Transcription by M.R.J.
AE In The Irish Theosophist
--By "AE" (George William Russell)
Contents:
1--A Word Upon the Objects of the Theosophical Society
2--The Twilight Hour
3--The Mask of Apollo
4--The Secret of Power
5--The Priestess of the Woods
6--A Tragedy in the Temple
7--Jagrata, Svapna and Sushupti
8--Concentration
9--Verse by AE in "The Irish Theosophist" (39 verses)
10--The Element Language
11--At the Dawn of the Kali Yuga
12--The Meditation of Parvati
13--A Talk by the Euphrates
14--The Cave of Lilith
15--A Strange Awakening
16--The Midnight Blossom
17--The Story of a Star
18--How Theosophy Affects One's View of Life
19--Comfort
20--The Ascending Cycle
21--The Mystic Night's Entertainment
22--On the Spur of the Moment
23--The Legends of Ancient Eire
24--Review: Lyrics of Fitzpatrick
25--"Yes, And Hope"
26--Content
27--The Enchantment of Cuchullain
28--Shadow and Substance
29--On the Passing of W.Q. Judge
30--Self-Reliance
31--The Mountains
32--Works and Days
33--The Childhood of Apollo
34--The Awakening of the Fires
35--Our Secret Ties
36--Priest or Hero?
37--The Age of the Spirit
38--A Thought Along the Road
39--The Fountains of Youth
A Word Upon the Objects of the Theosophical Society
1st:--To form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity,
without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or color.
2nd:---To promote the study of Aryan and other Eastern literatures,
religions, philosophies and sciences, and demonstrate the importance
of that study.
3rd:---To investigate unexplained laws of nature and the psychic
powers latent in man.
Started a little under a quarter of a century ago, in an age
grown cold with unbelief and deadened by inexplicable dogmas, the
Theosophical Society has found adherents numerous enough to make
it widely known, and enthusiastic enough to give it momentum and
make it a living force. The proclamation of its triple objects--
brotherhood, wisdom and power, acted like a trumpet call, and many
came forth to join it, emerging from other conflicts; and out of
silence and retirement came many who had grown hopeless but who
had still the old feeling at heart.
For the first object no explanation is necessary; but a word or
two of comment upon the second and third may help to show how they
do not weaken, by turning into other channels, the intellectual
energies and will, which might serve to carry out the first. In
these old philosophies of the East we find the stimulus to brotherly
action which might not be needed in an ideal state, but which is
a help to the many, who, born into the world with a coldness of
heart as their heritage, still wish to do their duty. Now out duty
alters according to our conception of nature, and in the East there
has been put forward, by men whom we believe to be the wise and
great of the earth, a noble philosophy, a science of life itself,
and this, not as a hypothesis, but as truth which is certain, truth
which has been verified by eyes which see deeper than ours, and
proclaimed by the voices of those who have become the truth they
speak of; for as Krishna teaches Arjuna in the Dayanishvari:
"on this Path to whatever place one would go that place one's self
becomes!" The last word of this wisdom is unity. Underneath all
phenomena and surviving all changes, a great principle endures
for ever. At the great white dawn of existence, from this principle
stream spirit and primordial matter; as they flow away further
from their divine source, they become broken up, the one life into
countless lives, matter into countless forms, which enshrine these
lives; spirit involves itself into matter and matter evolves,
acted upon by this informing fire.
These lives wander on through many a cycle's ebb and flow, in
separation and sorrow, with sometimes the joy of a momentary meeting.
Only by the recognition of that unity, which spiritually is theirs,
can they obtain freedom.
It is true in the experience of the race that devotion of any life
to universal ends brings to that life a strange subtle richness and
strength; by our mood we fasten ourselves into the Eternal; hence
these historic utterances, declarations of permanence and a spiritual
state of consciousness, which have been the foundation of all great
religious movements. Christ says, "I and my Father are one."
"Before Abraham was I am." Paul says, "In him we live and move
and have our being."
In the sacred books of India it is the claim of many sages that
they have recognised "the ancient constant and eternal which perishes
not through the body be slain," and there are not wanting to-day
men who speak of a similar expansion of their consciousness, out
of the gross and material, into more tender, wise and beautiful
states of thought and being. Tennyson, in a famous letter published
some time ago, mentioned that he had at different times experienced
such a mood; the idea of death was laughable; it was not thought,
but a state; "the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest."
It would be easy to do on multiplying instances.
Now in a nature where unity underlies all differences, where soul
is bound to soul more than star to star; where if one falters or
fails the order of all the rest is changed; the duty of any man
who perceives this unity is clear, the call for brotherly action
is imperative, selfishness cannot any longer wear the mask of wisdom,
for isolation is folly and shuts us out from the eternal verities.
The third object of the society defined as "the study of the psychic
powers latent in man" is pursued only by a portion of the members;
those who wish to understand more clearly the working of certain
laws of nature and who wish to give themselves up more completely
to that life in which they live and move and have their being;
and the outward expression of the occult life is also brotherhood.
--Nov. 15, 1892
The Hour of Twilight
For the future we intend that at this hour the Mystic shall be at home,
less metaphysical and scientific than is his wont, but more really
himself. It is customary at this hour, before the lamps are brought in,
to give way a little and dream, letting all the tender fancies day
suppresses rise up in out minds. Wherever it is spent, whether in
the dusky room or walking home through the blue evening, all things
grow strangely softened and united; the magic of the old world
reappears. The commonplace streets take on something of the grandeur
and solemnity of starlit avenues of Egyptian temples the public
squares in the mingled glow and gloom grow beautiful as the Indian
grove where Sakuntala wandered with her maidens; the children chase
each other through the dusky shrubberies, as they flee past they
look at us with long remembered glances: lulled by the silence,
we forget a little while the hard edges of the material and remember
that we are spirits.
Now is the hour for memory, the time to call in and make more securely
our own all stray and beautiful ideas that visited us during the day,
and which might otherwise be forgotten. We should draw them in from
the region of things felt to the region of things understood; in
a focus burning with beauty and pure with truth we should bind them,
for from the thoughts thus gathered in something accrues to the
consciousness; on the morrow a change impalpable but real has taken
place in our being, we see beauty and truth through everything.
It is in like manner in Devachan, between the darkness of earth
and the light of spiritual self-consciousness, that the Master in
each of us draws in and absorbs the rarest and best of experiences,
love, self-forgetfulness, aspiration, and out of these distils the
subtle essence of wisdom, so that he who struggles in pain for his
fellows, when he wakens again on earth is endowed with the tradition
of that which we call self-sacrifice, but which is in reality the
proclamation of our own universal nature. There are yet vaster
correspondences, for so also we are told, when the seven worlds
are withdrawn, the great calm Shepherd of the Ages draws his misty
hordes together in the glimmering twilights of eternity, and as
they are penned within the awful Fold, the rays long separate are
bound into one, and life, and joy, and beauty disappear, to emerge
again after rest unspeakable on the morning of a New Day.
Now if the aim of the mystic be to fuse into one all moods made
separate by time, would not the daily harvesting of wisdom render
unnecessary the long Devachanic years? No second harvest could be
reaped from fields where the sheaves are already garnered. Thus
disregarding the fruits of action, we could work like those who
have made the Great Sacrifice, for whom even Nirvana is no resting
place. Worlds may awaken in nebulous glory, pass through their
phases of self-conscious existence and sink again to sleep, but
these tireless workers continue their age-long task of help. Their
motive we do not know, but in some secret depth of our being we
feel that there could be nothing nobler, and thinking this we have
devoted the twilight hour to the understanding of their nature.
--February 15, 1893
There are dreams which may be history or may be allegory. There
is in them nothing grotesque, nothing which could mar the feeling
of authenticity, the sense of the actual occurence of the dream
incident. The faces and figures perceived have the light shade
and expression which seems quite proper to the wonderworld in
which the eye of the inner man has vision; and yet the story may
be read as a parable of spiritual truth like some myth of ancient
scripture. Long ago I had may such dreams, and having lately
become a student of such things, I have felt an interest in recalling
the more curious and memorable of these early vision.
The nebulous mid-region between waking and unconsciousness was the
haunt of many strange figures, reflections perhaps from that true
life led during sleep by the immortal man. Among these figures
two awoke the strangest feelings of interest. One was an old man
with long grey hair and beard, whose grey-blue eyes had an expression
of secret and inscrutable wisdom; I felt an instinctive reverence
for this figure, so expressive of spiritual nobility, and it became
associated in my mind with all aspiration and mystical thought.
The other figure was that of a young girl. These two appeared again
and again in my visions; the old man always as instructor, the
girl always as companion. I have here written down one of these
adventures, leaving it to the reader to judge whether it is purely
symbolical, or whether the incidents related actually took place,
and were out-realized from latency by the power of the Master within.
With the girl as my companion I left an inland valley and walked
towards the sea. It was evening when we reached it and the tide
was far out. The sands glimmered away for miles on each side of us;
we walked outwards through the dim coloured twilight, I was silent;
a strange ecstacy slowly took possession of me, as if drop by drop
an unutterable life was falling within; the fever grew intense,
then unbearable as it communicated itself to the body; with a wild
cry I began to spin about, whirling round and round in ever increasing
delirium; Some secretness was in the air; I was called forth by
the powers of invisible nature and in a swoon I fell. I rose again
with sudden memory, but my body was lying upon the sands; with a
curious indifference I saw that the tide was on the turn and the
child was unable to remove the insensible form beyond its reach;
I saw her sit down beside it and place the head upon her lap;
she sat there quietly waiting, while all about her little by little
the wave of the Indian sea began to ripple inwards, and overhead
the early stars began softly to glow.
After this I forgot completely the child and the peril of the waters,
I began to be conscious of the presence of a new world. All around
me currents were flowing, in whose waves dance innumerable lives;
diaphanous forms glided about, a nebulous sparkle was everywhere
apparent; faces as of men in dreams glimmered on me, or unconsciously
their forms drifted past, and now and then a face looked sternly
upon me with a questioning glance. I was not to remain long in
this misty region, again I felt the internal impulse and internally
I was translated into a sphere of more pervading beauty and light;
and here with more majesty and clearness than I had observed before
was the old man of my dreams.
I had though of him as old but there was an indescribable youth
pervading the face with its ancient beauty, and then I knew it was
neither age nor youth, it was eternalness. The calm light of thought
played over features clear cut as a statue's, and an inner luminousness
shone through the rose of his face and his silver hair.
There were others about but of them I had no distinct vision.
He said, "You who have lived and wandered through our own peculiar
valleys look backwards now and learn the alchemy of thought." He
touched me with his hand and I became aware of the power of these
strange beings. I felt how they had waited in patience, how they
had worked and willed in silence; from them as from a fountain
went forth peace; to them as to the stars rose up unconsciously
the aspirations of men, the dumb animal cravings, the tendrils of
the flowers. I saw how in the valley where I lived, where naught
had hindered, their presence had drawn forth in luxuriance all dim
and hidden beauty, a rarer and pure atmosphere recalled the radiant
life of men in the golden dawn of the earth.
With wider vision I saw how far withdrawn from strife they had
stilled the tumults of nations; I saw how hearing far within the
voices, spiritual, remote, which called, the mighty princes of the
earth descended from their thrones becoming greater than princes;
under this silent influence the terrible chieftains flung open the
doors of their dungeons that they themselves might become free,
and all these joined in that hymn which the quietude of earth makes
to sound in the ears of the gods.--Overpowered I turned round, the
eyes of light were fixed upon me.
"Do you now understand?"
"I do not understand," I replied. I see that the light and the
beauty and the power that enters the darkness of the world comes
from these high regions; but I do not know how the light enters,
no how beauty is born, I do not know the secret of power."
"You must become as one of us," he answered.
I bowed my head until it touched his breast; I felt my life was
being drawn from me, but before consciousness utterly departed and
was swallowed up in that larger life, I learned something of the
secret of their being; I lived within the minds of men, but their
thoughts were not my thoughts; I hung like a crown over everything,
yet age was no nearer than childhood to the grasp of my sceptre
and sorrow was far away when it wept for my going, and very far
was joy when it woke at my light; yet I was the lure that led
them on; I was at the end of all ways, and I was also in the sweet
voice that cried "return;" and I had learned how spiritual life
is one in all things, when infinite vistas and greater depths
received me, and I went into that darkness out of which no memory
can ever return.
--March 15, 1893
The Mask of Apollo
A tradition rises up within me of quiet, unrumoured years, ages
before the demigods and heroes toiled at the making of Greece,
long ages before the building of the temples and sparkling palaces
of her day of glory. The land was pastoral, all over its woods
hung a stillness as of dawn and of unawakened beauty deep-breathing
in rest. Here and there little villages sent up their smoke and
a dreamy people moved about; they grew up, toiled a little at
their fields, followed their sheep and goats, they wedded and grey
age overtook them, but they never ceased to be children. They
worshiped the gods with ancient rites in little wooden temples and
knew many things which were forgotten in later years.
Near one of these shrines lived a priest, an old man whose simple
and reverend nature made him loved by all around. To him, sitting
one summer evening before his hut, came a stranger whom he invited
to share his meal. The stranger sat down and began to tell him
many wonderful things, stories of the magic of the sun and of the
bright beings who moved at the gates of the day. The old priest
grew drowsy in the warm sunlight and fell asleep. Then the stranger
who was Apollo arose and in the guise of the old priest entered
the little temple, and the people came in unto him one after the other.
Agathon, the husbandman. "Father, as I bend over the fields or
fasten up the vines, I sometimes remember how you said that the
gods can be worshiped by doing these things as by sacrifice. How
is it, father, that the pouring of cool water over roots, or training
up the branches can nourish Zeus? How can the sacrifice appear
before his throne when it is not carried up in the fire and vapour."
Apollo. "Agathon, the father omnipotent does not live only in the
aether. He runs invisibly within the sun and stars, and as they
whirl round and round, they break out into woods and flowers and
streams, and the winds are shaken away from them like leaves from
off the roses. Great, strange and bright, he busies himself within,
and at the end of time his light shall shine through and men shall
see it, moving in a world of flame.
Think then, as you bend over your fields, of what you nourish and
what rises up within them. Know that every flower as it droops in
the quiet of the woodland feels within and far away the approach
of an unutterable life and is glad, they reflect that life even
as the little pools take up the light of the stars. Agathon, Agathon,
Zeus is no greater in the aether than he is in the leaf of grass,
and the hymns of men are no sweeter to him than a little water
poured over one of his flowers."
Agathon the husbandman went away and bent tenderly over his fruits
and vines, and he loved each one of them more than before, and he
grew wise in many things as he watched them and he was happy working
for the gods.
Then spake Damon the shepherd, "Father, while the flocks are browsing
dreams rise up within me; they make the heart sick with longing;
the forests vanish, I hear no more the lamb's bleat or the rustling
of the fleeces; voices from a thousand depths call me, they whisper,
they beseech me, shadows lovelier than earth's children utter music,
not for me though I faint while I listen. Father, why do I hear
the things others hear not, voices calling to unknown hunters of
wide fields, or to herdsmen, shepherds of the starry flocks"?
Apollo answered, "Damon, a song stole from the silence while the
gods were not yet, and a thousand ages passed ere they came, called
forth by the music, and a thousand ages they listened then joined
in the song; then began the worlds to glimmer shadowy about them
and bright beings to bow before them. These, their children, began
in their turn to sing the song that calls forth and awakens life.
He is master of all things who has learned their music. Damon,
heed not the shadows, but the voices, the voices have a message
to thee from beyond the gods. Learn their song and sing it over
again to the people until their hearts too are sick with longing
and they can hear the song within themselves. Oh, my son, I see
far off how the nations shall join in it as in a chorus, and hearing
it the rushing planets shall cease from their speed and be steadfast;
men shall hold starry sway." The face of the god shone through
the face of the old man, and filled with awe, it was so full of
secretness. Damon the herdsman passed from his presence and a
strange fire was kindled in his heart. Then the two lovers, Dion
and Neaera, came in and stood before Apollo.
Dion spake, "Father, you who are so wise can tell us what love is,
so that we shall never miss it. Old Tithonius nods his grey head
at us as we pass; he says, 'only with the changeless gods has
love endurance, for men the loving time is short and its sweetness
is soon over.'"
Neaera added. "But it is not true, father, for his drowsy eyes
light when he remembers the old days, when he was happy and proud
in love as we are."
Apollo. "My children, I will tell you the legend how love came
into the world and how it may endure. It was on high Olympus the
gods held council at the making of man; each had brought a gift,
they gave to man something of their own nature. Aphrodite, the
loveliest and sweetest, paused and was about to add a new grace
to his person, but Eros cried, "let them not be so lovely without,
let them be lovelier within. Put you own soul in, O mother."
The mighty mother smiled, and so it was; and now whenever love
is like hers, which asks not return but shines on all because it
must, within that love Aphrodite dwells and it becomes immortal
by her presence."
Then Dion and Neaera went out, and as they walked homewards through
the forest, purple and vaporous in the evening light, they drew
closer together; and Dion looking into her eyes saw there a new gleam,
violet, magical, shining, there was the presence of Aphrodite, there
was her shrine.
Then came in unto Apollo the two grandchildren of old Thithonius
and they cried, "See the flowers we have brought you, we gathered
them for you down in the valley where they grow best." Then Apollo
said, "What wisdom shall we give to children that they may remember?
Our most beautiful for them!" As he stood and looked at them the
mask of age and secretness vanished, he stood before them radiant
in light; they laughed in joy at his beauty; he bent down and
kissed them each upon the forehead then faded away into the light
which was his home. As the sun sank down amid the blue hills the
old priest awoke with a sigh and cried out, "Oh that we could talk
wisely as we do in our dreams."
--April 15, 1893
The Secret of Power
It is not merely because it is extraordinary that I wish to tell
you this story. I think mere weirdness, grotesque or unusual character,
are not sufficient reasons for making public incidents in which
there is an element of the superhuman. The world, in spite of its
desire to understand the nature of the occult is sick of and refuses
to listen to stories of apparitions which betray no spiritual
character or reveal no spiritual law. The incident here related is
burned into my mind and life, not because of its dramatic intensity
or personal character, but because it was a revelation of the secret
of power, a secret which the wise in good and the wise in evil alike
have knowledge of.
