Few of our students of Occultism have had the opportunity of examining
Egyptian papyri—those living, or rather re‐arisen witnesses that Magic,
good and bad, was practised many thousands of years back into the night of
time. The use of the papyrus prevailed up to the eighth century of our
era, when it was given up, and its fabrication fell into disuse. The most
curious of the exhumed documents were immediately purchased and taken away
from the country. Yet there are a number of beautifully‐preserved papyri
at Bulak, Cairo, though the greater number have never been yet properly
read.(453)
Others—those that have been carried away and may be found in the museums
and public libraries of Europe—have fared no better. In the days of the
Vicomte de Rougé, some twenty‐five years ago, only a few of them “were
two‐thirds deciphered;” and among those some most interesting legends,
inserted parenthetically and for purposes of explaining royal expenses,
are in the Register of the Sacred Accounts.
This may be verified in the so‐called “Harris” and Anastasi collections,
and in some papyri recently exhumed; one of these gives an account of a
whole series of magic feats performed before the Pharaohs Ramses II. and
III. A curious document, the first‐mentioned, truly. It is a papyrus of
the fifteenth century B.C., written during the reign of Ramses V., the
last king of the eighteenth dynasty, and is the work of the scribe
Thoutmes, who notes down some of the events with regard to defaulters
occurring on the twelfth and thirteenth days of the month of Paophs. The
document shows that in those days of “miracles” in Egypt the taxpayers
were not found among the living alone, but every mummy was included. All
and everything was taxed; and the Khou of the mummy, in default, was
punished “by the priest‐exorciser, who deprived it of the liberty of
action.” Now what was the Khou? Simply the astral body, or the aerial
simulacrum of the corpse or the mummy—that which in China is called the
Hauen, and in India the Bhût.
Upon reading this papyrus to‐day, an Orientalist is pretty sure to fling
it aside in disgust, attributing the whole affair to the crass
superstition of the ancients. Truly phenomenal and inexplicable must have
been the dullness and credulity of that otherwise highly philosophical and
civilized nation if it could carry on for so many consecutive ages, for
thousands of years, such a system of mutual deception! A system whereby
the people were deceived by the priests, the priests by their King‐
Hierophants, and the latter themselves were cheated by the ghosts, which
were, in their turn, but “the fruits of hallucination.” The whole of
antiquity, from Menes to Cleopatra, from Manu to Vikramaditya, from
Orpheus down to the last Roman augur, were hysterical, we are told. This
must have been so, if the whole were not a system of fraud. Life and death
were guided by, and were under the sway of, sacred “conjuring.” For there
is hardly a papyrus, though it be a simple document of purchase and sale,
a deed belonging to daily transactions of the most ordinary kind, that has
not Magic, white or black, mixed up in it. It looks as though the sacred
scribes of the Nile had purposely, and in a prophetic spirit of race‐
hatred, carried out the (to them) most unprofitable task of deceiving and
puzzling the generations of a future white race of unbelievers yet unborn!
Anyhow, the papyri are full of Magic, as are likewise the stelæ. We learn,
moreover, that the papyrus was not merely a smooth‐surfaced parchment, a
fabric made of
Ligneous matter from a shrub, the pellicles of which superposed
one over the other formed a kind of writing‐paper;
but that the shrub itself, the implements and tools for fabricating the
parchment, etc., were all previously subjected to a process of magical
preparation—according to the ordinance of the Gods, who had taught that
art, as they had all others, to their Priest‐Hierophants.
