Things of late have changed, true enough. The field of investigation has
widened; old religions are a little better understood; and since that
miserable day when the Committee of the French Academy, headed by Benjamin
Franklin, investigated Mesmer’s phenomena only to proclaim them
charlatanry and clever knavery, both heathen Philosophy and Mesmerism have
acquired certain rights and privileges, and are now viewed from quite a
different standpoint. Is full justice rendered them, however, and are they
any better appreciated? We are afraid not. Human nature is the same now,
as when Pope said of the force of prejudice that:
The difference is as great between
The optics seeing, as the objects seen.
All manners take a tincture from our own,
Or some discolour’d through our passions shown,
Or fancy’s beam enlarges, multiplies,
Contracts, inverts, and gives ten thousand dyes.
Thus in the first decades of our century Hermetic Philosophy was regarded
by both Churchmen and men of Science from two quite opposite points of
view. The former called it sinful and devilish; the latter denied point‐
blank its authenticity, notwithstanding the evidence brought forward by
the most erudite men of every age, including our own. The learned Father
Kircher, for instance, was not even noticed; and his assertion that all
the fragments known under titles of works by Mercury Trismegistus,
Berosus, Pherecydes of Syros, etc., were rolls that had escaped the fire
which devoured 100,000 volumes of the great Alexandrian Library—was simply
laughed at. Nevertheless the educated classes of Europe knew then, as they
do now, that the famous Alexandrian Library, the “marvel of the ages,” was
founded by Ptolemy Philadelphus; that numbers of its MSS. had been
carefully copied from hieratic texts and the oldest parchments, Chaldæan,
Phœnician, Persian, etc.; and that these transliterations and copies
amounted, in their turn, to another 100,000 rolls, as Josephus and Strabo
assert.
There is also the additional evidence of Clemens Alexandrinus, that ought
to be credited to some extent.(58) Clemens testified to the existence of
an additional 30,000 volumes of the Books of Thoth, placed in the library
of the Tomb of Osymandias, over the entrance of which were inscribed the
words, “A Cure for the Soul.”
Since then, as all know, entire texts of the “apocryphal” works of the
“false” Pymander, and the no less “false” Asclepias, have been found by
Champollion in the most ancient monuments of Egypt.(59) As said in _Isis
Unveiled_:
After having devoted their whole lives to the study of the records
of the old Egyptian wisdom, both Champollion‐Figéac and
Champollion Junior publicly declared, notwithstanding many biassed
judgments hazarded by certain hasty and unwise critics, that the
_Books of Hermes_ “truly contain a mass of Egyptian traditions
which are constantly corroborated by the most authentic records
and monuments of Egypt of the hoariest antiquity.”(60)
The merit of Champollion as an Egyptologist none will question, and if he
declare that everything demonstrates the accuracy of the writings of the
mysterious Hermes Trismegistus, and if the assertion that their antiquity
runs back into the night of time be corroborated by him in minutest
details, then indeed criticism ought to be fully satisfied. Says
Champollion:
These inscriptions are only the faithful echo and expression of
the most ancient verities.
Since these words were written, some of the “apocryphal” verses by the
“mythical” Orpheus have also been found copied word for word, in
hieroglyphics, in certain inscriptions of the Fourth Dynasty, addressed to
various Deities. Finally, Creuzer discovered and immediately pointed out
the very significant fact that numerous passages found in Homer and Hesiod
were undeniably borrowed by the two great poets from the Orphic Hymns,
thus proving the latter to be far older than the _Iliad_ or the _Odyssey_.
And so gradually the ancient claims come to be vindicated, and modern
criticism has to submit to evidence. Many are now the writers who confess
that such a type of literature as the Hermetic works of Egypt can never be
dated too far back into the prehistoric ages. The texts of many of these
ancient works, that of Enoch included, so loudly proclaimed “apocryphal”
at the beginning of this century, are now discovered and recognised in the
most secret and sacred sanctuaries of Chaldæa, India, Phœnicia, Egypt and
Central Asia. But even such proofs have failed to convince the bulk of our
Materialists. The reason for this is very simple and evident. All these
texts—held in universal veneration in Antiquity, found in the secret
libraries of all the great temples, studied (if not always mastered) by
the greatest statesmen, classical writers, philosophers, kings and laymen,
as much as by renowned Sages—what were they? Treatises on Magic and
Occultism, pure and simple; the now derided and tabooed Theosophy—hence
the ostracism.