My friend Felix was strangely disturbed; not only were his material
affairs unsettled, but he was also passing through a crisis in his
spiritual life. Two paths were open before him; On one side lay
the dazzling mystery of passion; on the other "the small old path"
held out its secret and spiritual allurements. I had hope that
he would choose the latter, and as I was keenly interested in his
decision. I invested the struggle going on in his mind with something
of universal significance, seeing in it a symbol of the strife between
"light and darkness which are the world's eternal ways." He came
in late one evening. I saw at once by the dim light that there
was something strange in his manner. I spoke to him in enquiry;
he answered me in a harsh dry voice quite foreign to his usual manner.
"Oh, I am not going to trouble myself any more, I will let things
take their course." This seemed the one idea in his mind, the one
thing he understood clearly was that things were to take their own
course; he failed to grasp the significance of any other idea or
its relative importance. He answered "Aye, indeed," with every
appearance of interest and eagerness to some trivial remark about
the weather, and was quite unconcerned about another and most
important matter which should have interested him deeply. I soon
saw what had happened; his mind, in which forces so evenly balanced
had fought so strenuously, had become utterly wearied out and could
work no longer. A flash of old intuition illumined it at last,--
it was not wise to strive with such bitterness over life,--therefore
he said to me in memory of this intuition, "I am going to let things
take their course." A larger tribunal would decide; he had appealed
unto Caesar. I sent him up to his room and tried to quiet his fever
by magnetization with some success. He fell asleep, and as I was
rather weary myself I retired soon after.
This was the vision of the night. It was surely in the room I was
lying and on my bed, and yet space opened on every side with pale,
clear light. A slight wavering figure caught my eye, a figure that
swayed to and fro; I was struck with its utter feebleness, yet I
understood it was its own will or some quality of its nature which
determined that palpitating movement towards the poles between which
it swung. What were they? I became silent as night and thought
no more.
Two figures awful in their power opposed each other; the frail
being wavering between them could by putting out its arms have
touched them both. It alone wavered, for they were silent, resolute
and knit in the conflict of will; they stirred not a hand nor a foot;
there was only a still quivering now and then as of intense effort,
but they made no other movement. Their heads were bent forward
slightly, their arms folded, their bodies straight, rigid, and
inclined slightly backwards from each other like two spokes of a
gigantic wheel. What were they, these figures? I knew not, and
yet gazing upon them, thought which took no words to clothe itself
mutely read their meaning. Here were the culminations of the human,
towering images of the good and evil man may aspire to. I looked
at the face of the evil adept. His bright red-brown eyes burned
with a strange radiance of power; I felt an answering emotion of pride,
of personal intoxication, of psychic richness rise up within me gazing
upon him. His face was archetypal; the abstract passion which
eluded me in the features of many people I knew, was here declared,
exultant, defiant, giantesque; it seem to leap like fire, to be free.
In this face I was close to the legendary past, to the hopeless
worlds where men were martyred by stony kings, where prayer was
hopeless, where pity was none. I traced a resemblance to many of
the great Destroyers in history whose features have been preserved,
Napoleon, Ramses and a hundred others, named and nameless, the long
line of those who were crowned and sceptered in cruelty. His strength
was in human weakness, I saw this, for space and the hearts of men
were bare before me. Out of space there flowed to him a stream
half invisible of red; it nourished that rich radiant energy of
passion; it flowed from men as they walked and brooded in loneliness,
or as they tossed in sleep. I withdrew my gaze from this face which
awoke in me a lurid sense accompaniment, and turned it on the other.
An aura of pale soft blue was around this figure through which gleamed
an underlight as of universal gold. The vision was already dim and
departing, but I caught a glimpse of a face godlike in its calm,
terrible in the beauty of a life we know only in dreams, with strength
which is the end of the hero's toil, which belongs to the many times
martyred soul; yet not far away not in the past was its power, it
was the might of life which exists eternally. I understood how
easy it would have been for this one to have ended the conflict,
to have gained a material victory by its power, but this would not
have touched on or furthered its spiritual ends. Only its real
being had force to attract that real being which was shrouded in
the wavering figure. This truth the adept of darkness knew also
and therefore he intensified within the sense of pride and passionate
personality. Therefore they stirred not a hand nor a foot while
under the stimulus of their presence culminated the good and evil
in the life which had appealed to a higher tribunal to decide.
Then this figure wavering between the two moved forward and touched
with its hand the Son of Light. All at once the scene and actors
vanished, and the eye that saw them was closed, I was alone with
darkness and a hurricane of thoughts.
Strange and powerful figures! I knew your secret of strength, it
is only to be, nature quickened by your presence leaps up in response.
I knew no less the freedom of that human soul, for your power only
revealed its unmanifest nature, it but precipitated experience.
I knew that although the gods and cosmic powers may war over us
for ever, it is we alone declare them victors or vanquished.
For the rest the vision of that night was prophetic, and the feet
of my friend are now set on that way which was the innermost impulse
of his soul.
--May 15, 1893
The Priestess of the Woods
Here is a legend whispered to me, the land or time I cannot tell,
it may have been in the old Atlantean days. There were vast woods
and a young priestess ruled them; she presided at the festivals
and sacrificed at the altar for the people, interceding with the
spirits of fire, water air and earth, that the harvest might not
be burned up, nor drenched with the floods, nor town by storms and
that the blight might not fall upon it, which things the elemental
spirits sometimes brought about. This woodland sovereignty was
her heritage from her father who was a mighty magician before her.
Around her young days floated the faery presences; she knew them
as other children know the flowers having neither fear nor wonder
for them. She saw deeper things also; as a little child, wrapped
up in her bearskin, she watched with awe her father engaged in mystic
rites; when around him the airy legions gathered from the populous
elements, the spirits he ruled and the spirits he bowed down before:
fleeting nebulous things white as foam coming forth from the great
deep who fled away at the waving of his hand; and rarer the great
sons of fire, bright and transparent as glass, who though near
seemed yet far away and were still and swift as the figures that
glance in a crystal. So the child grew up full of mystery; her
thoughts were not the thoughts of the people about her, nor their
affections her affections. It seemed as if the elf-things or beings
carved by the thought of the magician, pushed aside by his strong
will and falling away from him, entering into the child became
part of her, linking her to the elemental beings who live in the
star-soul that glows within the earth. Her father told her such
things as she asked, but he died while she was yet young and she
knew not his aim, what man is, or what is his destiny; but she
knew the ways of every order of spirit that goes about clad in a
form, how some were to be dreaded and some to be loved; By reason
of this knowledge she succeeded as priestess to the shrine, and
held the sway of beauty and youth, of wisdom and mystery over the
people dwelling in the woods.
It was the evening of the autumn festival, the open grassy space
before the altar was crowded with figures, hunters with their
feathered heads; shepherds, those who toil in the fields, the old
and hoary were gathered around.
The young priestess stood up before them; she was pale from vigil,
and the sunlight coming through the misty evening air fell upon her
swaying arms and her dress with its curious embroidery of peacock's
feathers; the dark hollows of her eyes were alight and as she spoke
inspiration came to her; her voice rose and fell, commanding, warning,
whispering, beseeching; its strange rich music flooded the woods
and pierced through and through with awe the hearts of those who
listened. She spoke of the mysteries of that unseen nature; how
man is watched and ringed round with hosts who war upon him, who
wither up his joys by their breath; she spoke of the gnomes who
rise up in the woodland paths with damp arms grasping from their
earthy bed.
"Dreadful" she said "are the elementals who live in the hidden waters:
they rule the dreaming heart: their curse is forgetfulness; they
lull man to fatal rest, with drowsy fingers feeling to put out his
fire of life. But the most of all, dread the powers that move in air;
their nature is desire unquenchable; their destiny is--never to
be fulfilled--never to be at peace: they roam hither and thither
like the winds they guide; they usurp dominion over the passionate
and tender soul, but they love not in our way; where they dwell
the heart is a madness and the feet are filled with a hurrying fever,
and night has no sleep and day holds no joy in its sunlit cup.
Listen not to their whisper; they wither and burn up the body with
their fire; the beauty they offer is smitten through and through
with unappeasable anguish." She paused for a moment; here terrible
breath had hardly ceased to thrill them, when another voice was
heard singing; its note was gay and triumphant, it broke the spell
of fear upon the people,
"I never heed by waste or wood
The cry of fay or faery thing
Who tell of their own solitude;
Above them all my soul is king.
The royal robe as king I wear
Trails all along the fields of light;
Its silent blue and silver bear
For gems the starry dust of night.
The breath of joy unceasingly
Waves to and fro its fold star-lit,
And far beyond earth's misery
I live and breathe the joy of it."
The priestess advanced from the altar, her eyes sought for the singer;
when she came to the centre of the opening she paused and waited
silently. Almost immediately a young man carrying a small lyre
stepped out of the crowd and stood before her; he did not seem
older than the priestess; he stood unconcerned though her dark
eyes blazed at the intrusion; he met her gaze fearlessly; his
eyes looked into hers--in this way all proud spirits do battle.
Her eyes were black with almost a purple tinge, eyes that had looked
into the dark ways of nature; his were bronze, and a golden tinge,
a mystic opulence of vitality seemed to dance in their depths;
they dazzled the young priestess with the secrecy of joy; her eyes
fell for a moment. He turned round and cried out, "Your priestess
speaks but half truths, her eyes have seen but her heart does not know.
Life is not terrible but is full of joy. Listen to me. I passed
by while she spake, and I saw that a fear lay upon every man, and
you shivered thinking of your homeward path, fearful as rabbits of
the unseen things, and forgetful how you have laughed at death facing
the monsters who crush down the forests. Do you not know that you
are greater than all these spirits before who you bow in dread;
your life springs from a deeper source. Answer me, priestess, where
go the fire-spirits when winter seizes the world?"
"Into the Fire-King they go, they dream in his heart." She half
chanted, the passion of her speech not yet fallen away from her.
"And where go the fires of men when they despair"? She was silent;
then he continued half in scorn, "Your priestess is the priestess
of ghouls and fays rather than a priestess of men; her wisdom is
not for you; the spirits that haunt the elements are hostile because
they see you full of fear; do not dread them and their hatred will
vanish. The great heart of the earth is full of laughter; do not
put yourselves apart from its joy, for its soul is your soul and
its joy is your true being."
He turned and passed through the crowd; the priestess made a motion
as if she would have stayed him, then she drew herself up proudly
and refrained. They heard his voice again singing as he passed into
the darkening woods,
"The spirits to the fire-king throng
Each in the winter of his day:
And all who listen to their song
Follow them after in that way.
They seek the heart-hold of the king,
They build within his halls of fire,
Their dreams flash like the peacock's wing,
They glow with sun-hues of desire.
I follow in no faery ways;
I heed no voice of fay or elf;
I in the winter of my days
Rest in the high ancestral self."
The rites interrupted by the stranger did not continue much longer;
the priestess concluded her words of warning; she did not try to
remove the impression created by the poet's song, she only said,
"His wisdom may be truer. It is more beautiful than the knowledge
we inherit."
The days passed on; autumn died into winter, spring came again
and summer, and the seasons which brought change to the earth
brought change to the young priestess. She sought no longer to
hold sway over the elemental tribes, and her empire over them
departed: the song of the poet rang for ever in her ears; its
proud assertion of kingship and joy in the radiance of a deeper
life haunted her like truth; but such a life seemed unattainable
by her and a deep sadness rested in her heart. The wood-people
often saw her sitting in the evening where the sunlight fell along
the pool, waving slowly its azure and amethyst, sparkling and
flashing in crystal and gold, melting as if a phantom Bird of
Paradise were fading away; her dark head was bowed in melancholy
and all the great beauty flamed and died away unheeded. After a
time she rose up and moved about, she spoke more frequently to the
people who had not dared to question her, she grew into a more
human softness, they feared her less and loved her more; but she
ceased not from her passionate vigils and her step faltered and
her cheek paled, and her eager spirit took flight when the diamond
glow of winter broke out over the world. The poet came again in
the summer; they told him of the change they could not understand,
but he fathomed the depths of this wild nature, and half in gladness,
half in sorrow, he carved an epitaph over her tomb near the altar,
Where is the priestess of this shrine,
And by what place does she adore?
The woodland haunt below the pine
Now hears her whisper nevermore.
Ah, wrapped in her own beauty now
She dreams a dream that shall not cease;
Priestess, to her own soul to bow
Is hers in everlasting peace.
--July 15, 1893
A Tragedy in the Temple
I have often thought with sadness over the fate of that comrade.
That so ardent and heroic a spirit, so much chivalry and generosity
should meet such a horrible fate, has often made me wonder if there
is any purpose in this tangled being of ours; I have hated life
and the gods as I thought of it. What brought him out of those
great deserts where his youth was spent, where his soul grew vast
knowing only of two changes, the blaze of day and night the purifier,
blue, mysterious, ecstatic with starry being? Were not these enough
for him? Could the fire of the altar inspire more? Could he be
initiated deeper in the chambers of the temple than in those great
and lonely places where God and man are alone together? This was
my doing; resting in his tent when I crossed the desert, I had
spoken to him of that old wisdom which the priests of the inner
temple keep and hand down from one to the other; I blew to flame
the mystic fire which already smouldered within him, and filled
with the vast ambition of God, he left his tribe and entered the
priesthood as neophyte in the Temple of Isthar, below Ninevah.
I had sometimes to journey thither bearing messages from our high
priest, and so as time passed my friendship with Asur grew deep.
That last evening when I sat with him on the terrace that roofed
the temple, he was more silent than I had known him before to be;
we had generally so many things to speak of; for he told me all
his dreams, such vague titanic impulses as the soul has in the
fresh first years of its awakening, when no experience hinders
with memory its flights of aspiration, and no anguish has made
it wise. But that evening there was, I thought, something missing;
a curious feverishness seemed to have replaced the cool and hardy
purity of manner which was natural to him; his eyes had a strange
glow, fitful and eager; I saw by the starlight how restless his
fingers were, they intertwined, twisted, and writhed in and out.
We sat long in the rich night together; then he drew nearer to me
and leaned his head near my shoulder; he began to whisper incoherently
a wild and passionate tale; the man's soul was being tempted.
"Brother" he said, "I am haunted by a vision, by a child of the
stars as lovely as Isthar's self; she visits my dreaming hours,
she dazzles me with strange graces, she bewilders with unspeakable
longing. Sometime, I know, I must go to her, though I perish.
When I see her I forget all else and I have will to resist no longer.
The vast and lonely inspiration of the desert departs from my thought,
she and the jewel-light she lives in blot it out. The thought of
her thrills me like fire. Brother give me help, ere I go mad or die;
she draws me away from earth and I shall end my days amid strange
things, a starry destiny amid starry races."
I was not then wise in these things, I did not know the terrible
dangers that lurk in the hidden ways in which the soul travels.
"This" I said " is some delusion. You have brooded over a fancy
until it has become living; you have filled your creation with
your own passion and it lingers and tempts you; even if it were
real, it is folly to think of it, we must close our hearts to passion
if we would attain the power and wisdom of Gods."
He shook his head, I could not realize or understand him. Perhaps
if I had known all and could have warned him, it would have been
in vain; perhaps the soul must work out its own purification in
experience and learn truth and wisdom through being. Once more he
became silent and restless. I had to bid him farewell as I was to
depart on the morrow, but he was present in my thoughts and I could
not sleep because of him; I felt oppressed with the weight of some
doom about to fall. To escape from this feeling I rose in adoration
to Hea; I tried to enter into the light of that Wisdom; a sudden
heart-throb of warning drew me back; I thought of Asur instinctively,
and thinking of him his image flashed on me. He moved as if in
trance through the glassy waves of those cosmic waters which
everywhere lave and permeate the worlds, and in which our earth
is but a subaqueous mound. His head was bowed, his form dilated
to heroic stature, as if he conceived of himself as some great
thing or as moving to some high destiny; and this shadow which
was the house of his dreaming soul grew brilliant with the passionate
hues of his thought; some power beyond him drew him forth. I felt
the fever and heat of this inner sphere like a delirious breath
blow fiercely about me; there was a phosphorescence of hot and
lurid colours. The form of Asur moved towards a light streaming
from a grotto, I could see within it burning gigantic flowers.
On one, as on a throne, a figure of weird and wonderful beauty was
seated. I was thrilled with a dreadful horror, I thought of the
race of Liliths, and some long forgotten and tragic legends rose
up in my memory of these beings whose soul is but a single and
terrible passion; whose love too fierce for feebler lives to endure,
brings death or madness to men. I tried to warn, to awaken him
from the spell; my will-call aroused him; he turned, recognized
me and hesitated; then this figure that lured him rose to her
full height; I saw her in all her plume of a peacock, it was
spotted with gold and green and citron dyes, she raised her arms
upwards, her robe, semi-transparent, purple and starred over with
a jewel lustre, fell in vaporous folds to her feet like the drift
over a waterfall. She turned her head with a sudden bird-like
movement, her strange eyes looked into mine with a prolonged and
snaky glance; I saw her move her arms hither and thither, and the
waves of this inner ocean began to darken and gather about me, to
ripple through me with feverish motion. I fell into a swoon and
remembered nothing more.
I was awakened before dawn, those with whom I was to cross the
desert were about to start and I could remain no longer. I wrote
hurriedly to Asur a message full of warning and entreaty and set
out on my return journey full of evil forebodings. Some months
after I had again to visit the temple; it was evening when I arrived;
after I had delivered the message with which I was charged, I asked
for Asur. The priest to whom I spoke did not answer me. He led
me in silence up to the terrace that overlooked the desolate eastern
desert. The moon was looming white upon the verge, the world was
trembling with heat, the winged bulls along the walls shone with
a dull glow through the sultry air. The priest pointed to the far
end of the terrace. A figure was seated looking out over the desert,
his robes were motionless as if their wrinkles were carved of stone,
his hands lay on his knees, I walked up to him; I called his name;
he did not stir. I came nearer and put my face close to his, it
was as white as the moon, his eyes only reflected the light. I
turned away from him sick to the very heart.
