THE ANTAGONISATION.
Even had we been disposed, which happily we were not, to exalt ourselves
on the strength of the loftiness of our mission, the constant proofs
afforded us of the paucity of our knowledge in comparison with what
remained to be known, would have effectually restrained us. But as it
was, we were from the first penetrated by the conviction that only in so
far as we succeeded in subordinating the individual to the universal,
the personal to the divine, could the work be successfully accomplished.
The man must make himself nothing that the God may be all. This was the
burden of the injunctions enforced on us throughout; the failures of
others through self-exaltation being adduced in illustration. For, as we
were plainly given to understand, "many are called but few are chosen";
the weak point in their system, the "Judas" by whom they are betrayed
and fail, being generally vanity. They are as instruments which mistake
themselves for the mind and hand which wield them.
Humility and Love, the violet and the red, these are the two extremes of
the prism which comprise between them all the Seven Spirits of God.
Blended, they make the royal purple; but the hue of that purple depends
on the spiritual states of the individuals themselves whose tinctures
they are. They were, we were told, the tinctures of our own souls as
indicated by the colours of our respective _auras_. "Mary's" was the
"blood-red ray of the innermost sphere," the sphere of the "first of the
Gods," wherein "love and wisdom are one." "For the Hebrews Uriel, for
the Greeks Phoibos, the Bright One of God." Mine was the violet of the
outermost sphere, that of the "last of the Gods," the "Spirit of the
Fear of the Lord," and therein of Reverence and Humility; for the Greeks
Saturn, and for the Hebrews Satan, the "Angel unfallen of the outermost
sphere." Only when man is built up of all the Gods, and bears upon him
the seal of each God, having climbed the ladder of his regeneration from
circumference to centre, from "Saturn" to the "Sun," is the "week" of
his new and spiritual creation accomplished. Similarly the co-operation
of all these divine potencies was indispensable to our work. And we were
emphatically warned of the dangers both to it and to ourselves, that
would come of the lack of the divine presence in respect of any of them.
Hence the necessity of maintaining the necessary conditions in
ourselves, and the caution addressed to us by "Hermes," in view of the
liability of mortals to appropriate to themselves the importance
appertaining to their mission when this transcends the ordinary. To this
end, in the following Exhortation, he disclosed to us the heights yet to
be ascended, saying--
He whose adversaries fight with weapons of steel, must himself be
armed in like manner, if he would not be ignominiously slain or
save himself by flight.
And not only so, but forasmuch as his adversaries may be many,
while he is only one; it is even necessary that the steel he
carries be of purer temper and of more subtle point and contrivance
than theirs.
I, Hermes, would arm you with such, that bearing a blade with a
double edge, ye may be able to withstand in the evil hour.
For it is written that the tree of life is guarded by a sword which
turneth every way.
Therefore I would have you armed both with a perfect philosophy and
with the power of the divine life.
And first the knowledge; that you and they who hear you may know
the reason of the faith which is in you.
But knowledge cannot prevail alone, and ye are not yet perfected.
When the fulness of the time shall come, I will add unto you the
power of the divine life.
It is the life of contemplation, of fasting, of obedience, and of
resistance.
And afterwards the chrism, the power, and the glory. But these are
not yet.
Meanwhile remain together and perfect your philosophy.
Boast not, and be not lifted up; for all things are God's, and ye
are in God, and God in you.
But when the word shall come to you, be ready to obey.
There is but one way to power, and it is the way of obedience.
Call no man your master or king upon the earth, lest ye forsake the
spirit for the form and become idolaters.
He who is indeed spiritual, and transformed into the divine image,
desires a spiritual king.
Purify your bodies, and eat no dead thing that has looked with
living eyes upon the light of Heaven.
For the eye is the symbol of brotherhood among you. Sight is the
mystical sense.
Let no man take the life of his brother to feed withal his own.
But slay only such as are evil; in the name of the Lord.
They are miserably deceived who expect eternal life, and restrain
not their hands from blood and death.
They are miserably deceived who look for wives from on high, and
have not yet attained their manhood.
Despise not the gift of knowledge; and make not spiritual eunuchs
of yourselves.
For Adam was first formed, then Eve.
Ye are twain, the man with the woman, and she with him, neither man
nor woman, but one creature.
And the kingdom of God is within you[49].
The knowledge of the "Seven Spirits" whereby Deity operates in the
universe, has been completely dropped out of sight by the Christian
world. It is necessary, therefore, if only in vindication of the
importance attached to them by our illuminators, to recite the
instruction received by us concerning them, which is as follows. It is a
chapter from the recovered Gnosis[50]:--
"In the bosom of the Eternal were all the Gods comprehended, as the
seven spirits of the prism, contained in the Invisible Light.
* * * * *
By the Word of Elohim were the Seven Elohim manifest: even the
Seven Spirits of God in the order of their precedence:
The Spirit of Wisdom, the Spirit of Understanding, the Spirit of
Counsel, the Spirit of Power, the Spirit of Knowledge, the Spirit
of Righteousness, and the Spirit of Divine Awfulness.
All these are coequal and coeternal.
Each has the nature of the whole in itself: and each is a perfect
entity.
And the brightness of their manifestation shineth forth from the
midst of each, as wheel within wheel, encircling the White Throne
of the Invisible Trinity in Unity.
These are the Divine fires which burn before the presence of God:
which proceed from the Spirit, and are one with the Spirit.
He is divided, yet not diminished: He is All, and He is One.
For the Spirit of God is a flame of fire which the Word of God
divideth into many: yet the original flame is not decreased, nor
the power thereof nor the brightness thereof lessened.
Thou mayest light many lamps from the flame of one; yet thou dost
in nothing diminish that first flame.