Were people, then, so simple and credulous in the days of Pythagoras and
Plato? Were the millions of Babylonia and Egypt, of India and Greece, with
their great Sages to lead them, all fools, that during those periods of
great learning and civilization which preceded the year _one_ of our
era—the latter giving birth but to the intellectual darkness of mediæval
fanaticism—so many otherwise great men should have devoted their lives to
a mere illusion, a superstition called Magic? It would seem so, had one to
remain content with the word and conclusions of modern Philosophy.
Every Art and Science, however, whatever its intrinsic merit, has had its
discoverer and practitioner, and subsequently its proficients to teach it.
What is the origin of the Occult Sciences, or Magic? Who were its
professors, and what is known of them, whether in history or legend?
Clemens Alexandrinus, one of the most intelligent and learned of the early
Christian Fathers, answers this question in his _Stromateis_. That ex‐
pupil of the Neoplatonic School argues:
If there is instruction, you must seek for the master.(61)
And so he shows Cleanthes taught by Zeno, Theophrastus by Aristotle,
Metrodorus by Epicurus, Plato by Socrates, etc. And he adds that when he
had looked further back to Pythagoras, Pherecydes, and Thales, he had
still to search for their masters. The same for the Egyptians, the
Indians, the Babylonians, and the Magi themselves. He would not cease
questioning, he says, to learn who it was they all had for their masters.
And when he (Clemens) had traced down the enquiry to the very cradle of
mankind, to the first generation of men, he would reiterate once more his
questioning, and ask, “Who is their teacher?” Surely, he argues, their
master could be “no one of men.” And even when we should have reached as
high as the Angels, the same query would have to be offered to them: “Who
were their (meaning the ‘divine’ and the ‘fallen’ Angels) masters?”
The aim of the good father’s long argument is of course to discover two
distinct masters, one the preceptor of biblical patriarchs, the other the
teacher of the Gentiles. But the students of the Secret Doctrine need go
to no such trouble. Their professors are well aware who were the Masters
of their predecessors in Occult Sciences and Wisdom.
The two professors are finally traced out by Clemens, and are, as was to
be expected, God, and his eternal and everlasting enemy and opponent, the
Devil; the subject of Clemens’ enquiry relating to the _dual_ aspect of
Hermetic Philosophy, as cause and effect. Admitting the moral beauty of
the virtues preached in every Occult work with which he was acquainted,
Clemens desires to know the cause of the apparent contradiction between
the doctrine and the practice, good and evil Magic, and he comes to the
conclusion that Magic has two origins—divine and diabolical. He perceives
its bifurcation into two channels, hence his deduction and inference.
We perceive it too, without, however, necessarily designating such
bifurcation diabolical, for we judge the “left‐hand path” as it issued
from the hands of its founder. Otherwise, judging also by the effects of
Clemens’ own religion and the walk in life of certain of its professors,
since the death of their Master, the Occultists would have a right to come
to somewhat the same conclusion as Clemens. They would have a right to say
that while Christ, the Master of all _true_ Christians, was in every way
godly, those who resorted to the horrors of the Inquisition, to the
extermination and torture of heretics, Jews and Alchemists, the Protestant
Calvin who burnt Servetus, and his persecuting Protestant successors, down
to the whippers and burners of witches in America, must have had for
_their_ Master, the Devil. But Occultists, not believing in the Devil, are
precluded from retaliating in this way.
Clemens’ testimony, however, is valuable in so far as it shows (1) the
enormous number of works on Occult Sciences in his day; and (2) the
extraordinary powers acquired through those Sciences by certain men.
He devotes, for instance, the whole of the sixth book of his _Stromateis_
to this research for the first two “Masters” of the true and the false
Philosophy respectively, both preserved, as he says, in the Egyptian
sanctuaries. Very pertinently too, he apostrophises the Greeks, asking
them why they should not accept the “miracles” of Moses as such, since
they claim the very same privileges for their own Philosophers, and he
gives a number of instances. It is, as he says, Æachus obtaining through
his Occult powers a marvellous rain; it is Aristæus causing the winds to
blow; Empedocles quieting the gale, and forcing it to cease, etc.(62)
The books of Mercurius Trismegistus most attracted his attention.(63) He
is also warm in his praise of Hystaspes (or Gushtasp), of the Sibylline
books, and even of the right Astrology.