There are, however, some modern Orientalists who seem to have an inkling
of the true nature of such things, and especially of the analogy and the
relations that exist between the Magic of old and our modern‐day
phenomena. Chabas is one of these, for he indulges, in his translation of
the “Harris” papyrus, in the following reflections:
Without having recourse to the imposing ceremonies of the wand of
Hermes, or to the obscure formulæ of an unfathomable mysticism, a
mesmerizer in our own day will, by means of a few passes, disturb
the organic faculties of a subject, inculcate the knowledge of
foreign languages, transport him to a far‐distant country, or into
secret places, make him guess the thoughts of those absent, read
in closed letters, etc.... The antre of the modern sybil is a
modest‐looking room, the tripod has made room for a small round
table, a hat, a plate, a piece of furniture of the most vulgar
kind; only the latter is even superior to the oracle of antiquity
[how does M. Chabas know?], inasmuch as the latter only
spoke,(454) while the oracle of our day writes its answers. At the
command of the medium the spirits of the dead descend to make the
furniture creak, and the authors of bygone centuries deliver to us
works written by them beyond the grave. Human credulity has no
narrower limits to‐day than it had at the dawn of historical
times.... As teratology is an essential part of general physiology
now, so the _pretended_ Occult Sciences occupy in the annals of
humanity a place which is not without its importance, and deserve
for more than one reason the attention of the philosopher and the
historian.(455)
Selecting the two Champollions, Lenormand, Bunsen, Vicomte de Rougé, and
several other Egyptologists to serve as our witnesses, let us see what
they say of Egyptian Magic and Sorcery. They may get out of the difficulty
by accounting for each “superstitious belief” and practice by attributing
them to a chronic psychological and physiological derangement, and to
collective hysteria, if they like; still facts are there, staring us in
the face, from the hundreds of these mysterious papyri, exhumed after a
rest of four, five, and more thousands of years, with their magical
containments and evidence of antediluvian Magic.
A small library, found at Thebes, has furnished fragments of every kind of
ancient literature, many of which are dated, and several of which have
thus been assigned to the accepted age of Moses. Books or manuscripts on
ethics, history, religion and medicine, calendars and registers, poems and
novels—everything—may be had in that precious collection; and old
legends—traditions of long forgotten ages (please to remark this: legends
recorded during the Mosaic period)—are already referred to therein as
belonging to an immense antiquity, to the period of the dynasties of Gods
and Giants. Their chief contents, however, are formulæ of exorcisms
against black Magic, and funeral rituals: true breviaries, or the _vade
mecum_ of every pilgrim‐traveller in eternity. These funeral texts are
generally written in hieratic characters. At the head of the papyrus is
invariably placed a series of scenes, showing the defunct appearing before
a host of Deities successively, who have to examine him. Then comes the
judgment of the Soul, while the third act begins with the launching of
that Soul into the divine light. Such papyri are often forty feet
long.(456)
The following is extracted from general descriptions. It will show how the
moderns understand and interpret Egyptian (and other) Symbology.
The papyrus of the priest Nevo‐loo (or Nevolen), at the Louvre, may be
selected for one case. First of all there is the bark carrying the coffin,
a black chest containing the defunct’s mummy. His mother, Ammenbem‐Heb,
and his sister, Hooissanoob, are near; at the head and feet of the corpse
stand Nephtys and Isis clothed in red, and near them a priest of Osiris
clad in his panther’s skin, his censer in his right hand, and four
assistants carrying the mummy’s intestines. The coffin is received by the
God Anubis (of the jackal’s head), from the hands of female weepers. Then
the Soul rises from its mummy and the Khou (astral body) of the defunct.
The former begins its worship of the four genii of the East, of the sacred
birds, and of Ammon as a ram. Brought into the “Palace of Truth,” the
defunct is before his judges. While the Soul, a scarabæus, stands in the
presence of Osiris, his astral Khou is at the door. Much laughter is
provoked in the West by the invocations to various Deities, presiding over
each of the limbs of the mummy, and of the living human body. Only judge:
in the papyrus of the mummy Petamenoph “the anatomy becomes
theographical,” “astrology is applied to physiology,” or rather “to the
anatomy of the human body, the heart and the soul.” The defunct’s “hair
belongs to the Nile, his eyes to Venus (Isis), his ears to Macedo, the
guardian of the tropics; his nose to Anubis, his left temple to the Spirit
dwelling in the sun.... What a series of intolerable absurdities and
ignoble prayers ... to Osiris, imploring him to give the defunct in the
other world, geese, eggs, pork, etc.”(457)
It might have been prudent, perhaps, to have waited to ascertain whether
all these terms of “geese, eggs, and pork” had not some other Occult
meaning. The Indian Yogî who, in an _exoteric_ work, is invited to drink a
certain intoxicating liquor till he loses his senses, was also regarded as
a drunkard representing his sect and class, until it was found that the
Esoteric sense of that “spirit” was quite different: that it meant divine
light, and stood for the ambrosia of Secret Wisdom. The symbols of the
dove and the lamb which abound now in Eastern and Western Christian
Churches may also be exhumed long ages hence, and speculated upon as
objects of present‐day worship. And then some “Occidentalist” in the
forthcoming ages of high Asiatic civilization and learning, may write
karmically upon the same as follows: “The ignorant and superstitious
Gnostics and Agnostics of the sects of ‘Pope’ and ‘Calvin’ (the two
monster Gods of the Dynamite‐Christian period) adored a pigeon and a
sheep!” There will be portable hand‐fetishes in all and every age for the
satisfaction and reverence of the rabble, and the Gods of one race will
always be degraded into devils by the next one. The cycles revolve within
the depths of Lethe, and Karma shall reach Europe as it has Asia and her
religions.