Now the Spirit of God is expressed by the Word of God, which is
Adonai.
For without the Word the Will could have had no utterance.
Thus the Divine Will divided the Spirit of God, and the seven fires
went forth from the bosom of God and became seven spiritual
entities.
They went forth into the Divine Substance, which is the substance
of all that is."
As already stated, Hermes is the Greek name for the Second of the
creative Elohim above enumerated. Hence his special relation to the New
Gospel of Interpretation, the appeal of which is to the Understanding.
Being shown one day in vision the path we had to traverse for the
accomplishment of our work, "Mary" exclaimed:--
"What a dreadfully difficult thing it is to steer one's way amidst
such numbers of influences! I see a fine, bright-shining thread. It
is our own path, and it is a pathway of light. But, oh! so narrow,
so narrow, and all around are spirits trying to lure us from it.
Here is Hermes, shining like a silver light. My Genius says that
the way to get the utmost vitality on the spiritual plane is to
abandon the plane of the body, and keep it quite low, by not
indulging it. The time for bodily indulgence is passed with us.
Abstinence, we have been told, and watchfulness and fasting are
needful. And the time for the first of these has come. Nothing is
gained without labour or won without suffering. Fasting and
Watching and Abstinence, these are Beads and Rosary. It is a hard
way and a long way, and it makes one wishful to turn back. We are
not to be misled by the story, so much dwelt on to you by the
Astrals, of Moses and Aaron[51]. They both were failures, who
entered not into the land of Canaan. We must be patient and trust.
We have to be cultivated on both planes, the intellectual and the
spiritual, and not on the physical, for this draws from and saps
the others."
So far as I was concerned, there was yet another rule that was made
absolute: this was the rule of Poverty. Desiring at one time to mitigate
the rigour of my enforced economies by working with a commercial intent,
and to that end endeavouring to finish a tale some time before
commenced, I found myself baffled by a complete withdrawal of power. I
was well aware that no romance I could devise would compare with the
romance I was living, and that any incidents I could invent would be
tame before those of my actual life; but it was not this that withheld
me. It was made clear to me that there was now only one direction and
one plane in which I was accessible to ideas and in which therefore I
could work, and this a direction and plane altogether incompatible with
mundane ends. But I had not fully reconciled myself to the loss of my
earning power, or resolved to refrain from further efforts in that
behalf, when I received the following experience.
I had gone to bed, but not to sleep, for thinking over the matter, when
I became aware of the presence of a group of spiritual influences, one
of whom, speaking for them all, said to me, in tones audible only to the
inner hearing, but distinct, measured and authoritative--
"We whom you know as the Gods--Zeus, Phoibos, Hermes, and the
rest--are actual celestial personalities, who are appointed to
represent to mortals the principles and potencies called the Seven
Spirits of God. We have chosen you for our instrument, and have
tried you and proved you and instructed you; and you belong to us
to do our work and not your own, save in so far as you make it your
own. Only in such measure as you do this will you have any success.
For you can do nothing without us now: and it is useless for you to
attempt to do anything without our help."
By this and manifold other experiences, we had practical demonstration
of the existence of a celestial hierarchy consisting of souls perfected
and divinised, divided into orders corresponding to the "Seven Spirits
of God," and having for their function the illumination of those souls
of men still on earth who are accessible by them; and to whom they
manifest themselves in the forms recognised in the mysteries in which
such persons have formerly been initiated.
We had also manifold proofs of their power to arrest utterance before
persons unfit to be entrusted with the mysteries. The first instance
occurred to myself, and was in this wise. I was reading some passages in
illustration of our work to an old clerical friend who came to see me in
Paris, when I inadvertently turned to a part of the book which we had
been charged to keep secret. But before I had read a line, the air round
me became so dense with invisible presences that I was unable to see,
and my heart was clutched, as if by an invisible hand, and lifted up
towards my throat with such force as almost to choke me; while, at the
same instant, an overwhelming sense of my fault was impressed on my
mind, causing me for some hours to feel as one utterly God-forsaken and
cast off.
Not thinking that "Mary" was liable to err in the same way, or caring to
tell her of my trespass, I kept silence respecting this experience. But
a few weeks later it was repeated for her. She was speaking of our work
to a spiritualist friend with whom we were spending the evening, and, in
her eagerness, got upon topics which I recognised as forbidden. But
before I had time to remind her, she suddenly stopped short and rose
from her seat, gasping and dazed, and insisted on returning home
forthwith, to our hostess's great amazement and disappointment. Divining
what had occurred, I refrained from questioning her until we were
outside and alone, when in reply to me she described exactly what had
happened to me, using the words, "I did not want to be choked!" There
were other occasions on which I was cut short under like circumstances,
by having all that I meant to say suddenly and completely obliterated
from my mind.
Being desirous to know more of the adverse influences against which we
had been warned, and from which we suffered, "Mary" consulted her
illuminator respecting their origin and nature, when the following
colloquy ensued:--
"They are," he said, "the powers which affect and influence
Sensitives. They do not control, for they have no force.... They
are Reflects. They have no real entity in themselves. They resemble
mists which arise from the damp earth of low-lying lands, and which
the heat of the sun disperses. Again, they are like vapours in high
altitudes, upon which, if a man's shadow falls, he beholds himself
as a giant. For these spirits invariably flatter and magnify a man
to himself. And this is a sign whereby you may know them. They tell
one that he is a king; another, that he is a Christ; another, that
he is the wisest of mortals, and the like. For, being born of the
fluids of the body, they are unspiritual and live _of_ the body."
"Do they, then," I asked, "come from within the man?"
"All things," he replied "come from within. A man's foes are they
of his own household."
"And how," I asked, "may we discern the Astrals from the higher
spirits?"