There have been in all ages use and abuse of Magic, as there are use and
abuse of Mesmerism or Hypnotism in our own. The ancient world had its
Apollonii and its Pherecydæ, and intellectual people could discriminate
then, as they can now. While no classical or pagan writer has ever found
one word of blame for Apollonius of Tyana, for instance, it is not so with
regard to Pherecydes. Hesychius of Miletia, Philo of Byblos and
Eusthathius charge the latter unstintingly with having built his
Philosophy and Science on demoniacal traditions—_i.e._, on Sorcery. Cicero
declares that Pherecydes is, _potius divinus quam medicus_, “rather a
soothsayer than a physician,” and Diogenes Laërtius gives a vast number of
stories relating to his predictions. One day Pherecydes prophesies the
shipwreck of a vessel hundreds of miles away from him; another time he
predicts the capture of the Lacedæmonians by the Arcadians; finally, he
foresees his own wretched end.(64)
Bearing in mind the objections that will be made to the teachings of the
Esoteric Doctrine as herein propounded, the writer is forced to meet some
of them beforehand.
Such imputations as those brought by Clemens against the “heathen” Adepts,
only prove the presence of clairvoyant powers and prevision in every age,
but are no evidence in favour of a Devil. They are, therefore, of no value
except to the Christians, for whom Satan is one of the chief pillars of
the faith. Baronius and De Mirville, for instance, find an unanswerable
proof of Demonology in the belief in the co‐eternity of Matter with
Spirit!
De Mirville writes that Pherecydes
Postulates in principle the primordiality of Zeus or Ether, and
then, on the same plane, a principle, coëternal and coäctive,
which he calls the fifth element, or Ogenos.(65)
He then points out that the meaning of Ogenos is given as that which shuts
up, which holds captive, and that is Hades, “or in a word, hell.”
The synonyms are known to every schoolboy without the Marquis going to the
trouble of explaining them to the Academy; as to the deduction, every
Occultist will of course deny it and only smile at its folly. And now we
come to the theological conclusion.
The _résumé_ of the views of the Latin Church—as given by authors of the
same character as the Marquis de Mirville—amounts to this: that the
Hermetic Books, their wisdom—fully admitted in Rome—notwithstanding, are
“the heirloom left by Cain, the accursed, to mankind.” It is “generally
admitted,” says that modern memorialist of Satan in History:
That immediately after the Flood Cham and his descendants had
propagated anew the ancient teachings of the Cainites and of the
submerged Race.(66)
This proves, at any rate, that Magic, or Sorcery as he calls it, is an
antediluvian Art, and thus one point is gained. For, as he says:—
The evidence of Berosius makes Ham identical with the first
Zoroaster, founder of Bactria, the first author of all the magic
arts of Babylonia, the _Chemesenua_ or Cham,(67) the
_infamous_(68) of the faithful Noachians, finally the object of
adoration for Egypt, which having received its name Χημεία, whence
chemistry, built in his honour a town called _Choemnis_, or the
“city of fire.”(69) Ham adored it, it is said, whence the name
_Chammaim_ given to the pyramids; which in their turn have been
vulgarised into our modern noun “chimney.”(70)
This statement is entirely wrong. Egypt was the cradle of Chemistry and
its birth‐place—this is pretty well known by this time. Only Kenrick and
others show the root of the word to be _chemi_ or _chem_, which is not
_Cham_ or Ham, but _Khem_, the Egyptian phallic God of the Mysteries.
But this is not all. De Mirville is bent upon finding a satanic origin
even for the now innocent Tarot.
He goes on to say:
As to the means for the propagation of this evil Magic, tradition
points it out, in certain runic characters traced on metallic
plates [or leaves, _des lames_] which have escaped destruction by
the Deluge.(71) This might have been regarded as legendary, had
not subsequent discoveries shown it far from being so. Plates were
found covered with curious and utterly undecipherable characters,
characters of undeniable antiquity, to which the Chamites
[Sorcerers, with the author] attribute the origin of their
marvellous and terrible powers.(72)
The pious author may, meanwhile, be left to his own orthodox beliefs. He,
at any rate, seems quite sincere in his views. Nevertheless, his able
arguments will have to be sapped at their very foundation, for it must be
shown on mathematical grounds who, or rather what, Cain and Ham really
were. De Mirville is only the faithful son of his Church, interested in
keeping Cain in his anthropomorphic character and in his present place in
“Holy Writ.” The student of Occultism, on the other hand, is solely
interested in the truth. But the age has to follow the natural course of
its evolution.