planets) of Pymander,

“commissioned by God to contain the phenomenal world in their seven

circles, lost in love with their own beauty,[7] came to admire

themselves with such intensity that owing to this proud self-adulation

they finally _fell_.”

-----

Footnote 5:

Thus saith Des Mousseaux. “Mœurs et Pratiques des Demons.” p. X.—and

he is corroborated in this by Cardinal de Ventura. The Devil, he says,

“is one of the great personages _whose life is closely allied to that

of the Church_; and without him ... the fall of man could not have

taken place. If it were not for him (the Devil), the Saviour, the

Redeemer, the Crucified would be but the most ridiculous of

supernumeraries and the Cross an insult to good sense.” And if so,

then we should feel thankful to the poor Devil.

Footnote 6:

De Mirville. “No Devil, no Christ,” he exclaims.

Footnote 7:

This is only another version of Narcissus, the Greek victim of his own

fair looks.

-----

Perversity having thus found its way amongst the angels, the most

beautiful creature of God “revolted against its Maker.” That creature is

in theological fancy Venus-Lucifer, or rather the informing Spirit or

Regent of that planet. This teaching is based on the following

speculation. The three principal heroes of the great sidereal

catastrophe mentioned in _Revelation_ are, according to the testimony of

the Church fathers—“the Verbum, Lucifer his usurper (see editorial) and

the grand Archangel who conquered him,” and whose “palaces” (the

“houses” astrology calls them) are in the Sun, Venus-Lucifer and

Mercury. This is quite evident, since the position of these orbs in the

Solar system correspond in their hierarchical order to that of the

“heroes” in Chapter xii of _Revelation_ “their names and destinies (?)

being closely connected in the theological (exoteric) system with these

three great metaphysical names.” (De Mirville’s _Memoir_ to the Academy

of France, on the rapping Spirits and the Demons).

The outcome of this was, that theological legend made of Venus-Lucifer

the sphere and domain of the fallen Archangel, or Satan before his

apostacy. Called upon to reconcile this statement with that other fact,

that the metaphor of “the morning star,” is applied to both Jesus, and

his Virgin mother, and that the planet Venus-Lucifer is included,

moreover, among the “stars” of the seven planetary spirits worshipped by

the Roman Catholics[8] under new names, the defenders of the Latin

dogmas and beliefs answer as follows:—

“Lucifer, the jealous neighbour of the Sun (Christ) said to himself in

his great pride: ‘I will rise as high as he!’ He was thwarted in his

design by Mercury, though the brightness of the latter (who is St.

Michael) was as much lost in the blazing fires of the great Solar orb as

his own was, and though, like Lucifer, Mercury is only the assessor, and

the guard of honour to the Sun.”—(_Ibid._)

-----

Footnote 8:

The famous temple dedicated to the Seven Angels at Rome, and built by

Michael-Angelo in 1561, is still there, now called the “Church of St

Mary of the Angels.” In the old Roman Missals printed in 1563—one or

two of which may still be seen in Palazzo Barberini—one may find the

religious service (_officio_) of the seven angels, and their _old_ and

occult names. That the “angels” are the pagan Rectors, under different

names—the Jewish having replaced the Greek and Latin names—of the

seven planets is proven by what Pope Pius V. said in his Bull to the

Spanish Clergy, permitting and encouraging the worship of the said

seven spirits of the stars. “One cannot exalt too much these _seven

rectors_ of the world, _figured by the seven planets_, as it is

consoling to our century to witness by the grace of God the cult of

these _seven ardent lights_, and of these _seven stars_ reassuming all

its lustre in the Christian republic.” (_Les Sept Esprits et

l’Histoire de leur Culte_; De Mirville’s 2nd memoir addressed to the

Academy. Vol. II. p. 358.)

-----

Guards of “dishonour” now rather, if the teachings of _theological_

Christianity were true. But here comes in the cloven foot of the Jesuit.

The ardent defender of Roman Catholic Demonolatry and of the worship of

the seven planetary spirits, at the same time, pretends great wonder at

the coincidences between old Pagan and Christian _legends_, between the

fable about Mercury and Venus, and the _historical truths_ told of St.

Michael—the “angel of the face,”—the terrestrial double, or _ferouer_ of

Christ. He points them out saying: “like Mercury, the archangel Michael,

is the _friend_ of the Sun, his Mitra, perhaps, for Michael is a

_psychopompic_ genius, one who leads the separated souls to their

appointed abodes, and like Mitra, he is the _well-known adversary of the

demons_.” This is demonstrated by the book of the _Nabatheans_ recently

discovered (by Chwolson), in which the Zoroastrian Mitra is called the

“_grand enemy of the planet Venus_.”[9] (_ibid_ p. 160.)

-----

Footnote 9:

Herodotus showing the identity of Mitra and Venus, the sentence in the

_Nabathean Agriculture_ is evidently misunderstood.

-----

There is something in this. A candid confession, for once, of perfect

identity of celestial personages and of _borrowing_ from every pagan

source. It _is_ curious, if unblushing. While in the oldest Mazdean

allegories, Mitra conquers the planet Venus, in Christian tradition

Michael defeats Lucifer, and both receive, as war spoils, the planet of

the vanquished deity.

“Mitra,” says Dollinger, “possessed, in days of old, the star of

Mercury, placed between the sun and the moon, but he was given the

planet of the conquered, and ever since his victory he is identified

with Venus.” (_“Judaisme and Paganisme,” Vol. II., p. 109. French

transl._)

“In the Christian tradition,” adds the learned Marquis, “St. Michael _is

apportioned in Heaven the throne and the palace of the foe he has

vanquished_. Moreover, like Mercury, during the palmy days of paganism,

which made sacred to this _demon_-god all the promontories of the earth,

_the Archangel is the patron of the same in our religion_.” This means,

if it does mean anything, that _now_, at any rate, Lucifer-Venus is a

_sacred_ planet, and no synonym of Satan, since St. Michael has become

his legal heir?

The above remarks conclude with this cool reflection:

“It is evident that paganism has _utilised beforehand_, and most

marvellously, all the features and characteristics of the _prince of the

face of the Lord_ (Michael) in applying them to that _Mercury_, to the

Egyptian _Hermes Anubis_, and the _Hermes Christos_ of the Gnostics.

Each of these was represented as the first among the divine councillors,

and the god nearest to the sun, _quis ut Deus_.”

Which title, with all its attributes, became that of Michael. The good

Fathers, the Master Masons of the temple of _Church_ Christianity, knew

indeed how to utilize pagan material for their new dogmas.

The fact is, that it is sufficient to examine certain Egyptian

_cartouches_, pointed out by Rossellini (_Egypte_, Vol. I., p. 289), to

find Mercury (the double of Sirius in our solar system) as Sothis,

preceded by the words “_sole_” and “_solis custode, sostegnon dei

dominanti, e forte grande dei vigilanti_,” “watchman of the sun,

sustainer of dominions, and the strongest of all the vigilants.” All

these titles and attributes are now those of the Archangel Michael, who

has inherited them from the _demons_ of paganism.

Moreover, travellers in Rome may testify to the wonderful presence in

the statue of Mitra, at the Vatican, of the best known Christian

symbols. Mystics boast of it. They find “in his lion’s head, and the

eagle’s wings, those of the courageous Seraph, the master of space

(Michael); in his caduceus, the spear, in the two serpents coiled round

the body, the struggle of the good and bad principles, and especially in

the two keys which the said Mitra holds, like St. Peter, the keys with

which this Seraph-patron of the latter opens and shuts the gates of

Heaven, _astra cludit et recludit_.” (_Mem_: p. 162.)

To sum up, the aforesaid shows that the theological romance of Lucifer

was built upon the various myths and allegories of the pagan world, and

that it is no _revealed_ dogma, but simply one invented to uphold

superstition. Mercury being one of the Sun’s _assessors_, or the

_cynocephali_ of the Egyptians and _the watch-dogs of the Sun_,

literally, the other was _Eosphoros_, the most brilliant of the planets,

“_qui mane oriebaris_,” the early rising, or the Greek ὀρθρινὸς. It was

identical with the _Amoon-ra_, the light-bearer of Egypt, and called by

all nations “the _second born_ of light” (the first being Mercury), the

beginning of his (the Sun’s) ways of wisdom, the Archangel Michael being

also referred to as the _principium viarum Domini_.

Thus a purely astronomical personification, built upon an occult meaning

which no one has hitherto seemed to unriddle outside the Eastern wisdom,

has now become a dogma, part and parcel of Christian revelation. A

clumsy transference of characters is unequal to the task of making

thinking people accept in one and the same trinitarian group, the “Word”

or Jesus, God and Michael (with the Virgin occasionally to complete it)

on the one hand, and Mitra, Satan and Apollo-Abbadon on the other: the

whole at the whim and pleasure of Roman Catholic Scholiasts. If Mercury

and Venus (Lucifer) are (astronomically in their revolution around the

Sun) the symbols of God the Father, the Son, and of their Vicar,

Michael, the “Dragon-Conqueror,” in Christian legend, why should they

when called Apollo-_Abaddon_, the “King of the Abyss,” Lucifer, Satan,

or Venus—become forthwith devils and demons? If we are told that the

“conqueror,” or “Mercury-Sun,” or again St. Michael of the _Revelation_,

was given the spoils of the conquered angel, namely, his planet, why

should opprobrium be any longer attached to a constellation so purified?

Lucifer is now the “Angel of the Face of the Lord,”[10] because “that

face is mirrored in it.” We think rather, because the Sun is reflecting

his beams in Mercury seven times more than it does on our Earth, and

twice more in Lucifer-Venus: the Christian symbol proving again its

astronomical origin. But whether from the astronomical, mystical or

symbological aspect, Lucifer is as good as any other planet. To advance

as a proof of its demoniacal character, and identity with Satan, the

configuration of Venus, which gives to the crescent of this planet the

appearance of a cut-off horn is rank nonsense. But to connect this with

the horns of “The Mystic Dragon” in _Revelation_—“one of which was

broken”[11]—as the two French Demonologists, the Marquis de Mirville and

the Chevalier des Mousseaux, the champions of the Church militant, would

have their readers believe in the second half of our present century—is

simply an insult to the public.

-----

Footnote 10:

“Both in Biblical and pagan theologies,” says de Mirville, “the Sun

has its god, its defender, and its sacrilegious usurper, in other

words, its Ormuzd, its planet Mercury (Mitra), and its Lucifer, Venus

(or Ahriman), taken away from its ancient master, and now given to its

conqueror.” (p. 164.) Therefore, Lucifer-Venus is quite _holy_ now.

Footnote 11:

In Revelation there is no “horn broken,” but it is simply said in

Chapter XIII., 3. that John saw “one of his heads, as it were, wounded

to death.” John knew naught in his generation of “a horned” devil.

-----

Besides which, the Devil had no horns before the fourth century of the

Christian era. It is a purely Patristic invention arising from their

desire to connect the god Pan, and the pagan Fauns and Satyrs, with

their Satanic legend. The demons of Heathendom were as hornless and as

tailless as the Archangel Michael himself in the imaginations of his

worshippers. The “horns” were, in pagan symbolism, an emblem of divine

power and creation, and of fertility in nature. Hence the ram’s horns of

Ammon, of Bacchus, and of Moses on ancient medals, and the cow’s horns

of Isis and Diana, etc., etc., and of the Lord God of the Prophets of

Israel himself. For Habakkuk gives the evidence that this symbolism was

accepted by the “chosen people” as much as by the Gentiles. In Chapter

III. that prophet speaks of the “Holy One from Mount Paran,” of the Lord

God who “comes from Teman, and _whose brightness was as the light_,” and

who had “_horns_ coming out of his hand.”

When one reads, moreover, the Hebrew text of Isaiah, and finds that no

Lucifer is mentioned at all in Chapter XIV., v. 12, but simply הֵילֵל,

_Hillel_, “a _bright_ star,” one can hardly refrain from wondering that

_educated_ people should be still ignorant enough at the close of our

century to associate a radiant planet—or anything else in nature for the

matter of that—with the DEVIL![12]

H. P. B.

-----

Footnote 12:

The literal words used, and their translation, are: “_Aïk Naphelta

Mi-Shamayim Hillel Ben-Shachar Negdangta La-Aretz Cholesch El-Goüm_,”

or, “How art thou fallen from the heavens, Hillel, Son of the Morning,

how art thou cast down unto the earth, thou who didst cast down the

nations.” Here the word, translated “Lucifer,” is הילל, Hillel, and

its meaning is “shining brightly or gloriously.” It is very true also,

that by a pun to which Hebrew words lend themselves so easily, the

verb _hillel_ may be made to mean “to howl,” hence, by an easy

derivation, hillel may be constructed into “howler,” or a devil, a

creature, however, one hears rarely, if ever, “howling.” In his

Lexicon, Art. הל, Parkhurst says: “The Syriac translation of this

passage renders it אילל ‘howl’; and even Jerome observes that it

literally means ‘to howl.’” Michaelis translates it, ‘Howl, Son of the

Morning.’ But at this rate, Hillel, the great Jewish sage and

reformer, might also be called a “howler,” and connected with the

devil!

-----

=THE BLOSSOM AND THE FRUIT=:

_A TALE OF LOVE AND MAGIC_.

---------------------

BY MABEL COLLINS,

Author of “THE PRETTIEST WOMAN IN WARSAW,” &c., &c., And Scribe of “THE

IDYLL OF THE WHITE LOTUS,” and “THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD.”

---------------------

Only—

One facet of the stone,

One ray of the star,

One petal of the flower of life,

But the one that stands outermost and faces us, who are men and women.

_This strange story has come to me from a far country and was brought to

me in a mysterious manner; I claim only to be the scribe and the editor.

In this capacity, however, it is I who am answerable to the public and

the critics. I therefore ask in advance, one favour only of the reader;

that he will accept (while reading this story) the theory of the

reincarnation of souls as a living fact._

_M. C._

INTRODUCTION.

Containing two sad lives on earth,

And two sweet times of sleep in Heaven.

A LIFETIME.

Overhead the boughs of the trees intermingle, hiding the deep blue sky

and mellowing the fierce heat of the sun. The boughs are so covered with

white blossoms that it is like a canopy of clustered snow-flakes, tinged

here and there with a soft pink. It is a natural orchard, a spot

favoured by the wild apricot. And among the trees, wandering from shine

to shade, flitting to and fro, is a solitary figure. It is that of a

young woman, a savage, one of a wild and fierce tribe dwelling in the

fastnesses of an inaccessible virgin forest. She is dark but beautiful.

Her blue-black hair hangs far down over her naked body; its masses

shield the warm, quivering, nervous brown skin from the direct rays of

the sun. She wears neither clothing nor any ornament. Her eyes are dark,

fierce and tender: her mouth soft and natural as the lips of an opening

flower. She is absolutely perfect in her simple savage beauty and in the

natural majesty of her womanhood, virgin in herself and virgin in the

quality of her race, which is untaught, undegraded. But in her sublimely

natural face is the dawn of a great tragedy. Her soul, her thought, is

struggling to awake. She has done a deed that seemed to her quite

simple, quite natural; yet now it is done a dim perplexity is rising

within her obscure mind. Wandering to and fro beneath the rich masses of

blossom-laden boughs, she for the first time endeavours to question

herself. Finding no answer within she goes again to look on that which

she has done.

A form lies motionless upon the ground within the thickest shade of the

rich fruit trees. A young man, one of her own tribe, beautiful like

herself, and with strength and vigour written in every line of his form.

But he is dead. He was her lover, and she found his love sweet, yet with

one wild treacherous movement of her strong supple arm she had killed

him. The blood flowed from his forehead where the sharp stone had made

the death wound. The life blood ebbed away from his strong young form; a

moment since his lips still trembled, now they were still. Why had she

in this moment of fierce passion taken that beautiful life? She loved

him as well as her untaught heart knew how to love; but he, exulting in

his greater strength, tried to snatch her love before it was ripe. It

was but a blossom, like the white flowers overhead: he would have taken

it with strong hands as though it were a fruit ripe and ready. And then

in a sudden flame of wondrous new emotion the woman became aware that

the man was her enemy, that he desired to be her tyrant. Until now she

had thought him as herself, a thing to love as she loved herself, with a

blind unthinking trust. And she acted passionately upon the guidance of

this thing—feeling—which until now she had never known. He, unaccustomed

to any treachery or anger, suspected no strange act from her, and thus,

unsuspicious, unwarned, he was at her mercy. And now he lay dead at her

feet. And still the fierce sun shone through the green leaves and

silvern blossoms and gleamed upon her black hair and tender brown skin.

She was beautiful as the morning when it rose over the tree tops of that

world-old forest. But there is a new wonder in her dark eyes; a question

that was not there until this strange and potent hour came to her. What

ages must pass over her dull spirit ere it can utter the question; ere

it can listen and hear the answer?

The savage woman, nameless, unknown save of her tribe, who regard her as

indifferently as any creature of the woods, has none to help her or stay

in its commencement the great roll of the wave of energy she has

started. Blindly she lives out her own emotions. She is dissatisfied,

uneasy, conscious of some error. When she leaves the orchard of wild

fruit trees and wanders back to the clearer part of the forest beneath

the great trees, where her tribe dwells, when she returns among them her

lips are dumb, her voice is silent. None ever heard that he, the one she

loved, had died by her hand, for she knew not how to frame or tell this

story. It was a mystery to her, this thing which had happened. Yet it

made her sad, and her great eyes wore a dumb look of longing. But she

was very beautiful and soon another young and sturdy lover was always at

her side. He did not please her; there was not the glow in his eyes that

had gladdened her in those of the dead one whom she had loved. And yet

she shrunk not from him nor did she raise her arm in anger, but held it

fast at her side lest her passion should break loose unawares. For she

felt that she had brought a want, a despair upon herself by her former

deed; and now she determined that she would act differently. Blindly she

tried to learn the lesson that had come upon her. Blindly she let

herself be the agent of her own will. For now she became the willing

slave and serf of one whom she did not love, and whose passion for her

was full of tyranny. Yet she did not, she dared not, resist this

tyranny; not because she feared him, but because she feared herself. She

had the feeling that one might have who had come in contact with a new

and hitherto unknown natural force. She feared lest resistance or

independence should bring upon her a greater wonder, a greater sadness

and loss than that which she had already brought upon herself.

And so she submitted to that which in her first youth would no more have

been endured by her than the bit by the wild horse.

The apricot blossom has fallen and fruit has followed it; the leaves

have fallen and the trees are bare. The sky is grey and wild above, the

ground dank and soft with fallen leaves below. The aspect of the place

is changed, but it is the same; the face and form of the woman have

changed; but she is the same. She is alone again in the wild orchard,

finding her way by instinct to the spot where her first lover died. She

has found it. What is there? Some white bones that lie together; a

skeleton. The woman’s eyes fasten and feed on the sight and grow large

and terrible. Horror at last is struck into her soul. This is all that

is left of her young love, who died by her hand—white bones that lie in

ghastly order! And the long hot days and sultry nights of her life have

been given to a tyrant who has reaped no gladness and no satisfaction

from her submission; for he has not learned yet even the difference

between woman and woman. All alike are mere creatures like the wild

things; creatures to hunt and to conquer. Dumbly in her dark heart

strange questionings arise. She turns from this graveyard of her

unquestioning time and goes back to her slavery. Through the years of

her life she waits and wonders, looking blankly at the life around her.

Will no answer come to her soul?

---

AFTER SLEEP, AWAKENING.

Splendid was the veil that shielded her from that other soul, the soul

she knew and of which she showed her recognition by swift and sudden

love. But the veil separated them; a veil heavy with gold and shining

with stars of silver. And as she gazed upon these stars, with delighted

admiration of their brilliance, they grew larger and larger, till at

length they blended together, and the veil became one shining sheen

gorgeous with golden broideries. Then it became easier to see through

the veil, or rather it seemed easier to these lovers. For before the

veil had made the shape appear dim; now it appeared glorious and ideally

beautiful and strong. Then the woman put out her hand, hoping to obtain

the pressure of another hand through the shining gossamer. And at the

same instant he too put out his hand, for in this moment their souls

communicated, and they understood each other. Their hands touched; the

veil was broken; the moment of joy was ended and again the struggle

began.

---

A LIFETIME.

Sitting, singing, on the steps of an old palace, her feet paddling in

the water of a broad canal, was a child who was becoming more than a

child; a creature on the threshold of life, of awakening sensation. A

girl, with ruddy gold hair, and innocent blue eyes, that had in their

vivid depths the strange startled look of a wild creature. She was as

simple and isolated in her happiness as any animal of the woods or

hills—the sunshine, the sweet air with the faint savour of salt in it,

her own pure clear girlish voice, and the gay songs of the people that

she sang—these were pleasure enough and to spare for her.

But the space of unconscious happiness or unhappiness which heralds the

real events of a life was already at an end. The great wave which she

had set in motion was increasing in volume ceaselessly; how long before

it shall reach the shore and break upon that far off coast? None can

know, save those whose eyesight is more than man’s. None can tell; and

she is ignorant, unknowing. But though she knows nothing of it, she is

within the sweep of the wave, and is powerless to arrest it until her

soul shall awake.

“My blossom, my beautiful wild flower,” said a voice close beside her. A

young boatman had brought his small vessel so gently to the steps she

had not noticed his approach. He leaned over his boat towards her, and

touched her bare white feet with his hand.

“Come away with me, Wild Blossom,” he said. “Leave that wretched home

you cling to. What is there to keep you there now your mother is dead?

Your father is like a savage, and makes you live like a savage too. Come

away with me, and we will live among people who will love you and find

you beautiful as I do. Will you come? How often have I asked you, Wild

Blossom, and you have never answered. Will you answer now?”

“Yes,” said the girl, looking up with grave, serious eyes, that had

beneath their beauty a melancholy meaning, a sad question.

The man saw this strange look and interpreted it as clearly as he could.

“Trust me,” he said, “I am not a savage like your father. When you are

my little wife I will care for you far more dearly than myself. You will

be my soul, my guide, my star. And I will shield you as my soul is

shielded within my body, follow you as my guide, look up to you as to a

star in the blue heavens. Surely you can trust my love, Wild Blossom.”

He had not answered the doubt in her heart, for he had not guessed what

it was, nor could she have told him. For she had not yet learned to know

what it was, nor to know of it more than that it troubled her. But she

put it aside and silenced it now, for the moment had come to do so. Not

till she had learned her lesson much more fully could the question ever

be expressed even to her own soul, and before this could be, the

question must be silenced many times.

“Yes,” she said, “I will come.”

She held out her hand to him as if to seal the compact. He interpreted

the gesture by his own desire, and taking her hand in his drew her

towards him. She yielded and stepped into the boat. And then he quickly

pushed away from the steps, and, dipping his oars in the water, soon had

gone far away down the canal. Blossom looking earnestly back, watched

the old palace disappear. In some of its old rooms and on its sunny

steps her child-life had been spent. Now she knew that was at an end.

She understood that all was changed henceforth, though she could not

guess into what she was going, and she waited for her future with a

strange confidence in the companion she had accepted. This puzzled her

dimly. Yet how should she lack confidence, having known him long ago and

thrown away his love and his life beneath the wild apricot trees, having

seen afterwards the steadfastness of his love when her soul stood beside

his in soul life?

A long way they went in the little boat. They left the canals and went

out upon the open sea, and still the boatman rowed unwearyingly, his

eyes all the while upon the beautiful wild blossom he had plucked and

carried away with him to be his own, his dear and adored possession. Far

away along the coast lay a small village of fishermen’s cots. It was to

this that the young man guided his boat, for it was here he dwelled.

At the door of his cot stood his old mother, a quaint old woman with

wrinkled, rosy face, wearing a rough fishwife’s dress and coarse shawl;

her brown hand shaded her eyes as she watched her son’s boat

approaching. Presently a smile came on her mouth. “He’s gotten the

blossom he’s talked of so often in his sleep. Will he be happy now, the

good lad?”

He was truly a good lad; for his mother knew him well, and the more she

knew him the deeper grew her love. She would do anything for his

happiness. And now she took to her arms the child, the Blossom, and

cherished her for his sake. Before many days had passed the fishing

village made a _fête_ day for the wedding of its strongest boatman. And

the women’s eyes filled with tears when they looked at the sad, tender,

questioning face of the beautiful Wild Blossom.

She had given her love without hesitation, in complete confidence. She

had given more; herself, her life, her very soul. The surrender was now

complete.

And now, when all seemed done and all accomplished, her question began

to be answered. Dimly she knew that, spite of the husband at whose feet

she bowed, spite of the babes she carried in her arms till their tiny

feet were strong enough to carry them down over the shore to the marge

of the blue waters, spite of the cottage home she garnished and cleansed

and loved so dearly, spite of all, her heart was hungry and empty. What

could it mean, that though she had all she had none? Blossom was grown a

woman now, and there were some lines of care and of pain on her

forehead. Yet, still, she was beautiful and still she bore her

child-name of Blossom; but the beauty of her face grew sadder and more

strange as the years went by, the years that bring ease and satisfaction

to the stagnant soul. Wild Blossom’s soul was eager and anxious; she

could not still the mysterious voices of her heart, and these told her

(though perhaps she did not always understand their speech) that her

husband was not in reality her king; that he heard no sound from that

inner region in which she chiefly existed. For him contentment existed

in the outward life that he lived, in sheer physical pleasure, in the

excitement of hard work, and the dangers of the sea, in the beauty of

his wife, the mirth of his happy children. He asked no more. But Wild

Blossom’s eyes had the prophetic light in them. She saw that all this

peace must pass, this pleasure end; she recognised that these things did

not, could not, absolutely satisfy the spirit; her soul seemed to

tremble within her as she began to feel the first dawn of the terrible

answer to her sad questioning.

---

A deeper dream of rest;

A stronger waking.

Many a long year later, a solitary woman dwelled in that fisherman’s

cottage on the shore of the blue sea. She was old and bowed with age and

trouble. But still her eyes were brighter than any girl’s in the

village, and held in them the mysterious beauty of the soul; still her

hair, once golden, now grey, waved about her forehead. The people loved

her and were kind to her, for she was always gentle and full of generous

thought. But they never understood her, for they were long ages behind

her in her growth. She was ready now for the great central test of

personal existence; the experience of life in civilization. When the old

fishwife lay dead within her cottage, and the people came to grieve

beside her body, they little guessed that she was going on to a great

and glorious future; a future full of daring and of danger. When her

eyes closed in death, her inner eyes opened on a sight that filled her

with absolute joy. She was in a garden of fruit trees, and the blossom

of the trees was at its full. When her eyes fell on this white maze of

flowers and drank in its beauty, she remembered the name she had borne

on earth and dimly understood its meaning. The blossoms hid from her the

sky and all else until a soft pressure on her hand drew her eyes

downwards; and then she saw beside her that one whom she had loved

through the ages, and who, side by side with her, was experiencing the

profound mystery, and learning the strange lesson of incarnation in the

world where sex is the first great teacher. And with each phase of

existence that they passed through, these two forged stronger and

stronger links that held them together and compelled them again and

again to meet, so that together they were destined to pass through the

vital hour; the hour when the life is shaped for greater ends or for

vain deeds.

Here within this sheltered place, where blossoms filled the air with

sweetness and beauty, it seemed to them, that they had attained to the

full of pleasure. They rested in perfect satisfaction, drinking deep

draughts of the joy of living. To them existence seemed a final and

splendid fact in itself; existence as they then had it. The moment in

which they lived was sufficient, they desired none other, nor any other

place, nor any other beauty, than those they had. None knows and none

can tell what time or age was passed in this deep contentment and

fulfilment of pleasure. At last Wild Blossom’s soul woke from its sleep,

satiated; the hunger returned to gnaw at her heart; the longing to know

reasserted itself. Holding tight the hand she held in hers, she sprang

from the soft couch on which she lay. Then, for the first time, she

noticed that the ground was so soft and pleasant, because there, where

she had lain, had drifted great heaps of the fallen fruit blossoms. The

ground was all white with them, though some had begun to lose their

delicate beauty, to curl and wrinkle and turn dark. Then she looked

overhead and saw that the trees had, with the loss of the delicate

petals, lost their first fairness, the splendour of the spring. Now they

were covered with small, hard, green fruit, scarce formed, unbeautiful

to the eye, hard to the touch, acid to the taste. With a shudder of

regret for the sweet spring time that was gone, Wild Blossom hurried

away from the trees, still holding fast that other hand in hers. She was

going to face new, strange experiences, perhaps terrible dangers: her

task was the easier for that tried companionship, for the nearness of

that other who was climbing the same steep ladder of life.

END OF INTRODUCTION.

CHAPTER I.

In a masked ball there is an element of adventure that appeals to the

daring of both sexes, to the bright and witty spirits. Hilary Estanol

was just such an one as the hero of a bright revel should be. A

beautiful boy, with a lovely face, and eyes that had in them a deep

sadness. In repose his face was almost womanish in its softness; but a

chill brilliance was in his smile, a certain slight cynicism coloured

all his speech. Yet Hilary had no reason to be a cynic, and he was not

one who adopted anything from fashion or affectation. The spring of this

uncalled-for coldness and indifference lay in himself.

To-night he was the centre of attraction in Madame Estanol’s

drawing-rooms. This _bal masqué_ was to celebrate his coming of age, and

Hilary had never looked so womanish as when he stood among his friends

receiving their congratulations and admiring their gifts. He wore the

dress of a troubadour, and it was one which became him well, not only in

its picturesqueness as a costume, but in the requirements of the

character. He had the faculty of the improvisatore, his voice was rich

and soft, his musical and poetic gifts swift and versatile. Hilary was

adored by his friends, but disliked, indeed almost hated, by his one

near relation, his mother. She was standing near him now, talking to a

group who had gathered round her. She was one of the cleverest women of

the day, and, still beautiful and full of a charming pride, held a court

of her own. Her dislike for Hilary was founded on her estimate of his

character. To one of her intimate friends she had said, not long before

this night, “Hilary will disgrace his name and family before there is

one grey thread in his dark hair. He has the qualities that bring

despair and ensure remorse. God will surely forgive me that I say this

of my son; but I see it before me, an abyss into which he will drag me

with him; and I wait for it every day.”

A guest, just arrived, approached Madame Estanol with a smile, and after

greeting her affectionately, said, in a whisper, “I have brought a

friend with me. Welcome her in her character as a fortune-teller. She is

very witty, and will amuse us presently, if you like.”

She moved aside a little, and Madame Estanol saw standing behind her a

stooping figure, an old haggard crone, with palsied head, and hand that

trembled as it grasped her stick.

“Ah, Countess! it is impossible to recognise your friend under this

disguise,” said Madame Estanol. “Will you not tell me who she is?”

“I am pledged to say nothing but that she is a fortune-teller,” said the

Countess Bairoun. “Her name she herself will reveal only to one person;

and that person must be born under the star that favoured her own

birth.”

The fortune-teller turned her bent head towards Madame Estanol, and

fixed a pair of brilliant and fascinating eyes on hers. Immediately

Madame Estanol became aware of a strong charm that drew her towards this

mysterious person. She advanced and held out her hand to assist the old

woman in moving across the room.

“Come with me,” she said, “I should like to introduce you to my son. He

is the hero of this scene to-night, for the ball is held in honour of

his coming of age.”

They went together through the maskers that were now beginning to throng

the large drawing-rooms, and everyone turned to look at the strange

figure of the tottering old crone. Hilary Estanol was leaning against

the high carved oak mantel frame of the inner drawing-room, surrounded

by a laughing group of his intimate friends. He held his mask in his

hand, and as he stood there smiling, his dark curls falling on his

forehead, his mother thought, as she approached him, “My boy grows

handsomer every hour of his gay young life.” When Hilary saw his

mother’s strange companion he advanced a step, as if to welcome her, but

Madame Estanol checked him with a smile. “I cannot introduce our visitor

to you,” she said, “for I do not know her name. She will tell it to but

one person, who must have been born under the same star as herself.

Meantime, we are to greet her in her character as the fortune-teller.”

This announcement was welcomed by a murmur of amusement and interest.

“Then will our kind visitor perhaps exercise her craft for us?” asked

Hilary, gazing with curiosity at the trembling head and grey locks

before him. The old woman turned her head sideways, and gave him a look

from those strange brilliant eyes. He, too, like his mother, felt the

charm from them. But he felt more. Something suddenly wakened within

him; a rush of inexplicable emotions roused him into amazement; he put

his hand to his forehead; he was bewildered, almost faint.

There was a small drawing-room which opened out of the room they were

in. It was so tiny that it held but a table covered with flowers, a low

couch and an easy-chair. The laughing group that surrounded Hilary went

eagerly to convert this room into the sanctum of the prophetess. They

lowered and softened the shaded light; drew close the blinds and shut

the doors, locking all but one. Here was placed a guardian who was to

admit grudgingly and one by one those who were fortunate enough to speak

alone with the sybil, for she would only see certain of the guests whom

she selected herself from the throng, describing their appearance and

dress to the guardian of her improvised temple. These were all ladies of

great position. They entered laughing and half defiant. They came out,

some pale, some red, some trembling, some in tears. “Who can she be?”

they whispered in terrified tones to one another, and in that terror

showed how she had penetrated their hearts and touched on their secret

thoughts.

At last the guardian of the door said that Hilary himself was to enter.

When Hilary went in, the young man, as he closed the door on the fortune

teller and her new guest, turned with a laugh to the group behind him.

“Already she has startled him,” he said, “I heard him utter almost a cry

as he entered.”

“Could you see in?” asked one, “perhaps she has taken off her disguise

for her host!”

“No, I saw nothing,” he answered. “Can none of you who have been in

guess who she is?”

“No,” answered a girl who had come out from the ordeal with white and

trembling lips. “It is impossible to guess. She knows everything.”

It was as they had supposed. She had taken off her disguise for her

host. The staff, the large cloak, the wig and cap lay on the ground.

With the swift use of a cosmetiqued kerchief she had removed from her

fair skin the dark complexion of the ancient sybil. When Hilary entered

she had completed this rapid toilette and sat leaning back in a low

chair. She was dressed in a rich evening costume; she held a mask in her

hand ready for use. But now her face was uncovered; her strange and

brilliant eyes were fixed on Hilary; her beautiful mouth wore a half

smile of amusement at his surprise. It was more than surprise that he

experienced. Again that rush of inexplicable emotion overpowered him. He

felt like one intoxicated. He regarded her very earnestly for a few

moments.

“Surely,” he said, “we have met before!”

“We were born under the same star,” she answered in a voice that

thrilled him. Until now he had not heard her speak. The sense of some

strong link or association that united them, was made doubly strong by

the sound of that voice, rich, strong and soft. Suddenly he recognised

the meaning of his emotion. He no longer struggled against it, he no

longer was bewildered by it.

He approached her and sat down upon the couch at her side. He regarded

her with wonder and adoration, but no longer with awe or surprise. For

he understood that the event which he had imagined would never come was

already here—he was in love.

“You said you would disclose your name to the one who was born under the

same star as yourself.”

“Do you not know me?” she said with a slight look of surprise. She

fancied everyone knew her at least by sight.

“I do not,” he answered, “though indeed I am perplexed to think I can

ever have lived without knowing you.”

Flattery produced no effect upon her, she lived in an atmosphere of it.

“I am the Princess Fleta,” she answered. Hilary started and coloured a

little at the words, and could ill control his emotion. The Princess

Fleta held a position in the society of the country, which can only

belong to one who stands next to a throne that rules an important

nation. She was a personage among crowned heads, one to whom an emperor

might, without stooping, offer his love; and Hilary, the child of an

officer of the Austrian army, and of a poor daughter of a decayed

aristocratic family, Hilary had in the swift stirring of love at first

sight, told his own heart that he loved her! It could never be unsaid,

and he knew it. He had whispered the words within himself, the whisper

would find a hundred echoes. He must always love her.

The Princess turned her wonderful eyes on him and smiled.

“I have done my work for to-night,” she said. “I have amused some of the

people, now I should like to dance.”

Hilary was sufficient of a courtier not to be deaf to this command,

though his whole soul was in his eyes and all his thoughts fixed on her

beauty. He rose and offered her his arm, she put on her mask and they

left the room. When Hilary appeared among the crowd that hung round the

door of the fortune teller’s sanctum, accompanied by a slender, graceful

woman, whose face was hidden save for the great dark eyes, there was an

irrepressible murmur of excitement and wonder. “Who can she be?” was

repeated again a hundred times. But no one guessed. None dreamed this

could be the Princess Fleta herself; for there were but few houses she

would visit at, and no one imagined that there could be any inducement

to bring her to Madame Estanol’s. The mystery of her presence she

explained to Hilary while they danced together.

“I am a student of magic,” she said, “and I have already learned some

useful secrets. I can read the hearts of the courtiers who surround me,

and I know where to look for true friends. Last night I dreamed of the

friend I should find here. Do you care for these mystic occupations?”

“I know nothing of them,” said Hilary.

“Let me teach you then,” said the Princess, with a light laugh. “You

will be a good pupil, that I know. Perhaps I may make a disciple of you!

and there are not many with whom that is possible.”

“And why?” asked Hilary. “Surely it is a fascinating study to those who

can believe in the secrets.”

“Scepticism is not the great difficulty,” answered the Princess, “but

fear. Terror turns the crowd back from the threshold. Only a few dare

cross it.”

“And you are one of the few,” said Hilary, gazing on her with eyes of

burning admiration.

“I have never felt fear,” she answered.

“And would it be impossible to make you feel it, I wonder,” said Hilary.

“Do you desire to try?” she answered, with a smile at his daring speech.

It did not sound so full of impertinence as it looks, for Hilary’s eyes

and face were all alight with love and admiration, and his voice

trembled with passion.

“You can make the attempt if you choose,” she said, glancing at him with

those strange eyes of hers. “Terrify me if you can.”

“Not here, in my own house, it would not be hospitable.”

“Come and see me, then, some day when you think it will amuse you. Try

and frighten me. I will show you my laboratory, where I produce essences

and incenses to please the gnomes and ghouls.”

Hilary accepted this invitation with a flush of pleasure.

“Take me to the Countess,” she said at last. “I am going home. But I

want her first to introduce me to your mother.”

The Countess was delighted that the Princess had made up her mind to

this. She hardly thought Madame Estanol would be pleased to discover

that the great lady had been masquerading in her drawing-room, and had

not cared to throw off her disguise even for her hostess. And the

Countess valued the friendship of Madame Estanol; so she was glad the

wilful Princess had decided to treat her with politeness.

Madame Estanol could scarcely conceal her surprise at learning what the

dignity was which had been hidden under the disguise of the old

fortune-teller. The Princess did not remove her mask, and, with a laugh,

she warned Madame Estanol that some of her guests would not be pleased

to discover who the sybil was who had read their hearts so shrewdly.

When she had gone, Hilary’s heart and spirits had gone with her. It

seemed as if he hardly cared to speak; his laughter had died away

altogether. His thoughts, his very self, followed the fascinating

personality that had bewitched him.

Madame Estanol saw his abstraction, his flushed eager look, and the new

softness of his eyes. But she said no word. She feared the Princess, who

was well known to be full of caprice and wilfulness. She feared lest

Hilary should be mad enough to yield to the charm of the girl’s beauty

and confident manner; the charm of power, peculiar, or rather, possible

only to one in a royal place. But she would say no word; knowing Hilary

well, she knew that any attempt to influence him against it would only

intensify his new passion.

CHAPTER II.

Two days later Hilary nerved himself to pay the visit to the Princess.

He thought she could not consider it to be too soon, for it seemed to

him two months since he had seen her.

She lived in a garden-house some two or three miles away in the country.

Her father’s palace in the city never pleased her; she only came there

when festivities or ceremonials made her presence necessary. In the

country, with her chaperone and her maids, she was free to do as she

chose. For they were one and all afraid of her, and held her

“laboratory” in the profoundest respect. None of them would have entered

that room except to avoid some dreadful doom.

Hilary was taken to the Princess in the garden, where she was walking to

and fro in an avenue of trees which were covered with sweet scented

blossoms. She welcomed Hilary with a charming manner, and the hour he

spent with her here in the sunshine was one of the wildest intoxication.

They began openly to play the pretty game of love. Now that no eyes were

on them the Princess let him forget that she belonged to a different

rank from his own. When she was tired of walking, “Come,” she said, “and

I will shew you my laboratory. No one in this house ever enters it. If

you should say in the city that you have been in that room you will be

besieged with questions. Be careful to say nothing.”

“I would die sooner,” exclaimed Hilary, to whom the idea of talking

about the Princess and her secrets seemed like sacrilege.

The room was without windows, perfectly dark but for a softened light

shed by a lamp in the centre of the high ceiling. The walls were painted

black and on them were drawn strange figures and shapes in red. These

had evidently not been painted by any artisan hand; though bold in

touch, they were irregular in workmanship. Beside a great vessel which

stood upon the ground, was a chair, and in this chair a figure upon

which Hilary’s attention immediately became fastened.

He saw at once that it was not human, that it was not a lay figure, that

it was not a statue. It resembled most a lay figure, but there was

something strange about it which does not exist in the mere form on

which draperies are hung. And its detail was elaborated; the skin was

tinted, the eyes darkened correctly, the hair appeared to be human.

Hilary remained at the doorway unable to advance because of the

fascination this form exercised upon him.

The Princess looked back from where she stood in the centre of the room

beneath the light; she saw the direction of his gaze and laughed.

“You need not fear it,” she said.

“Is it a lay figure?” asked Hilary, trying to speak easily, for he

remembered that she despised those who knew fear.

“Yes,” she answered, “it is my lay figure.”

There was something that puzzled Hilary in her tone.

“Are you an artist?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered, “in life—in human nature. I do not work with a

pencil or a brush; I use an agent that cannot be seen yet can be felt.”

“What do you mean?” asked Hilary.

She turned on him a strange look, that was at first distrustful, and

then grew soft and tender.

“I will not tell you yet,” she said.

Hilary roused himself to answer her lightly.

“Have I to pass through some ordeal before you tell me?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered gaily, “and already an ordeal faces you. Dare you

advance into the room or no?”

Hilary made a great effort to break the spell that was on him. He went

hastily across the room to where she stood. Then he realised that he had

actually passed through an ordeal. He had resisted some force, the

nature of which he knew not, and he had come out the victor. Realising

this brought to him another conviction.

“Princess,” he said, “there is some one else in this room besides you

and me. We are not alone.”

He spoke so suddenly, and from so great a sense of startled surprise,

that he did not pause to think whether his question were a wise one or

not. The Princess laughed as she looked at him.

“You are very sensitive,” she said. “Certainly we were born under the

same star, for we are susceptible to the same influences. No, we are not

alone. I have servants here whom no eyes have seen but mine. Would you

like to see them? Do not say yes hastily. It means a long and tedious

apprenticeship, obtaining mastery over these servants. But unless you

conquer them you cannot often see me; for if you are much near to me

they will hate you, and their hate is greater than your power to resist

it.”

She spoke seriously now, and Hilary felt a strange sensation as he

looked at this beautiful girl standing beneath the lamp light. He

experienced a sudden dread of her as of someone stronger than himself;

and also an impassioned desire to serve her, to be her slave, to give

his life to her utterly. Perhaps she read the love in his eyes, for she

turned away and moved towards the figure in the chair.

“I know this distresses you,” she said. “You shall see it no longer.”

She opened a large screen which was formed of some gold coloured

material covered with shapes outlined in black. She arranged this so

that the figure was altogether hidden from view and also the great

vessel which stood beside it.

“Now,” she said, “you will breathe more freely. And I am going to shew

you something. We did not come out of the sunshine for no purpose. And

we must be quick, for my good aunt will be terrified when she finds I

have brought you in here. I believe she will hardly expect to see you

alive again.”

She opened a gold vessel, which stood upon a cabinet, while she spoke,

and the air immediately became full of a strong sweet perfume. Hilary

put his hand to his forehead. Was it possible that he could be so

immediately affected, or was it his imagination that the red shapes and

figures which were on the black wall moved and ordered and arranged

themselves? Yet, so it was; to his eyes the forms mingled and again

broke up and re-mingled. A word was formed and then another. It was

unconsciously imprinted on Hilary’s memory before it changed and

vanished; he noticed only the mysterious occurrence which was happening

before his eyes. Suddenly he became aware that a sentence had been

completed; that words had been written there which he would never have

dared to utter; that on the wall before him had appeared in letters as

of fire the secret of his heart. He staggered back and drew his eyes

with difficulty from the wall to fix them in amazement and fear upon the

Princess. Her face was flushed, her eyes were bright and tender.

“Did you see it?” he asked in a trembling voice.

For a moment she hesitated then she answered, “Yes, I saw it.”

There was a brief silence. Hilary looked again at the wall, expecting to

see the thought in his mind written there. But the shapes were returning

to their original appearance, and the perfume was dying out of the air.

“Come,” said the Princess suddenly, “we have been here long enough. My

aunt will be distressed. Let us go to her.”

She led the way from the room, and Hilary followed her. In another

moment they were in a large drawing-room, flooded with sunshine and

fragrant with flowers; the Princess’ aunt was busied with silks which

she had entangled while at her embroidery; the Princess was on her knees

beside her, holding a skein of yellow silk upon her hands. Hilary stood

a moment utterly bewildered. Had he been dreaming? Was that black room

and its terrible atmosphere a phantasy?