--September 15, 1893
Jagrata, Svapna and Sushupti
While the philosophical concepts of ancient India, concerning
religion and cosmogony, are to some extent familiar and appreciated
in these countries, its psychology, intimately related with its
religion and metaphysics, is comparatively unknown. In Europe the
greatest intellects have been occupied by speculations upon the
laws and aspects of physical nature, while the more spiritual Hindus
were absorbed in investigations as to the nature of life itself;
by continual aspiration, devotion, introspection and self-analysis,
they had acquired vast knowledge of the states of consciousness
possible for man to enter upon; they had laid bare the anatomy
of the mind, and described the many states that lay between the
normal waking condition of man, and the final state of spiritual
freedom and unity with BRAHMA, which it was the aim alike of religion
and science to bring about. Most interesting among their ideas,
was their analysis of the states of consciousness upon which we
enter during sleep. Roughly speaking, they may be divided into two,
which together with the waking state, make a trinity of states
through which every person passes, whether he be aware of it or not.
These states are known as:---Jagrata, waking; Svapna, dreaming;
and Sushupti, deep sleep. The English equivalents of these words
give no idea of the states. Passing our of Jagrata, the Indians
held that, beyond the chaotic borderland, we entered, in Svapna
and Sushupti, upon real states of being. Sushupti, the highest,
was accounted a spiritual state; here the soul touches vaster
centres in the great life and has communion with celestial
intelligences. The unification of these states into one is one
of the results of Raj-Yoga; in this state the chela keeps memory
of what occurred while his consciousness was in the planes of Svapna
and Sushupti. Entrance upon these states should not I think be
understood as meaning that the mind has deserted its fleshly
tabernacle in search of such experience. Departure from the
physical form is no more necessary for this than for clairvoyence,
but a transfer of the consciousness in us from one plane to another
is necessary.
Now as we generate Karma in the dreaming and deep sleep states
which may either help or hinder the soul in its evolution, it is
a matter of importance that we should take steps to promote the
unification of these states, so that the knowledge and wisdom of
any one state may be used to perfect the others. Our thoughts and
actions in the waking state react upon the dreaming and deep sleep,
and our experiences in the latter influence us in the waking state
by suggestion and other means. The reason we do not remember what
occurs in Svapna and Sushupti is because the astral matter which
normally surrounds the thinking principle is not subtle enough to
register in its fullness the experience of any one upon the more
spiritual planes of consciousness. To increase the responsiveness
upon the more spiritual planes of consciousness. To increase the
responsiveness of this subtle matter we have to practise concentration,
and so heighten the vibrations, or in other words to evolve or perfect
the astral principle. Modern science is rapidly coming to the
conclusion that the differences perceived in objects around us, are
not differences in substance, but differences of vibration in one
substance. Take a copper wire; pass electrical currents through it,
gradually increasing their intensity, and phenomena of sound, heat
and light will be manifest, the prismatic colours appearing one
after the other. Similarly by an increased intensity in the
performance of every action, the consciousness is gradually
transferred from the lower to the higher planes. In order to give
a point, or to direct the evolving faculties into their proper channel,
continual aspiration is necessary. Take some idea--the spiritual
unity of all things, for example--something which can only be
realized by our complete absorption in spiritual nature; let every
action be performed in the light of this idea, let it be the subject
of reverent thought. If this is persisted in, we will gradually
begin to become conscious upon the higher planes, the force of
concentration carrying the mind beyond the waking into Svapna and
Sushupti. The period between retiring to rest and awakening,
formerly a blank, will begin to be spotted with bright lights of
consciousness, or, as we walk about during the day such knowledge
will visit us. "He who is perfected in devotion findeth spiritual
knowledge springing up spontaneously in himself" say Krishna.
Patanjali recommends dwelling on the knowledge that presents itself
in dreams; if we think over any such experience, many things
connected with it will be revealed, and so gradually the whole
shadowy region will become familiar and attractive, and we will
gain a knowledge of our own nature which will be invaluable and
which cannot otherwise be acquired.
--January 15, 1893
Concentration
Beyond waking, dreaming and deep sleep is Turya. Here there is a
complete change of condition; the knowledge formerly sought in
the external world is now present within the consciousness; the
ideations of universal mind are manifest in spiritual intuitions.
The entrance to this state is through Jagrata, Svapna, and Sushupti,
and here that spiritual unity is realized, the longing for which
draws the soul upwards through the shadowy worlds of dreaming and
deep sleep. I have thought it necessary to supplement the brief
statement made in the previous number by some further remarks upon
concentration, for the term applied without reference to the Turya
state is liable to be misunderstood and a false impression might
arise that the spiritual is something to be sought for outside
ourselves. The waking, dreaming and deep sleep states correspond
to objective worlds, while Turya is subjective, including in itself
all ideals. If this is so, we can never seek for the true beyond
ourselves; the things we suppose we shall come sometime realize
in spiritual consciousness must be present in it now, for to spirit
all things are eternally present. Advance to this state is measured
by the realization of moods: we are on the path when there surges
up in the innermost recesses of our being the cry of the long
imprisoned souls of men; we are then on our way to unity.
The Bhagavad-Gita which is a treatise on Raj Yoga, gives prominence
to three aspects of concentration. Liberation is attained by means
of action, by devotion, by spiritual discernment; these aspects
correspond respectively to three qualities in man and nature, known
as Tamas, Rajas and Satva. The Tamas is the gross, material or
dark quality; Rajas is active and passional; the attributes of
Satva are light, peace, happiness, wisdom. No one while in the
body can escape from the action of the three qualities, for they
are brought about by nature which is compounded of them. We have
to recognize this, and to continue action, aspiration and thought,
impersonally or with some universal motive, in the manner nature
accomplishes these things. Not one of these methods can be laid
aside or ignored, for the Spirit moveth within all, these are its
works, and we have to learn to identify ourselves with the moving
forces of nature.
Having always this idea of brotherhood or unity in mind, by action--
which we may interpret as service in some humanitarian movement--
we purify the Tamas.
By a pure motive, which is the Philosopher's Stone, a potent force
in the alchemy of nature, we change the gross into the subtle, we
initiate that evolution which shall finally make the vesture of
the soul of the rare, long-sought-for, primordial substance.
Devotion is the highest possibility for the Rajas; that quality
which is ever attracted and seduced by the beautiful mayas of fame,
wealth and power, should be directed to that which it really seeks
for, the eternal universal life; the channels through which it
must flow outwards are the souls of other men, it reaches the One
Life through the many. Spiritual discernment should be the aim of
the Satva, "there is not anything, whether animate or inanimate
which is without me," says Krishna, and we should seek for the
traces of THAT in all things, looking upon it as the cause of the
alchemical changes in the Tamas, as that which widens the outflowing
love of the Rajas. By a continued persistence of this subtle
analytic faculty, we begin gradually to perceive that those things
which we formerly thought were causes, are in reality not causes
at all; that there is but one cause for everything, "The Atma by
which this universe is pervaded. By reason of its proximity alone
the body, the organs, Manas and Buddhi apply themselves to their
proper objects as if applied (by some one else)." (The Crest Jewel
of Wisdom). By uniting these three moods, action, devotion and
spiritual discernment, into one mood, and keeping it continuously
alight, we are accompanying the movements of spirit to some extent.
This harmonious action of all the qualities of our nature, for
universal purposes without personal motive, is in synchronous
vibration with that higher state spoken of at the beginning of the
paper; therefore we are at one with it. "When the wise man
perceiveth that the only agents of action are these qualities,
and comprehends that which is superior to the qualities of goodness,
action and indifference--which are co-existent with the body, it
is released from rebirth and death, old age and pain, and drinketh
of the water of immortality."
--February 15, 1893
Verse by AE in the "Irish Theosophist"
Contents:
1--"While the yellow constellations...." (untitled)
2--Om
3--Krishna
4--Pain
5--Three Councelors
6--Dusk
7--Dawn
8--Desire
9--Deep Sleep
10--Day
11--To A Poet
12--The Place of Rest
13--Comfort
14--H.P.B. (In Memoriam.)
15--By the Margin of the Great Deep
16--The Secret
17--Dust
18--Magic
19--Immortality
20--The Man to the Angel
21--The Robing of the King
22--Brotherhood
23--In the Womb
24--In the Garden of God
25--The Breath of Light
26--The Free
27--The Magi
28--W.Q.J. (?)
29--From the Book of the Eagle
30--The Protest of Love
31--The King Initiate
32--The Dream of the Children
33--The Chiefs of the Air
34--The Palaces of the Sidhe
35--The Voice of the Wise
36--A Dawn Song
37--The Fountain of Shadowy Beauty
38--A New Earth
39--Duality
While the yellow constellations shine with pale and tender glory,
In the lilac-scented stillness, let us listen to Earth's story.
All the flow'rs like moths a-flutter glimmer rich with dusky hues,
Everywhere around us seem to fall from nowhere the sweet dews.
Through the drowsy lull, the murmur, stir of leaf and sleep hum
We can feel a gay heart beating, hear a magic singing come.
Ah, I think that as we linger lighting at Earth's olden fire
Fitful gleams in clay that perish, little sparks that soon expire,
So the mother brims her gladness from a life beyond her own,
From whose darkness as a fountain up the fiery days are thrown
Starry worlds which wheel in splendour, sunny systems, histories,
Vast and nebulous traditions told in the eternities:
And our list'ning mother whispers through her children all the story:
Come, the yellow constellations shine with pale and tender glory!
--October 15, 1892
Om
Faint grew the yellow buds of light
Far flickering beyond the snows,
As leaning o'er the shadowy white
Morn glimmered like a pale primrose.
Within an Indian vale below
A child said "Om" with tender heart,
Watching with loving eyes the glow
In dayshine fade and night depart.
The word which Brahma at his dawn
Outbreathes and endeth at his night;
Whose tide of sound so rolling on
Gives birth to orbs of golden light;
And beauty, wisdom, love, and youth,
By its enchantment, gathered grow
In age-long wandering to the truth,
Through many a cycle's ebb and flow.
And here all lower life was stilled,
The child was lifted to the Wise:
A strange delight his spirit filled,
And Brahm looked from his shining eyes.
--December 15, 1892
Krishna
The East was crowned with snow-cold bloom
And hung with veils of pearly fleece;
They died away into the gloom,
Vistas of peace, and deeper peace.
And earth and air and wave and fire
In awe and breathless silence stood,
For One who passed into their choir
Linked them in mystic brotherhood.
Twilight of amethyst, amid
The few strange stars that lit the heights,
Where was the secret spirit hid,
Where was Thy place, O Light of Lights?
The flame of Beauty far in space--
When rose the fire, in Thee? in Me?
Which bowed the elemental race
To adoration silently.
--February 15, 1893
Pain
Men have made them gods of love,
Sun gods, givers of the rain,
Deities of hill and grove,
I have made a god of Pain.
Of my god I know this much,
And in singing I repeat,
Though there's anguish in his touch
Yet his soul within is sweet.
--March 15, 1893
Three Counselors
It was the fairy of the place
Moving within a little light,
Who touched with dim and shadowy grace
The conflict at its fever height.
It seemed to whisper "quietness,"
Then quietly itself was gone;
Yet echoes of its mute caress
Still rippled as the years flowed on.
It was the Warrior within
Who called "Awake! prepare for fight,
"Yet lose not memory in the din;
"Make of thy gentleness thy might.
"Make of thy silence words to shake
"The long-enthroned kings of earth;
"Make of thy will the force to break
"Their towers of wantonness and mirth."
It was the wise all-seeing soul
Who counseled neither war nor peace
"Only be thou thyself that goal
"In which the wars of time shall cease."
--April 15, 1893
Dusk
Dusk wraps the village in its dim caress;
Each chimney's vapour, like a thin grey rod,
Mounting aloft through miles of quietness,
Pillars the skies of God.
Far up they break or seem to break their line,
Mingling their nebulous crests that bow and nod
Under the light of those fierce stars that shine
Out of the house of God.
Only in clouds and dreams I felt those souls
In the abyss, each fire hid in its clod,
From which in clouds and dreams the spirit rolls
Into the vast of God.
--May 15, 1893
Dawn
Still as the holy of holies breathes the vast,
Within its crystal depths the stars grow dim,
Fire on the altar of the hills at last
Burns on the shadowy rim.
Moment that holds all moments, white upon
The verge it trembles; then like mists of flowers
Break from the fairy fountain of the dawn
The hues of many hours.
Thrown downward from that high companionship
Of dreaming inmost heart with inmost heart,
Into the common daily ways I slip
My fire from theirs apart.
--June 15, 1893
Desire
With Thee a moment! then what dreams have play!
Traditions of eternal toil arise,
Search for the high, austere and lonely way,
Where Brahma treads through the eternities.
Ah, in the soul what memories arise!
And with what yearning inexpressible,
Rising from long forgetfulness I turn
To Thee, invisible, unrumoured, still:
White for Thy whiteness all desires burn!
Ah, with what longing once again I turn!
--August 15, 1893
Deep Sleep
Heart-hidden from the outer things I rose,
The spirit woke anew in nightly birth
Into the vastness where forever glows
The star-soul of the earth.
There all alone in primal ecstasy,
Within her depths where revels never tire,
The olden Beauty shines; each thought of me
Is veined through with its fire.
And all my thoughts are throngs of living souls;
They breath in me, heart unto heart allied
With joy undimmed, though when the morning tolls
The planets may divide.
--September 15, 1893
Day
In day from some titanic past it seems
As if a thread divine of memory runs;
Born ere the Mighty One began his dreams,
Or yet were stars and suns.
But here an iron will has fixed the bars;
Forgetfulness falls on earth's myriad races,
No image of the proud and morning stars
Looks at us from their faces.
Yet yearning still to reach to those dim heights,
Each dream remembered is a burning-glass,
Where through to darkness from the light of lights
Its rays in splendour pass.
--September 15, 1893
To A Poet
Oh, be not led away.
Lured by the colour of the sun-rich day.
The gay romances of song
Unto the spirit-life doth not belong.
Though far-between the hours
In which the Master of Angelic Powers
Lightens the dusk within
The Holy of Holies; be it thine to win
Rare vistas of white light,
Half-parted lips, through which the Infinite
Murmurs her ancient story;
Hearkening to whom the wandering planets hoary
Waken primeval fires,
With deeper rapture in celestial choirs
Breathe, and with fleeter motion
Wheel in their orbits through the surgeless ocean.
So, hearken thou like these,
Intent on her, mounting by slow degrees,
Until thy song's elation
Echoes her multitudinous meditation.
--November 15, 1893
The Place of Rest
--The soul is its own witness and its own refuge.
Unto the deep the deep heart goes.
It lays its sadness nigh the breast:
Only the mighty mother knows
The wounds that quiver unconfessed.
It seeks a deeper silence still;
It folds itself around with peace,
Where thoughts alike of good or ill
In quietness unfostered, cease.
It feels in the unwounding vast
For comfort for its hopes and fears:
The mighty mother bows at last;
She listens to her children's tears.
Where the last anguish deepens--there--
The fire of beauty smites through pain,
A glory moves amid despair,
The Mother takes her child again.
--December 15, 1893
Comfort
Dark head by the fireside brooding,
Sad upon your ears
Whirlwinds of the earth intruding
Sound in wrath and tears:
Tender-hearted, in your lonely
Sorrow I would fain
Comfort you, and say that only
Gods could feel such pain.
Only spirits know such longing
For the far away;
And the fiery fancies thronging
Rise not out of clay.
Keep the secret sense celestial
Of the starry birth;
Though about you call the bestial
Voices of the earth.
If a thousand ages since
Hurled us from the throne:
Then a thousand ages wins
Back again our own.
Sad one, dry away your tears:
Sceptred you shall rise,
Equal mid the crystal spheres
With seraphs kingly wise.
--February, 1894
H. P. B.
(In Memoriam.)
Though swift the days flow from her day,
No one has left her day unnamed:
We know what light broke from her ray
On us, who in the truth proclaimed
Grew brother with the stars and powers
That stretch away--away to light,
And fade within the primal hours,
And in the wondrous First unite.
We lose with her the right to scorn
The voices scornful of her truth:
With her a deeper love was born
For those who filled her days with ruth.
To her they were not sordid things:
In them sometimes--her wisdom said--
The Bird of Paradise had wings;
It only dreams, it is not dead.
We cannot for forgetfulness
Forego the reverence due to them,
Who wear at times they do not guess
The sceptre and the diadem.
With wisdom of the olden time
She made the hearts of dust to flame;
And fired us with the hope sublime
Our ancient heritage to claim;
That turning from the visible,
By vastness unappalled nor stayed,
Our wills might rule beside that Will
By which the tribal stars are swayed;
And entering the heroic strife,
Tread in the way their feet have trod
Who move within a vaster life,
Sparks in the Fire--Gods amid God.
--August 15, 1894
By the Margin of the Great Deep
When the breath of twilight blows to flame the misty skies,
All its vapourous sapphire, violet glow and silver gleam
With their magic flood me through the gateway of the eyes;
I am one with the twilight's dream.
When the trees and skies and fields are one in dusky mood,
Every heart of man is rapt within the mother's breast:
Full of peace and sleep and dreams in the vasty quietude,
I am one with their hearts at rest.
From our immemorial joys of hearth and home and love,
Strayed away along the margin of the unknown tide,
All its reach of soundless calm can thrill me far above
Word or touch from the lips beside.
Aye, and deep, and deep, and deeper let me drink and draw
From the olden Fountain more than light or peace or dream,
Such primeval being as o'erfills the heart with awe,
Growing one with its silent stream.
--March 15, 1894
The Secret
One thing in all things have I seen:
One thought has haunted earth and air;
Clangour and silence both have been
Its palace chambers. Everywhere
I saw the mystic vision flow,
And live in men, and woods, and streams,
Until I could no longer know
The dream of life from my own dreams.
Sometimes it rose like fire in me,
Within the depths of my own mind,
And spreading to infinity,
It took the voices of the wind.
It scrawled the human mystery,
Dim heraldry--on light and air;
Wavering along the starry sea,
I saw the flying vision there.