Nevertheless,
This grand and dignified language [in the _Book of the Dead_],
these pictures full of majesty, this orthodoxy of the whole
evidently proving a very precise doctrine concerning the
immortality of the soul and its personal survival,
as shown by De Rougé and the Abbé Van Drival, have charmed some
Orientalists. The psychostasy (or judgment of the Soul) is certainly a
whole poem to him who can read it correctly and interpret the images
therein. In that picture we see Osiris, the horned, with his sceptre
hooked at the end—the original of the pastoral bishop’s crook or
crosier—the Soul hovering above, encouraged by Tmei, daughter of the Sun
of Righteousness and Goddess of Mercy and Justice; Horus and Anubis,
weighing the deeds of the soul. One of these papyri shows the Soul found
guilty of gluttony sentenced to be re‐born on earth as a hog; forthwith
comes the learned conclusion of an Orientalist, “This is an indisputable
proof of belief in _metempsychosis_, of transmigration _into animals_,”
etc.
Perchance the Occult law of Karma might explain the sentence otherwise. It
may, for all our Orientalists know, refer to the physiological vice in
store for the Soul when re‐incarnated—a vice that will lead that
personality into a thousand and one scrapes and misadventures.
Tortures to begin with, then metempsychosis _during_ 3,000 _years_
as a hawk, an angel, a lotus‐flower, a heron, a stork, a swallow,
a serpent, and a crocodile: one sees that the consolation of such
a progress was far from being satisfactory,
argues De Mirville, in his work on the Satanic character of the Gods of
Egypt.(458) Again, a simple suggestion may throw on this a great light.
Are the Orientalists quite sure they have read correctly the
“metempsychosis during 3,000 years”? The Occult Doctrine teaches that
Karma waits at the threshold of Devachan (the Amenti of the Egyptians) for
3,000 years; that then the eternal _Ego_ is reincarnated _de novo_, to be
punished in its new temporary personality for sins committed in the
preceding birth, and the suffering for which, in one shape or another,
will atone for past misdeeds. And the hawk, the lotus‐flower, the heron,
serpent, or bird—every object in Nature, in short—had its symbolical and
manifold meaning in ancient religious emblems. The man who all his life
acted hypocritically and passed for a good man, but had been in sober
reality watching like a bird of prey his chance to pounce upon his fellow‐
creatures, and had deprived them of their property, will be sentenced by
Karma to bear the punishment for hypocrisy and covetousness in a future
life. What will it be? Since every human unit has ultimately to progress
in its evolution, and since that “man” will be reborn at some future time
as a good, sincere, well‐meaning man, his sentence to be re‐incarnated as
a hawk may simply mean that he will then be regarded metaphorically as
such. That, notwithstanding his real, good, intrinsic qualities, he will,
perhaps during a long life, be unjustly and falsely charged with and
suspected of greed and hypocrisy and of secret exactions, all of which
will make him suffer more than he can bear. The law of retribution can
never err, and yet how many such innocent victims of false appearance and
human malice do we not meet in this world of incessant illusion, of
mistake and deliberate wickedness. We see them every day, and they may be
found within the personal experience of each of us. What Orientalist can
say with any degree of assurance that he has understood the religions of
old? The metaphorical language of the priests has never been more than
superficially revealed, and the hieroglyphics have been very poorly
mastered to this day.(459)
What says _Isis Unveiled_ on this question of Egyptian rebirth and
transmigration, and does it clash with anything that we say now?
