founders of the Theosophical Society in the days of its infancy affords
matter of no little interest. The basic idea of the Theosophical
Society, viz. the harmonising of the esoteric side of all religions,
naturally suggested to the promoters of the movement that in the authors
of so remarkable a work, they would find a tower of strength, and Madame
Blavatsky, in particular, was most anxious to obtain their support and
co-operation for the British section of the Society. Eventually, after
considerable hesitation, Anna Kingsford responded to the advances made
to her, and accepted the presidency of the British section. But the
arrangement was not one which was destined to last long. That it was not
likely to be a success might, I think, have been readily enough
foreseen. Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland were too uncompromising in
their point of view—too positive that the source of their own
information could not be impugned, to accept readily the _bona fides_ of
other and, as they considered, lower oracles. This, however, was by no
means all. The attitude of Theosophy in its early days towards
Christianity was in the main hostile. To make the esoteric
interpretation of this creed the pivot of their teaching was the last
idea they contemplated. Madame Blavatsky had attacked Christianity in
_Isis Unveiled_. Mr Sinnett was equally unsympathetic. The basis of
their actual teaching was an interpretation of Eastern religions,
whereas the basis of _The Perfect Way_ was an interpretation of Western.
Anna Kingsford was just as unhesitating in giving her preference to
Christianity as the leaders of Theosophy were in according theirs to
Buddhism, Hinduism, and kindred Oriental philosophies. Mrs Besant’s
attitude when she joined the Society showed similar preferences. Her
early experiences of orthodox Christianity were not such as to bias her
in its favour, and it was not until later days that she assumed the
mantle of the prophet of _The Perfect Way_, and openly recognised the
importance of the esoteric side of Christianity to complete the circle
of theosophical teachings. The views with which Theosophy commenced have
in the course of time been materially modified, and a curious sidelight
is thrown, by a letter of Anna Kingsford’s, on the question whether the
leaders of this Society had originally adopted the reincarnation
hypothesis, or whether this was in the nature of a subsequent
development. Mrs Kingsford writes under date 3rd July 1882, to her
friend Lady Caithness, alluding to the reception of _The Perfect Way_ by
the Press:
After all this reviewing and fault-finding on the part of critics
having but a third of the knowledge which has been given to us,
there is not a line in _The Perfect Way_ which I would alter were
the book to be reprinted. The very reviewer—Mr Sinnett—who writes
with so much pseudo-authority in the _Theosophist_, has, within a
year’s time, completely altered his views on at least one important
subject—I mean Reincarnation. When he came to see us a year ago in
London, he vehemently denied that doctrine, and asserted, with
immense conviction, that I had been altogether deceived in my
teaching concerning it. He read a message from _Isis Unveiled_ to
confute me, and argued long on the subject. He had not then received
any instruction from his Hindu guru about it. Now, he has been so
instructed, and wrote Mr Maitland a long letter acknowledging the
truth of the doctrine which, since seeing us, he has been taught.
But he does not yet know all the truth concerning it, and so finds
fault with our presentation of that side of it which, as yet, he has
not been taught.
Presumably in this matter Mr Sinnett reflected Madame Blavatsky’s views,
and the fact that he cites _Isis Unveiled_ seems to me to leave little
doubt in the matter. Surely if he had misunderstood her, H. P. B. would
have taken pains to put him right! I think that the date given will fix
approximately the period at which official Theosophy was openly
converted to the doctrine of Reincarnation. Until that time, if it was
not uniformly denied, at least there were wide diversities of opinion,
and apparently its opponents mustered more strongly than its supporters.
Eventually Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland founded between them the
_Hermetic Society_. This was not destined to a long lease of life,
mainly owing to the breakdown of Anna Kingsford’s health. But while
Theosophy showed the greater vitality, in spite of scandals and discords
which might well have shattered it to its base, the teachings of the
authors of _The Perfect Way_ exercised a profound influence in leavening
the mass of Theosophical teaching. Though possessing no little dogmatism
in her own intellectual organisation, Anna Kingsford had no great liking
for any form of society that taught dogmatically, her idea being that
every one must necessarily find out the truth for himself and realise it
spiritually from his own individual standpoint. Theosophy was altogether
too dogmatic for her, without being dogmatic on her own lines. She was
readier to admit the existence of the Mahatmas than to grant the
inspired source of their communications. In any case she looked upon
their teaching as of a radically lower order than her own, and
reflecting those vices and defects which she and Maitland were wont to
associate with the denizens of the astral plane. On the subject of
communications with such entities, or with those whom she suspected of
belonging by nature to this region, she was never tired of inveighing.
