were the jealous and the covetous, and there were conspiracies within
her borders as well as without. Her doges were not all, like Caesar's
wife, "above suspicion," her counsellors were not all like Fra Paolo
nor all her scholars like Aldo. But there was no apathy and there _was_
a nucleus of impersonal, united effort sufficiently vitalized to hold
back the agencies of disintegration during century after century of
steady upward effort. And then the Wheel of Destiny turned and the
Venice of Sarpi passed.
But the days to dawn will again see Venice whirled upward into the
light on the rim of this mighty Wheel. This is inevitable. It is
Theosophical teaching. The old clans will gather--and _there_--and they
will work again and aspire again and build again; and in the light of
the lessons learned through the failures and successes of the past will
rise again to greater heights.
Doge and counsellor, artist and craftsman, scientist and scholar,
statesman, philosopher, and poet--as the "whirling wheel of spiritual
will and power" brought to you great opportunities in the past, so will
it bring them to you again and yet again, in the future.
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. THE DUCAL PALACE,
VENICE IN THE FOREGROUND THE LION OF ST. MARK'S]
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. COURTYARD OF THE
DUCAL PALACE]
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. BRIDGE OF THE RIALTO]
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. PONTE DEI
SOSPIRI--THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS, VENICE]
HUMANITY AND THEOSOPHICAL EDUCATION: by Elizabeth C. Spalding
Had our modern philosophers studied, instead of sneering at, the old
Books of Wisdom--they would have found that which would have unveiled
to them many a secret of ancient church and state. As they have not
the result is evident. The dark cycle of Kali-Yug has brought back
a Babel of modern thought, compared with which the "confusion of
tongues" itself, appears a harmony.--_H. P. Blavatsky_
To the placid minds of one part of humanity the idea that there is
an imperious need for Humanity to be saved, may seem quite absurd.
To them the world appears to be moving on well enough; children are
born to them, and are trained in the same methods they were, and their
ancestors before them for centuries, possibly; life passes smoothly
along, so they ask in wonder, Why change?
On the other hand is noticeable amongst a large class, a great unrest,
a fretting against established conditions, and a reaching out for
something new. Individuals striving with different motives, but massing
together into various societies, and associations, united in the
purpose of breaking down the old, but with no ideals upon which to form
new and better ones. It is like building an edifice on shifting sands.
This vague but extreme restlessness is permeating every race and
country. Is it not pitiful that with such an expenditure of force,
there should be a lack of the right understanding to lead men and
women out of all their difficulties, discouragements, and adverse
conditions, to the correct solution of life's problems? Truly the
world is harvesting a chaotic mass of thought that unless checked,
will tend rapidly towards degeneracy, and the disintegration of all
things. We need a clearer and cleaner atmosphere mentally, morally, and
physically, and to secure this the minds of people must be opened to
the truth.
Theosophy offers to humanity this knowledge, and shows the way
to restore balance and harmony. These few words convey a simple
declaration of the truth, but a world of meaning lies in them.
Down through the ages has this touch of wisdom been kept burning in the
hearts of a few. Great Teachers passing its light to their pupils, they
in their turn to others, thus forming a noble and devoted band. They
held the knowledge as a sacred trust awaiting the time to come, when
humanity could receive these truths, without crucifying the great Souls
who revealed to them the teachings.
H. P. Blavatsky had the key to this knowledge, the "Secret Archaic
Doctrine" in other words "Theosophy," which she brought to the western
world. In _Isis Unveiled_, written thirty-three years ago, she wrote:
The said key must be turned seven times before the whole system is
divulged. We will give it but one turn, and thereby allow the profane
one glimpse into the mystery. Happy he who understands the whole.