He had stayed long enough, and he now took his leave reluctantly. The

Princess, who would have no ceremony at the Garden House, rose from her

knees and said she would open the gate for him. Hilary flushed with

pleasure at this mark of kindness.

The gate she took him to was a narrow one that stood in a thick-set

hedge of flowering shrubs. When he had passed through he looked back,

and saw the Princess leaning on the gate, framed in gorgeous blossoms.

She smiled and held out her hand to him. The richness of her presence

intoxicated him, and he lost all sense of the apparently impassable gulf

between them.

“You read the words,” he said, “and you give me your hand in mine?”

“I read the words,” she answered, in a soft voice that thrilled him,

“and I give you my hand in yours. Good-bye!”

She had touched his hand for an instant, and now she was gone. Hilary

turned to walk through the flowering hedges to the city. But his heart,

his thought, his soul remained behind. She had read the words, and she

was not angry. She knew of his love for her and she was not angry. She

had read his heart and had not taken offence. What might he not hope

for?

Then came another thought. She had read the words. Then that black room

was no phantasy, but a fact as actual as the sunshine. What were the

powers of this strange creature that he loved? He knew not; but he knew

that he loved her.

* * * * * * * *

An overpowering desire carried him daily on that road between the

flowery hedges to the Garden House. Only sometimes had he the courage to

enter. Most often he lingered at that narrow gate, embosomed in flowers

and looked longingly over it. The first time that he entered after this

visit, in which his secret was written before his eyes, he found the

Princess standing within the gate. She held out her hand to him saying

simply, “I knew you were coming. I have prepared something, and I have

persuaded my aunt that no terrible thing will happen if you are in my

laboratory for a little while. So come with me.”

It was brilliantly lit, this black walled room she called her

laboratory. The great vessel stood in the midst of the floor beneath the

lamp, and from it rose flame and smoke. A strong and vivid perfume

filled the air, and the upper part of the high room was clouded with

grey blue smoke, that shone in the light like silver.

In the chair beside it sat a figure: it was that of a beautiful woman. A

strange mixture of emotions overpowered Hilary. At the first glance he

felt that this figure was the same he had seen the other day; at the

second he recognised his mother. He rushed forward to her and became

aware that she was lifeless; then he turned passionately upon the

Princess with anger and horror in his face.

“What have you done? What have you done?” he cried.

“Nothing,” she said, with a smile. “I have done no harm. Do you not see

that is only an image? My lay figure, as I told you.”

He gave a long look at the inanimate shape that was so perfect a

representation of his mother, and then he turned upon the Princess a

look of more intense horror than before.

“What are you doing?” he asked, in a low voice.

“No harm!” she answered lightly. “Your mother hates and fears me. I

cannot endure that. I am making her love me. I am making her desire your

presence here with me.”

For a while they stood in silence by the side of the vessel and its

flaming contents; then suddenly Hilary cried out: “I cannot bear it! Put

an end to this terrible spell!”

“Yes,” said the Princess, “I will, but not to its results.”

She drew the screen before the seated figure, and threw something into

the vessel that instantly quenched the flame.

Then she led Hilary from the room, and they walked up and down beneath

the trees, talking of things as lovers talk—things that interested

themselves but none other.

When Hilary returned home his mother rose from her couch and held out

her hand to him. She drew him to sit beside her.

“Hilary,” she said, “something tells me you have been with the Princess

Fleta. It is well, and I am glad. She is a good friend for you; ask her

if I shall come to see her.”

Hilary rose without replying. The dew stood on his brow. For the first

time he was conscious of actual fear, and the fear he felt was of the

woman he loved.

(_To be continued._)

A LAW OF LIFE: KARMA.

There is nothing more common to those who know anything about Theosophy

than to be asked:—What is Karma? Karma is a Sanskrit word which has to

be used by those who discuss the idea it conveys, simply because there

is no English word to correspond to it. That is very easy to answer.

Then comes the question:—What is the idea which it conveys? Than this

there is nothing more difficult to answer, and the reason why this is

the case is not far to seek. Let it once be granted that the

constitution of man is complex and complicated, and that the soul has

existed for ages that seem like an eternity, and existed, moreover, in a

garb of flesh which has been changed thousands of times in the course of

those ages. Let this be granted, and, in addition, that no action is

without its effect in the physical, moral, and spiritual worlds, then,

it will be seen, that the answer to the question: “What is Karma,” is

very difficult, if not well-nigh impossible. Still, some endeavour may

be made to give a general idea, though the details of any individual

case can hardly be calculated.

Granting the principle of reincarnation, Karma is the _working_ of the

great law which governs those incarnations; but, taken in its wider

sense, Karma may be defined as a manifestation of the One, Universal,

Divine Principle in the phenomenal world. Thus, it may be further

defined as “the great law of Harmony” which governs the Universe.

But it may be replied that Harmony is not the great law of Nature, but,

on the contrary, lack of harmony and discord. And what proof is there

that Harmony is the law?

When such proof is required, the answer is at once made:—Too short a

view of life and the universe has been taken. The man who denies the

existence of harmony in the universe has transgressed the law and is

experiencing the punishment. He does this unconsciously to himself,

because the law of harmony forms an unconscious impulse to its

re-adjustment when it has been broken. No better illustration can be

given than in the definition of a fugue, which is:—“A musical

composition in contrapuntal style, in which a subject is proposed by one

part, and then responded to by the others according to certain rules.”

Again, in musical chords, the composing notes, if taken by twos and

threes, will be found in discord, but, when taken altogether, produce a

harmony. Harmony is then the just adaptation of things to each other,

and the universe, the personal element of man being eliminated, is

essentially an evidence of harmony; otherwise it could not exist, for it

would fall to pieces and no longer be a universe. To those who find only

discord around them, the note to Rule 5, in the second part of “Light on

the Path,” may convey a meaning. No other words can express it better.

One reason for the apparent disharmony may be given. The desires of man

are, as a rule, devoted to the gain of what may be called his

personality. While such is the case in any man, to the exclusion of

other interests, that man cannot dive deep into his own heart and

perceive the real underlying harmony. He is incapable of understanding

or even of perceiving it, because his attention is solely devoted to

that which produces discord. Naturally, then, to him all things seem out

of joint, the reign of discord is ever present, and he cries out

perpetually against the injustice of the world he lives in. But if he

will but turn his attention from his personality to the greater span of

his life, and endeavour first to see evidence of harmony in those around

him and then in himself, he will find that harmony; and his way will be

made plain to him.

Granting, then, that it is the Great Law of Harmony or Karma which

governs the Universe, and which is the Divine principle under one aspect

manifested in Nature, then it is easy to understand that any action in

violation of Nature’s laws will produce a deviation from the straight

line of harmony; consequently the law of harmony will produce an

adjusting effect. Now, who is to produce that effect? Nature, or the man

who committed the action? Both, or rather, the latter under the

influence of the former. The latter most certainly, unless man is to be

regarded simply as a blind puppet. It is possible to compare the

situation to that of a man whose progress is contingent upon an exact

balance being preserved on a pair of scales in front of him. If his

actions disturb the balance of those scales and add weight to one side

or the other, it is necessary immediately to add a counter-balancing

weight on the opposite side and so restore the balance or harmony. (Of

course this is a physical illustration, and can hardly be carried very

far on the moral plane.) That is to say that the one Divine principle is

divided by man’s actions into two opposing forces of good and evil, and

man’s progress depends on the exertion of his will to preserve harmony

and prevent deviation to one side or the other. Evil only exists in

contradistinction to good, and the preservation of such harmony as we

have and the advance towards Universal Harmony—the abstract divinity—is

what all right-minded persons theoretically aspire to.

It has been thought that, in consequence of the attention paid to the

classics in education, the word Nemesis would replace Karma with

advantage. So perhaps it might have done, had the earliest traditions of

Greek mythology been preserved. But the fatal tendency towards

anthropomorphism set in very strongly even in the palmy days of Greece,

and in consequence Nemesis only pourtrayed the personification of a

human passion. Originally the balancing power, independent of Zeus and

all the Olympian gods, who carried out her decrees, Nemesis became

simply the avenging deity; so much was this the case that in a general

sense she might have been called the tutelary deity of those envious of

their neighbour’s happiness. Between these points Nemesis appears as the

personification of the moral reverence for law, of the natural fear of

committing a wrong action, and hence the personification of conscience.

It was after this period that Nemesis was said to direct human affairs,

with a view to restore the balance between happiness and unhappiness.

But, in earlier times, the idea of Nemesis was divided into those of

_Nemesis_ and _Adrasteia_ (or what Orientalists would call good and evil

Karma), for even then the idea of evil was beginning to be attached to

Nemesis.

But Nemesis was closely linked to both the _Moirae_ (Fates) and the

_Eumenides_ (Furies), who were all the children of Zeus and Night. The

_Moirae_ appear generally as divinities of fate in a strict sense, and

act independently at the helm of necessity. They direct fate, and watch

that the fate assigned to every being _by eternal laws_ shall take its

course (_Aesch_: _Prometheus Vinctus_, 511-515). Zeus, as well as gods

and men, submits to them. They assign their proper functions to the

Erinnyes who inflict the punishment, and are sometimes called their

sisters (_Aesch_: _Eumen_: 335, 962; _Prometheus_ 516, 696, 895). These

latter were always considered to be more ancient than the Olympian gods,

and were therefore not under the rule of Zeus, though they honoured and

esteemed him. The crimes which they especially punished were (1),

violation of the respect due to old age; (2), perjury; (3), murder; (4),

violation of the law of hospitality; (5), improper conduct towards

suppliants; and the punishment was inflicted not only after death but

during life. (It is somewhat curious that these “crimes” are also those

actions which entail the heaviest Karma.) No prayers, sacrifices, or

tears could move them or protect the object of their persecution. When

they feared that he would escape, they called in _Dikè_ to their

assistance, with whom they were closely connected, as justice was said

to be their only object.

Now when the meaning of all these “minor” Greek deities is considered,

and further, if it is considered in connection with the definition of

Karma, it will be seen that all are so many personifications of the main

divisions of the law of ancient Nemesis or Karma. But the one word

cannot, in popular estimation, replace the other; for, as said above,

Nemesis has lost its original meaning, and is almost invariably

associated with the idea of vengeance. Karma, however, has never lost

its essential connection with the law of Harmony, though even in this

case there is some tendency to confine it to the law of cause and

effects, and to consider what is called evil Karma solely in relation to

human life. This is almost inevitable, while the human personality takes

the foremost place in the consideration of each man, and his own

welfare, in time and eternity, is the goal of his endeavours. As said

above, while this is the case man cannot regard the great laws of the

Universe, nor recognise himself as part of it, and thus his life is

confined to the world of effects, and can never enter that of causes.

Thus it is ignorance of the law of Harmony that leads him to struggle in

vain, in this world, for the apparent advantage of surpassing his

neighbour, and—worse—to instinctively carry the struggle beyond death,

and attempt to advance in favour in the so-called heavenly kingdom.

This is the result of the pernicious doctrine of reward and punishment

after death, in heaven or in hell. Nothing could have been found more

calculated to circumscribe the view of life as a whole, and concentrate

man’s attention on temporary matters. It is inevitable that man should

regard his soul as something fashioned after his struggling personality,

and very similar to it; and this view of his personality was not

calculated to agree with the loftiness of the ideas about the soul. From

this point of view he either rejected the idea of soul as altogether

worthless, or else he transferred his interest to the soul’s welfare in

Heaven—in either case concentrating his attention on what is inevitably

transient. It is as though a man lost sight of the fact of respiration

in its component parts of inspiration and expiration; that is to say,

that one respiration is taken as the whole, and the millions of other

respirations in the course of a human life are lost sight of and

forgotten. Thus the man who adapts his life to the ordinary views, with

regard to life on earth and life in Heaven, fixes his thoughts and

aspirations on what is transient, and desires to intensify that. No

truer words were ever spoken than by Christ when he said:—“What shall it

profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul.” It is a

loss which man will inevitably experience if he pursues this purblind

course of endeavour, for he will lose sight of his _real_ soul

altogether, and he—as _he_, that is—will never regain it. He follows a

flickering Will-o’-the-Wisp, and finds his way only into a treacherous

marsh; the result being that the whole of that incarnation is wasted,

and a stumbling block, perhaps, placed in the way of the next. This

danger is, as said, due to neglect or ignorance of the idea of Karma,

and to the purblind view consequently taken of the great scope of human

life.

In the _Theosophist_, of July, 1887, Mr. Subba Row deals with the

doctrine of Karma as contained in the Bhagavadgita. His lecture contains

one of the clearest elucidations of the metaphysical side of the

question which it is possible to put in language, so far as the Kosmic

aspect of Karma is concerned. In it, and the previous lectures, Mr.

Subba Row dealt with three main bases or vehicles[13] (states of matter)

through which the light of the spirit is reflected into the phenomenal

world. These vehicles, when traced to their origin, lead to _prakriti_,

or matter; as opposed to _purusha_, or spirit.

-----

Footnote 13:

Sanskrit Upadhi.

-----

“So Krishna says that all Karma is traceable to Upadhi, and hence to

_Prakriti_. _Karma_ itself depends upon conscious existence. Conscious

existence entirely depends upon the constitution of man’s mind....

_Upadhi_ is the cause of individual existence. Existence itself, I

mean living existence, is, however, traceable to this light (of the

Logos). All conscious existence is traceable to it, and, furthermore,

when spiritual intelligence is developed, it directly springs from

it.... Now it is through the action of this _Karma_ that individual

existence makes its appearance. On account of this _Karmae_ individual

existence is maintained, and it is on account of _Karma_ that man

suffers all the pains and sorrows of earthly existence. Birth, life,

and death, and all the innumerable ills to which human nature is

subject, are endured by mankind owing to this _Karma_.... Thus

_Karma_, being the inevitable result of _Prakriti_, and _Prakriti_

continuing to exist as long as you are a human being, it is useless to

try to get rid of _Karma_.... When you renounce this desire (desire to

do Karma other than from a sense of duty), _Karma_ will become weaker

and weaker in its ability to affect you, till at last you arrive at a

condition in which you are not affected by _Karma_ at all, and that

condition is the condition of _Mukti_.”[14]

-----

Footnote 14:

Liberation or Nirvana.

-----

“Those philosophers who want to reject all _Karma_ pretend to renounce

it altogether. But that is an impossible task. No man, so long as he

is a human being, can ever give up _Karma_ altogether. He is at least

bound to do that which the bare existence of his physical body

requires, unless, indeed, he means to die of starvation, or otherwise

put an untimely end to his life.”

“Supposing you do give up _Karma_—that is abstain from it in action,

how can you keep control over your own minds? It is useless to abstain

from an act, and yet be constantly thinking of it. If you come to the

resolution that you ought to give up _Karma_, you must necessarily

conclude that you ought not even to think about these things. That

being so, let us see in what a condition you will then place

yourselves. As almost all our mental states have some connection with

the phenomenal world, and are somehow or other connected with _Karma_

in its various phases, it is difficult to understand how it is

possible for a man to give up all _Karma_, unless he can annihilate

his mind, or get into an eternal state of _Sushupti_ (_dreamless_

slumber). Moreover, if you have to give up all _Karma_, you have to

give up good _Karma_ as well as bad, for _Karma_, in its widest sense,

is not confined to bad actions. If all the people in the world give up

_Karma_, how is the world to exist? Is it not likely that an end will

then be put to all good impulses, to all patriotic and philanthropic

deeds, that all the good people, who have been and are exerting

themselves in doing unselfish deeds for the good of their fellow men,

will be prevented from working? If you call upon everybody to give up

_Karma_, you will simply create a number of lazy drones, and prevent

good people from benefiting their fellow beings.”

“And furthermore, it may be argued that this is not a rule of

universal applicability. How few are there in the world who can give

up their whole _Karma_, and reduce themselves to a condition of

eternal inactivity. And if you ask these people to follow this course,

they may, instead of giving up _Karma_, simply become lazy, idle

persons, who have not really given up anything. What is the meaning of

the expression, to give up _Karma_? Krishna says that in abstaining

from doing a thing there may be the effects of active _Karma_, and in

active _Karma_ there may be no real Karmic results. If you kill a man,

it is murder, and you are held responsible for it; but suppose you

refuse to feed your old parents and they die in consequence of your

neglect, do you mean to say that you are not responsible for that

_Karma_? You may talk in the most metaphysical manner you please, you

cannot get rid of _Karma_ altogether.”

“Taking all these circumstances into consideration, and admitting the

many mischievous consequences that will follow as the result of

recommending every human being to give up _Karma_, Krishna adds all

that is to be found in the teaching that makes the Logos the means of

salvation, and recommends man—if he would seek to obtain immortality—a

method by following which he is sure to reach it, and not one that may

end in his having to go through another incarnation, or being absorbed

into another spiritual being whose existence is not immortal.”

“The recommendation to practice and obtain self-mastery, Krishna

accepts. But he would add to it more effectual means of obtaining the

desired end—means sufficient in themselves to enable you to reach that

end. He points out that this practise of self-mastery is not only

useful for training in one birth, but is likely to leave permanent

impulses on a man’s soul which come to his rescue in future

incarnations.”...

“Krishna, in recommending his own method, combines all that is good in

the five systems, and adds thereto all those necessary means of

obtaining salvation that follow as inferences from the existence of

the _Logos_, and its real relationship to man and to all the

principles that operate in the cosmos. His is certainly more

comprehensive than any of the theories from which these various

schools of philosophy have started, and it is this theory that he is

trying, in the second six chapters of the Bhagavadgita,to inculcate.”

In the above quoted lecture Karma was considered in its Kosmic and

universal aspect, but no attempt was made to consider it in its

individual aspect as applied to the various great sections of Being on

this planet. The first approach to this is seen in the animal kingdom.

Doubtless, the mineral and vegetable kingdoms are under the law of

Harmony with Nature; it could not possibly be otherwise for they are

closer to what is known as nature and much less individualised. But

there is so little individualisation in these kingdoms that it is hardly

possible to consider them in relation to the law of harmony, or to that

of Cause and Effect on the plane of objectivity. But to anyone who has

thought about the question it is plain that the animal kingdom, in its

individuals, does come at least under the law of cause and effect. This

may practically be called the working of Karma on the physical plane and

by some has been called the law of Compensation, this being a term

expressive of mechanical and physical energy. The word Karma had better

be retained to express the working of the law of harmony on that plane

where moral responsibility begins, and where “the law of compensation

can be modified by will and reason,” and where therefore personal merit

and demerit exists. To quote from an article in the Theosophist on the

Karma of animals:—

“A piece of iron is attracted to a magnet without having any desire in

the matter. If it is exposed to air and water, it may become rusty and

cannot prevent it. A plant or a tree may be straight or crooked on

account of circumstances over which it has no control. An animal

usually follows the instincts of its nature without any merit or

demerit for so doing, a child or an idiot may smilingly kick over a

lamp which may set a whole city on fire; the cause will have its

effect, but the child or the idiot cannot be held responsible for it,

because they have not sufficient intelligence to fully control their

actions or to judge about the consequences. A person can only be held

responsible according to his ability to perceive justice and to

distinguish between good and evil. The power to discriminate properly

is an attribute of the human mind, and the higher that mind is

developed the more it becomes responsible for the effects it produces.

A cat may kill a mouse or an ox gore a man; and to hold them morally

responsible for it would be an act of injustice, cruelty and

stupidity. Whether or not a dog may have sufficient reason to incur

any moral responsibility is a matter of opinion, and no emphatic

affirmation or denial will decide the case: but it is reasonable to

suppose that a dog, though he may have sufficient reason to know what

is good or bad for himself or for those to whom he is attached, has no

moral responsibility.”

Thus, though animals may be under the law of compensation, and under the

law of harmony or Karma, they _are not_ under the law of compensation,

or the law of harmony or Karma in the same way as it applies to human

beings. With humanity, a fresh element has been introduced—the

intellectual, reasoning, and discriminating power. Consequently, while

the universal law of harmony or Karma governs the whole Universe, the

law of Harmony should be applied to the Universe as a whole, and its

manifestations, the laws of Karma and Compensation, should be applied to

man and animal respectively.

It is more possible, perhaps, to consider the question in relation to

the various grades of humanity so far as we can conceive of it and them.

It would be better to commence with the highest and proceed downwards.

All Theosophists, and many who are not, have heard of Mahatmas, and many

have speculated very wrongly about them. In this magazine, and in this

article, it may be possible to write about them without disrespect,

_because_ only through these speculations is it possible to understand

the law of harmony and its relation to man as Karma, and to divinity as

harmony. The word Karma as limited above does not apply to the Mahatma.

“Gazing only upon the eternal the Mahatma feels neither good nor ill,

nor does either good or ill come to him. Personally, he cannot either

suffer or rejoice, and is incapable of emotion, because he is

indifferent to circumstances. But as he developes, his sympathies

increase, until at last his sympathies enter into all beings, and with

them he rejoices and suffers until they also pass beyond the sense of

joy or pain.”

“They do not have good or evil Karma. The glory and good fortune and

happiness, these go to the good men who look for temporary joys. Karma

produces pleasure or pain by the ordering of circumstances. The

Mahatma does not feel pleasure and pain, and is not affected by

circumstances, therefore he is Karmaless. The law of cause and effect

is only called Karma when it concerns temporary and changing

circumstances. The acts of the Mahatma generate spiritual energy which

goes to create the power that shall be his when he is no longer man,

and consequently form an eternal factor in his future; thus, the

Mahatma, being without personal desire, is outside the operation of

the law of Karma.”

In his real condition he is in harmony with Nature, and its agent, and

hence outside Karma. His physical body is however still within its

limits of action. But to him this is a very small matter.

ARCHIBALD KEIGHTLEY, M.B.

(_To be continued._)

THE MYSTERY OF ALL TIME.

The inner light which guides men to greatness, and makes them noble,

is a mystery through all time and must remain so while Time lasts

for us; but there come moments, even in the midst of ordinary life,

when Time has no hold upon us, and then all the circumstance of

outward existence falls away, and we find ourselves face to face

with the mystery beyond. In great trouble, in great joy, in keen

excitement, in serious illness, these moments come. Afterwards they

seem very wonderful, looking back upon them.

What is this mystery, and why is it so veiled, are the burning

questions for anyone who has begun to realise its existence. Trouble

most often rouses men to the consciousness of it, and forces them to

ask these questions when those, whom one has loved better than

oneself, are taken away into the formless abyss of the unknown by

death, or are changed, by the experiences of life, till they are no

longer recognisable as the same; then comes the wild hunger for

knowledge. Why is it so? What is it, that surrounds us with a great

dim cloud into which all loved things plunge in time and are lost to

us, obliterated, utterly taken from us? It is this which makes life

so unbearable to the emotional natures, and which developes

selfishness in narrow hearts. If there is no certainty and no

permanence in life, then it seems to the Egotist, that there is no

reasonable course but to attend to one’s own affairs, and be content

with the happiness of the first person singular. There are many

persons sufficiently generous in temperament to wish others were

happy also, and who, if they saw any way to do it, would gladly

redress some of the existing ills—the misery of the poor, the social

evil, the sufferings of the diseased, the sorrow of those made

desolate by death—these things the sentimental philanthropist

shudders to think of. He does not act because he can do so little.

Shall he take one miserable child and give it comfort when millions

will be enduring the same fate when that one is dead? The inexorable

cruelty of life continues on its giant course, and those who are

born rich and healthy live in pleasant places, afraid to think of

the horrors life holds within it. Loss, despair, unutterable pain,

comes at last, and the one who has hitherto been fortunate is on a

level with those to whom misery has been familiarised by a lifetime

of experience. For trouble bites hardest when it springs on a new

victim. Of course, there are profoundly selfish natures which do not

suffer in this sense, which look only for personal comfort and are

content with the small horizon visible to one person’s sight; for

these, there is but little trouble in the world, there is none of

the passionate pain which exists in sensitive and poetic natures.

The born artist is aware of pain as soon as he is aware of pleasure;

he recognises sadness as a part of human life before it has touched

on his own. He has an innate consciousness of the mystery of the

ages, that thing stirring within man’s soul and which enables him to

outlive pain and become great, which leads him on the road to the

divine life. This gives him enthusiasm, a superb heroism indifferent

to calamity; if he is a poet he will write his heart out, even for a

generation that has no eyes or ears for him; if he desires to help

others personally, he is capable of giving his very life to save one

wretched child from out a million of miserable ones. For it is not

his puny personal effort in the world that he considers—not his

little show of labour done; what he is conscious of is the

over-mastering desire to work with the beneficent forces of

super-nature, to become one with the divine mystery, and when he can

forget time and circumstances, he is face to face with that mystery.

Many have fancied they must reach it by death; but none have come

back to tell us that this is so. We have no proof that man is not as

blind beyond the grave as he is on this side of it. Has he entered

the eternal thought? If not, the mystery is a mystery still.

To one who is entering occultism in earnest, all the trouble of the

world seems suddenly apparent. There is a point of experience when

father and mother, wife and child, become indistinguishable, and

when they seem no more familiar or friendly than a company of

strangers. The one dearest of all may be close at hand and

unchanged, and yet is as far as if death had come between. Then all

distinction between pleasure and pain, love and hate, have vanished.

A melancholy, keener than that felt by a man in his first fierce

experience of grief, overshadows the soul. It is the pain of the

struggle to break the shell in which man has prisoned himself. Once

broken then there is no more pain; all ties are severed, all

personal demands are silenced for ever. The man has forced himself

to face the great mystery, which is now a mystery no longer, for he

has become part of it. It is essentially the mystery of the ages,

and these have no longer any meaning for him to whom time and space

and all other limitations are but passing experiences. It has become

to him a reality, profound, indeed, because it is bottomless, wide,

indeed, because it is limitless. He has touched on the greatness of

life, which is sublime in its impartiality and effortless

generosity. He is friend and lover to all those living beings that

come within his consciousness, not to the one or two chosen ones

only—which is indeed only an enlarged selfishness. While a man

retains his humanity, it is certain that one or two chosen ones will

give him more pleasure by contact, than all the rest of the beings

in the Universe and all the heavenly host; but he has to remember

and recognise what this preference is. It is not a selfish thing

which has to be crushed out, if the love is the love that gives;

freedom from attachments is not a meritorious condition in itself.

The freedom needed is not from those who cling to you, but from

those to whom you cling. The familiar phrase of the lover “I cannot

live without you” must be words which cannot be uttered, to the

occultist. If he has but one anchor, the great tides will sweep him

away into nothingness. But the natural preference which must exist

in every man for a few persons is one form of the lessons of Life.

By contact with these other souls he has other channels by which to

penetrate to the great mystery. For every soul touches it, even the

darkest. Solitude is a great teacher, but society is even greater.

It is so hard to find and take the highest part of those we love,

that in the very difficulty of the search there is a serious

education. We realise when making that effort, far more clearly what

it is that creates the mystery in which we live, and makes us so

ignorant. It is the swaying, vibrating, never-resting desires of the

animal soul in man. The life of this part of man’s nature is so

vigorous and strongly developed from the ages during which he has

dwelt in it, that it is almost impossible to still it so as to

obtain contact with the noble spirit. This constant and confusing

life, this ceaseless occupation with the trifles of the hour, this

readiness in surface emotion, this quickness to be pleased, amused

or distressed, is what baffles our sight and dulls our inner senses.

Till we can use these the mystery remains in its Sphinx-like

silence.

------------------

When the unit thinks only of itself, the whole, which is built of

units perishes, and the unit itself is destroyed.

------------------

So it is throughout nature on every plane of life. This, therefore,

is the first lesson to be learnt.

------------------

What the _true_ occultist seeks, is not knowledge, or growth, or

happiness, or power, for himself; but having become _conscious_ that

the harmony of which he forms part is broken on the outer plane, he

seeks the means to resolve that discord into a higher harmony.

This harmony is Theosophy—Divine or Universal Wisdom—the root whence

have sprung all “religions,” that is all; “bonds which unite men

together,” which is the true meaning of the word religion.

Therefore, Theosophy is not _a_ “religion,” but religion itself, the

very “binding of men together” in one Universal Brotherhood.

THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS OF BUDDHISM.

When a man immersed in the darkness of modern civilization awakens,

however slightly, to the hollowness of his every-day life, he

becomes sensible of a feeling of despair, for he is mentally brought

face to face with what appears to him to be a meaningless yet cruel

destiny. Now to any one so circumstanced, no truer source of

consolation and encouragement can be offered than that which is to

be found in a proper consideration of the “Four Noble Truths” of

Buddhism. But to give this proper consideration to the Truths, or

indeed to promote even a preliminary enquiry into their nature is by

no means an easy task, because the fundamental ideas which they

embody have scarcely any vitality in the present generation; nay

more, they involve for the most part a complete inversion of maxims

commonly accepted as axiomatic in current thought.

It is, however, in the hopes of doing something towards the

elucidation of the matter, that the present exposition is attempted.

The first Noble Truth relates to human suffering. It proclaims that

the conscious, separated, life of individual existence necessarily

implies pain, sorrow and misery; that so long as a man feels that he

is possessed of an _isolated self_, or so long as he regards himself

and his fellow men as _detached personalities_, having antagonistic

or even independent interests, so long must he suffer and be subject

to trouble, grief and disappointment.

This first Noble Truth gives utterance to one aspect of an

inexorable law of universal application, a law from whose operations

no man can, or has, or ever will escape, until he has learnt and in

the fullest sense realized the four Noble Truths.

The first Truth may also be thus expressed: individual existence

necessitates and involves change of state, whether manifested as

birth growth, decay or death, and all changes of state are

accompanied by pain in one form or another on some plane of being;

while those who seem in their own eyes to have escaped from pain, or

those who imagine that others escape from it, are alike deluded, for

all men are overtaken by it soon or late.

The second Noble Truth deals with the cause of pain, and partially

explains its meaning. According to this Truth, it is the desire or

thirst for the continuance of individual life, with its various

sensations and experiences, that constitutes the true basis of all

suffering, whatever the outward form it may assume, and to whatever

plane of consciousness it may belong. This thirst for life, called

in the Sanscrit language Tanha, gives rise in the mind of man to a

delusive belief in the _permanence_ and _reality_ of that separate

personality, which, according to Buddhism, is no more than an

ephemeral mode of individual existence; it further leads him to

suppose that the numerous mental states which in their aggregate

make up the personality, are, in themselves _real_; and hence grows

that rooted belief in the absolute reality of the manifold objects

of sense, and that longing for their possession, that insatiable

longing for the enhancement and for the multiplication of the

experiences associated with these objects.

The second Truth, like the first, presents an aspect of the

universal law already referred to.

This law, the Sanscrit name for which is Karma, is the governing and

controlling power, ordering all individual existence, and by virtue

of which Tanha operates.

The third Noble Truth announces the fact that, as the individual man

grows strong in spiritual knowledge and charity, so Tanha is

gradually dissolved, and there is for him a consequent cessation of

sorrow and of pain. The individuality becoming proportionately freed

from the bondage of Karma, Tanha is indeed a quite necessary adjunct

of man’s incipient growth, for it represents the _creative_ power

which forces the individuality through the earlier stages of its

development, yet, while performing this most useful function, being

in fact indispensable to the lower nature of man, Tanha, at the same

time, forges those Karmic fetters from which the spiritual self

struggles desperately to get free.

As the man’s spiritual nature is evolved, the unconscious creative

energy, in form of Tanha, is gradually replaced by the newly

developed powers of the higher self, the _will_ becomes more and

more completely associated with the spirit, while the man himself,

endowed with true Faith, true Hope, and true Love, becomes a

conscious co-worker with the Universal or Macrocosmic Will, the

“Great Builder.”

The fourth Noble Truth assures us that there is a way by which all

men may, if they only choose, rapidly accomplish this displacement

of Tanha by true Love; this way is called the Noble Eight-fold Path

leading to enlightenment.

Thus:—1. Right fundamental Belief, _i.e._, the right basis mentally

and spiritually upon which to establish true knowledge. 2. Right

Intention, _i.e._, goodwill towards all that lives, singleness of

purpose, correctness and purity of motive. 3. Right Speech, _i.e._,

the use of becoming language, kindly temperate, fair and profitable;

patient yet vigorous; thoughtful, courageous, honest and

discriminating. 4. Right Behaviour _i.e._, active philanthropy. 5.

Right means of Livelihood, _i.e._, honest and useful employment of

one’s time, paying adequate attention to one’s own material needs

and helping others to do the same, yet without care for the morrow.

6. Right Endeavour, _i.e._, putting one’s heart in one’s work. 7.

Right Loneliness, _i.e._, self-contained and harmonious within. 8.

Right Meditation. This is the Sanskrit _Yoga_ and signifies union

with the divine by practising the contemplation of the reality of

being. It is the result of a sustained effort to concentrate the

mind upon the universal, eternal and immutable law of life; the

first stage of such concentration takes the form of an impartial

review or survey of all one’s thoughts, actions, desires, sensations

and experiences from a thoroughly impersonal standpoint. This

Eightfold Path has four stages representing different degrees

of advancement towards Buddhahood or the state of perfect

enlightenment. The true Buddha or Tathâgata is one who has attained

final emancipation from individual existence, whose purified spirit

is freed from the last vestige of Tanha, one upon whom Karma has no

more hold, for he has reached Para Nirvana, the _Eternal_, the

Absolute Being.

ST. GEORGE LANE-FOX.

------------------

THE LAST OF A GOOD LAMA.—Whatever may be said against godless

Buddhism, its influence, wherever it penetrates, is most

beneficent. One finds the Spirit of “Lord Buddha ... most pitiful,

the Teacher of Nirvâna and the Law,” ennobling even the least

philosophical of the dissenting sects of his religion—the Lamäism

of the nomadic Kalmucks. The Caspian Steppes witnessed, only a few

months ago, the solemn cremation and burial of a Mongolian saint,

whose ashes were watered by as many Christian as Lamaic tears. The

high priest to the Russian Calmucks of the Volga died December

26th, 1886, near Vétlyanka, once the seat of the most terrible

epidemics. The Ghelungs had chosen the day of ceremony in

accordance with their sacred books; the hour was fixed

astrologically, and at noon on January 4th, 1887, the imposing

ceremony took place. More than 80,000 people assembling from all

the neighbouring Cossack _stanitzas_ and Calmuck _ooloosses_,

formed a procession surrounding the pillar of cremation. The

corpse having been fixed in an iron arm-chair, used on such

ceremonies, was introduced into the hollow pillar, the flames

being fed with supplies of fresh butter. During the whole burning,

the crowd never ceased weeping and lamenting, the Russians being

most violent in their expressions of sorrow, and with reason. For

long years the defunct Lama had been a kind father to all the poor

in the country, whether Christian or Lamaist. Whole villages of

proletarians had been fed, clothed, and their poll-taxes paid out

of his own private income. His property in pasture lands, cattle,

and tithes was very large, yet the Lama was ever in want of money.

With his death, the poor wretches, who could hardly keep soul in

their bodies, have no prospect but starvation. Thus the tears of

the Christians were as abundant, if not quite as unselfish, as

those of the poor Pagans. Only the year before, the good Lama

received 4,000 roubles from a Calmuck _oolooss_ (camp) and gave

the whole to rebuild a burned down Russian village, and thus saved

hundreds from death by hunger. He was never known during his long

life to refuse any man, woman, or child, in need, whether Pagan or

Christian, depriving himself of every comfort to help his poorer

fellow-creatures. Thus died the last of the Lamas of the priestly

hierarchy sent to the Astrakhan Calmucks from beyond the “Snowy

Range” some sixty years ago. A shameful story is told of how a

travelling Christian pilgrim imposed on the good Lama. The Lama

had entrusted him with 30,000 roubles to be placed in the

neighbouring town; but the Christian pilgrim disappeared, and the

money with him.

THE BIRTH OF LIGHT.

_Translated from Eliphas Levis “Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie.”_

The “Lucifer” of the Kabalists is not a proscribed and fallen angel,

but the spirit which illuminates and regenerates by fire; he is to

the angels of peace what the comet is to the peaceful constellations

of spring-time.

The fixed star is beautiful, radiant and calm; she drinks in the

aromas of Heaven, and looks lovingly on her sisters; clad in her

dazzling garments, and her brow adorned with diamonds, she smiles as

she sings her morning and her evening hymn; she enjoys an eternal

repose which nothing can disturb, and solemnly she treads the path

assigned to her among the sentinels of light.

But the wandering comet, all bloodstained, and her tresses unloosed,

rushes on from the depths of the sky; she dashes across the track of

the peaceful spheres like a chariot of war breaking the ranks of a

procession of vestals; she dares to breast the burning sword of the

guardians of the sun, and, like a lost spouse who seeks the partner

visioned in her lonely night watches, she forces her way even into

the tabernacle of the King of Day.

Then she rushes out, breathing forth the fires which consume herself

and leaving in her train one long conflagration; the stars pale

before her approach, the herded constellations, which browse upon

the starry flowers in the vast meadows of the sky, seem to flee from

her terrible breath. The grand council of the stars is called, and

universal consternation reigns. At last the fairest of the fixed

stars is charged to speak in the name of the heavenly concourse, and

to propose a truce with the errant messenger.

“My sister,” she says, “why troublest thou the harmony of these

spheres? What harm have we done thee, and why, instead of wandering

at hazard, dost thou not, like us, take up thy settled rank in the

Court of the Sun? Why dost thou not join with us in chanting the

evening hymn, attired, like us, in a robe of white clasped above the

breast by one pure diamond? Why dost thou allow thy tresses,

dripping with the sweat of fire, to float across the vapours of the

night? If thou wouldst but take thy due place among the daughters of

Heaven, how far more lovely thy mien! Thy face no more would be

burnt up by the fatigue of thy unheard-of journeys; thy eyes would

shine forth clear, and thy features smile with the tints of lily and

of rose, like those of thy happy sisters; all the stars would

recognise in thee a friend, and far from fearing thy transit, they

would rejoice at thy approach. For thou wouldst be united to us by

the indissoluble ties of universal harmony, and thy peaceable

existence would be but one voice the more in the anthem of Infinite

Love.”

But the comet replies:

“Deem not, my sister, that I could stray at chance and disturb the

harmony of the spheres. God has traced for me my path, as thine for

thee, and if my course appears to thee uncertain and erratic, it is

because thy rays cannot reach so far as to embrace the outlines of

the great ellipse which has been given me for my career. My burning

tresses are the banner of God; I am the messenger of the Suns, and I

bathe me in their fires that I may distribute them on my path to

those young worlds which have not yet sufficient heat, and to the

declining stars that shiver in their solitude. If I court fatigue in

my long journeyings, if my beauty is less mild than thine, if my

attire less virginal, I am no less than thee a worthy daughter of

the sky. Leave in my hands the awful secret of my destiny, leave to

me the horror which encompasses me, and slander me not if thou canst

not understand me. None the less, shall I fulfil my appointed task.

Happy the stars that take their rest and shine like young queens in

the stately concourse of the Universe; for me, I am cast out, a

wanderer, and claim the Infinite as my only fatherland. They accuse

me of setting on fire the planets which I warm, and of terrifying

the stars which I illume. I am reproached with disturbing the

harmony of the worlds, because I do not revolve round their own

fixed points, and because I bind them one to the other, setting my

face alone toward the only centre of all the Suns. So rest assured,

thou fairest star, I will not deprive thee of one ray of thy so

peaceful light; the rather, I will squander on thee my warmth and my

own life. Who knows, but I may vanish from the sky when I have

consumed myself? My lot will still have been a noble one! For know

that in the Temple of God the fires that burn are not all one. Ye

are the light of the golden torches, but I, the flame of sacrifice.

Let each accomplish her own destiny!”

Her words scarce uttered, the comet shakes her tresses loose, covers

herself with her burning shield, and plunges once more into infinite

space, where she appears to vanish for evermore.

It is thus that Lucifer appears and disappears in the allegories of

the Bible.

One day, so says the book of Job, the sons of God had assembled in

the presence of their Lord, and among them came Lucifer.

To him the Lord said: “Whence comest thou?”

And he replied:

“I have journeyed round the world and travelled throughout it.”

This is how a Gnostic gospel, re-discovered in the East by a learned

traveller, explains, in treating of the symbolical Lucifer, the

genesis of Light.

“Truth which is conscious of itself is living Thought. Truth is the

Thought which is contained within itself; and formulated Thought is

Speech. When the Eternal Thought sought for a _form_ it said: ‘Let

there be Light.’ Therefore this Thought that speaks is the _Word_,

and this Word says: ‘Let there be Light, because the word itself is

the light of the _spirit_.’”

The uncreated light, which is the divine Word, sends forth its

rays because it wishes to be manifest, and when it says, “Let

there be light,” it commands the eyes to open; it creates the

_Intelligences_.

And, when God said: “Let there be light,” Intelligence was made and

light appeared.

Then, the Intelligence which God had breathed forth, like a planet

detached from the Sun, took the form of a splendid Angel and the

heavens saluted him with the name of Lucifer.

Intelligence awoke and it fathomed its own depths as it heard this

apostrophe of the divine Word, “Let there be Light.” It felt itself

to be free, for God had commanded it so to be, and it answered,

raising its head and spreading its wings, “I will not be Slavery.”

“Wilt thou be then Sorrow?” said the uncreated voice.

“I will be Liberty,” answered the Light.

“Pride will seduce thee,” replied the supreme voice, “and thou wilt

give birth to Death.”

“I must needs combat with Death to conquer Life,” said once again

the light created.

God then unloosed from his bosom the thread of splendour which held

back the superb spirit, and as he watched him dive into the night,

cutting in it a path of glory, he loved the child of his thought,

and smiling with a smile ineffable, he murmured to himself: “How

fair a thing was this Light!”

And Sorrow was the condition imposed upon the free being. If the

chief of the angels had not dared confront the depths of night, the

travail of God had not been complete, and the created light could

not have separated itself from the light unrevealed.

Perhaps Lucifer, in plunging into the night, drew with him a shower

of Stars and Suns _by the attraction of his glory_? * * * * * * *

A TRUE THEOSOPHIST.

A very large majority of people have no idea whatever about

Theosophy, and regard Theosophists as more or less crazy members of

a new sect. They naturally deny any superiority to one new sect

among so many, and aver that, as a considerable number of sects have

been “tried in the balances and found wanting,” this one is no

better than its predecessors. Theosophists—the real ones—can only

reply that they are unsectarian and superior to none. They believe

that they have found a good road to the discovery of truth, and wish

to share their discovery—if it can be so called—with others.

The very assumption of superiority would be a contradiction in terms

to the name itself. But, while giving this emphatic denial with

reference to the name “Theosophist,” no attempt is made to assert

that all members of the Theosophical Society are also Theosophists.

True indeed, that when they enter that society, they subscribe to

rules and declare their objects to be such that, were they to carry

them out thoroughly, no other name than Theosophists would be

applicable. Nor does the name imply that, in the studies which

Theosophists make their own, it is necessary that the sole and best

place should be given to studies of Oriental philosophy. That again

would be a contradiction, for it has most emphatically been stated

that “there are those who are ignorant of the Eastern wisdom” who

are nearer to divine wisdom, than some who have devoted their entire

lives to Oriental studies. It is again the old story that, “the

letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.”

Still while holding to the assertion that the study of Oriental

wisdom is only one road out of many, it is necessary to remember the

analogy which philology may here present to “religion.” Just as

philology traces all languages to a common root—the Sanskrit or

rather pre-Sanskrit—so the religions of the world can also be traced

to a common root and birth place, identical with the cradle and

birth place of the human race, which ethnology locates on the high

plateaux of Central Asia. Therefore it is, that the study of

Oriental philosophy has something to be urged in its especial

favour, because that philosophy has its home nearer to the source of

the wisdom religion than any other.

Still more must it be borne in mind, that members of the

Theosophical Society are not necessarily Theosophists, for a very

considerable number are attracted merely by the name and through

curiosity. They either do not understand what they profess, or if

they do, they do not practise it. But this is no attempt to run

counter to the proverb, that the tree is known by its fruit,

although there is some amount of injustice in it. All that is

asserted is that, if this argument is used against a Society with

aims and aspirations such as the Theosophical Society has, it can be

used with even more terrible effect against _all_ religions whether

Christian, Mohammedan, Buddhist, etc. The real reason why this has

come to pass, lies in a few words—the cultivation of the individual;

and, as a later result of this, in anthropomorphism. It is only

those individuals who can “grasp their whole individuality firmly,”

and by the force of their “awakened spiritual will, reach out to the

life beyond individuality”—it is only they, who can shake themselves

loose from the curse which has gradually spread over the whole

world. It is in consequence of this growth of individualism that the

“blessings of civilization” have become the curse of mankind, and

every religion, originally altruistic, has become inverted, and the

reign of anti-Christ and hypocrisy has superseded that of Christ and

truth. No sweeping accusation is made against the whole world in

this statement. A dim and misty veil has been thrown over the face

of Truth, and it is as though we saw everything outside the

principal focus of a lens, and consequently, under full faith that

we see the real image, perceive the inverted image. In the time of

Elizabeth, for instance, men learnt to cultivate the individual

within the circle of the race, and to attempt to unite in patriotism

for the benefit of that race or empire. But it is a vain attempt,

and the dissociating effects of this culture will soon be evident in

the impossibility of the attempt. Originally the attempt was to

cultivate the individual, but only with a view to the increase of

that race and with that object as paramount. That is to say, that an

English soldier would cultivate himself to the uttermost in order

that the world should see what English soldiers were. But the time

came when the egoistic element appeared in overwhelming force, and

the cultivation was devoted to the sole aim of making this or that

man stronger than any man of his own race, or any other.