It will be observed that this philosophy of cycles, which was
allegorized by the Egyptian Hierophants in the “cycle of
necessity,” explains at the same time the allegory of the “Fall of
Man.” According to the Arabian descriptions, each of the seven
chambers of the pyramids—those grandest of all cosmic symbols—was
known by the name of a planet. The peculiar architecture of the
pyramids shows in itself the drift of the metaphysical thought of
their builders. The apex is lost in the clear blue sky of the land
of the Pharaohs, and typifies the primordial point lost in the
unseen Universe from whence started the first race of the
spiritual prototypes of man. Each mummy from the moment that it
was embalmed lost its physical individuality in one sense: it
symbolised the human race. Placed in such a way as was best
calculated to aid the exit of the “Soul,” the latter had to pass
through the seven planetary chambers before it made its exit
through the symbolical apex. Each chamber typified, at the same
time, one of the seven spheres [of our Chain] and one of the seven
higher types of physico‐spiritual humanity alleged to be above our
own. Every 3000 years the soul, representative of its race, had to
return to its primal point of departure before it underwent
another evolution into a more perfected spiritual and physical
transformation. We must go deep indeed into the abstruse
metaphysics of Oriental mysticism before we can realise fully the
infinitude of the subjects that were embraced at one sweep by the
majestic thought of its exponents.(460)
This is all Magic when once the details are given; and it relates at the
same time to the evolution of our seven Root‐Races, each with the
characteristics of its special guardian or “God,” and his Planet. The
astral body of each Initiate, after death, had to reënact in its funeral
mystery the drama of the birth and death of each Race—the past and the
future—and pass through the seven “planetary chambers,” which, as said
above, typified also the seven spheres of our Chain.
The mystic doctrine of Eastern Occultism teaches that
_“__The Spiritual Ego [not the astral Khou] has to revisit, before it
incarnates into a new body, the scenes it left at its last disincarnation.
It __ has to see for itself and take cognizance of all the effects
produced by the causes [the Nidânas] generated by its actions in a
previous life; that, seeing, it should recognize the justice of the
decree, and help the law of Retribution [Karma] instead of impeding
it.__”_(461)
The translations by Vicomte de Rougé of several Egyptian papyri, imperfect
as they may be, give us one advantage: they show undeniably the presence
in them of white, divine Magic, as well as of Sorcery, and the practice of
both throughout all the dynasties. The _Book of the Dead_, far older than
_Genesis_(462) or any other book of the _Old Testament_, shows it in every
line. It is full of incessant prayers and exorcisms against the Black Art.
Therein Osiris is the conqueror of the “aerial demons.” The worshipper
implores his help against Matat, “from whose eye proceeds the invisible
arrow.” This “invisible arrow” that proceeds from the eye of the Sorcerer
(whether living or dead) and that “circulates throughout the world,” is
the evil eye—cosmic in its origin, terrestrial in its effects on the
microcosmical plane. It is not the Latin Christians whom it behoves to
view this as a superstition. Their Church indulges in the same belief, and
has even a prayer against the “arrow circulating in darkness.”
The most interesting of all those documents, however, is the “Harris”
papyrus, called in France “_le papyrus magique_ de Chabas,” as it was
first translated by the latter. It is a manuscript written in hieratic
characters, translated, commented upon, and published in 1860 by M.
Chabas, but purchased at Thebes in 1855 by Mr. Harris. Its age is given at
between twenty‐eight and thirty centuries. We quote a few extracts from
these translations:
Calendar of lucky and unlucky days: ... He who makes a bull work
on the 20th of the month of Pharmuths will surely die; he who on
the 24th day of the same month pronounces the name of Seth aloud
will see trouble reigning in his house from that day; ... he who
on the 5th day of Patchous leaves his house falls sick and dies.
Exclaims the translator, whose cultured instincts are revolted:
If one had not these words under our eyes, one could never believe
in such servitude at the epoch of the Ramessides.(463)
We belong to the nineteenth century of the Christian era, and are
therefore at the height of civilization, and under the benign sway and
enlightening influence of the Christian Church, instead of being subject
to the Pagan Gods of old. Nevertheless we personally know dozens, and have
heard of hundreds, of educated, highly‐intellectual persons who would as
soon think of committing suicide as of starting on any business on a
Friday, of dining at a table where thirteen sit down, or of beginning a
long journey on a Monday. Napoleon the Great became pale when he saw three
candles lit on a table. Moreover, we may gladly concur with De Mirville in
this, at any rate, that such “superstitions” are “the outcome of
observation and experience.” If the former had never agreed with facts,
the authority of the _Calendar_, he thinks, would not have lasted for a
week. But to resume:
_Genethliacal influences_: The child born on the 5th day of Paophi
will be killed by a bull; on the 27th by a serpent. Born on the
4th of the month of Athyr, he will succumb to blows.