The secret (she says) of the opposition made in certain circles to
the doctrine set forth in _The Perfect Way_ is not far to seek. It
is to be found in the fact that the book is, throughout, strenuously
opposed to idolatry in all its forms, including that of the popular
“spiritualism” of the day, which is, in effect, a revival, under a
new guise and with new sanctions, of the ancient cultus known as
Ancestor-worship. _The Perfect Way_, on the contrary, insists that
truth is accessible only through the illumination, by the Divine
Spirit, of man’s own soul; and that precisely in proportion as the
individual declines such interior illumination, and seeks to
extraneous influences, does he impoverish his own soul and diminish
his possibilities of knowledge. It teaches that “Spirits” or
“Angels,” as their devotees are fond of styling them, are
untrustworthy guides, possessed of no positive divine element, and
reflecting, therefore, rather than instructing, their interrogators;
and that the condition of mind, namely, passivity, insisted on by
these “angels” is one to be strenuously avoided, the true attitude
for obtaining divine illumination being that of ardent active
aspiration, impelled by a resolute determination to know nothing but
the Highest. Precisely such a state of passivity, voluntarily
induced, and such veneration of and reliance upon “guides” or
“controls,” are referred to by the Apostle when he says: “But let no
man beguile you by a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels.”
And precisely such exaltation of the personal Jesus, as _The Perfect
Way_ repudiates and its opponents demand, is by the same Apostle
condemned in the words: “Henceforth know we no man after the flesh:
yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth
know we him no more.”
Accordingly, as Maitland and Kingsford fell foul of the Theosophical
Society on the one hand, they fell foul of the Spiritualists on the
other. But the cleavage between Spiritualism and the teaching of _The
Perfect Way_ was far deeper than that between this teaching and
Theosophy. With Theosophy indeed, in its broadest sense, there was
nothing in Kingsford and Maitland’s teaching that was radically
antagonistic. _The Perfect Way_ might in fact be accepted to-day, with
some reservations on minor points, as a theosophical text-book, and,
looked at from this point of view, it is the fullest, the most complete,
and the most coherent exposition of Christianity as seen through
theosophical spectacles. Anna Kingsford had indeed herself been received
into the fold of the Roman Catholic Church, though certainly Roman
Catholicism never had a more rebellious or more independent subject. On
the doctrine of authority she would never have made concessions, and,
without this admission, one fails to see what status the Roman Church
can be held to occupy. It is indeed a case of Hamlet without the Prince
of Denmark. Her leanings, however, towards the ancient mother of
Christian churches was, even in its modified form, gall and wormwood to
her partner and collaborator, and in the end it brought about some very
unhappy and regrettable scenes in connection with her last hours, and a
dispute as to the faith in which she died, which must have been
exceedingly painful to all concerned.
Perhaps in no single point does Roman Catholicism present a worse and
more undesirable aspect than in the manner in which its missionaries
besiege the last hours of the passing soul in the effort to induce its
victims, when too weak for resistance, to say “ditto” to the formulæ
which their priests pretend to regard as constituting a password to the
celestial realms. Certainly, in Anna Kingsford’s case, the admission of
a Roman Catholic Sister of Mercy to tend her in her last illness was
productive of the worst results, troubling her last hours with an
unseemly wrangle that did not cease even after her body was consigned to
its final resting-place.
A sidelight is thrown on Mrs Kingsford’s attitude towards Roman
Catholicism by the record of a conversation which her biographer cites
her as having had on one occasion with a Roman Catholic priest. She was
calling on a Catholic friend on the occasion, and speaking as usual in
her very free and self-confident manner with regard to the religious
views which she held. Some remark which she made elicited from the
priest the rebuke, “Why, my daughter, you have been _thinking_. You
should never do that. The Church saves us the trouble and danger of
thinking, by telling us what to _believe_. We are only called on to
believe. I never think: I dare not. I should go mad if I were to let
myself think.” Anna Kingsford replied that what she wanted was to
understand, and that it was impossible to do this without thinking.
Believing without understanding was for her not faith but credulity.
“How, except by thinking,” she asked, “does one learn whether the Church
has the truth?”
