all your teaching was a lie. I believe that you had not the courage to
repudiate yourself, and so surpass yourself; so surpass yourself and
become yourself Beyond Man.”
“Then you think I knew?”
“I know that you knew. I know that you had a vision of Him, that you
saw where you yourself had failed to understand, and that you would not
acknowledge your own new understanding--which came too late.”
“You know too much,” he said.
“You asked me to be your judge,” I retorted.
“But not my executioner.”
“You have been your own executioner, and the executioner of your
people.”
“My people!” His tone was scornful.
“Did I not say that you had no love?” I demanded.
“And what do you now bid me do?”
“Go back to the earth, and teach mankind how man can surpass himself.
Go back to the earth, and teach men to follow the carpenter’s Son whom
you taught them to despise. Go back to Germany, and repudiate yourself.”
“And how shall I go back?”
“In another body, of course, a clean and wholesome body, which you are
to keep clean.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know very well what I mean! I have told you that you had no
love. You had only fastidiousness, and arrogance, and the desire for
sensation.”
“You have set me a hard task,” he said.
“Eternity is long,” I replied, “and the new Germany will have need of
your new teaching.”
“Shall I thank you?” he asked.
“There is no need. It is I who thank you for not appealing from my
decision.”
“Good night,” he said.
“Good night,” I repeated.
And the soul of Friedrich Nietzsche passed on. Was it toward the gate
of rebirth?
_June 1._
LETTER XLVI
THE ENTERING WEDGE
AFTER our writing of last night, in which I told you of the tortured
soul who asked my judgment on a course of teaching which had corrupted
a nation, I went back to the battle line in France. (The Germans cannot
sink me with their torpedoes.)
Passing slowly along on the German side, I saw again the tall majestic
form, dark-veiled about the head, which I described to you in a
previous letter.
This time I hailed him, without waiting for him to hail me.
“How goes your work?” I asked.
He threw back the veil which covered him, and I saw the dark and
splendid face, marked deep by thought and evil.
“My work goes as it goes,” he answered. “And what have you been doing?”
“Writing to the world this evening,” I replied.
He laughed.
“Have you been writing about peace?”
“Not this time. I have been writing about a conversation I had with a
great and troubled soul.”
“Yes, I know.”
“You know, do you? Were you listening?”
“Through my long-distance telephone.”
“Brilliant invention, the telephone,” I observed. “Did you inspire the
invention?”
“I? Oh, no! I worked against it.”
“And why?”
“It is not well that man should know too much.”
“But when man makes discoveries, notwithstanding your efforts to hinder
him, you attempt to use those discoveries against him, do you not?”
“Of course.”
“You interest me,” I said. “And were you interested by my conversation
with the soul of Friedrich Nietzsche?”
“More interested than you can imagine, until I tell you why.”
“And you will tell me why?”
“There is no reason for my not telling you. I am frank with those who
see through me.”
“Why don’t you teach that to the Germans?”
“Because it would spoil my game. I want to destroy them after I have
used them, and if they should turn frank, they would be so thorough in
their frankness that they would disarm the indignant world.”
“They are frank enough in their brutality,” I said.
“Oh, yes! But that is another matter. Should they be frank in their
repentance, the world would forgive them.”
“But what of Nietzsche?” I questioned.
“Only this, that it was I who inspired him.”
“You did your work thoroughly.”
“I do my work as thoroughly as it can be done.”
“Tell me more,” I urged.
“What a worker was lost in you,” he exclaimed, “when you chose good for
your standard!”
“But I am an excellent worker,” I insisted. “I have even balked some of
your work.”
He laughed, a quick, sharp laugh.
“Don’t think that I care too much for that,” he said. “There is more
than one road for me. If you block the door, I can go in by the window.”
“And how did you go in to Nietzsche?”
“Sometimes by one way, sometimes by another. He only locked his door
against man, and you see I also am Beyond Man.”
“I perceived that at our first meeting. He who goes beyond man must
make the choice between good and evil.”
“There is no fooling you,” he said, “and so I no longer try. Yes, it
was I who inspired Nietzsche to preach Beyond Man to the Germans, who
could only choose evil when they believed themselves strong.”
“And what do you get out of it?”
For answer, he asked a question:
“Did you ever play chess?”