"I have told you of one sign;--they are flattering spirits. Now I
will tell you of another. They always depreciate Woman. And they do
this because their deadliest foe is the Intuition. And these, too,
are signs. Is there anything strong? they will make it weak. Is
there anything wise? they will make it foolish. Is there anything
sublime? they will distort and travesty it. And this they do
because they are exhalations of matter, and have no spiritual
nature. Hence they pursue and persecute the Woman continually,
sending after her a flood of vituperation like a torrent to sweep
her away. But it shall be in vain. For God shall carry her to His
throne, and she shall tread on the necks of them.
"Therefore the High Gods will give through a woman the
Interpretation which alone can save the world. A woman shall open
the gates of the Kingdom to mankind, because Intuition only can
redeem. Between the Woman and the Astrals there is always enmity;
for they seek to destroy her and her office, and to put themselves
in her place. They are the delusive shapes who tempted the saints
of old with exceeding beauty and wiles of love, and great show of
affection and flattery. Oh! beware of them when they flatter, for
they spread a net for thy soul."
"Am I, then, in danger from them?" I asked. "Am I, too, a
Sensitive?" And he said,--
"No, you are a Poet. And in that is your strength and your
salvation. Poets are the children of the Sun, and the Sun illumines
them. No poet can be vain or self-exalted; for he knows that he
speaks only the words of God. 'I sing,' he says, 'because I must.'
Learn a truth which is known only to the sons of God. The Spirit
within you is divine. It is God. When you prophesy and when you
sing, it is the Spirit within you which gives you utterance. It is
the 'New Wine of Dionysos.' By this Spirit your body is
enlightened, as is a lamp by the flame within it. Now, the flame is
not the oil, for the oil may be there without the light. Yet the
flame cannot be there without the oil. Your body, then, is the
lamp-case into which the oil is poured. And this--the oil--is your
soul, a fine and combustible fluid. And the flame is the Divine
Spirit, which is not born of the oil, but is conveyed to it by the
hand of God. You may quench this Spirit utterly, and thenceforward
you will have no immortality; but when the lamp-case breaks, the
oil will be spilt on the earth, and a few fumes will for a time
arise from it, and then it will expend itself and leave at last no
trace. Some oils are finer and more spontaneous than others. The
finest is that of the soul of the poet. And in such a medium the
flame of God's Spirit burns more clearly and powerfully, and
brightly, so that sometimes mortal eyes can hardly endure its
brightness. Of such an one the soul is filled with holy raptures.
He sees as no other man sees, and the atmosphere about him is
enkindled. His soul becomes transmuted into flame; and when the
lamp of his body is shattered, his flame mounts and soars, and is
united to the Divine Fire. Can such an one, think you, be
vain-glorious or self-exalted, and lifted up? Oh no; he is one with
God, and knows that without God he is nothing. I tell no man that
he is a reincarnation of Moses, of Elias, or of Christ. But I tell
him that he may have the Spirit of these if, like them, he be
humble and self-abased, and obedient to the Divine Word."
So far from our being sufficiently advanced to escape molestation from
the sources thus indicated, there were times when we suffered much from
their incursions, even to the hindrance, for the time being, of the work
on which our whole hearts were set. Knowing that everything depended on
our unanimity, they sought to make division between us, and what they
lacked in force was more than made up for by subtlety[52]. Despite all
our vigilance, they would insinuate themselves like barbed and poisoned
arrows between the joints of our armour, there to rankle and envenom, so
insidious were their suggestions. They did not flatter, but attacked
us. So that it was a satisfaction to be assured that they attack those
only who are worth attacking. The very nature of our work was such as to
invite attack from them, being what they were.
Meanwhile, no experience was withheld that would serve to qualify us for
what proved to be an essential part of our work, the "discerning of
spirits" in the sense, not merely of perceiving them, but of
distinguishing their nature and character. And always was the lesson
given in a form which combined with its other features that of total
unexpectedness. Especially important was it for us to be able to
distinguish between the spirits _of_ the astral, against which we were
warned, and spirits _in_ the astral, namely, souls which had not yet
accomplished their emancipation, but were in course of doing so. But
while as regarded the former we were left to fight the battle for
ourselves, as regarded the latter there was a control exercised, and
none were permitted to approach us save such as had a message of service
which would minister to the solution of a present problem. Of this the
following experience was an instance. It helped us to a yet fuller
comprehension, both of the reasons which had dictated our association,
and of the liabilities to be guarded against.
It was evening[53], and we were occupied in our respective tasks, and so
entirely engrossed by them as to be disposed to resent any interruption,
when "Mary" bent across the table, and speaking in a low tone, said to
me, "There is a spirit in the room who wants to speak to us. Shall I let
him?" I assented on the condition that he had something to tell us
really worth hearing. She then became entranced, being magnetised by his
presence; and after telling me that he spoke with a strong American
accent and professed to be a "meta-physical doctor"--meaning, she
supposed, a doctor in metaphysics--repeated the following after him; for
I could neither see nor hear him:--
"You two have been put together for a work which you could not do
separately. I have been shown a chart of your past histories,
containing your characters and your past incarnations. She is of a
highly active, wilful disposition, and represents the centrifugal
force. You, Caro, are her opposite, and, being contemplative and
concentrated, represent the centripetal force. Without her
expansive energy you would become altogether indrawn and inactive
in deed; and without your restraining influence she would go forth
and become dissipated in expansiveness. So extraordinary is her
outward tendency that nothing but such an organism as she now has
could repress it and keep it within bounds. It is for the work she
has to do that she has been placed in a body of weakness and
suffering. She is the man--and you the woman--element in your joint
system. I can see only her female incarnations, but she has been a
man much oftener than a woman; while you have generally been a
woman, and would be one now but for the work you have to do. Even
as a woman she has always been much more man than woman, for her
wilfulness and recklessness have led her into enterprises of
incredible daring. Nothing restrained her when her will prompted
her. She would wreck any work to follow that, and only by
combination with your centripetal tendency can she do the present
work. As a man she has been initiated, once, a long time ago, in
Thebes, afterwards in India. The things she has done in her past
lives! Well, _I_ do not say they were wrong, for I
do not hold the existence of moral evil. All things are allowed for
good ends; but this is a difficult truth to express."