In her book, _The Secret Doctrine_, which followed later, she gave out
much more information. So little did the world then understand her
that she was considered a charlatan by some. But others did recognize
that a Teacher had come, and they gathered around her. She appointed
Wm. Q. Judge, another Teacher, as her successor, to carry on the work
she had created, the Theosophical Society. He, in his turn, appointed
Katherine Tingley, the present Leader of the Universal Brotherhood
and Theosophical Society, who is electrifying the world with her
educational work in different countries.
Katherine Tingley is now making practical the true Theosophical
education.
What is a Theosophical education?
"Man Know Thyself," was one of the most valued teachings of the
ancients. To know that one is a compound being, spiritual, mental, and
physical; to know that this trinity also makes man a dual being; that
he has both the potentiality of the God, and the lower forces as well;
to learn how to conquer the evil that the God may prevail, and the soul
be liberated to become the living power in him for good. All this is
but a part of what Theosophy teaches.
Socrates asked "Which of us is skilful or successful in the treatment
of the Soul, and which of us has had good teachers?" If that question
were asked today Katherine Tingley's students could answer, here, at
Point Loma, and her various centers throughout the world. Consider
what it means to a child, to enter upon life's path favored with an
understanding of these truths, imparted to him in such a simple,
practical, logical manner that he lives naturally from the beginning,
the proper life. "The first shoot of every living thing is by far the
greatest and fullest." Such a child has the right foundation on which
to build; he is truly educated.
The physical has not been strengthened at a loss of the mental and
spiritual; the intellectual has not been so abnormally developed that
the intuitional and spiritual have been absolutely shut off. The
Theosophical education gives a gradual unfolding of the whole nature,
from within, outwards. Its growth may be likened to the ripening of the
Lotus seed into the pure, white perfect blossom. The soul of the child
who has developed under this training (making due allowance for Karmic
heredity) will look forth, when matured, upon the world with so clear
a vision, that confusion of ideas will be to him an unknown quantity.
He can more clearly detect right from wrong--the necessary from the
unnecessary, the practical from the unpractical--the true brotherhood
from the selfish independence. In fact he will restore equilibrium, and
always for humanity's welfare.
Theosophy has been a revelation to the women. Women as a rule cling
to old established forms and conventionalities, some from fear of
varying kinds, others from ignorance, or a lack of desire to take
the initiative, owing to an inertia which the habits and customs of
centuries have bred in them. It is mainly because of the manifold
possibilities which have been dormant so long in woman that she feels
the impelling urge to do something now, perhaps more than ever before.
In her effort to respond, she sometimes strikes an extreme note which
results in making the whole tide of life about her, of which she should
be the harmonious center, stormy and discordant. Without the spiritual
thread of knowledge how can she act wisely? Yet woman is responsible to
a large degree for the unsettled condition that the minds of men are in
today, and she always will carry a heavy responsibility, because she is
the matrix of humanity.
One of our best-known American cartoonists has pictured the condition
of the world, as a large globe held in a woman's hand. Consider what a
power for good woman has in her position of motherhood, which must of
course embrace wifehood. Words cannot depict all the fine possibilities
and capabilities of mother-love. It has been said that great men have
great mothers, and if we trace the life and thought of the mother prior
to the child's birth, we can invariably find a clue which explains the
strength, or weaknesses of the child.
Are not the majority of humanity simply drifting? Men and women
growing apart, the seeds of separateness and consequent disintegration
being sown, instead of their growing together into the nobler, fuller
comradeship which Theosophy encourages.
As Katherine Tingley has said:
We want not only the hearts, but the divine fire, the divine life,
and the splendid royal warriorship of men and women. Theosophy is the
panacea.