And now another aim has been substituted for the paramount one of

patriotism. Mammon has superseded the latter, and the strength of

the individual is cultivated and devoted to withstanding the

pressure of life, and to getting a start in the great race to

worship at the feet of the demon of cupidity. But again, while

devoting their own lives and worse—the lives of their neighbours—to

this worship, they yet professed to be Christians or members of

other religions. They tried to worship two gods—Mammon on six days

of the week and the other divinity on Sunday, or any day set apart

for his service. But still, in most cases, it was not the divine

instinct of search for the divine in their hearts, but a fear of

wrath to come. It really was a pharisaical idea of “hedging,” to use

a term of racing slang, with reference to the race of life. The end

of it was that Mammon received the real worship of their hearts, and

the other god only lip-service. Thus in the end hypocrisy became

almost as paramount as Mammon. Time still passed on, and man almost

lost sight of any idea of an offended and avenging deity, and any

germ of spirituality was very nearly dead from want of cultivation.

The material needs held him in complete sway, and the spread of

physical science helped him mightily. Losing sight of all the

subtler side of nature, he immersed himself in gross matter, and

utilitarianism was the watchword and rallying cry. In all this

change the age of mechanical inventions took no small part. Man can

hardly be blamed as an individual nor as a whole. It is part of the

great law of evolution, and the working out of the law of the

survival of the fittest.

It may be asked what this has to do with the subject of the article;

but in justification it is averred that a picture is most clearly

seen by its contrast.

Perhaps the best definition of a Theosophist, is that given by the

Alchemist, Thomas Vaughan:

“A Theosophist is one who gives you a theory of the works of God,

which has not a revelation, but an inspiration of his own for

basis.”

“A man once abandoning the old pathway of routine and entering on

the solitary pathway of independent thought—Godward—he is a

Theosophist, an original thinker, a seeker after the Eternal Truth,

with an inspiration of his own to solve the Eternal problems.”

Such a one as this is the subject of the article. Count Tolstoi, the

Russian novelist, is a true Theosophist, and his words and actions

in contradiction and illustration of the foregoing, are taken from

an interview with him by Mr. George Kennan (_Century_, June 1887).

The interview first describes the surroundings amidst which Count

Tolstoi lives, and gives also a description of the Count’s

appearance.

Apparently the first thing which impressed Mr. Kennan was the sight

of “a wealthy Russian noble, and the greatest of living novelists,

shaking hands upon terms of perfect equality with a poor, ragged,

and not over clean droshky driver,” who had been engaged in the

streets.

Then follows a description of the rooms, the furniture &c., which

was observed during the time that Mr. Kennan’s host had retired—not,

indeed, to change his coat, but to put one on after a morning’s

labour in the fields. Mr. Kennan, it seems, had journeyed through

Siberia, and had there promised several of the exiles to visit Count

Tolstoi on his return, and to tell him of their condition. In the

course of conversation on these matters, Mr. Kennan asked Count

Tolstoi whether he did not think that resistance to such oppression

as the exiles had experienced was justifiable?

“That depends,” he replied, “upon what you mean by resistance; if

you mean persuasion, argument, protest, I answer yes; if you mean

violence—no. I do not believe that violent resistance to evil is

ever justifiable under any circumstances.”

He then set forth clearly, eloquently, and with more feeling than

he had yet shown, the views with regard to man’s duty as a member

of society which are contained in his book entitled “My Religion,”

and which are further explained and illustrated in a number of his

recently published tracts for the people. He laid particular

stress upon the doctrine of non-resistance to evil, which, he

said, is in accordance with both the teachings of Christ and the

results of human experience. He declared that violence, as a means

of redressing wrongs, is not only futile, but an aggravation of

the original evil, since it is the nature of violence to multiply

and reproduce itself in all directions. “The Revolutionists,” he

said, “whom you have seen in Siberia, undertook to resist evil by

violence, and what has been the result? Bitterness, and misery,

and hatred, and bloodshed! The evils against which they took up

arms still exist, and to them has been added a mass of previously

non-existent human suffering. It is not in that way that the

kingdom of God is to be realised on earth.”

For a long time I did not suggest any difficulties or raise any

objections.... It is one thing to ask a man in a general way

whether he would use violence to resist evil, and quite another

thing to ask him specifically whether he would knock down a

burglar who was about to cut the throat of his mother. Many men

would say _yes_ to the first question who would hesitate at the

second. Count Tolstoi, however, was consistent. I related to him

many cases of cruelty, brutality, and oppression which had come to

my knowledge in Siberia, and at the end of every recital I said to

him, “Count Tolstoi, if you had been there and had witnessed that

transaction, would you not have interfered with violence?” He

invariably answered “No.” I asked him the direct question whether

he would kill a highwayman who was about to murder an innocent

traveller, provided there were no other way to save the

traveller’s life. He replied, “If I should see a bear about to

kill a peasant in the forest, I would sink an axe in the bear’s

head; but I would not kill a man who was about to do the same

thing.” There finally came into my mind a case which, although

really not worse than many that I had already presented to him,

would, I thought, appeal with peculiar force to a brave,

sensitive, chivalrous man.

This was a case of most brutal treatment of a young girl who was

exiled to Siberia. At a certain town on her journey the governor

ordered that she was to put on the clothing of an ordinary convict.

This she declined to do on the ground that administrative exiles had

the right to wear their own clothing. Furthermore the clothing

supplied to convicts is not always new, and it is quite possible

that it is of the filthiest description and full of vermin. She

argued that she would have been compelled to change at Moscow had it

been necessary, and again declined. The local governor persisted and

ordered that force should be used to effect the change. Accordingly,

in the presence of nine or ten men, the change of clothing was

effected—she was stripped naked, forcibly reclothed, and left

bleeding and exhausted after ineffectual resistance.

“Now,” I said, “suppose all this had occurred in your presence;

suppose that this bleeding, defenceless, half-naked girl had

appealed to you for protection, and had thrown herself into your

arms; suppose that it had been your daughter, would you still have

refused to interfere by an act of violence?”

He was silent. Finally, ignoring my direct question as to what he

personally would have done in such a case, Count Tolstoi said,

“Even under such circumstances violence would not be justifiable.

Let us analyse that situation carefully. I will grant, for the

sake of argument, that the local governor who ordered the act of

violence was an ignorant man, a cruel man, a brutal man—what you

will; but he probably had an idea that he was doing his duty; he

probably believed that he was enforcing a law of the Government to

which he owed obedience and service. You suddenly appear and set

yourself up as a judge in the case; you assume that he is not

doing his duty—that he is committing an act of unjustifiable

violence—and then, with strange inconsistency, you proceed to

aggravate and complicate the evil by yourself committing another

act of unjustifiable violence. One wrong added to another wrong

does not make a right; it merely extends the area of wrong.

Furthermore, your resistance, in order to be effective—in order to

accomplish anything—must be directed against the soldiers who are

committing the assault. But those soldiers are not free agents;

they are subject to military discipline and are acting under

orders which they dare not disobey. To prevent the execution of

the orders you must kill or maim two or three of the soldiers—that

is, kill or wound the only parties to the transaction who are

certainly innocent, who are manifestly acting without malice and

without evil intention. Is that just? Is it rational? But go a

step further: suppose that you do kill or wound two or three of

the soldiers; you may or may not thus succeed in preventing the

completion of the act against which your violence is a protest;

but one thing you certainly will do, and that is, extend the area

of enmity, injustice, and misery. Every one of the soldiers whom

you kill or maim has a family, and upon every such family you

bring grief and suffering which would not have come to it but for

your act. In the hearts of perhaps a score of people you rouse the

anti-Christian and anti-social emotions of hatred and revenge, and

thus sow broadcast the seeds of further violence and strife. At

the time when you interposed there was only one centre of evil and

suffering. By your violent interference you have created

half-a-dozen such centres. It does not seem to me, Mr. Kennan,

that that is the way to bring about the reign of peace and

good-will on earth.”

Mr. Kennan had a manuscript written by one of those prisoners who

took part in the desperate “hunger-strike” of 1884, with which he

had been entrusted to hand on to Count Tolstoi. He read two or three

pages of it, and then, alluding to the Nihilists, condemned their

methods most heartily. Mr. Kennan appeared rather to sympathise with

their motives. Count Tolstoi appears only to do so partially, and,

while he earnestly desires a revolution, declines to have anything

to do with one brought about by violence. Mr. Kennan objected that

violence might close the mouth of the peaceable revolutionist and

prevent his teaching and thoughts from ever becoming public.

“But do you not see,” replied the Count, “that if you claim and

exercise the right to resist by an act of violence what you regard

as evil, every other man will insist upon his right to resist in

the same way what he regards as evil, and the world will continue

to be filled with violence? It is your duty to show that there is

a better way.”

“But,” I objected, “you cannot show anything if somebody smites

you on the mouth every time you open it to speak the truth.”

“You can at least refrain from striking back,” replied the Count;

“you can show by your peaceable behaviour that you are not

governed by the barbarous law of retaliation, and your adversary

will not continue to strike a man who neither resists nor tries to

defend himself. It is by those who have suffered, not by those who

have inflicted suffering, that the world has been advanced.”

I said it seemed to me that the advancement of the world had been

promoted not a little by the protests—and often the violent and

bloody protests—of its inhabitants against wrong and outrage, and

that all history goes to show that a people which tamely submits

to oppression never acquires either liberty or happiness.

“The whole history of the world,” replied the Count, “is a history

of violence, and you can of course cite violence in support of

violence; but do you not see that there is in human society an

endless variety of opinions as to what constitutes wrong and

oppression, and that if you once concede the right of any man to

resort to violence to resist what he regards as wrong, he being

the judge, you authorise every other man to enforce his opinions

in the same way, and you have a universal reign of violence?”

Count Tolstoi considers it necessary to labour for and help the poor

by whom he is surrounded; but he is keenly alive to the danger of

pauperising them. In doing this he runs counter to the ideas of

organised society and the existing traits of human character. He

declines to regard these as sacred and immutable, and is doing what

he can to change them.

“Count Tolstoi then related with great fulness of detail the

history of his change of attitude toward the teaching of Christ,

and the steps by which he was brought to see that that teaching,

rightly understood, furnishes a reasonable solution of some of the

darkest problems of human life. He based upon it not only his

opposition to resistance as a means of overcoming evil, but his

hostility to courts of justice, established churches, class

distinctions, private property, and all civil and ecclesiastical

organisation in existing forms. His frequent references to the New

Testament, and his insistence on the precepts of Christ as

furnishing the only rule for the right government of human

conduct, might lead one to regard Count Tolstoi as a devout and

orthodox Christian, but, judged by a doctrinal standard, he is

very far from being so. He rejects the whole doctrinal framework

of the Christian scheme of redemption, including original sin,

atonement, the triune personality of God, and the divinity of

Christ, and has very little faith in the immortality of the soul.

His religion is a religion of this world, and it is based almost

wholly upon terrestrial considerations. If he refers frequently to

the teachings of Christ, and accepts Christ’s precepts as the

rules which should govern human conduct, it is not because he

believes that Christ was God, but because he regards those

precepts as a formal embodiment of the highest and noblest

philosophy of life, and as a revelation, in a certain sense, of

the Divine will and character. He insists, however, that Christ’s

precepts shall be understood—and that they were intended to be

understood—literally and in their most obvious sense. He will not

recognise nor tolerate any softening or modification of a hard

commandment by subtle and plausible interpretation. If Christ

said, ‘Resist not evil,’ he meant resist not evil. He did not mean

resist not evil if you can help it, nor resist not evil unless it

is unbearable; he meant resist not at all. How unflinchingly Count

Tolstoi faces the logical results of his system of belief I have

tried to show.”

Count Tolstoi’s views as to his own action and practice have been

recently published in an authorised interview which appeared in a

Russian journal. He said:

“People say to me, ‘Well, Lef Nikolaivitch, as far as preaching

goes, you preach; but how about your practice?’ The question is a

perfectly natural one; it is always put to me, and it always shuts

my mouth. ‘You preach,’ it is said, ‘but how do you live?’ I can

only reply that I do not preach—passionately as I desire to do so.

I might preach through my actions, but my actions are bad. That

which I say is not preaching; it is only an attempt to find out

the meaning and the significance of life. People often say to me,

‘If you think that there is no reasonable life outside the

teachings of Christ, and if you love a reasonable life, why do you

not fulfill the Christian precepts?’ I am guilty and blameworthy

and contemptible because I do not fulfill them; but at the same

time I say—not in justification, but in explanation, of my

inconsistency—Compare my previous life with the life I am now

living, and you will see that I am trying to fulfill. I have not,

it is true, fulfilled one eighty-thousandth part, and I am to

blame for it; but it is not because I do not wish to fulfill all,

but because I am unable. Teach me how to extricate myself from the

meshes of temptation in which I am entangled—help me—and I will

fulfill all. I wish and hope to do it even without help. Condemn

me if you choose—I do that myself—but condemn me, and not the path

which I am following, and which I point out to those who ask me

where, in my opinion, the path is. If I know the road home, and if

I go along it drunk, and staggering from side to side, does that

prove that the road is not the right one? If it is not the right

one, show me another. If I stagger and wander, come to my help,

and support and guide me in the right path. Do not yourselves

confuse and mislead me, and then rejoice over it and cry, ‘Look at

him! He says he is going home, and he is floundering into the

swamp!’ You are not evil spirits from the swamp; you are also

human beings, and you also are going home. You know that I am

alone—you know that I cannot wish or intend to go into the

swamp—then help me! My heart is breaking with despair because we

have all lost the road; and while I struggle with all my strength

to find it and keep in it, you, instead of pitying me when I go

astray, cry triumphantly, ‘See! He is in the swamp with us!’”

In this report of Count Tolstoi, it is impossible not to recognise

the generous, just, and sympathetic man—the true Theosophist. He may

be mistaken, but he is endeavouring to carry out the precepts of

Christ. Not indeed, doctrinal Christianity, but to put in practice

the actual precepts of the Master he follows. He does this as far as

he can; and even with this little (as he says) he is accused of

quixotism, and is obliged to stay his hand in order to keep up the

example he affords. Why is this. For fear of interested relatives

and the lunatic asylum. Here we have a man endeavouring to carry out

“under an inspiration of his own,” the precepts laid down by the

last of the world’s great teachers. What is the result of his

endeavours? That he is in danger of the same fate that the author of

“Modern Christianity a civilized Heathenism,” threatened Christ

with, were he to return in the XIXth century—the lunatic asylum.

Nothing is so intolerable to modern minds as an example of what they

(unconsciously to themselves) recognise as that which they ought to

follow, but do not. Therefore it has to be put out of sight. Since

madness has been defined as a mental state which is in contradiction

to the average mental state, it is evident that all religious

reformers ought to be put away in a lunatic asylum.

It is quite possible to recognise what an extraordinary effect Count

Tolstoi’s principle of non-resistance to evil would have. Still it

is a strictly Christian one. Christ went further, and ordained that

the other cheek should be offered to the man who smites. It might be

argued that this would result in a tacit acquiescence in evil. But

if it be so, the whole of the Count’s life is a contradiction to

this, and a standing protest against the existence of those who

create, or rather perpetuate, this evil. Every reform, this

included, is a protest against doing at Rome what Romans do, or the

_laisser aller_, which is the indolent curse of human progress.

Count Tolstoi desires to see the reign of Christ on Earth, and in

this accords well with the Theosophists who desire “Universal

Brotherhood.” But neither of these can be effected save by the

cultivation of the inner and spiritual man, so that it shall shine

through and form the guide to the outer and physical man. But

unfortunately the welfare of the latter is taken as the standard at

present and humanity, without the spiritual man as a guide, is left

to flounder in the ditch into which it has fallen.

Those who desire to follow Count Tolstoi, or to become real working

Theosophists, may find something to think about in comparing his

words with his actions. He endeavours to “go about doing good,” and

to help his fellow men on the hard path of life. When it is followed

it will be found that to run counter to the spirit of the age, and

instead of the indolent _laisser aller_, to work not for self, but

for humanity at large, is the hardest task ever set to men. Mankind

as a rule does not want an example or to be worked for; both are

rude awakenings from the lotus-eating state they desire to be left

in. “Let us alone,” is their cry, and they resist with violence any

attempt to rouse them.

But those who desire a greater unity than that which any race or

nation can afford—the unity of the human race—the Universal

Brotherhood—cannot leave them alone. There is a power which impels

Count Tolstoi to protest against the reign of violence, and he truly

replies, that the readiest means of continuing this reign is to meet

violence by violence. Therefore he, by his writings, and his words

and life, endeavours to place before men the noblest philosophy of

life that he recognises, in answer to the appeal which is silently

uttered from the hearts of many men and women in the world.

It is a cry of despair at the ignorance which surrounds them and to

which the Theosophical Society, _according to its avowed aims_, is

an answer. It is best described in the words of Tennyson—

An infant crying in the night,

And with no language but a cry.

A. I. R.

A GHOST’S REVENGE

Early in the year 187—, the singular and distressing attacks of

mental depression from which Sir Selwyn Fox had long been a

sufferer, increased in frequency.

His son Gaston (twenty-four years of age, of medicine by calling and

letters by choice), whose devotion to his father was intense, urged

him to go to London and procure that skilled medical advice which

was not to be had in the neighbourhood of the baronet’s country

seat, in Northumberland. But Sir Selwyn was inflexible in his

determination to see no doctor. Affectionate as his manner always

was with Gaston, he even showed impatience when pressed on this

point; and Gaston, forced to abandon it, fell back on his own skill

in an endeavour to assign some tangible cause for his father’s

malady. But in this he was hopelessly baffled.

Nothing in Sir Selwyn’s present state, no circumstance of his past

history which was known to Gaston (who had rarely been apart from

him since boyhood), excused or explained in any degree the

melancholy which clouded his existence. His great fortune placed him

beyond suspicion or suggestion of pecuniary embarrassment. All the

surroundings of his home were well calculated to administer to the

refined pleasures of a man widely known as an amateur of books and

art. No entanglement of the affections could be supposed seriously

to trouble the peace of one who had passed his meridian, and who,

moreover, cherished still the memory of the wife he had long lost.

He had friendships which, while they attested his worth, would have

been sufficient in themselves to endear most men to life. Yet for

months he had worn the air of a man to whom life was fast becoming

an unendurable burden.

His own skill and experience failing to open to Gaston any method of

coping with a disease whose hidden source and origin he could not

divine, he was on the point of writing to a leading London physician

of his acquaintance, when a circumstance occurred which saved him

from the necessity of this step.

Sir Selwyn was alone in his room one evening when Gaston, who was

reading in a room immediately beneath, heard sounds overhead which

at once sent him upstairs to learn the cause. He had fancied that

his father was speaking in a tone of troubled remonstrance to some

unwelcome visitor, though he felt persuaded that no one, unless a

servant of the house, could be with him at that hour. Hastening to

his father’s room, his footsteps were arrested on the threshold by

the spectacle which the half-opened door revealed to him. Sir Selwyn

sat motionless and rigid in his chair; his face was colourless, and

all the features stiff, while the eyes, dilated and staring, seemed,

though they were fixed on space, to hold within their vision some

object not perceptible to Gaston. This was the more remarkable that

Gaston stood directly in his father’s line of sight, though it was

certain that Sir Selwyn neither looked at him nor saw him. In a

word, it was the gaze of a man who sees, or believes that he sees,

an apparition.

Gaston took a step forward; the sound fell on the baronet’s ear and

broke the spell which held him.

His first look was one of inexpressible shame, succeeded immediately

by one of indescribable relief. If detection were painful, as it

clearly was, it appeared as though the pain were almost lost in the

necessity now forced upon him of disclosing the secret of his

misery. Gaston was at his father’s side in a moment.

“What is it, father?” he cried. “What is it? You have seen

something. Tell me what it is.”

Sir Selwyn, in whose expression exhaustion and pain were mingled,

fixed his eyes for a while on his son’s face before he replied:

“If I should tell you, Gaston, you would not believe it. I do not

believe it myself. And yet I see it, and know that it is there.”

“I shall believe whatever you tell me, father,” answered Gaston.

“Gaston,” began the baronet, “you are a doctor, and have read, read

widely in all branches of science. Tell me, do you believe that we

who are in the body may see and know a spirit from the dead?”

“You believe, father, that you have seen such a spirit?”

“The whole force of my reason cannot persuade me otherwise,”

answered his father. “All the powers of my mind compel me to deny

it, and yet the thing is there before my eyes.”

The baronet had by this time regained his usual calm of manner, and

his voice was resolute and quiet.

“Is it here now, father?” asked Gaston.

“Yes,” answered Sir Selwyn.

“Where, father? Point to me the place where it stands.”

“It stands now at my elbow, side by side with you.”

Gaston started involuntarily, the baronet’s tone bespoke such

absolute conviction. He moved a step, and placed himself immediately

at his father’s elbow.

“Do you see it now, father?” he asked.

“No, for you have taken its place. Yes! I see it again. It is on

this side now, exactly opposite to you.”

There was in all this so little of the tone and manner of the mere

spectre-ridden visionary, that Gaston could not but be impressed,

and his alarm for his father’s state increased proportionately.

He began to question him in the direct matter-of-fact style of a

doctor with his patient, inquiring into the particular nature of the

vision, how often and in what circumstances it presented itself,

whether his father were able to connect it with any event of his

life, or whether it seemed to be causeless, a mere fabric of the

imagination.

His object in this was to bring his father to exert his reason upon

the matter, that so, if possible, he might end by convincing himself

that he was haunted merely by some spectre of the brain. He was,

however, only partially successful, and for this reason, that his

father, while denying—and with perfect honesty of convincement—the

reality of his vision, remained nevertheless persuaded that his

bodily eye beheld it.

“I cannot well remember,” went on Sir Selwyn, “how many years it is

since this spectre first began to haunt me. In the beginning I

thought little of it; my health was more robust then than it has

been in late years, and leading a more active life at that time than

I am able to do at present, I had greater strength, both of mind and

body, to assist me in banishing it from my thoughts and presence.

Indeed, I could then at any time rid myself of the vision by a mere

exertion of will; but I can do so no longer. It torments me now as

it pleases. I am powerless against it.”

“Does the form resemble that of anyone whom you have ever known?”

asked Gaston.

“Yes,” replied Sir Selwyn, after a moment’s pause.

“And the person whose spirit you believe this to be is now dead,

father?”

“Dead many years,” answered Sir Selwyn.

“And what is there in the vision that troubles you so greatly,

father?” asked his son.

“Its presence is tormenting,” replied Sir Selwyn, “because I feel

that there is evil in it; it is malignant, and seems continually to

threaten me.”

“Is it here still, father?”

“No, since we have been speaking it has vanished. I shall see it no

more to-night; but it will return to-morrow, and in the end it will

kill me.”

“No, father, no,” said Gaston affectionately, but gravely. “Let me

entreat you not to give way. You see how this vision, whatever it

may be, vanishes when you begin to reason upon it. The mere fact of

our having discussed it together will enable you to combat it more

resolutely. Do this, and the same power will revive by which you

dispelled the vision when first it troubled you.”

Indeed, the closing words of Sir Selwyn’s confession,

notwithstanding the quiet assurance with which they were spoken, had

practically convinced his son that the case was one of

hallucination. They continued talking on the subject until, at the

baronet’s usual hour of retiring, they separated for the night, when

Gaston was so far satisfied that his arguments appeared at last to

have given his father a somewhat increased measure of

self-confidence.

At breakfast the next day, Sir Selwyn assured his son that he had

slept well, and both in speech and look he was more cheerful than

Gaston had seen him during a considerable period. It seemed, in

short, as though the effect of their conversation the previous night

had already begun to bear out the son’s prediction; nor, at the end

of a week, did this good effect appear to have been in any degree

dissipated. “I have not seen it once,” said Sir Selwyn, in answer to

a question from Gaston. Another week passed, and a third, and the

baronet declared that there had been no recurrence of the visions.

He became very reticent upon the subject, and it was evident that he

now shrank from any allusion to it. Gaston, on his side, was only

too willing to avoid its mention.

It was at this time that Sir Selwyn received a letter from an old

friend of his college days, now holding a high place in the Indian

Government, reminding him of a long-promised visit, and begging him

to fulfil his word without further delay.

A better invitation, thought Gaston, could not have arrived at a

more opportune moment. Their pleasant English home had become

charged for the baronet with associations which were wholly painful;

a new scene and fresher interests would assist to push to completion

the recovery which could not but be long delayed in his present

situation. Sir Selwyn himself was of the same mind, and decided at

once to accept his friend’s invitation.

Then arose in Gaston’s mind the question whether, in the

circumstances, it were well or advisable that his father should make

the journey alone. He thought it not advisable at all, and without

plainly telling this to his father, begged that he might accompany

him. But Sir Selwyn showed a strong reluctance to accede to this

request, which was the more marked that father and son had never yet

been separated on any tour of pleasure. Gaston continued to press

his point, until he perceived, or thought that he perceived, what

was his father’s reason for wishing to take this journey alone.

The thing which Sir Selwyn had striven for years to hide from his

son he had just been forced to reveal to him. It was the sorrowful

secret of his life, a secret which, to the baronet, had something of

shame in it, and the revelation had been beyond measure painful to

him. If, in one sense, the confession which had been wrung from him

had brought father and son more closely together, it had, in another

sense, placed a certain something between them of which the presence

of Gaston was a constant reminder. With Gaston at his father’s side,

the secret too was there. When Gaston’s delicate intuition had

realised this for him, his entreaties to accompany his father were

at an end. It was decided that Sir Selwyn should go to India alone,

and in a fortnight from the receipt of his friend’s invitation he

was on his way.

Gaston was desolate at home, and at the end of ten days or so he

went to Paris, intending to stay a week there and return to England;

but the weather was pleasant, and from Paris he began to wander, in

leasurely fashion, southwards; and before he had quite made up his

mind as to where he wanted to go, he found himself in Rome. Rome was

chilly, and he had lighted on a bad hotel, so he remained but a few

days, and went on to Naples. He would wait to see Rome, he said,

until his father was with him.

After a fortnight in Naples, he was on the point of returning home,

when he received a cable message from his father, forwarded with

letters from England. Sir Selwyn had reached India safely and in

good health, and thought it probable that his stay would be of

somewhat longer duration than his arrangements on leaving England

had contemplated.

The prospect of five or six solitary months in the castle in

Northumberland had no relish for Gaston, so he resolved to extend

his tour by an excursion to Sicily. Accordingly, he took steamer one

evening from Naples to Palermo: the beautiful old city where the

traces yet linger of Saracen and Norman; with the tideless sea in

front, and the purple hills behind, and between the hills and the

sea the little lovely plain of the Shell of Gold. Naples is

beautiful, but brutal; a paradise peopled by savages: an Oriental

languor softens the life of Palermo, as it tinges with melancholy

the national songs; and the rural element which enters so largely

into the character of the whole Sicilian people makes them something

of Arcadians in a modern Arcady.

Gaston felt the charm of the place in an hour; the sense of want of

companionship which had gone with him in his listless wanderings in

Italy, here deserted him; he plucked ripe oranges in the garden of

the hotel, and they became his lotos fruit, for he resolved that his

wanderings should end in Palermo. He would remain here until his

father returned from India.

But it chanced that there were few foreign visitors in Palermo that

season, and within a week of Gaston’s arrival the hotel at which he

stayed was emptied of all its guests, except himself and an old

German baron, and the baron waited only for a steamer to take him to

Malta, on his way to Egypt. An empty hotel in a foreign land is as

cheerful an abode as a catacomb, and Gaston cast about for a change

of quarters.

Strolling one day in a slumbrous corner of the town, where cypress

trees stood sentinels at rusty iron gates, and the air smelled of

lemon groves and roses, he was struck by the aspect of a tenantless

and apparently deserted villa, walled within a garden, which,

untended as it was, retained a certain monastic trimness. A

weather-stained board over the iron gate, which was of fine

workmanship, announced that the villa was to let. Gaston tried the

gate, but it was locked. A broad-hatted priest who was passing at

the moment, observing Gaston’s interest in the villa, stopped, took

a pinch of snuff, and said that if the signor desired to have

particulars of the place, he might obtain them from such a person in

a street close at hand, which he indicated. Gaston thanked the

father for his courtesy, and went to inquire if he could see the

villa, with a view to hiring it for a short time.

At dinner that evening, the baron said that he expected to sail for

Malta on the following day, and expressed his regret at leaving

Gaston alone in the hotel. Gaston replied that he should be sorry to

lose the companionship of the baron, but that he also was about to

leave the hotel, and had taken a villa for the remainder of his stay

in Palermo. He described the villa, and the baron, who spoke English

well, exclaimed with a laugh:

“So! Is that the place? The Villa Torcello then has found a tenant

at last!”

“Has it been long without one?”

“Nearly thirty years.”

“And what is the reason?”

“How! Did they not tell you? The Villa Torcello is the famous

haunted house. Yes, I assure you, a real ghost! Are you not

delighted? You may be able to make a story about it, you know, you

who write novels.”

“And whose is the ghost?” inquired Gaston, whose associations with

this subject were by no means pleasant.

“They ought to have told you about it,” answered the baron. “Some

people do not like ghosts. I do not like them myself, though to be

sure I have never seen a ghost. The house, as you know, is called

the Villa Torcello, but that was not its original name. Years ago it

was called the Villa Verga, after its first owner, Signor Udalrico

Verga, a young Sicilian of good family, who was well known and very

popular in Palermo. He lived there all alone, and was much visited

by a priest, a very handsome young man, a little older than himself,

with whom he was on terms of great affection. One morning, thirty

years ago—I believe it was in this very month—the gardener of the

Signor Verga found his master lying dead in the garden, with a

bullet-hole in the temple. There seemed no reason in the world why

he should have killed himself, and as no weapon was found near the

body, or in any part of the garden, it was concluded that he had

been murdered. Suspicion fell on the priest, though for no cause

except that he had been more intimate with the Signor Verga than

anybody else. They were never known to have had a quarrel, and as

for evidence, not a scrap could be produced against the priest, who,

they say, showed the deepest grief for his friend. Indeed he died,

in great distress of mind, six months afterwards. Some people, who

would always regard him as the murderer, said that remorse for his

crime killed him; but though I have heard this story many times

since I first visited Palermo, I could never see that there was any

reason whatever to suspect the priest.”

“And the murder was never brought home to anyone?”

“It has remained a mystery from that day to this,” replied the

baron. “A year or two after the death of Verga, his brother went to

live in the Villa, changing its name to that of a property of his

own in Calabria, the name which it still bears. But he could not

stay in it, for he said that he saw the spirit of his brother

walking in the garden in the evenings, on the path where the body

was found. Since he left it, the house has never been occupied. As

to the ghost, many stories are told, but the favourite one is that

it haunts the place seeking someone to avenge the murder. That is a

strange notion, don’t you think, Herr Fox?”

The baron added no more to the story, and as he was busy with his

letters during the rest of the evening, Gaston only saw him again to

bid him good-bye on the following morning.

A day or two afterwards, Gaston settled himself in the Villa

Torcello. His coming there created a momentary flutter of excitement

in the quarter where the villa was situated; but this was not known

to Gaston, who had neither friends nor acquaintances in the town.

He wrote to tell his father of his new residence, and to ask him

whether he had visited Palermo in the tour he had made in Italy a

few years before Gaston’s birth. One morning, the post from England

brought him some flattering notices of a book he had published

shortly before leaving, which made him think that it was time to set

to work upon a new story. But the idea he was seeking did not come

to him, and the indolent charm of his surroundings favoured no

severe exertion of the intellect.

He walked in the town until it grew familiar to him; its avenues,

and terraces by the sea, its deep shadowy gardens, its groves of

orange trees and lemon; its narrow streets and the multiplied

variety of the houses, with their odd and glaring contrasts of

colour; its churches, where the religion of the west seems out of

harmony with the architectural and decorative fashions of the east.

Sometimes he hired a carriage and drove out into the country, and

these excursions were usually prolonged throughout the day. On one

such occasion, he was returning late in the afternoon, and the

vetturino was guiding his horses in lazy fashion in and out amongst

a straggling file of mule-carts laden with wine, in a narrow lane on

the outskirts of the town.

“What place is this?” called out Gaston presently, pointing to an

old, discoloured building of considerable extent, which lay on the

left of the road.

“_Il Convento de’ Cappuccini, signor_,” replied the driver, and

(never rejecting a chance to rest) pulled up his horses, adding:

“The signor no see Il Convento? _Ma, è molto curioso, signor_ (but

it’s a queer place).”

Gaston got down from the carriage, and at that moment a sandalled

and brown-robed monk appeared at the entrance to the monastery.

“_Ecco il padre, signor!_” (There’s the father), said the driver,

pointing to the Capucin, who bowed to Gaston with a courteous

indication of readiness to receive him.

Gaston went across, and was presently following the monk through an

outer chamber of the monastery, empty and cold, with bare walls and

a dark stone floor.

The monk stopped at a heavy wooden door, and taking a key from his

girdle, turned to Gaston and said, in a mixture of Italian and

broken English, which is here translated:

“The signor probably wishes to see our subterranean chambers. Many

foreigners come here to see them. It is a very curious sight; we

keep here the bodies of the wealthy Palermitans, whose relatives and

friends assemble every year, on the Feast of All Souls, to visit

them.”

While he was speaking he unlocked the door, which led into a vaulted

passage with a flight of stairs beyond. A faint, sickly smell

pervaded the corridor, which became stronger and more offensive as

they began to descend the steps.

They went down to a dusky place, around which Gaston’s eyes wandered

for a few moments with no certain gaze, until they grew accustomed

to the dimness. The daylight, such feeble daylight as filtered into

that dismal magazine of mummies, was fading fast.

The monk took a bit of candle from a ledge and lighted it; at once a

strange and weird effect was produced.

Thousands of corpses, and skeletons, and horrible hooded figures

which were of neither state, seemed in some manner to be awakened,

seemed to rouse themselves, and take cognisance of Gaston and his

guide.

TIGHE HOPKINS.

(_To be concluded in our next._)

------------------

NOTE.—The Editors regret that they are unable to publish, as

announced, the translation of the “Death of Ivan Ilyitch,” by Count

Tolstoi, a complete translation having just been issued by Messrs.

Vizetelly.

=LITERARY JOTTINGS=

“BUDDHISM IN CHRISTENDOM, OR JESUS THE ESSENE,” by Arthur Lillie,

etc.—A queer and rather thickish volume, of a presumably scientific

character, by an amateur Orientalist. Contents:—Familiar theories,

built on two sacred and time-honoured names, which the author

enshrines between garlands of modern gossip and libels on his

critics, past and present. A true literary sarcophagus inhuming the

decayed bodies of very old, if occasionally correct, theories

jumbled up together with exploded speculations.

The volume—title and symbology—is pregnant with the atmosphere of

the sacred poetry attached to the names of Gautama the Buddha, and

“Jesus the Essene.” To find it sprinkled with the heavy drops of

personal spite, is like gazing at an unclean fly fallen into the

communion-wine of a chalice. One can but wonder and ask oneself,

what shall be the next move in literature? Is it a new “Sacred Book

of the East,” in which one will find the evidence by Policeman

Endacott against Miss Cass welcomed and accepted as an historical

fact? Or shall it be the Pentecostal tongues of fire examined in the

light of the latest improved kerosene lamp?

But a well-informed chronicler at our elbow reports that the author

of _Buddhism in Christendom, or Jesus the Essene_, is a strong

medium who sits daily for spiritual development? This would account

for the wonderfully mixed character of the contents of the volume

referred to. It must be so, since it reads just as such a joint

production would. It is a curious mixture of “spirit” inspiration,

passages bodily taken from the reports of the Society “for

_Spookical_ Research,” as that misguided body was dubbed—for once

wittily—by the _Saturday Review_, and various other little

defamatory trifles besides. The “spirit guides” are proverbially

revengeful and not always wise in their generation. A former work by

the same medium having been three or four years ago somewhat

painfully mangled by a real Sanskrit and Buddhist scholar in India,

the “Spirit Angel” falls foul now of his critics. The wandering

Spook tries to run amuck among them, without even perceiving the

poor, good soul, that he only blots and disfigures with the

corrosive venom of his spite the two noble and sacred characters

whom his medium-author undertakes to interpret before ever he has

learned to understand them....

This places “Lucifer” under the disagreeable necessity of reviewing

the pretentious work at length in one of its future numbers. As the

same mistakes and blunders occur in “Buddhism in Christendom” as in

“Buddha and Early Buddhism,” the magazine must make it its duty, if

not altogether its pleasure, to check the volume of 1883 by that of

1887.

---

It is rumoured that “A CATECHISM ON EVERY-DAY LIFE,” by a

Theosophical writer, is ready for press. Let us hope it will contain

no special theology or dogmas, but only wise advice for practical

life, in its application to the ordinary events in the existence of

every theosophist. The time has come when the veil of illusion is to

be pulled aside entirely, not merely playfully, as hitherto done.

For if mere members of the theosophical body have nothing to risk,

except, perhaps, an occasional friendly stare and laugh at those

who, without any special necessity, as believed, pollute the

immaculate whiteness of their respectable society skirts by joining

an unpopular movement, real theosophists ought to look truth and

fact right in the face. To become a true theosophist—_i.e._ one

thoroughly imbued with altruistic feelings, with a willingness to

forget self, and readiness to help his neighbour to carry the burden

of life—is to become instantaneously transformed into a public

target. It is to make oneself a ready thing for heavy “Mrs. Grundy”

to sit upon: to become the object of ridicule, slander, and

vilification, which will not stop even before an occasional criminal

charge. For some theosophists, every move in the _true theosophical

direction_, is a forlorn-hope enterprise. All this notwithstanding,

the ranks of the “unpopular” society are steadily, if slowly

increasing.

For what does slander and ridicule really matter? When have fools

ever been slandered, or rich and influential men and women

ostracised, however black and soiled in their hearts, or in their

secret lives? Who ever heard of a Reformer’s or an orator’s course

of life running smooth? Who of them escaped from being pelted with

dirt by his enemies?

Gautama Buddha, the great Hindu Reformer, was charged by the

Brahmins with being a demon, whose form was taken by Vishnu, to

encourage men to despise the Vedas, deny the gods, and thus effect

their own destruction.

“Say we not well thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil?” said the

Pharisees to Jesus. “He deceiveth the people.... Stone him to

death!”

“He who surpasses or subdues mankind,

Must look down on the hate of those below,”

says the great English poet. The latter is echoed in prose by the

king of French poets. Writes Victor Hugo:

“You have your enemies; but who has not? Guizot has enemies,

Thiers has enemies, Lamartine has enemies. Have I not been myself

fighting for twenty years? Have I not been for twenty years past

reviled, betrayed, sold, rended, hooted, taunted, insulted,

calumniated? Have not my books been parodied, and my deeds

travestied? I also am beset and spied upon, I also have traps laid

for me, and I have even been made to fall into them. But what is

all that to me? I disdain it. It is one of the most difficult yet

necessary things in life to learn to disdain. Disdain protects and

crushes. It is a breast plate and a club. You have enemies? Why,

it is the story of every man who has done a great deed, created a

new idea. It is the cloud which thunders around everything which

shines. Do not trouble yourself about it. Do not give your enemies

the satisfaction of thinking that they cause you any feeling, be

disdainful.” (_Choses Vues._)

-------

“THE LATEST ROMANCE OF SCIENCE,” Summarized by a Frenchman.

If the Atomo-mechanical Theory of the Universe has caused

considerable embarrassment to our materialists, and brought some of

their much beloved scientific speculations to grief (see “Concepts

of Modern Physics,” by Stallo), the layman must not be ungrateful to

the great men for other boons received at their hands. Through the

indefatigable labours of the most famous biologists and

anthropologists of the day, the mystery which has hitherto

enshrouded the origin of man is no more. It has vanished into thin

air; thanks to the activity of the _officina_ (workshop, in Queen’s

English), in Haeckel’s brain, or, as a Hylo-Idealist would say, in

the _vesiculo neurine of his hemispherical ganglia_[15]—the origin

of mankind has to be sought in _that_ scientific region, and nowhere

else.

-----

Footnote 15:

Dr. Lewins, the Hylo-Idealist, in his appendices to “What is

Religion?” by C. N.—“On the Brain Theory of Mind and Matter, the

Creed of Physics, Physic and Philosophy.” W. Stewart & Co.

-----

Religiously read by the “Animalists” in its English translation in

Protestant and Monarchical England, the “Pedigree of Man” is now

welcomed with shouts of joy in Roman Catholic Republican France. A

summary has just been compiled of it by a French _savant_, who

rejoices in the name of Topinard. The summary on that “question of

questions” (as Mr. Huxley calls it), is more interesting in reality

than the “Pedigree of Man” itself. It is so deliciously fantastic

and original, that one comes almost to regret that our numerous and

frolicsome ancestors in the Zoological Gardens of Europe and America

seem to show no intention of getting up a subscription list among

themselves, for the raising of a lasting monument to the great

Haeckel. Thus, ingratitude in man must surely be a phenomenon of

_atavism_; another suggestive point being thus gained toward further

proof of man’s descent from the ingrate and heartless, as well as

tailless, pithecoid baboon.

Saith the learned Topinard:—

“At the commencement of what geologists call the _Laurentian

period_ of the Earth, and the fortuitous union of certain elements

of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, under conditions which

_probably_ only took place at that epoch, the first albuminoid

clots were formed. From them, and by spontaneous generation,[16]

the first cellules or cleavage masses took their origin. These

cellules were then sub-divided and multiplied, arranging

themselves in the form of organs, and after a series of

transformations, fixed by Mr. Haeckel at nine in number,

originated certain vertebrata of the genus _Amphioxus

lanceolatus_. The division into sexes was marked out, the spinal

marrow and _chorda dorsalis_ became visible. At the tenth stage

the brain and skull made their appearance, as in the lamprey; at

the eleventh, the limbs and jaws were developed ... the earth was

then only in the _Silurian_ period. At the sixteenth, the

adaptation to terrestrial life ceased. At the seventeenth, which

corresponds to the _Jurassic_ phase of the history of the globe,

the genealogy of man is raised to the kangaroo among the

marsupials. At the eighteenth, he becomes a lemurian; the

_Tertiary period_ commences. At the nineteenth, he becomes

Catarrhinian, that is to say, an ape with a tail, a Pithecian. At

the twentieth he becomes an anthropoid, continuing so throughout

the whole of the _Miocene period_. At the twenty-first he becomes

a man-ape, he does not possess language, nor in consequence the

corresponding brain. Lastly, at the twenty-second, man comes forth

... in his inferior types.”

-----

Footnote 16:

Mark well: when a theosophist or an occultist speaks of

“spontaneous generation,” because for him there exists no

inorganic matter in Kosmos—he is forthwith set down as an

_ignoramus_. To prove the descent of man from the animal, however,

even spontaneous generation from dead or inorganic matter, becomes

an axiomatic and scientific fact.

-----

Happy, privileged man! Hapless evolution-forsaken baboon! We are not

told by science the secret why, while man has had plenty of time to

become, say a Plato, a Newton, a Napoleon, or _even_ a Haeckel, his

poor ancestor should have been arrested in his growth and

development. For, as far as is known, the rump of the cynocephalus

seems as blue and as callous to-day, as it was during the reign of

Psammetichus or Cheops; the macacus must have made as ugly faces at

Pliny 18 centuries back, as he does now at a Darwinian. We may be

told that in the enormous period of time that must have elapsed

since the beginning of evolution, 2,000, or even 10,000, years mean

very little. But then, one does not find even the Moneron any better

off for the millions of years that have rolled away. Yet, between

the gelatinous and thoughtful hermit of the briny deep and man,

there must have elapsed quite sufficient time for some trifling

transformation. That primordial protoplasmic creature, however,

seems to fare no better at the hands of evolution, which has

well-nigh forgotten it.

By this time, one would suppose that this ancestor of ours of stage

_one_, ought to have reached, to say the least, a higher

development: to have become, for instance, the amphibian “sozura” of

the “fourteenth stage,” so minutely and scientifically described by

Mr. Haeckel, and of which De Quatrefages so wickedly says in “The

Human Species” (p. 108), that “it (the sozura) is _equally unknown

to science_.” But we see quite the reverse. This tender-bodied

little one, has remained but a moneron to this very hour: so much

so, that Mr. Huxley, fishing him out from the abysmal ocean depths,

took pity upon him, and gave him a father. He baptized our archaic

ancestor, and named him _Bathybius Haeckelii_....

But all these are mysteries that will, no doubt, be easily explained

to the full satisfaction—of science, by any biologist of Haeckel’s

brain power. As all know, no acrobatic feats, from the top of one

tree to another top, by the swiftest of chimpanzees, can ever

approach, let alone equal, the rapid evolutions of fancy in his

cerebral “officina,” whenever Haeckel is called upon to explain the

inexplicable....

There is one trifle, however, which seems to have the best of even

his capacity for getting out of a scientific dilemma, and this is

_the eighteenth stage_ of his genealogy, in the “Pedigree of Man.”