When the Hermetic Society was founded, W. T. Stead was editor of the
_Pall Mall Gazette_, and Mrs Kingsford wrote for him an account of the
new Society. Stead, with his usual taste for dramatic headlines,
entitled it “The Newest Thing in Religions.” This was the very last
description that its founders were likely to tolerate. Anna Kingsford
wrote back an indignant letter of repudiation. “So far,” she says, “from
being the newest thing in religions, or even claiming to be a religion
at all, that at which the Society aims is the recovery of what is really
the oldest thing in religion, so old as to have become forgotten and
lost—namely, its esoteric and spiritual, and therefore its true
signification.” Elsewhere she writes of _The Perfect Way_ as not
purporting to be a new gospel. “Its mission,” she says, “is that simply
of rehabilitation and re-interpretation undertaken with the view, not of
superseding Christianity, but of saving it.” She continues:
For, as the deepest and most earnest thinkers of our day are
painfully aware, the Gospel of Christendom, as it stands in the Four
Evangels, does NOT suffice, uninterpreted, to satisfy the needs of
the age, and to furnish a perfect system of thought and rule of
life. Christianity—historically preached and understood—has for
eighteen centuries filled the world with wars, persecutions, and
miseries of all kinds; and in these days it is rapidly filling it
with agnosticism, atheism, and revolt against the very idea of God.
_The Perfect Way_ seeks to consolidate truth in one complete whole,
and, by systematising religion, to demonstrate its Catholicity. It
seeks to make peace between Science and Faith; to marry the
Intellect with the Intuition; to bring together East and West, and
to unite Buddhist philosophy with Christian love, by demonstrating
that the basis of religion is not historical, but spiritual—not
physical, but psychic—not local and temporal, but universal and
eternal. It avers that the true “Lord Jesus Christ” is no mere
historical character, no mere demi-god, by whose material blood the
souls of men are washed white, but “the hidden man of the heart,”
continually born, crucified, ascending and glorified in the interior
Kingdom of the Christian’s own Spirit. A scientific age rightly
refuses to be any longer put off with data which are more than
dubious, and logic which morality and philosophy alike reject. A
deeper, truer, more real religion is needed for an epoch of thought,
and for a world familiar with Biblical criticism and revision—a
religion whose foundations no destructive agnosticism can undermine,
and in whose structure no examination, however searching, shall be
able to find flaw or blemish. It is only by rescuing the Gospel of
Christ from the externals of history, persons, and events, and by
vindicating its essential significance, that Christianity can be
saved from the destruction which inevitably overtakes all idolatrous
creeds. There is not a word in _The Perfect Way_ at variance with
the spirit of the Gospel of the “Lord Jesus Christ.”
Nothing shows the method adopted in their Gospel of Interpretation by
the two authors more clearly than their teaching with regard to the
story of the Garden of Eden and the Fall of Man. It is curious how
literally this story has been taken through many ages of the Church’s
history, in view of the fact that such a writer as Origen in the early
days of the infant Church observed that: “No one in his time would be so
foolish as to take this allegory as a description of actual fact.”
Kingsford and Maitland refer the interpretation firstly to the Church,
and secondly to individual man. “The conscience,” they say, “set over
the human reason as its guide, overseer, and ruler, whether, in the
general, as the Church, or in the particular, as the individual, falls,
when, listening to the suggestions of the lower nature, she desires,
seeks, and at length defiles herself with, the ambitions and falsehoods
of this present world.” “Ceasing to be a trustworthy guide she becomes
herself serpent and seducer to the human reason, leading him into false
paths until, if she have her way, she will end by plunging him into the
lowest depths of abject ignorance, there to be devoured by the brood of
unreason and to be annihilated for ever. For she is now no longer the
true wife, Faith, she has become the wanton, Superstition.” On the other
hand, “the Church at her best, unfallen, is the glass to the lamp of
Truth, guarding the sacred flame within and transmitting unimpaired to
her children the light received upon its inner surface.” Hitherto this
fall has been the common fate of all Churches. “Thus fallen and
degraded, the Church becomes a church of this world, greedy of worldly
dignities, emoluments, and dominion, intent on foisting on the belief of
her votaries in the name of authority fables and worse than fables—a
Church jealous of the letter which killeth, ignorant of, or bitterly at
enmity with, the spirit which giveth life.”
We now come to the interpretation of the Fall as applied to individual
Man. This is allegorically described as “the lapse of heavenly beings
from their first happy estate and their final redemption by means of
penance done through incarnation in the flesh.” The authors tell us that
this imagined lapse is a parable designed to veil and preserve a truth.
