Abbe Roca - Reply to Madame Blavatskys Observations on Christian Esotericism: Difference between revisions

Otherwise, would she have dreamed of displaying so much erudition before me, and to remind me of the astronomical allegory and the sidereal symbolism, in which the priests of the ancient temples saw stereotyped in some fashion all the mysteries of Christianity? It is long since Dr Sepp, to refute Strauss and Dupuis, replied victoriously to the arguments brought against the historic Christ which were drawn from that astral legend. Thus, as that profound exegete remarks, Nature, the real dumb Sibyl, is so full of the Word which informs her that she delivers her oracles and unveils her secrets by means of all the Cosmic manifestations which occur in the subjects treated upon in our sciences; “multifariam, multisque modis loquens nobis, etc.”

To answer Madame Blavatsky on this point, I ought to do some plagiarizing, for I know nothing more definitive than what is written in the Introduction to Dr. Sepp’s splendid Life of Christ, translated into French by M. Charles Sainte-Foi (a pseudonym of Éloi Jourdain).

Yes, Priests, yes, scholars, one and the same Dogma is common to the East and to the West. “Theosophists,” says Madame Blavatsky, “will bring to light the mysteries of the Catholic Church, which are really those of the Brâhmanas, although under other names.” So may it be! My first article said enough of how I share in that hope, and this one does not contradict it.

III.—When Christ’s suffering will have finished the redeeming and liberating work he came to do for us, and which appears to me to be nearing its end; when, thanks to Christian civilization and to the new sciences which are being inaugurated among us, when, I say, by favour of all these illuminations, the humble and suffering Christ “shall have been sufficiently exalted” in the understanding of the people redeemed by his blood, then, according to his own words, “he will draw all to him, he will bear them to his Father and our Father, to his God and our God,” and in {{Page aside|185}}that ascension he will encompass the whole world: Cum exaltatus fuero, omnia traham ad meipsum—ascendo ad Deum meum et Deum vestrum, ad Patrem meum et Patrem vestrum.”<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[This is a paraphrase of two distinct passages in the Vulgate, namely, John, xii, 32, and xx, 17; the first is: “Et ego, si exaltatus fuero a terra, omnia traham ad meipsum”; and the second is: “Dicit ei Jesus: Noli me tangere, nondum enim ascendi ad Patrem meum: vade autem ad fratres meos, et dic eis: Ascendo ad Patrem meum, et Patrem vestrum, Deum meum, et Deum vestrum.”—Compiler.]}}</ref>

Need we comment on this text? As you can see, it would be but to paraphrase the Law of Initiation, such as was formerly practised in the secrecy of the Temples, and such, I believe, as the Mahâtmas and Chelas still practice in their profound and holy retreats. When, by the purifying road of suffering, of expiation, and of death, Christ will be transfigured in the social structure, as he was once personally seen to be upon prophetic Tabor, to the extent that the sorrowful Christ will have become the triumphant Christ, through the sacrifice made to the absolute Ego of all that constitutes the relative Ego or Ego-ism, then, in truth, Son of God as He is from all Eternity, as the Word, equal to and consubstantial with the Father, according to the canonical Nicean expression, he will be recognized, acclaimed, glorified by the East as well as the West; then all the sanctuaries will again re-echo his call, the “general” salute on the drums will again be beaten, and the réveille of his Advent will sound from one end of the earth to the other.

In order to assume human nature, and thereby everyday human-hood, with all its individual monads, transitory and ceaselessly renewed on the earthly journey, Christ had to take on himself, in his flesh, all our wounds, all our miseries, all our personal and social infirmities, {{Page aside|186}}and to expiate them upon a cross in the streams of a virginal blood, absolutely pure in the Father’s sight. To raise this fallen world, sunk lower in the West than in the East—and that is why the earth’s axis is inclined, as you know—a lever was necessary. That lever, far more powerful than the one Archimedes asked for, is the arm of Christ, that arm which we call “the invincible right of the Father.”

Under such a process Europe is evolving, is being morally uplifted; it awakens, it thrills, do you not see it? It grows, it mounts, soon it is going to find itself at the heights where Asia stands awaiting it. The Mahâtmas, their gaze fixed on us, have seen this ascensional movement operating in the turmoil of our revolutions, and they are saying to themselves: This is the psychological moment, let us hold out a hand to our poor brothers, and light our beacons in the midst of their darkness. And that is why, obeying the mot-d’ordre of the “Brothers,” you have been able to establish 135 branches, which are so many centres of light, not only in Paris, but already in nearly every quarter of the globe. And when, by this means, the East and the West will have met each other and embraced, then, Arcades ambo, they will together take their glorious flight toward the Kingdom of Heaven realized on earth, and the divine Jerusalem contemplated by the Seer of Patmos will descend among us, to be occupied by men who will be as Gods, and by Gods who will be as men, even according to the saying of our Christ: Ego dixi; vos Dii estis!<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[The text of the Vulgate for John, x, 34 is: “Respondit eis Jesus: Nonne scriptum est in lege vestra: Quia ego dixi, dii estis ?”—Compiler.]}}</ref>