“Often, in many lives,” I answered.
“Did you have an interest in the game?”
“A great interest.”
“Did you play for stakes?”
“No.”
“Then what interested you?”
“Why, the game.”
“Of course,” he said. “That is how I enjoy my game. I play to win, if I
can. When I do not win, I have had the pleasure of the game.”
“And you played with that great man’s soul?”
“As a cat plays with a mouse. I found in him an earnest spirit, with a
sore spot in his head and in his heart. He was an easy one.”
“How did you go about it?”
“By the usual method.”
“And that is?”
“Flattery.”
“And he did not smell a rat?”
“The rats were perfumed. He is an aesthete.”
“Do you always perfume the rats?”
“It isn’t always necessary. I perfumed yours.”
“Yes,” I said, “with the patchouli of peace. But I have a keen scent.”
“Yes, the Others have taught you too well.”
“Did Nietzsche ever see you as I see you?”
“He saw my distinguished face, and he felt the thrill of my power, and
he envied and desired to be like me. It is great sport when these
earnest mortals are ambitious to emulate me!”
“And so you taught him Beyond Man?”
“Yes, and I taught him to despise the One who was really Beyond Man.”
“Then you are not really Beyond Man yourself?”
“My head is. My other members are nearer the earth.”
“Notwithstanding the dignity of your presence?”
“Oh, there is a dignity in the earth and in what belongs to the earth!”
“Did the German philosopher ever know you for what you are?”
“Yes, toward the end, but then it was too late to undo my work.”
“Then also at the end,” I exclaimed, “he saw the two forms of Beyond
Man, you and the Christ!”
“Yes, he saw. The seeing drove him mad.”
“And you have no remorse for your work?”
“Remorse? What is that?”
“Remorse is an emotion which men feel when they are conscious of having
done evil.”
“An emotion that _men_ feel,” he repeated. “But I only feel those
emotions of men which give me pleasure in the feeling.”
“Such as----”
“You are really too curious and inquisitive!”
“Granted, my curiosity and my inquisitiveness,” I said. “But it
interests me, this labor of a lifetime, a man’s lifetime, to make him
an instrument through which _all this_ could be produced,” and I
indicated by a gesture the battle line beneath us.
His eyes were brilliant with fire as he answered:
“What is the lifetime of a man in comparison to the glory of all this?
One might labor a thousand years and produce nothing in comparison with
this!”
“It pleases you then, this slaughter?”
“What a trifling question! It gratifies me, glorifies me, exalts
me--all this carnage of battle brought forth by me and my kind.”
“And did you have all this in mind while you were preparing one man to
corrupt a nation by his writings?”
“Yes. He was the one perfect instrument. None other could have served
our purpose so well--ambitious, dissatisfied, aristocratic, arrogant,
unloving in the broader sense, capable of infatuation and hence of
disenchantment, and last but not least, with eyes open to the vision.”
“The vision of you?”
“Yes. He saw me first in dreams, and admired me, and desired to emulate
me.”
“And then you spoke to him of Beyond Man?”
“Yes, and I used the old arguments that women were of small account;
that the love of woman stood in man’s way; that woman enslaved man
unless he enslaved her; that Nature was the devil, not the Great
Mother, and so was to be combatted as far as possible; that man rose to
Beyond Man by denying all that could influence him, including Nature,
and by asserting whatever gave him freedom, such as his own superiority
to all other beings, his mastery of them, his mastery of his own
thought, his mastery of good and evil, of fact and falsehood.”
“A fine _combination_ of fact and falsehood, that teaching of
yours,” I said.
“Of course,” he answered; “but what would you? Truth alone could never
have produced this.” And he swept with his long arm the line of battle
beneath us.
“And what else did you teach your chosen disciple?” I asked.
“I taught him all that he taught the world. Whenever he drove a woman’s
face from his heart, I scored a point and he thought himself nearer
Beyond Man. Whenever he swelled with pride and superiority, I scored
a point and he felt himself nearer Beyond Man. Whenever he read the
Gospels and sneered to himself at the humility of the so-called Son of
Man, I scored two points--one against him and one against your Christ.”
“Thank you,” I said, “for enrolling me with the followers of the
Crucified One. I am such a follower.”