Man’s evolution from the Monera, _alias_ Bathybius _Haeckelii_, up

to tailed and then tailless man, passes through the marsupials, the

kangaroo, sarrigue, etc. Thus he writes:—

“_Eighteenth stage._ Prosimiæ allied to the Loris (Stenops) and

Makis (Lemur), without marsupial bones, but _with placenta_.”

(“_Pedig. of Man._” p. 77.)

Now it may be perhaps interesting to the profane and the innocent to

learn that no such “prosimiæ,” with placenta, exists in nature. That

it is, in short, another creation of the famous German Evolutionist,

and a child of his own brain. For De Quatrefages has pointed out

several years ago, that:

“The anatomical investigations of MM. Alphonse Milne, Edwards and

Grandidier ... place it beyond all doubt that the prosimiæ of

Haeckel have _no decidua and a diffuse placenta_. They are

_indeciduata_. Far from _any possibility of their being the

ancestors of the apes_, according to the principles laid down by

Haeckel himself, they cannot even be regarded as the ancestors of

the zonoplacential mammals ... and ought to be connected with the

pachydermata, the edentata and the cetacea.” (p. 110.)

But, as that great French _savant_ shows, “Haeckel, without the

least hesitation, adds his _prosimiæ_,” to the other groups in the

“Pedigree of Man,” and “attributes to them ... a discoidal

placenta.” Must the world of the too credulous innocents again

accept on faith these two creatures unknown to Science or man, only

because “the proof of their existence arises _from the necessity of

an intermediate type_?” This necessity, however being one only for

the greater success of their inventor, Haeckel, that Simian Homer

must not bear us ill will, if we do not hesitate to call his

“genealogy” of man a romance of Science of the wildest type.

One thing is very suggestive in this speculation. The discovery of

the absence of the needed placenta in the so-called _prosimiæ_ now

dates several years back. Haeckel knows of it, of course. So does

Mr. Ed. B. Aveling, D.Sc., his translator. Why is the error allowed

to remain uncorrected, and even unnoticed, in the English

translation of the “Pedigree of Man,” of 1887? Do the “members of

the International Library of Science and Free-thought,” fear to lose

some of Haeckel’s admirers were these to learn the truth?

Nevertheless Haeckel’s scientific “Pedigree of Man,” ought to awake

and stir up to action the spirit of private enterprise. What a

charming _Féerie_ could be made of it on the stage of a theatre! A

_corps de ballet_, composed of antediluvian reptiles and giant

lizards, gradually, and stage by stage, metamorphosing themselves

into kangaroos, lemurs, tailless apes and anthropoid baboons, and

finally into a chorus of German biologists!

Such a _Féerie_ would leave “Black Crook,” and “Alice in

Wonder-Land,” nowhere. An intelligent manager, alive to his

interests, would make his fortune were he but to follow the happy

thought.

_Nota bene_:—The suggestion is copyright.

---

THE BOOK OF LIFE, by Sidhartha (also) Vonisa; his discoveries from

“6215 to 6240, Anno Mundi.”

A cross between an _octavo_ and _duodecimo_.

This volume, we see, is highly appreciated by the clergy, by whom,

at this gloomy day of infidelity, even small favours seem to be

thankfully received. The author (profane name unknown) hints, when

he does not state plainly, that he is a reincarnation of Gautama

Buddha, or Siddartha, as also of a few other no meaner historical

personages. The work is a clever steering between the sandbanks of

science and theology. Enough is given in careful agreement with the

former to make it ignore the more abundant concessions to the gods

of the latter—_e.g._, Biblical chronology. The age of the world is

allowed 6240 years from Adam, “seven hundred years after the brown

and black races had been created” (p. 53 “Chronology”); the date of

the earth’s incrustation and globe being left to the imagination of

the reader. A chronological table of the principal historical events

of the world is published on pages 53-56. Among them the birth of

Moses is placed 1572 B.C. The Vedas are shown compiled in India, and

the poems of Homer in Greece, “about 1200 B.C.” Siddartha or Gautama

established Buddhism in India “from 808 to 726,” B.C. we are told.

Last, but not least, of the world epochs and _divine_ signs of the

time, comes the for ever memorable event of March 31st, 1885—namely,

the “Book of Life, Vonisa, was completely written,” and it closes

the list. The reader is notified, moreover, at the line beginning

with A.D. 6240, that the year 1884 C.E. (Christian Era) is the

“beginning of Messianic age and close of Christian age,” which might

account for the appearance and publication in the year following of

the original volume now under review.

The new Messiah declares that “although much of the work consists of

discoveries which are original with the author, yet the reader will

find in the Analytic Index a few hundred out of the many references

which might be given to eminent authorities which were consulted in

its preparation.” Among these, it seems, one has to include some

theosophic writings, as it is stated in the “Book of Life” that—

(_a._) “Seven great forces were concerned in these vast movements

of early creation.”

(_b._) “Seven Ages of the Earth.”

(_c._) “Vayomer Elohim” translated “according to the laws of the

Hebrew language,” means that “seven forces were used as three-fold

factors,” and

(_d._) “That the first human beings were incarnated spirits” (pp.

26-27).

The above four declarations have the approval of theosophy. Whether

the sentence that follows, namely, that “the work of incarnation (of

the _spirits_) took place according to law,” and is “the clearest

hypothesis _which science has to offer concerning the origin of

man_,” will meet with the same approval from Messrs. Huxley,

Haeckel, and Fiske, of the “Atomo-mechanical Theory,” is very

doubtful.

Nor is it so sure that the Ethnological department in the

Anglo-Indian Bureau of Statistics is quite prepared to alter its

census returns in accordance with Siddartha’s declaration, on page

29,that—

“One branch of the brown race was the Dravidian, _which still holds

its place in Northern India_.” (?!)

---

A new book, bearing the title of SPIRIT REVEALED, is nearly ready

for press. It is described as an extraordinary work. Its author is

Wm. C. Eldon Serjeant, F.T.S., a writer of articles on the “Coming

Reformation,” “Sparks from the World of Fire,” &c., &c. The work

claims to “explain the Nature of the Deity, and to discuss His

manifestations on every plane of existence, and to show forth the

form of Christ, whose second coming is expected by Christians, and

to proclaim the advent of the Messiah according to the belief of the

Jews.” “Many subjects, involving questions of considerable obscurity

in reference to the Deity, to the Scriptures, to men, to animals,

and to things generally, are comprehensively treated and explained

in accordance with the Word of the Spirit declared at various times

through the sons of men.”

---

PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH:

These reports coming out _ad libitum_, without any definite date,

cannot be regarded as periodical. Depending for their circulation

chiefly on the consummation of what the learned editors offer as

_bonâ fide_ psychic and spiritualistic _exposés_—which the public

accepts as most kind advertisements of the people so attacked—this

publication occupies a position entirely _sui generis_. The

“Proceedings” offer to the public a very useful _manual_, something

between a text and a guidebook, with practical instructions in

diplomatic policy in the domain of the Psychic, in the form of

scientific letters and private detective information. Sensitives

discern in the “Proceedings” (by _telepathic impact_) the

Machiavelian spirit of aristocratic Bismarck, seasoned with an aura

strongly impregnated with the plebeian perfumes of honest

_mouchards_ on duty, but then they are, perhaps, prejudiced. On the

other hand, some Russian spiritualistically inclined members of the

S.P.R. have been heard to say, that the “Proceedings” reminded them

of those of the happily defunct Third Section of the St. Petersburg

Police. Thus, the tutelary “guides” of the learned association of

the British Psychists, may one day turn out to be the departed

spirits of Russian _gendarmes_ after all?

Occasionally when the hunting grounds of this erudite body have

afforded a specially successful chase—after mares’ nests—a

_Supplement_ is added to the “Proceedings,” the magnitude of the

added volume being in inverse ratio to the illumination of its

contents, which are generally offered as a premium to materialism.

Hence, the “Proceedings” may be better described as the fluctuating

and occasional records of a society bent upon giving the lie to its

own name. For “Psychical” research is surely a misnomer, besides

being a delusion and a snare for the unwary. LUCIFER would suggest

as a truer title, “Society for Hylo-_Pseumatical_ Research.” This

would give the S.P.R. the benefit of an open connection with Dr.

Lewins’ unparalleled “Hylo-Idealism”[17]—while it would enable it to

sail under its _true_ colours.

Whether LUCIFER’S advice be accepted or not, the profound philosophy

of the phenomenon baptized “telepathy” and telepathic impact can

only be studied scientifically, in our spasmodic contemporary. This

new Greek stranger is the crowning work of the Psychic Fathers of

our century. It is their “first” and “only” offspring, and is a

_genuine_ discovery as far as its Hellenic name goes. For, bereft of

its Greek appellation, it becomes like America. The genius who

_discovered_ the phenomenon, is like Columbus on whom the Northmen,

and even the Chinamen, had stolen a march centuries before. This

phenomenon can only seem _new_ when thus disguised under a name

solemn and scientific—because incomprehensible to the average

profane. Its plain description in English—as transference of thought

or sensation from a distance—could never hope to have the same ring

of classical learning in it.

Nevertheless, the “Proceedings” with the two additional gigantic

volumes of the psychic “Leviathan,” called “Phantasms of the

Living,” are strongly recommended to invalids. They are priceless in

cases of obstinate _insomnia_, as the best soporific known.

_Directions_: The reader must be careful not to light a match in too

close proximity to the said works.

“THE ADVERSARY.”

-----

Footnote 17:

ύλη “_matter_ as opposed to mind”; therefore _Material-Idealism_—a

contradiction in terms exactly parallel to the name “Psychic” and

the very “anti-psychic” work of the Society referred to. _Pseuma_

should replace _Psyche_, as it seeks for _frauds_ and not

_soul-action_.

-----

------------------

The following books have been received and will be noticed in early

numbers of LUCIFER:—

THE HISTORY OF THE ROSICRUCIANS, by Arthur E. Waite, and THE

QUABALAH UNVEILED, by S.L. Mac-Gregor Mathers, from Mr. Redway;

EARTH’S EARLIEST AGES, by G. H. Pember, from Messrs. Hodder and

Stoughton: THE MYSTERY OF THE AGES, by the Countess of Caithness,

from Mr. C. L. H. Wallace; AN ADVENTURE AMONG THE ROSICRUCIANS, by

Dr. F. Hartmann, from the Occult Publishing Company, Boston; and

NINETEENTH CENTURY COMMON SENSE, from the T. B. Lippincott Company,

Boston, U.S.A.

=CORRESPONDENCE=

INTERESTING TO ASTROLOGERS.

ASTROLOGICAL NOTES—No. 1.

_To the Editor of_ LUCIFER.

We are told that, before judging a horary figure, we must ascertain

if it is radical, and to decide this point several rules have been

given. The first is with regard to the number of degrees on the cusp

of the ascendant. Lilly says a figure is rarely radical if the first

two or last three degrees of a sign ascend. Morrison fixes the limit

at the first or second and last two degrees. Pearse gives the limit

as the first and last five degrees, and Raphael as the first and

last three.

All the laws of nature are harmonious and rational; but in the rule

of the first two authorities, this harmony seems absent. Why should

the limit be 1 or 2 degrees at the beginning of the sign and 2 or 3

at the end?

Again, as an exception to the above rule, Lilly says that a figure

may be radical even when 27° or more ascend, if the number

corresponds to his age; and when 1° or 2° ascend, if the querent be

very young, and his appearance agrees with the quality of the signs

ascending. And here again there is the same want of harmony. Why

should the age of the querent have to correspond accurately in one

case and only approximately in the other? Furthermore, no

astrologers seem to have given a logical explanation of these rules.

On reflecting on this problem I reasoned thus. In ♍ 29° 59´ 59´´ ♃

is absolutely without dignity; in ♐ 0° 0´ 1´´ he is in his house

triplicity, and terms, a threefold dignity. Is it conceivable that

this great change of power should be so sudden, as to be

accomplished in less than 2 seconds of space? Analogy shows that it

is probably otherwise, and that as the planets and cusps of houses

have orbs of influence, _so also have the signs_.

If this be true, it supplies the key to the above problem. If only

the first or last few degrees of a sign ascend, then the cusp of the

ascendant is within the orbs of the adjacent signs, and the house is

not ruled solely by the planet which is its proper lord, but also

partly by the planet ruling the adjacent sign; and this must hold

good under all circumstances, even when the number of the degrees

ascending agree with the age of the querent, or the ascending sign

and planets therein describe him.

Furthermore, if this be admitted, it also follows, as a logical

conclusion, that if the first and last few degrees of a sign are on

the cusp of any house, no conclusion can be drawn with certainty

from the aspects of the lord of that house.

The exact limits of the orbs of the signs must be decided by

experience; I am induced to fix the limits at 2° 30´ and 27° 30´.

NEMO.

--------------

_To the Editor of_ LUCIFER.

The belief in the power and efficacy of talismans and amulets was,

at one period of the world’s history, universal. Even during the

XVth century, the latest among the innumerable revivals of

civilisation, the majority of learned and cultured men had a

profound conviction of their reality. But such ideas are now scouted

by popular opinion, because the philosophy underlying them is not

understood. LUCIFER, therefore, would certainly confer a boon on

many by throwing light on the following points:—

(1). Wherein does the power of a talisman lie? (2). How far does its

efficacy depend on the signs traced upon it, and how far on the

power and knowledge of the maker? (3). Granting that will-power and

knowledge are the main factors in imparting to the talisman its

power, how does that power remain attached to it after the death of

the man who made it.

β

=THEOSOPHICAL

AND MYSTIC PUBLICATIONS=

The Theosophist, a magazine of Oriental Philosophy, Art, Literature,

and Occultism. Conducted by H. P. Blavatsky, and H. S. Olcott,

Permanent President of the T. S. Vol. VIII., Nos. 94 and 95, July

and August, 1887. Madras, India. In London, George Redway, 15, York

Street, Covent Garden.

This journal is the oldest of the periodicals of the Theosophical

Society, and has a distinct feature of its own: a number of Hindoo,

Buddhist, and Parsi contributors among the most learned of British

India. No journal is thus more reliable in the occasional

information given in it upon the sacred tenets and scriptures of the

East, since it is derived first hand, and comes from native

scholars, well versed in their respective cults. From time to time

_The Theosophist_ has respectfully corrected mistakes—sins of

omission and commission—by Western Orientalists, and will continue

to perform its proposed task by issuing admirable articles.

As a marked instance of this, the four “Lectures on the Bhagavid

Gita,” by a native scholar, Mr. T. Subba Rao, may be cited. Begun in

the February number, they are now concluded in the July issue. No

better, abler, or more complete exposition on that most

philosophical, as the least understood, of the sacred books of the

East, has ever been given in any work, past or present. In the June

and July numbers, the “Ha-Khoshe-Cah, a Vision of the Infinite,” by

Dr. Henry Pratt, a erudite Kabalist in England, is published.

Some very interesting articles on the “Norse Mythology,” by the

learned Swedish scholar, Mr. C. H. A. Bjerregard (the Astor Library,

New York), may also be found in the last numbers.

_The Theosophist_ is the journal of the Theosophical Society _par

excellence_; the Minutes and records of the Society’s work, being

given monthly in its “Supplements.”

No evil wisher of the said Society, rushing into publicity with

denunciations, and occasionally libellous attacks upon that body,

ought—if he is a fair-minded and _honest_ opponent, of course—to

publish anything without first making himself well acquainted with

the contents of _The Theosophist_, and especially with the

_Supplements_ attached to that journal.

This advice is given in all kindness to our traducers—the learned as

the ignorant—for their direct benefit, though at an evident

disadvantage to theosophy. For, as so many of our critics have been

lately making fools of themselves, in their alleged _exposés_ of our

doctrines, it is to the advantage of our Society to let them go on

undisturbed, and thus turn the laugh on the enemy. Two graphic

instances may be cited. In “Buddhism in Christendom; or, Jesus the

Essene,” by an impolite dabbler in Orientalism, the septenary

doctrine of the Occultists is disfigured out of recognition, and is

met by the unanimous hearty laugh of those who know something of the

subject. Its unlucky author has evidently never opened a serious

theosophical work, unless, indeed, the doctrine is too much above

his head. As a refreshing contrast one finds, in “Earth and Its

Earliest Ages,” by G. H. Pember, an author, who has most

conscientiously studied and understood the fundamental doctrines of

Theosophy.

Thus, notwithstanding his attempt to connect it with the coming

Antichrist, and show its numerous writers pledged to the work of

Satan, “the Prince of the Powers of the Air,”[18] the volume

published by that learned and fair-minded gentleman is a true pearl

in the _anti_-Theosophical literature. The correct enunciation of

knowledge of the tenets he disapproves, as a sincere orthodox

Christian, is remarkable; and his language, dignified, polite, and

entirely free from any personality can but call forth as courteous a

reply from those he arraigns. He has evidently read, and, what is

more, _understood_, what he found in the _Theosophist_, and other

mystic volumes. It shall, therefore, be the pleasure and duty of

LUCIFER, who bears no malice for the personal attack, to review this

interesting volume in its October issue, hoping to see as kind a

notice of “Earth and Its Earliest Ages” in the _Theosophist_ of

Madras.

-----

Footnote 18:

Spiritualists, mystics, and metaphysical Orientalists need not

feel jealous, as they are made to share the same fate, and are

raised to the same dignity with the Theosophists. The writers of

“The Perfect Way,” Mrs. Dr. Kingsford and Mr. E. Maitland, stand

arm-in-arm with the humble writer of “Isis Unveiled” before the

throne of Satan. Mr. Ed. Arnold, of “The Light of Asia,” and the

late Mr. Kenealy, of the “Book of God.” are seen radiating in the

same lethal light of brimstone and sulphur. Mr. C. C. Massey is

shown stuck deep in Antichristian Metaphysics; our kind Lady

Caithness is pointed out in the coils of the “Great Beast” of

Romanism, and charged with “Goddess worship:” and even—ye Powers

of mystical Perception!—Mr. Arthur Lillie’s Buddhist Monotheism is

taken _au grand serieux_!

-----

---

The Path; “a magazine devoted to the Brotherhood of Humanity,

Theosophy in America, and the study of Occult Science, Philosophy,

and Aryan Literature.” Edited by William Q. Judge. Price ten

shillings per annum. New York, U. S. A. P. O. Box, 2659, etc. George

Redway, 15 York Street, Covent Garden, London.

A most excellent and theosophical monthly, full of philosophical

literature by several well-known mystics and writers. The best

publication of its kind in the United States, and one that ever

fulfils what it promises, giving more food for thought than many of

the larger periodicals. Its August number is very interesting and

fully up to its usual mark.

Jasper Niemann continues his excellent reflections in “Letters on

the True.” Mr. E. D. Walker, in an article upon “The Poetry of

Reincarnation in Western Literature,” cites the verses of

Wordsworth, Tennyson, Dean Alford, Addison, H. Vaughan, Browning,

etc., in proof of the fact that these poets were tinctured, if not

imbued, with the philosophy of reincarnation. B. N. Acle continues

_Notes on the Astral Light_, from Eliphas Levi. He cites the

startling and lurid enunciation of that epigrammatical occultist,

who says that “He who dies without forgiving his enemy, hurls

himself into Eternity armed with a dagger, and devotes himself to

the horror of eternal murder.” “_The Symbolism of the Equilateral

Triangle_,” by Miss Lydia Bell, shows how much wisdom can be

extracted from a little symbol when you know how to look for it

there.

S. B. makes some very pertinent remarks upon _Theosophical Fiction_,

the growth of which is one sign of the times. “A true picture of

life, either real or potential, which is found in a work of fiction,

makes such reading one of the best sources of learning.” Thanks to

the education which it is receiving from the more solid literature

of theosophy, the public is becoming more critical, and has already

formed a “standard of probability” for marvellous phenomena, which

acts as a healthy check upon outside writers of fiction, who are

therefore no longer able to trust entirely “to their imagination for

their acts, and to their memory for their fancies.” Novel readers

now like their supernatural not to be _unnaturally_ supernatural,

even if they do have to take it in minute doses, disguised in their

favourite draught of love, murder and small talk. _The Higher

Carelessness_ (No. 7 of _Thoughts in Solitude_), by “Pilgrim,” is

full of deep and beautiful reflections. This writer, like “American

Mystic” whose article on the puzzling question, “_Am I my Brothers

Keeper_,” comes next, has advanced some way upon the path of

knowledge, and the thoughts of both of them have a special interest

for contemplative and self-examining readers. “American Mystic,”

by-the-bye, gives a new and striking turn to a phrase too often

misunderstood. “Resist not evil” he quotes and explains that

resistance, fierce and personal, to evil befalling oneself, is what

is meant. _Christianity—Theosophy_, by Mr. Wm. H. Kembal, seeks to

show that the fundamental aim of both, namely the Brotherhood of

Humanity, is the same, and that they can and ought to unite their

forces.

_Julius_, in _Tea Table Talk_, is as crisp, weird, and

slyly-sentimental as ever.

---

Le Lotus: “Revue des Hautes Etudes Théosophiques. Tendant à

favorises le rapprochement entre l’Orient et l’Occident.” Sous

l’inspiration de H. P. Blavatsky (nominally; but edited, in reality,

by our able brother, F. K. Gaboriau, F.T.S.). Georges Carré, 112

Boulevard St. Germain, Paris. Subscription 15 fr. per annum.

An excellent monthly, presenting yet another aspect of theosophy;

inspired by the desire to benefit the struggling masses of humanity,

and to diffuse the true spirit of solidarity among men. The August

number, besides translations of selected articles from the

_Theosophist_, of special interest to its French readers, contains a

capital article on “Freemasons and Theosophists,” the continuation

of a series of studies on “Initiation,” and a discussion of the

much-vexed question whether the “Will to Live” spoken of in the

“Elixir of Life” is selfish or not. In the last few pages, the

serious character of the journal is relieved by those brilliant

sparkles of French wit to which that language lends itself so

admirably.

Brief notes on books, articles in the press, pamphlets, &c., give

ample scope for caustic raillery, as well as appreciative comment,

and the editor ought to be specially congratulated on this

department of his review.

---

L’Aurore: Revue mensuelle sous la direction de Lady Caithness,

Duchesse de Pomar. George Carré, 112 Boulevard St. Germain, Paris.

Subscription, 15fr. per annum.

The Mystic and Catholic Journal of Aristocratic France, somewhat

tinged with humanitarianism, and showing the influence of the higher

phases of modern spiritualism. The subject of reincarnation is its

principal feature, and a mystical romance, _Amour Immortel_, gives

its various phases. _L’Aurore_ is admirably conducted. Its articles

are always in good taste, and perfectly adapted to the special

public it appeals to.

---

The Occult Word: A monthly journal in the interest of Theosophy.

Mrs. J. W. Cables, 40, Ambrose Street, Rochester, N. Y., U.S.A.

Subscription, 1 dollar per annum.

Brought out more in the style of a newspaper, this journal is

another proof of the vitality of the Theosophic movement. It is more

Christian in its tone and phraseology, and shows less traces of the

influence of Eastern thought, than the publications already

mentioned. Some thoughts in it are remarkably good, and its tendency

most excellent. A most worthy little periodical.

---

The Occultist: A monthly journal of Psychological and Mystical

Research. Edited by Mr. J. Thomas, F.T.S. London agent, E. W. Allen,

4 Ave Maria Lane, E.C. Subscription, 1 shilling per annum.

As its price indicates, a tiny and unambitious publication of four

pages, but one that contains, from time to time, thoughtful and

suggestive articles. Its existence testifies to the devotion of its

proprietor and editor to the cause of truth.

---

The Sphinx: “A monthly journal, devoted to the historical and

experimental proof of the supersensuous conception of the world on a

monistic basis.” Edited by Hübbe Schleiden, Dr. J. U. Th. Griebens

Verlag, Leipzig; and George Redway, London. Subscription, 12s. 6d.

per annum.

As its title page implies, a learned and philosophical journal,

doing its work with true German thoroughness and permeated with a

real spirit of earnest investigation. It appeals, mainly, to

thinkers and students—a numerous class in Germany, but somewhat

sparsely represented in England. Dr. Carl Du Prel, the leader of the

new school of transcendental philosophy in that country, is its

leading contributor. But it contains from time to time articles of

great interest to students of occultism.

---

TRANSACTIONS OF THE “LONDON LODGE” OF THE T. S., NOS. 12 AND 13.—Two

able and interesting papers by Mr. A. P. Sinnett; the first on

“Buddha’s Teaching,” the second on “The Relations of the Lower and

Higher Self.” Dealing with Buddhism, Mr. Sinnett exposes several of

the current misconceptions regarding Buddhist doctrines. Notably

among these stand the utterly false ideas, current in the West, that

Buddha recognised no conscious existence for the individual after

death, and that Nervana is synonymous with annihilation. Mr. Sinnett

draws a happy comparison between these misconceptions and the

strange blindness shown by European scholars in accepting the

allegorical legend that Buddha’s death was occasioned by eating

roast _boar_, as a literal fact.

In his second paper, Mr. Sinnett follows up a line of thought

originated by him in an earlier number of the “Transactions.” He

explains his views with clearness, and adds considerably to the

details of the outline sketched in his previous paper. But, as

LUCIFER hopes shortly to deal with this subject at length, it is

unnecessary to enter into a detailed examination of Mr. Sinnett’s

views at present.

---

The Esoteric: “A Magazine of Advance and Practical Esoteric

Thought.” Boston, U.S.A. Subscription 6s. per annum.

Principal feature—the identification of each issue with one of the

signs of the Zodiac, which are held to be “important and real

divisions of time or states of man’s life.” Contents—eighteen short

articles, occupying 62 pages, the substance of which has been mainly

gleaned from various mystic authors, and harmonizes well with some

Theosophical teachings.

=FROM THE NOTE BOOK OF AN UNPOPULAR PHILOSOPHER=

THE ESOTERIC VALUE OF CERTAIN WORDS AND DEEDS IN SOCIAL LIFE.

A definition of _Public Opinion_. The gathering of a few fogies

positively electrified by fanaticism and force of habit, who act on

the many noodles negatively electrified by indifference. The

acceptation of uncharitable views on “suggestion” by “telepathic

impact” (what ever that may mean). The work of unconscious

psychology.

_Sympathetic grief._—The expression thereof in Society, for one’s

sorrow, is like a solemn funeral procession, in which the row of

mourning coaches is long, indeed, but the carriages of which are all

empty.

_Mutual exchange of compliments._—Expressions of delight and other

acting in cultured society are the fig-leaves of the civilised Adams

and Eves. These “aprons” to conceal truth are fabricated incessantly

in social Edens, and their name is—_politeness_.

_Keeping the Sabbath._—Throwing public contumely on, and parading

one’s superiority over Christ, “one greater than the temple” and

Sabbath, who stood for his disciples’ rights to “break” the Sabbath,

for the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for Sabbath (Matt.

xii. and Mark ii., etc.).

_Attending Divine Service._—Breaking the express commandment of

Jesus. Becoming “as the hypocrites are,” who love to pray in

Synagogue and Temples, “that they may be seen of men.” (Matt.vi.)

_Taking the Oath, on the Bible._—A Christian law, devised and

adopted to perpetuate and carry out the unequivocal commandment of

the Founder of Christianity, “Swear not at all, neither by heaven

nor by the earth” (Matt. v.). As the heaven and the earth are

supposed to have been created _only_ by God, a book written by _men_

thus received the prerogative over the former.

_Unpopularity._—We hate but those whom we envy or fear. Hatred is a

concealed and forced homage rendered to the person hated; a tacit

admission of the superiority of the unpopular character.

The true value of _back-biting and slander_. A proof of the fast

coming triumph of the victim chosen. The bite of the fly when the

creature feels its end approaching.

_A Few Illustrations to the Point from Schopenhauer._

Socrates was repeatedly vilified and thrashed by the opponents of

his philosophy, and was as repeatedly urged by his friends to have

his honour avenged in the tribunals of Athens. Kicked by a rude

citizen, in the presence of his followers, one of these expressed

surprise for his not resenting the insult, to which the Sage

replied:

“Shall I then feel offended, and ask the magistrate to avenge me, if

I also happen to be kicked by an ass?”

To another remark whether a certain man had abused and called him

names, he quietly answered:

“No; for none of the epithets he used can possibly apply to me.”

(From Plato’s “Georgics”)

The famous cynic, Cratus, having received from the musician

Nicodromus a blow which caused his face to swell, coolly fixed a

tablet upon his brow, inscribed with the two words, “_Nicodromus

facit_.” The flute player hardly escaped with his life from the

hands of the populace, which viewed Cratus as a household god.

Seneca, in his work “_De Constanta Sapientis_,” treats most

elaborately of insults in words and deeds, or _contumelia_, and then

declares that no Sage ever pays the smallest attention to such

things.—“Well, yes!” the reader will exclaim, “but these men were

all of them _Sages_!”—“And you, are you then only _fools_? Agreed!”

LUCIFER

------------------------------------------------------------------------

VOL. I. LONDON, OCTOBER 15TH, 1887. NO. 2.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE LADY OF LIGHT.

(_Written for_ LUCIFER.)

Star of the Day and the Night!

Star of the Dark that is dying;

Star of the Dawn that is nighing,

Lucifer, Lady of Light![19]

* *

Still with the purest in white,

Still art thou Queen of the Seven;

Thou hast not fallen from Heaven

Lucifer, Lady of Light!

* *

How large in thy lustre, how bright

The beauty of promise thou wearest!

The message of Morning thou bearest,

Lucifer, Lady of Light!

* *

Aid us in putting to flight

The Shadows that darken about us,

Illumine within, as without, us,

Lucifer, Lady of Light!

* *

Shine through the thick of our fight;

Open the eyes of the sleeping;

Dry up the tears of the weeping,

Lucifer, Lady of Light!

* *

Purge with thy pureness our sight,

Thou light of the lost ones who love us,

Thou lamp of the Leader above us,

Lucifer, Lady of Light!

* *

Shine with transfiguring might,

Till earth shall reflect back as human

Thy Likeness, Celestial Woman,

Lucifer, Lady of Light!

* *

With the flame of thy radiance smite

The clouds that are veiling the vision

Of Woman’s millennial mission,

Lucifer, Lady of Light!

* *

Shine in the Depth and the Height,

And show us the treasuries olden

Of wisdom, the hidden, the golden,

Lucifer, Lady of Light!

GERALD MASSEY.

-----

Footnote 19:

The reader well versed in symbology and theogony is, of course,

aware that every god and goddess of the ancient pantheons is

androgynous in his or her genealogy. Thus our Lucifer, the

“Morning Star,” being identical with Venus, is, therefore, the

same as the Chaldean Istar, or the Jewish Astoreth, to whom the

Hebrews offered cakes and buns, addressing her as the Lady of

Light and the Queen of Heaven. She is the “great star,”

_Wormwood_, whom the misanthropical St. John sees falling down to

the earth in _Revelation_ (Chapter viii.), as her great rival is

_Aima_, the fruitful mother, or the third Sephiroth Binah (IHVH

ALHIM, or the female Jah-hovah), the “woman with child,” in

Chapter xii. of the same.

-----

THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES.

It is intensely interesting to follow season after season the rapid

evolution and change of public thought in the direction of the

mystical. The educated mind is most undeniably attempting to free

itself from the heavy fetters of materialism. The ugly caterpillar

is writhing in the agonies of death, under the powerful efforts of

the psychic butterfly to escape from its science-built prison, and

every day brings some new glad tidings of one or more such mental

births to light.

As the New York “Path” truly remarks in its September issue, when

“Theosophical and kindred topics ... are made the texts for novels,”

and, we may add, scientific essays and _brochures_, “the implication

is that interest in them has become diffused through all social

ranks.” That kind of literature is “paradoxically proof that

Occultism has passed beyond the region of careless amusement and

entered that of serious enquiry.” The reader has but to throw a

retrospective glance at the publications of the last few years to

find that such topics as Mysticism, Magic, Sorcery, Spiritualism,

Theosophy, Mesmerism, or, as it is now called, Hypnotism, all the

various branches in short of the _Occult_ side of nature, are

becoming predominant in every kind of literature. They visibly

increase in proportion to the efforts made to discredit the

movements in the cause of truth, and strangle enquiry—whether on the

field of theosophy or spiritualism—by trying to besmear their most

prominent heralds, pioneers and defenders, with tar and feathers.

The key-note for mystic and theosophic literature was Marion

Crawford’s “Mr. Isaacs.” It was followed by his “Zoroaster.” Then

followed “The Romance of Two Worlds,” by Marie Corelli; R. Louis

Stephenson’s “Mr. Hyde and Dr. Jekyll;” “The Fallen Idol,” by

Anstey; “King Solomon’s Mines” and the thrice famous “She,” by Rider

Haggard; “Affinities” and “The Brother of the Shadow,” by Mrs.

Campbell Praed; Edmund Downey’s “House of Tears,” and many others

less noticeable. And now there comes a fresh outburst in Florence

Marryat’s “Daughter of the Tropics,” and F. C. Philips’ “Strange

Adventures of Lucy Smith.” It is unnecessary to mention in detail

the literature produced by avowed theosophists and occultists, some

of whose works are very remarkable, while others are positively

scientific, such as S. L. Macgregor Mathers’ “Kabbalah Unveiled,”

and Dr. F. Hartmann’s “Paracelsus,” “Magic, White and Black,” &c. We

have also to note the fact that theosophy has now crossed the

Channel, and is making its way into French literature. “La France”

publishes a strange romance by Ch. Chincholle, pregnant with

theosophy, occultism and mesmerism, and called “_La Grande

Pretresse_,” while _La Revue politique et litteraire_ (19 Feb. 1887,

_et seq._) contained over the signature of Th. Bentzon, a novel

called _Emancipée_, wherein esoteric doctrines and adepts are

mentioned in conjunction with the names of well-known theosophists.

A sign of the times!

Literature—especially in countries free from government

censorship—is the public heart and pulse. Besides the glaring fact

that were there no demand there would be no supply, current

literature is produced only to please, and is therefore evidently

the mirror which faithfully reflects the state of the public mind.

True, Conservative editors, and their submissive correspondents and

reporters, still go on slashing occasionally in print the fair faces

of mystic spiritualism and theosophy, and some of them are still

found, from time to time, indulging in a _brutal_ personal attack.

But they do no harm on the whole, except perhaps to their own

editorial reputations, as such editors can never be suspected of an

exuberance of culture and good taste after certain ungentlemanly

personal attacks. They do good on the contrary. For, while the

theosophists and spiritualists so attacked, may view the

Billingsgate poured upon them in a true Socratean spirit, and

console themselves with the knowledge that none of the epithets used

can possibly apply to them, on the other hand, _too much_ abuse and

vilification generally ends by awakening the public sympathy for the

victim, in the right-minded and the impartial, at any rate.

In England people seem to like fair play on the whole. It is not

_bashi-boozook_-like actions, the doughty deeds of those who

delight in mutilating the slain and the wounded, that can find

sympathy for any great length of time with the public. If—as

maintained by our lay enemies and repeated by some _naïf_ and too

sanguine missionary organs—Spiritualism and Theosophy are “dead as

a door-nail” (_sic_, _vide_ American Christian periodicals),—aye,

“dead and buried,” why, in such case, good Christian fathers, not

leave the dead at rest till “Judgment Day”? And if they are not,

then editors—the profane as well as the clerical—why should you

still fear? Do not show yourselves such cowards if you have the

truth on your side. _Magna est veritas et prevalebit_, and “murder

will out,” as it always has, sooner or later. Open your columns to

_free_ and fearless discussion, and do as the theosophical

periodicals have ever done, and as LUCIFER is now preparing to do.

The “bright Son of the morning” fears no light. He courts it, and

is prepared to publish any inimical contributions (couched, of

course, in decent language), however much at variance with his

theosophical views. He is determined to give a fair hearing in any

and every case, to both contending parties and allow things and

thoughts to be judged on their respective merits. For why, or what

should one dread when fact and truth are one’s only aim? _Du choc

des opinions jaillit la verité_ was said by a French philosopher.

If Theosophy and Spiritualism are no better than “gigantic frauds

and will-o’-the-wisps of the age” why such _expensive_ crusades

against both? And if they are not, why should Agnostics and

searchers after truth in general, help bigoted and narrow-minded

materialists, sectarians and dogmatists to hide our light under a

bushel by mere brutal force and usurped authority? It is easy to

surprise the good faith of the fair-minded. Still easier to

discredit that, which by its intrinsic strangeness, is already

unpopular and could hardly be credited in its palmiest days. “We

welcome no supposition so eagerly as one which accords with and

intensifies our own prejudices” says, in “Don Jesualdo,” a popular

author. Therefore, _facts_ become often cunningly concocted

“frauds;” and self-evident, glaring lies are accepted as gospel

truths at the first breeze of Don Basilio’s _Calumnia_, by those

to whose hard-crusted pre-conceptions such slander is like

heavenly dew.

But, beloved enemies, “the light of Lucifer” may, after all, dispel

some of the surrounding darkness. The mighty roaring voice of

denunciation, so welcome to those whose little spites and hates and

mental stagnation in the grasp of the social respectability it

panders to, may yet be silenced by the voice of truth—“the still

small voice”—whose destiny it ever was to first preach in the

desert. That cold and artificial light which still seems to shine so

dazzlingly over the alleged iniquities of professional mediums and

the supposed sins of commission and omission of _non-professional_

experimentalists, of free and independent theosophists, may yet be

extinguished at the height of all its glory. For it is not quite the

perpetual lamp of the alchemist philosopher. Still less is it that

“light which never shone on sea or land,” that ray of divine

intuition, the spark which glimmers latent in the spiritual,

never-erring perceptions of man and woman, and which is now

awakening—for its time is at hand. A few years more, and the

Aladdin’s lamp, which called forth the ministering genius thereof,

who, making three salutes to the public, proceeded forthwith to

devour mediums and theosophists, like a juggler who swallows swords

at a village fair, will get out of order. Its light, over which the

anti-theosophists are crowing victory to this day, shall get dim.

And then, perhaps, it will be discovered that what was claimed as a

direct ray from the source of eternal truth was no better than a

penny rush-light, in whose deceitful smoke and soot people got

hypnotized, and saw everything upside down. It will be found that

the hideous monsters of fraud and imposture had no existence outside

the murky and dizzied brains of the Aladdins on their journey of

discovery. And that, finally, the good people who listened to them,

had been all the time seeing sights and hearing things under

unconscious and mutual _suggestion_.

This is a scientific explanation, and requires no black magicians or

_dugpas_ at work; for “suggestion” as now practised by the sorcerers

of science is—_dugpaship_ itself, _pur sang_. No Eastern “adept of

the _left_ hand” can do more mischief by his infernal art than a

grave hypnotiser of the Faculty of Medicine, a disciple of Charcot,

or of any other scientific _light_ of the first magnitude. In Paris,

as in St. Petersburg, crimes have been committed under “suggestion.”

Divorces have occurred, and husbands have nearly killed their wives

and their supposed co-respondents, owing to tricks played on

innocent and respectable women, who have thus had their fair name

and all their future life blasted for ever. A son, under such

influence, broke open the desk of an avaricious father, who caught

him in the act, and nearly shot him in a fit of rage. One of the

keys of Occultism is in the hands of science—cold, heartless,

materialistic, and crassly ignorant of the other truly psychic side

of the phenomenon: hence, powerless to draw a line of demarcation

between the physiological and the purely spiritual effects of the

disease inoculated, and unable to prevent future results and

consequences of which it has no knowledge, and over which it has,

therefore, no control.

We find in the “Lotus” of September, 1887, the following:—

A French paper, the _Paris_, for August 12th, contains a long and

excellent article by G. Montorgueil, entitled, _The Accursed

Sciences_, from which we extract the following passage, since we

are, unfortunately, unable to quote the whole:—

“Some months ago, already, in I forget what case, the question of

‘suggestion’ was raised and taken account of by the judges. We

shall certainly see people in the dock accused of occult

malpractices. But how will the prosecution go to work? What

arguments will it bring to bear? The crime by ‘suggestion’ is the

ideal of a crime without proof. In such a case the gravest charges

will never be more than presumptions, and fugitive presumptions.

On what fragile scaffolding of suspicions will the charge rest? No

examination, but a moral one, will be possible. We shall have to

resign ourselves to hearing the Solicitor-general say to the

accused: ‘Accused, it appears from a perquisition made into your

brain, etc.’

Ah, the poor jurymen! it is they who are to be pitied. Taking

their task to heart, they already have the greatest difficulty in

separating the true from the false, even in rough and ready cases,

the facts of which are obvious, all the details of which are

tangible and the responsibilities clear. And we are going to ask

them on their soul and conscience to decide questions of black

magic! Verily their reason will not hold out through the

fortnight; it will give way before that and sink into thaumaturgy.

We move fast. The strange trials for sorcery will blossom anew;

somnabules who were merely grotesque will appear in a tragic

light; the coffee grounds, which so far only risked the police

court, will hear their sentence at the assizes. The evil eye will

figure among criminal offences. These last years of the XIXth

century will have seen us step from progress to progress, till we

reach at last this judicial enormity: a second Laubardemont

prosecuting another Urbain Grandier.”

Serious, scientific, and political papers are full of earnest

discussions on the subject. A St. Petersburg “Daily” has a long

_feuilleton_ on the “Bearing of _Hypnotic Suggestions_ upon Criminal

Law.” “Cases of Hypnotism with criminal motives have of late begun

to increase in an ever progressing ratio,” it tells its readers. And

it is not the only newspaper, nor is Russia the only country where

the same tale is told. Careful investigations and researches have

been made by distinguished lawyers and medical authorities. Data

have been assiduously collected and have revealed that the curious

phenomenon,—which sceptics have hitherto derided, and young people

have included among their evening _petits jeux innocents_,—is a new

and terrible danger to state and society.

Two facts have now become patent to law and science:—

(I.) _That, in the perceptions of the hypnotised subject, the

visionary representations called forth by “suggestion,” become

real existing actualities, the subject being, for the moment,

the automatic executor of the will of the hypnotiser; and_—

(II.) _That the great majority of persons experimented upon, is

subject to hypnotic suggestion._

Thus Liébeault found only _sixty_ subjects intractable out of the

_seven hundred_ he experimented upon; and Bernheim, out of 1,014

subjects, failed with only _twenty-six_. The field for the

natural-born _jadoo-wala_ (sorcery-mongers), is vast indeed! Evil

has acquired a play-ground on which it may now exercise its sway

upon many a generation of unconscious victims. For crimes undreamt

of in the waking state, and felonies of the blackest dye, are now

invited and encouraged by the new “accursed science.” The real

perpetrators of these deeds of darkness may now remain for ever

hidden from the vengeance of human justice. The hand which executes

the criminal suggestion is only that of an irresponsible automaton,

whose memory preserves no trace of it, and who, moreover, is a

witness who can easily be disposed of by compulsory suicide—again

under “suggestion.” What better means than these could be offered to

the fiends of lust and revenge, to those dark Powers—called human

passions—ever on the look out to break the universal commandment:

“Thou shalt not steal, nor murder, nor lust after thy neighbour’s

wife?” Liébeault _suggested_ to a young girl that she should poison

herself with prussic acid, and she swallowed the supposed drug

without one moment’s hesitation; Dr. Liégois _suggested_ to a young

woman that she owed him 5,000 francs, and the subject forthwith

signed a cheque for the amount Bernheim _suggested_ to another

hysterical girl a long and complicated vision with regard to a

criminal case. Two days after, although the hypnotiser had not

exercised any new pressure upon her in the interim, she repeated

distinctly the whole suggested story to a lawyer sent to her for the

purpose. Had her evidence been seriously accepted, it would have

brought the accused to the guillotine.

These cases present two dark and terrible aspects. From the moral

stand point, such processes and _suggestions_ leave an indelible

stain upon the purity of the subject’s nature. Even the innocent

mind of a ten year old child can thus be innoculated with vice, the

poison-germ of which will develop in his subsequent life.

On the judicial aspect it is needless to enter in great detail.

Suffice to say that it is this characteristic feature of the

hypnotic state—the absolute surrender of will and self-consciousness

to the hypnotiser—which possesses such importance, from its bearing

upon crime, in the eyes of legal authorities. For if the hypnotiser

has the subject entirely at his beck and call, so that he can cause

him to commit any crime, acting, so to say, invisibly within him,

then what are not the terrible “judicial mistakes” to be expected?

What wonder then, that the jurisprudence of one country after the

other has taken alarm, and is devising, one after the other,

measures for repressing the exercise of hypnotism! In Denmark it has

just been forbidden. Scientists have experimented upon sensitives

with so much success that a hypnotised victim has been jeered and

hooted through the streets on his way to commit a crime, which he

would have completed unconsciously, had not the victim been warned

beforehand by the hypnotiser.

In Brussels a recent and sad case is well-known to all. A young girl

of good family was seduced while in a hypnotised state by a man who

had first subjected her to his influence at a social gathering. She

only realised her condition a few months later, when her relatives,

who divined the criminal, forced her seducer to make the only

possible reparation—that of marrying his victim.