Here she spoke in her own person, having under his magnetism recovered
her own vision and recollection, saying--
"O Caro! I can see your past. You have been--no, it is all wiped
out. I cannot see it now. I am not allowed to see it. Why is this?
I see my own past. I see India:--a magnificent glittering white
marble temple, and elephants. How tame they are! They are all out,
and feeding in a field or enclosure. And there are such a number of
splendid red flowers, they are cactuses, and all prickly. The trees
have all their foliage on the top, and such long stems. They are
palms. The soil is of a white dust. And the sky is so clear and
blue! But the heat is terrible. I see you again. Your colour is
blue, inclining to indigo, owing to your want of expansiveness. But
I cannot see your past, except that you are mostly a woman. And now
I am by the Nile,--such a fine broad river!"
Here she returned to her normal consciousness, our visitor having taken
his departure.
Subsequently, in March, 1881, under the influence of a higher
illuminative power, she found herself as one of a group of initiates
making solemn procession through the aisles of a vast Egyptian temple,
and chanting in chorus the rituals which compose the marvellous "Hymn to
the Planet-God, Iacchos"[54]. For, long as it is, she was able to
reproduce it afterwards. It was thus, by her recovery of the memory of
knowledges acquired in past existences, that the divine originals were
recovered from which the Bible-writers largely derived at once their
doctrine and their diction. This is not to say that these were mere
borrowers and unilluminate. It is to say only that they recognised the
divinity of a prior revelation, and regarded it as a common heritage.
The truth is one.
Among the uses of the painful experience we were now undergoing[55] was
this one. It put me on a track of thought of high value in enabling me
to determine our respective positions in regard to our work. It was
clearly the endeavour of the astral influences by which we were being
assailed--the "haters of the mysteries" as our Genii called them[56]--to
break down our work by destroying that perfect harmony between us which
was the first condition of it. And all my endeavours failing to discover
in myself the weak point which rendered us accessible to them, carefully
as I sought there for it, I was forced to look for it in her, and was
disposed to ascribe it to the survival from the far past of some defect
of the affectional nature. For, as we were now learning, man has a dual
heredity, that of his physical parentage and that of his spiritual
selfhood. From the former of which he derives his outward
characteristics; and from the latter his inward character. The
experience just recited served to confirm the surmise, but it did
something else besides. It suggested to me the following explanation of
the situation as growing out of the exigencies of our work. That work
had for its purpose the accomplishment of the prophesied downfall of the
"world's sacrificial system." It meant war to the knife against all the
orthodoxies at once, religious, social, scientific. It meant a
death-"wrestle, not against flesh and blood, but against principalities,
against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world,
against spiritual wickedness in high places." It meant, in short, the
destruction foretold by the prophets of "that great city," the world's
materialistic system in Church, State, and Society, wherein the "Lord,"
the divinity in man, is ever systematically crucified, and its
replacement by the "Holy City" or system which comes down from the
heaven of a perfect ideal.
What, then, I asked myself, was the foremost moral need for the
instruments of such a work? Surely it was Courage. But courage subsists
under two modes. There is the courage which manifests itself in action
and aggression, and there is the courage which manifests itself in
endurance and resistance. The former is its masculine mode, the latter
its feminine mode. The former connotes Will, the latter connotes Love.
And these were the parts assigned respectively to us in our joint
system. Will and Love united had made the world; disunited, they had
ruined the world; reunited, they would redeem the world. As He and She,
King and Queen, positive and negative, centrifugal and centripetal, they
are the dual powers of all things, the constituent principles at once of
God and of Man. The whole Universe is Humanity, for it is the
manifestation of God, and they are the divine man and woman of all
being; in their conjunction omnipotent for good, in their disjunction
omnipotent for evil. And whereas it is the function of Will to inflict,
it is the function of Love to bear. It is not, then, to the lack of
these qualities that our troubles are due, but to the defect of them,
the defect of our respective qualities.
The tension of feeling induced by the situation had for me reached a
pitch at which I had cause for serious apprehension lest my organism
prove unequal to the strain. For, resolute though I myself was to endure
to the end, come what might, the effort involved had so greatly affected
my organic system as nearly to double the number of the heart's
pulsations, to the imminent risk of a rupture fatal to life or reason.
