Madame Blavatsky on Indian Metaphysics
Sir,—Two peas in the same pod are the traditional symbol of mutual resemblance, and the time-honoured simile forced itself upon me when I read the twin letters of our two masked assailants in your paper of February 22nd. In substance they are so identical that one would suppose the same person had written them simultaneously with his two hands, as Paul Morphy will play you two games of chess, or Kossuth dictate two letters at once. The only difference between these two letters—lying beside each other on the same page, like two babes in one crib—is, that “M.A. (Cantab’s)” is brief and courteous, while “Scrutator’s” is prolix and uncivil.
By a strange coincidence both these sharpshooters fire, from behind their secure ramparts, a shot at a certain “learned occultist” over the head of Mr. C. C. Massey, who quoted some of that personage’s views, in a letter published May 10th, 1876. "Whether in irony or otherwise, they hurl the views of this “learned occultist” at the heads of Colonel Olcott and myself, as though they were missiles that would floor us completely. Now, the “learned occultist” in question is not a whit more or less learned than your humble servant, for the very simple reason that we are identical. The extracts published by Mr. Massey, by permission, were contained in a letter from myself to him. Moreover, it is now before me, and, save one misprint of no consequence, I do not find in it a word that I would wish changed. What is said there I repeat now over my own signature; the theories of 1876 do not contradict those of 1878 in any respect, as I shall endeavour to prove, after pointing out to the impartial reader the quaking ground upon which our two critics stand. Their arguments against Theosophy— certainly “Scrutator’s”—are Uke a verdant moss, which displays a velvety carpet of green, without roots, and with a deep bog below.
When a person enters a controversy over a fictitious signature, he should be doubly cautious, if he would avoid the accusation of abusing the opportunity of the mask to insult his opponents with impunity. Who, or what, is “Scrutator”? A clergyman, a medium, a lawyer, a philosopher, a physician (certainly not a metaphysician), or what? Quien sabe? He seems to partake of the flavour of all, and yet to grace neither. Though his arguments are all interwoven with sentences quoted from our letters, yet in no case does he criticise merely what is written by us, but what he thinks we may have meant, or what the sentences might imply. Drawing his deductions, then, from what existed only in the depths of his own consciousness, he invents phrases and forces constructions upon which he proceeds to pour out his wrath. Without meaning to be in the least personal—for, though propagating “absurdities” with “utmost effrontery,” I would feel sorry and ashamed to be as impertinent with “Scrutator” as he is with us—yet, hereafter, when I see a dog chasing the shadow of his own tail, I will think of his letter.
In my doubts as to what this assailant might be, I invoked the help of Webster to give me a possible clue in the pseudonym. “Scrutator,” says the great lexicographer, “is one who scrutinises, and “scrutiny” he derives from the Latin serutari, “to search even to the rags;” which serutari itself he traces back to a Greek root, meaning “trash, trumpery.” In this ultimate analysis, therefore, we must regard the nom de plume, while very applicable to his letter of Feb. 22nd, very unfortunate for himself; for, at best, it makes him a sort of literary chiffonnier, probing in the dust-heap of the language for bits of hard adjective to fling at us. I repeat that, when an anonymous critic accuses two persons of “slan-derous imputations” (the mere reflex of his own imagination), and of “unfathomable absurdities,” he ought, at least, to make sure (1) that he has thoroughly grasped what he is pleased to call the “teachings” of his adversaries; and (2) that his own philosophy is infallible. I may add, furthermore, that when that critic permits himself to call the views of other people—not yet half digested by himself—“unfathomable absurdities,” he ought to be mighty careful about introducing as arguments into the dissension sectarian absurdities far more “unfathomable,” and which have nothing to do with either science or philosophy. “I suppose,” gravely argues “Scrutator,” “a babe’s brain is soft, and a quite unfit tool for intelligence, otherwise Jesus could not have lost His intelligence when He took upon Himself the body and the brain of a babe.” (! ! ?) The very opposite of Oliver Johnson evidently, this Jesus-babe of “Scrutator’s.”
Such an argument might come with a certain force in a discussion between two conflicting dogmatic sects, but if picked “even to rags,” it seems but “utmost effrontery to use “Scrutator’s” own complimentary expression—to employ it in a philosophical debate, as if it were either a scientific or historically proved fact! If I refused, at the very start, to argue with our friend “M.A. (Oxon.),” a man whom I esteem and respect as I do few in this world, only because he put forward a “cardinal dogma,” I shall certainly lose no time in debating Theosophy with a tattering Christian, whose “scrutinising” faculties have not helped him beyond the acceptance of the latest of the world’s Avatars in all its unphilosophical dead-letter meaning, without even suspecting its symbolical significance. To parade in a would-be philosophical debate the exploded dogmas of any church, is most ineffectual, and shows, at best, a great poverty of resource. Why does not “Scrutator” address his refined abuse, ex cathedra, to the Royal Society, whose Fellows doom to annihilation every human being, Theosophist or Spiritualist, pure or impure?