[Illustration: THE SCREEN OF TIME]
BOOK REVIEWS: "Commentary upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex" (William
E. Gates) by C. J. Ryan
The Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard
University recently published a new _Paper_ (Vol. VI, No. 1) on the
subject of Central American hieroglyph writing. The _Paper_ is entitled
"_Commentary upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex_, with a concluding
_Note upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs_." Professor
Wm. E. Gates, International Theosophical Headquarters, Point Loma,
the author, has been a member of the Theosophical Society for about
twenty-five years, beginning the serious study of Theosophy during
H. P. Blavatsky's lifetime. Later, an ardent supporter of William Q.
Judge, he is now one of the most active workers at Point Loma under the
direction of Katherine Tingley. Professor Gates has applied himself
largely to the historical and ethnological side of H. P. Blavatsky's
teachings, and, by a careful study of her _Secret Doctrine_ and other
works, he has been able to bring to the problem of ancient American
culture a fund of information and many valuable clues not familiar
to the average student of archaeology. Professor F. W. Putnam of the
Peabody Museum, Harvard, in his prefatory note to the _Commentary_,
says:
The Museum is fortunate in adding to its collaborators Mr. William
E. Gates, of Point Loma, California, who for more than ten years has
been an earnest student of American hieroglyphs. From his life-long
studies in linguistics in connexion with his research in "the motifs
of civilizations and cultures" he comes well-equipped to take up the
difficult and all-absorbing study of American hieroglyphic writing.
Mr. Gates has materially advanced this study by his reproduction
of the glyphs in type. These type-forms he has used first in his
reproduction of the Codex Perez, and now in this Commentary they are
used for the first time in printing. This important aid to the study
will be highly appreciated by all students of American hieroglyphs, as
it will greatly facilitate the presentation of the results of future
research.
The Harvard _Papers_ are taken by the principal Universities and
learned societies throughout the world. The Commentary on the Perez
Codex and the reproduction of it have been printed by the Aryan Press
at Point Loma and are fine examples of the highest class of printing.
[Illustration: A PAGE OF THE MAYA-TZENTAL PEREZ CODEX FROM CENTRAL
AMERICA]
[Illustration: PEREZ CODEX: PAGE 17]
The Perez Codex itself, of which Professor Gates' _Commentary_ treats,
and of which he has just issued a new, definitive edition, redrawn,
colored as in the original and slightly restored, is a Central American
manuscript on specially coated "maguey" paper, of unknown antiquity.
It was discovered about fifty years ago in a forgotten chimney corner
of the Bibliothèque Impériale, Paris, black with dust and without
record of its antecedents. It is but a fragment, but fortunately
the twenty-two remaining pages contain several chapters complete. The
artistic quality of the work is of a high order; the coloring is most
harmonious and the drawing of the hieroglyphs firm and refined. The
human figures in the accompanying illustrations are conventionalized
in certain grotesque though evidently intentional ways, but they have
character and a real dignity, and admirably fit the spaces alloted
to them. As an example of decorative art the manuscript must take
high rank. It irresistibly reminds one of the best Egyptian Papyri.
Professor Gates says:
And when, ... one advances to an appreciation of the work in its
bearings as a whole, one has to acknowledge himself facing the
production of craftsmen who had the inheritance of not only
generations, but ages of training. Such a combination of complete
mastery in composition, perfect control of definite and fixed forms,
and hand technique, can grow up from barbarism in no few hundred
years.... Had we nothing but the Perez Codex and Stela P at Copan, the
merits of their execution alone, weighed simply in comparison with
observed history elsewhere, would prove that we have to do not with
the traces of an ephemeral, but with the remains of a wide-spread,
settled race and civilization, worthy to be ranked with or beyond even
such as the Roman, in its endurance, development and influence in the
world, and the beginnings of whose culture are still totally unknown.
As to the Codex before us, we can only imagine what the beauty,
especially of the pages we now come to discuss, must have been when
the whole was fresh and perfect.