Such was the emergency when, longing for light and aid, I received at
night[57] the following experience, which I reproduce as recorded at the
time:--
It seemed to me that I was sole spectator in some circus or
hippodrome. And in the arena were some horses, seven in number,
harnessed to a common centre, but all facing in different
directions like the spokes of a wheel, and pulling frantically, so
that the vehicle to which they were attached remained stationary
between them, through their counterbalancing each other; while at
the same time it seemed as if it must presently be dragged asunder
into pieces. On looking at it more closely, the vehicle seemed to
become a person who was attempting to drive the horses, but was
unable to get them into a line; and, strange to say, the driver was
one and identical both with the horses and the vehicle, so that it
was a living person who was in danger of being torn asunder by
creatures who were in reality himself. While wondering what this
meant, some one addressed me and said that if I would do any good,
I must help to control and direct the animals which were thus
pulling their owner asunder. And that the only way to do this was
by so disposing myself that I should be at one and the same time in
the centre with the driver, to help him to curb and direct his
steeds, and outside at their heads in order to compel their
submission. And not only must I be indifferent to their ramping and
chafing, I must even suffer myself to be struck and wounded and
trampled upon to any extent without flinching; for only when I was
so unconscious of self as to be indifferent as to what might happen
to me, would they cease to have power against me. And the reason
why I must be also in the centre was that only there could I
effectually co-operate with the driver to enable him to do his part
in directing what in reality were the forces, as yet unbroken in,
of his own system, into the road it was necessary for us both to
follow. We were destined to be fellow-travellers, and our journey
was to be made together and with that team. It could not be made by
one of us without the other, and the failure to effect a complete
conjunction and co-operation would bring certain ruin to the hopes
of both of us and of all who looked to us. The owner of the horses,
I was assured, could not of himself control them, and I could only
enable him to do so by an absolute surrender of myself.
Applying this vision to the situation, the moral was obvious so far as I
was concerned, and I wondered whether "Mary" would receive anything
equally suggestive for herself. In the morning, after remaining
unusually late in her room, she silently handed me the following account
of an experience which had similarly and simultaneously been received by
her:--
"I was shown two stars near each other, both of them shining with a
clear bright light, only that of one the light had a purple tinge,
and of the other a blood colour; and a great Angel stood beside me
and bade me look at them attentively. I did so, and saw that the
stars were not round, but seemed to have a piece cut out of the
globe of each of them. And I said to the Angel, 'The stars are not
perfect; but instead of being round, they are uneven.' He told me
to look again; and I did so, and saw that each globe was really
perfect, but that in each a small portion remained dark so as to
present the appearance of having a piece out; and I noticed that
these dark portions of the two stars were turned towards each
other. Upon this I looked to the Angel for the explanation.
And the Angel said to me, 'These stars derive their light not only
from the sun but from each other. If there be darkness in one of
them, the corresponding face of the other will likewise be
darkened; and how shall either reflect perfectly the image of the
sun if it be dark to its companion star? For how shall it respond
to that which is above all, if it respond not to that which is
nearest?'
And I said, 'Lord, if the darkness in one of these stars be caused
by the darkness in its fellow, which of them was first darkened?'
Then he answered me and said, 'These stars are of different
tinctures; one is of the sapphire, the other of the sardonyx. Of
the first the atmosphere is cool and equable; of the other it is
burning and irregular. The spirit of the first is as God towards
man; the spirit of the second is as the soul towards God. The first
loves; the second aspires. And the office of the spirit which loves
is outwards; while the office of the spirit which aspires is
upwards. The light of the first, which is blue, enfolds, and
contains, and embraces, and sustains. The light of the second,
which is red, is as a flame which scorches, and burns, and
troubles, and seeks God only, and his duty is not to the outward,
for it is not given to him to love. God, whom he seeks, _is_ love;
and therefore is he drawn upward to God only. But the spirit of his
fellow descends. She indraws, and blesses, and confers; and hers is
the office which redeems. Wherefore if she fail in her love, her
failure is greater than his who hath no love; and to be perfect she
must forgive until the seventy times seven, and be great in
humility. For the violet, which is the colour of humility, is of
the blue. And if she seek her own, or yield not in outward things,
her nature is not perfected, and her light is darkened. Let Love,
therefore, think not of herself, for she hath no self, but all that
she hath is towards others, and only in giving and forgiving is she
rich. If, on the contrary, she make a self withinwards, her light
is withdrawn and troubled, and she is not perfect, and if she
demand of another that which he hath not, then she seeketh her own,
and her light is darkened. And if she be darkened towards him, he
also will darken towards her, in respect, that is, of
enlightenment. And thus her failure of love will break the
communion with the Divine, which is through him. He cannot darken
outwardly first; for love is not of him. If he darken of himself,
it must be within towards God. But that which he receives of God,
he gives not forth himself. But he burns centrally and enlightens
his fellow, and she gives it forth according to her office. And if
she darken in any way outwardly, she cannot receive enlightenment,
but darkens the burning star likewise, and so hinders their
inter-communion.'
Having thus spoken, the Angel looked upon me and said, 'Ye are the two
stars, and to one is given the office of the Prophet, and to the other
the office of the Redeemer. But to be Prophet and Redeemer in one, this
is the glory of the Christ.'"
Here again was an intimation that on one plane at least of our
respective systems she was of masculine and I of feminine potency, with
functions to correspond. That these functions were capable of being
described in the terms employed was, we felt, no reason for arrogating
high places to ourselves. Rather did we consider that everything is
according to its degree; and that, as for persons, if the Gods were to
wait until they found perfect instruments, or at least perfect persons
for their instruments, they would never begin. And this also, that if
the world were in a condition to produce such persons, it would have no
need of redemption. Had not even Jesus Himself been "crucified through
weakness"?
In view of the intensity of the distress undergone in this connection, I
found myself recalling the remark of Plato, "Many begin the mysteries,
but few complete them." My only wonder was that any should survive the
ordeals, if they approached ours in severity. Meanwhile it was said to
us by way of encouragement, "Be sure there is trouble in store. No man
ever got to the Promised Land without first going through the
wilderness."
The instruction to "Mary" had not only justified my surmise, it also met
and corrected her in respect of the chief cause of our trouble. This was
her disposition, at astral instigation, to withhold from me the products
of her illuminations, and even to refrain from writing them down[58], on
the specious pretext that they were meant for her own exclusive
benefit, and were too sacred to be given to the world, or even to me;
and she had failed to discern the source and motive of these
suggestions. So effectually had what were really spirits of darkness
disguised themselves as angels of light.