He ignored my last remark, and proceeded:
“I encouraged his wish to produce a new ideal of a leader, a new
Christ, an Antichrist, a hard-faced German Christ, who should not win
men by love and compassion, but by cruelty and hardening. Oh, I have
done that work well! Many a German has exalted my ideal to the place of
the Son of Mary. Many a German has put me in place of the Sun-God, and
hailed me as Beyond Man, though he was too cowardly to hail me frankly
_as_ Antichrist. Instead, he added my attributes to Christ and
called us by one name, and by that name he sought to destroy all pity
and compassion, both in himself and in others, sought to destroy all
love that stood in the way of his becoming like me. It was I who taught
him to exalt the cross as a symbol of cruelty, of sacrifice _to_
himself, and not _of_ himself for the love of man.”
He paused, and gazed out toward the stars that shone serenely above us.
“You seem to me,” I said, “to be yourself conscious of the superiority
of Christ to Antichrist.”
Again he ignored my remark, and continued the line of his own thought.
“What intellectual pleasure it has given me, this transforming of a
Christian nation into monsters of egotism and cruelty to all things
_not their own_! The foreigner was to be hated, despised, used,
ridiculed, and whenever possible insulted. I taught them that such were
the ways of Beyond Man, that so was man surpassed.”
“But why do you tell all this to me?” I asked. “Why do you thus lay
your cards upon the table, when you know that I hold a better hand?”
The eyes he turned to me were smouldering lakes of flame.
“Because I envy you,” he said.
“Is that some new and more subtle attack upon me and the principles I
stand for?”
The dark one laughed again, his sharp and mirthless laughter.
“Frankly, no,” he said. “You no longer amuse me as an opponent.”
“Which means----”
“That I throw up the game in weariness--this is, for the present.
Already the souls I deluded are weary of me and my teaching. They have
seen a new light--some of them.”
“Perhaps,” I said, “they have seen the light of the Christ, the true
Beyond Man.”
“Perhaps,” he repeated.
“And have you seen it, too?”
“Faugh!” he said. “Are you ambitious to convert the devil?”
“Ah, no!”
Suddenly he turned to me:
“Will you take me for a pupil?”
“Again, no,” I answered. “You will make that request of some good
woman, with a better chance of deceiving her.”
“So you know all the tricks?”
“My Teacher has taught me much regarding the ways of your kind.”
“Then I bid you good evening,” he said, and disappeared in the darkness.
World for which I write, I am telling you these things that you may
be armored with knowledge. When Satan asks you to convert him, beware
lest he convert you. When Satan points to Beyond Man, even to Christ,
be sure that his Christ is not Antichrist; be sure He is full of
compassion, that His heart bleeds for the woes and _weakness_ of
the world, that His crown of thorns is the mark of His sacrifice for
man, and not merely a becoming ornament. For, as He said:
“By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love
one to another.”
And also:
“Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name,
saying, I am Christ, and shall deceive many, * * * for there shall
arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and
wonders, insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the
very elect.”
_June 2._
LETTER XLVII
THE NEW BROTHERHOOD
I WANT to speak of the new race, the coming race. The world is big with
child, and the present generation will look with wonder into the clear
eyes of the infant that shall redeem its parent.
Pin your faith to the standard of the new race, work for it, make the
garments that it shall wear, and be ready for its coming.
Already you are in touch with those who will help in its training, who
will be its teachers and guides. Give yourself also to the Great Work
that is planned for America in the coming days. No, you need not spend
all your time there; but do not remain away too long. Come and go, that
going away you may receive new impressions, and that coming back you
may bring the romance of older lands to entertain and inspire the new
land.
But be ever loyal to the new.
In the untrodden wilderness of America there is strength that shall
renew you from time to time. The cities of America will be redeemed by
the wilderness. The cities are too worldly. They have forgotten God. In
the open air, under the open sky, the message may be received by the
awakened soul.
Send the children out to the wilderness to drink from the
uncontaminated springs. The water that flows through lead pipes may
refresh the body; but the water of mountain springs refreshes the soul.
