Publications: Lucifer, Vol. III, No. 14, October, 1888, pp. 131-32, 164, 167
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MISCELLANEOUS NOTES
[The following important Editorial Note is appended by H.P.B. to an article dealing with the future androgynous human being, and the traditional tales, both of classical antiquity and later times, concerning non-physical beings uniting with physical ones.]
Begging our esteemed correspondent's pardon, we believe it dangerous to leave what he says Without an explanation. There is an enormous difference between the Sophia of the Theosophist Gichtel, an Initiate and Rosicrucian (1638-1710), and the modern Lillies, John Kings, and “Sympneumatas.” The “Brides” of the Mediaeval adepts are an allegory, while those of the modern mediums are astral realities of black magic. The “Sophia” of Gichtel was the “Eternal Bride” (Wisdom and Occult Science personified); the “Lillies” and others are astral spooks, semi-substantial “influences,” semi-creations of the surexcited brains of unfortunate hysteriacs and “sensitives.” No purer man ever lived in this world than Gichtel. Let any one read de Saint-Martin’s Correspondence (pp. 168 to 198), and he will see the difference. From Marcus, the Gnostic, down to the last mystic student of the Kabala and Occultism, that which they called their “Bride” was “Occult Truth,” personified as a naked maiden, otherwise called Sophia or Wisdom. That 156“spouse” revealed to Gichtel all the mysteries of the outward and inward nature, and forced him to abstain from every earthly enjoyment and desire, and made him sacrifice himself for Humanity. And as long as he remained in that body which represented him on earth, he had to work for the deliverance from ignorance of those who had not yet obtained their inheritance and inward beatitude. “From that time [when he had married his ‘Bride’], he gave himself up as a sacrifice, to be accursed for his brethren [men] even without knowing them,” says St. Martin. Has this case any analogy with the cases of the Lillies and Rosies of the Summer Land? Sophia descends as a “bride to the Adepts, from the higher regions of spirit, the astral Ninons de l’Enclos, from Kamaloka, to hysterical epileptics. The less one has to do with the latter class—the better. Let “sensitives” talk as poetically as they like, the naked truth is that such unnatural sexual unions, between the living man and the beauteous beings of the Elemental world, arise from the abnormal surexcitation of the nervous system and animal passions, through the unclean imagination of the "sensitive." In the Kabalistic world, these “celestial” brides and bridegrooms have always been called by the harsh names of Succubi and Incubi; and the difference between those creatures and the “Sympneumatas” shown in Laurence Oliphant’s Scientific Religion is only a supposed one, and exists for no one except the author. There are some such unions between mediums and their “controls”—we have known several such personally—and some involuntarily submitted to, under obsession. The tie is a psycho-physiological one, and can be broken by an exercise of will-power, either by the victim or a friendly mesmeriser. Colonel Olcott cured two such cases—one in America, the other in Ceylon. Amiable hysteriacs and certain religious ecstatics may give free run to their diseased fancy, and construct Sophias, Lillies, and other “Sympneumatas” out of the opalescent aura of their brains; but all the same they are but unconscious sorcerers: they enjoy lustful animal feelings by working black magic upon themselves. If they admit that 157these unnatural unions, or rather hysterical hallucinations of such are disease, then they are on a level with insane nymphomaniacs; if they deny it, then, accepting responsibility, they place themselves on a far lower level.
[. . . . a foundation statement of “Christian Science” is man’s unchangeable and indestructible union or oneness with spirit itself]
Facts are against this assumption. Were the “Union” universal there could be no evil, no disease or suffering in this world.
To help anyone with a cancer on the nose to fancy he has no cancer, can only be done through mesmerism, or hypnotism, although the operator may call it as he chooses.