The importance attached to the occult significance of our "tinctures"
received illustration in this wise. Permission had been given us to make
an exception to the rule of secrecy imposed with regard to certain of
the Scriptures received by us, in favour of a friend[59] who took so
warm an interest in our work as to be eager to render it material aid in
the future should occasion arise. It was her mission, she declared, to
do so. But when the day appointed for the reading came, "Mary" was so
ill that her going seemed to be impossible, and the question accordingly
arose as to whether I might go alone and read them without her. We had
no sooner begun to consider the point than she became entranced, and was
shown a large open volume, the book of the Greater Mysteries to which
our Scriptures belonged, surrounded by an Iris composed of all the
colours of the rainbow. She was then shown the following lines, which I
wrote down as she repeated them:--
"The one in Red guards his privileges, and claims to be present
whatever is read.
For the air is filled with the haters of the Mysteries.
Therefore for your sake the chain must be complete;
And the Light must be refracted round you seven times.
He who is Red stands within the holy circle.
And the Violet guards the outermost.
For the Word is a Word of Mystery, and they who guard it are Seven.
Beware that nothing you hear be told unless the circle be perfect.
And this charge we lay upon you until the work be accomplished.
Fire and sword and war are against you; you walk in the midst of
commotion.
And your life is in peril every hour until the words be completed."
Up to the latest moment of the interval before the appointment it seemed
impossible for her to go. She then suddenly recovered as by miracle, and
was able to attend the reading.
The liabilities of our position subsequently[60] received this further
illustration. "Mary" was introduced in sleep, by her Genius, into an
apartment in the spiritual world which purported to be the laboratory of
William Lilly, the famous astrologer who had foretold the great plague
and fire of London in 1666, in order to have her horoscope told by him,
he still pursuing his favourite studies. On quitting him she caught
sight of a pile of books, one of which contained the Gnosis we were in
course of recovering. The following colloquy then ensued:--
"You also have these Scriptures!" she exclaimed.
"Yes," said he, "but I keep them for myself alone."
"And why so," she asked, "since, if you have them, they are for the
learning of others likewise? Will you not rather communicate these
saving truths to thirsty souls?"
"I will communicate them," said he, fixing his eyes on her intently,
"when I can find Seven Men who for forty days have tasted no flesh,
whose hands have shed no blood, and whose tongues have tasted of none."
"But if you find not Seven?"
"Then, mayhap, I shall find Five."
"And if not Five?"
"Then, maybe, I shall meet with Three."
"But even this may be hard to find, and if you should not meet with
Three, what then will you do?"
"One Neophyte would not be able to protect himself."
In communicating to her the results of his calculations, he had said
that owing to the propensities indulged in certain of her former lives,
she had made for herself a destiny which ensured suffering and failure,
except when living in a similar manner; doing which she would have a
life of unbounded success. "But," he continued, "your horoscope has
nothing for you but misfortune so long as you persist in a virtuous
course of life, and, indeed, it is now too late to adopt another. I
speak herein according to your Fortune, not in regard to your Inner
life. With that I have no concern. I tell you what is forecast for you
on the material and actual planisphere of your Nativity.... I see
nothing but misfortune before you. Yea, if you persist in virtue, it is
not unlikely that you may be stript of all your worldly goods, and of
all you possess, and this evil fortune will follow your nearest
associates."
To her enquiry, "Can I never overcome this evil prognostic?" he replied
that she could do so only by outliving the time appointed for her
natural life in the career indicated, and added this advice, "Steel
yourself; learn to suffer; become a Stoic; care not. If Misfortune be
yours, make it your Fortune. Let Poverty become to you Riches. Let Loss
be Gain. Let Sickness be Health. Let Pain be Pleasure. Let Evil Report
be Good Report. Yea, let Death be Life. Fortune is in the Imagination.
If you believe you have all things, they are truly yours." He concluded
with an explanation reconciling destiny with free will, and vindicating
the divine justice, in a manner which removed all our difficulties on
those points, and, as we later came to learn, was entirely in accordance
with the Hindu doctrine of "Karma," of which at this time we had never
heard[61].
There was no exaggeration in the terms of the warning of danger. We were
constantly made aware of the presence of the malignant entities above
described focusing their influences on us to prevent the accomplishment
of our work, and requiring the utmost vigilance on our part, as well
also as on the part of our illuminators, to thwart their purpose. And we
had good reason to believe that our difficulties and dangers were
enhanced through "Mary's" attendances at the schools and hospitals,
owing to the evil nature of the influences there dominant under a
regimen grossly materialistic, and her liability to be fastened upon and
accompanied home by them. The outer walls of her spiritual system--it
was explained to us--were not yet completed, owing to the vastness of
the circuit of her selfhood; and hence her accessibility to the
incursion of noxious influences from without. The treatment of the
patients by men trained in the physiological laboratory, and bent upon
turning the hospital ward also into a laboratory with the patients
themselves for the victims of cruel and wanton experimentation, would
send her home boiling with indignation and wrath, to the destruction of
the serenity and self-control requisite for our spiritual work.
It was clear to us that no experience was to be wanting to exhibit the
contrast between the world's actual and the world's possible. The
overthrow of "the world's sacrificial system" meant salvation for man
and beast. The condition of all really redemptive work is a "descent
into hell." The following instruction to us is a typical one:--
"Teach the doctrine of the Universal Soul and the Immortality of
all creatures. Knowledge of this is what the world most needs, and
this is the keynote of your joint mission. On this you must build;
it is the key-stone of the arch. The perfect life is not attainable
for man alone. The whole world must be redeemed under the new
gospel you are to teach."