The French Academy has just been debating the question:—how far a

hypnotised subject, from a mere victim, can become a regular tool of

crime. Of course, no jurist or legislator can remain indifferent to

this question; and it was averred that the crimes committed under

_suggestion_ are so unprecedented that some of them can hardly be

brought within the scope of the law. Hence the prudent legal

prohibition, just adopted in France, which enacts that no person,

save those legally qualified to exercise the medical profession,

shall hypnotise any other person. Even the physician who enjoys such

legal right is permitted to hypnotise a person only in the presence

of another qualified medical man, and with the written permission of

the subject. Public _séances_ of hypnotism are forbidden, and they

are strictly confined to medical _cliniques_ and laboratories. Those

who break this law are liable to a heavy fine and imprisonment.

But the keynote has been struck, and many are the ways in which this

_black art_ may be used—laws notwithstanding. That it will be so

used, the vile passions inherent in human nature are sufficient

guarantee.

Many and strange will be the romances yet enacted; for truth is

often stranger than fiction, and what is thought fiction is still

more often truth.

No wonder then that occult literature is growing with every day.

Occultism and sorcery are in the air, with no true philosophical

knowledge to guide the experimenters and thus check evil results.

“Works of _fiction_,” the various novels and romances are called.

“Fiction” in the arrangement of their characters and the adventures

of their heroes and heroines—admitted. Not so, as to the _facts_

presented. These are _no fictions_, but true _presentiments_ of what

lies in the bosom of the future, and much of which is already

born—nay corroborated by _scientific_ experiments. Sign of the

times! Close of a psychic cycle! The time for phenomena with, or

through mediums, whether professional or otherwise, is gone by. It

was the early season of the blossoming, of the era mentioned even in

the Bible;[20] the tree of Occultism is now preparing for

“fruiting,” and the Spirit of the Occult is awakening in the blood

of the new generations. If the old men only “dream dreams,” the

young ones see already visions,[21] and—record them in novels and

works of fiction. Woe to the ignorant and the unprepared, and those

who listen to the syrens of materialistic science! For indeed,

indeed, many will be the unconscious crimes committed, and many will

be the victims who will innocently suffer death by hanging and

decapitation at the hands of the righteous judges and the _too

innocent_ jurymen, both alike ignorant of the fiendish power of

“SUGGESTION.”

-----

Footnote 20:

“It shall come to pass that I will pour out my Spirit upon all

flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men

shall dream dreams; your young men shall see visions” (Joel ii.

28).

Footnote 21:

It is curious to note that Mr. Louis Stevenson, one of the most

powerful of our imaginative writers, stated recently to a reporter

that he is in the habit of constructing the plots of his tales in

_dreams_, and among others that of Dr. Jekyll. “I dreamed,” he

continued, “the story of ‘Olalla’ ... and I have at the present

moment two unwritten stories which I have likewise dreamed....

Even when fast asleep I know that it is I who am inventing.”...

But who knows whether the idea of “invention” is not also “a

dream”!

-----

[Illustration: decorative separator]

SELF-KNOWLEDGE.

The first necessity for obtaining self-knowledge is to become

profoundly conscious of ignorance; to feel with every fibre of the

heart that one is _ceaselessly_ self-deceived.

The second requisite is the still deeper conviction that such

knowledge—such intuitive and certain knowledge—can be obtained by

effort.

The third and most important is an indomitable determination to

obtain and face that knowledge.

Self-knowledge of this kind is unattainable by what men usually call

“self-analysis.” It is not reached by reasoning or any brain

process; for it is the awakening to consciousness of the Divine

nature of man.

To obtain this knowledge is a greater achievement than to command

the elements or to know the future.

COMMENTS ON “LIGHT ON THE PATH.”

BY THE AUTHOR; (_continued_).

“Before the ear can hear, it must have lost its sensitiveness.”

The first four rules of Light on the Path are, undoubtedly, curious

though the statement may seem, the most important in the whole book,

save one only. Why they are so important is that they contain the

vital law, the very creative essence of the astral man. And it is

only in the astral (or self-illuminated) consciousness that the

rules which follow them have any living meaning. Once attain to the

use of the astral senses and it becomes a matter of course that one

commences to use them; and the later rules are but guidance in their

use. When I speak like this I mean, naturally, that the first four

rules are the ones which are of importance and interest to those who

read them in print upon a page. When they are engraved on the man’s

heart and on his life, unmistakably then the other rules become not

merely interesting, or extraordinary, metaphysical statements, but

actual facts in life which have to be grasped and experienced.

The four rules stand written in the great chamber of every actual

lodge of a living Brotherhood. Whether the man is about to sell his

soul to the devil, like Faust; whether he is to be worsted in the

battle, like Hamlet; or whether he is to pass on within the

precincts; in any case these words are for him. The man can choose

between virtue and vice, but not until he is a man; a babe or a wild

animal cannot so choose. Thus with the disciple, he must first

become a disciple before he can even see the paths to choose

between. This effort of creating himself as a disciple, the

re-birth, he must do for himself without any teacher. Until the four

rules are learned no teacher can be of any use to him; and that is

why “the Masters” are referred to in the way they are. No real

masters, whether adepts in power, in love, or in blackness, can

affect a man till these four rules are passed.

Tears, as I have said, may be called the moisture of life. The soul

must have laid aside the emotions of humanity, must have secured a

balance which cannot be shaken by misfortune, before its eyes can

open upon the super-human world.

The voice of the Masters is always in the world; but only those hear

it whose ears are no longer receptive of the sounds which affect the

personal life. Laughter no longer lightens the heart, anger may no

longer enrage it, tender words bring it no balm. For that within, to

which the ears are as an outer gateway, is an unshaken place of

peace in itself which no person can disturb.

As the eyes are the windows of the soul, so are the ears its

gateways or doors. Through them comes knowledge of the confusion of

the world. The great ones who have conquered life, who have become

more than disciples, stand at peace and undisturbed amid the

vibration and kaleidoscopic movement of humanity. They hold within

themselves a certain knowledge, as well as a perfect peace; and thus

they are not roused or excited by the partial and erroneous

fragments of information which are brought to their ears by the

changing voices of those around them. When I speak of knowledge, I

mean intuitive knowledge. This certain information can never be

obtained by hard work, or by experiment; for these methods are only

applicable to matter, and matter is in itself a perfectly uncertain

substance, continually affected by change. The most absolute and

universal laws of natural and physical life, as understood by the

scientist, will pass away when the life of this universe has passed

away, and only its soul is left in the silence. What then will be

the value of the knowledge of its laws acquired by industry and

observation? I pray that no reader or critic will imagine that by

what I have said I intend to depreciate or disparage acquired

knowledge, or the work of scientists. On the contrary, I hold that

scientific men are the pioneers of modern thought. The days of

literature and of art, when poets and sculptors saw the divine

light, and put it into their own great language—these days lie

buried in the long past with the ante-Phidian sculptors and the

pre-Homeric poets. The mysteries no longer rule the world of thought

and beauty; human life is the governing power, not that which lies

beyond it. But the scientific workers are progressing, not so much

by their own will as by sheer force of circumstances, towards the

far line which divides things interpretable from things

uninterpretable. Every fresh discovery drives them a step onward.

Therefore do I very highly esteem the knowledge obtained by work and

experiment.

But intuitive knowledge is an entirely different thing. It is not

acquired in any way, but is, so to speak, a faculty of the soul; not

the animal soul, that which becomes a ghost after death, when lust

or liking or the memory of ill-deeds holds it to the neighbourhood

of human beings, but the divine soul which animates all the external

forms of the individualised being.

This is, of course, a faculty which indwells in that soul, which is

inherent. The would-be disciple has to arouse himself to the

consciousness of it by a fierce and resolute and indomitable effort

of will. I use the word indomitable for a special reason. Only he

who is untameable, who cannot be dominated, who knows he has to play

the lord over men, over facts, over all things save his own

divinity, can arouse this faculty. “With faith all things are

possible.” The sceptical laugh at faith and pride themselves on its

absence from their own minds. The truth is that faith is a great

engine, an enormous power, which in fact can accomplish all things.

For it is the covenant or engagement between man’s divine part and

his lesser self.

The use of this engine is quite necessary in order to obtain

intuitive knowledge; for unless a man believes such knowledge exists

within himself how can he claim and use it?

Without it he is more helpless than any drift-wood or wreckage on

the great tides of the ocean. They are cast hither and thither

indeed; so may a man be by the chances of fortune. But such

adventures are purely external and of very small account. A slave

may be dragged through the streets in chains, and yet retain the

quiet soul of a philosopher, as was well seen in the person of

Epictetus. A man may have every worldly prize in his possession, and

stand absolute master of his personal fate, to all appearance, and

yet he knows no peace, no certainty, because he is shaken within

himself by every tide of thought that he touches on. And these

changing tides do not merely sweep the man bodily hither and thither

like driftwood on the water; that would be nothing. They enter into

the gateways of his soul, and wash over that soul and make it blind

and blank and void of all permanent intelligence, so that passing

impressions affect it.

To make my meaning plainer I will use an illustration. Take an

author at his writing, a painter at his canvas, a composer listening

to the melodies that dawn upon his glad imagination; let any one of

these workers pass his daily hours by a wide window looking on a

busy street. The power of the animating life blinds sight and

hearing alike, and the great traffic of the city goes by like

nothing but a passing pageant. But a man whose mind is empty, whose

day is objectless, sitting at that same window, notes the passers-by

and remembers the faces that chance to please or interest him. So it

is with the mind in its relation to eternal truth. If it no longer

transmits its fluctuations, its partial knowledge, its unreliable

information to the soul, then in the inner place of peace already

found when the first rule has been learned—in that inner place there

leaps into flame the light of actual knowledge. Then the ears begin

to hear. Very dimly, very faintly at first. And, indeed, so faint

and tender are these first indications of the commencement of true

actual life, that they are sometimes pushed aside as mere fancies,

mere imaginings.

But before these are capable of becoming more than mere imaginings,

the abyss of nothingness has to be faced in another form. The utter

silence which can only come by closing the ears to all transitory

sounds comes as a more appalling horror than even the formless

emptiness of space. Our only mental conception of blank space is, I

think, when reduced to its barest element of thought, that of black

darkness. This is a great physical terror to most persons, and when

regarded as an eternal and unchangeable fact, must mean to the mind

the idea of annihilation rather than anything else. But it is the

obliteration of one sense only; and the sound of a voice may come

and bring comfort even in the profoundest darkness. The disciple,

having found his way into this blackness, which is the fearful

abyss, must then so shut the gates of his soul that no comforter can

enter there nor any enemy. And it is in making this second effort

that the fact of pain and pleasure being but one sensation becomes

recognisable by those who have before been unable to perceive it.

For when the solitude of silence is reached the soul hungers so

fiercely and passionately for some sensation on which to rest, that

a painful one would be as keenly welcomed as a pleasant one. When

this consciousness is reached the courageous man by seizing and

retaining it, may destroy the “sensitiveness” at once. When the ear

no longer discriminates between that which is pleasant or that which

is painful, it will no longer be affected by the voices of others.

And then it is safe and possible to open the doors of the soul.

“Sight” is the first effort, and the easiest, because it is

accomplished partly by an intellectual effort. The intellect can

conquer the heart, as is well known in ordinary life. Therefore,

this preliminary step still lies within the dominion of matter. But

the second step allows of no such assistance, nor of any material

aid whatever. Of course, I mean by material aid the action of the

brain, or emotions, or human soul. In compelling the ears to listen

only to the eternal silence, the being we call man becomes something

which is no longer man. A very superficial survey of the thousand

and one influences which are brought to bear on us by others will

show that this must be so. A disciple will fulfil all the duties of

his manhood; but he will fulfil them according to his own sense of

right, and not according to that of any person or body of persons.

This is a very evident result of following the creed of knowledge

instead of any of the blind creeds.

To obtain the pure silence necessary for the disciple, the heart and

emotions, the brain and its intellectualisms, have to be put aside.

Both are but mechanisms, which will perish with the span of man’s

life. It is the essence beyond, that which is the motive power, and

makes man live, that is now compelled to rouse itself and act. Now

is the greatest hour of danger. In the first trial men go mad with

fear; of this first trial Bulwer Lytton wrote. No novelist has

followed to the second trial, though some of the poets have. Its

subtlety and great danger lies in the fact that in the measure of a

man’s strength is the measure of his chance of passing beyond it or

coping with it at all. If he has power enough to awaken that

unaccustomed part of himself, the supreme essence, then has he power

to lift the gates of gold, then is he the true alchemist, in

possession of the elixir of life.

It is at this point of experience that the occultist becomes

separated from all other men and enters on to a life which is his

own; on to the path of individual accomplishment instead of mere

obedience to the genii which rule our earth. This raising of himself

into an individual power does in reality identify him with the

nobler forces of life and make him one with them. For they stand

beyond the powers of this earth and the laws of this universe. Here

lies man’s only hope of success in the great effort; to leap right

away from his present standpoint to his next and at once become an

intrinsic part of the divine power as he has been an intrinsic part

of the intellectual power, of the great nature to which he belongs.

He stands always in advance of himself, if such a contradiction can

be understood. It is the men who adhere to this position, who

believe in their innate power of progress, and that of the whole

race, who are the elders brothers, the pioneers. Each man has to

accomplish the great leap for himself and without aid; yet it is

something of a staff to lean on to know that others have gone on

that road. It is possible that they have been lost in the abyss; no

matter, they have had the courage to enter it. Why I say that it is

possible they have been lost in the abyss is because of this fact,

that one who has passed through is unrecognizable until the other

and altogether new condition is attained by both. It is unnecessary

to enter upon the subject of what that condition is at present. I

only say this, that in the early state in which man is entering upon

the silence he loses knowledge of his friends, of his lovers, of all

who have been near and dear to him; and also loses sight of his

teachers and of those who have preceded him on his way. I explain

this because scarce one passes through without bitter complaint.

Could but the mind grasp beforehand that the silence must be

complete, surely this complaint need not arise as a hindrance on the

path. Your teacher, or your predecessor may hold your hand in his,

and give you the utmost sympathy the human heart is capable of. But

when the silence and the darkness comes, you lose all knowledge of

him; you are alone and he cannot help you, not because his power is

gone, but because you have invoked your great enemy.

By your great enemy, I mean yourself. If you have the power to face

your own soul in the darkness and silence, you will have conquered

the physical or animal self which dwells in sensation only.

This statement, I feel, will appear involved; but in reality it is

quite simple. Man, when he has reached his fruition, and

civilization is at its height, stands between two fires. Could he

but claim his great inheritance, the encumbrance of the mere animal

life would fall away from him without difficulty. But he does not do

this, and so the races of men flower and then droop and die and

decay off the face of the earth, however splendid the bloom may have

been. And it is left to the individual to make this great effort; to

refuse to be terrified by his greater nature, to refuse to be drawn

back by his lesser or more material self. Every individual who

accomplishes this is a redeemer of the race. He may not blazon forth

his deeds, he may dwell in secret and silence; but it is a fact that

he forms a link between man and his divine part; between the known

and the unknown; between the stir of the market-place and the

stillness of the snow-capped Himalayas. He has not to go about among

men in order to form this link; in the astral he _is_ that link, and

this fact makes him a being of another order from the rest of

mankind. Even so early on the road towards knowledge, when he has

but taken the second step, he finds his footing more certain, and

becomes conscious that he is a recognised part of a whole.

This is one of the contradictions in life which occur so

constantly that they afford fuel to the fiction writer. The

occultist finds them become much more marked as he endeavours to

live the life he has chosen. As he retreats within himself and

becomes self-dependent, he finds himself more definitely becoming

part of a great tide of definite thought and feeling. When he has

learned the first lesson, conquered the hunger of the heart, and

refused to live on the love of others, he finds himself more

capable of inspiring love. As he flings life away it comes to him

in a new form and with a new meaning. The world has always been a

place with many contradictions in it, to the man; when he becomes

a disciple he finds life is describable as a series of paradoxes.

This is a fact in nature, and the reason for it is intelligible

enough. Man’s soul “dwells like a star apart,” even that of the

vilest among us; while his consciousness is under the law of

vibratory and sensuous life. This alone is enough to cause those

complications of character which are the material for the

novelist; every man is a mystery, to friend and enemy alike, and

to himself. His motives are often undiscoverable, and he cannot

probe to them or know why he does this or that. The disciple’s

effort is that of awaking consciousness in this starry part of

himself, where his power and divinity lie sleeping. As this

consciousness becomes awakened, the contradictions in the man

himself become more marked than ever; and so do the paradoxes

which he lives through. For, of course man creates his own life;

and “adventures are to the adventurous” is one of those wise

proverbs which are drawn from actual fact, and cover the whole

area of human experience.

Pressure on the divine part of man re-acts upon the animal part. As

the silent soul awakes it makes the ordinary life of the man more

purposeful, more vital, more real, and responsible. To keep to the

two instances already mentioned, the occultist who has withdrawn

into his own citadel has found his strength; immediately he becomes

aware of the demands of duty upon him. He does not obtain his

strength by his own right, but because he is a part of the whole;

and as soon as he is safe from the vibration of life and can stand

unshaken, the outer world cries out to him to come and labour in it.

So with the heart. When it no longer wishes to take, it is called

upon to give abundantly.

“Light on the Path” has been called a book of paradoxes, and very

justly; what else could it be, when it deals with the actual

personal experience of the disciple?

To have acquired the astral senses of sight and hearing; or in other

words to have attained perception and opened the doors of the soul,

are gigantic tasks and may take the sacrifice of many successive

incarnations. And yet, when the will has reached its strength, the

whole miracle may be worked in a second of time. Then is the

disciple the servant of Time no longer.

These two first steps are negative; that is to say they imply

retreat from a present condition of things rather than advance

towards another. The two next are active, implying the advance into

another state of being.[22]

Δ

(_To be continued._)

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Footnote 22:

The correspondence with reference to these “Comments” will be

found in the Correspondence columns.

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WILL AND DESIRE.

WILL is the exclusive possession of man on this our plane of

consciousness. It divides him from the brute in whom instinctive

desire only is active.

DESIRE, in its widest application, is the one creative force in the

Universe. In this sense it is indistinguishable from Will; but we

men never know desire under this form while we remain only men.

Therefore Will and Desire are here considered as opposed.

Thus Will is the offspring of the Divine, the God in man; Desire the

motive power of the animal life.

Most men live in and by desire, mistaking it for will. But he who

would achieve must separate will from desire, and make his will the

ruler; for desire is unstable and ever changing, while will is

steady and constant.

Both will and desire are absolute _creators_, forming the man

himself and his surroundings. But will creates intelligently—desire

blindly and unconsciously. The man, therefore, makes himself in the

image of his desires, unless he creates himself in the likeness of

the Divine, through his will, the child of the light.

His task is twofold: to awaken the will, to strengthen it by use and

conquest, to make it absolute ruler within his body; and, parallel

with this, to purify desire.

Knowledge and will are the tools for the accomplishment of this

purification.

A LAW OF LIFE: KARMA.

(_Continued._)

In illustration of the Mahatmic condition, it may be well to quote

some extracts from “Five Years of Theosophy,” on pp. 215, _et seq._

“The principal object of the Yogi is to realise the oneness of

existence, and the practice of morality is the most powerful means

to that end. The principal obstacle to this realization is the

inborn habit of man of always placing himself at the centre of the

Universe. Whatever a man might act, think, or feel, the

irrepressible personality is sure to be the central figure. This, as

will appear on reflection, is that which prevents every individual

from filling his proper sphere in existence, where he only is in

place, and no other individual is. The realization of this harmony

is the practical objective aspect of the ‘Grand Problem.’.... It

availeth nothing to intellectually grasp the notion of your being

everything ... if it is not realized in daily life. To confuse ‘meum

and tuum’ in the vulgar sense is but to destroy the harmony of

existence by a false assertion of ‘I,’ and is as foolish as the

attempt to nourish the legs at the expense of the arms. You cannot

be one with Nature, unless all your acts, thoughts, and feelings,

synchronize with the onward march of Nature. What is meant by a

Brahmajnani being beyond the reach of Karma, can be realised only by

a man who has found out his exact position in harmony with the one

Life in Nature; that man can see how a Brahmajnani can act only in

unison with Nature, and never in discord with it.”

“To use the phraseology of old occult writers, the Brahmajnani is a

real co-worker with Nature.... Many have fallen into the error of

supposing that a human being can escape the operation of the law of

Karma by adopting a condition of masterly inactivity, entirely

losing sight of the fact that even a rigid abstinence from physical

acts does not produce inactivity on the higher astral and spiritual

planes.... Such a supposition is nothing short of a delusion....

There is a tendency in every department of Nature for an act to

repeat itself. The Karma acquired in the last preceding birth is

always trying to forge fresh links in the chain, and thereby lead to

continued material existence. This tendency can only be counteracted

by unselfishly performing all the duties pertaining to the sphere in

which a person is born. Such a course can alone produce purification

of the mind, without which the capacity of perceiving spiritual

truths can never be acquired.”

Such a moral standard as this may be considered as the main working

factor in the existence of a Mahatma. He exists by, through, and in

harmony, and, as Mahatma, is harmony itself. It is impossible to

carry these speculations further, for beyond the fact that these

considerations are in analogy with the great law of nature, ordinary

human intelligence can gain nothing from them. The Mahatma is a

Mahatma, and only those who have reached that supreme condition can

describe it, and even then it is doubtful whether words would

express it. The word Mahatma has been used with some hesitation, as

it might possibly require an article of great length to give the

least idea of what it means. But some idea of the true position of

these exalted beings (known in India and Tibet by this name) may be

gathered from the foregoing pages if any conception of the

connection of humanity with the law of Karma, and also of liberated

humanity with the law of harmony, can be obtained.

In the preceding pages especial reference has been made to the fact

that the Mahatma, as such, has no Karma, but it is by no means

intended to convey the idea that all who enter Occultism, and even

those who have progressed a very long way on the Path of Life, are

Mahatmas. Nay, more! There are many of them who are very holy, and

even exalted, beings, but who are still subject to the law of Karma,

as applied to ordinary humanity. But they have acquired self-mastery

to an extraordinary degree, and their whole attention is “fixed on

the eternal.” Thus, so far as they are concerned, they generate no

new Karma in the restricted sense, but only progress towards

Universal Harmony.

To put it shortly, they exhaust their old Karma of past lives, and

devote themselves to the production of Harmony.

It is important to bear this in mind when the attention is turned to

the Karmic condition of ordinary humanity. For we are at once

brought face to face with the old and much disputed question between

free-will and predestination.

At this point, therefore, it will be necessary to enter, at some

length, on this question, because it has been supposed that the idea

of Karma is identical, or nearly so, with that of predestination.

Consequently, it will be necessary to attempt a definition of what

Free-will and Will are. Will, to the ordinary man, is known

according to his experience as the power to do or not to do an

action. So far, he is perfectly right, but, as usual, man limits the

action of his will to the physical plane, and takes no account of

even the mental plane. Even if he does not commit an action, he

cannot help thinking about it, because he has desired to do it—even

if he has repressed that desire. Nothing is more common than to hear

anyone say, “I can’t help my likes and dislikes,” or, in other

words, their attractions and repulsions, desires and the reverse.

Consequently, until a man can control his desires, those desires

control his will, and, consequently, predestination appears to rule

the day. Thus we find that it is desire which impels man onward on

his course, and governs that course to a very large extent, and this

is the principle which is at its highest development in mankind as a

rule. Now if it be granted that the human personality—a transient

thing—has been constituted by man’s vanity as the centre of the

Universe, it is plain that the combination of this principle of

desire with the pronounced personality, will only serve to intensify

this personality and bind man fast to it. Man thus constituted is a

prisoner, and, more often than not, is so attached to his prison

that he prefers to flutter his wings against the bars of his cage,

instead of endeavouring to escape. But are there any means of

escape:—it may be asked? Desire binds man fast to his personality,

and intensifies one personality against another. Hence it is

productive of strife and discord, and militates strongly against the

law of universal harmony, or Karma, in this aspect. Thus desire and

Karma would seem to be in complete opposition, and desire cannot be

said to be a consequence of Karma. But really this is a confusion of

terms, for all this only exists in the world of effects and not in

that of causes. Desire is an effect of the accentuated personality,

and in its turn produces that personality. This constitutes the

prison, and the only means of escape from this prison of discord is

the endeavour to produce harmony in its place. Thus, therefore, we

have a definition of will as being not only that which represses a

desire, but also an emanation of the one divine principle, and

proceeding from the divine in man. In one sense, this will, this

harmonizer of the discord, is identical with Karma. As a

consequence, we can see that Karma produces punishment. That

punishment arises from the fact that the assertion of both desire

and will in any man makes him the battle-field of two opposing

forces—the desire to do anything, and thus gratify the desire, and

the will to repress it. Thus man must be a co-worker with nature and

the law of harmony. He has to repress the Typhonic principle of

desire and dissipate its energy. If he does not, it will bind him

more firmly to his “personal centre,” accentuate his punishment, and

hang like a millstone round his neck in the shape of Karmic effects,

which generate fresh tendencies and desires.

The real function of will is to promote harmony between man and the

great law by repressing desire. Liberation from the _effects_ of

Karma will come to the man who grasps his whole individuality firmly

(not merely his personality), and, by the force of his awakened

_spiritual_ will, recognises this individuality as not himself, but

as a thing to use in passing beyond the life of the individuality.

Thus the direction of will should be towards realizing one’s

aspirations, and so give man “a glimpse into the eternal;” the lower

consciousness will mirror these aspirations, even unconsciously to

itself, and then itself aspires and is elevated if all is in accord.

But this is not free-will in the ordinary sense of the term; and it

does not seem possible that such should exist in view of the ideas

of Karmic effects and of reincarnation. It is in these two that lie

all the objections to free-will, because too short a view has been

taken of human life. In the dim vistas of time, and the countless

incarnations which have taken place in them, it will at once be seen

that the individual being has generated innumerable causes, the

effects of which are still to be experienced. Thus it is free-will

that man has, but not in the ordinary sense; it is free-will limited

by countless other free-wills around him—limited too and

circumscribed by his own acts. Man makes himself a prisoner, and

believes himself free. He is right in his belief in a measure, for

in virtue of the will he is free—to aspire and soar into the sublime

heights of his own higher nature. He is a prisoner and predestined

when he confines himself to his personality. Karma is at once his

gaoler and his liberator, and the decision lies in the intensity of

his aspirations, and is therefore in his own hands. Thus from the

personal view predestination is true, but not from that of the

spirit, which is free. From the latter view, and to a reasoning

mind, the Calvinistic doctrine sounds little short of blasphemy. It

is most certainly a contradiction in terms to speak of God as an

all-wise, all-powerful and entirely just God, and then to speak of

predestination as one of his laws, a law which, in face of the above

qualities, and with that of mercy in addition, dooms countless

millions to an eternity of pain and suffering as punishment, and

that too before they are even born. When the apparent injustice of

the lives of men is viewed and argued, it is because men forget what

they have done in previous lives, in which they have violated the

law in a very material direction, which leads them into these

positions and from which they have to escape.

Thus the aspirations of man constitute that which sets man free, and

which therefore represent his free-will. It is then well to

endeavour to trace these aspirations in man with regard to Karma.

The second section of the third part of “Light on the Path,” speaks

on this point with no uncertain voice. The Occultist must pluck and

eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and step on either the good

or the evil path. And to do this knowingly produces great Karmic

results. The mass of men walk waveringly, uncertain as to their

goal, their standard of life is indefinite; the Occultist cannot be

half-hearted, nor can he return when he has passed the threshold.

“The individuality has approached the state of responsibility by

reason of growth; it cannot recede from it.” The one means of escape

from Karma is for the Occultist to live in the Eternal. But below

this—the threshold—many men aspire. On this point, we may quote,

“Five Years of Theosophy,” p. 226.

“The unintelligent aspiration towards goodness propagates itself and

leads to good lives in the future; the intelligent aspiration

propagates itself in the same way, plus the propagation of

intelligence; and this distinction shows the gulf of difference

which may exist between the growth of a human soul, which merely

drifts along the stream of time, and that of one which is

consciously steered by an intelligent purpose throughout. The human

Ego, which acquires the habit of seeking for knowledge, becomes

invested, life after life, with the qualifications which ensure the

success of such a search, until the final success, achieved at some

critical period of its existence, carries it right up into the

company of those perfected Egos, which are the fully developed

flowers only expected from a few of the thousand seeds.”

“Now it is clear that a slight impulse in a given direction, even on

the physical plane, does not produce the same effect as a stronger

one; so exactly in this matter of engendering habits which are

required to persist in their operation through a succession of lives

it is quite obvious that the strong impulse of a very ardent

aspiration towards knowledge will be more likely than a weaker one

to triumph over the so-called accidents of nature.”

These considerations bring us to the question of those habits of

life which are more immediately associated with the pursuit of

occult science. It will be quite plain that the generation within

his own nature of affinities in the direction of spiritual progress

is a matter which has very little to do with the outer circumstances

of a man’s daily life. It cannot be dissociated from what may be

called the outer circumstances of his moral life, for an occult

student, whose moral nature is consciously ignoble, and who combines

the pursuit of knowledge with the practice of wrong, becomes by that

condition of things a student of sorcery rather than of true

Occultism.

Thus so far traced Karma in one of its aspects is, “the ethical law

of causation.” This law descends in its action below the moral

plane, and is observed as the law of compensation on the physical

plane. Thus the physical, intellectual and emotional planes, are all

affected by Karma. The key to the situation is the mind; and, as we

have seen, the liberation of the mind must be the most difficult

task. If the powers of the mind are concentrated on the attainment

of the highest ideal, Karma has no basis in which to inhere and

consequently the tendency to commit actions from lower motives is

annihilated. Even repentance, from this point of view, is a mistake,

as it necessarily draws the mind back to the actions and motives

repented of. Consequently by the exertion of free will, in the

aspiration to realize the ideal, man becomes his own Saviour; and

the true way to do this is to look neither for reward nor

punishment; to detach the mind from all considerations below that of

the spiritual life, and to live only in the Eternal.

ARCHIBALD KEIGHTLEY, M.B.

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“The great watch-word of the True is this:—in last analysis all

things are divine.”—(_Jasper Niemand in the “Path”_).

A GHOST’S REVENGE.

(_Conclusion._)

Gaston paused at the entrance to the chamber, and even detected

himself in taking an involuntary step backwards, for the singular

illusion was heightened by the circumstance that many of the figures

which were suspended perpendicularly from the walls, and had fallen

a little forward, looked as though they were trying to let

themselves down. But the monk, nothing concerned, went stolidly on

down the long narrow chamber, which had other chambers, or

corridors, leading out of it in several directions. To speak more

correctly, there was a series of vaults, branching several ways,

some of which were shut off from the rest by open-work screens or

gates of wool.

The walls on either side were piled high with coffins, the greater

number of which had one of their sides of glass, exposing to view

the hideous shrouded tenants. By whatever art it had been sought to

preserve these bodies from decay, Nature had declared in every

instance that it should not be, and no ghastlier assemblage of

mummified and mouldering corpses could have mocked the grief of the

relatives who should have given their dead to the grave. On the

blackened and distorted faces of some, it was not difficult to read

a look of supplication which the parted and fleshless lips seemed

striving to translate in this way: “Take us away from this dreadful

place and hide us in the decent earth.”

They lay there, all of them, in their coffins, in wrappings of

linen, silk, and velvet; men, and women, and children, and little

infants; priests, nobles, merchants—a world of dead ones; hundreds

and thousands of them.

Upon the faces of some, decay seemed working with a kind of

fantastic cruelty: punching a hole in the cheek or forehead; pushing

one eye from its socket, and leaving the other; stripping the skin

from one side of the face, and leaving it like a bit of wrinkled

parchment on the other.

Some were made to laugh from ear to ear; some had the corners of the

mouth drawn down and the features twisted, as though pain haunted

them in death; others looked defiant, derisive, amazed, indignant.

The majesty of death had fled from all of them, mockery and shame

had come to take its place. The worms were being avenged on these

who should have gone to feed them. Silent and rotting, they had no

part in either world; and shrinking continually within their

coffins, they cried mutely on decay to hasten his work, and give

them the boon of nothingness.

Above the line of coffins, on both sides of the chamber, hundreds of

clothed and hooded creatures—skeletons in all except the face, which

for the most part retained its covering of dried and tarnished

skin—were suspended from the walls. Each had a ticket pinned to its

dress, bearing the name and the date of death.

It was these figures on the walls which gave the chamber its most

dreadful aspect. Some were suspended by the neck, like suicides left

there for an example. Others in various gruesome fashions parodied

the attitudes of life. There was a grotesque group composed of three

figures which had tumbled together in such a manner that the two on

either side appeared to whisper into the ears of the third. Some had

the neck awry, the head on one side, in a listening or questioning

attitude; of others the head had sunk forward on the narrow breast.

The jaw of some had dropped, and protruded a row of teeth, with a

savage or jeering air.

Every variety of grimace and grin was shown on those appalling

faces; and as Gaston passed down the chamber fingers poked at him

from gaping sleeves; he was laughed at, mocked at, scowled at; and

when he looked behind him, all these skeletons were laughing,

mocking, and scowling at one another. Many of the faces were little

else but grinning mouths, and to those whose mouths stood wide open

his imagination gave voices, so that the vaults seemed filled with

the cries and laughter of the dead.

The monk went steadily on in front of him, waving his candle to and

fro; and as the smell was nauseate and oppressed the nostrils, he

spat occasionally upon the floor.

His bit of candle burnt itself out before he had taken Gaston

completely round, and he returned to fetch another, leaving Gaston

in a corner of the vault where the light was a mere glimmer. Right

opposite to him in this place was a massive coffin with rich

chasings, whose grisly inmate was wrapped from head to foot in a

mantle of black velvet. Every particle of flesh had melted from the

face, the hair had fallen from the head, the eyeless sockets stared

from the depths of the velvet hood. The skeleton was richly dight

and finely housed; it was Death himself lying in state.

The monk came up with a fresh candle, and Gaston stooped down and

peered into the coffin. Above the figure’s head was affixed a

miniature on ivory, which represented a young man in the first prime

of life, of a refined and beautiful countenance. In the folds of the

mantle a card had tumbled, and stooping lower, Gaston read on it the

name of Udalrico Verga. There was a small round hole in the skull,

just over the left temple.

“_Ucciso_, signor!” (Murdered!) said the monk, behind him.

The Italian word sounded softly in the lips of the monk; but there

was the tell-tale hole in the forehead.

This then was the hero and the victim of that old tragedy; this was

the end of him! But for his punctured skull, he might have changed

places with any of the least repulsive of his skeleton companions.

But his little bullet-hole marked him out from all of them.

Curiously, the hood had slipped off from the left side of the skull,

and as this was the side next to the spectator, the bullet-hole

compelled attention to itself at once.

The story of the murder which the baron had told to Gaston, and with

which his thoughts had many times been occupied in the Villa

Torcello, came before him again; and looking at the stark remains of

the victim of that forgotten crime, he felt a sudden and

irresistible longing to know its secret. If he could win it from the

coffin there! But the grim rest within would be disturbed no more.

And the young man pictured there beside the skeleton? Murder had no

meaning for him; he had not come to know it when he was pictured

thus. The face impressed Gaston strangely. He looked at it long,

till he began to fancy that behind its delicate beauty he saw the

tokens of a latent sensuality. But it was a face of singular

sweetness, and if any evil were there, it existed only in the

colourless form of a suggestion.

And the priest, who had died a suspect? Was _he_ here, and did death

whisper anything against him? No, the monk said; the priest was a

native of Syracuse, and after his death his body had been carried

there.

Gaston had seen enough; the chamber and its horrid tenants had given

him a sense of physical sickness; and, above all, some curious

malign influence seemed to issue from the coffin of Udalrico Verga,

which was working its way into his brain.

The words of the Baron came into his mind: “They say the spirit

haunts the place, seeking some one to avenge the murder.”

Placing a five-franc note in the hand of the monk, he left the

chamber and the monastery at once; and entering the carriage, he was

driven home.

By morning he had shaken off the morbid effects of his visit to the

Capucins’; but his imagination had become the seat of a vague and

indefinable oppression. This, at length, when analysed, resolved

itself into a certain feeling of injury on account of Udalrico

Verga. The wonderful amiableness, joined to an almost womanly

beauty, of the face he had seen imaged in the coffin, had touched

his sympathies; and now the memory of it began to lay hold on his

affections. For what cause, and by whose hand, had the young

Udalrico died so brutally?

The tale of the murder stuck in his mind; it possessed him; it would

not be dislodged. And the tale, though begun a whole generation

since, was still unfinished. It told that Verga had been murdered;

but who had murdered him?

This question uttered itself again and again; it grew importunate.

One evening in particular it became a kind of clamour in his ears;

when, walking by moonlight in the garden of the villa, he was

suddenly conscious that a presence other than his own was with him.

Turning about, he beheld vividly, at a distance from him of twelve

or fifteen paces, the figure of a young and elegant man. The view of

this figure which his eyes took in, and the impression which it made

upon his mind, were so distinct, that, but for a single

circumstance, he would have suspected nothing abnormal in the

appearance. The features were those of Udalrico Verga.

His reason still urging him to reject the testimony of his sight,

Gaston advanced nearer to the figure. It remained motionless,

outlined distinctly in the moonlight, on the path bordered by a row

of pepper trees where the body of Verga had been found. Again Gaston

went forward; he could now by stretching out his hand almost have

touched the figure; his eyes looked straight into the eyes of the

man whom he knew to have lain for thirty years in his coffin. While

gazing fixedly and with fascination upon this creature from the

grave, which, though he knew it to be bodiless, seemed full real to

him, Gaston felt his senses being subdued; and, before he could

exert will enough to repel an influence which flowed in upon him as

it were waves of blinding light, he was rapt out of himself, and

held for the space of a minute or so in what is best described as a

magnetic sleep or trance. He remained upright and rigid; his brain a

whirl of excitement, with an accompanying painful consciousness; the

body of the emotion being a confused and very indefinite feeling of

fear—whether for himself or for some other person, he did not know.

This feeling becoming slightly more definite, he knew that the fear

he felt was not for himself, but for another; yet who that other

was, he could not tell. It was the same when a voice said plainly in

his ear, that what had been begun must be finished; the voice was

piercing in its clearness, and he knew that it was the voice of one

dear to him; but whose, he could not divine.

This curious sleep lasted, as I have said, for about a minute; and

when Gaston awoke he was standing precisely as he had been when

seized in the trance. He looked for the apparition; it was not

there. He moved to the path, placed himself on the very spot where,

but a minute before, the form in the likeness of Udalrico Verga had

stood. There was nothing. He looked round him; from this path he

could see over the whole garden; it slept motionless in the

moonlight, and his was the only figure in it. Gaston returned to the

house in a condition of extreme nervous excitement.

In this condition, and almost before he had reached the room in

which he usually sat, the story of the murder was flashed in upon

his mind; he read it as plainly as if it were traced in English

characters on the wall before him. Fancying himself still under some

abnormous influence, which when it passed away would carry the story

with it, he at once sat down and committed an abstract of it to

paper.

All that night, the story swam in his brain, and rising early next

morning, he resolved—or rather was impelled—to commence writing it

immediately. He did so, and in the full light of day the wraith of

Udalrico Verga stood beside him, and he plainly saw it, during the

whole time his pen was at work. But the vision had no longer any

weakening or retarding effect upon his brain; rather its effects

were quickening and coercive; and these effects increased, till it

became a certainty to him that from the visible presence of the

spirit of Verga he drew the main strength of his inspiration. The

story grew under his pen to an elaborate romance, upon which,

sustained throughout by an elation of mind that allowed little

repose to the body, he was at work during many weeks.

In all this time, he never passed beyond the grounds of the villa,

and when, by-and-bye, his face began to show marks of the mental and

bodily stress to which his task subjected him, the peasant people of

the town, who saw him walking in the garden sometimes of an evening,

used to say:

“There is the English signor who went to live in the Villa Torcello

eleven weeks ago; he used to go out every day, but it is nine weeks

since he passed the gate. He cannot get out any more. He has seen

the ghost of the Signor Verga, and it keeps him there. He grows like

a ghost himself.”

But the story was finished at length, and Gaston sent the manuscript

to his publishers in London. The ghost of Verga, which had remained

visibly before him during the whole period of composition, vanished

on the day the work was ended, and was never seen by him again. He

went out every day as he had done formerly, and exercise brought

back the colour to his face, and restored the tone of his mind. At

this time he thought no more about the story than that it was a

strange one, which had come to him in a strange manner, and that it

ought to bring him the fame in fiction which he coveted.

A letter from Sir Selwyn, in which he said that he was on the point

of starting for home, determined Gaston to return thither at once,

that he might have everything in readiness for his father’s coming.

On the evening before his departure, while sorting a bundle of

papers, he came upon a portion of manuscript of his story which he

remembered having set aside as needing to be re-cast. He took it up

and began to read it.

The tragedy which formed the climax of the romance, had this

feature, that the man who was murdered had (unconsciously, and by a

singular operation of fate) planned his own death in planning that

of the friend whom he falsely believed to have betrayed him in love.

The chapter upon which Gaston had lighted, was devoted to a minute

analysis of the character of the man whom blind force of

circumstance had driven to an act of murder which his affection for

its victim had rendered abhorrent in the highest degree.

So remote from the ordinary had been the conditions under which the

story was composed, and so small (it had seemed to Gaston) was the

share of its inspiration which his own brain could claim, that now,

within a few weeks of its composition, he read it almost as the work

of another.

This exotic notion, that his own was not his own, deepened as he

read further into the chapter, for something was there which

disquieted him. Some shadowy unembodied likeness, and yet no

likeness, but a faint whispering of resemblance; some voiceless hint

that was but the failure of an echo. He turned back, and read again.

It was not there, he had deceived himself. He shut the page, his

mind at ease.

In a week from this time, he was home again, awaiting the coming of

his father. Sir Selwyn landed in England a month later, and Gaston,

who received him at the vessel’s side, was shocked at his

appearance. Sir Selwyn’s handsome face seemed not so much to have

aged as to have withered; the body, too, was shrunken, and

desiccated, as though the vital fluids were exhausted. The nervous

irritation of manner which had characterised an earlier stage of the

disease, had given way to a species of torpor, in which even speech

seemed an effort. It was the mental and bodily paralysis of

melancholia in its acutest form.

The journey home was a sad one. What little Sir Selwyn said, told

the story of the renewal of his sufferings, which dated from the day

that he had written to Gaston of his intention to return to England.

“But I am persuaded,” he said in conclusion, “that it draws near the

end.”

Strangely enough, however, as Gaston thought, and quite contrary to

his expectations, the sight of his beautiful home revived Sir

Selwyn’s spirits. They dined together, and the baronet showed a

brighter face over his wine. He sent for his bailiff, and spent an

hour or more discussing the affairs of his estate. Afterwards, he

walked with Gaston through the gardens and park, and began, for the

first time, to talk of his travels. Then he questioned Gaston about

his Italian tour, and said:

“What did you do with yourself all those weeks in Palermo? You

mentioned no writing; but I am sure your pen was not idle so long.”

“No,” said Gaston. “I wrote a famous story there. I did not mean to

tell you of it until it was published. It was to be a surprise, for

this is the book that is to make me famous.”

“Come, that sounds well!” said Sir Selwyn. “But you are beginning to

be famous already. What could have been better than the reviews of

your last book which you sent me?”

“Oh, but this one will do twice as much for me!” laughed Gaston.

“I am glad you feel that. No one could be more delighted than I am

to hear it. Have you dedicated it to me, Gaston?”

“Otherwise, my dear father, it would be no book of mine.”

“Thank you, Gaston. You know how dear your fame is to me.”

In another month, during which Sir Selwyn’s health, with some

fluctuations, had shown, on the whole, a disposition towards

improvement, Gaston’s romance was published.

On the day on which some copies were forwarded to him from the

publishers, he had gone on business to the neighbouring town, and

did not return until late in the evening.

Sir Selwyn’s valet, an old and devoted servant who had been with his

master for many years, met him at the door, pale, and terrified.

“Sir Selwyn has been taken strangely ill, sir,” he said. “We can

none of us tell what is the matter with him. He rang his bell an

hour ago, and when I went upstairs he was looking like a ghost,

sitting up quite stiff in his arm-chair, with one of your new books

in his hand. It seemed like a dead man speaking when he asked how

soon you could return, and said that no doctor was to be sent for.

He would not let me stay with him either, and, indeed, though I’ve

known Sir Selwyn these forty years, I believe I should have been

almost afraid to do so sir, he looked so terrible. I remained close

outside; but there’s not been a sound in his room ever since, sir.”

Fears which, even in thought, he dared not shape, came like a wave

upon Gaston, as he hurried to his father’s room.

Death, or his image, sat there, in Sir Selwyn’s chair; or rather,

the baronet’s aspect, as Gaston beheld him, grey and rigid, was like

the phantom Life-in-Death; as though a corpse had been galvanised

for a moment into a ghastly appearance of life. The jaw had begun to

fall and the eyes were large and glassy; but the regular rising and

falling of the breast showed that mechanical life was not yet

extinct. Open on the ground beside Sir Selwyn lay Gaston’s new

romance.

The spirit had all but taken its departure; but when Gaston bent

over his father and pleaded for recognition, there was a faint

twitching of the brow, and a half-convulsive movement of the whole

body, as though the spirit were trying to force an entrance again;

and Sir Selwyn, by an effort, fixed his eyes on his son’s face. His

voice struggled in his throat, and he said, with a pause between

every word:

“When I knelt beside him—for I still loved him—he said: ‘You have

killed me, but I will never leave you, and one day I will come back

from the grave and kill _you_’ He has kept his word. This is not

your book, Gaston, _it-is-Udalrico’s_. This is my——”

The voice stopped. Sir Selwyn was dead. The Ghost of Udalrico Verga

was avenged.