Each fire that in God's temple lit
Burns fierce before the inner shrine,
Dimmed as my fire grew near to it,
And darkened at the light of mine.
At last, at last, the meaning caught:
When spirit wears its diadem,
It shakes its wondrous plumes of thought,
And trails the stars along with them.
--April 15, 1894
Dust
I heard them in their sadness say,
"The earth rebukes the thought of God:
We are but embers wrapt in clay
A little nobler than the sod."
But I have touched the lips of clay--
Mother, thy rudest sod to me
Is thrilled with fire of hidden day,
And haunted by all mystery.
--May 15, 1894
Magic
--After reading the Upanishads
Out of the dusky chamber of the brain
Flows the imperial will through dream on dream;
The fires of life around it tempt and gleam;
The lights of earth behind it fade and wane.
Passed beyond beauty tempting dream on dream,
The pure will seeks the hearthold of the light;
Sounds the deep "OM," the mystic word of might;
Forth from the hearthold breaks the living stream.
Passed out beyond the deep heart music-filled,
The kingly Will sits on the ancient throne,
Wielding the sceptre, fearless, free, alone,
Knowing in Brahma all it dared and willed.
--June 15, 1894
Immortality
We must pass like smoke, or live within the spirits' fire;
For we can no more than smoke unto the flame return.
If our thought has changed to dream, or will into desire,
As smoke we vanish o'er the fires that burn.
Lights of infinite pity star the grey dusk of our days;
Surely here is soul; with it we have eternal breath;
In the fire of love we live or pass by many ways,
By unnumbered ways of dream to death.
--July 15, 1894
The Man to the Angel
I have wept a million tears;
Pure and proud one, where are thine?
What the gain of all your years
That undimmed in beauty shine?
All your beauty cannot win
Truth we learn in pain and sighs;
You can never enter in
To the Circle of the Wise.
They are but the slaves of light
Who have never known the gloom,
And between the dark and bright
Willed in freedom their own doom.
Think not in your pureness there
That our pain but follows sin;
There are fires for those who dare
Seek the Throne of Might to win.
Pure one, from your pride refrain;
Dark and lost amid the strife,
I am myriad years of pain
Nearer to the fount of life.
When defiance fierce is thrown
At the God to whom you bow,
Rest the lips of the Unknown
Tenderest upon the brow.
--September 15, 1894
Songs of Olden Magic--II.
The Robing of the King
--"His candle shined upon my head, and by his light I walked
through darkness."--Job, xxix. 3
On the bird of air blue-breasted
glint the rays of gold,
And a shadowy fleece above us
waves the forest old,
Far through rumorous leagues of midnight
stirred by breezes warm.
See the old ascetic yonder,
Ah, poor withered form!
Where he crouches wrinkled over
by unnumbered years
Through the leaves the flakes of moonfire
fall like phantom tears.
At the dawn a kingly hunter
passed proud disdain,
Like a rainbow-torrent scattered
flashed his royal train.
Now the lonely one unheeded
seeks earth's caverns dim,
Never king or princes will robe them
radiantly as him.
Mid the deep enfolding darkness,
follow him, oh seer,
While the arrow will is piercing
fiery sphere on sphere.
Through the blackness leaps and sparkles
gold and amethyst,
Curling, jetting and dissolving
in a rainbow mist.
In the jewel glow and lunar
radiance rise there
One, a morning star in beauty,
young, immortal, fair.
Sealed in heavy sleep, the spirit
leaves its faded dress,
Unto fiery youth returning
out of weariness.
Music as for one departing,
joy as for a king,
Sound and swell, and hark! above him
cymbals triumphing.
Fire an aureole encircling
suns his brow with gold
Like to one who hails the morning
on the mountains old.
Open mightier vistas changing
human loves to scorns,
And the spears of glory pierce him
like a Crown of Thorns.
As the sparry rays dilating
o'er his forehead climb
Once again he knows the Dragon
Wisdom of the prime.
High and yet more high to freedom
as a bird he springs,
And the aureole outbreathing,
gold and silver wings
Plume the brow and crown the seraph.
Soon his journey done
He will pass our eyes that follow,
sped beyond the sun.
None may know the darker radiance,
King, will there be thine.
Rapt above the Light and hidden
in the Dark Divine.
--September 15, 1895
Brotherhood
Twilight a blossom grey in shadowy valleys dwells:
Under the radiant dark the deep blue-tinted bells
In quietness reimage heaven within their blooms,
Sapphire and gold and mystery. What strange perfumes,
Out of what deeps arising, all the flower-bells fling,
Unknowing the enchanted odorous song they sing!
Oh, never was an eve so living yet: the wood
Stirs not but breathes enraptured quietude.
Here in these shades the Ancient knows itself, the Soul,
And out of slumber waking starts unto the goal.
What bright companions nod and go along with it!
Out of the teeming dark what dusky creatures flit,
That through the long leagues of the island night above
Come wandering by me, whispering and beseeching love,--
As in the twilight children gather close and press
Nigh and more nigh with shadowy tenderness,
Feeling they know not what, with noiseless footsteps glide
Seeking familiar lips or hearts to dream beside.
Oh, voices, I would go with you, with you, away,
Facing once more the radiant gateways of the day;
With you, with you, what memories arise, and nigh
Trampling the crowded figures of the dawn go by;
Dread deities, the giant powers that warred on men
Grow tender brothers and gay children once again;
Fades every hate away before the Mother's breast
Where all the exiles of the heart return to rest.
--July 15, 1895
In the Womb
Still rests the heavy share on the dark soil:
Upon the dull black mould the dew-damp lies:
The horse waits patient: from his lonely toil
The ploughboy to the morning lifts his eyes.
The unbudding hedgerows, dark against day's fires,
Glitter with gold-lit crystals: on the rim
Over the unregarding city's spires
The lonely beauty shines alone for him.
And day by day the dawn or dark enfolds,
And feeds with beauty eyes that cannot see
How in her womb the Mighty Mother moulds
The infant spirit for Eternity.
--January 15, 1895
In the Garden of God
Within the iron cities
One walked unknown for years,
In his heart the pity of pities
That grew for human tears
When love and grief were ended
The flower of pity grew;
By unseen hands 'twas tended
And fed with holy dew.
Though in his heart were barred in
The blooms of beauty blown;
Yet he who grew the garden
Could call no flower his own.
For by the hands that watered,
The blooms that opened fair
Through frost and pain were scattered
To sweeten the dull air.
--February 15, 1895
The Breath of Light
From the cool and dark-lipped furrows
breathes a dim delight
Aureoles of joy encircle
every blade of grass
Where the dew-fed creatures silent
and enraptured pass:
And the restless ploughman pauses,
turns, and wondering
Deep beneath his rustic habit
finds himself a king;
For a fiery moment looking
with the eyes of God
Over fields a slave at morning
bowed him to the sod.
Blind and dense with revelation
every moment flies,
And unto the Mighty Mother
gay, eternal, rise
All the hopes we hold, the gladness,
dreams of things to be.
One of all they generations,
Mother, hails to thee!
Hail! and hail! and hail for ever:
though I turn again
For they joy unto the human
vestures of pain.
I, thy child, who went forth radiant
in the golden prime
Find thee still the mother-hearted
through my night in time;
Find in thee the old enchantment,
there behind the veil
Where the Gods my brothers linger,
Hail! for ever, Hail!
--May 15, 1895
The Free
They bathed in the fire-flooded fountains;
Life girdled them round and about;
They slept in the clefts of the mountains:
The stars called them forth with a shout.
They prayed, but their worship was only
The wonder at nights and at days,
As still as the lips of the lonely
Though burning with dumbness of praise.
No sadness of earth ever captured
Their spirits who bowed at the shrine;
They fled to the Lonely enraptured
And hid in the Darkness Divine.
At twilight as children may gather
They met at the doorway of death,
The smile of the dark hidden Father
The Mother with magical breath.
Untold of in song or in story,
In days long forgotten of men,
Their eyes were yet blind with a glory
Time will not remember again.
--November 15, 1895
Songs of Olden Magic--IV
The Magi
"The mountain was filled with the hosts of the Tuatha de Dannan."
--Old Celtic Poem
See where the auras from the olden fountain
Starward aspire;
The sacred sign upon the holy mountain
Shines in white fire:
Waving and flaming yonder o'er the snows
The diamond light
Melts into silver or to sapphire glows
Night beyond night;
And from the heaven of heavens descends on earth
A dew divine.
Come, let us mingle in the starry mirth
Around the shrine!
Enchantress, mighty mother, to our home
In thee we press,
Thrilled by the fiery breath and wrapt in some
Vast tenderness
The homeward birds uncertain o'er their nest
Wheel in the dome,
Fraught with dim dreams of more enraptured rest,
Wheel in the dome,
But gather ye to whose undarkened eyes
The night is day:
Leap forth, Immortals, Birds of Paradise,
In bright array
Robed like the shining tresses of the sun;
And by his name
Call from his haunt divine the ancient one
Our Father Flame.
Aye, from the wonder-light that wraps the star,
Come now, come now;
Sun-breathing Dragon, ray thy lights afar,
Thy children bow;
Hush with more awe the breath; the bright-browed races
Are nothing worth
By those dread gods from out whose awful faces
The earth looks forth
Infinite pity, set in calm; their vision cast
Adown the years
Beholds how beauty burns away at last
Their children's tears.
Now while our hearts the ancient quietness
Floods with its tide,
The things of air and fire and height no less
In it abide;
And from their wanderings over sea and shore
They rise as one
Unto the vastness and with us adore
The midnight sun;
And enter the innumerable All,
And shine like gold,
And starlike gleam in the immortals' hall,
The heavenly fold,
And drink the sun-breaths from the mother's lips
Awhile--and then
Fail from the light and drop in dark eclipse
To earth again,
Roaming along by heaven-hid promontory
And valley dim.
Weaving a phantom image of the glory
They knew in Him.
Out of the fulness flow the winds, their son
Is heard no more,
Or hardly breathes a mystic sound along
The dreamy shore:
Blindly they move unknowing as in trance,
Their wandering
Is half with us, and half an inner dance
Led by the King.
--January 15, 1896
W. Q. J. *
O hero of the iron age,
Upon thy grave we will not weep,
Nor yet consume away in rage
For thee and thy untimely sleep.
Our hearts a burning silence keep.
O martyr, in these iron days
One fate was sure for soul like thine:
Well you foreknew but went your ways.
The crucifixion is the sign,
The meed of all the kingly line.
We may not mourn--though such a night
Has fallen on our earthly spheres
Bereft of love and truth and light
As never since the dawn of years;--
For tears give birth alone to tears.
One wreath upon they grave we lay
(The silence of our bitter thought,
Words that would scorch their hearts of clay),
And turn to learn what thou has taught,
To shape our lives as thine was wrought.
--April 15, 1896
[* This is unsigned but is very possibly G.W. Russell's. It was a
memoriam to William Quan Judge (W.Q.J), the leader of the American
and European Theosophical Societies at the time, one of the original
founders of the Theosophical Society, and close co-worker with
H.P. Blavatsky.]
Fron the Book of the Eagle
--[St. John, i. 1-33]
In the mighty Mother's bosom was the Wise
With the mystic Father in aeonian night;
Aye, for ever one with them though it arise
Going forth to sound its hymn of light.
At its incantation rose the starry fane;
At its magic thronged the myriad race of men;
Life awoke that in the womb so long had lain
To its cyclic labours once again.
'Tis the soul of fire within the heart of life;
From its fiery fountain spring the will and thought;
All the strength of man for deeds of love or strife,
Though the darkness comprehend it not.
In the mystery written here
John is but the life, the seer;
Outcast from the life of light,
Inly with reverted sight
Still he scans with eager eyes
The celestial mysteries.
Poet of all far-seen things
At his word the soul has wings,
Revelations, symbols, dreams
Of the inmost light which gleams.
The winds, the stars, and the skies though wrought
By the one Fire-Self still know it not;
And man who moves in the twilight dim
Feels not the love that encircles him,
Though in heart, on bosom, and eyelids press
Lips of an infinite tenderness,
He turns away through the dark to roam
Nor heeds the fire in his hearth and home.
They whose wisdom everywhere
Sees as through a crystal air
The lamp by which the world is lit,
And themselves as one with it;
In whom the eye of vision swells,
Who have in entranced hours
Caught the word whose might compels
All the elemental powers;
They arise as Gods from men
Like the morning stars again.
They who seek the place of rest
Quench the blood-heat of the breast,
Grow ascetic, inward turning
Trample down the lust from burning,
Silence in the self the will
For a power diviner still;
To the fire-born Self alone
The ancestral spheres are known.
Unto the poor dead shadows came
Wisdom mantled about with flame;
We had eyes that could see the light
Born of the mystic Father's might.
Glory radiant with powers untold
And the breath of God around it rolled.
Life that moved in the deeps below
Felt the fire in its bosom glow;
Life awoke with the Light allied,
Grew divinely stirred, and cried:
"This is the Ancient of Days within,
Light that is ere our days begin.
"Every power in the spirit's ken
Springs anew in our lives again.
We had but dreams of the heart's desire
Beauty thrilled with the mystic fire.
The white-fire breath whence springs the power
Flows alone in the spirit's hour."
Man arose the earth he trod,
Grew divine as he gazed on God:
Light in a fiery whirlwind broke
Out of the dark divine and spoke:
Man went forth through the vast to tread
By the spirit of wisdom charioted.
There came the learned of the schools
Who measure heavenly things by rules,
The sceptic, doubter, the logician,
Who in all sacred things precision,
Would mark the limit, fix the scope,
"Art thou the Christ for whom we hope?
Art thou a magian, or in thee
Has the divine eye power to see?"
He answered low to those who came,
"Not this, nor this, nor this I claim.
More than the yearning of the heart
I have no wisdom to impart.
I am the voice that cries in him
Whose heart is dead, whose eyes are dim,
'Make pure the paths where through may run
The light-streams from that golden one,
The Self who lives within the sun.'
As spake the seer of ancient days."
The voices from the earthly ways
Questioned him still: "What dost thou here,
If neither prophet, king nor seer?
What power is kindled by they might?"
"I flow before the feet of Light:
I am the purifying stream.
But One of whom ye have no dream,
Whose footsteps move among you still,
Though dark, divine, invisible.
Impelled by Him, before His ways
I journey, though I dare not raise
Even from the ground these eyes so dim
Or look upon the feet of Him."
When the dead or dreamy hours
Like a mantle fall away,
Wakes the eye of gnostic powers
To the light of hidden day,
And the yearning heart within
Seeks the true, the only friend,
He who burdened with our sin
Loves and loves unto the end.
Ah, the martyr of the world,
With a face of steadfast peace
Round whose brow the light is curled:
'Tis the Lamb with golden fleece.
So they called of old the shining,
Such a face the sons of men
See, and all its life divining
Wake primeval fires again.
Such a face and such a glory
Passed before the eyes of John,
With a breath of olden story
Blown from ages long agone
Who would know the God in man.
Deeper still must be his glance.
Veil on veil his eye must scan
For the mystic signs which tell
If the fire electric fell
On the seer in his trance:
As his way he upward wings
From all time-encircled things,
Flames the glory round his head
Like a bird with wings outspread.
Gold and silver plumes at rest:
Such a shadowy shining crest
Round the hero's head reveals him
To the soul that would adore,
As the master-power that heals him
And the fount of secret lore.
Nature such a diadem
Places on her royal line,
Every eye that looks on them
Knows the Sons of the Divine.
--April 15, 1896
The Protest of Love
"Those who there take refuge nevermore return."--Bhagavad Gita
Ere I lose myself in the vastness and drowse myself with the peace,
While I gaze on the light and beauty afar from the dim homes of men,
May I still feel the heart-pang and pity, love-ties that I would
not release,
May the voices of sorrow appealing call me back to their succour again.
Ere I storm with the tempest of power the thrones and dominions
of old,
Ere the ancient enchantment allures me to roam through the star-
misty skies,
I would go forth as one who has reaped well what harvest the earth
may unfold:
May my heart be o'erbrimmed with compassion, on my brow be the
crown of the wise.
I would go as the dove from the ark sent forth with wishes and prayers
To return with the paradise-blossoms that bloom in the eden of light:
When the deep star-chant of the seraphs I hear in the mystical airs
May I capture one tone of their joy for the sad ones discrowned
in the night.
Not alone, not alone would I go to my rest in the Heart of the Love:
Were I tranced in the innermost beauty, the flame of its tenderest breath,
I would still hear the plaint of the fallen recalling me back from above
To go down to the side of the mourners who weep in the shadow of death.
--May 15, 1896
The King Initiate
"They took Iesous and scourged him."--St. John
Age after age the world has wept
A joy supreme--I saw the hands
Whose fiery radiations swept
And burned away his earthly bands:
And where they smote the living dyes
Flashed like the plumes of paradise.
Their joys the heavy nations hush--
A form of purple glory rose
Crowned with such rays of light as flush
The white peaks on their towering snows:
It held the magic wand that gave
Rule over earth, air, fire and wave.
What sorrow makes the white cheeks wet:
The mystic cross looms shadowy dim--
There where the fourfold powers have met
And poured their living tides through him,
The Son who hides his radiant crest
To the dark Father's bosom pressed.
--June 15, 1896
The Dream of the Children
The children awoke in their dreaming
While earth lay dewy and still:
They followed the rill in its gleaming
To the heart-light of the hill.
Its sounds and sights were forsaking
The world as they faded in sleep,
When they heard a music breaking
Out from the heart-light deep.
It ran where the rill in its flowing
Under the star-light gay
With wonderful colour was glowing
Like the bubbles they blew in their play.
From the misty mountain under
Shot gleams of an opal star:
Its pathways of rainbow wonder
Rayed to their feet from afar.
From their feet as they strayed in the meadow
It led through caverned aisles,
Filled with purple and green light and shadow
For mystic miles on miles.
The children were glad; it was lonely
To play on the hill-side by day.
"But now," they said, "we have only
To go where the good people stray."
For all the hill-side was haunted
By the faery folk come again;
And down in the heart-light enchanted
Were opal-coloured men.