As for me, I have simply wished to speak of the epoch when, thanks to the progress accomplished among us by religious economy, and the {{Page aside|187}}Christian civilization that we owe to the diffusion of the entirely new Spirit of our Holy Gospel, it will become possible to overthrow these obstacles, I mean the mountains of error, of prejudices and passions, which have hitherto prevented the East and the West appreciating and listening to each other. These obstacles, these barriers, as everyone understands today, are the political work of Caesar. All our misfortunes come to us from that monster, who is the Satan of whom our Parables speak. Witness Jesus Himself on that point.

But first, I must remind you of the cry of triumph that, like a clarion cry of the morning watchman, echoed four years ago in the centre of Paris: “In the twentieth century war will be dead, frontiers will be dead, armies will be dead, Caesars will be dead” and the rest. An immense multitude, assembled at the Château-d’Eau, quivered with enthusiasm under the fiery breath of that prophetic Word, and the echoes sent that emotion far and wide. Shall it be said that Victor Hugo, whose genius was above all made of presentiments and foresight, shall it be said that Paris, France, Europe—Christendom from one end to the other—is nourished on illusions and flatters itself with optimistic dreams? Oh! yes, yes, what is stirring in the entire West and in the whole of America is really the spirit of Christ, you may be sure! Christendom does not realize itself unless it comprehends that it belongs to Christ. “Mens agitat molem.” Its Redeemer possessed it, and St. Paul would be socially right in our times: “Non estis vestri, vos estis Christi.”<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[The text of the Vulgate for I Cor., vi, 19 is as follows: “An nescitis quoniam membra vestra, templum sunt Spiritus sancti qui in vobis est, quem habetis a Dei, et non estis vestri?”—Compiler.]}}</ref> O people, Christ holds you! Upon the Keep of Vincennes, the Pythoness spoke truly when, a hundred and ten years ago, she flung the blazing words to the world by the mouth of Diderot, prisoner of State: “Deus, ecce Deus!” “Arise, ye peoples, Deliverance is near!”

But who can tell the frightful ravages working in the popular understanding and in the heart of the Roman world, through the Satanic influence of the Caesarian idea which has ploughed it up for so many centuries? Who can narrate the vices inoculated into Europe by the abominable system of “might makes right” (tyrannizing and brutalizing the peoples, everywhere tied to the soil and riveted by the fetters of more than one kind of slavery), and which were at the heart of all the intellectual, moral and corporeal miseries everywhere, “erantes et jacentes sicut oves non habentes pastorem,” as Jesus Christ said.<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[The text of the Vulgate for I Peter, ii, 25 is as follows: “Eratio enim sicut oves errantes, sed conversi estis nunc ad pastorem, et episcopum animarum vestrarum.”—Compiler.]}}</ref>

Hence it was that some Fathers of the Church remark that Christ, dying on the cross at the extreme limit which separates the West from the East, held his face turned, his eyes open, and his arms extended toward the West. It is to be observed that the statutes of the Law of Ram were not broken then and are not entirely so even yet in Asia, while among us there remains no trace of them, since Julius Caesar stifled the last survivor of it in Druidic Gaul. If rightly understood, we should perhaps notice that the great law of the Abramid temples is exactly that of which the Redeemer spoke: “I am not come to destroy it but to raise it up, to fulfill it” throughout the whole world—Non veni solvere, sed adimplere! [Matt., v, 17].

Madame Blavatsky is too well initiated into the secrets of the primitive sanctuaries to be ignorant, that, long before Jesus Christ, the Hindû peoples had already passed through the social stages which our Messiah came to lead us through in our turn, in order to re-establish the equilibrium between these two great divisions of the human family, so long disrupted. She knows that, before this rupture, the entire world, as witnessed by Moses, had one sole and identical religious language, one sole and identical social constitution: “Erat terra labii unius, et sermonum eorundem” [Gen., xi, 1].

I am going to say something which not all of my brethren in the priesthood will understand, and that the more illiterate will probably condemn: “The East already had Messiahs and Christs, humanly {{Page aside|189}}realized, when the West had only received, through the ministry of Moses and the Prophets, distant promises of its religious and social Redemption.”