This is a question of horoscopic predictions; judiciary astrology is
firmly believed in in our own age, and has been proven to be
scientifically possible by Kepler.
Of the Khous two kinds were distinguished: first, the justified Khous,
_i.e._, those who had been absolved from sin by Osiris when they were
brought before his tribunal; these lived a second life. Secondly, there
were the guilty Khous, “the Khous dead a second time;” these were the
damned. Second death did not annihilate them, but they were doomed to
wander about and to torture people. Their existence had phases analogous
to those of the living man, a bond so intimate between the dead and the
living that one sees how the observation of religious funeral rites and
exorcisms and prayers (or rather magic incantations) should have become
necessary.(464) Says one prayer:
Do not permit that the venom should master his limbs [of the
defunct], ... that he should be penetrated by any male dead, or
any female dead; or that the shadow of any spirit should haunt him
(or her).(465)
M. Chabas adds:
These Khous were beings of that kind to which human beings belong
after their death; they were exorcised in the name of the god
Chons.... The Manes then could enter the bodies of the living,
haunt and obsess them. Formulæ and talismans, and especially
statues or _divine figures_, were used against such _formidable_
invasions.(466)... They were combated by the help of the divine
power, the god Chons being famed for such deliverances. The Khou,
in obeying the orders of the god, none the less preserved the
precious faculty inherent in him of accommodating himself in any
other body at will.
The most frequent formula of exorcism is as follows. It is very
suggestive:
Men, gods, elect, dead spirits, amous, negroes, menti‐u, do not
look at this soul to show cruelty toward it.
This is addressed to all who were acquainted _with Magic_.
“Amulets and mystic names.” This chapter is called “very mysterious,” and
contains invocations to Penhakahakaherher and Uranaokarsankrobite, and
other such easy names. Says Chabas:
We have proofs that mystic names similar to these were in common
use during the stay of the Israelites in Egypt.
And we may add that, whether got from the Egyptians or the Hebrews, these
are sorcery names. The student can consult the works of Éliphas Lévi, such
as his _Grimoire des Sorciers_. In these exorcisms Osiris is called
Mamuram‐Kahab, and is implored to prevent the twice‐dead Khou from
attacking the justified Khou and his next of kin, since the accursed
(astral spook)
Can take any form he likes and penetrate at will into any locality
or body.
In studying Egyptian papyri, one begins to find that the subjects of the
Pharaohs were not very much inclined to the Spiritism or Spiritualism of
their day. They dreaded the “blessed spirit” of the dead more than a Roman
Catholic dreads the devil!
But how uncalled‐for and unjust is the charge against the Gods of Egypt
that they are these “devils,” and against the priests of exercising their
magic powers with the help of “the fallen angels,” may be seen in more
than one papyrus. For one often finds in them records of Sorcerers
sentenced to the death penalty, as though they had been living under the
protection of the holy Christian Inquisition. Here is one case during the
reign of Ramses III., quoted by De Mirville from Chabas.
The first page begins with these words: “From the place where I am
to the people of my country.” There is reason to suppose, as one
will see, that the person who wrote this, in the first personal
pronoun, is a magistrate making a report, and attesting it before
men, after an accustomed formula, for here is the main part of
this accusation: “This Hai, a bad man, was an overseer [or perhaps
keeper] of sheep: he said: ‘Can I have a book that will give me
great power?’... And a book was given him with the formulæ of
Ramses‐Meri‐Amen, the great God, his royal master; and he
succeeded in getting a divine power enabling him to fascinate men.