They moved like kings unattended
Without a squire or dame,
But they wore tiaras splendid
With feathers of starlight flame.
They laughed at the children over
And called them into the heart:
"Come down here, each sleepless rover:
We will show you some of our art."
And down through the cool of the mountain
The children sank at the call,
And stood in a blazing fountain
And never a mountain at all.
The lights were coming and going
In many a shining strand,
For the opal fire-kings were blowing
The darkness out of the land.
This golden breath was a madness
To set a poet on fire,
And this was a cure for sadness,
And that the ease of desire.
And all night long over Eri
They fought with the wand of light
And love that never grew weary
The evil things of night.
They said, as dawn glimmered hoary,
"We will show yourselves for an hour;"
And the children were changed to a glory
By the beautiful magic of power.
The fire-kings smiled on their faces
And called them by olden names,
Till they towered like the starry races
All plumed with the twilight flames.
They talked for a while together,
How the toil of ages oppressed;
And of how they best could weather
The ship of the world to its rest.
The dawn in the room was straying:
The children began to blink,
When they heard a far voice saying,
"You can grow like that if you think!"
The sun came in yellow and gay light:
They tumbled out of the cot,
And half of the dream went with daylight
And half was never forgot.
--July 15, 1896
The Chiefs of the Air
Their wise little heads with scorning
They laid the covers between:
"Do they think we stay here till morning?"
Said Rory and Aileen.
When out their bright eyes came peeping
The room was no longer there,
And they fled from the dark world creeping
Up a twilight cave of air.
They wore each one a gay dress,
In sleep, if you understand,
When earth puts off its grey dress
To robe it in faeryland.
Then loud o'erhead was a humming
As clear as the wood wind rings;
And here were the air-boats coming
And here the airy kings.
The magic barks were gleaming
And swift as the feathered throng:
With wonder-lights out-streaming
They blew themselves along.
And up on the night-wind swimming,
With pose and dart and rise,
Away went the air fleet skimming
Through a haze of jewel skies.
One boat above them drifted
Apart from the flying bands,
And an air-chief bent and lifted
The children with mighty hands.
The children wondered greatly,
Three air-chiefs met them there,
They were tall and grave and stately
With bodies of purple air.
A pearl light with misty shimmer
Went dancing about them all,
As the dyes of the moonbow glimmer
On a trembling waterfall.
The trail of the fleet to the far lands
Was wavy along the night,
And on through the sapphire starlands
They followed the wake of light.
"Look down, Aileen," said Rory,
"The earth's as thin as a dream."
It was lit by a sun-fire glory
Outraying gleam on gleam.
They saw through the dream-world under
Its heart of rainbow flame
Where the starry people wander;
Like gods they went and came.
The children looked without talking
Till Roray spoke again,
"Are those our folk who are walking
Like little shadow men?
"They don't see what is about them,
They look like pigmies small,
The world would be full without them
And they think themselves so tall!"
The magic bark went fleeting
Like an eagle on and on;
Till over its prow came beating
The foam-light of the dawn.
The children's dream grew fainter,
Three air-chiefs still were there,
But the sun the shadow painter
Drew five on the misty air.
The dream-light whirled bewild'ring,
An air-chief said, "You know.
You are living now, my children,
Ten thousand years ago."
They looked at themselves in the old light,
And mourned the days of the new
Where naught is but darkness or cold light,
Till a bell came striking through.
"We must go," said the wise young sages:
It was five at dawn by the chimes,
And they ran through a thousand ages
From the old De Danaan Times.
--August 15, 1896
The Palaces of the Sidhe
Two small sweet lives together
From dawn till the dew falls down,
They danced over rock and heather
Away from the dusty town.
Dark eyes like stars set in pansies,
Blue eyes like a hero's bold--
Their thoughts were all pearl-light fancies,
Their hearts in the age of gold.
They crooned o'er many a fable
And longed for the bright-capped elves,
The faery folk who are able
To make us faery ourselves.
A hush on the children stealing
They stood there hand in hand,
For the elfin chimes were pealing
Aloud in the underland.
And over the grey rock sliding,
A fiery colour ran,
And out of its thickness gliding
The twinkling mist of a man--
To-day for the children had fled to
An ancient yesterday,
And the rill from its tunnelled bed too
Had turned another way.
Then down through an open hollow
The old man led with a smile:
"Come, star-hearts, my children, follow
To the elfin land awhile."
The bells above them were hanging,
Whenever the earth-breath blew
It made them go clanging, clanging,
The vasty mountain through.
But louder yet than the ringing
Came the chant of the elfin choir,
Till the mountain was mad with singing
And dense with the forms of fire.
The kings of the faery races
Sat high on the thrones of might,
And infinite years from their faces
Looked out through eyes of light.
And one in a diamond splendour
Shone brightest of all that hour,
More lofty and pure and tender,
They called him the Flower of Power.
The palace walls were glowing
Like stars together drawn,
And a fountain of air was flowing
The primrose colour of dawn.
"Ah, see!" said Aileen sighing,
With a bend of her saddened head
Where a mighty hero was lying,
He looked like one who was dead.
"He will wake," said their guide, "'tis but seeming,
And, oh, what his eyes shall see
I will know of only in dreaming
Till I lie there still as he."
They chanted the song of waking,
They breathed on him with fire,
Till the hero-spirit outbreaking,
Shot radiant above the choir.
Like a pillar of opal glory
Lit through with many a gem--
"Why, look at him now," said Rory,
"He has turned to a faery like them!"
The elfin kings ascending
Leaped up from the thrones of might,
And one with another blending
They vanished in air and light.
The rill to its bed came splashing
With rocks on the top of that:
The children awoke with a flashing
Of wonder, "What were we at?"
They groped through the reeds and clover--
"What funny old markings: look here,
They have scrawled the rocks all over:
It's just where the door was: how queer!"
--September 15, 1896
The Voice of the Wise
They sat with hearts untroubled,
The clear sky sparkled above,
And an ancient wisdom bubbled
From the lips of a youthful love.
They read in a coloured history
Of Egypt and of the Nile,
And half it seemed a mystery,
Familiar, half, the while.
Till living out of the story
Grew old Egyptian men,
And a shadow looked forth Rory
And said, "We meet again!"
And over Aileen a maiden
Looked back through the ages dim:
She laughed, and her eyes were laden
With an old-time love for him.
In a mist came temples thronging
With sphinxes seen in a row,
And the rest of the day was a longing
For their homes of long ago.
"We'd go there if they'd let us,"
They said with wounded pride:
"They never think when they pet us
We are old like that inside."
There was some one round them straying
The whole of the long day through,
Who seemed to say, "I am playing
At hide-and-seek with you."
And one thing after another
Was whispered out of the air,
How God was a big kind brother
Whose home was in everywhere.
His light like a smile come glancing
From the cool, cool winds as they pass;
From the flowers in heaven dancing
And the stars that shine in the grass,
And the clouds in deep blue wreathing,
And most from the mountains tall,
But God like a wind goes breathing
A heart-light of gold in all.
It grows like a tree and pushes
Its way through the inner gloom,
And flowers in quick little rushes
Of love to a magic bloom.
And no one need sigh now or sorrow
Whenever the heart-light flies,
For it comes again on some morrow
And nobody ever dies.
The heart of the Wise was beating
In the children's heart that day,
And many a thought came fleeting,
And fancies solemn and gay.
They were grave in a way divining
How childhood was taking wings,
And the wonder world was shining
With vast eternal things.
The solemn twilight fluttered
Like the plumes of seraphim,
And they felt what things were uttered
In the sunset voice of Him.
They lingered long, for dearer
Than home were the mountain places
Where God from the stars dropt nearer
Their pale, dreamy faces.
Their very hearts from beating
They stilled in awed delight.
For Spirit and children were meeting
In the purple, ample night.
Dusk its ash-grey blossoms sheds on violet skies
Over twilight mountains where the heart-songs rise,
Rise and fall and fade again from earth to air:
Earth renews the music sweeter. Oh, come there.
Come, ma cushla, come, as in ancient times
Rings aloud and the underland with faery chimes.
Down the unseen ways as strays each tinkling fleece
Winding ever onward to a fold of peace,
So my dreams go straying in a land more fair;
Half I tread the dew-wet grasses, half wander there.
Fade your glimmering eyes in a world grown cold:
Come, ma cushla, with me to the mountain's fold,
Where the bright ones call us waving to and fro:
Come, my children, with me to the Ancient go.
--October 15, 1896
A Dawn Song
While the earth is dark and grey
How I laugh within: I know
In my breast what ardours gay
From the morning overflow.
Though the cheek be white and wet
In my heart no fear may fall:
There my chieftain leads, and yet
Ancient battle-trumpets call.
Bend on me no hasty frown
If my spirit slight your cares:
Sunlike still my joy looks down
Changing tears to beamy airs.
Think me not of fickle heart
If with joy my bosom swells
Though your ways from mine depart:
In the true are no farewells.
What I love in you I find
Everywhere. A friend I greet
In each flower and tree and wind--
Oh, but life is sweet, is sweet.
What to you are bolts and bars
Are to me the hands that guide
To the freedom of the stars
Where my golden kinsmen bide.
From my mountain top I view:
Twilight's purple flower is gone,
And I send my song to you
On the level light of dawn.
--November 15, 1896
--An Ancient Eden
Our legends tell of aery fountains upspringing in Eri, and
how the people of long ago saw them not but only the Tuatha de Danaan.
Some deem it was the natural outflow of water at these places which
was held to be sacred; but above fountain, rill and river rose up
the enchanted froth and foam of invisible rills and rivers breaking
forth from Tir-na-noge, the soul of the island, and glittering in
the sunlight of its mystic day. What we see here is imaged forth
from that invisible soul and is a path thereto. In the heroic
Epic of Cuculain Standish O'Grady writes of such a fountain, and
prefixes his chapter with the verse from Genesis, "And four rivers
went forth from Eden to water the garden," and what follows in
reference thereto.
The Fountain of Shadowy Beauty
--A Dream
I would I could weave in
The colour, the wonder,
The song I conceive in
My heart while I ponder,
And show how it came like
The magi of old
Whose chant was a flame like
The dawn's voice of gold;
Who dreams followed near them
A murmur of birds,
And ear still could hear them
Unchanted in words.
In words I can only
Reveal thee my heart,
Oh, Light of the Lonely,
The shining impart.
Between the twilight and the dark
The lights danced up before my eyes:
I found no sleep or peace or rest,
But dreams of stars and burning skies.
I knew the faces of the day--
Dream faces, pale, with cloudy hair,
I know you not nor yet your home,
The Fount of Shadowy Beauty, where?
I passed a dream of gloomy ways
Where ne'er did human feet intrude:
It was the border of a wood,
A dreadful forest solitude.
With wondrous red and fairy gold
The clouds were woven o'er the ocean;
The stars in fiery aether swung
And danced with gay and glittering motion.
A fire leaped up within my heart
When first I saw the old sea shine;
As if a god were there revealed
I bowed my head in awe divine;
And long beside the dim sea marge
I mused until the gathering haze
Veiled from me where the silver tide
Ran in its thousand shadowy ways.
The black night dropped upon the sea:
The silent awe came down with it:
I saw fantastic vapours flit
As o'er the darkness of the pit.
When, lo! from out the furthest night
A speck of rose and silver light
Above a boat shaped wondrously
Came floating swiftly o'er the sea.
It was no human will that bore
The boat so fleetly to the shore
Without a sail spread or an oar.
The Pilot stood erect thereon
And lifted up his ancient face,
(Ancient with glad eternal youth
Like one who was of starry race.)
His face was rich with dusky bloom;
His eyes a bronze and golden fire;
His hair in streams of silver light
Hung flamelike on his strange attire
Which starred with many a mystic sign,
Fell as o'er sunlit ruby glowing:
His light flew o'er the waves afar
In ruddy ripples on each bar
Along the spiral pathways flowing.
It was a crystal boat that chased
The light along the watery waste,
Till caught amid the surges hoary
The Pilot stayed its jewelled glory.
Oh, never such a glory was:
The pale moon shot it through and through
With light of lilac, white and blue:
And there mid many a fairy hue
Of pearl and pink and amethyst,
Like lightning ran the rainbow gleams
And wove around a wonder-mist.
The Pilot lifted beckoning hands;
Silent I went with deep amaze
To know why came this Beam of Light
So far along the ocean ways
Out of the vast and shadowy night.
"Make haste, make haste!" he cried. "Away!
A thousand ages now are gone.
Yet thou and I ere night be sped
Will reck no more of eve or dawn."
Swift as the swallow to its nest
I leaped: my body dropt right down:
A silver star I rose and flew.
A flame burned golden at his breast:
I entered at the heart and knew
My Brother-Self who roams the deep,
Bird of the wonder-world of sleep.
The ruby body wrapped us round
As twain in one: we left behind
The league-long murmur of the shore
And fleeted swifter than the wind.
The distance rushed upon the bark:
We neared unto the mystic isles:
The heavenly city we could mark,
Its mountain light, its jewel dark,
Its pinnacles and starry piles.
The glory brightened: "Do not fear;
For we are real, though what seems
So proudly built above the waves
Is but one mighty spirit's dreams.
"Our Father's house hath many fanes;
Yet enter not and worship not,
For thought but follows after thought
Till last consuming self it wanes.
"The Fount of Shadowy Beauty flings
Its glamour o'er the light of day:
A music in the sunlight sings
To call the dreamy hearts away
Their mighty hopes to ease awhile:
We will not go the way of them:
The chant makes drowsy those who seek
The sceptre and the diadem.
"The Fount of Shadowy Beauty throws
Its magic round us all the night;
What things the heart would be, it sees
And chases them in endless flight.
Or coiled in phantom visions there
It builds within the halls of fire;
Its dreams flash like the peacock's wing
And glow with sun-hues of desire.
We will not follow in their ways
Nor heed the lure of fay or elf,
But in the ending of our days
Rest in the high Ancestral Self."
The boat of crystal touched the shore,
Then melted flamelike from our eyes,
As in the twilight drops the sun
Withdrawing rays of paradise.
We hurried under arched aisles
That far above in heaven withdrawn
With cloudy pillars stormed the night,
Rich as the opal shafts of dawn.
I would have lingered then--but he--
"Oh, let us haste: the dream grows dim,
Another night, another day,
A thousand years will part from him
"Who is that Ancient One divine
From whom our phantom being born
Rolled with the wonder-light around
Had started in the fairy morn.
"A thousand of our years to him
Are but the night, are but the day,
Wherein he rests from cyclic toil
Or chants the song of starry sway.
"He falls asleep: the Shadowy Fount
Fills all our heart with dreams of light:
He wakes to ancient spheres, and we
Through iron ages mourn the night.
We will not wander in the night
But in a darkness more divine
Shall join the Father Light of Lights
And rule the long-descended line."
Even then a vasty twilight fell:
Wavered in air the shadowy towers:
The city like a gleaming shell,
Its azures, opals, silvers, blues,
Were melting in more dreamy hues.
We feared the falling of the night
And hurried more our headlong flight.
In one long line the towers went by;
The trembling radiance dropt behind,
As when some swift and radiant one
Flits by and flings upon the wind
The rainbow tresses of the sun.
And then they vanished from our gaze
Faded the magic lights, and all
Into a Starry Radiance fell
As waters in their fountain fall.
We knew our time-long journey o'er
And knew the end of all desire,
And saw within the emerald glow
Our Father like the white sun-fire.
We could not say if age or youth
Were on his face: we only burned
To pass the gateways of the Day,
The exiles to the heart returned.
He rose to greet us and his breath,
The tempest music of the spheres,
Dissolved the memory of earth,
The cyclic labour and our tears.
In him our dream of sorrow passed,
The spirit once again was free
And heard the song the Morning-Stars
Chant in eternal revelry.
This was the close of human story;
We saw the deep unmeasured shine,
And sank within the mystic glory
They called of old the Dark Divine.
Well it is gone now,
The dream that I chanted:
On this side the dawn now
I sit fate-implanted.
But though of my dreaming
The dawn has bereft me,
It all was not seeming
For something has left me.
I fell in some other
World far from this cold light
The Dream Bird, my brother,
Is rayed with the gold light.
I too in the Father
Would hide me, and so,
Bright Bird, to foregather
With thee now I go.
--December 15, 1896
A New Earth
"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims within his ken."
I who had sought afar from earth
The faery land to greet,
Now find content within its girth,
And wonder nigh my feet.
To-day a nearer love I choose
And seek no distant sphere,
For aureoled by faery dews
The dear brown breasts appear.
With rainbow radiance come and go
The airy breaths of day,
And eve is all a pearly glow
With moonlit winds a-play.
The lips of twilight burn my brow,
The arms of night caress:
Glimmer her white eyes drooping now
With grave old tenderness.
I close mine eyes from dream to be
The diamond-rayed again,
As in the ancient hours ere we
Forgot ourselves to men.
And all I thought of heaven before
I find in earth below,
A sunlight in the hidden core
To dim the noon-day glow.
And with the Earth my heart is glad,
I move as one of old,
With mists of silver I am clad
And bright with burning gold.
--February 1896
Duality
"From me spring good and evil."
Who gave thee such a ruby flaming heart,
And such a pure cold spirit? Side by side
I know these must eternally abide
In intimate war, and each to each impart
Life from their pain, with every joy a dart
To wound with grief or death the self-allied.
Red life within the spirit crucified,
The eyes eternal pity thee, thou art
Fated with deathless powers at war to be,
Not less the martyr of the world than he
Whose thorn-crowned brow usurps the due of tears
We would pay to thee, ever ruddy life,
Whose passionate peace is still to be at strife,
O'erthrown but in the unconflicting spheres.
--March 15, 1896 (This is unsigned, but in AE's "Collected Poems")
The Element Language
In a chapter in the Secret Doctrine dealing with the origin of
language, H.P. Blavatsky makes some statements which are quoted
here and which should be borne well in mind in considering what
follows. "The Second Race had a 'Sound Language,' to wit, chant-like
sounds composed of vowels alone." From this developed "monosyllabic
speech which was the vowel parent, so to speak, of the monosyllabic
languages mixed with hard consonants still in use among the yellow
races which are known to the anthropologist. The linguistic
characteristics developed into the agglutinative languages....