But, alas, no one can yet read the meaning of this and the two
other Maya Codices that have escaped the destructive hands of the
over-zealous Spanish missionaries who saw nothing in such things but
hindrances to the spreading of the "True Faith," yet at the time of the
Conquest they could be read easily by the cultured natives, and the
_language is still spoken_! Though it seems almost incredible, there is
no living person known who can decipher any of the hieroglyphs on the
manuscripts or the hundreds of stone monuments except a few calendar
signs and other signs of little consequence. We are indebted to Don
Diego Landa, second bishop of Yucatan, for the destruction of all the
manuscripts he could find, but it is to him also that we owe some
gratitude for preserving the meaning of the hieroglyphs of the days and
the months and a few other signs, which he inserted in his book. The
little he has given us is not enough to help much; we may have to await
the discovery of some "Rosetta Stone" like that which opened the lost
secret of the Egyptian sacred writings to Champollion. In Professor
Gates' words:
Up to date our knowledge of the meanings of the glyphs is still to all
intents and purposes limited to the direct tradition we have through
Landa, and the deductions immediately involved in these. We know the
day and month signs, the numbers, including 0 and 20, four units
of the archaic calendar count (the day, tun, katun and cycle), the
cardinal point signs, the negative particle. We have not fully solved
the uinal or month sign, which seems to be chuen on the monuments and
a cauac, or chuen, in the manuscripts. We are able to identify what
must be regarded as metaphysical or esoteric applications of certain
glyphs in certain places, such as the face numerals. But every one of
these points is either deducible directly by necessary mathematical
calculation, or else from the names of certain signs given by Landa
in his day and month list, and then found in other combinations, such
as _yax_, _kin_, etc. That we have as many of the points as we have,
and still cannot form from them the key--that we cannot read the
glyphs--is a constant wonder; but a fact nevertheless.
A large portion of the _Commentary_ is devoted to a highly technical,
detailed and closely-reasoned examination and analysis of the glyphs
and illustrations in the Codex, of interest chiefly to specialists, but
a considerable space is given to some general conclusions on language
which are highly significant to students of Theosophy.
There is one point from which this question of American origins, at
least of American place in human society and civilization, can be
studied in its broader lines, even with what materials we have. It is
that of language in general. From one point of view language is man
himself, and it certainly is civilization. Without it man is not man,
a Self-expressing and social being.... It is the constant effort of
the conscious self to formulate thought. It is the use of the energy
of creation, of objectivation, a veritable many-colored rainbow bridge
between the inner or higher man and the outer or lower worlds. And
it is not only the expression of Man as man, but in its varied forms
it is the inevitable and living expression of each man or body of
men at any and every point of time. Itself boundless as an ocean,
it is in its infinite forms and streams and colors and sounds, the
faithful and exact exponent both of the sources and channels by which
it has come, and of the banks in which it is held, racial, national or
individual.... Every word or form comes to us with the thought-impress
of every man or nation that has used or molded it before us. We must
take it as it comes, but we give it something of ourselves as we pass
it on. If our intellectual and spiritual thought is aflame, whether as
nation or individual, we may purify it, energize it, give it power to
form and arrange the atoms around it--and we have a new literature,
a new and beneficent, creative social vehicle of intercourse, mutual
understanding, and human unification....
It is evident that the criterion of the perfectness of any language
is not to be found in a comparison of its forms or methods with those
of any other, but in its fitness as a vehicle for the expression of
deeper life, of the best and greatest that is in those who use it, and
above all in its ability to react and stimulate newer and yet greater
mental and spiritual activity and expression. The force behind man,
demanding expression through him, and him only, into the human life of
all, is infinite--of necessity infinite. There is no limit, nor ever
has been any limit, to what man may bring down into the dignifying,
broadening and enriching of human life and evolution, save in his own
ability to comprehend, express, and live it. And the brightness and
cleanness of the tools whereby he formulates his thought, as well as
the worthiness and fitness of the substance and the forms into which
he shapes it for others to see, are the essentials of his craft....