This truth is the Creative Secret, the projection of Spirit into matter,
the descent of substance into Maya, or illusion. From a cosmic
standpoint “the Tree of Divination or Knowledge becomes Motion or the
Kalpa—the period of Existence as distinguished from Being; the Tree of
Life is Rest or the Sabbath, the Nirvâna. Adam is Manifestation; the
Serpent—no longer of the lower, but of the higher sphere—is the
celestial Serpent or Seraph of Heavenly Counsel.” By the Tree of
Divination of Good and Evil in this interpretation must be understood
that condition by means of which Spirit projected into appearance
becomes manifested under the veil of Maya, a necessary condition for the
evolution of the individual, but carrying with it its own inevitable
perils. It is not, say our authors, because matter is in itself evil
that the soul’s descent into it constitutes a fall. It is because to the
soul matter is a forbidden thing. By quitting her own proper condition
and descending into matter she takes upon herself matter’s limitations.
It is no particular act that constitutes sin. Sin does not consist in
fulfilling any of the functions of nature. Sin consists in acting
without or against the Spirit, and in not seeking the divine sanction
for everything that is done. Sin, in fact, is of the soul, and it is due
to the soul’s inclination to the things of sense. To regard an act as
_per se_ sinful is materialism and idolatry. For in doing so we invest
that which is physical with a spiritual attribute, and this is of the
essence of idolatry.
Adam signifies the manifested personality, or man, and is only complete
when Eve, his soul, is added to him as helpmeet. When Eve takes of the
fruit and enjoys it, she turns away from her higher spiritual self to
seek for pleasure in the things of her lower self, and in doing so she
draws Adam down with her till they both become sensual and debased. The
sin which commences in the thought of the soul, Eve, thus becomes
subsequently developed into action through the energy of the body or
masculine part, Adam. One of the inevitable results of the soul’s
enslavement to matter is its liability to extinction. In eating of the
fruit Adam and Eve absorb the seeds of mortality. As Milton says:
They engorged without restraint,
And knew not, eating Death.
The soul in her own nature is immortal, but the lower she sinks into
matter the weaker becomes her vitality. A continuous downward course
must therefore end in the extinction of the individual—not of course of
the Divine Ray, which returns to the Source whence it came. It is well
to bear in mind that man is a dual being, not masculine or feminine
only, but both. This, of course, applies equally to man whether
manifested in a male or female body. One side is more predominant in man
and the other in woman, but this does not imply absence of the other
side, but merely its subordination. The man who has nothing, or next to
nothing, of the woman in him, is no true man, and the woman who has
nothing of the man in her, is no true woman. Man, whether man or woman,
consists of male and female, Reason and Intuition, and is therefore
essentially twofold. Owing to the duality of his constitution, every
doctrine relating to man has a dual significance and application. Thus
the sacred books not only present an historical narrative of events
occurring in time, but have a spiritual significance of a permanent
character in regard to which the element of time has no meaning. In this
sense Scripture is a record of that which is always taking place.
Thus, the Spirit of God, which is original Life, is always moving
upon the face of the waters, or heavenly deep, which is original
Substance. And the One, which consists of these two, is always
putting forth alike the Macrocosm of the universe and the Microcosm
of the individual, and is always making man in the image of God, and
placing him in a garden of innocence and perfection, the garden of
his own unsophisticated nature. And man is always falling away from
that image and quitting that garden for the wilderness of sin, being
tempted by the serpent of sense, his own lower element. And from
this condition and its consequences he is always being born of a
pure virgin—dying, rising and ascending into heaven.
This, in brief, is one of the most essential portions of the new Gospel
of Interpretation. It exemplifies the method adopted throughout which is
that to which we are accustomed to apply the word “Hermetic.” It is both
Christian and pre-Christian, for it is the interpretation of the meaning
of life, which was the Key to the ancient Gnostic faiths which,
subsisting before Christianity, became incorporated in the Christian
teaching. New generations and races of men require the old truths to be
put before them in a new guise. This was so when Christianity first came
to birth, but in the days of Jesus Christ there were many things which
the Prophet of Nazareth had to say to his disciples, but which, as he
told them, they were then too weak to understand. The mystical
interpretation of Christian truth fell on deaf ears then. Re-stated and
re-interpreted, after a lapse of 1900 years, is it too much to hope that
it may no longer prove “to the Gentiles foolishness, and to the Jews a
rock of offence”?
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY NEILL AND CO., LTD., EDINBURGH
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
○ Footnotes have been moved to follow the chapters in which they are
referenced.