The inflectional speech, the root of the Sanskrit, was the first
language (now the mystery tongue of the Initiates) of the Fifth Race."
The nature of that language has not been disclosed along with other
teaching concerning the evolution of the race, but like many other
secrets the details of which are still preserved by the Initiates,
it is implied in what has already been revealed. The application
to speech of the abstract formula of evolution which they have put
forward should result in its discovery, for the clue lies in
correspondences; know the nature of any one thing perfectly, learn
its genesis, development and consummation, and you have the key to
all the mysteries of nature. The microcosm mirrors the macrocosm.
But, before applying this key, it is well to glean whatever hints
have been given, so that there may be less chance of going astray
in our application. First, we gather from the Secret Doctrine that
the sounds of the human voice are correlated with the forces, colours,
numbers and forms. "Every letter has its occult meaning, the vowels
especially contain the most occult and formidable potencies."
(S.D., I, 94) and again it is said "The magic of the ancient priests
consisted in those days in addressing their gods in their own language.
The speech of the men of earth cannot reach the Lords, each must
be addressed in the language of his respective element"---is a
sentence which will be shown pregnant with meaning. "The book of
rules" cited adds as an explanation of the nature of that element-
language: "It is composed of Sounds, not words; of sounds, numbers
and figures. He who knows how to blend the three, will call forth
the response of the superintending Power" (the regent-god of the
specific element needed). Thus this "language is that of incantations
or of Mantras, as they are called in India, sound being the most
potent and effectual magic agent, and the first of the keys which
opens the door of communication between mortals and immortals."
(S.D. I, 464)
From these quotations it will be seen that the occult teachings
as to speech are directly at variance with the theories of many
philologists and evolutionists. A first speech which was like song--
another and more developed speech which is held sacred--an esoteric
side to speech in which the elements of our conventional languages
(i.e. the letters) are so arranged that speech becomes potent enough
to guide the elements, and human speech becomes the speech of the
gods--there is no kinship between this ideal language and the
ejaculations and mimicry which so many hold to be the root and
beginning of it. Yet those who wish to defend their right to hold
the occult teaching have little to fear from the champions of these
theories; they need not at all possess any deep scholarship or
linguistic attainment; the most cursory view of the roots of
primitive speech, so far as they have been collected, will show
that they contain few or no sounds of a character which would bear
out either the onomatopoetic or interjectional theories. The vast
majority of the roots of the Aryan language express abstract ideas,
they rarely indicate the particular actions which would be capable
of being suggested by any mimicry possible to the human voice.
I have selected at random from a list of roots their English
equivalents, in order to show the character of the roots and to
make clearer the difficulty of holding such views. The abstract
nature of the ideas, relating to actions and things which often
have no attendant sound in nature, will indicate what I mean.
What possible sounds could mimic the sense of "to move, to shine,
to gain, to flow, to burn, to blow, to live, to possess, to cover,
to fall, to praise, to think"? In fact the most abstract of all
seem the most primitive for we find them most fruitful in combination
to for other words. I hope to show this clearly later on. It is
unnecessary to discuss the claims of the interjectional theory,
as it is only a theory, and there are few roots for which we could
infer even a remote origin of this nature. The great objection
to the theory that speech was originally a matter of convention
and mutual agreement, is the scarcity of words among the roots
which express the wants of primitive man. As it is, a wisdom
within or beyond the Aryan led him to construct in these roots
with their abstract significance an ideal foundation from which a
great language could be developed. However as the exponents of
rival theories have demolished each other's arguments, without
anyone having established a clear case for himself, it is not
necessary here to do more than indicate these theories and how
they may be met.
In putting forward a hypothesis more in accord with the doctrine
of the spiritual origin of man, and in harmony with those occult
ideas concerning speech already quoted, I stand in a rather unusual
position, as I have to confess my ignorance of any of these primitive
languages. I am rather inclined however, to regard this on the
whole as an advantage for the following reasons. I think primitive
man (the early Aryan) chose his words by a certain intuition which
recognised an innate correspondence between the thought and the symbol.
Para passu with the growing complexity of civilization language lost
it spiritual character, "it fell into matter," to use H.P. Blavatsky's
expression; as the conventional words necessary to define artificial
products grew in number, in the memory of these words the spontaneity
of speech was lost, and that faculty became atrophied which enable
man to arrange with psychic rapidity ever new combinations of sounds
to express emotion and thought. Believing then that speech was
originally intuitive, and that it only need introspection and a
careful analysis of the sounds of the human voice, to recover the
faculty and correspondences between these sounds and forces, colours,
forms, etc., it will be seen why I do not regard my ignorance of
these languages as altogether a drawback. The correspondences
necessarily had to be evolved out of my inner consciousness, and
in doing this no aid could be derived from the Aryan roots as they
now stand. In the meaning attached to each letter is to be found
the key to the meaning and origin of roots; but the value of each
sound separately could never be discovered by an examination of
them in their combinations, though their value and purpose in
combination to form words might be evident enough once the
significance of the letters is shewn. Any lack of knowledge then
is only a disadvantage in this, that it limits the area from which
to choose illustrations. I have felt it necessary to preface what
I have to say with this confession, to show exactly the position
in which I stand. The correspondences between sounds and forces
were first evolved, and an examination of the Aryan roots proved
the key capable of application.
--------
Note:--In an article which appeared in the Theosophist, Dec. 1887,
I had attempted, with the assistance of my friend Mr. Chas. Johnston,
to put forward some of the ideas which form the subject matter of
this paper. Owing to the numerous misprints which rendered it
unintelligible I have felt it necessary to altogether re-write it.
---G.W.R.
--------
It is advisable at this point to consider how correspondences arose
between things seeming so diverse as sounds, forms, colors and forces.
It is evident that they could only come about through the existence
of a common and primal cause reflecting itself everywhere in different
elements and various forms of life. This primal unity lies at the
root of all occult philosophy and science; the One becomes Many; the
ideas latent in Universal Mind are thrown outwards into manifestation.
In the Bhagavad-Gita (chap. IV) Krishna declares: "even though myself
unborn, of changeless essence, and the lord of all existence, yet
in presiding over nature--which is mine--I am born but through my
own maya, the mystic power of self-ideation, the eternal thought
in the eternal mind." "I establish the universe with a single
portion of myself and remain separate;" he says later on, and in
so presiding he becomes the cause of the appearance of the different
qualities. "I am in the taste in water, the light in the sun and moon,
the mystic syllable OM in all the Vedas, sound in space, the masculine
essence in men, the sweet smell in the earth, the brightness in the
fire" etc. Pouring forth then from one fountain we should expect
to find correspondences running everywhere throughout nature; we
should expect to find all these things capable of correlation.
Coexistent with manifestation arise the ideas of time and space,
and these qualities, attributes or forces, which are latent and
unified in the germinal thought, undergo a dual transformation;
they appear successively in time, and what we call evolution
progresses through Kalpa after Kalpa and Manvantara after Manvantara:
the moods which dominate these periods incarnate in matter, which
undergoes endless transformations and takes upon itself all forms
in embodying these sates of consciousness.
The order in which these powers manifest is declared in the Puranas,
Upanishads and Tantric works. It is that abstract formula of
evolution which we can apply alike to the great and little things
in nature. This may be stated in many ways, but to put it briefly,
there is at first one divine Substance-Principle, Flame, Motion or
the Great Breath; from this emanate the elements Akasa, ether, fire,
air, water and earth; the spiritual quality becoming gradually
lessened in these as they are further removed from their divine
source; this is the descent into matter, the lowest rung of
manifestation. "Having consolidated itself in its last principle
as gross matter, it revolves around itself and informs with the
seventh emanation of the last, the first and lowest element."
(S.D. I, p. 297) This involution of the higher into the lower
urges life upwards through the mineral, vegetable, animal and human
kingdoms, until it culminates in spiritually and self consciousness.
It is not necessary here to go more into detail, it is enough to
say that the elements in nature begin as passive qualities, their
ethereal nature becomes gross, then positive and finally spiritual,
and this abstract formula holds good for everything in nature.
These changes which take place in the universe are repeated in man
its microcosm, the cosmic force which acts upon matter and builds
up systems of suns and planets, working in him repeats itself and
builds up a complex organism which corresponds and is correlated
with its cosmic counterpart. The individual spirit Purusha dwells
in the heart of every creature, its powers ray forth everywhere;
they pervade the different principles or vehicles; they act through
the organs of sense; they play upon the different plexuses;
every principle and organ being specialised as the vehicle for a
particular force or state of consciousness. All the sounds we can
utter have their significance; they express moods; they create forms;
they arouse to active life within ourselves spiritual and psychic
forces which are centered in various parts of the body. Hence the
whole organism of man is woven through and through with such
correspondences; our thoughts, emotions, sensations, the forces
we use, colours and sounds acting on different planes are all
correlated among themselves, and are also connected with the forces
evolving present about us, in which we live and move. We find
such correspondences form the subject matter of many Upanishads
and other occult treatises; for example in Yajnavalkyasamhita,
a treatise on Yoga philosophy, we find the sound "Ra" associated
with the element of fire, Tejas Tatwa, with the God Rudra, with a
centre in the body just below the heart. Other books add, as
correspondences of Tejas Tatwa, that its colour is red, its taste
is hot, its form is a triangle and its force is expansion. The
correspondences given in different treatises often vary; but what
we can gather with certainty is that there must have existed a
complete science of the subject; the correlation of sound with
such things, once understood, is the key which explains, not only
the magic potency of sound, but also the constuction of those roots
which remain as relics of the primitive Aryan speech.
The thinking principle in man, having experiences of nature through
its vehicles, the subtle, astral and gross physical bodies, translates
these sensations into its own set of correspondences: this principle
in man, called the Manas, is associated with the element of akasa,
whose property is sound; the Manas moves about in akasa, and so
all ideas which enter into the mind awaken their correspondences
and are immediately mirrored in sound. Let us take as an instance
the perception of the colour red; this communicated to the mind
would set up a vibration, causing a sound to be thrown outwards in
mental manifestation, and in this way the impulse would arise to
utter the letter R, the correspondence of this colour. This Manasic
principle in man, the real Ego, is eternal in its nature; it exists
before and after the body, something accruing to it from each
incarnation; and so, because there is present in the body of man
this long-traveled soul, bearing with it traces of its eternal past,
these letters which are the elements of its speech have impressed
on them a correspondence, not only with the forces natural to its
transitory surroundings, but also with that vaster evolution of
nature in which it has taken part. These correspondences next
claim our attention.
The correspondences here suggested do not I think at all exhaust
the possible significance of any of the letters. Every sound ought
to have a septenary relation to the planes of consciousness, and
the differentiations of life, force and matter on each. Complete
mastery of these would enable the knower to guide the various
currents of force, and to control the elemental knower to guide
the various currents of force, and to control the elemental beings
who live on the astral planes, for these respond, we are told,
"when the exact scale of being to which they belong is vibrated,
whether it be that of colour, form, sound or whatever else,"
(Path, May, 1886) These higher interpretations I am unable to give;
it requires the deeper being to know the deeper meaning. Those
here appended may prove suggestive; I do not claim any finality
or authority for them, but they may be interesting to students of
the occult Upanishads where the mystic power of sound is continually
dwelt upon.
The best method of arranging the letters is to begin with A and
conclude with M or OO: between these lie all the other letters,
and their successive order is determined by their spiritual or
material quality. Following A we get letters with an ethereal or
liquid sound, such as R, H, L or Y; they become gradually harsher
as they pass from the A, following the order of nature in this.
Half way we get letters like K, J, TCHAY, S, or ISH; then they
become softer, and the labials, like F, B and M, have something
of the musical quality of the earlier sounds. If we arrange them
in this manner, it will be found to approximate very closely to the
actual order in which the sounds arise in the process of formation.
We begin then with
A--This represents God, creative force, the Self, the I, the
beginning or first cause. "Among letters I am the vowel A," says
Krishna in the Bagavad. It is without colour, number or form.
R--This is motion, air, breath or spirit; it is also abstract desire,
and here we find the teaching of the Rig-Veda in harmony. "Desire
first arose in It which was the primal germ of mind, and which sages,
searching with their intellect, have discovered in their hearts to
be the bond which connects Entity with non-Entity." The corresponding
colour of this letter is Red.
H (hay) and L--Motion awakens Heat and Light which correspond
respectively to H and L. That primordial ocean of being, says the
book of Dzyan, was "fire and heat and motion:" which are explained
as the noumenal essences of these material manifestations. The
colour of H is Orange, of L yellow. L also conveys the sense
of radiation.
Y (yea)--This letter signifies condensation, drawing together, the
force of attraction, affinity. Matter at the stage of evolution
to which this refers is gaseous, nebulous, or ethereal: the fire-
mists in space gather together to become worlds. The colour Y
is green.
W (way)--Water is the next element in manifestation: in cosmic
evolution it is spoken of as chaos, the great Deep; its colour,
I think, is indigo. After this stage the elements no longer manifest
singly, but in pairs, or with a dual aspect.
G (gay) and K--Reflection and Hardness; matter becomes crystalline
or metalic: the corresponding colour is blue.
S and Z--A further differentiation; matter is atomic: the abstract
significance of number or seed is attached to these letters: their
colour is violet.
J and Tchay--Earth and gross Substance: this is the lowest point
in evolution; the worlds have now condensed into solid matter.
The colour of these letters is orange.
N and Ng--Some new forces begin to work here; the corresponding
sounds have, I think, the meaning of continuation and transformation
or change: these new forces propel evolution in the upward or
ascending arc: their colour is yellow.
D and T--The colour of these letters is red. The involution of
the higher forces into the lower forms alluded to before now begins.
D represents this infusion of life into matter; it is descent and
involution, death or forgetfulness, perhaps, for a time to the
incarnating power. T is evolution, the upward movement generating
life; the imprisoned energies surge outwards and vegetation begins.
Ith and Ish--These correspond respectively to growth or expansion
and vegetation; the earth, as Genesis puts it, "puts forth grass
and herbs and trees yielding fruit." The colour of these letters
is green.
B and P--After the flora the fauna. B is Life or Being, animal and
human. Humanity appears; B is masculine, P feminine. P has also
a meaning of division, differentiation or production, which may
refer to maternity. The colour here is blue.
F and V--The colour is violet. Evolution moves still upwards,
entering the ethereal planes once more. Lightness and vastness
are the characteristics of this stage: we begin to permeate with
part of our nature the higher spheres of being and reach the
consummation in the last stage, represented by
M--which has many meanings; it is thought, it is the end or death
to the personality, it is the Receiver into which all flows, it
is also the Symbol of maternity in a universal sense, it has this
meaning when the life impulse (which is always represented by a
vowel) follows it, as in "ma." It is the Pralaya of the worlds;
the lips close as it is uttered. Its colour is indigo.
O--The last vowel sound symbolizes abstract space, the spirit
assumes once more the garment of primordial matter; it is the
Nirvana of eastern philosophy.
I will now try to show how the abstract significance of these sound
reveals a deeper meaning in the roots of Aryan language than
philologists generally allow. Prof. Max Muller says in the
introduction to Biographies of Words. "Of ultimates in the sense
of primary elements of language, we can never hope to know anything,"
and he also asserts that the roots are incapable of further analysis.
I will endeavour now to show that this further analysis can be made.
I should not be understood to say that all the so-called roots can
be made to yield a secret meaning when analysed. Philologists are
not all agreed as to what constitutes a root, or what words are roots,
and in this general uncertainty it should not be expected that these
correspondences, which as I have said are not complete, will apply
in every instance. There are many other things which add to the
difficulty; a root is often found to have very many different meanings;
some of these may have arisen in the manner I suggest, and many
more are derived from the primary meanings and are therefore not
intuitive at all. The intuition will have to be exercised to discover
what sensations would likely be awakened by the perception of an
action or object; or if the root has an abstract significance,
the thought must be analysed in order to discover its essential
elements. I described previously the manner in which I thought a
single sensation, the perception of the colour Red, would suggest
its correspondence in sound, the letter R. Where the idea is more
complex, a combination of two, tree or four sounds are necessary
to express it, but they all originate in the same way. The reader
who desires to prove the truth of the theory here put forward can
adopt either of two methods; he can apply the correspondences to
the roots, or he may try for himself to create words expressing
simple, elemental ideas by combining the necessary letters; and
then, if he turns to the roots, he will probably find that many
of the words he has created in this way were actually used long ago,
and this pratice will enable him more easily to understand in what
sense, or on what plane, any particular letter should be taken.
I think it probably that in the Sacred Language before mentioned,
this could at once have been recognized by a difference in the
intonation of the voice. This may have been a survival to some
extent of the chanting which was the distinguishing characteristic
of the speech of the Second Race. (Secret Doctrine, vol. II, p. 198)
In the written language it is not easily possible to discover this
without much thought, unless endeavour has previously been made to
re-awaken the faculty of intuitive speech, which we formerly possessed
and which became atrophied.
It is not possible here to go into the analysis of the roots at
much length: I can only illustrate the method which will be found to
apply more surely where the roots express most elemental conceptions.
Let us take as example the root, Wal, to boil. Boiling is brought
about by the action of fire upon water, and here we find the letters W,
water, and L, light or fire, united. In War, to well up as a spring,
the sounds for water and motion are combined. A similar idea is
expressed in Wat, to well out; the abstract significance of T,
which is to evolve, come forth or appear, being here applied to a
special action. A good method to follow in order to understand
how the pure abstract meaning of a letter may be applied in many
different ways, is to take some of the roots in which any one letter
is prominent and then compare them. Let us take D. It has an
abstract relation to involution or infusion; it may be view in
two ways, either as positive or negative; as the exertion of force
or the reception of force. Now I think if we compare the following
roots a similarity of action will be found to underlie them all.
Id, to swell; Ad, to eat; Dhu, to put; Da, to bind; Ad, to smell;
Du, to enter; Da, to suck.
I am not here going exhaustively to analyse the roots, as this is
not an essay upon philology, but an attempt to make clear some of
the mysteries of sound; those who wish to study this side of the
subject more fully can study with this light the primitive languages.