TIGHE HOPKINS.

THE ORIGIN OF EVIL.

The problem of the origin of evil can be philosophically approached

only if the archaic Indian formula is taken as the basis of the

argument. Ancient wisdom alone solves the presence of the universal

fiend in a satisfactory way. It attributes the birth of Kosmos and

the evolution of life to the breaking asunder of primordial,

manifested UNITY, into plurality, or the great illusion of form.

HOMOGENEITY having transformed itself into Heterogeneity, contrasts

have naturally been created: hence sprang what we call EVIL, which

thenceforward reigned supreme in this “Vale of Tears.”

Materialistic Western philosophy (so mis-named) has not failed to

profit by this grand metaphysical tenet. Even physical Science, with

Chemistry at its head, has turned its attention of late to the first

proposition, and directs its efforts toward proving on irrefutable

data the homogeneity of primordial matter. But now steps in

materialistic Pessimism, a teaching which is neither philosophy nor

science, but only a deluge of meaningless words. Pessimism, in its

latest development, having ceased to be pantheistic, and having

wedded itself to materialism, prepares to make capital out of the

old Indian formula. But the atheistic pessimist soars no higher than

the terrestrial homogeneous plasm of the Darwinists. For him the

_ultima thule_ is earth and matter, and he sees, beyond the _prima

materia_, only an ugly void, an empty nothingness. Some of the

pessimists attempt to poetize their idea after the manner of the

whitened sepulchres, or the Mexican corpses, whose ghastly cheeks

and lips are thickly covered with rouge. The decay of matter pierces

through the mask of seeming life, all efforts to the contrary

notwithstanding.

Materialism patronises Indian metaphora and imagery now. In a new

work upon the subject by Dr. Mainländer, “Pessimism and Progress,”

one learns that Indian Pantheism and German Pessimism are

_identical_; and that it is the breaking up of homogeneous matter

into heterogeneous material, the transition from uniformity to

multiformity, which resulted in so unhappy a universe. Saith

Pessimism:—

“This (transition) is precisely the original mistake, the

_primordial sin_, which the whole creation has now to expiate by

heavy suffering; it is just that _sin_, which, having launched

into existence all that lives, plunged it thereby into the abysmal

depths of evil and misery, to escape from which there is but one

means possible, _i.e._, by putting _an end to being itself_.”

This interpretation of the Eastern formula, attributing to it the

first idea of escaping the misery of life by “putting an end to

being”—whether that being is viewed as applicable to the whole

Kosmos, or only to individual life—is a gross misconception. The

Eastern pantheist, whose philosophy teaches him to discriminate

between Being or ESSE and conditioned existence, would hardly

indulge in so absurd an idea as the postulation of such an

alternative. He knows he can put an end to _form_ alone, not to

_being_—and that only on this plane of terrestrial illusion. True,

he knows that by killing out in himself _Tanha_ (the unsatisfied

desire for existence, or the “_will_ to live”)—he will thus

gradually escape the curse of re-birth and _conditioned_ existence.

But he knows also that he cannot kill or “put an end,” even to his

own little life except as a personality, which after all is but a

change of dress. And believing but in One Reality, which is eternal

_Be-ness_, the “_causeless_ CAUSE” from which he has exiled himself

unto a world of forms, he regards the temporary and progressing

manifestations of it in the state of _Maya_ (change or illusion), as

the greatest evil, truly; but at the same time as a process in

nature, as unavoidable as are the pangs of birth. It is the only

means by which he can pass from limited and conditioned lives of

sorrow into eternal life, or into that absolute “Be-ness,” which is

so graphically expressed in the Sanskrit word _sat_.

The “Pessimism” of the Hindu or Buddhist Pantheist is metaphysical,

abstruse, and philosophical. The idea that matter and its Protean

manifestations are the source and origin of universal evil and

sorrow is a very old one, though Gautama Buddha was the first to

give to it its definite expression. But the great Indian Reformer

assuredly never meant to make of it a handle for the modern

pessimist to get hold of, or a peg for the materialist to hang his

distorted and pernicious tenets upon! The Sage and Philosopher, who

sacrificed himself for Humanity by _living for it, in order to save

it_, by teaching men to see in the sensuous existence of matter

misery alone, had never in his deep philosophical mind any idea of

offering a premium for suicide; his efforts were to release mankind

from too strong an attachment to life, which is the chief cause of

Selfishness—hence the creator of mutual pain and suffering. In his

personal case, Buddha left us an example of fortitude to follow: in

living, not in running away from life. His doctrine shows evil

immanent, _not in matter_ which is eternal, but in the illusions

created by it: through the changes and transformations of matter

generating life—because these changes are conditioned and such life

is ephemeral. At the same time those evils are shown to be not only

unavoidable, but necessary. For if we would discern good from evil,

light from darkness, and appreciate the former, we can do so only

through the contrasts between the two. While Buddha’s philosophy

points, in its dead-letter meaning, only to the dark side of things

on this illusive plane; its esotericism, the hidden soul of it,

draws the veil aside and reveals to the Arhat all the glories of

LIFE ETERNAL in _all the Homogeneousness of Consciousness and

Being_. Another absurdity, no doubt, in the eyes of materialistic

science and even modern Idealism, yet a _fact_ to the Sage and

esoteric Pantheist.

Nevertheless, the root idea that evil is born and generated by the

ever increasing complications of the homogeneous material, which

enters into form and differentiates more and more as that form

becomes physically more perfect, has an esoteric side to it which

seems to have never occurred to the modern pessimist. Its

dead-letter aspect, however, became the subject of speculation with

every ancient thinking nation. Even in India the primitive thought,

underlying the formula already cited, has been disfigured by

Sectarianism, and has led to the ritualistic, purely dogmatic

observances of the _Hatha Yogis_, in contradistinction to the

philosophical Vedantic _Raja Yoga_. Pagan and Christian exoteric

speculation, and even mediæval monastic asceticism, have extracted

all they could from the originally noble idea, and made it

subservient to their narrow-minded sectarian views. Their false

conceptions of matter have led the Christians from the earliest day

to identify woman with Evil and matter—notwithstanding the worship

paid by the Roman Catholic Church to the Virgin.

But the latest application of the misunderstood Indian formula by

the Pessimists in Germany is quite original, and rather unexpected,

as we shall see. To draw any analogy between a highly metaphysical

teaching, and Darwin’s theory of physical evolution would, in

itself, seem rather a hopeless task. The more so as the theory of

natural selection does not preach any conceivable extermination of

_being_, but, on the contrary, a continuous and ever increasing

development of _life_. Nevertheless, German ingenuity has contrived,

by means of scientific paradoxes and much sophistry, to give it a

semblance of philosophical truth. The old Indian tenet itself has

not escaped litigation at the hands of modern pessimism. The happy

discoverer of the theory, that the origin of evil dates from the

protoplasmic _Amœba_, which divided itself for procreation, and thus

lost its immaculate homogeneity, has laid claim to the Aryan archaic

formula in his new volume. While extolling its philosophy and the

depth of ancient conceptions, he declares that it ought to be viewed

“as the most profound truth _precogitated_ and _robbed_ by the

ancient sages from modern thought”!!

It thus follows that the deeply religious Pantheism of the Hindu and

Buddhist philosopher, and the occasional vagaries of the pessimistic

materialist, are placed on the same level and identified by “modern

thought.” The impassable chasm between the two is ignored. It

matters little, it seems, that the Pantheist, recognising no reality

in the manifested Kosmos, and regarding it as a simple illusion of

his senses, has to view his own existence also as only a bundle of

illusions. When, therefore, he speaks of the means of escaping from

the sufferings of objective life, his view of those sufferings, and

his motive for putting an end to existence are entirely different

from those of the pessimistic materialist. For him, pain as well as

sorrow are illusions, due to attachment to this life, and ignorance.

Therefore he strives after eternal, changeless life, and absolute

consciousness in the state of Nirvana; whereas the European

pessimist, taking the “evils” of life as _realities_, aspires when

he has the time to aspire after anything except those said mundane

_realities_, to annihilation of “being,” as he expresses it. For the

philosopher there is but one real life, _Nirvanic bliss_, which is a

state differing in kind, not in degree only, from that of any of the

planes of consciousness in the manifested universe. The Pessimist

calls “Nirvana” superstition, and explains it as “cessation of

life,” life for him beginning and ending on earth. The former

ignores in his spiritual aspirations even the integral homogeneous

unit, of which the German Pessimist now makes such capital. He knows

of, and believes in only the direct cause of that unit, eternal and

_ever living, because the ONE uncreated_, or rather not evoluted.

Hence all his efforts are directed toward the speediest reunion

possible with, and return to his _pre_-primordial condition, after

his pilgrimage through this illusive series of visionary lives, with

their unreal phantasmagoria of sensuous perceptions.

Such pantheism can be qualified as “pessimistic” only by a believer

in a personal Providence; by one who contrasts its negation of the

reality of anything “created”—_i.e._ conditioned and limited—with

his own blind and unphilosophical faith. The Oriental mind does not

busy itself with extracting evil from every radical law and

manifestation of life, and multiplying every phenomenal quantity by

the units of very often imaginary evils: the Eastern Pantheist

simply submits to the inevitable, and tries to blot out from his

path in life as many “descents into rebirth” as he can, by avoiding

the creation of new _Karmic_ causes. The Buddhist philosopher knows

that the duration of the series of lives of every human being—unless

he reaches Nirvana “artificially” (“takes the kingdom of God by

violence,” in Kabalistic parlance), is given, allegorically, in the

_forty-nine days_ passed by Gautama the Buddha under the Bo-tree.

And the Hindu sage is aware, in his turn, that he has to light the

_first_, and extinguish the _forty-ninth fire_[23] before he reaches

his final deliverance. Knowing this, both sage and philosopher wait

patiently for the natural hour of deliverance; whereas their unlucky

copyist, the European Pessimist, is ever ready to commit, as to

preach, suicide. Ignorant of the numberless heads of the hydra of

existences he is incapable of feeling the same philosophical scorn

for life as he does for death, and of, thereby, following the wise

example given him by his Oriental brother.

-----

Footnote 23:

This is an esoteric tenet, and the general reader will not make

much out of it. But the Theosophist who has read “Esoteric

Buddhism” may compute the 7 by 7 of the _forty-nine_ “days,” and

the _forty-nine_ “fires,” and understand that the allegory refers

esoterically to the seven human consecutive root-races with their

seven subdivisions. Every monad is born in the first and obtains

deliverance in the last seventh race. Only a “Buddha” is shown

reaching it during the course of one life.

-----

Thus, philosophical pantheism is very different from modern

pessimism. The first is based upon the correct understanding of the

mysteries of being; the latter is in reality only one more system of

evil added by unhealthy fancy to the already large sum of real

social evils. In sober truth it is no philosophy, but simply a

systematic slander of life and being; the bilious utterances of a

dyspeptic or an incurable hypochondriac. No parallel can ever be

attempted between the two systems of thought.

The seeds of evil and sorrow were indeed the earliest result and

consequence of the heterogeneity of the manifested universe. Still

they are but an illusion produced by the law of contrasts, which, as

described, is a fundamental law in nature. Neither good nor evil

would exist were it not for the light they mutually throw on each

other. _Being_, under whatever form, having been observed from the

World’s creation to offer these contrasts, and evil predominating in

the universe owing to _Ego_-ship or selfishness, the rich Oriental

metaphor has pointed to existence as expiating the mistake of

nature; and the human soul (psüche), was henceforth regarded as the

scapegoat and victim of _unconscious_ OVER-SOUL. But it is not to

Pessimism, but to Wisdom that it gave birth. Ignorance alone is the

willing martyr, but knowledge is the master of natural Pessimism.

Gradually, and by the process of heredity or _atavism_, the latter

became innate in man. It is always present in us, howsoever latent

and silent its voice in the beginning. Amid the early joys of

existence, when we are still full of the vital energies of youth, we

are yet apt, each of us, at the first pang of sorrow, after a

failure, or at the sudden appearance of a black cloud, to accuse

_life_ of it; to feel _life_ a burden, and often to curse our being.

This shows pessimism in our blood, but at the same time the presence

of the fruits of ignorance. As mankind multiplies, and with it

suffering—which is the natural result of an increasing number of

units that generate it—sorrow and pain are intensified. We live in

an atmosphere of gloom and despair, but this is because our eyes are

downcast and rivetted to the earth, with all its physical and

grossly material manifestations. If, instead of that, man proceeding

on his life-journey looked—not heavenward, which is but a figure of

speech—but _within himself_ and centred his point of observation on

the _inner_ man, he would soon escape from the coils of the great

serpent of illusion. From the cradle to the grave, his life would

then become supportable and worth living, even in its worst phases.

Pessimism—that chronic suspicion of lurking evil everywhere—is thus

of a two-fold nature, and brings fruits of two kinds. It is a

natural characteristic in physical man, and becomes a curse only to

the ignorant. It is a boon to the spiritual; inasmuch as it makes

the latter turn into the right path, and brings him to the discovery

of another as fundamental a truth; namely, that all in this world is

only _preparatory_ because transitory. It is like a chink in the

dark prison walls of earth-life, through which breaks in a ray of

light from the eternal home, which, illuminating the _inner_ senses,

whispers to the prisoner in his shell of clay of the origin and the

dual mystery of our being. At the same time, it is a tacit proof of

the presence in man of that _which knows, without being told_,

viz:—that there is another and a better life, once that the curse of

earth-lives is lived through.

This explanation of the problem and origin of evil being, as already

said, of an entirely metaphysical character, has nothing to do with

physical laws. Belonging as it does altogether to the spiritual part

of man, to dabble with it superficially is, therefore, far more

dangerous than to remain ignorant of it. For, as it lies at the very

root of Gautama Buddha’s ethics, and since it has now fallen into

the hands of the modern Philistines of materialism, to confuse the

two systems of “pessimistic” thought can lead but to mental suicide,

if it does not lead to worse.

Eastern wisdom teaches that spirit has to pass through the ordeal of

incarnation and life, and be baptised with matter before it can

reach experience and knowledge. After which only it receives the

baptism of soul, or self-consciousness, and may return to its

original condition of a god, _plus_ experience, ending with

omniscience. In other words, it can return to the original state of

the homogeneity of primordial essence only through the addition of

the fruitage of Karma, which alone is able to create an absolute

_conscious_ deity, removed but one degree from the absolute ALL.

Even according to the letter of the Bible, evil must have existed

before Adam and Eve, who, therefore, are innocent of the slander of

the original sin. For, had there been no evil or sin before them,

there could exist neither tempting Serpent nor a Tree of Knowledge

of _good and evil_ in Eden. The characteristics of that apple-tree

are shown in the verse when the couple had tasted of its fruit: “The

eyes of them both were opened, and _they knew_” many things besides

knowing they were naked. Too much knowledge about things of matter

is thus rightly shown an evil.

But so it is, and it is our duty to examine and combat the new

pernicious theory. Hitherto, pessimism was kept in the regions of

philosophy and metaphysics, and showed no pretensions to intrude

into the domain of purely physical science, such as Darwinism. The

theory of evolution has become almost universal now, and there is no

school (save the Sunday and missionary schools) where it is not

taught, with more or less modifications from the original programme.

On the other hand, there is no other teaching more abused and taken

advantage of than evolution, especially by the application of its

fundamental laws to the solution of the most compound and abstract

problems of man’s many sided existence. There, where psychology and

even philosophy “fear to tread,” materialistic biology applies its

sledge-hammer of superficial analogies, and prejudged conclusions.

Worse than all, claiming man to be only a higher animal, it

maintains this right as undeniably pertaining to the domain of the

science of evolution. Paradoxes in those “domains” do not rain now,

they pour. As “man is the measure of all things,” therefore is man

measured and analyzed by the animal. One German materialist claims

spiritual and psychic evolution as the lawful property of physiology

and biology; the mysteries of embryology and zoology alone, it is

said, being capable of solving those of consciousness in man and the

origin of his soul.[24] Another finds justification for suicide in

the example of animals, who, when tired of living, put an end to

existence by starvation.[25]

-----

Footnote 24:

Haeckel.

Footnote 25:

Leo Bach.

-----

Hitherto pessimism, notwithstanding the abundance and brilliancy of

its paradoxes, had a weak point—namely, the absence of any real and

evident basis for it to rest upon. Its followers had no living,

guiding thought to serve them as a beacon and help them to steer

clear of the sandbanks of life—real and imaginary—so profusely sown

by themselves in the shape of denunciations against life and being.

All they could do was to rely upon their representatives, who

occupied their time very ingeniously if not profitably, in tacking

the many and various evils of life to the metaphysical propositions

of great German thinkers, like Schopenhauer and Hartmann, as small

boys tack on coloured tails to the kites of their elders and rejoice

at seeing them launched in the air. But now the programme will be

changed. The Pessimists have found something more solid and

authoritative, if less philosophical, to tack their jeremiads and

dirges to, than the metaphysical _kites_ of Schopenhauer. The day

when they agreed with the views of this philosopher, which pointed

at the Universal WILL as the perpetrator of all the World-evil, is

gone to return no more. Nor will they be any better satisfied with

the hazy “Unconscious” of von Hartmann. They have been seeking

diligently for a more congenial and less metaphysical soil to build

their pessimistic _philosophy_ upon, and they have been rewarded

with success, now that the cause of Universal Suffering has been

discovered by them in the fundamental laws of physical development.

Evil will no longer be allied with the misty and uncertain Phantom

called “WILL,” but with an actual and obvious fact: the Pessimists

will henceforth be towed by the Evolutionists.

The basic argument of their representative has been given in the

opening sentence of this article. The Universe and all on it

appeared in consequence of the “breaking asunder of UNITY into

_Plurality_.” This rather dim rendering of the Indian formula is not

made to refer, as I have shown, in the mind of the Pessimist, to the

one Unity, to the Vedantin abstraction—Parabrahm: otherwise, I

should not certainly have used the words “breaking up.” Nor does it

concern itself much with Mulaprakriti, or the “Veil” of Parabrahm;

nor even with the first manifested primordial matter, except

inferentially, as follows from Dr. Mainländer’s exposition, but

chiefly with terrestrial _protoplasm_. Spirit or deity is entirely

ignored in this case; evidently because of the necessity for showing

the whole as “the lawful domain of physical Science.”

In short, the time-honoured formula is claimed to have its basis and

to find its justification in the theory that from “a few, perhaps

one, single form of the very simplest nature” (Darwin), “all the

different animals and plants living to-day, and all the organisms

that have ever lived on the earth,” have gradually developed. It is

this axiom of Science, we are told, which justifies and demonstrates

the Hindu philosophical tenet. What is this axiom? Why, it is this:

Science teaches that the series of transformations through which the

seed is made to pass—the seed that grows into a tree, or becomes an

_ovum_, or that which develops into an animal—consists in every case

in nothing but the passage of the fabric of that seed, from the

homogeneous into the heterogeneous or compound form. This is then

the scientific verity which checks the Indian formula by that of the

Evolutionists, identifies both, and thus exalts ancient wisdom by

recognizing it worthy of modern materialistic thought.

This philosophical formula is not simply corroborated by the

individual growth and development of isolated species, explains our

Pessimist; but it is demonstrated in general as in detail. It is

shown justified in the evolution and growth of the Universe as well

as in that of our planet. In short, the birth, growth and

development of the whole organic world in its integral totality, are

there to demonstrate ancient wisdom. From the universals down to the

particulars, the organic world is discovered to be subject to the

same law of ever increasing elaboration, of the transition from

unity to plurality as “the fundamental formula of the evolution of

life.” Even the growth of nations, of social life, public

institutions, the development of the languages, arts and sciences,

all this follows inevitably and fatally the all-embracing law of

“the breaking asunder of unity into plurality, and the passage of

the homogeneous into multiformity.”

But while following Indian wisdom, our author exaggerates this

fundamental law in his own way, and distorts it. He brings this

law to bear even on the historical destinies of mankind. He makes

these destinies subservient to, and a proof of, the correctness of

the Indian conception. He maintains that humanity as an integral

whole, in proportion as it develops and progresses in its

evolution, and separates in its parts—each becoming a distinct and

independent branch of the unit—drifts more and more away from its

original healthy, harmonious unity. The complications of social

establishment, social relations, as those of individuality, all

lead to the weakening of the vital power, the relaxation of the

energy of feeling, and to the destruction of that integral unity,

without which no inner harmony is possible. The absence of that

harmony generates an inner discord which becomes the cause of the

greatest mental misery. Evil has its roots in the very nature of

the evolution of life and its complications. Every one of its

steps forward is at the same time a step taken toward the

dissolution of its energy, and leads to passive apathy. Such is

the inevitable result, he says, of every progressive complication

of life; because evolution or development is a transition from the

homogeneous to the heterogeneous, a scattering of the whole into

the many, etc. etc. This terrible law is universal and applies to

all creation, from the infinitesimally small up to man for, as he

says, it is a fundamental law of nature.

Now, it is just in this one-sided view of physical nature, which the

German author accepts without one single thought as to its spiritual

and psychic aspect, that his school is doomed to certain failure. It

is not a question whether the said law of differentiation and its

fatal consequences may or may not apply, in certain cases, to the

growth and development of the animal species, and even of man; but

simply, since it is the basis and main support of the whole new

theory of the Pessimistic school, whether it is really a _universal_

and fundamental law? We want to know whether this basic formula of

evolution embraces the whole process of development and growth in

its entirety; and whether, indeed, it is within the domain of

physical science or not. If it is “nothing else than the transition

from the homogeneous state to the heterogeneous,” as says

Mainländer, then it remains to be proved that the given process

“produces that complicated combination of tissues and organs which

forms and completes the perfect animal and plant.”

As remarked already by some critics on “Pessimism and Progress,” the

German Pessimist does not doubt it for one moment. His supposed

discovery and teaching “rest wholly on his certitude that

development and the fundamental law of the complicated process of

organization represent but one thing: the transformation of unity

into plurality.” Hence the identification of the process with

dissolution and decay, and the weakening of all the forces and

energies. Mainländer would be right in his analogies were this law

of the differentiation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous to

really represent the fundamental law of the evolution of life. But

the idea is quite erroneous—metaphysically as well as physically.

Evolution does not proceed in a straight line; _no more_ than any

other process in nature, but journeys on _cyclically_, as does all

the rest. The cyclic serpents swallow their tails like the Serpent

of Eternity. And it is in this that the Indian formula, which is a

Secret Doctrine teaching, is indeed corroborated by the natural

Sciences, and especially by biology.

This is what we read in the “Scientific Letters” by an anonymous

Russian author and critic.

“In the evolution of isolated individuals, in the evolution of the

organic world, in that of the Universe, as in the growth and

development of our planet—in short wherever any of the processes

of progressive complexity take place, there we find, apart from

the transition from unity to plurality, and homogeneity to

heterogeneity a _converse transformation—the transition from

plurality to unity, from the heterogeneous to the homogeneous_....

Minute observation of the given process of progressive complexity

has shown, that what takes place in it is not alone the separation

of parts, but also their mutual absorption.... While one portion

of the cells merge into each other and unite into one uniform

whole, forming muscular fibres, muscular tissue, others are

absorbed in the bone and nerve tissues, etc. etc. The same takes

place in the formation of plants....”

In this case material nature repeats the law that acts in the

evolution of the psychic and the spiritual: both descend but to

re-ascend and merge at the starting-point. _The homogeneous

formative mass or element differentiated in its parts, is gradually

transformed into the heterogeneous; then, merging those parts into a

harmonious whole, it recommences a converse process, or

reinvolution, and returns as gradually into its primitive or

primordial state._

Nor does Pessimism find any better support in pure Materialism, as

hitherto the latter has been tinged with a decidedly optimistic

bias. Its leading advocates have, indeed, never hesitated to sneer

at the theological adoration of the “glory of God and all his

works.” Büchner flings a taunt at the pantheist who sees in so “mad

and bad” a world the manifestation of the Absolute. But, on the

whole, the materialists admit a balance of good over evil, perhaps

as a buffer against any “superstitious” tendency to look out and

hope for a better one. Narrow as is their outlook, and limited as is

their spiritual horizon, they yet see no cause to despair of the

drift of things in general. The _pantheistic_ pessimists, however,

have never ceased to urge that a despair of conscious being is the

only legitimate outcome of atheistic negation. This opinion is, of

course, axiomatic, or ought to be so. If “in this life only is there

hope,” the tragedy of life is absolutely without any _raison d’être_

and a perpetuation of the drama is as foolish as it is futile.

The fact that the conclusions of pessimism have been at last

assimilated by a certain class of atheistic writers, is a striking

feature of the day, and another sign of the times. It illustrates

the truism that the void created by modern scientific negation

cannot and can never be filled by the cold prospects offered as a

_solatium_ to optimists. The Comtean “enthusiasm of Humanity” is a

poor thing enough with annihilation of the Race to ensue “as the

solar fires die slowly out”—if, indeed, _they do die_ at all—to

please physical science at the computed time. If all present sorrow

and suffering, the fierce struggle for existence and all its

attendant horrors, go for nothing in the long run, if MAN is a mere

ephemeron, the sport of blind forces, why assist in the perpetuation

of the farce. The “ceaseless grind of matter, force and law,” will

but hurry the swarming human millions into eternal oblivion, and

ultimately leave no trace or memory of the past, when things return

to the nebulosity of the fire-mist, whence they emerged. Terrestrial

life is no object in itself. It is overcast with gloom and misery.

It does not seem strange, then, that the Soul-blind negationist

should prefer the pessimism of Schopenhauer to the baseless optimism

of Strauss and his followers, which, in the face of their teachings,

reminds one of the animal spirits of a young donkey, after a good

meal of thistles.

One thing is, however, clear: the absolute necessity for some

solution, which embraces the facts of existence on an optimistic

basis. Modern Society is permeated with an increasing cynicism and

honeycombed with disgust of life. This is the result of an

utter ignorance of the operations of Karma and the nature of

Soul-evolution. It is from a mistaken allegiance to the dogmas of a

mechanical and largely spurious theory of Evolution, that Pessimism

has risen to such undue importance. Once the basis of the Great Law

is grasped—and what philosophy can furnish better means for such a

grasp and final solution, than the esoteric doctrine of the great

Indian Sages—there remains no possible _locus standi_ for the recent

amendments to the Schopenhauerian system of thought or the

metaphysical subtleties, woven by the “philosopher of the

Unconscious.” The reasonableness of _Conscious_ Existence can be

proved only by the study of the primeval—now esoteric—philosophy.

And it says “there is neither death nor life, for both are

illusions; being (or _be-ness_) is the only reality.” This paradox

was repeated thousands of ages later by one of the greatest

physiologists that ever lived. “Life is Death” said Claude Bernard.

The organism lives because its parts are ever dying. The survival of

the fittest is surely based on this truism. The life of the superior

whole requires the death of the inferior, the death of the parts

depending on and being subservient to it And, as life is death, so

death is life, and the whole great cycle of lives form but ONE

EXISTENCE—_the worst day of which is on our planet_.

He who KNOWS will make the best of it For there is a dawn for every

being, when once freed from illusion and ignorance by Knowledge; and

he will at last proclaim in truth _and all Consciousness_ to

Mahamaya:—

“BROKEN THY HOUSE IS, AND THE RIDGE-POLE SPLIT!

DELUSION FASHIONED IT!

SAFE PASS I THENCE—DELIVERANCE TO OBTAIN.”...

H. P. B.

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“Man will regain his lost Eden on that day when he can look at

every desire in the broad, quiet light of this question:—How can I

give desire such vent as shall conduce to the benefit of other

men?”—(_Jasper Niemand in the “Path”_).

THE GREAT PARADOX.

Paradox would seem to be the natural language of occultism. Nay

more, it would seem to penetrate deep into the heart of things, and

thus to be inseparable from any attempt to put into words the truth,

the reality which underlies the outward shows of life.

And the paradox is one not in words only, but in action, in the very

conduct of life. The paradoxes of occultism must be lived, not

uttered only. Herein lies a great danger, for it is only too easy to

become lost in the intellectual contemplation of the path, and so to

forget that the road can only be known by treading it.

One startling paradox meets the student at the very outset, and

confronts him in ever new and strange shapes at each turn of the

road. Such an one, perchance, has sought the path desiring a guide,

a rule of right for the conduct of his life. He learns that the

alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end of _life_ is

selflessness; and he feels the truth of the saying that only in the

profound unconsciousness of self-forgetfulness can the truth and

reality of being reveal itself to his eager heart.

The student learns that this is the one law of occultism, at once

the science and the art of living, the guide to the goal he desires

to attain. He is fired with enthusiasm and enters bravely on the

mountain track. He then finds that his teachers do not encourage his

ardent flights of sentiment; his all-forgetting yearning for the

Infinite—on the outer plane of his actual life and consciousness. At

least, if they do not actually damp his enthusiasm, they set him, as

the first and indispensable task, _to conquer and control his body_.

The student finds that far from being encouraged to live in the

soaring thoughts of his brain, and to fancy he has reached that

ether where is true freedom—to the forgetting of his body, and his

external actions and personality—he is set down to tasks much nearer

earth. All his attention and watchfulness are required on the outer

plane; he must never forget himself, never lose hold over his body,

his mind, his brain. He must even learn to control the expression of

every feature, to check the action of each muscle, to be master of

every slightest involuntary movement. The daily life around and

within him is pointed out as the object of his study and

observation. Instead of forgetting what are usually called the petty

trifles, the little forgetfulnesses, the accidental slips of tongue

or memory, he is forced to become each day more conscious of these

lapses, till at last they seem to poison the air he breathes and

stifle him, till he seems to lose sight and touch of the great world

of freedom towards which he is struggling, till every hour of every

day seems full of the bitter taste of self, and his heart grows sick

with pain and the struggle of despair. And the darkness is rendered

yet deeper by the voice within him, crying ceaselessly, “forget

thyself. Beware, lest thou becomest self-concentrated—and the giant

weed of spiritual selfishness take firm root in thy heart; beware,

beware, beware!”

The voice stirs his heart to its depths, for he feels that the words

are true. His daily and hourly battle is teaching him that

self-centredness is the root of misery, the cause of pain, and his

soul is full of longing to be free.

Thus the disciple is torn by doubt. He trusts his teachers, for he

knows that through them speaks the same voice he hears in the

silence of his own heart. But now they utter contradictory words;

the one, the inner voice, bidding him forget himself utterly in the

service of humanity; the other, the spoken word of those from whom

he seeks guidance in his service, bidding him _first_ to conquer his

body, his outer self. And he knows better with every hour how badly

he acquits himself in that battle with the Hydra, and he sees seven

heads grow afresh in place of each one that he has lopped off.

At first he oscillates between the two, now obeying the one, now the

other. But soon he learns that this is fruitless. For the sense of

freedom and lightness, which comes at first when he leaves his outer

self unwatched, that he may seek the inner air, soon loses its

keenness, and some sudden shock reveals to him that he has slipped

and fallen on the uphill path. Then, in desperation, he flings

himself upon the treacherous snake of self, and strives to choke it

into death; but its ever-moving coils elude his grasp, the insidious

temptations of its glittering scales blind his vision, and again he

becomes involved in the turmoil of the battle, which gains on him

from day to day, and which at last seems to fill the whole world,

and blot out all else beside from his consciousness. He is face to

face with a crushing paradox, the solution of which must be lived

before it can be really understood.

In his hours of silent meditation the student will find that there

is one space of silence within him where he can find refuge from

thoughts and desires, from the turmoil of the senses and the

delusions of the mind. By sinking his consciousness deep into his

heart he can reach this place—at first only when he is alone in

silence and darkness. But when the need for the silence has grown

great enough, he will turn to seek it even in the midst of the

struggle with self, and he will find it. Only he must not let go of

his outer self, or his body; he must learn to retire into this

citadel when the battle grows fierce, but to do so without losing

sight of the battle; without allowing himself to fancy that by so

doing he has won the victory. That victory is won only when all is

silence without as within the inner citadel. Fighting thus, from

within that silence, the student will find that he has solved the

first great paradox.

But paradox still follows him. When first he thus succeeds in thus

retreating into himself, he seeks there only for refuge from the

storm in his heart. And as he struggles to control the gusts of

passion and desire, he realises more fully what mighty powers he has

vowed himself to conquer. He still feels himself, apart from the

silence, nearer akin to the forces of the storm. How can his puny

strength cope with these tyrants of animal nature?

This question is hard to answer in direct words; if, indeed, such an

answer can be given. But analogy may point the way where the

solution may be sought.

In breathing we take a certain quantity of air into the lungs, and

with this we can imitate in miniature the mighty wind of heaven. We

can produce a feeble semblance of nature: a tempest in a tea-cup, a

gale to blow and even swamp a paper boat. And we can say: “I do

this; it is my breath.” But we cannot blow our breath against a

hurricane, still less hold the trade winds in our lungs. Yet the

powers of heaven are within us; the nature of the intelligences

which guide the world-forces is blended with our own, and could we

realise this and forget our outer selves, the very winds would be

our instruments.

So it is in life. While a man clings to his outer self—aye, and even

to any one of the forms he assumes when this “mortal coil” is cast

aside—so long is he trying to blow aside a hurricane with the breath

of his lungs. It is useless and idle such an endeavour; for the

great winds of life must, sooner or later, sweep him away. But if he

changes his attitude _in himself_, if he acts on the faith that his

body, his desires, his passions, his brain, are not himself, though

he has charge of them, and is responsible for them; if he tries to

deal with them as parts of nature, then he may hope to become one

with the great tides of being, and reach the peaceful place of safe

self-forgetfulness at last.

“FAUST.”

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“Fear is the slave of pain and Rebellion her captive; Endurance

her free companion and Patience her master. And the husband of

Pain is Rapture. But the souls are few in whom that marriage is

consummated.” (L. S. C.).

=THE BLOSSOM AND THE FRUIT=:

_THE TRUE STORY OF A MAGICIAN_.[26]

(_Continued._)

---------------------

BY MABEL COLLINS,

Author of “THE PRETTIEST WOMAN IN WARSAW,” &c., &c.,

And Scribe of “THE IDYLL OF THE WHITE LOTUS,” and “THROUGH THE GATES

OF GOLD.”

---------------------

-----

Footnote 26:

The sub-title, “a tale of love and magic,” having been

simultaneously used by myself, Mr. Joseph Hutton, and another

author, I think it best to change mine for one certainly less

pretty, but equally descriptive. Is not this simultaneous use also

a “sign of the times”?

-----

CHAPTER III.

In a chapel of the great Cathedral in the city there was at certain

hours always a priest who held there his confessional.

To him went Hilary some days later. In the interim he had not seen

the Princess. His soul had been torn hither and thither, to and fro.

His passion for the beautiful girl held him fast, while his horror

of the magician repelled him from her. He went to the Cathedral in

the afternoon determined that he would reveal all his distress to

the priest. Father Amyot was in his confessional, but some one was

with him, for the curtain was drawn. Hilary knelt down at the small

altar of the chapel there to wait. Presently there was a slight

sound; he turned his head to see if the confessional was now free.

The Princess Fleta stood beside him, her eyes fixed on him; it was

she who at this instant only had risen from her knees in the

confessional. Hilary, amazed and dumb with wonder, could only gaze

upon her. She kept her strange and fascinating eyes fixed on his for

a moment and then turned and with swift, soft steps left the chapel.

Hilary remained kneeling motionless before the altar, his mind

absorbed in what was hardly so much thought as amazement. Fleta was

not then what he thought her. If she were sensitive to religious

impressions she could not be the cold magician which she had

appeared to him to be when he recollected the last scene in the

laboratory. Perhaps after all she used her power generously and for

good. He began to see her in another light. He began to worship her

for her goodness as well as for her strong attractions. His heart

leaped with joy at the thought that her soul was as beautiful as her

body. He rose from his knees and turned instinctively and without

thought to follow her. As he did so he passed Father Amyot, who

seeing that no one else came immediately to the confessional, had

left it and flung himself at full length upon the ground before the

altar. He wore a long robe of coarse white cloth, tied at the waist

with a black cord; a hood of the same cloth covered his shaven head.

He was like a skeleton, perfectly fleshless and emaciated. His face

lay sideways on the stone; he seemed unconscious, so profound was

his abstraction. The eyes were open but had no sight in them. They

were large grey blue eyes, full of a profound melancholy which gave

them an appearance as if tears stood in them. This melancholy

affected Hilary strangely; it touched his heart, made thrill and

vibrate some deeply sensitive cord in his nature. He stood gazing a

moment at the prostrate figure, and then with a profound obeisance

left the chapel.

The Princess Fleta had her horse waiting for her. She was a constant

and daring rider, and seldom entered the city except on horseback,

to the amazement of the court ladies, who in the city rode in

carriages that they might dress beautifully. But Fleta had no vanity

of this kind. Probably no other girl of her age would have willingly

adopted the hideous dress of the witch and worn it before so many

curious eyes. Her own beauty and her own appearance was a subject of

but the slightest thought to her. She would walk down the

fashionable promenade in her riding habit among the magnificent

toilettes of the Court ladies. This she was doing now while a

servant led her horse up and down. Hilary watched her from a

distance, unable to summon courage to approach her in the midst of

such a throng of personages. But presently Fleta saw him and came

with her swift light step towards him. “Will you walk with me?” she

asked. “There is no one here to be my companion but you.”

“And why is that?” asked Hilary, as with flushed face and eager

steps he accompanied her.

“Because there are none that sympathise with me. You alone have

entered my laboratory.”

“But would not any of these be glad to come if you would admit

them?”

“Not one would have the courage, except perhaps some few wild

spirits who would dare anything for mere excitement. And they would

not please me.”

Hilary was silent. Her words showed him very plainly that he pleased

her. But there was a chill in his nature which now asserted itself.

Here in the midst of so many people her hold on him was lessened,

and he doubted her more than ever. Was she merely playing with him

for her own amusement? Her high position gave her this power and he

could not resent it, for even to be her favourite for a day would be

accounted by any man an honour and a thing to boast of. And Hilary

was being signalled out for public honour. He felt the envious

glances of the men whom he met, and immediately a cold veil fell on

his heart. He desired no such envy. To his mind love was a thing

sacred. His scorn of life and doubt of human nature awakened at this

moment of triumph. He did not speak, but the Princess answered his

thought.

“We will go away from here,” she said. “In the country you are a

creature of passion. Here you become a cynic.”

“How do you know my heart?” he asked.

“We were born under the same star,” she answered quietly.

“That is no sufficient answer,” he replied. “It conveys no meaning

to me, for I know nothing of the mysterious sciences you study.”

“Come then with me,” she answered, “and I will teach you.”

She signed to her servant, who brought her horse; she mounted and

rode away with merely a smile to Hilary. She knew that in spite of

the chill that was on him he would hunger for her in her absence and

soon follow. And so he did. The pavements appeared empty though

crowds moved over them; the city seemed lifeless and dull, though it

was one of the gayest in the world. He turned from the streets, and

walking into the country, found himself very soon at the narrow

wicket gate of the Princess Fleta’s Garden House.

She was wandering up and down the avenue between the trees. Her

dress was white now, and very long and soft, falling in great folds

from her shoulders. As she moved slowly to and fro, the dancing

sunlight playing on her splendid form, it seemed to Hilary that he

saw before him not a mere woman, but a priestess. Her late visit to

the Cathedral recurred to him; if the religious soul was in her,

might she not, indeed, spite of her strange acts, be no magician,

but a priestess? He returned to his former humour and was ready to

worship at her feet. She greeted him with a smile that thrilled him;

her eyes read his very soul, and her smile brought to it an

unutterable joy. She turned and led the way to the house and Hilary

followed her.

She opened her laboratory door, and immediately Hilary became aware

of the strong odour of some powerful incense. The dim smoke was

still in the room but the flame had all died away in the vessel. By

the side of the vessel lay a prostrate figure. Hilary uttered a cry

of amazement and of horror as he recognised Father Amyot. He turned

such a look of dismay upon the Princess that she answered his

thought in a haughty tone which she had never before used in

addressing him.

“It is not time yet to ask me the meaning of what you may see here.

Some day, perhaps, when you know more, you may have the right to

question me: but not now. See, I can change this appearance that

distresses you, in a moment.”

She raised the prostrate figure, and flung off from it the white

robe that resembled Father Amyot’s. Beneath, it was clothed in a

dull red garment such as Hilary had first seen it in. With a few

swift touches of her hand the Princess changed the expression of the

face. Father Amyot was gone, and Hilary saw sitting in the chair

before him that unindividualised form and face which at his visit to

the laboratory had affected him with so much horror. The Princess

saw the repugnance still in his face, and with a laugh opened the

screen with which she had hidden the figure before.

“Now,” she said, “come and sit beside me on this couch.”

But before she left the great vessel she threw in more incense and

lit it. Already Hilary was aware that the fumes of that which had

been already burned had affected his brain. The red figures moved

upon the black wall, and he watched them with fascinated eyes.

They shaped themselves together not, this time, into words, but into

forms. And the wall instead of black became bright and luminous. It

was as though Hilary and Fleta sat alone before an immense stage.

They heard the spoken words and saw the gestures and the movements

of these phantasmal actors as clearly and with as much reality as

though they were creatures of flesh and blood before them. It was a

drama of the passions; the chief actors were Hilary and Fleta

themselves. Hilary almost forgot that the real Fleta was at his

side, so absorbed was he in the action of the phantasmal Fleta.

He was bewildered, and he could not understand the meaning of what

he saw, clearly though the drama was enacted in front of him. He saw

the orchard full of blossoming trees; he saw the splendid savage

woman. He knew that he himself and this Fleta at his side, were in

some strange way playing a part under this savage guise; but how or

what it was he could not tell. Fleta laughed as she watched his

face. “You do not know who you are,” she cried. “That is a great

loss and makes life much more difficult. But you will know by and

bye if you are willing to learn. Come, let us look at another and a

very different page of life.”

The stage grew dark and moving shadows passed to and fro upon it,

great shadows that filled Hilary’s soul with dread. At last they

drew back and left a luminous space where Fleta herself was visible.

Fleta, in this same human shape that she wore now, yet strangely

changed. She was much older and yet more beautiful; there was a

wonderful fire in her brilliant eyes. On her head was a crown, and

Hilary saw that she had great powers to use or abuse—it was written

on her face. Then something drew his eyes down and he saw a figure

lying helpless at her feet—why was it so still?—it was alive!—yes,

but it was bound and fettered, bound hand and foot.

“Are you afraid?” broke out Fleta’s voice with a ring of mocking

laughter in it. “Surely you are not afraid—why should I not reign?

why should you not suffer? You are a cynic; is there anything good

to be expected?”

“Perhaps not,” said Hilary. “It may be that you are heartless and

false. And yet, as I stand here now, I feel that though you may

betray me by and bye, and take my life and liberty from me, yet I

love your very treachery.”

Fleta laughed aloud, and Hilary stood silent, confused by the words

he had spoken hastily without pausing to think whether they were fit

to speak or not. Well, it was done now. He had spoken of his love.

She could refuse ever to see him again and he would go into the

outer darkness.

“No,” she said, “I shall not send you away. Do you not know, Hilary

Estanol, that you are my chosen companion? Otherwise would you be

here with me now? The word love does not alarm me; I have heard it

too often. Only I think it very meaningless. Let us put it aside for

the present. If you let yourself love me you must suffer; and I do

not want you to suffer yet. When pain comes to you the youth will go

from your face; you do not know how to preserve it, and I like your

youth.”

Hilary made no answer. It was not easy to answer such a speech, and

Hilary was not in the humour for accomplishing any thing difficult.

His brain was confused by the fumes of the incense and by the

strange scenes so mysteriously enacted before his eyes. He scarcely

knew what Fleta this was that stood beside him. And yet he knew he

loved her though he distrusted her! With each moment that he passed

by her side he worshipped her more completely, and the disbelief

interfered less and less with his proud joy in being admitted to her

intimacy.

“Now,” said Fleta, “I want you to do a new thing. I want you to

exercise your will and compel my servants who have been pleasing us

with phantasies, to show us a phantasy of your own creation. You can

do this very well, if you will. It only needs that you shall not

doubt you can do it. Ah! how quickly does the act follow the

thought!” She uttered the last words with a little cry of amused

pleasure. For the dim shadows had rapidly masked the stage and then

again withdrawn, leaving the figure of Fleta very clearly visible,

beautiful and passionate, her face alight with love, held clasped in

Hilary’s arms, her lips pressed close to his.

The real Fleta who sat beside him rose now with a shake of her head,

and a laugh which was not all gay. The shadows closed instantly over

the stage, and a moment later the illusion was all destroyed and the

solid wall was there before Hilary’s eyes. He had become so

accustomed to witness the marvellous inside this room that he did

not pause to wonder; he followed Fleta as she crossed to the door,

and tried to attract her attention.

“Forgive me, my Princess,” he murmured over and over again.

“Oh, you are forgiven,” she said at last lightly. “You have not

offended, so it is easy for me to forgive. I do not think a man can

help what is in his heart; at all events, no ordinary man can. And

you, Hilary, have consented to be like the rest. Are you content?”