The following "Counsel of Perfection" which was received[62] by "Mary,"
is an exquisite expression of the same theme:--
I dreamed that I was in a large room, and there were in it seven
persons, all men, sitting at one long table; and each of them had
before him a scroll, some having books also; and all were
greyheaded and bent with age save one, and this was a youth of
about twenty, without hair on his face. One of the aged men, who
had his finger on a place in a book open before him, said:
"This spirit, who is of our order, writes in this book,--'Be ye
perfect, therefore, as your Father in heaven is perfect.' How shall
we understand this word 'perfection'?" And another of the old men,
looking up, answered, "It must mean Wisdom, for wisdom is the sum
of perfection." And another old man said, "That cannot be; for no
creature can be wise as God is wise. Where is he among us who could
attain to such a state? That which is part only, cannot comprehend
the whole. To bid a creature to be wise as God is wise would be
mockery."
Then a fourth old man said:--"It must be Truth that is intended;
for truth only is perfection." But he who sat next the last speaker
answered, "Truth also is partial; for where is he among us who
shall be able to see as God sees?"
And the sixth said, "It must surely be Justice; for this is the
whole of righteousness." And the old man who had spoken first,
answered him:--"Not so; for justice comprehends vengeance, and it
is written that vengeance is the Lord's alone."
Then the young man stood up with an open book in his hand and
said:--"I have here another record of one who likewise heard these
words. Let us see whether his rendering of them can help us to the
knowledge we seek." And he found a place in the book and read
aloud:--
"Be ye merciful, even as your Father is merciful."
And all of them closed their books and fixed their eyes upon me.
That it was possible at all for her to study medicine in a school in
which vivisection was an all prevailing practice, was only because she
set her face resolutely against it, by refusing to attend any place or
occasion where or on which it took place, and relying for her own
education chiefly on private tuition. It was an essential part of her
plan to prove that such experimentation was not necessary for a degree.
And this she effectually demonstrated by accomplishing her
student-course with rare expedition and distinction, despite her many
and severe illnesses and her frequent change of professors. For one
after another resigned the office on account of her refusal to allow
them to experiment on live animals at her lessons. Not until she had
secured her diploma did she enter a physiological laboratory. And then
only in order to qualify herself by personal experience to denounce the
practice. For herself it was not necessary, she declared, to see a
murder or a robbery committed to know that it is a crime.
The following incident shows how adverse the conditions of modern life
were to our spiritual work:--
Being in London one Christmas evening[63], and speaking to me under
illumination, "Mary" suddenly broke off and said--
"Do not ask me such deep questions just now, for I cannot see clearly,
and it hurts me to look. The atmosphere is thick with the blood shed for
the season's festivities. The Astral Belt is everywhere dense with
blood. My Genius says that if we were in some country where the
conditions of life are purer, we could live in constant communication
with the spiritual world. For the earth here whirls round as in a cloud
of blood like red fire. He says distinctly and emphatically that the
salvation of the world is impossible while people nourish themselves on
blood. The whole globe is like one vast charnel-house. The magnetism is
intercepted. The blood strengthens the bonds between the Astrals and the
Earth.... This time, which ought to be the best for spiritual communion,
is the worst, on account of the horrid mode of living. Pray wake me up:
I cannot bear looking; for I see the blood and hear the cries of the
poor slaughtered creatures." Here her distress was so extreme that she
wept bitterly, and some days passed before she fully recovered her
composure.
Our first acquaintance with any literature kindred to our special work
took place toward the close of our sojourn in Paris[64]. It was due to
the arrival of the friend in whose favour the exception had been made in
respect of the reading of our Mysteries, and who was the possessor of an
excellent library, which she placed at our disposal, of precisely the
books it had now become necessary for us to read. This was Marie,
Countess of Caithness and Duchesse de Pomar, who had for many years been
a spiritualist of zeal so ardent that--as I now came to learn--she had
been wont to make my conversion to that faith a matter of special
prayer, long before I had been able to contemplate such an event as
within the range of probability. Of wide culture, open mind, and large
sympathies, she had an enthusiastic and intelligent appreciation of our
work, and her arrival on the scene proved so timely as to point to
superior direction. We were now able to begin to make acquaintance with
many of the seers, mystics, and occultists of past ages, from the
Neoplatonists, Hermetists, Rosicrucians, and other orders of initiates,
to Boehme, Swedenborg and "Eliphas Levi," and to see what the various
spiritualistic schools of the present day had to say for themselves.
The following recognition of Hermes by one of the greatest of the
Neoplatonists, Proclus, who lived in the fifth century of our era, was
especially gratifying to us as proving the continuity of our experiences
with those of past ages. Proclus, it must be remembered, was so eminent
for his wisdom and powers as to be regarded by his contemporaries with a
veneration approaching to adoration. Says Proclus, "Hermes, as the
messenger of God, reveals to us His paternal Will, and--developing in us
the Intuition--imparts to us knowledge. The knowledge which descends
into the soul from above, excels any that can be attained by the mere
exercise of the intellect. Intuition is the operation of the soul. The
knowledge received through it from above, descending into the soul,
fills it with the perception of the interior causes of things. The Gods
announce it by their presence, and by illumination, and enable us to
discern the universal order." Here was exactly the doctrine received by
us, and the manner of it, only that the Intuition was further disclosed
to us as due to interior recollection, as declared by Plato, as well as
to perception.
The results of the investigations thus begun, and afterwards continued
in the library of the British Museum, proved satisfactory and gratifying
beyond all that we could have anticipated. For while it was made clear
to us that there had never been a time when there were not some in the
world who had the witness to the truth in themselves, and this one and
the same truth, it was also made clear that whereas others had received
it in limitation, and beheld it as "through a glass darkly," we were
receiving it in plenitude and "face to face," to the realisation of the
high anticipations of the sages, saints, seers, prophets, redeemers, and
Christs of all time; and this, too, at the period, in the manner, and
under the conditions declared by them as to mark and make the "time of
the end."