He also succeeded in building a place and in finding a very _deep
place_, and produced men of Menh [magical homunculi?] and ...
love‐writings ... stealing them from the Khen [the occult library
of the palace] by the hand of the stonemason Atirma, ... by
forcing one of the supervisors to go aside, and acting magically
on the others. Then he sought to read futurity by them and
succeeded. All the horrors and abominations he had conceived in
his heart, he did them really, he practised them all, and other
great crimes as well, such as _the horror_ [?] of all the Gods and
Goddesses. Likewise let the prescriptions _great_ [_severe?_]
_unto death_ be done unto him, such as the divine words order to
be done to him.” The accusation does not stop there, it specifies
the crimes. The first line speaks of a hand paralysed by means of
the _men of Menh_, to whom it is simply said, “_Let such an effect
be produced_,” and it is produced. Then come the _great
abominations_, such as deserve death.... The judges who had
examined him (the culprit) reported saying, “Let him die according
to the order of Pharaoh, and according to what is written in the
lines of the divine language.”
M. Chabas remarks:
Documents of this kind abound, but the task of analysing them all
cannot be attempted with the limited means we possess.(467)
Then there is an inscription taken in the temple of Khous, the God who had
power over the elementaries, at Thebes. It was presented by M. Prisse
d’Avenne to the Imperial—now National—Library of Paris, and was translated
first by Mr. S. Birch. There is in it a whole romance of Magic. It dates
from the day of Ramses XII.(468) of the twentieth dynasty; it is from the
rendering of M. de Rougé as quoted by De Mirville, that we now translate
it.
This monument tells us that one of the Ramses of the twentieth
dynasty, while collecting at Naharain the tributes paid to Egypt
by the Asiatic nations, fell in love with a daughter of the chief
of Bakhten, one of his tributaries, married her and, bringing her
to Egypt with him, raised her to the dignity of Queen, under the
royal name of Ranefrou. Soon afterwards the chief of Bakhten
dispatched a messenger to Ramses, praying the assistance of
Egyptian science for Bent‐Rosh, a young sister of the queen,
attacked with illness in all her limbs.
The messenger asked expressly that a “wise‐man” [an Initiate—Reh‐
Het] should be sent. The king gave orders that all the
hierogrammatists of the palace and the guardians of the secret
books of the Khen should be sent for, and choosing from among them
the royal scribe Thoth‐em‐Hebi, an intelligent man, well versed in
writing, charged him to examine the sickness.
Arrived at Bakhten, Thoth‐em‐Hebi found that Bent‐Rosh was
possessed by a Khou (Em‐seh‐’eru ker h’ou), but declared himself
too weak to engage in a struggle with him.(469)
Eleven years elapsed, and the young girl’s state did not improve.
The chief of Bakhten again sent his messenger, and on his formal
demand Khons‐peiri‐Seklerem‐Zam, one of the divine forms of
Chons—God the Son in the Theban Trinity—was dispatched to
Bakhten....
The God [incarnate] having saluted (_besa_) the patient, she felt
immediately relieved, and the Khou who was in her manifested
forthwith his intention of obeying the orders of the God. “O great
God, who forcest the phantom to vanish,” said the Khou, “I am thy
slave and I will return whence I came!”(470)
Evidently Khons‐peiri‐Seklerem‐Zam was a real Hierophant of the class
named the “Sons of God,” since he is said to be one of the forms of the
God Khons; which means either that he was considered as an incarnation of
that God—an Avatâra—or that he was a full Initiate. The same text shows
that the temple to which he belonged was one of those to which a School of
Magic was attached. There was a Khen in it, or that portion of the temple
which was inaccessible to all but the highest priest, the library or
depository of secret works, to the study and care of which special priests
were appointed (those whom all the Pharaohs consulted in cases of great
importance), and wherein they communicated with the Gods and obtained
advice from them. Does not Lucian tell his readers in his description of
the temple of Hierapolis, of “Gods who manifest their presence
independently?”(471) And further on that he once travelled with a priest
from Memphis, who told him he had passed twenty‐three years in the
subterranean crypts of his temple, receiving instructions on Magic from
the Goddess Isis herself. Again we read that it was by Mercury himself
that the great Sesostris (Ramses II.) was instructed in the Sacred
Sciences. On which Jablonsky remarks that we have here the reason why Amun
(Ammon)—whence he thinks our “Amen” is derived—was a real evocation to the
light.(472)
In the Papyrus Anastasi, which teems with various formulæ for the
evocation of Gods, and with exorcisms against Khous and the elementary
demons, the seventh paragraph shows plainly the difference made between
the real Gods, the Planetary Angels, and those shells of mortals which are
left behind in Kâma‐loka, as though to tempt mankind and to puzzle it the
more hopelessly in its vain search after the truth, outside the Occult
Sciences and the veil of Initiation. This seventh verse says with regard
to such divine evocations or theomantic consultations:
One must invoke that divine and great name(473) only in cases of
absolute necessity, and when one feels absolutely pure and
irreproachable.