“No!” he answered, instantly. And as he spoke he understood for the

first time the fever that had stirred him all through his short

bright life. “Content! How should I be? Moreover, is not our star

the star of restlessness and action?”

For the first time, Fleta turned on him a glance of real tenderness

and emotion. When he said the words “our star,” it seemed as if he

had touched her heart.

“Ah!” she said, “How sorely I long for a companion!”

Then she turned from him very abruptly, and almost before he knew

she had moved she had opened the door, and was standing outside

waiting for him. “Come!” she said impatiently. He followed her

immediately, for he had no choice but to do so; yet he was

disappointed. He was more deeply disappointed when he found that she

led the way with swift steps into the room where her aunt sat.

Arrived there, Fleta threw herself into a chair, took up a great

golden fan and began to fan herself, while she talked about the

gossip of the Court. The change was so sudden that for some moments

Hilary could not follow her. He stood bewildered, till the aunt

pushed a low chair towards him; and he felt then that the old lady

was not surprised at his manner, but only sorry for him. And then

suddenly the cynic re-asserted itself in his heart. A thought that

bit like flame suddenly started into life. Had the bewildered

emotion that had been, as he knew, visible on his face, been seen on

others before; was Fleta not only playing with him, but playing with

him as she had played with many another lover? The thought was more

hateful than any he had ever suffered from; it wounded his vanity,

which was more tender and delicate than his heart.

Fleta gave him no opportunity of anything but talk such as seemed in

her stately presence too trivial to be endured, and so at last he

rose and went his way. Fleta did not accompany him to the gate this

time. She left him to go alone, and he felt as if she had withdrawn

her favour in some degree; and yet perhaps that was foolish, he told

himself, for after all, both he and she had said too much to-day.

Fleta was betrothed. She had been betrothed at her christening.

Before long her marriage would take place; and then that crown seen

in the vision would be placed on her head. Had it needed the vision

to bring that fact to his mind, asked Hilary of himself? If so,

’twas time, he bitterly added, for Fleta was not a woman who was

likely to give up a crown for the sake of love! His heart rose

fiercely within him as he thought of all this. Why had she tempted

him to speak of love? For surely he never would have dared to so

address her had she not tempted him; so he thought.

If he could have seen Fleta now! As soon as he left the room she had

risen and slowly moved back to her laboratory. Entered there, she

drew away a curtain which concealed a large mirror let deep into the

wall. She did this resolutely, yet as if reluctantly. Immediately

her gaze became fixed on the glass. She saw Hilary’s figure within

it moving on his way towards the city. She read his thoughts and his

heart. At last she dropped the curtain with a heavy sigh, and let

her arms fall at her side with a gesture that seemed to mean

despair; certainly it meant deep dejection. And presently some great

tears dropped upon the floor at her feet

None, since Fleta was born, had seen her shed tears.

CHAPTER IV.

Father Amyot on the next morning sent a message to Hilary praying

him to come and see him. This Hilary did at once, and in much

perplexity as to what the reason of such a summons could be. He went

straight to the Cathedral, for there he knew the ascetic priest

passed all his time. He found him, as he expected, prostrate before

the altar, and almost in the same attitude he had seen him in

yesterday. Horribly too it reminded him of the attitude of that

figure lying on the floor of Fleta’s laboratory when he had entered

it. He had to touch Father Amyot to attract his attention; then at

once the priest rose and led the way out of the Cathedral into the

cloisters, which joined it to the monastery close at hand. He went

on, without speaking, his head drooped. Hilary could but follow. At

last they reached a bare cell in which was no furniture but a

crucifix and a perpetual lamp burning before it, and against the

wall a bench.

Here Father Amyot sat down, and he motioned with his hand to Hilary

to sit beside him.

Then he fell into a profound reverie; and Hilary watching him,

wondered much what was in his mind. Was Fleta even now working her

spells upon him and moulding his thoughts according to her will?

It almost seemed like it, for her name was the first word he uttered

“The Princess Fleta,” he commenced, “is about to go upon a long and

dangerous journey.”

Hilary started and turned his face away, for he knew that he had

turned pale. Was she really going to leave the city! How unexpected!

how terrible!

“In a very short time,” went on Father Amyot, “the Princess will be

married and she has a mission which she desires to accomplish before

her wedding, and she says that you can assist her in this. It is for

the fulfilment of this mission that she is undertaking the journey I

speak of; supposing you should agree to help her you would have to

accompany her.”

Hilary made no answer. He had no answer ready. His breath was taken

away and he could not recover it all in an instant. The whole thing

seemed incredible; he felt it to be impossible; and yet a conviction

was already falling on him that it would take place.

“Of course,” resumed Father Amyot, seeing that Hilary was not

disposed to speak, “you will want to know your errand, you will want

to know why you are going on this journey. This it will be

impossible for you to know. The Princess does not choose to inform

any one of what her errand is.”

“Not even the person whom she says can help her?” exclaimed Hilary

in amazement

“Not even you.”

“Well,” said Hilary rising with a gesture of indignation, “let her

find some one else to go blindly in her wake. I am not the man.”

So saying he walked across the cell to the doorway, forgetting even

to say good-bye to Father Amyot.

But the priest’s voice arrested him.

“You would travel alone, save for one attendant.”

Hilary turned and faced the priest in amazement.

“Oh, impossible!” he exclaimed, “——yet it is true.”

To Hilary the cynic, the thing suddenly assumed an intelligible

form. Fleta wanted to take a journey in which she would prefer a

companion because of its danger; yet she could not give her

confidence to any one. She proposed to herself to use his love for

her; she offered him her society as a bribe to take care of her, to

ask no questions and tell no tales. The idea did not please him.

“I have heard of princesses risking anything, relying on the power

of their position; I have heard that the royal caprice is not to be

measured by the reason of other men and women. Perhaps it is so. But

Fleta! I thought her different even from her own family.”

These were the first thoughts that came into his mind. His ready

conclusion was that Fleta was willing that he should be her lover if

he would be her servant also. But immediately afterwards came the

fair vision of Fleta herself in her white robes, and with the face

of a priestess. Her purpose was inscrutable, like herself. He

confessed this as he stood there, surging doubts in his mind. And

then suddenly a fragrance came across his sense—a strong perfume,

that he associated with Fleta’s dress—and next a breath of incense.

His brain grew dizzy; he staggered back and leaned against the wall.

He no longer appeared to himself to be in Father Amyot’s cell—he was

in Fleta’s laboratory, and her hand touched his face, her breath was

on his brow. Ah, what madness of joy to be with her! To travel with

her, to be her associate and companion to pass all the hours of the

day by her side. Suddenly he roused himself, and, starting forward,

approached Father Amyot.

“I will go,” he said.

“It will cost you dear,” said the priest. “Think again before you

decide.”

“It is useless to think,” cried Hilary. “Why should I think? I

feel—and to feel is to live.”

Father Amyot seemed not to hear his words. He was apparently already

buried in prayer. Evidently he had said all that he intended to say;

and Hilary, after a glance at him, turned and left the cell. He knew

the priest’s moods too well to speak again, when once that deep

cloud of profound abstraction had descended on his face.

He went away, passing back as he had come, through the Cathedral. At

the high altar he paused an instant, and then knelt and murmured a

prayer. It was one he had learned, and he scarce attached any

meaning to the familiar words. But it comforted him to feel that he

had prayed, be it never so meaningless a prayer. For Hilary had been

reared in all the habits of the devout Catholic.

Then he went out and took his way towards the Garden House, walking

with long strides. He was determined to know the truth, and that at

once. Amid all the brilliant men who crowded her father’s Court was

he indeed the only one who could touch her heart? An hour ago he

would have laughed at any one who had told him he had touched it;

yet now he believed he had. And what intoxication that belief was!

For the first time he began to feel the absolute infatuation of

love. And looking back it seemed to him that an hour ago he had not

loved Fleta—that he had never loved her till this minute.

He found her standing at the gate, among the flowers. She was

dressed in white, and some crimson roses were fastened at her neck.

Her face was like a child’s, full of gaiety and gladness. Hilary’s

heart bounded with the delight it gave him to see her like this. She

opened the gate for him, and together they walked towards the house.

“I have been to see Father Amyot,” said Hilary. “He sent for me this

morning.”

“Yes,” answered Fleta, quietly. “He had a message to you from me.

Are you willing to undertake a tiresome task for one you know so

little?”

“My Princess,” murmured Hilary, bending his head as he spoke.

“But not your Queen,” said Fleta, with a laugh full of the glorious

insolence only possible to one who had the royal blood in her veins,

and knew that a crown was waiting for her.

“Yes, my Queen,” said Hilary.

“If you call me that,” said Fleta, quickly, and in a different tone,

“you recognise a royalty not recognised by courtiers.”

“Yes,” replied Hilary simply.

“The royalty of power,” added Fleta, significantly, and with a

penetrating look into his eyes.

“Call it what you will,” answered Hilary, “you are my Queen. From

this hour I give allegiance.”

“Be it so,” said Fleta, with a light girlish laugh, “Be ready then,

tomorrow at noon. I will tell you where to meet me. I will send a

message in the morning.”

Suddenly a recollection crossed Hilary’s mind which had hitherto

been blotted out from it. “My mother,” he said.

“Oh,” said Fleta, “I have been to see Madame Estanol. My father goes

into the country to-day and she believes you go with him. She is

glad you should join the Court.”

“Strange,” said Hilary, unthinkingly, “for she has always set her

face against it.” Then the smile on Fleta’s face made him think his

words foolish.

“It is as my Queen orders. Seemingly, men and women obey her even in

their inmost hearts.”

“No,” said Fleta, with a sigh, “that is just what they do not! It is

that power which I have yet to obtain. They obey me, yes, but

against the dictates of their inmost hearts. If you really loved me,

we could obtain that power; but you are like the others. You do not

love me with your inmost heart!”

“I do not!” exclaimed Hilary, in amazement, stunned by her words.

“No,” she answered, mournfully, “you do not. If you really loved me

you would not calculate chances and risks, you would not consider

whether I am profligate or virtuous, whether I am my father’s

daughter or a child of the stars! I tell you, Hilary Estanol, if you

were capable of loving me truly, you might find your way to the gods

with me and even sit among them. But it is not so with you. You

vacillate even in your love. You cannot give yourself utterly. That

means grief to you, for you cannot find perfect pleasure in a thing

which you take doubtingly and give but by halves. Still you shall

travel with me; and you shall be my companion and friend. There is

none other to whom I would give this chance. How do you think you

will reward me? Oh, I know too well. Go now, but be ready when I

send for you.”

So saying she turned and went into the house, leaving him in the

garden. For a few moments he stood there embarrassed, not knowing

which way to turn or what to do. But he was not annoyed or

disturbed, as his vanity might have led him to be at another time,

by such cavalier treatment. He was aghast, horrified. Was this the

girl he loved! this tyrant, this proud spirit, this strange woman,

who before he had wooed her reproached him with not loving her

enough! Within him lurked a conventional spirit, strong under all

circumstances, even those of the most profound emotion, and Fleta’s

whole conduct shocked and distressed that spirit so that it groaned,

and more, upbraided him with his mad love. But the fierce growth of

that love could not be checked. He might suffer because it lived,

but he was not strong enough to kill it.

He turned and walked away from the house and slowly returned to the

city. He was ashamed and disheartened. His love seemed to disgrace

him. He had entertained lofty ideas which now were discarded for

ever. For he knew that to-morrow he would start upon a long journey,

the end of which was to him unknown, by the side of a girl whom he

could never marry, yet of whom he was the avowed lover. Well, be it

so. Hilary began to look at these things from a fatalistic point of

view; his weakness led him to shrug his shoulders and say that his

fate was stronger than himself. So he went home gloomily yet with a

burning and feverish heart. He immediately set to work making ready

for his departure for an indefinite period. His mother he found was

prepared for this, as Fleta had told him; and more—seemed to regard

Fleta as a kind of gentle goddess who had brought good fortune into

his path.

“I have always resisted the idea of your hanging about the Court,”

she said, “but it is different if indeed the King wishes to have you

with him. That must lead to your obtaining some honourable post.

What I dreaded was your becoming a mere useless idler. And I am glad

you are going into the country, dear, for you are looking very pale

and quite ill.”

Hilary assented tacitly and without comment to the deceit with which

Fleta had paved the way for him.

(_To be continued._)

[Illustration: decorative separator]

“Spirituality is not what we understand by the words ‘virtue’ or

‘goodness.’ It is the power of perceiving formless, spiritual

essences.”—(_Jasper Niemand in the “Path.”_)

“The discovery and right use of the true essence of Being—this is

the whole secret of life.”—(_Jasper Niemand in the “Path.”_)

------------------

DESIRE MADE PURE.

When desire is for the purely abstract—when it has lost all trace or

tinge of “self”—then it has become pure.

The first step towards this purity is to kill out the desire for the

things of matter, since these _can_ only be enjoyed by the separated

personality.

The second is to cease from desiring for oneself even such

abstractions as power, knowledge, love, happiness, or fame; for they

are but selfishness after all.

Life itself teaches these lessons; for all such objects of desire

are found Dead Sea fruit in the moment of attainment. This much we

learn from experience. Intuitive perception seizes on the _positive_

truth that satisfaction is attainable only in the infinite; the will

makes that conviction an actual fact of consciousness, till at last

all desire is centred on the Eternal.

THOUGHTS ON THEOSOPHY.

“The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life,” this is the

keynote of all true reform. Theosophy is the vehicle of the spirit

that gives life, consequently nothing _dogmatic_ can be truly

_theosophical_.

It is incorrect, therefore, to describe a _mere_ unearthing of dead

letter dogmas as “Theosophic work.”

When a word, phrase, or symbol, having been once used for the

purpose of suggesting an idea _new_ to the mind or minds being

operated on, is insisted upon irrespective of the said idea, it

becomes a dead letter dogma and loses its vitalising power, and

serves rather as an obstruction to, than as vehicle of the spirit;

but, alas, this insistance upon the letter is too often carried on

under the honoured name of “Theosophy.”

A man cannot acquire an idea _new to him_ unless it _grows_ in his

mind.

The mere familiarity with the _sound_ of a word, or a phrase, or the

mere familiarity with the _appearance_ of a symbol, does not, of

_necessity_, involve the possession of the idea properly associated

with the said word, phrase or symbol. To insist, therefore, on the

contrary cannot be theosophical; but would be better described as

_un_theosophical.

It would certainly be theosophical work to point out kindly and

temperately how certain words, phrases and symbols appear to have

been misunderstood or misapplied, how various claims and professions

may be excessive or confused as a consequence of ignorance or

vanity, or both. But it is quite another thing to condemn a man or a

body of men _outright_, for certain errors in judgment or action;

even though they were the result of vanity, greed or hypocrisy;

indeed such wholesale condemnation would, on the contrary, be

untheosophical.

The one eternal, immutable law of life alone can judge and condemn a

man absolutely. “Vengeance is _mine_, saith the Lord.”

Were I asked how I would dare attempt “to dethrone the gods,

overthrow the temple, destroy the law which feeds the priests and

props the realm; I should answer as the Buddha is made to answer in

the _Light of Asia_: ‘What thou bidst me keep is form which passes

while the free truth stands; get thee to thy darkness.’”

“What good gift hath my brother but it comes from search and strife

(inward) and loving sacrifice.”

*

* *

=Correspondence=

---

ARE THE TEACHINGS ASCRIBED TO JESUS CONTRADICTORY?

There are none so blind as those who won’t see, excepting those who

can’t!

In _Light_, for September 10th, there is a letter from Dr. Wyld, who

writes as follows: “In the last number of _Light_ there is a

quotation from the _Spiritual Reformer_ in which the writer shows

the absurdity of the idea that Jesus was not an historic being. But

while thanking the writer for this contribution, I would take the

strongest objection to his assertion that many of Christ’s teachings

are contradictory and mistaken. This is an assertion occasionally

made by Spiritualists, and whenever I have met with it I have asked

for evidence of the assertion, but hitherto I have received none.”

But that might surely have been easily supplied. Here, for example,

are a few very direct contradictions in the speaker’s own words.

Every one knows how secret were the teachings in their nature; how

secretly they were conveyed in private places apart; how secretly

his secrets were to be kept; and yet in presence of the High Priest

Jesus makes the astounding declaration: “_I have spoken openly to

the world; I always taught in synagogues; and in secret spake I

nothing._”—John xviii. 20.

Jesus, in keeping with the mythical character, is made to claim

equality and identity with the Father. He says (John x. 30), “_I and

my Father are one_;” but in the same book (John xiv. 28), he says,

“_The Father is greater than I_”—(Cf. Matthew xxiv. 36.) Again, he

claims superiority over his Father. “_The Father judgeth no man, but

hath committed all judgment to the Son. As I hear I judge_” (John v.

22, 30). And then in the same gospel he says, “_I judge no man_,”

(John viii. 15.) “_If any man hear my words and believe not, I judge

him not; for I came not to judge the world_,” (John xii. 47). Again,

“_I am one that bear witness of myself. Though I bear witness of

myself, yet my record is true_,” (John viii. 14, 18); which is

contradicted by (John v. 31) “_If I bear witness of myself, my

witness is not true_.” He says (John v. 33, 34) that “_John bare

witness unto the truth, but I receive not testimony from man_,” and

then tells the disciples, who are supposed to have been men, that

“_they also shall bear witness_” to or of him (John xv. 27). Again

he says, “_Let your light so shine before men that they may see your

good works_,” (Matthew v. 16). But “_Take heed that ye do not your

alms before men to be seen of them_.” (Matthew vi. 1).

“_Resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right

cheek, turn to him the other also_,” (Matthew v. 39); for “_all that

take the sword, shall perish with the sword_,” (Matthew xxvi. 52).

Nevertheless, “_He that hath no sword let him sell his garment and

buy one_,” (Luke xxii. 36). “_I came not to send Peace but a

Sword_,” (Matthew x. 34). “_Be not afraid of them that kill the

body_,” (Luke xii. 4). Nevertheless “_Jesus would not walk in Jewry

because the Jews sought to kill him_,” (John vii. 1).

I merely ask, for the sake of information, are these statements

contradictory or are they not?

I will but offer one or two specimens of the more serious and

fundamental contradictions in the _olla podrida_ of teaching

assigned to Jesus. The teaching of the alleged founder of

Christianity in the Gospel according to Matthew (ch. xix. 12), is

that of the Saboi, the self-mutilators, who are still extant as the

Russian Skoptsi[27] and who emasculate themselves to save their

spermatic souls, as Origen is reputed to have done. Jesus is made to

say, “_There are Eunuchs which made themselves Eunuchs for the

Kingdom of Heaven’s sake_. He that is able to receive it, let him

receive it.” And then in the opening verses of the very next

chapter, the same teacher says, “_Suffer little children and forbid

them not, to come unto me; for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven_.”

But those who became Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven’s sake could

not be suffering the little children to come unto him or to them.

They would be forbidding them to come at all. If the Kingdom of

Heaven be _such_ as the children of Eunuchs it must be non-extant.

As Hood’s deaf shopman said of the crackers going off, there were so

many reports he did not know _which_ to believe.

-----

Footnote 27:

Of whom there are large colonies along the Black Sea and the coast

of Imeretia and Poti.

-----

And where is the sense of talking so much nonsense about the “Golden

Rule” or the Divine humanity on behalf of one who carried on the

blindest warfare against human nature itself? Who declared that “_If

any man come to me and hate not his father and mother, and wife and

children, and brothers and sisters, and his own life also, he cannot

be my disciple_” (Luke xiv. 26). And who promised that every

follower of his who “_left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife,

or children, for the Kingdom of God’s sake should receive manifold

more in the present and in the world to come life everlasting_.”

Well may the grateful Musselman cry in his adorations, “_Thank God_

OUR _Father has no Son!_”

But, I do not charge these contradictory sayings and teachings to

any personal character. The collectors are but making use of the

_Kurios_, the Lord of the pre-Christian Mythos, the mystical Christ

of the Gnostics, as a puppet to represent them and their divers

doctrines. They make the human image of a God of Love to be the

preacher of everlasting punishment, and the bearer of a fan with

which he fans the fires of hell; a false foreteller of that which

never came to pass, and the forerunner of a fulfilment which did not

follow. In short, they make this Marionette Messiah dance to any

particular tune they play.

Jesus is posed as the original revealer of a father in Heaven,

whereas the doctrine of the Divine Fatherhood was taught in three

different Egyptian Cults during some four thousand years previously.

Dr. Wyld implies that I deny the existence of a personal Jesus. That

is the misrepresentation of ignorance. But the sole historical Jesus

acknowledged by me is the only one who was ever known to the Jews,

to Celsus, to Epiphanius, as the descendant of JOSEPH Pandira, he,

who according to Irenæus, lived to be over fifty years of age.

This, I admit, was not the kind of Jesus whom the Christians find in

the Gospels and honour as a God.

The Gospel histories do not contain the biography of Ben-Pandira,

the son of Joseph. Nor was it intended that they should. Their Jesus

is the mythical Christ, the Horus of 12 years, and the adult Horus

of 30 years; the Lord of the age, Æon or Cycle, who came and went,

and was to come again for those who possessed the Gnosis.

Another writer in _Light_, a week earlier, could not understand how

any one can deny the personal existence of the “Historical Christ!”

The _Historical Christ_! You might as well demand our belief in the

historical Chronos—Time, in person—or the historical Ghost, in man

or out of him. If the writer knew anything of the pre-Christian

Spiritualism—anything of the true nature or even the meaning of the

name—he would perceive the Historic Impossibility of the personal

Christ. An “Historical Christ” is as much a nonentity as the

historical Mrs. Harris. But, _cui bono?_ I have no hope in these

matters of any orthodox Christian Spiritualists. They have to learn

the primary lesson, at last, that Historic Christianity was not

founded on our facts _until it had buried them_! That it was the

negation of Gnosticism, the antithesis of phenomenal Spiritualism.

That it substituted faith for facts; a physical resurrection for a

spiritual continuity, and a corporeal Christ for the trans-corporeal

man.

The Christian Revelation leaves no room for modern Spiritualism, and

they are logically, truly Christians who reject it! It recognises no

other rising again except at the last day, and then only for the few

who believed in Jesus (John vi. 40). The Christians have no other

world but one at the end of this; no other spirits extant excepting

their physical Christ and the devil.

People who will see nothing contradictory in direct opposites, no

difference betwixt black and white, but rather the necessary duality

of antiphonal truth, who can accept a misinterpretation of mythology

for the Word of God, are of little account as witnesses for

Spiritualism. They who tell a story about the whale swallowing Jonah

are not likely to be credited when they come with another that looks

very like Jonah swallowing the whale. Professed believers in the

literal truth of the Gospel fables are of necessity “_Suspects_” as

witnesses for abnormal and extraordinary facts.

Pointing to his antagonist on the platform, O’Connel once enquired

of his audience, “Can ye believe a single word that a gentleman says

who wears a waistcoat of _that_ colour?” It was yellow, and they

couldn’t.

What is the use of taking your “Bible oath” that this thing is true,

if the Book you are sworn upon is a magazine of falsehoods already

exploded or just going off?

Moreover, the Christian Priesthood has been preaching through all

these centuries that the dead do _not_ return; and the living have

believed them.

Dr. Sprenger has calculated that nine million persons have been put

to death as Witches, Wizards, or Mediums, since 1484, when Pope

Innocent VIII. issued his Bull against Spiritualism and all its

practices, which were considered to be the works of the devil.

Besides, if the Christian scheme of damnation be true, as assigned

to the teaching of Jesus, no humane person should want to know that

there is any hereafter.

Spiritualism can make no headway where it has to draw after it this

dead weight of a tail.

Christian Spiritualism also ostentatiously proclaims that it has

nothing in the world to do with “Woman’s Rights,” “Vaccination,” or

any such merely human interests. It would seek to create an interest

in another life, whilst ignoring the vital interests of this. But

that is to sign its own death-warrant and to seal its own speedy

doom. This is to repeat the mistake and follow the failure of the

Christian system of saving souls for another life whilst allowing

them to be damned in this. At the same time, it would drag

Spiritualism into the bankrupt business of Historic Christianity and

bind up a third testament to save the other two, as a sort of

Trinity in Unity. But as a system of thought, of religion, or morals

and a mode of interpreting nature, Historic Christianity is moribund

and cannot be saved, or resuscitated by transfusion of new blood

into it; not if you bled Spiritualism to death in trying to give it

a little new life. They try in vain to make our phenomena guarantee

the miracles of mythology as spiritual realities. They try in vain

to tether the other world in this and make it draw for the

fraudulent old faith. They keep on jumping up and down to persuade

themselves and others that they are free. But it is only a question

of length of chain, for those who are still fettered fast at foot

upon the ancient standing-ground.

I have not answered the writer in the paper quoted by _Light_, and

approved by Dr. Wyld, for the reason that his acquaintance with my

data was too limited to make discussion profitable or useful. Those

data are already presented in accessible books and pamphlets, and

there is no need for me to repeat them in reply to him. Those who

undertake to write on so perplexing a subject ought to be able to

illuminate it and enlighten their opponents. The problems are not to

be solved by any amount of personal simplicity. I am always ready to

meet any competent and well-informed defender of the faith upon the

platform or in the press. I should prefer it to be a bishop, who is

also an Egyptologist. But beggars are not allowed to be choosers. I

am prepared at any time to demonstrate the entirely mythical and

mystical origin of the Christ, and the non-spiritual, non-historical

beginnings of the vast complex called Christianity.

GERALD MASSEY.

[Any “Bishop Egyptologist,” or even Assyriologist, of whom we have

heard there are not a few in England, is cordially invited to

defend his position in the pages of LUCIFER. The “Son of the

Morning” is the _Light-Bearer_, and welcomes light from every

quarter of the globe.—ED.]

------------------

[NOTE.—As _Lucifer_ cannot concur in the exclusively _exoteric_

view, taken by Mr. Massey, of this allegorical, though none the

less philosophical, scripture, the next number will contain an

article dealing with the _esoteric_ meaning of the New

Testament.—ED.]

TO THE AUTHOR OF “LIGHT ON THE PATH.”

There is a sentence in your “Comments” which has haunted me with a

sense of irritation: “To obtain knowledge by experiment is too

tedious a method for those who aspire to do real work,” &c. Have we

any knowledge, of whatever sort, that has been of use in the world,

which has been obtained otherwise than experimentally? By patient

and persistent toil of sifting and testing, we have obtained the

little knowledge that is of service to us. Is there such a thing as

“certain intuition”? Has intuitive knowledge, if such there be, been

accepted as positive knowledge until it has been submitted to the

test of experiment? Would it be right that it should be? Your

illustration of the “determined workman” brings the question down

(as I think the question should be brought) to the plane of

practice. Is there any workman who can know his tools until he has

tried them? Is not the history of knowledge the history of

intuitions put to the test of practice? Intuitions, or what we call

such, seem to me quite as apt and likely to deceive us as anything

in the world; we only know them for good when we have tried them.

INTERROGATOR.

---

It seems to me there is some confusion in this letter between

obtaining knowledge by experiment, and testing it by experiment.

Edison knew that his discoveries were only things to look for, and

he tested his knowledge by experiment. The actual work of great

inventors is the bringing of intuitive knowledge on to the plane of

practice by applying the test of experiment. But all inventors are

seers; and some of them having died without being able to put into

practice the powers which they knew existed in Nature were

considered madmen. Later on, other men are more fortunate, and

re-discover the laughed-at knowledge. This is an old and familiar

story, but we need constantly to be reminded of it. How often have

great musicians or great artists been regarded as “infant prodigies”

in their childhood? They have intuitive knowledge of that power of

which they are chosen interpreters, and experiment is only necessary

in order to find out how to give that which they know to others.

Intuitive knowledge in reference to the subjects with which I have

been dealing must indeed be tested by experiment; and it is the

whole purpose of “Light on the Path” itself, and the “Comments” to

urge men to test their knowledge in this way. But the vital

difference between this and material forms of knowledge is that for

all occult purposes a man must obtain his own knowledge before he

can use it. There are many subjects of time content to linger on

through æons of slow development, and pass the threshold of eternity

at last by sheer force of the great wheel of life with which they

move; possibly during their interminable noviciate, they may obtain

knowledge by experiment and with well-tested tools. Not so the

pioneer, the one who claims his divine inheritance now. He must work

as the great artists, the great inventors have done; obtain

knowledge by intuition, and have such sublime faith in his own

knowledge that his life is readily devoted to testing it.

But for this purpose the testing has to be actually done in the

astral life. In a new world, where the use of the senses is a pain,

how can the workman stay to test his tools? The old proverb about

the good workman who never quarrels with them, however bad they are,

though of course had he the choice he would use the best, applies

here.

As to whether intuitive knowledge exists or no, I can only ask how

came philosophies, metaphysics, mathematics into existence? All

these represent a portion of abstract truth.

Before I received this letter the “Comments” for this month were

written, in which, as it happens, I have spoken a great deal about

intuitive knowledge. Therefore, I will now only quote the definition

of a philosopher from Plato, which is given near the end of Book

V.,—

“I mean by philosopher, the man who is devoted to the acquisition of

knowledge, real knowledge, and not merely inquisitive. The more our

citizens approach this temperament, the better the state will be.

True knowledge in its perfection and its entirety, man cannot

attain. But he can attain to a kind of knowledge of realities, if he

has any knowledge at all, because he cannot know nonentities. Hence

his knowledge is half-way between real knowledge and ignorance, and

we must call it opinion.”

NOTE.—Several questions which have been received are held over to

be answered next month.

------------------

_To the Editors of_ LUCIFER.

In the interesting and lucid article on “Karma” in your number of

September 15th, everything seems to hinge on the theory of

re-incarnation. “Very well,” says the author of that paper, “let

us take the principle of re-incarnation for granted.” But is not

this a rather unphilosophical way of handling a subject of such

gravity? Take this or that principle for granted, and you may go

about to prove anything under the sun. It is the old weakness of

begging the question. Is it not this taking for granted what

cannot be proved, and is not attempted to be proved, that has led

astray speculators—both scientific and religious—everywhere and in

every age, and is it not upon similar assumptions that the whole

monstrous fabric of theology rests? Of course, in every kind of

speculation one is compelled to set out with an assumption of some

sort; but then the first thing the reader demands is, that the

grounds shall be shown upon which the assumption rests; the

assumption, whatever it be, must be made good before one can be

asked to accept that which is to be raised upon it. And here comes

in my question: What is the warrant or sanction for the principle

of re-incarnation? What is the principle grounded upon? Do we

undergo re-incarnation, and how do you know it?

Having set out with the assumption, the author does not return to it

again, and at the end of the article I am as uninstructed as at the

outset respecting the pivotal principle upon which all that follows

seems to turn.

INTERROGATOR.

------------------

The author of “Karma” will go into this question fully in a paper

devoted entirely to the subject of re-incarnation. The two subjects

are inextricably interwoven, but it was decided that to treat the

two at the same time would produce too great a confusion, and offer

too wide an area of speculation for the mind to grapple with.

Therefore this course was adopted of taking the principle of

re-incarnation for granted. It is possible that the second paper

should have come first, but the two theories stand side by side, not

one before the other, so that the question of precedence was a

difficult one. But it is necessary, in view of this blending of the

ideas, that the reader shall have the complete presentation of both

before him, and then draw his conclusions. Therefore indulgence is

asked until the papers dealing with each subject are completed. As

many readers may have felt the same difficulty as our correspondent,

we are glad to insert this letter and reply.—ED.

Reviews.

=THE KABBALAH UNVEILED.=

TRANSLATED BY S. L. MACGREGOR MATHERS.[28]

-----

Footnote 28:

George Redway, 15, York Street, Covent Garden.

-----

The author of this welcome volume has supplied the present

generation of students of theosophy and occultism with a text-book

which has been long wanted and waited for. The “Zohar” is the great

storehouse of the ancient Hebrew theosophy, supplemented by the

philosophical doctrines of the mediæval Jewish Rabbis. It consists

of several distinct yet allied tracts, each discussing some special

branch of the subject; each tract again consists of several

portions, a kernel of most ancient dogma, to which are added

comments and explanations, in some cases by several hands and at

very different epochs. There is sufficient proof that these kernels

of dogma are remnants of one of the oldest systems of philosophy

that have come down to us, and they show also intrinsic evidence

that they are associated at least with the return from the

Babylonish captivity. On the other hand, it is pretty certain that

the Zohar, in its present form, was put together and first printed

about 1558, at Mantua, and a little later in other editions at

Cremona and Lublin. This Mantuan edition was a revision of the

collection of tracts collected and edited in MS. form by Moses de

Leon, of Guadalaxara, in Spain, about 1300; even the most hostile

views of the antiquity of the Zohar grant this much, and although

direct historical evidence is not forthcoming of the several steps

in the course of transmission of these doctrines from ante-Roman

times, yet, as aforesaid, the internal evidence is ample to show the

essential origination of the specially Hebrew ideas found in the

Zohar from Rabbis, more or less tinged with a Babylonish cast, who

must have flourished antecedent to the building of the second

Temple. The tradition of the mediæval Rabbis definitely assigned the

authorship to Rabbi Schimeon ben Jochai, who lived in the reign of

the Roman Emperor Titus, A.D. 70-80; and it is the claim of

authorship made on his behalf that the modern critic is so fond of

contesting.

The “Zohar,” or “Splendour,” or “Book of Illumination,” and the

“Sepher Yetzirah” are almost the only extant books of the Kabbalah,

Qbalah or Cabbala. The “Kabbalah Denudata” of Knorr von Rosenroth,

is a Latin version of the former, with commentaries by himself and

by certain learned Rabbis. No French and no German translation of

the Zohar has ever been published, nor until the present time has

any English version been printed. Eliphaz Levi has, however,

paraphrased a few chapters of the “Book of Concealed Mystery,” and

these have been printed in the _Theosophist_.

Some parts of the Zohar are written in pure Hebrew, but a large

portion is in Aramaic Chaldee, and there are passages in other

dialects; this variation of language adds immensely to the

difficulties of an accurate translation.

Knorr von Rosenroth was a most able and compendious Hebrew savant,

and his translation of much of the Zohar into Latin is a work of

established reputation, and has been, indeed, almost the only means

by which the students of our era have been able to consult Hebraic

philosophy. The present revival of theosophical studies by the

English speaking races has created a demand for the Kabbalah in an

English dress, and hence the appearance of the present work is well

timed, and will form an epoch in the history of occultism; and much

good fruit will no doubt be borne by a more intimate acquaintance

with Jewish lore, which will tinge the present tendency to supremacy

of the Sanscrit and Hermetic forms of mysticism. There is much

reason to suppose that an attentive study of each of these forms of

knowledge may lead one to the Hidden Wisdom; but a skilful analogy,

and an investigation into the three forms of dogma on parallel lines

will give a breadth of grasp and a cosmopolitan view of the matter

which should lead to a happy solution of the great problems of life

in a speedy and satisfactory manner. The Kabbalah may, in concise

terms, be said to teach the ancient Rabbinical doctrines of the

nature and attributes of the Divinity, the cosmogony of our

universe, the creation of angels and the human soul, the destiny of

angels and men, the dogma of equilibrium, and the transcendental

symbolism of the Hebrew letters and numerals.

Mr. Mathers, who is a most patient and persevering student, if not

professor, of mystic lore, is at the same time a first-rate

classical scholar, and a skilful interpreter of the Hebrew tongue,

and his translation from the Latin, varied and improved by his own

study of the original Chaldee, has produced an English version of

the Kabbalah Denudata which is eloquent in its construction, true to

its text, and lucid in its abstruseness. For the matter is abstruse,

much of it, and some is practically incomprehensible to the

beginner, to the world in general for certain, and perhaps to every

one at the first glance. But it will be certainly perceived that

those very portions which seem most extravagant at a first reading

are just the passages from which later a light will arise and lead

one on to a firm grasp of the subject. To take up this volume and

read at odd moments is a useless and hopeless task; no progress will

be made, at any rate at first, except by thoroughly abstracting

one’s individuality from the things of common life; disappointment

can only accompany superficial reading.

Great credit is due to the enterprise of Mr. Redway in publishing

this volume, for which no very extensive sale could have been

anticipated; that he has already distributed a considerable number

is matter for congratulation to himself and to the public. It is

hoped that his success will induce him to publish other volumes of

antique lore, of which many yet remain more or less completely

ignored by the present generation.

The “Siphra Dtzenioutha,” the “Idra Rabba,” and the “Idra Zuta,”

included in this volume are doubtless three of the most valuable of

the tracts of the Zohar, yet there are others of equal interest. The

“Book of the Revolutions of Souls” is a most curious and mysterious

work, and the “Asch Metzareph” is a treatise on the relations

between Theosophy and the oldest alchemical ideas which are known to

exist; it is a work on the Asiatic plane, on the lowest of the four

kabbalistic worlds of Emanation.

Beyond the limits of the Zohar proper, the “Sepher Yetzirah,” is a

treatise which for interest and instruction cannot be surpassed.

Mr. Mathers supplies us with an introduction to the Qabalah, which

stamps him as a master of the science, and although he refers us on

some pages to Ginsburg (a recognised authority), yet his remarks and

explanation are more deep and thorough than those published in

Ginsburg’s little English pamphlet, and are more discursive and

complete. My remarks on the difficulty of our subject hardly render

it necessary for me to insist on the absolute necessity of a

painstaking study of this introduction, which will supply in a great

measure the want of a _de novo_ education in Hebrew, and Hebrew

modes of thought and expression.

Mr. Mathers justly insists on the literal rendering of the Hebrew

title by the spelling Qabalah, which is no doubt correct, but lays

him open to a charge of pedantry, which perhaps does not much affect

him, since it would only come from superficial and possibly scoffing

critics. The use of the letter Q without its usual English companion

the u is sanctioned and advised, in this connection, by the learned

Max Müller and other Orientalists of repute. To avoid the printing

of Hebrew letters, the publisher has adopted a scheme of printing

Hebrew words in English capital letters (in addition to the mode of

pronunciation), after a method given by the author in tabular form.

To the Hebrew scholar this gives an idea of barbarism, which is

painful to the eye and sadly mars the volume, whilst it only saves

the student the task of learning an alphabet of 22 letters. I differ

from the author in representing the Hebrew Teth by T, while

depicting the Tau by TH., the reverse would have been a closer

imitation of the sounds. The Introduction includes a learned

excursus upon the idea of “Negative Existence,” in which

considerable light is thrown on that difficult subject; skilful

definitions are added concerning the AIN, the AIN SOPH, and AIN SOPH

AUR, answering in English to Negativity, The Limitless, and

Limitless Light, the first essences of Deity. Several pages are

devoted to a clear description of the Ten Sephiroth, the Numerical

Conceptions of Godhead, and their explanatory titles; the Four

Worlds of Emanation, and the component elements of a Human Soul; the

Mysteries of the Hexagram as a type of Macroprosopus, the Most Holy

Ancient One, or God the Father—and the succeeding mystery of

Microprosopus, the Lesser Countenance, typified in the Pentagram and

corresponding to the Christian Personality of the “Son of God,” are

all explained at length. The series of references to the IHVH the

Tetragrammaton, the Concealed Name of unknown pronunciation, form a

valuable dissertation. The book is supplied with nine well executed

diagrams, explanatory of the Sephiroth, the sacred names, essences

of the soul, and a very perfect and complete scheme of the Sephiroth

in the four worlds of emanation associated with the Vision of

Ezekiel. Mr. Mathers desires to call special attention to the

differentiation of the Deity in the Emanations, into the female type

in addition to masculine characteristics: note the idealism of the

Superior HE, Binah, the Mother, and the Inferior HE, Malkuth, the

Bride of Microprosopus, the Kingdom of God (the Son of God and his

Bride the Church), note that Genesis i. 26, says “let _Us_ make man

in our image,” “male and female created he them;” the “_us_” is

“Elohim,” a noun in the plural.

The “Siphra Dtzenioutha,” or “Book of Concealed Mystery,” is the

most difficult of comprehension. Mr. Mathers adds a running

commentary of his own, which proves to be very valuable. It consists

of five chapters; in the first are found references to the Mystical

Equilibrium, the worlds of unbalanced force characterised as the

Edomite kings, the Vast Countenance, Theli the Dragon, the powers of

IHVH, and the essence of the female power—the Mother. The second

chapter mentions the Beard of Truth, and passes on to define

Microprosopus. The third chapter treats of the Beard of

Microprosopus in an allegorical manner, and of the formation of the

Supernal Man. An annotation follows concerning Prayer, and a curious

note on the word AMEN! as composed of IHVH, and ADNI Adonai or Lord.

Chapter IV. treats of the male and female essences, and has a

curious note on the Hebrew letter Hé, speaking of it as female, and

composed of D, Daleth, and I, Jod—a great mystery worthy of study.

Chapter V. speaks of the Supernal Eden, the Heavens, the Earth, the

Waters, the Giants-Nephilim in the earth, wars of the kings, the

tree of knowledge of good and evil, the serpent, and the houses of

judgment; so that this treatise is no less discursive than abstruse.

The “Idra Rabba,” or “Greater Holy Assembly,” consisted of ten

Rabbis, of whom Rabbi Schimeon was chief, and the book contains

their several speeches and comments upon the doctrines laid down by

Rabbi Schimeon, on a similar plan to the conversations narrated in

the Book of Job. Twenty-five chapters are occupied with an allegory

of the several parts of Macroprosopus, the type of God the Father;

the twenty-sixth concerns the Edomite kings, the vanished creations;

Chapters XXVII. to XLII. are an allegorical description of

Microprosopus, the Son Deity, the V or Vau of the Tetragrammaton;

Chapter XLIII. concerns the Judgments; XLIV., the Supernal Man; and

XLV. is a Conclusion, in narrative form, of the passing away of

three of the ten Rabbis, and the acknowledgment of R. Schimeon as

chief of them all.

Very much of this descriptive volume referring to Deity is not only

abstruse, but is, to the modern European, verbiage run wild; yet in

this characteristic it is truly Oriental and Hebrew; some passages

remind me very much of the “Song of Solomon,” there are the same

exuberant and flowery outbursts of poetic imagery.

The “Idra Zuta,” or “Lesser Holy Assembly,” is a similar treatise,

explanatory of the Holy powers of the Deity, ascribing honour and

power to Macroprosopus, Microprosopus, AIMA the God Mother, and the

Bride of God; with instructive allusions to the Prior Worlds of the

so-called Edomite Kings, and the sexual aspects of Godhead. The work

concludes with a narrative of the death of R. Schimeon and his

burial, the whole “Idra” being his last dying declaration of

doctrine.

It is noteworthy that the words of the “Smaragdime Tablet of

Hermes”—“that which is below is like that which is above” occur in

paragraph 388 of the Idra Rabba, and are thus introduced, “We have

learned through Barietha, the tradition given forth _without_ the

Holy City.” I note also that the Mischna is mentioned in the Idra

Zuta. Want of space compels me to omit all extracts from this

volume, which is a matter of regret, as many passages are very

eloquently written.

A flaw in this book is the construction of the Index, which should

have contained sub-headings, as well as main headings. Of what value

is the entry “Microprosopus,” followed by eleven lines each of

fourteen page-numbers? A score of references, sub-divided between

his characteristics, his relationships, and his titles would have

been of more practical use. With this exception, and when the

abomination of Hebrew in English letters has been tolerated, we must

acknowledge the production of a most valuable theosophical and

philosophical storehouse of ancient Hebrew doctrine, on which Mr.

MacGregor Mathers may be heartily congratulated.

W. WYNN WESTCOTT, M.B.

------------------

“AN ADVENTURE AMONG THE ROSICRUCIANS.”

BY A STUDENT OF OCCULTISM.[29]

-----

Footnote 29:

Copyrighted by Franz Hartmann, Boston Occult Publishing Co., 1887.

-----

A strange and original little story, charmingly fantastic, but full

of poetic feeling and, what is more, of deep philosophical and

occult truths, for those who can perceive the ground-work it is

built upon. A fresh Eclogue of Virgil in its first part, descriptive

of Alpine scenery in the Tyrol, where the author “dreamt” his

adventure, with “shining glaciers glistening like vast mirrors in

the light of the rising sun,” deep ravines with rushing streams

dancing between the cliffs, blue lakes slumbering among the meadows,

and daisy-sprinkled valleys resting in the shadow of old pine

forests.

Gradually as the hero of the “Adventure” ascended higher and higher,

he began losing the sense of the world of the real, to pass

unconsciously into the land of waking dreams.

“In these solitudes there is nothing to remind one of the

existence of man, except occasionally the sawed-off trunk of a

tree, showing the destructive influence of human activity. In some

old, rotten, and hollow trunks rain-water has collected, sparkling

in the sun like little mirrors, such as may be used by

water-nymphs, and around their edges mushrooms are growing, which

our imagination transforms into chairs, tables, and baldachinos

for elves and fairies.... No sound could now be heard, except

occasionally the note of a titmouse and the cry of a hawk who rose

in long-drawn spiral motion high up into the air....”

Throwing himself upon the moss, he begins watching the play of the

water until it becomes “alive with forms of the most singular

shape,” with super-mundane beings dancing in the spray, “shaking

their heads in the sunshine and throwing off showers of liquid

silver from their waving locks.”...