For in the illuminations vouchsafed to us the key had been restored
which unlocked the meaning of the symbols in which the doctrines of all
the churches, pre-Christian as well as Christian, had been at once
concealed and revealed, to the elucidation of all the problems which
have so sorely perplexed the world, and the verification, by actual
experience, of the truth contained in them. No longer now was there for
us any doubt as to the meaning of allegories such as the Fall, the
Deluge, the Exodus, and others were now shown us to be; or of prophecies
such as those of the crushing of the serpent's head by the Woman and her
seed; the return of Astraea with her progeny of divine sons; the fall
from heaven of Lucifer and Satan; the Return of the Gods; the reign of
Michael, "that great prince who standeth for the children of God's
people"; the breaking of the seals, and opening of the books; the
recognition of the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place;
the budding of the fig-tree, and the end of that "adulterous
generation"; the revelation of "that wicked one, the mystery of iniquity
and son of perdition, whom the Lord, at His coming in the clouds of
heaven with power and great glory, shall consume with the spirit of His
mouth, and destroy with the brightness of His coming"; the two
Witnesses, their resurrection from the dead, and their ascent into
heaven; the drying up of the great river Euphrates, and the coming of
the kings of the East by the way thus prepared; the binding of Satan,
and the acceptable year of the Lord to follow; the exaltation to heaven,
and clothing with the sun, of the mystic "Woman" of the Apocalypse; the
advent of the angel flying in mid-heaven, having an eternal gospel to
proclaim unto every nation, and tribe, and tongue, and people; the
coming of many from the East, and the West, and the North, and the
South, to sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of
heaven; and the battle of Armageddon, and the end of the world. To all
these, and other sacred enigmas of like nature, the key had been given
us. And they one and all proved to be prophecies of one and the same
event, the restoration of the faculty of inward understanding, and of
the divine knowledges which only through it are possible. And whereas
this was the faculty, the corruption and loss of which had made the
Fall, which was that of the original Church, so was it the faculty, the
purification and restoration of which was to reverse the Fall,
accomplishing the Redemption. For by it man will regain his mental
balance, in virtue of which he was "made upright," and become again
sound, whole, and sane, and be by _condition_ that which he has been
divinely declared from the first to be by _constitution_,--an instrument
of understanding, competent for the comprehension of all truth. For only
thus is he really man, and made in the divine image; seeing that he is
not really man, but infant only, until he attains his spiritual majority
and is able to understand. And that which thus makes him man on the
plane mental and spiritual, is that which makes him man on the plane
physical. It is his recognition and appropriation of the "Woman" of that
plane, the mystic "Woman" of Holy Writ, the mind's feminine mode, the
Intuition. It is of her first identification by us, as the key to the
whole mystery of the Bible, that the manner will now be recounted.
FOOTNOTES:
[49] The occasion of the receipt by A.K. and E.M. of the above was one
of peculiar interest. It was given in reference to a visit from the late
Laurence Oliphant, an account of which will be found in "The Life of
A.K." It will suffice to say here that, having heard of their work,
Oliphant came to them as an emissary from his chief in America, Thomas
Lake Harris, to summon them to place themselves and all that they were
and had, at his disposal as the king and Christ of the new dispensation.
The above instruction was given to them in direct reference to this
incident. It was followed by others fully exposing the delusive source
and nature of the doctrine and practice of Laurence Oliphant and Thomas
Lake Harris. The above Exhortation of Hermes to his Neophytes is now
given in full in this book for the first time. It is taken from "The
Life of A.K." Vol. I. pp. 282-283. S.H.H.
[50] See note p. 7
[51] The above reference is to an experience of mine which does not call
for relation here. E.M.
[52] Says E.M. in "The Life of A.K."--"The subtlety with which my most
sensitive places were searched out, and the mercilessness with which
they were probed by the influences which had now obtained access to us,
seemed to me to belong altogether to the infernal." (Life A.K. Vol. I.
p. 318.) S.H.H.
[53] The date was 27th March, 1880. S.H.H.
[54] The Hymn to the Planet-God has been referred to on p. 79. It is
given in full in the P.W. pp. 341-349: a portion of it concerning the
passage of the Soul, and concerning the Mystic Exodus, are given on pp.
169-173 post. The method of the recovery by A.K. of this most important
Hymn "was such as to constitute it a proof positive of the great
doctrine set forth in it, the doctrine of Reincarnation; for it was as
one of a band of initiates, making solemn procession through the aisles
of a vast Egyptian temple, chanting it in chorus, that 'Mary,' being
asleep, recollected it." (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 456.) S.H.H.
[55] That is, the "strained conditions" under which their association
was then maintained and their work carried on. (Life A.K. Vol. I. p.
374.) S.H.H.
[56] See p. 130.
[57] On the night of the 23rd June, 1880. This vision was received by
E.M. as he pondered and while he was awake. (Life A.K. Vol. I. pp.
376-377.) S.H.H.
[58] Some of A.K.'s illuminations have thus been lost to the world.
(Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 374.) S.H.H.
[59] Lady Caithness. (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 329.) See pp. 137 and 185
post. S.H.H.
[60] On the 13th-14th January, 1881. (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 435.) S.H.H.
[61] A full account of this interview with William Lily is given in "The
Life of A.K." Vol. I. pp. 435-441.
[62] On the 9th April, 1877, in London. (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 172.)
S.H.H.
[63] Christmas Day, 1880. (Life A.K. Vol. I. p. 430.)
[64] The time referred to was September, 1878. (Life A.K. Vol. I. pp.
285-385.)