Not so in the formula of black Magic. Reuvens, speaking of the two rituals
of Magic of the Anastasi collection, remarks that they
Undeniably form the most instructive commentary upon the _Egyptian
mysteries_ attributed to Jamblichus, and the best pendant to that
classical work, for understanding the thaumaturgy of the
philosophical sects, thaumaturgy based on ancient Egyptian
religion. According to Jamblichus, thaumaturgy was exercised by
the ministry of secondary genii.(474)
Reuvens closes with a remark which is very suggestive and is very
important to the Occultists who defend the antiquity and genuineness of
their documents, for he says:
All that he [Jamblichus] gives out as theology we find as history
in our papyri.
But then how deny the authenticity, the credibility, and, beyond all, the
trustworthiness of those classical writers, who all wrote about Magic and
its Mysteries in a most worshipful spirit of admiration and reverence?
Listen to Pindarus, who exclaims:
Happy he who descends into the grave thus initiated, for he knows
the end of his life and the kingdom(475) given by Jupiter.(476)
Or to Cicero:
Initiation not only teaches us to feel happy in this life, but
also to die with better hope.(477)
Plato, Pausanias, Strabo, Diodorus and dozens of others bring their
evidence as to the great boon of Initiation; all the great as well as the
partially‐initiated Adepts, share the enthusiasm of Cicero.
Does not Plutarch, thinking of what he had learned in his
initiation, console himself for the loss of his wife? Had he not
obtained the certitude at the Mysteries of Bacchus that “the soul
[spirit] remains incorruptible, and that there is a hereafter”?...
Aristophanes went even farther: “All those who participated in the
Mysteries,” he says, “led an innocent, calm, and holy life; they
died looking for the light of the Eleusinian Fields [Devachan],
while the rest could never expect anything but eternal darkness
[ignorance?].
“... And when one thinks about the importance attached by the
States to the principle and the correct celebration of the
Mysteries, to the stipulations made in their treaties for the
security of their celebration, one sees to what degree those
Mysteries had so long occupied their first and their last thought.
“It was the greatest among public as well as private
preoccupations, and this is only natural, since according to
Döllinger, ‘the Eleusinian Mysteries were viewed as the
efflorescence of all the Greek religion, as the purest essence of
all its conceptions.’ ”(478)
Not only conspirators were refused admittance therein, but those
who had not denounced them; traitors, perjurers, debauchees,(479)
... so that Porphyry could say that: “Our soul has to be at the
moment of death as it was during the Mysteries, _i.e._, exempt
from any blemishes, passion, envy, hatred, or anger.”(480)
Truly,
Magic was considered a Divine Science which led to a participation
in the attributes of the Divinity itself.(481)
Herodotus, Thales, Parmenides, Empedocles, Orpheus, Pythagoras, all went,
each in his day, in search of the wisdom of Egypt’s great Hierophants, in
the hope of solving the problems of the universe.
Says Philo:
The Mysteries were known to unveil the secret operations of
Nature.(482)
The prodigies accomplished by the priests of theurgic magic are so
well authenticated and the evidence—if human testimony is worth
anything at all—is so overwhelming that, rather than confess that
the pagan theurgists far outrivalled the Christians in miracles,
Sir David Brewster conceded to the former the greatest proficiency
in physics and everything that pertains to natural philosophy.
Science finds herself in a very disagreeable dilemma....
“Magic,” says Psellus, “formed the last part of the sacerdotal
science. It investigated the nature, power, and quality of
everything sublunary; of the elements and their parts, of animals,
of various plants and their fruits, of stones and herbs. In short,
it explored the essence and power of everything. From hence,
therefore, it produced its effects. And it formed _statues_
[magnetized] which procure health, and made all various figures
and things [talismans], which could equally become the instruments
of disease as well as of health. Often, too, celestial fire is
made to appear through magic, and then statues laugh and lamps are
spontaneously enkindled.”(483)
This assertion of Psellus that Magic “made statues which procure health,”
is now proven to the world to be no dream, no vain boast of a hallucinated
Theurgist. As Reuvens says, it becomes “history.” For it is found in the
_Papyrus Magique_ of Harris and on the votive stele just mentioned. Both
Chabas and De Rougé state that:
On the eighteenth line of this very mutilated monument is found
the formula with regard to the acquiescence of the God (Chons) who
made his consent known by a motion he imparted to his statue.(484)
There was even a dispute over it between the two Orientalists. While M. de
Rougé wanted to translate the word “Han” by “favour” or “grace,” M. Chabas
insisted that “Han” meant a “movement” or “_a sign_” made by the statue.