There is one great broad line that divides the nations and
civilizations of the earth, past and present, in all their arts of
expression. We may call it that of the ideographic as against the
literal. It controls the inner form of language and of languages; it
manifests in the passage of thought from man to man; it determines
whether the writing of the people shall be hieroglyphic or alphabetic;
it gives both life and form to the ideals of their art. It is a
distinction that was clearly recognized by Wilhelm von Humboldt,
when he laid down that the incorporative characteristic essential to
all the American languages is the result of the exaltation of the
imaginative over the ratiocinative elements of mind.
Ideographic writing directs the mind of the reader by means of a
picture or a symbol directly to the idea existing in the mind of the
one who uses it; while alphabetic or literal writing is simply the
written expression of the sound, and only indirectly expresses the idea.
Passing on from the culture of ancient America with its ideographs, the
writer draws attention to the great transition of thought, as indicated
by language, that took place in Central Asia probably, the supposed
seat of the Aryan beginnings after the destruction of Atlantis and the
general break-up of the former civilizations. He says:
I believe ... that coincident with a new and universal world-epoch, as
wide in its cultural scope as the difference between the ideographic
and literal, there was finally formed a totally new vehicle for
the use of human thought, the inflectional, literal, alphabetic.
That this vehicle was perfected into some great speech, the direct
ancestor of Sanskrit, into the _forms_ of which were concentrated
all the old power of the ancient hieroglyphs and their underlying
concepts. For Sanskrit, while the oldest is also the mightiest of
Aryan grammars; and no one who has studied its forms, or heard
its speech from educated native mouths, can call it anything but
concentrated spiritual power. That the force which went on the one
hand into the Sanskrit forms, was on the other perpetuated on into
the special genius of Chinese, in which, as we know it, we have a
retarded survival, not of course of outer form so much as of method
and essence. And in Tibetan, in spite of all that is said to the
contrary, I suspect that we have a derivative, not from either Chinese
or Sanskrit as we know them, but by a medial line from a common point.
Many students feel convinced that once we solve the problem of the
Maya-Tzental manuscripts and carved inscriptions, which undoubtedly
relate to enormous periods of time, we shall have conclusive evidences
of the civilization and destruction of Atlantis. Several illuminating
quotations from H. P. Blavatsky's _Secret Doctrine_ are given by
Professor Gates, and in his last paragraph he sums up the results
of his long application to the study of ancient American and other
languages, in which he has been so notably helped by the teachings of
Theosophy, in these words:
And I am convinced that the widest door there is to be opened to
this past of the human race, is that of the Maya glyphs. The narrow
limitations of our mental horizon as to the greatness and dignity of
man, of his past, and of human evolution, were set back widely by
Egypt and what she has had to show, and again by the Sanskrit; but the
walls are still there, and advances, however rapid, are but gradual.
With the reading of America I believe the walls themselves will fall,
and a new conception of past history will come.
A NEW MAGAZINE
Translation of an article that appeared in the Gothenburg paper
_Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfarts Tidning_ for August 23, 1911, written
by the literary and dramatic critic of the paper, J. Atterbom.
THE first number of a new international magazine which seems worthy of
recognition is now out in a Swedish edition. The publication is called
_Den Teosofiska Vägen_ (_The Theosophical Path_) and the ultimate
direction is in the hands of Katherine Tingley, the Leader of the
international Theosophical Movement. The editor of the Swedish edition
is Dr. Gustaf Zander, Stockholm.
This monthly magazine is intended to continue, on a broader scale, the
work of the former magazine _Theosophia_, which has been published
for a good many years. The interest in Theosophy has grown steadily
of late, not only in our country but in all civilized countries. And
the more attention the Theosophical Movement has attracted through
its propaganda and educational activities, the more the need has been
felt of a publication which, instead of devoting most of its space to
theoretical Theosophy and the deeper teachings of its philosophy suited
to advanced students, would serve primarily to enlighten and inform
all genuine seekers of Truth upon the essential character of this
Theosophical Movement throughout the world, and indicate _the path_
along which its workers are trying to make Theosophy a living power in
the world's life, as well as in the daily life of each of them.