Behind the veil of Nature is the face of the Great Mother, and
though she does not always smile, yet her eyes are full of dreams
and mysteries. Nature is _not_ the devil. The devil is ever at
war with Nature. Nature is Isis, the Mother. Do not listen to the
blasphemers. They have confused the offices of Isis and of Typhon. It
is Isis, Nature, which shall bring forth Horus. Go back to Nature and
ask her for her message. She waits in the silence of the woods, and the
voice of the brook is her whisper; when the wind stirs in the trees it
is the rustling of her garments. The Mother is coming, O children of
the new race! In her arms you shall know refreshing rest, and in her
eyes shall you read the love that knows no selfishness, the bliss of
self-giving.
Too long have you dwelt in cities, forgetting the Mother who bore you.
Too long have you lived without the magnetism of the kind earth in
contact with your naked feet. Too long have you trodden the dead, stony
and unmagnetic streets, that take from you but give nothing. Go back to
the woods and the streams. Read your destiny in the eyes of the stars
themselves--not merely on a printed chart. Jupiter has a message for
you which he will give only face to face, and so has the gentle Venus
and the eager Mars. Go to them for your lessons, in the quiet of the
hill-top alone with the Mother.
Do not set up your temple in the market-place. Let your cathedral be
the aisles of the forest.
Go to the city when you must, for it is always well to know the
opposite. The cathedral is stiller after the voice of the mart.
Give honor where honor is due, to those who have led the children
forth to learn the mysteries of the primeval life. You grown-ups are
only taller children. Dance in a ring round the mulberry bush or round
the camp-fire. In the smell of burning wood the visions may come, as
I wrote you once before of your wood-fires in Paris. But what is a
wood-fire in a Paris grate compared with a camp-fire in the woods? Yes,
I was there the other night, on the outskirts of the gathering, and I
enjoyed it, too.
My greetings to the Chief!
The salvation of America lies in this wild-wood movement. Movement!
Well may you call it that. It is stirred by the very forces of the
earth herself; it is inspired by the race-spirit; it will go on and on,
in ever-widening circles.
Whoever puts a stone in the way of this work will stumble over it
himself. Whoever brings Satanism into this movement will be devoured by
the demonic forces. There will not be enough left of him to grease two
sticks for the camp-fire.
Rest you in peace. _We_ watch, and with us the souls of all the
thousands and tens of thousands and millions of native Americans, who
cannot go on to their rest until they have passed on the torch of the
Nature mysteries that were their heritage from their remote ancestors.
They may be despised by those who despoiled them; but their forgiveness
shall redeem you, O America of the new race!
Do you not know that many of those who made their escape into the rest
of the “happy hunting ground” are already coming back to incarnation in
the land they loved before? Look at the high cheek-bones of many of the
children, look at the eagle eyes and the straight taut forms.
O America, you did a great wrong once in the pursuit of your destiny!
Yes, you did. Now strive to atone. Let the reincarnated red children
play in the wild woods, teach them the old code of honor and courage,
and they will work hand in hand with the reincarnated souls that
came by way of Europe, hand in hand shall they stand together in the
_Woodcraft Brotherhood_.
My salutations to the Chief!
_July 9._
LETTER XLVIII
IN THE CRUCIBLE
I AM still profoundly interested in the land that gave me birth. There
are dark days ahead for her, and the great soul of Abraham Lincoln is
very near to the helm of State at this moment, when peace and war hang
in the balance and the action of a day may decide the question.
No irreparable injury must overtake this land. It is the great pioneer
of race freedom. As I told you months ago, one of America’s hands
threatens the other, and both threaten the whole body.
May she keep peace so long as she can have peace with honor! But if the
dark day comes, may she face it with squared shoulders; and if her foes
be also those of her own household, it will not be the first time. A
man once prayed to be saved from his friends, declaring that he could
deal with his enemies himself.
The stillness of the Germans in America at this moment is potent with
danger. If the hour comes when drastic action is necessary, they should
be invited to return into the fold of their naturalization, and those
who refuse should be dealt with severely, even to deportation. There
yet remains one country which might receive them for transportation to
that Fatherland they left--in quest of the freedom which they have now
abused and betrayed.
The world is in the crucible, and Satan is in the laboratory with all
his cohorts. Our labor is to stand. It is not always easy to stand
steady.
Be calm, and trust in the Motherland that shall yet give birth to the
new race, the synthesis of races.