A few more examples must suffice. The root, Mar, to die, may be
variously interpreted as the end of motion, the cessation of breath,
or the withdrawal of spirit, R being expressive of what on various
planes is motion, spirit, air and breath. In Bur, to be active,
life and movement are combined,: in Gla, to glow, reflection and
light; the same idea is in Gol, a lake. We find combined in Kar,
to grind, hardness and motion: in Thah, to generate, expansion
and heat; in Pak, to comb, division and hardness, the suggestion
being division with some hard object; the same idea is in Pik,
to cut. In Pis, to pound, the letters for division and matter in
its molecular state are combined: in Fath, to fly, lightness and
expansion: in Yas, to gird, drawing together and number; in Rab,
to be vehement, energy and life; in Rip, to break, energy and
division. In Yudh, to fight, the meaning suggested may be, coming
together to destroy. Without further analysis the reader will be
able to detect the relation which the abstractions corresponding
to each letter bear to the defined application in the following words.
Ak, to be sharp; Ank, to bend; Idh, to kindle; Ar, to move;
Al, to burn; Ka, to sharpen; Har, to burn; Ku, to hew; Sa, to
produce; Gal, to be yellow or green; Ghar, to be yellow or green;
Thak, to thaw; Tar, to go through; Thu, to swell; Dak, to bite;
Nak, to perish; Pa, to nourish, to feed; Par, to spare; Pi, to
swell, to be fat; Pu, to purify; Pu, to beget; pau, little;
Put, to swell out; Flu, to fly, to float; Bar, to carry; Bhu,
to be, to become; Bla, to blow as a flower; Ma, to think; Mak,
to pound; Mi, to diminish; Mu, to shut up, to enclose; Yas, to
seethe, to ferment; Ys, to bind together, to mix; Yuk, to yoke,
to join; Ra, to love; Rik, to furrow; Luh, to shine; Rud, to
redden, to be red; Lub, to lust [?]; Lu, to cast off from; Wag,
to be moist; Wam, to spit out; So, to sow, to scatter; Sak, to
cut, to cleave; Su, to generate; Swa, to toss; Swal, to boil up;
Ska, to cut; Skap, to hew; Sniw, to snow; Spew, to spit out;
Swid, to sweat; etc. An analysis of some sacred words and the
names of Deities may now prove interesting.
It has been said that before we can properly understand the character
of any deity we would have to know the meaning and the numbers
attached to each letter in the name, for in this way the powers
and functons of the various gods were indicated. If we take as
examples names familiar to everyone, Brahma, Vishnu, and Rudra,
the three aspects of Parabrahm in manifestation, and analyse them
in the same way as the roots, they will be found to yield up their
essential meaning. Form the union of B, life, R, breath, and Ma,
the producer, I would translate Brahma as "the creative breath of life."
Vishnu similarly analysed is the power that "pervades, expands, and
preserves;" I infer this from the union of V, whose force is pervasion,
Sh, expansion, and N, continuation. Rudra is "the breath that absorbs
the breath." Aum is the most sacred name of all names; it is held
to symbolize the action of the Great breath from its dawn to its close:
it is the beginning, A, the middle, U, and the close M. It is also
an affirmation of the relation of our spiritual nature to the universal
Deity whose aspects are Brahma, Vishnu, and Rudra. I shall have
more to say of the occult power of this word later on. Taken in
conjunction with two other words, it is "the threefold designation
of the Supreme Being." Om Tat Sat has a significance referable to
a still higher aspect of Deity than that other Trinity; the Om
here signifies that it is the All; Tat that it is self-existent
or self-evolved; I think the repetition of the T in Tat gives it
this meaning: Sat would signify that in it are contained the seeds
of all manifestation. H.P. Blavatsky translates this word as Be-ness,
which seems to be another way of expressing the same idea. The
mystic incantation familiar to all students of the Upanishads, Om,
bhur, Om, Bhwar, Om, Svar," is an assertion of the existence of
the Divine Self in all the three worlds or Lokas. Loka is generally
translated as a place; the letters suggest to me that a place or
world is only a hardening or crystalization of Fire or Light.
In Bhur Loka the crystalization of the primordial element of Fire
leaves only one principle active, the life principle generally called
Prana. Bhur Loka then is the place where life is active; we have
B, life, and R, movement, to suggest this. In the word Bhuvar a
new letter, V, is inserted: this letter, as I have said, corresponds
to the Astral world, so the Bhuvar Loka is the place where both
the Astral and Life principles are active. It is more difficult
to translate Svar Loka: there is some significance attached here
to the letter S, which I cannot grasp. It might mean that this
world contains the germs of Astral life; but this does not appear
sufficiently distinctive, Svar Loka is generally known as Devachan,
and the whole incantation would mean that the Deity is present
throughout the Pranic, Astral and Devachanic worlds. It is
interesting to note what is said in the Glossary by H.P.B., about
these three words (p. 367): they are said to be "lit by and born
of fire," and to possess creative powers. The repetition of them
with the proper accent should awaken in the occultist the powers
which correspond to the three worlds. I think by these examples
that the student will be able to get closer to the true significance
of incantation; those who understand the occult meaning of the
colours attached to the letters will be able to penetrate deeper
than others into these mysteries.
I may here say something about the general philosophy of incantation.
There is said to be in nature a homogenous sound or tone which
everywhere stirs up the molecules into activity. This is the "Word"
which St. John says was in the beginning (the plane of causation);
in another sense it is the Akasa of occult science, the element
of sound, it is the Pythagorean "music of the spheres." The
universe is built up, moulded and sustained by this element which
is everywhere present, though inaudible by most men at this stage
of evolution. It is not sound by the physical ears, but deep in
the heart sometimes may be heard "the mystic sounds of the Akasic
heights." The word Aum represents this homogeneous sound, it stirs
up a power which is latent in it called the Yajna. The Glossary
says that this "is one of the forms of Akasa within which the mystic
word calls it into existence:" it is a bridge by means of which
the soul can cross over to the world of the Immortals. It is this
which is alluded to in the Nada-Bindu Upanishad. "The mind becoming
insensible to the external impressions, becomes one with the sound,
as milk with water, and then becomes rapidly absorbed in chidakas
(the Akasa where consciousness pervades). The sound..... serves
the purpose of a lure to the ocean waves of Chitta (mind), ...the
serpent Chitta through listening to the Nada is entirely absorbed
in it, and becoming unconscious of everything concentrates itself
on the sound." We may quote further from another Upanishad.
"Having left behind the body, the organs and objects of sense, and
having seized the bow whose stick is fortitude and whose string
is asceticism, and having killed with the arrow of freedom from
egoism the first guardian, ....he crosses by means of the boat Om
to the other side of the ether within the heart, and when the ether
is revealed he enters slowly, as a miner seeking minerals enters
a mine, into the hall of Brahman. ...Thenceforth, pure, clean,
tranquil, breathless, endless, imperishable, firm, unborn, and
independent, he stands in his own greatness, and having seen the
Self standing in his own greatness, he looks at the wheel of
the world."
Let no one think that this is all, and that the mere repetition of
words will do anything except injure those who attempt the use of
these methods without further knowledge. It has been said (Path,
April, 1887) that Charity, Devotion, and the like virtues are
structural necessities in the nature of the man who would make this
attempt. We cannot, unless the whole nature has been purified by
long services and sacrifice, and elevated into mood at once full
of reverence and intense will, become sensitive to the subtle powers
possessed by the spiritual soul.
What is here said about the Aum which is the name of our own God,
and the way in which it draws forth the hidden power will serve to
illustrate the method in using other words. The Thara-Sara Upanishad
of Sukla-Yajur Veda says "Through Om is Brahm produced: through Na
is Vishnu produced; through Ma is Rudra produced, etc." All these
are names of gods; they correspond to forces in man and nature,
in their use the two are united, and the man mounts upwards to
the Immortals.
I have been forced to compress what I had to say in these articles,
I have only been able to suggest rather than put forward ideas,
for my own knowledge of these correspondences is very incomplete.
As far as I know the subject has been untouched hitherto, and this
must be my excuse for the meagre nature of the information given.
I hope later on to treat of the relation of sound and colour to
form and to show how these correspondences will enable us to
understand the language which the gods speak to us through flowers,
trees, and natural forms. I hope also to be able to show that it
was a knowledge of the relation of sound to form which dictated
the form of the letters in many primaeval alphabets.
--5/15, 6/15, 7/15, 8/15, 9/15, 1893
At the Dawn of the Kaliyuga *
Where we sat on the hillside together that evening the winds were
low and the air was misty with light. The huge sunbrowned slope
on which we were sitting was sprinkled over with rare spokes of grass;
it ran down into the vagueness underneath where dimly the village
could be seen veiled by its tresses of lazy smoke. Beyond was a
bluer shade and a deeper depth, out of which, mountain beyond mountain,
the sacred heights of Himalay rose up through star-sprinkled zones
of silver and sapphire air. How gay were our hearts! The silent
joy of the earth quickened their beating. What fairy fancies
alternating with the sweetest laughter came from childish lips!
In us the Golden Age whispered her last, and departed. Up came
the white moon, her rays of dusty pearl slanting across the darkness
from the old mountain to our feet. "A bridge!" we cried, "Primaveeta,
who long to be a sky-walker, here is a bridge for you!"
Primaveeta only smiled; he was always silent; he looked along
the gay leagues of pulsating light that lead out to the radiant
mystery. We went on laughing and talking; then Primaveeta broke
his silence.
"Vyassa," he said, "I went out in thought, I went into the light,
but it was not that light. I felt like a fay; I sparkled with
azure and lilac; I went on, and my heart beat with longing for I
knew not what, and out and outward I sped till desire stayed and I
paused, and the light looked into me full of meaning. I felt like
a spark, and the dancing of the sea of joy bore me up, up, up!"
"Primaveeta, who can understand you?" said his little sister Vina,
"you always talk of the things no one can see; Vyassa, sing for us."
"Yes! yes! let Vyassa sing!" they all cried; and they shouted and
shouted until I began:--
"Shadowy petalled, like the lotus, loom the mountains with their snows:
Through the sapphire Soma rising, such a flood of glory throws
As when the first in yellow splendour Brahma from the lotus rose.
"High above the darkening mounds where fade the fairy lights of day,
All the tiny planet folk are waving us from far away;
Thrilled by Brahma's breath they sparkle with the magic of the gay.
"Brahma, all alone in gladness, dreams the joys that throng in space,
Shepherds all the whirling splendours onward to their resting place,
Where at last in wondrous silence fade in One the starry race."
"Vyassa is just like Primaveeta, he is full of dreams to-night,"
said Vina. And indeed I was full of dreams; my laughter had all
died away; a vague and indescribable unrest came over me; the
universal air around seemed thrilled by the stirring of unknown powers.
We sat silent awhile; then Primaveeta cried out: "Oh, look, look,
look, the Devas! the bright persons! they fill the air with
their shining."
We saw them pass by and we were saddened, for they were full of
solemn majesty; overhead a chant came from celestial singers full
of the agony of farewell and departure, and we knew from their
song that the gods were about to leave the earth which would
nevermore or for ages witness their coming. The earth and the air
around it seemed to tingle with anguish. Shuddering we drew closer
together on the hillside while the brightness of the Devas passed
onward and away; and clear cold and bright as ever, the eternal
constellations, which change or weep not, shone out, and we were
alone with our sorrow. To awed we were to speak, but we clung closer
together and felt a comfort in each other; and so, crouched in
silence; within me I heard as from far away a note of deeper anguish,
like a horn blown out of the heart of the ancient Mother over a
perished hero: in a dread moment I saw the death and the torment;
he was her soul-point, the light she wished to shine among men.
What would follow in the dark ages to come, rose up before me in
shadowy, over-crowding pictures; like the surf of a giant ocean
they fluctuated against the heavens, crested with dim, giantesque
and warring figures. I saw stony warriors rushing on to battle;
I heard their fierce hard laughter as they rode over the trampled foe;
I saw smoke arise from a horrible burning, and thicker and blacker
grew the vistas, with here and there a glow from some hero-heart
that kept the true light shining within. I turned to Primaveeta
who was crouched beside me: he saw with me vision for vision, but,
beyond the thick black ages that shut me out from hope, he saw the
resurrection of the True, and the homecoming of the gods. All this
he told me later, but now our tears were shed together. Then
Primaveeta rose up and said, "Vyasa, where the lights were shining,
where they fought for the True, there you and I must fight; for,
from them spreads out the light of a new day that shall dawn behind
the darkness." I saw that he was no longer a dreamer; his face
was firm with a great resolve. I could not understand him, but I
determined to follow him, to fight for the things he fought for,
to work with him, to live with him, to die with him; and so,
thinking and trying to understand, my thought drifted back to that
sadness of the mother which I had first felt. I saw how we share
joy or grief with her, and, seized with the inspiration of her sorrow,
I sang about her loved one:--
"Does the earth grow grey with grief
For her hero darling fled?
Though her vales let fall no leaf,
In our hearts her tears are shed.
"Still the stars laugh on above,
Not to them her grief is said;
Mourning for her hero love
In our hearts her tears are shed.
"We her children mourn for him,
Mourn the elder hero dead;
In the twilight grey and dim
In our hearts the tears are shed."
"Vyassa," they said, "you will break our hearts." And we sat in
silence and sorrow more complete till we heard weary voices calling
up to us from the darkness below: "Primaveeta! Vyassa! Chandra!
Parvati! Vina! Vasudeva!" calling all our names. We went down
to our homes in the valley; the breadth of glory had passed away
from the world, and our hearts were full of the big grief that
children hold.
--October 15, 1893
--------------
* Note--Kaliyuga. The fourth, the black or iron age, our present
period, the duration of which is 432,000 years. It began 3,102
years B.C. at the moment of Krishna's death, and the first cycle
of 5,000 years will end between the years 1897 and 1898.
--------------
The Meditation of Parvati
Parvata rose up from his seat under the banyan tree. He passed
his hand unsteadily over his brow. Throughout the day the young
ascetic had been plunged in profound meditation, and now, returning
from heaven to earth, he was dazed like one who awakens in darkness
and knows not where he is. All day long before his inner eye burned
the light of the Lokas, until he was wearied and exhausted with
their splendours; space glowed like a diamond with intolerable
lustre, and there was no end to the dazzling processions of figures.
He had seen the fiery dreams of the dead in Swargam. He had been
tormented by the sweet singing of the Gandharvas, whose choral song
reflected in its ripples the rhythmic pulse of Being. He saw how
the orbs, which held them, were set within luminous orbs still of
wider circuit, and vaster and vaster grew the vistas, and smaller
seemed the soul at gaze, until at last, a mere speck of life, he
bore the burden of innumerable worlds. Seeking for Brahma, he
found only the great illusion as infinite as Brahma's being.
If these things were shadows, the earth and the forests he returned
to, viewed at evening, seemed still more unreal, the mere dusky
flutter of a moth's wings in space. Filmy and evanescent, if he
had sunk down as through a transparency into the void, it would not
have been wonderful. Parvati turned homeward, still half in trance:
as he threaded the dim alleys he noticed not the flaming eyes that
regarded him from the gloom; the serpents rustling amid the
undergrowths; the lizards, fire-flies, insects, the innumerable
lives of which the Indian forest was rumourous; they also were
but shadows. He paused half unconsciously at the village, hearing
the sound of human voices, of children at play. He felt a throb
of pity for these tiny being who struggled and shouted, rolling
over each other in ecstasies of joy; the great illusion had indeed
devoured them before whom the Devas once were worshipers. Then
close beside him he heard a voice; its low tones, its reverence
soothed him: there was something akin to his own nature in it;
it awakened him fully. A little crowd of five or six people were
listening silently to an old man who read from a palm-leaf manuscript.
Parvati knew his order by the orange-coloured robes he wore; a
Bhikshu of the new faith. What was his delusion?
The old man lifted his head for a moment as the ascetic came closer,
and then he continued as before. He was reading the "Legend of
the Great King of Glory." Parvati listened to it, comprehending
with the swift intuition and subtlety of a mystic the inner meaning
of the Wonderful Wheel, the elephant Treasure, the Lake and palace
of Righteousness. He followed the speaker, understanding all
until he came to the meditation of the King: then he heard with
vibrating heart, how "the Great King of Glory entered the golden
chamber, and set himself down on the silver couch. And he let his
mind pervade one quarter of the world with thoughts of Love: and
so the second quarter, and so the third, and so the fourth. And
thus the whole wide world, above below, around and everywhere,
did he continue to pervade with heart of Love, far-reaching, grown
great, and beyond measure." When the old Bhikshu had ended, Parvati
rose up, and went back again into the forest. He had found the
secret of the True--to leave behind the vistas, and enter into the
Being. Another legend rose up in his mind, a fairy legend of
righteousness, expanding and filling the universe, a vision beautiful
and full of old enchantment; his heart sang within him. He seated
himself again under the banyan tree; he rose up in soul; he saw
before him images, long-forgotten, of those who suffer in the
sorrowful old earth; he saw the desolation and loneliness of old age,
the insults to the captive, the misery of the leper and outcast,
the chill horror and darkness of life in a dungeon. He drank in
all their sorrow. For his heart he went out to them. Love, a
fierce and tender flame arose; pity, a breath from the vast;
sympathy, born of unity. This triple fire sent forth its rays;
they surrounded those dark souls; they pervaded them; they beat
down oppression.
While Parvati, with spiritual magic, sent forth the healing powers,
far away at that moment, in his hall, a king sat enthroned. A
captive was bound before him; bound, but proud, defiant, unconquerable
of soul. There was silence in the hall until the king spake the doom,
the torture, for this ancient enemy. The king spake: "I had thought
to do some fierce thing to thee, and so end thy days, my enemy.
But, I remember with sorrow, the great wrongs we have done to each
other, and the hearts made sore by our hatred. I shall do no more
wrong to thee. Thou art free to depart. Do what thou wilt. I will
make restitution to thee as far as may be for thy ruined state."
Then the soul no might could conquer was conquered, and the knees
were bowed; his pride was overcome. "My brother!" he said, and
could say no more.