Excesses of power, abuse of knowledge and personal ambition very often led
selfish and unscrupulous Initiates to black Magic, just as the same causes
led to precisely the same thing among Christian popes and cardinals; and
it was black Magic that led finally to the abolition of the Mysteries, and
not Christianity, as is often erroneously thought. Read Mommsen’s _Roman
History_, vol. i., and you will find that it was the Pagans themselves who
put an end to the desecration of the Divine Science. As early as 560 B.C.
the Romans had discovered an Occult association, a school of black Magic
of the most revolting kind; it celebrated mysteries brought from Etruria,
and very soon the moral pestilence had spread all over Italy
More than seven thousand Initiates were prosecuted, and most of
them were sentenced to death....
Later on, Titus‐Livius shows us another three thousand Initiates
sentenced during a single year for the crime of poisoning.(485)
And yet black Magic is derided and denied!
Paulthier may or may not be too enthusiastic in saying that India appears
to him as
The grand and primitive hearth of human thought, that has ended by
embracing the whole ancient world,
but he was right in his idea. That primitive thought led to Occult
knowledge, which in our Fifth Race is reflected from the earliest days of
the Egyptian Pharaohs down to our modern times. Hardly a hieratic papyrus
is exhumed with the tightly swathed‐up mummies of kings and high priests
that does not contain some interesting information for the modern students
of Occultism.
All that is, of course, derided Magic, the outcome of primitive knowledge
and of revelation, though it was practised in such ungodly ways by the
Atlantean Sorcerers that it has since become necessary for the subsequent
Race to draw a thick veil over the practices which were used to obtain so‐
called magical effects on the psychic and on the physical planes. In the
letter no one in our century will believe the statements, with the
exception of the Roman Catholics, and these will give the acts a satanic
origin. Nevertheless, Magic is so mixed up with the history of the world,
that if the latter is ever to be written it has to rely upon the
discoveries of Archæology, Egyptology, and hieratic writings and
inscriptions; if it insists that they must be free from that “superstition
of the ages” it will never see the light. One can well imagine the
embarrassing position in which serious Egyptologists, Assyriologists,
savants and academicians find themselves. Forced to translate and
interpret the old papyri and the archaic inscriptions on stelæ and
Babylonian cylinders, they find themselves compelled from first to last to
face the distasteful, and to them repulsive, subject of Magic, with its
incantations and paraphernalia. Here they find sober and grave narratives
from the pens of learned scribes, made up under the direct supervision of
Chaldæan or Egyptian Hierophants, the most learned among the Philosophers
of antiquity. These statements were written at the solemn hour of the
death and burial of Pharaohs, High Priests, and other mighty ones of the
land of Chemi; their purpose was the introduction of the newly‐born,
Osirified Soul before the awful‐tribunal of the “Great Judge” in the
region of Amenti—there where a _lie_ was said to outweigh the greatest
crimes. Were the Scribes and Hierophants, Pharaohs, and King‐Priests all
fools or frauds to have either believed in, or tried to make others
believe in, such “cock‐and bull stories” as are found in the most
respectable papyri? Yet there is no help for it. Corroborated by Plato and
Herodotus, by Manetho and Syncellus, as by all the greatest and most
trustworthy authors and philosophers who wrote upon the subject, those
papyri note down—as seriously as they note any history, or any fact so
well known and accepted as to need no commentary—whole royal dynasties of
Manes, to wit, of shadows and phantoms (astral bodies), and such feats of
magic skill and such Occult phenomena, that the most credulous Occultist
of our own times would hesitate to believe them to be true.
The Orientalists have found a plank of salvation, while yet publishing and
delivering the papyri to the criticism of literary Sadducees: they
generally call them “romances of the days of Pharaoh So‐and‐So.” The idea
is ingenious, if not absolutely fair.