LETTER XLIX
BLACK MAGIC IN AMERICA
YOU have seen pretty clearly the methods employed by the evil forces to
balk progress, to destroy the work of centuries, to destroy the workers
for the future, and to frighten away those who seek to interfere with
this maliciousness.
Notice that none of this is constructive work. It is all destructive,
all tearing down. Wars of construction have been engineered by angels;
but this is not a war of construction.
Now let me tell you a few of the things against which the new race
in America will have to guard itself. As always where the forces of
progress are strong, the opposition is strong. I have written enough
about the good influences of this new birth; but I want to give a
few warnings, to analyze a few influences which are of a destructive
character.
There is developing in America a great group of people who seek to gain
control of the desire-nature and the will of others, that they may use
them for their own purposes. These people are not all in one place,
they are not organized into one body but into many bodies, and some of
them are working quite independently. But in the astral world, and in
the language of us who work in that world, they are known as a “group.”
They teach to those who will pay them, either in money or in service,
certain rules for controlling the mind of self and of others. They
teach the rudiments of astral knowledge to the many, and they teach
more advanced principles to the few. Some of their teachings are true,
some of their teachings are false; but there are few among them who
undertake any real discipline of character with their students. As one
profound teacher has said, for every step in psychic development, three
steps should be taken in the development of character.
I need not name those who are most criminally active in teaching the
formulas of black magic to men and women who are utterly unfit to be
trusted with that knowledge.
The question will naturally arise in the mind of the reader, What
_is_ black magic? I think I have given a similar definition
before, but you may restate it thus:
Black magic is an attempt to gain control over the will or the astral
or the mind of one’s fellows, through means other than the normal
physical or the legitimate mental influence by word or pen; be it
through the use of the elementals of nature, artificial elementals, or
one’s own mental or elemental nature.
Black magic may be deliberately used to influence, or black magic
may be deliberately used to injure; and its votaries often employ
_the substances of the body of the victim_, through which to gain
sympathetic control of his astral and etheric nature.
I want to say to those who think it smart or amusing to fool with
these things: Beware of any man or of any woman who by _normal or
abnormal means_ seeks to get possession of the fluids of your body,
especially the blood and the other vital fluids.
I shall not go into detail here. Those who accept my warning owe me no
thanks; those who disregard my warning do so at their own peril.
It gives me no amusement thus to thrust myself between the evil forces
and their victims. By so doing I draw down upon myself the rage of
those forces that I thwart so far as I can.
Be it so! I am competent to deal with them. And I want here to notify
anyone who thinks to destroy my work, or to destroy those who with
self-abnegation and selfless courage are helping me in the work of
trying to save my country from the forces of hell which are now
ravaging Europe--I want to notify any evil magician who is interested
in this matter, that if he gets in the way of my resolve it will be he
who will suffer and not I.
The ring which I and the Masters behind me draw round our workers can
be passed with evil intent only at the peril of the one who passes.
This is no threat to use evil magic. We do not use evil magic. But we
know how to deflect a malicious current from its chosen victim, so that
it returns with overwhelming force upon its own source.
And I also want to say to those who in their ignorance or wantonness
allow themselves to be used as catspaws to draw the devil’s chestnuts
from the fire, that fire will burn, and that the devil’s hot chestnuts
stick to the fingers.
This is an unpleasant subject. I will now leave it.
Let me talk to those who are ignorant of these matters, and most people
are ignorant--even those who have “studied psychism.”
Many an innocent (or half-innocent) soul has been driven nearly insane
by the pressure of the evil thoughts of others, by the will-driven
thoughts of others.
Let me advise such not further to weaken themselves by fear, but to
strengthen themselves by prayer.
I have said that there is a god and a devil in every one of you. Turn
to the god for protection from the devil. If there were no devil in
you, the devils of others could not harm you. Remember that.
Set your own devil to serve your own god.
If you want to use signs and symbols, meditate on the cross of Christ.
The cross of Christ is profound enough for a lifetime’s meditation.
Do not use evil magic to protect yourself against evil magic. Call on
the god within to send evil back to its source.
Protect yourself before sleep by prayer to your god for protection. The
evil workers can sometimes reach your soul in sleep when they cannot
reach you while awake. The child’s prayer, “Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,” is more potent than a magician’s
spells.
Childish, you say? Yes, but I am writing now for those who are children
in these things, be they seven or seventy.