To watch for years a little narrow slit high up in the dark cell,
so high that he could not reach up and look out; and there to see
daily a little change from blue to dark in the sky had withered
that prisoner's soul. The bitter tears came no more; hardly even
sorrow; only a dull, dead feeling. But that day a great groan
burst from him: he heard outside the laugh of a child who was playing
and gathering flowers under the high, grey walls: then it all came
over him, the divine things missed, the light, the glory, and the
beauty that the earth puts forth for her children. The narrow slit
was darkened: half of a little bronze face appeared.
"Who are you down there in the darkness who sigh so? Are you all
alone there? For so many years! Ah, poor man! I would come down
to you if I could, but I will sit here and talk to you for a while.
Here are flowers for you," and a little arm showered them in handfuls;
the room was full of the intoxicating fragrance of summer. Day
after day the child came, and the dull heart entered into human
love once more.
At twilight, by a deep and wide river, sat an old woman alone, dreamy,
and full of memories. The lights of the swift passing boats, and
the lights of the stars, were just as in childhood and the old
love-time. Old, feeble, it was time for her to hurry away from
the place which changed not with her sorrow.
"Do you see our old neighbour there?" said Ayesha to her lover.
"They say she once was as beautiful as you would make me think I
am now. How lonely she must be! Let us come near and speak to her";
and the lover went gladly. Though they spoke to each other rather
than to her, yet something of the past--which never dies when love,
the immortal, has pervaded it--rose up again as she heard their voices.
She smiled, thinking of years of burning beauty.
A teacher, accompanied by his chelas, was passing by the wayside
where a leper was sitting. The teacher said, "Here is our brother
whom we may not touch. But he need not be shut out from truth.
We may sit down where he can listen." He sat down on the wayside
beside the leper, and his chelas stood around him. He spoke words
full of love, kindliness, and pity, the eternal truths which make
the soul grow full of sweetness and youth. A small old spot began
to glow in the heart of the leper, and the tears ran down his
withered cheeks.
All these were the deeds of Parvati, the ascetic; and the Watcher
who was over him from all eternity made a great stride towards
that soul.
--November 15, 1893
A Talk by the Euphrates
Priest Merodach walked with me at evening along the banks of the
great river.
"You feel despondent now," he said, "but this was inevitable. You
looked for a result equal to your inspiration. You must learn to
be content with that alone. Finally an inspiration will come for
every moment, and in every action a divine fire reveal itself."
"I feel hopeless now. Why is this? Wish and will are not less
strong than before."
"Because you looked for a result beyond yourself, and, attached
to external things, your mind drew to itself subtle essences of
earth which clouded it. But there is more in it than that. Nature
has a rhythm, and that part of us which is compounded of her elements
shares in it. You were taught that nature is for ever becoming:
the first emanation in the great deep is wisdom: wisdom changes
into desire, and an unutterable yearning to go outward darkens the
primeval beauty. Lastly, the elements arise, blind, dark, troubled.
Nature in them imagines herself into forgetfulness. This rhythm
repeats itself in man: a moment of inspiration--wise and clear,
we determine; then we are seized with a great desire which impels
us to action; the hero, the poet, the lover, all alike listen to
the music of life, and then endeavour to express its meaning in
word or deed; coming in contact with nature, its lethal influence
drowses them; so baffled and forgetful, they wonder where the God is.
To these in some moment the old inspiration returns, the universe is
as magical and sweet as ever, a new impulse is given, and so they
revolve, perverting and using, each one in his own way, the
cosmic rhythm."
"Merodach, what you say seems truth, and leaving aside the cosmic
rhythm, which I do not comprehend, define again for me the three states."
"You cannot really understand the little apart from the great; but,
applying this to your own case, you remember you had a strange
experience, a God seemed to awaken within you. This passed away;
you halted a little while, full of strange longing, eager for the
great; yet you looked without on the hither side of that first moment,
and in this second period, which is interchange and transition, your
longing drew to you those subtle material essences I spoke of, which,
like vapour surround, dull and bewilder the mind with strange
phantasies of form and sensation. Every time we think with longing
of any object, these essences flow to us out of the invisible spheres
and steep us with the dew of matter: then we forget the great, we
sleep, we are dead or despondent as you are despondent."
I sighed as I listened. A watchfulness over momentary desires was
the first step; I had thought of the tasks of the hero as leading
upwards to the Gods, but this sleepless intensity of will working
within itself demanded a still greater endurance. I neared my
destination; I paused and looked round; a sudden temptation
assailed me; the world was fair enough to live in. Why should I
toil after the far-off glory? Babylon seemed full of mystery, its
temples and palaces steeped in the jewel glow and gloom of evening.
In far-up heights of misty magnificence the plates of gold on the
temples rayed back the dying light: in the deepening vault a starry
sparkle began: an immense hum arose from leagues of populous streets:
the scents of many gardens by the river came over me: I was lulled
by the splash of fountains. Closer I heard voices and a voice I
loved: I listened as a song came
"Tell me, youthful lover, whether
Love is joy or woe?
Are they gay or sad together
On that way who go?"
A voice answered back
"Radiant as a sunlit feather,
Pure and proud they go;
With the lion look together
Glad their faces show."
My sadness departed; I would be among them shortly, and would walk
and whisper amid those rich gardens where beautiful idleness was
always dreaming. Merodach looked at me.
"You will find these thoughts will hinder you much," he said.
"You mean--" I hesitated, half-bewildered, half-amazed. "I say
that a thought such as that which flamed about you just now, driving
your sadness away, will recur again when next you are despondent,
and so you will accustom yourself to find relief on the great quest
by returning to an old habit of the heart, renewing what should be
laid aside. This desire of men and women for each other is the
strongest tie among the many which bind us: it is the most difficult
of all to overcome. The great ones of the earth have passed that
way themselves with tears."
"But surely, Merodach, you cannot condemn what I may say is so much
a part of our nature--of all nature."
"I did not condemn it, when I said it is the strongest tie that
binds us here: it is sin only for those who seek for freedom."
"Merodach, must we then give up love?"
"There are two kinds of love men know of. There is one which begins
with a sudden sharp delight--it dies away into infinite tones of
sorrow. There is a love which wakes up amid dead things: it is
a chill at first, but it takes root, it warms, it expands, it lays
hold of universal joys. So the man loves: so the God loves.
Those who know this divine love are wise indeed. They love not
one or another: they are love itself. Think well over this:
power alone is not the attribute of the Gods; there are no such
fearful spectres in that great companionship. And now, farewell,
we shall meet again."
I watched his departing figure, and then I went on my own way. I
longed for that wisdom, which they only acquire who toil, and strive,
and suffer; but I was full of a rich life which longed for excitement
and fulfilment, and in that great Babylon sin did not declare itself
in its true nature, but was still clouded over by the mantle of
primeval beauty.
--December 15, 1893
The Cave of Lilith
Out of her cave came the ancient Lilith; Lilith the wise; Lilith
the enchantress. There ran a little path outside her dwelling;
it wound away among the mountains and glittering peaks, and before
the door, one of the Wise Ones walked to and fro. Out of her cave
came Lilith, scornful of his solitude, exultant in her wisdom,
flaunting her shining and magical beauty.
"Still alone, star gazer! Is thy wisdom of no avail? Thou hast
yet to learn that I am more powerful knowing the ways of error than
you who know the ways of truth."
The Wise One heeded her not, but walked to and fro. His eyes were
turned to the distant peaks, the abode of his brothers. The
starlight fell about him; a sweet air came down the mountain path,
fluttering his white robe; he did not cease from his steady musing.
Like a mist rising between rocks wavered Lilith in her cave.
Violet, with silvery gleams her raiment; her face was dim; over
her head rayed a shadowy diadem, the something a man imagines over
the head of his beloved---looking closer at her face he would have
seen that this was the crown he reached out to, that the eyes burnt
with his own longing, that the lips were parted to yield to the
secret wishes of his heart.
"Tell me, for I would know, why do you wait so long? I, here in
my cave between the valley and the height blind the eyes of all
who would pass. Those who by chance go forth to you come back to
me again, and but one in ten thousand passes on. My delusions are
sweeter to them than truth. I offer every soul its own shadow;
I pay them their own price. I have grown rich, though the simple
shepards of old gave me birth. Men have made me; the mortals have
made me immortal. I rose up like a vapour from their first dreams,
and every sigh since then and every laugh remains with me. I am
made up of hopes and fears. The subtle princes lay out their plans
of conquest in my cave, and there the hero dreams, and there the
lovers of all time write in flame their history. I am wise, holding
all experience, to tempt, to blind, to terrify. None shall pass by.
Why, therefore, dost thou wait?"
The Wise One looked at her and she shrank back a little, and a
little her silver and violet faded, but out of her cave her voice
still sounded:
"The stars and the starry crown are not yours alone to offer, and
every promise you make, I make also. I offer the good and the bad
indifferently. The lover, the poet, the mystic, and all who would
drink of the first Fountain, I delude with my mirage. I was the
Beatrice who led Dante upward: the gloom was in me, and the glory
was mine also, and he went not out of my cave. The stars and the
shining of heaven were delusions of the infinite I wove about him.
I captured his soul with the shadow of space; a nutshell would
have contained the film. I smote on the dim heart-chords the
manifold music of being. God is sweeter in the human than the
human in God: therefore he rested in me."
She paused a little, and then went on.
"There is that fantastic fellow who slipped by me--could your wisdom
not keep him? He returned to me full of anguish, and I wound my
arms round him like a fair melancholy, and now his sadness is as
sweet to him as hope was before his fall. Listen to his song."
She paused again. A voice came up from the depths chanting a
sad knowledge--
"What of all the will to do?
It has vanished long ago,
For a dream shaft pierced it through
From the unknown Archer's bow.
What of all the soul to think?
Some one offered it a cup
Filled with a diviner drink,
And the flame has burned it up.
What of all the hope to climb?
Only in the self we grope
To the misty end of time;
Truth has put an end to hope.
What of all the heart to love?
Sadder than for will or soul,
No light lured it on above;
Love has found itself the whole."
"Is it not pitiful? I pity only those who pity themselves. Yet
he is mine more surely than ever. This is the end of human wisdom.
How shall he now escape? What shall draw him up?"
"His will shall awaken," said the Wise One. "I do not sorrow over
him, for long is the darkness before the spirit is born. He learns
in your caves not to see, not to hear, not to think, for very anguish
flying your delusions."
"Sorrow is a great bond," Lilith said.
"It is a bond to the object of sorrow. He weeps what thou can never
give him, a life never breathed in thee. He shall come forth, and
thou shalt not see him at the time of passing. When desire dies,
will awakens, the swift, the invisible. He shall go forth, and
one by one the dwellers in your caves will awaken and pass onwards;
this small old path will be trodden by generation after generation.
You, too, oh, shining Lilith, will follow, not as mistress, but
as hand-maiden."
"I shall weave spells," Lilith cried. "They shall never pass me.
With the sweetest poison I will drug them. They will rest drowsily
and content as of old. Were they not giants long ago, mighty men
and heroes? I overcame them with young enchantment. Will they
pass by feeble and longing for bygone joys, for the sins of their
proud exultant youth, while I have grown into a myriad wisdom?"
The Wise One walked to and fro as before, and there was silence,
and I thought I saw that with steady will he pierced the tumultuous
gloom of the cave, and a heart was touched here and there in its
blindness. And I thought I saw that Sad Singer become filled with
a new longing to be, and that the delusions of good and evil fell
from him, and that he came at last to the knees of the Wise One
to learn the supreme truth. In the misty midnight I hear these
three voices, the Sad Singer, the Enchantress Lilith, and the Wise
One. From the Sad Singer I learned that thought of itself leads
nowhere, but blows the perfume from every flower, and cuts the
flower from every tree, and hews down every tree from the valley,
and in the end goes to and fro in waste places gnawing itself in
a last hunger. I learned from Lilith that we weave our own
enchantment, and bind ourselves with out own imagination; to think
of the true as beyond us, or to love the symbol of being, is to
darken the path to wisdom, and to debar us from eternal beauty.
From the Wise One I learned that the truest wisdom is to wait, to
work, and to will in secret; those who are voiceless today, tomorrow
shall be eloquent, and the earth shall hear them, and her children
salute them. Of these three truths the hardest to learn is the
silent will. Let us seek for the highest truth.
--February 15, 1894
A Strange Awakening
Chapter I.
That we are living in the Dark Age we all know, yet we do not realise
half its darkness. We endure physical and moral suffering; but,
fortunately or unfortunately, we are oblivious of the sorrow of
all sorrows--the Spiritual Tragedy. Such a rust has come over the
pure and ancient spirit of life, that the sceptre and the diadem
and the starry sway we held are unremembered; and if anyone speaks
of these things he is looked at strangely with blank eyes, or with
eyes that suspect madness. I do not know whether to call him great,
or pity him, who feels such anguish; for although it is the true
agony of the crucifixion, it is only gods who are so martyred.
With these rare souls memory is not born: life flows on, and they
with it go on in dreams: they are lulled by lights, flowers, stars,
colours, and sweet odours, and are sheltered awhile from heaven
and hell; then in some moment the bubble bursts, and the god
awakens and knows himself, and he rises again with giant strength
to conquer; or else he succumbs, and the waves of Lethe, perhaps
in mercy, blot out his brief knowledge.
I knew such an one many years ago, and I tell of him because I know
of no deeper proof of the existence of a diviner nature than that
man's story. Arthur Harvey, as I have heard people describe him,
in his early years was gentle, shy, and given to much dreaming.
He was taken from school early, came up from the country to the city,
and was put to business. He possessed the apathy and unresisting
nature characteristic of so many spiritual people, and which is
found notably among the natives of India; so he took his daily
confinement at first as a matter of course, though glad enough when
it was over, and the keen sweet air blew about him in spring or
summer evenings, and the earth looked visionary, steeped in dew
and lovely colour, and his soul grew rich with strange memories
and psychic sensations. And so day-by-day he might have gone on
with the alternation of work and dream, and the soul in its
imaginings might never have known of the labours of the mind, each
working by habit in its accustomed hour, but for an incident which
took place about two years after his going to business.
One morning his manager said: "Harvey, take this letter; deliver
it, and wait for an answer." He started up eagerly, glad for the
unwonted freedom from his desk. At the door, as he went out, the
whole blinding glory of the sunlight was dashed on him. He looked
up. Ah! what spaces illimitable of lustrous blue. How far off!
How mighty! He felt suddenly faint, small, mean, and feeble.
His limbs trembled under him: he shrank from the notice of men
as he went on his way. Vastness, such as this, breaking in upon
the eye that had followed the point of the pen, unnerved him: he
felt a bitter self-contempt. What place had he amid these huge
energies? The city deafened him as with one shout: the tread of
the multitude; the mob of vehicles; glitter and shadow; rattle,
roar, and dust; the black smoke curled in the air; higher up the
snowy and brilliant clouds, which the tall winds bore along; all
were but the intricate and wondrous workings of a single monstrous
personality; a rival in the universe who had absorbed and wrested
from him his own divine dower. Out of him; out of him, the power--
the free, the fearless--whirled in play, and drove the suns and
stars in their orbits, and sped the earth through light and shadow.
Out of him; out of him; never to be reconquered; never to be
regained. The exultant laugh of the day; the flame of summer;
the gigantic winds careering over the city; the far-off divine
things filled him with unutterable despair. What was he amid it all?
A spark decaying in its socket; a little hot dust clinging together.
He found himself in a small square; he sat down on a bench; his
brain burning, his eyes unseeing.
"Oh! my, what's he piping over?" jeered a grotesque voice, and a
small figure disappeared, turning somersaults among the bushes.
"Poor young man! Perhaps he is ill. Are you not well, sir?" asked
a sympathetic nurse.
He started up, brought to himself, and muttering something
unintelligible, continued his journey through the city. The
terrible influence departed, and a new change came over him. The
laugh of the urchin rankled in his mind: he hated notice: there
must be something absurd or out of the common in his appearance
to invoke it. He knew suddenly that there was a gulf between him
and the people he lived among. They were vivid, actual, suited
to their places. How he envied them! Then the whole superficies
of his mind became filled with a desire to conceal this difference.
He recalled the various characteristics of those who worked along
with him. One knew all topical songs, slang and phrases; another
affected a smartness in dress; a third discussed theatres with
semi-professional knowledge. Harvey, however, could never have
entered the world, or lived in it, if he had first to pass through
the portals of such ideas! He delivered his letter; he was wearied
out, and as he returned he noticed neither sky nor sunlight, and
the hurrying multitudes were indifferent and without character.
He passed through them; his mind dull like theirs; a mere machine
to guide rapid footsteps.
That evening, a clerk named Whittaker, a little his senior in the
office, was struck by Harvey's curious and delicate face.
"I say, Harvey," he said, "how do you spend your evenings?"
Harvey flushed a little at the unwonted interest.
"I take long walks," he said.
"Do you read much?"
"A little."
"Do you go to the theatre?"
"No."
"Never?"
"Never."
"Whew! what a queer fellow! No clubs, classes, music-halls--
anything of the sort, eh?"
"No," said Harvey, a little bitterly, "I know nothing, nobody; I
am always alone."
"What an extraordinary life! Why, you are out of the universe
completely. I say," he added, "come along with me this evening.
I will initiate you a little. You know you must learn your profession
as a human being."
His manner was very kindly; still Harvey was so shy that he would
have found some excuse, but for that chance expression, "out of
the universe." Was not this apartness the very thing he had just
been bitterly feeling? While he hesitated and stammered in his
awkwardness, the other said: "There, no excuses! You need not go
to your lodgings for tea. Come along with me."
They went off together through the darkening streets. One cheerful
and irreverent, brimful of remark or criticism; the other silent,
his usual dreaminess was modified, but had not departed, and once,
gazing up through the clear, dark blue, where the stars were shining,
he had a momentary sense as if he were suspended from them by a fine
invisible thread, as a spider hung from her roof; suspended from
on high, where the pure and ancient aether flamed around the
habituations of eternity; and below and about him, the thoughts
of demons, the smoke, darkness, horror and anguish of the pit.