“Their laughter sounded like that of the Falls of _Minnehaha_, and

from the crevices of the rocks peeped the ugly faces of gnomes and

kobolds, watching slyly the fairies.”

Then the dreamer asks himself a variety of questions of the most

perplexing nature, except, perhaps, to the materialist, who cuts

every psychological problem as Alexander cleft the Gordian knot....

“What is the reason that we imagine such things?” he inquires.

“Why do we endow ‘dead’ things with human consciousness and with

sensation?... Is our consciousness merely a product of the organic

activity of our physical body, or is it a function of the

universal life ... within the body? Is our personal consciousness

dependent for its existence on the existence of the physical body,

and does it die with it; or is there a spiritual consciousness,

belonging to a higher, immortal, and invisible self of man,

temporarily connected with the organism, but which may exist

independently of the latter? If such is the case, if our physical

organism is merely an instrument through which our consciousness

acts, then this instrument is _not_ our real self. If this is

true, then our real self is there where our consciousness exists,

and may exist independently of the latter.... Can there be any

_dead_ matter in the Universe? Is not even a stone held together

by the ‘cohesion’ of its particles, and attracted to the earth by

‘gravitation’? But what else is this ‘cohesion’ and ‘gravitation’

but _energy_, and what is ‘energy’ but the _soul_, an interior

principle called _force_, which produces an outward manifestation

called _matter_?... All things possess life, all things possess

soul, and there may be soul-beings ... invisible to our physical

senses, but which may be perceived by our soul.” (p. 19.)

The arch-druid of modern Hylo-Idealism, Dr. Lewins, failing to

appear to rudely shake our philosopher out of his unscientific

thoughts, a dwarf appears in his stead. The creature, however, does

not warn the dreamer, as that _too_-learned _Idealist_ would. He

does not tell him that he transcends “the limits of the anatomy of

his conscious Ego,” since “_psychosis_ is now diagnosed by

_medico-psychological symptomatology as vesiculo-neurosis in

activity_,”[30] and—as quoth the raven—“merely this, and nothing

more.” But being a _cretin_, he laughingly invites him to his

“Master.”

-----

Footnote 30:

“What is Religion: A Vindication of Free Thought.” By C. N.,

annotated by Robert Lewins, M. D. See his Appendices, p. 35, _et

seq._

-----

The hero follows, and finds he is brought to a “theosophical

monastery,” in a hidden valley of the most gorgeous description.

Therein he meets, to his surprise, with adepts of both sexes; for,

as he learns later:—

“What has intelligence to do with the sex of the body? Where the

sexual instincts end, there ends the influence of the sex.”

Meanwhile, he is brought into the presence of a male adept of

majestic appearance, who welcomes and informs him that he is among

“The Brothers of the Golden and Rosy Cross.” He is invited to remain

with them for some time, and see how they live. His permanent

residence with them is, however, objected to. The reasons given for

it are as follow:—

“There are still too many of the lower and animal elements

adhering to your constitution.... They could not resist long the

destructive influence of the pure and spiritual air of this place;

and, as you have not yet a sufficient amount of truly spiritual

elements in your organism to render it firm and strong, you would,

by remaining here, soon become weak and waste away, like a person

in consumption; you would become miserable instead of being happy,

and you would die.”

Then follows a philosophical conversation on WILL, in which the

latter, in individual man, is said to become the stronger if it only

uses the universal Will-Power in Nature, _itself remaining passive

in the_ LAW. This sentence has to be well understood, lest it should

lead the reader into the error of accepting pure _mediumistic

passivity_ as the best thing for spiritual and occult development. A

phenomenon is produced on a passing cloud, into which apparent life

is infused by the Master’s hand, stretched towards it; this is again

explained by showing that LIFE is universal and identical with WILL.

Other phenomena still more wonderful follow; and they are all

explained as being produced through natural laws, in which science

will not believe. The thoughts of the student are read and answered

as though his mind were an opened book. A lovely garden, full of

exotic plants and luxurious palm-trees, into which he is taken,

striking him as something unnatural in the Tyrolean Alps; so much

luxury, moreover, seeming to him to disagree with the ascetic views

just expressed by the adept, he is told forthwith, in answer to his

unexpressed thoughts, that the garden had been erected to make his

visit an agreeable one; and that it was an _illusion_. “All these

trees and plants ... require no gardeners, ... they cost us nothing

but an effort of our imagination”—he learns.

“Surely,” he said, “this rose cannot be an illusion ... or an effect

of my imagination?”

“No,” answered the adept ... “but it is a product of the imagination

of Nature, whose processes can be guided by the will of the adept.

The whole world ... is nothing else but a world of the imagination

of the _Universal Mind_, which is the _Creator_ of forms....”

To exemplify the teaching, a Magnolia Tree in full blossom sixty

feet high, standing at a distance, is made to look less and less

dense. The green foliage fades into gray, becomes “more and more

shadowy and transparent,” until “it seemed to be merely the ghost of

a tree, and finally disappeared entirely from view.”

“Thus” continued the adept, “you see that tree stood in the sphere

of my mind as it stood in yours. We are all living within the

sphere of each other’s mind.... The Adept creates his own images;

the ordinary mortal lives in the products of the imagination of

others, or the imagination of nature. We live in the paradise of

our own soul ... but the spheres of our souls are not narrow. They

have expanded far beyond the limits of the visible bodies, and

will continue to expand until they become one with the universal

Soul....”

“The power of the imagination is yet too little known to mankind,

else they would better beware of what they think. If a man thinks

a good or an evil thought, that thought calls into existence a

corresponding form or power ... which may assume density and

become living ... and live long after the physical body of the man

who created it has died. It will accompany his soul after death,

because _the creations are attracted to their creator_.” (p. 83.)

Scattered hither and thither, through this little volume are pearls

of wisdom. For that which is rendered in the shape of dialogue and

monologue is the fruit gathered by the author during a long research

in old forgotten and mouldy, MSS. of the Rosicrucians, or mediæval

alchemists, and in the worm-eaten _infoglios_ of unrecognized, yet

great adepts of every age.

Thus when the author approaches the subject of theosophical retreats

or communities—a dream cherished by many a theosophist—he is

answered by the “Adept” that “the _true ascetic is he who lives in

the world, surrounded by its temptations_; he in whose soul the

animal elements are still active, craving for, the gratification of

their desires and possessing the means for such gratification, but

_who by the superior power of his will conquers his animal self_.

Having attained that state he may retire from the world.... He

expects no future reward in heaven; for what could heaven offer him

except happiness which he already possesses? He desires no other

good, but to create good for the world.”... Saith the Adept.

“If you could establish theosophical monasteries, where

intellectual and spiritual development would go hand-in-hand,

where a new science could be taught, based upon a true knowledge

of the fundamental laws of the universe, and when, at the same

time man would be taught how to obtain a mastery over himself, you

would confer the greatest possible benefit upon the world. Such a

convent would afford immense advantage for the advancement of

intellectual research.... These convents would become centres of

intelligence....”

Then, reading the student’s thoughts:

“You mistake,” he added; “it is not the want of money which

prevents us to execute the idea. It is the impossibility to find

the proper kind of people to inhabit the convent after it is

established. Indeed, we would be poor Alchemists if we could not

produce gold in any desirable quantity ... but gold is a curse to

mankind, and we do not wish to increase the curse.... Distribute

gold among men, and you will only create craving for more; give

them gold, and you will transform them into devils. No, it is not

gold that we need; it is men who thirst after wisdom. _There are

thousands who desire knowledge, but few who desire wisdom...._

Even many of your would-be Occultists ... have taken up their

investigations merely for the purpose of gratifying idle

curiosity, while others desire to pry into the secrets of nature,

to obtain knowledge which they desire to employ for the attainment

of selfish ends. Give us men or women who desire nothing else but

the truth, and we will take care of their needs....”

And then having given a startlingly true picture of modern

civilisation, and explained the occult side of certain things

pertaining to knowledge, the Adept led on the student to his

laboratory, where he left him for a few minutes alone. Then another

adept, looking like a monk, joined him, and drew his attention to

some powders, by the fumigations of which the Elementals, or

“Spirits of Nature” could be made to appear. This provoked the

student’s curiosity. Sure of his invulnerability in the matter of

tests and temptations, he begged to be allowed to see these

creatures....

Suddenly the room looked dim, and the walls of the laboratory

disappeared. He felt he was in the water, light as a feather,

dancing on the waves, with the full moon pouring torrents of light

upon the ocean, and the beautiful Isle of Ceylon appearing in the

distance. The melodious sound of female voices made him espy near to

where he was three beautiful female beings. The Queen of the

Undines, the most lovely of the three—for these were the longed-for

Elementals—entices the unwary student to her submarine palace. He

follows her, and, forgetting theosophical convents, Adepts and

Occultism, succumbs to the temptation....

* * * * * * * * * *

Was it but a dream? It would so appear. For he awakes on the mossy

plot where he had lain to rest in the morning, and from whence he

had followed the dwarf. But how comes it that he finds in his

button-hole the exotic lily given to him by the adept lady, and in

his pocket the piece of gold transmuted in his presence by the

“Master”? He rushes home, and finds on the table of his hotel-room a

promised work on “The Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians,” and on

its fly-leaf a few words in pencil. They ran thus:—

“_Friend, I regret ... I cannot invite you to visit us again for the

present. He who desires to remain in the peaceful valley must know

how to resist all sensual attractions, even those of the Water

Queen. Study ... bring the circle into the square, mortify the

metals.... When you have succeeded we shall meet again.... I shall

be with you when you need me._”

The work ends with the quotation from Paul’s Second Epistle to the

Corinthians, where the man caught up into Paradise (whether in the

body or out of the body ... God knoweth) “_heard unspeakable words,

which it is not lawful for a man to utter_....”

The “adventure” is more than worth perusal.

------------------

TABULA BEMBINA SIVE MENSA ISIACA. THE ISIAC TABLET OF CARDINAL

BEMBO. ITS HISTORY AND OCCULT SIGNIFICANCE.

BY W. WYNN WESTCOTT, M.B. BATH. R. H. FRYAR, 1887.

This work is a monograph of 20 foolscap folio pages, on the

celebrated Isiac Tablet. It is well and clearly printed in

good-sized type on good paper, and has for frontispiece a

well-executed photogravure of the Tablet itself, from a drawing made

by the author some years previously. It is written in the clear

style which distinguishes Dr. Westcott’s writings, and in all

quotations chapter and verse are scrupulously given. Three centuries

ago this Tablet greatly exercised the minds of the learned, and

continued to do so till the researches of modern Egyptologists began

to throw some doubt upon its authenticity as a reliable specimen of

ancient Egyptian art; since which time the interest in it has

gradually declined. Undoubtedly occult, as its meaning and symbolism

alike are, we feel that this monograph will be of service to all

lovers and students of the mystical ideas of ancient Egypt. The

first thing which strikes the eye of even the most careless observer

is the careful and systematic arrangement of the figures and emblems

in triads, or groups of three, which system of classification

prevailed in the religious symbolism of the Egyptians. The Tablet,

again, is divided by transverse horizontal lines into three

principal portions, Upper, Lower, and Middle, the latter being

sub-divided by vertical lines into three parts, the centre of which

is occupied by a throned female figure, flanked on each side by a

triad, of which the central figure in each instance is seated. Thus

the Upper and Lower portions of the Tablet give each a Dodecad

sub-divided into Triads, while the central portion forms a Heptad.

This at once corresponds to the symbolism of the ספר יצירה, _Sepher

Yetzirah_, Chapter VI., § 3. “The Triad, the Unity which standeth

one and alone, the Heptad divided into Three as opposed to Three and

the Centre Mediating between them, the Twelve which stand in war ...

the Unity above the Triad, the Triad above the Heptad, the Heptad

above the Dodecad and they are all bound together each with each.”

Commencing with a description of the Tablet, Dr. Westcott gives as

much as is known of its history, quoting from Kircher, Keysler,

Murray, and others. It appears that it was first discovered in Rome,

at a spot where a Temple of Isis had once stood. After the sack of

Rome by the Constable De Bourbon, it fell into the hands of a smith,

who sold it to Cardinal Bembo for a large sum. At his death it came

into the possession of the Dukes of Mantua, at the taking of which

city in 1630, it passed into the hands of Cardinal Pava. It is now

in the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities at Turin. The dimensions are 4

ft. 2 in., by 2 ft. 5½ in. Thus its experiences during the last few

centuries have been rather stormy.

After mentioning Æneas De Vico and Pignorius, Dr. Westcott gives us

an extensive digest of the views of Athanasius Kircher, from whose

plate in the “Œdipus Ægyptiacus” the photogravure at the

commencement is taken. Kircher undoubtedly more nearly grasped the

esoteric design of the tablet than any one except Eliphas Levi, and

his attempted explanation marks him alike as a profound scholar and

an advanced mystic, notwithstanding the great disadvantages with

which he had to contend in the utter ignorance of Egyptology as it

is now understood, which prevailed at the date at which he wrote.

Quotations and notes from Montfauçon, Shuckford, Warburton,

Jablonski, Caylus, Banier, Mackenzie, Kenealy, and Winckelman follow

the excerpts from Kircher, and we then come to the views of modern

Egyptologists on the subject, notably those of Professor Le Page

Renouf as expressed to Dr Westcott in person. The reasons they

assign for doubting the authenticity of the Tablet are briefly

these:—that they consider the execution of the work stamps it as a

Roman production; that the hieroglyphics will not read so as to make

sense; that the running pattern with the masks would never have been

employed by an Egyptian; and that some of the best known Egyptian

deities are conspicuous by their absence. In answer to these attacks

Dr. Westcott wisely remarks that “it is a gross absurdity to suppose

that any man capable of designing such a tablet, over which immense

energy, research, and knowledge must have been expended, to say

nothing of the skill displayed in its execution, should have wasted

his abilities in perpetrating a gigantic hoax; for that is, I

suppose, what some modern writers mean who call it a ‘forgery’; but

a _forgery_ is a _deceitful imitation_. How it can be called an

imitation considering that its special character is that of being

different to any other Stelé or Tablet known is not clear; and how

it can be a deceit is also incomprehensible, since it bears no name

or date purporting to refer it to a definite author or period.”

On page 16 Dr. Westcott observes that the Four Genii of the Dead are

conspicuous by their absence, but he seems to overlook their

representation in figure 41 of the Limbus, where the sepulchral

vases beneath the couch have, as usual, the heads of the Genii of

the Dead.

A quotation, together with a plate from Levi’s “Histoire de la

Magie,” follows this, together with a disquisition on the Taro,

which has so much exercised occult students of late. Altogether the

book is an extremely interesting production, and Dr. Westcott puts

forward his own views on the subject with much clearness.

------------------

EARTH’S EARLIEST AGES

AND THEIR CONNECTION WITH MODERN SPIRITUALISM AND THEOSOPHY.

BY G. H. PEMBER, M.A. (Hodder & Stoughton).

To meet with a book like this in the last quarter of the nineteenth

century is like meeting a Pterodactyl strolling along the Row in the

height of the season. But more careful perusal, while augmenting the

reader’s wonder, mingles with it a certain respect for the writer’s

courage and unflinching logic.

Granting his fundamental premiss—the verbal inspiration of the

Bible—and accepting his first principle of interpretation, his

argument is at least consistent, and is weakened by no half-hearted

pandering to the facts of experience or the discoveries of science.

To quote Mr. Pember’s primary canon, he assumes—

I. “That the first chapter of Genesis, equally with those which

follow it, is, in its primary meaning, neither vision nor

allegory, but plain history, and must, therefore, be accepted as a

literal statement of facts.”

On this basis he gives an interpretation of Genesis, the main idea

of which is the interposition of “The Interval” between the creation

and the “Six Days” described in the text. During this period the

earth was wholly given over to Satan and his host, and the “Six

Days” creation was, according to Mr. Pember, the restoration and

reformation of the world from this chaos of confusion.

But space forbids to follow the author into details, since one-half

of his volume is devoted to the subject indicated in its sub-title,

and this portion is of greater interest to readers of LUCIFER.

As an accurate and thorough student of the work of those he

condemns, Mr. Pember stands unrivalled. He has both read and

understood a very large part of the literature of Theosophy and

Spiritualism. His quotations are fair and well chosen, his comments

strictly moderate in tone and entirely free from any personal

animus. And these traits are the more surprising since the author

has certainly got the “Powers of the Air” very much on the brain. It

is hardly even a rhetorical expression to say that it is his firm

and unshakeable conviction, that all persons who do not hold the

same views of Biblical criticism and Scriptural exegesis as Mr.

Pember, are, to the extent of their difference from him, serving the

Powers of Evil, the Personal Devil, the Antichrist, whose coming he

expects in the very near future.

On this point only Mr. Pember does not seem to have the courage of

his opinions; perhaps he does not see, or seeing does not realise,

the inevitable conclusion to which his arguments point. But then he

may, after all, take refuge in the famous _credo quia absurdum_.

The author, moreover, is sure to meet with scant sympathy even from

the materialists to whom he is most nearly allied in thought. For he

accepts, _en bloc_, the phenomena and wonders of spiritualism as of

occultism, and never attempts even to question their reality.

Meanwhile, he believes in the resurrection of the _physical body_

after death, in a physical kingdom of Christ upon earth, and so on.

Indeed, his views are the most remarkable compound of pure

materialism and wholesale acceptance of the psychic and so-called

supernatural that have ever appeared in print.

To sum up, a few passages may be quoted to give an idea of the

spirit of Mr. Pember’s treatment of this part of the subject, which

at the same time will be the most telling criticism of his book to

the minds of those who have grasped the ideas of which he speaks.

“... the existence, in all times of the world’s history, of

persons with abnormal faculties, initiates of the great mysteries

and depositors of the secrets of antiquity, has been affirmed by a

testimony far too universal and persistent to admit of denial....

He who would be an adept must conform to the teaching of those

demons, predicted leaders of the last apostasy, who forbid to

marry, and command to abstain from meat.”

“We have never met with a single reported instance of a spirit

entering the lower spheres with the glad tidings, “Believe on the

Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” On the contrary, among

Spiritualists, as with Theosophists and Buddhists, sin can be

expiated only by personal suffering.... “Sin,” shrieks the

familiar of “M. A. Oxon,” “is remediable by repentance and

atonement and reparation personally wrought out in pain and shame,

not by coward cries for mercy, and by feigned assent to statements

which ought to create a shudder.”

Mr. Pember, therefore, believes in vicarious atonement in its

crudest form? He teaches that “repentance and faith” save man _from

the consequences_ of his actions!

After describing the “Perfect Way” as “an ecclesiastical compound of

Heathenism” (_with a capital H_), the author proceeds to expound the

doctrine of reincarnation as therein set forth. Nothing can be

fairer or more correct than this exposition, at the conclusion of

which we read:

“Jews, Christians, Buddhists and Mahommedans ... will become able

to unite in a universal belief that sin is expiated by

transmigrations and in the worship of ‘the Great Goddess’. The

conception of a second league of Babel has been formed in the

minds of Theosophists.”

And even then, would not such a league be better than the sectarian

wars, the religious persecutions, the tests and disabilities which

still disfigure _Christendom_ in the name of religion?

Further on the author refers to the occult axiom that “whereas God

is I AM, or positive being, the Devil is NOT, and remarks:

“There is little doubt that the culminations of the Mysteries was

the worship of Satan himself... It would appear, then, that from

remote ages, probably from the time when the Nephilim [the fallen

angels of Satan’s Host] were upon earth, there has existed a

league with the Prince of Darkness, a Society of men consciously

on the side of Satan, and against the Most High.

“The spells by which spirits may be summoned from the unseen are

now known to all; and those unearthly forms which in past times

were projected from the void only in the labyrinths, caverns, and

subterranean chambers of the initiated, are now manifesting

themselves in many a private drawing-room and parlour. Men have

become enamoured of demons, and ere long will receive the Prince

of the Demons as their God.”

Theosophy, says Mr. Pember, will become the creed of the

intellectual and the educated, while Spiritualism influences the

masses of mankind. And he traces the influences of Theosophy and

Buddhism in “Broad-Churchism, Universalism, Comtism, Secularism, and

Quietism.” Nay, even under the Temperance movement he spies the

lurking serpent of esoteric teaching and guidance, and he cites

letters from Christian friends complaining that these and other

philanthropic movements are being swamped, and their periodicals

occupied by Theosophists, who work on Buddhist principles.

In his concluding chapter, the author sums up a truly formidable

array of evidences to prove that “the advocates of modern thought

array themselves against every principle of the early revelations of

the Divine Will,” apparently since they deny and repudiate the

following “cosmic or universal laws”:—

I. The law of the Sabbath.

II. The headship of the man over the woman.

III. The institution of marriage [_i.e._, they practise _celibacy_].

IV. The law of substitution, that life must atone for life, and that

without shedding of blood there is no remission, as taught in

type by animal sacrifices. Latter-day philosophers affect the

utmost horror of such a salvation, and will have none of Christ.

V. The command to use the flesh of animals as food.

VI. The decree that “whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his

blood be shed.”

VII. The direction to multiply and replenish the earth.

The charge of disobedience to such laws as these every mystic will

joyfully admit, with the cry, “Happy will it be for all things

living when such laws shall no longer be obeyed by any living

creature.”

These laws, the disobedience to which Mr. Pember so much regrets in

the later schools, date from the dark past when man had to form his

physical existence and root it upon the earth. If they are some of

the early revelations of the “Divine Will,” that is no reason why

they should rule mankind when its condition is changed and it is

emerging from the darkness of Materialism, and losing, from its

natural growth towards that Divine will, the desire for physical

existence. The Mosaic laws were made by the Jehovah, the God of

anger and cruelty. In spite of the strange inconsistency by which

the followers of Jesus Christ, the teacher of a gentle and sublime

faith, read in their churches these Mosaic laws, yet they are empty

words from a past of bloodshed to the humane or religious man. The

occultist professes even more than religion—he dares to avow himself

a follower of the light, an aspirant towards knowledge, and one who

is determined to live the noblest life knowledge can indicate. What

to him are the laws of murder, of the shedding of blood, of marriage

and giving in marriage? It is not his aim to help people the earth,

for he desires to lift himself and others above the craving for

earth-life. He commits no murder, for all men are his brethren, and

he no longer recognises the brutal law of the criminal, by which,

when blood is shed, blood must be again shed to wash it away. He can

have no interest either in the straightforward laws of the past, or

the complicated modern law of the present—which permits of many

things the Jews would have been ashamed of. The only law he

recognises is that of charity and justice.

There is a charming page in the _Introduction_, a ring of genuine

sorrow for the failure of certain missionaries in their cowardly

attack upon the theosophical leaders, as refreshing as it is

ludicrous. The Jeremiad runs in this wise:—

“It would seem that the attack of the Madras Christian College

upon Madame Blavatsky has by no means checked the movement in

which she has been so conspicuous an actor, and, apparently, the

failure is nowhere more manifest than in Madras itself. It was

confidently predicted that the High Priestess of Theosophy and

Buddhism would not dare to show her face again in that city.

Nevertheless she did so, and ... received a warm welcome, not

merely from the members of the Theosophical societies, but also

from the members of the various colleges and from many other

persons. She was conducted in procession from the shore to the

Pancheappa Hall, and was there presented by the students with an

address of sympathy and admiration, to which, among other

signatures, were appended those of more than three hundred members

of the very Christian College whose professors had assailed her.”

And he adds, “Satan is now setting in motion intellectual forces

which will be more than a match for the missionaries, if they

persist in carrying on the warfare in the old way.”

Too much praise cannot be rendered to Mr. Pember for his fairness

and impersonality. He writes as becomes a scholar and a gentleman,

and though one may smile at his intellectual blindness and stand

amazed at the mental capacity which can digest the views which he

maintains, one cannot but respect his earnestness, his thoroughness,

and his mastery of the subject.

B. K.

------------------

ISAURE AND OTHER POEMS.

BY W. STEWART ROSS.

The poem which gives its name to this volume of ringing verse is, as

may easily be conjectured, the lament of a poet over his love torn

from him by inexorable death.

A true instinct has taught the author that it is such hours of agony

as this, such piercing of the heart, such fierce and burning

torture, which reveal to the noble soul capable of intense suffering

the inner truths and realities of life.

To quote:

“I stand on the cis-mortal,

And I gaze with ’wildered eye,

To the mists of the trans-mortal,

And the signs called Live and Die.

. . . . . . .

Let me dream in this cis-mortal,

And the noblest dream I can.

. . . . . . .

Let me dream far from the formulæ,

And I may dream more nigh

To the sable shore of mystery,

And the signs of Live and Die.”

Some passages in this opening poem are instinct with the breath of

mysticism, and rouse a keen desire that Mr. Stewart Ross had become

acquainted, in that period of his life when this book was written,

with the wider and grander view of life as a whole, of its purpose

and meaning, of its laws and its realities, which occultism affords

to a mind capable of grasping them.

Surely the man who could write:

“For death and life are really one.”

And again:

“For the mystic Part is gathered

Unto the mystic Whole.

And the vague lines of non-Being

Are scribbled o’er thy soul.”

must have the power to sense the keener air of the subtle life and

grasp its glorious promise.

What pilgrim of the path has not felt:

“Hard-paced the iron years have gone

Over my head since then;

I’ve haunted in a waking dream

The paths of living men;

But of this world my kingdom’s not,

Like him of Galilee,

For I grasp hands they cannot feel,

See forms they cannot see.”

In “Leonore: A Lay of Dipsomania,” one of the most terrible sides of

human life is depicted with a vividness which tortures the reader,

and flings a gloom on the inexorable sweep of life, fitly in keeping

with the vision pictured in “A Nightmare.” A mystic, struggling with

the negations of modern science, battling to assert the intuitive

knowledge of his true self against its captious intellectualisms,

speaks through this picture of desolation and decay, protesting

against the disappearance of all that is great and valuable in life

under the waves of oblivion.

But no man in whom the spark of true poetic inspiration burns can

ever in the depths of his own heart accept the lifeless, empty,

unreal phantom which materialism offers as the aim, the purpose, the

fulfilment of life. We hope, therefore, that Mr. Stewart Ross will

some day give us a volume of poetry in which his true power and

insight will find expression, and which will enroll his name on the

list of those who have given new life to men.

[Illustration: decorative separator]

One cannot fill a vacuum from within itself.—L.S.C.

Many a man will follow a misleader.—L.S.C.

It is not necessary for truth to put on boxing-gloves.—L.S.C.

You cannot build a temple of truth by hammering dead stones. Its

foundations must precipitate themselves like crystals from the

solution of life.—L.S.C.

When a certain point is reached pain becomes its own anodyne.—L.S.C.

Some pluck the fruits of the tree (of knowledge) to crown themselves

therewith, instead of plucking them to eat.—L.S.C.

=THEOSOPHICAL=

=AND MYSTIC PUBLICATIONS=

THE THEOSOPHIST; a magazine of Oriental Philosophy, Art, Literature,

and Occultism, conducted by H. P. Blavatsky, and H. S. Olcott,

Permanent President of the T. S. Vol. VIII., 1887. Madras, India. In

London, George Redway, 15, York Street, Covent Garden.

The September number contains several articles of great interest.

For lovers of the wonderful, as for the more scientifically inclined

students of the laws of psycho-physics, the account given by

Sreenath Chatterjee, of a self-levitating lama who stayed for some

days in his house, is both interesting and instructive. It is

endorsed by Colonel Olcott and another independent witness, and

bears evident marks of genuine and careful observation. Curious and

wonderful as such feats are, however, they have little to do with

Theosophy.

To many readers such articles as Mr. Khandalwala’s “The

Bhagavat-Gita and the Microcosmic Principles” will be far more

attractive. The questions propounded in this paper have a very

important bearing upon a question which has recently been a good

deal under discussion, and it is to be hoped that it will elicit

from Mr. Subba Row the further explanation of his views which is so

much needed.

Visconde Figanière continues his “Esoteric Studies” with some

abstruse but very interesting calculations as to the composition of

the alchemical elements during various cycles. A page of moral

maxims from the Mahabharata and a thoughtful paper on the “Kabbalah

and the Microcosm” contribute to make this number full of valuable

matter.

---

THE PATH; “a magazine devoted to the Brotherhood of Humanity,

Theosophy in America, and the Study of Occult Science, Philosophy,

and Aryan Literature.” Edited by W. Q. Judge, New York, P. O. Box

2,659, and in London from George Redway.

In the September issue, the opening paper is the fourth of “Jasper

Niemand’s” admirable “Letters on the True.” Its subject is the

“Mind” (_Manas_) or Heart in its relation to the Soul. Both analysis

and synthesis are employed by the writer, with the intuition of a

true mystic, and many suggestive gleams of light are thrown on an

exceedingly difficult subject in the course of a few pages.

The idea of re-incarnation is traced by Mr. Walker in the writings

of various poets: Mr. Johnston contributes an interesting paper on

“Gospels and Upanishads,” and “Rameses” gives us a charming allegory

under the archaic title of “Papyrus,” and the number concludes with

“Tea-Table Talk,” which is, as usual, quaint, yet instructive.

Finally, thanks are due to Mr. Judge for the kind and cordial

welcome he has extended to LUCIFER; the first number of which has,

it is to be hoped, fulfilled the flattering expectations he

expresses.

---

LE LOTUS: “Revue des Hautes Etudes Théosophiques. Tendant à

favoriser le rapprochement entre l’Orient et l’Occident.” Sous

l’inspiration de H. P. Blavatsky (nominally, but edited in reality,

by our able brother, F. K. Gaborian, F. T. S.). Georges Carré, 112

Boulevard St. Germain, Paris.

This journal—the French Theosophist—contains in its September number

an article by Madame Blavatsky on “Misconceptions,” in which various

doctrines and ideas erroneously connected with Theosophy are dealt

with. M. Barlet continues his series of articles on “Initiation,”

and the reprint of the Abbé de Villars’ clever and humorous “Comte

de Gabalis,” is continued. Some verses by Amaravella, and several

pages of sparkling “Notes,” conclude the table of contents.

LUCIFER owes thanks also to the _Lotus_ for inserting an admirably

translated extract from its prospectus.

---

L’AURORE: Revue mensuelle sous la direction de Lady Caithness,

Duchesse de Pomar, Georges Carré, 112 Boulevard St. Germain, Paris.

The articles in the September number are neither so numerous nor so

varied as those of the other Theosophical periodicals already

referred to. Lady Caithness advocates, in the current issue, the

theory that the English nation is descended from the lost ten tribes

of Israel. As the very existence of these ten tribes is more than

questionable, students must judge for themselves of the weight of

the arguments advanced; the subject being too extensive even for

comment here.

---

THE SPHINX: “A monthly journal devoted to proving historically and

experimentally the supersensuous conception of the world on a

monistic basis.” Edited by Hübbe Schleiden. Dr. J. U. Th. Griebens

Verlag, Leipzig.

The October number is a full and highly instructive one. Dr. Carl

du Prel’s handling of the “Demon of Socrates” contrasts

brilliantly with the lame and obscure treatment which the same

subject received a while ago at the hands of a body, which

professes to investigate matters pertaining to the soul and its

activity. Herr Niemann’s proof of the existence of an esoteric or

secret teaching in the Platonic dialogues is able and convincing;

Mr. Finch contributes a most interesting article on his

observations among the “Faith-Healers” in America, and Herr Carl

zu Leiningen pursues his able exposition of the Kabbalistic

doctrine of Souls.

---

Three new works on mystic subjects are shortly to appear from the

pen of Dr. Franz Hartmann, whose valuable book on Paracelsus is

certainly in the hands of many of our readers.

Of these the first, and probably the most important, is entitled:

“THE SECRET SYMBOLS OF THE ROSICRUCIANS,” and is to be published in

Boston, U.S.A., by the Occult Publishing Company. It will contain

numerous plates coloured by hand, giving accurate transcriptions of

symbols and figures which have hitherto lain buried in rare, and in

some cases, unattainable manuscripts. The value of the work as a

text-book for students will be much enhanced by the copious

vocabulary which Dr. Hartmann promises shall accompany it.

The other two will probably be issued by Mr. Redway; the one being

called: “IN THE PRONAOS OF THE TEMPLE OF THE R.C.,” and the other:

“THE LIFE OF JEHOSHUA, THE ADEPT OF NAZARETH: AN OCCULT STUDY.”

This is an attempt to dispel the mists which for many centuries have

been gathering around the person of the supposed founder of

Christianity, and which have prevented mankind from obtaining a

clear view of the “Redeemer.” It claims to give an approximately

correct account of his life, his initiation into the Egyptian

mysteries and of his ignominious death caused by an infuriated mob,

excited by the Pharisees of the temple, who were bound to destroy

his mortal form, because he had taught the religion of universal

fraternal love and freedom of thought in opposition to priestcraft

and superstition.

While the book deals to a certain extent with the external life of

Jehoshua, as far as its details have become known by historical

researches into sources not generally known, it especially deals

with his inner life—_i.e._ his method of thought.

The author says: “If we wish to give a correct picture of the

character of a person, we must try to describe his thoughts as well

as his acts, for the thought-life of a man constitutes his real

life, while his outward life is merely a pictorial representation, a

shadow of the actions that are taking place upon the interior stage

of his mind.”

“To describe this inner life, a dramatical representation of the

processes going on in the soul of man will be better adapted to

bring it to our understanding, than a merely verbal description of

character. This maxim seems to have influenced those who wrote the

accounts contained in the bible, and who describe interior processes

in allegorical pictures of events, which may or may not have taken

place on the outward plane. I have adhered to this plan in

describing the thought-life of Jehoshua Ben-Pandira, but I have

attempted to shape the allegories contained in this book in such a

manner that the intelligent reader may easily perceive their true

meaning, for I have made the forms sufficiently transparent, so that

the truths which they are intended to represent may be easily seen

through the external shell.”

“Nevertheless, these descriptions are not mere fancies, but they are

based upon historical facts, and upon information received from

sources whose nature will be plain to every occultist. The events

described have all actually taken place; but whether they have

wholly or in part taken place on the external or internal plane,

each intelligent reader is left to decide for himself.”

=CORRESPONDENCE=

INTERESTING TO ASTROLOGERS.

ASTROLOGICAL NOTES—No. 2.

_To the Editor of_ LUCIFER.

The ancients assigned to the planets certain signs and degrees, in

which they were essentially dignified, being there more powerful for

good, and less powerful for evil; these were called their House,

Exaltation, Triplicity, Term, and Face. Opposite to the first two

were the places where they were essentially debilitated, being there

less powerful for good and more powerful for evil; these were called

their Detriment and Fall. Whether the latter three dignities have

three corresponding debilities has not been stated.

To the seven known planets, the ancients apportioned the twelve

zodiacal signs as their respective houses or chief dignity, thus: ☉

ruled ♌, and ☽ ruled ♋, both by day and night; while the remaining

ten signs were divided between the remaining five planets, each

planet ruling two signs, one by day and the other by night. But when

♅ and ♆ were discovered, the question arose where to place them.

A. J. Pearce, the present editor of _Zadkiel’s Almanac_, has

suggested that, as they were more remote from ☉ than was ♄, they

should have the same houses and exaltations as ♄. Raphael dethrones

♄ from ♒, and proclaims that ♅ reigns in his stead. Both these

suggestions involve serious difficulties, nor do they settle the

question once and for all with regard to any planets which may yet

be discovered. It seems unlikely that planets of such diverse

natures as ♄, ♅, and ♆ (not to mention any still more distant

planets) should all bear equal rule in the same two signs, and to

depose ♄ from his throne, pre-supposes a grave error on the part of

the ancients, whose teaching on this point has been handed down with

complete unanimity from the dim past: necessitating, also, a further

process of dethronement, and a further ignoring of the teachings of

antiquity, as further planetary discoveries are made.

The first Raphael (the late R. C. Smith) rejected the ancient

nocturnal and diurnal division of the Houses and Triplicities, in

which he is followed by his successor. It appears to me that it is

here that the error, with its consequent difficulties, first arose;

and that by observing this distinction, ♅ and ♆ easily find their

homes, with room to spare for their yet undiscovered brethren.

It is obvious that Astrology can never become an even approximately

perfect science, unless we are able in our calculations to take

fully into account the influence of ♅ and ♆. With this end in view,

I have been endeavouring, in my leisure moments, to solve the

problem. To a certain extent I have been successful; and though I

have not yet been able to substantiate all my conclusions as fully

as I could wish, yet I deem it is the best interests of the Science

to make them now public, that their truth or falsity may be as

speedily as possible established by the investigations of

astrologers generally.

My conclusions are the following: that the ancient Diurnal and

Nocturnal divisions are quite correct, so that if a figure is drawn

for any time between sunrise and sunset, the planets which rule by

day the signs on the cusps of the houses of the significators must

be chiefly, and sometimes exclusively, considered; and _vice versâ_.

The Houses of the new planets are, I believe, these:

♒, which is the day-house of ♄, is the night-house of ♅.

♊, which is the day-house of ☿, is the night-house of ♆.

♍, which is the night-house of ☿, is the day-house of ♅.

♓, which is the night-house of ♃, is the day-house of ♆.

The first two I have verified by horary figures drawn for the time

of an event; the latter two I consider as highly probable, but have

not yet been able to thoroughly substantiate them.

There is an old tradition (_Esoteric Science in Human History_, p.

180) that there are 12 principal planets in our solar system; this

leaves 4 more to be discovered. It will be seen at a glance that

these 4 will fill up the vacant signs, two planets ruling each sign,

one by night and the other by day. The only alteration which will

then have to be made will be to consider ☉ to rule ♌ by day only,

and ☽ to rule ♋ by night only; this, however, will be only in

accordance with nature: moreover, the fact that the ancients

assigned only one house each to ☉ and ☽, and two to each of the

other planets, denotes some essential astrological difference

between them.

With regard to the other essential dignities, Raphael considers ♏ to

be the exaltation of ♅; I am inclined to believe ♒ to be the

exaltation of ♆. In the Triplicities there is a curious want of

harmony; each, according to the ancients, being ruled by two

planets, one by day and the other by night, except the watery

triplicity, which is ruled by ♂ only. There seems to be no reason

for this discrepancy, except the all-powerful one that there was no

other known planet to share his dominion. I have ascertained that ♆

has strong dignity in ♏, and conclude that he rules the watery

triplicity, probably by night. Furthermore, I believe ♅ rules the

airy triplicity. As for the Terms and Faces of the planets, they

also, like the Planetary Hours, require re-arrangement so as to

bring in ♅ and ♆ but in what way this is to be done, I have not yet

been able to discover.

I will take this opportunity of saying, in reply to inquiries, that

the best books for beginners are Raphael’s _Horary Astrology_ for

that branch of the Science; A. J. Pearce’s _Science of the Stars_

for Mundane and Atmospheric Astrology; A. J. Pearce’s _Text Book of

Astrology_ for Nativities, to be worked out by Primary Directions;

and Raphael’s _Guide to Astrology_ for the same, worked out by

Secondary Directions excited by Transits. Raphael’s works are

published by Foulsham and Co., 4, Pilgrim Street, E.C.; and Pearce’s

works may be procured from the author, 54, East Hill, Wandsworth,

S.W.

NEMO.

------------------

_To the Editors of_ LUCIFER.

For the purpose of correcting any prejudicial suspicion or erroneous

misrepresentation of myself, arising from the insertion of the note

at the end of the “Bath Occult Reprint Edition” of the “Divine

Pymander” or as associated with the Society of the “H. B. of L.,”

known to me only through the names of Peter Davidson and T. H.

Burgoyne, alias D’Alton, Dalton, &c., and whose secretary is

announced to be “A convicted felon, and the supposed adept to be a

Hindu of questionable antecedents,” I wish it to be understood I

have now no confidence, sympathy, or connection therewith, direct or

indirect, since or even prior to the date hereof, viz., May, 1886.

Yours truly,

ROBT. H. FRYAR.

8, Northumberland Place, Bath.

=FROM THE NOTE BOOK OF AN UNPOPULAR PHILOSOPHER=

THE ESOTERIC VALUE OF CERTAIN WORDS AND DEEDS IN SOCIAL LIFE.

_To Show Anger._—No “_cultured_” man or woman will ever show anger

in Society. To check and restrain every sign of annoyance shows good

manners, certainly, but also considerable achievement in hypocrisy

and dissimulation. There is an occult side to this rule of good

breeding expressed in an Eastern proverb: “Trust not the face which

never shows signs of anger, nor the dog that never barks.”

Cold-blooded animals are the most venomous.

_Non-resistance to Evil._—To brag of it is to invite all evil-doers

to sit upon you. To practice it openly is to lead people into the

temptation of regarding you as a coward. Not to resist the evil you

have never created nor merited, to eschew it yourself, and help

others quietly to get out of its way, is the only wise course open

to the lover of wisdom.

“_Love Thy Neighbour._”—When a parson has preached upon this

subject, his pious congregation accepts it as tacit permission to

slander and vilify their friends and acquaintances in neighbouring

pews.

_International Brotherhood._—When a Mussulman and a Christian swear

mutual friendship, and pledge themselves to be brothers, their two

formulas differ somewhat. The Moslem says: “Thy mother shall be my

mother, my father thy father, my sister thy hand maid, and thou

shalt be my brother.” To which the Christian answers: “Thy mother

and sister shall be my hand-maidens, thy wife shall be my wife, and

my wife shall be thy dear sister.”—_Amen._

_Brave as a Lion._—The highest compliment—in appearance—paid to

one’s courage; a comparison with a bad-smelling wild-beast—in

reality. The recognition, also, of the superiority of animal over

human bravery, considered as a virtue.

_A Sheep._—A weak, silly fellow, figuratively, an insulting,

contemptuous epithet among laymen; but one quite flattering among

churchmen, who apply it to “the people of God” and the members of

their congregations, comparing them to _sheep_ under the guidance of

the lamb.

_The Code of Honour._—In France—to seduce a wife and kill her

husband. There, offended honour can feel satisfied only with blood;

here, a wound inflicted upon the offender’s pocket suffices.

_The Duel as a Point of Honour._—The duel being an institution of

Christendom and civilization, neither the old Spartans, nor yet the

Greeks or Romans knew of it, as they were only uncivilized

heathens.—(_See Schopenhauer._)

_Forgive and Forget._—“We should freely forgive, but forget rarely,”

says Colton. “I will not be revenged, and this I owe to my enemy;

but I will _remember_, and this I owe to myself.” This is real

practical wisdom. It stands between the ferocious “Eye for eye, and

tooth for tooth” of the Mosaic Law, and the command to turn the left

cheek to the enemy when he has smitten you on the right. Is not the

latter a direct encouraging of sin?

_Practical Wisdom._—On the tree of silence hangs the fruit of peace.

The secret thou wouldst not tell to thine enemy, tell it not to thy

friend.—(_Arabic._)

_Civilised Life._—Crowded, noisy and full of vital power, is modern

Society to the eye of matter; but there is no more still and silent,

empty and dreary desert than that same Society to the spiritual eye

of the Seer. Its right hand freely and lavishly bestows ephemeral

but costly pleasures, while the left grasps greedily the leavings

and often grudges the necessities of show. All our social life is

the result and consequence of that unseen, yet ever present autocrat

and despot, called _Selfishness_ and _Egotism_. The strongest will

becomes impotent before the voice and authority of _Self_.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

LUCIFER

------------------------------------------------------------------------

VOL. 1. LONDON, NOVEMBER 15TH, 1887. NO. 3.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

“LET EVERY MAN PROVE HIS OWN WORK.”

Such is the title of a letter received by the Editors of LUCIFER. It

is of so serious a nature that it seems well to make it the subject

of this month’s editorial. Considering the truths uttered in its few

lines, its importance and the bearing it has upon the much obscured

subject of Theosophy, and its visible agent or vehicle—the Society

of that name—the letter is certainly worthy of the most considerate

answer.

“_Fiat justitia, ruat cœlum!_”

Justice will be done to both sides in the dispute; namely,

Theosophists and the members of the Theosophical Society[31] on the

one hand, and the followers of the _Divine Word_ (or Christos), and

the so-called Christians, on the other.

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Footnote 31:

Not all the members of the Theosophical Society are Theosophists;

nor are the members of the so-called Christian Churches all

Christians, by any means. True Theosophists, as true Christians,

are very, _very_ few; and there are practical Theosophists in the

fold of Christianity, as there are practical Christians in the

Theosophical Society, outside all ritualistic Christianity. “Not

every one that saith unto me ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the Kingdom

of Heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father.” (Matthew,

vii. 21.) “Believe not in Me, but in the truths I utter.”

(Buddha’s _Aphorisms_.)

-----

We reproduce the letter:

“_To the Editors of_ LUCIFER.

“What a grand chance is now open in this country, to the exponents

of a noble and advanced religion (if such this Theosophy be[32])

for proving its strength, righteousness and verity to the Western

world, by throwing a penetrating and illuminating ray of its

declared light upon the terribly harrowing and perplexing

practical problems of our age.

“Surely one of the purest and least self-incrusted duties of man,

is to alleviate the sufferings of his fellow man?

“From what I read, and from what I daily come into immediate

contact with, I can hardly think it would be possible to over-rate

in contemplation, the intense privation and agonizing suffering

that is—aye, say it—_at this moment_ being endured by a vast

proportion of our brothers and sisters, arising in a large measure

from their not absolutely having the means for procuring the _bare

necessaries of existence_?

“Surely a high and Heaven-born religion—a religion professing to