With crushing irony he speaks of us as “our teachers.” Now, I remember having distinctly stated in a previous letter that we have not offered ourselves as teachers, but, on the contrary, decline any such office—whatever may be the superlative panegyric of my esteemed friend, Mr. O’Sullivan, who not only sees in me “a Buddhist priestess” (!) but, without a shadow of warrant of fact credits me with the foundation of the Theosophical Society and its branches! Had Colonel Olcott been half as “psyehologised” by me as a certain American Spiritualist paper will have it, he would have followed my advice and refused to make public our “views,” even though so much and so often importuned in different quarters. With characteristic stubbornness, however, he had his own way, and now reaps the consequence of having thrown his bomb into a hornet’s nest. Instead of being afforded opportunity for a calm debate, we get but abuse, pure and simple—the only weapon of partisans. Well, let us make the best of it, and join our opponents in picking the question “to rags.” Mr. C. C. Massey comes in for his share, too, and, though fit to be a leader himself, is given by “Scrutator” a chief!
Neither of our critics seems to understand our views (or his own) so little as “Scrutator.” He misapprehends the meaning of elementary, and makes a sad mess of spirit and matter. Hear him say that elementary “is a new-fangled and ill defined term . . . not yet two years old 1” This sentence alone proves that he forces himself into the discussion, without any comprehension of the subject at issue. Evidently, he has neither read the mediaeval, nor modern, Kabalists. Henry Kunrath is as unfamiliar to him as the Abbe Constant. Let him go to the British Museum, and ask for the Amphitheatrum Sapientiæ Æternæ of Kunrath. He will find in it illustrated engravings of the four great classes of elementary spirits, as seen during an evocation of ceremonial magic, by the Magus who lifts the Veil of Isis. The author explains that these are disembodied vicious men, who have parted with their divine spirits, and become as beasts. After reading this volume “Scrutator” may profitably consult Eliphas Levi, whom he will find using the words “Elementary Spirits’’ throughout his Dogme et Retuel de la Haute Magie, in both senses in which we have employed it. This is especially the case where (vol. 1 p. 262, seq.) he speaks of the evocation of Apollonius of Tyana by himself. Quoting from the greatest Kabalistic authorities, he says:— “When a man has lived well, the astral cadaver evaporates like a pure incense as it mounts towards the higher regions; but if a man has lived in crime, his astral cadaver, which holds him prisoner, seeks again the objects of his passions, and desires to resume its earthly life. It torments the dreams of young girls, bathes in the vapour of spilt blood, and wallows about the places where the pleasures of his life flitted by; it watches without ceasing over treasures which it possessed and buried; it wastes itself in painful efforts to make for itself material organs (materialise itself) and live again. But the astral elements attract and absorb it; its memory is gradually lost, its intelligence weakens, all its being dissolves. . . . The unhappy wretch loses thus in succession all the organs which served its sinful appetites. Then it (this astral body, this “soul,” this all that is left of the once living man) dies a second time and for ever, for it then loses its personality and its memory.. Souls which are destined to live, but which are not yet entirely purified, remain for a longer or shorter time captive in the astral cadaver, where they are refined by the odic light, which seeks to assimilate them to itself and dissolve. It is to rid themselves of this cadaver, that suffering souls sometimes enter the bodies of living persons, and remain there for a time in a state which the Kabalists call embryonic (embryonnat). These are the aerial phantoms evoked by necromancy; (and, I may add, the “materialised spirits,” evoked by the unconscious necromancy of incautious mediums, in cases where the forms are not transformations of their own doubles); these are larvae, substances dead or dying, with which one places himself in rapport.” Further, Levi says (Op. sit. p. 164) “the astral light is saturated with elementary souls. . . . Yes, yes, these spirits of the elements do exist. Some wandering in their spheres, others trying to incarnate themselves, others, again, already incarnated and living on earth: these are vicious and imperfect men.”
And in the face of this testimony (which he can find in the British Museum, two steps from the office of The Spiritualist!) that since the middle ages the Kabalists have been writing about elementaries, and their potential annihilation, Scrutator permits himself to arraign Theosophists for their “effrontery” in foisting upon Spiritualists a “new-fangled and ill-defined term” which is “not yet two years old”!!
In truth, we may say that the idea is older than Christianity, for it is found in the ancient Kabalistic books of the Jews. In the olden time they defined three kinds of “souls”; the daughters of Adam, the daughters of the angels, and those of sin; and in the book of The Revolution of the Souls three kinds of “spirits” (as distinct from <... continues on page 7-45 >
Editor's notes
Sources
London Spiritualist, No. 291, March 22, 1878, pp. 140-1