And it is in this way that is explained in my mind the failure of the Christian preachings outside the particular sphere that the earliest priesthood of our Church had to evangelize: “preach first the Gospel to the scattered sheep of the house of Israel,” or of Ram (the family of Israel belongs to the Abramite stock and the primitive spelling of Abraham is Abram, i.e., Ab-Ram, issue of Ram). Madame Blavatsky enjoys holding Christ and our Church accountable for the impotence of our efforts in the East. She takes that set back as a defeat of Christianity, while, on the contrary, it is the confirmation of the Messianic plan when regarded in its true meaning. With statistics in hand, invoking and confirming the testimony of the venerable Bishop Temple, she observes that “since the beginning of our century, where the Christian missionaries have made but three million converts, the Mohammedans have acquired two million proselytes without the cost of one cent.” “A sign of the times!” she exclaims.

So long as the work of the Redemption remains with us, the Holy Gospel of the Deliverance will not depart from our Latin, Greek, {{Page aside|190}}Protestant, Anglican, Anglo-Saxon, and Anglo-American churches; but when, according to the promise of the Liberator, Christianity will have overthrown and annihilated Caesarism in all its political forms, great things will be seen!<ref>[The Editor of Le Lotus, as is fully explained on the first page, is not responsible for the opinions of contributors. We would draw the attention of censors in countries where Le Lotus goes, that this is a controversial subject, but that we ourselves, do not take part in politics.—Editor, Le Lotus.]</ref>

I have promised to let you hear the voice of Christ; this is your opportunity, so listen: “The principle of brutal and criminal force will be driven from the earth.” In other words, which are those of the Gospel: “Princeps huius mundi ejicietur foras!”<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[These words as well as the last Latin words in this paragraph, to which the Greek version is appended, are from one and the same passage in the Vulgate, namely John, xii, 31: “Nunc judicium est mundi: nunc princeps hujus mundi ejicietur foras.”—Compiler.]}}</ref> Satan-Caesar will flee from every quarter, his strongholds will be razed, his structures destroyed, his laws abolished. “I have conquered that abominable world: ego vici mundum!”<ref>[John, xvi, 33.]</ref> All economic, religious or social establishments not made by my heavenly Father, and whose foundations are not sunk in justice and divine verities, will be uprooted, utterly extirpated: Omnis plantatio, quam non plantavit Pater meus coelestis, eradicabitur!<ref>[Matt., xv, 13.]</ref> From that day, the judgment is given, and the crisis begins: “Nunc judicium est mundi, ''νῦν κρίσις ἐστὶ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου''.”

Had I space enough at my disposal, I would not merely quote five or ten or a hundred texts. Evoking the Prophets, Christ, and his Apostles, and the Fathers of the primitive church and the entire Carmelite and Franciscan tradition, I would fill a book with their lightning and thunder. However, that would only be repeating what I have already published in La Fin de l’Ancien Monde (The End of the Ancient World) and one should not quote oneself.

If the priests knew how esoterically to read the dismal parables and funereal prophecies in our Gospel which relate to the end of the world and the consummation of the cycle; if they knew how to understand the symbolism of those mountains that fall, the globe which trembles, the sun which turns black as a coalsack, the moon which no longer reflects light, those constellations which are extinguished, those stars which fall, those trumpets which sound under the breath of Angels, those foundations which are split open, that last judgment which will separate the goats from the sheep . . . they would see that these prodigies are already {{Page aside|191}}three-quarters realized, no doubt, in forms unexpected by the Vatican and in our sacristies, but none the less the exact fulfilment of the transcendental promises of our divine Liberator. They would also understand that the world and the age spoken of by Jesus Christ were not what our poor exegetes have imagined, but really the world and the age of the infamous Caesar and his abominable policy; a world and an age for which Jesus refused to pray—non pro mundo rogo!<ref>[John, xvii, 9.]</ref>—for the very simple reason that he came to destroy them; a world and an age, finally, which are none other than those of which John on the one hand, and Tacitus on the other, spoke frankly: Totus mundus in maligno positus est— corrumpere et corrumpi soeculum est.<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[The first part of this Latin quote is from the Vulgate, where in I John, v, 19 we find the passage: “Scimus, quoniam ex Deo sumus, et mundus totus in maligno positus est.”<br>

The second part is from Tacitus, De origine et situ Germanorum liber, xix, lines 8-9, which are as follows: “Nemo enim illic uitia ridet, nec corrumpere et corrumpi saeculum uocatur.” (See The Germania of Tacitus. A Critical Edition. Rodney Potter Robinson. Middletown, Conn.: Amer. Philol. Association, 1935.)––Compiler.]}}</ref>

Caesar, that is the obstacle, that is the enemy! Once that monster is overthrown all will be changed. I do not wish to say that one bugle call will suffice to collect all peoples under the crook of the One Shepherd. But at least the way will be open, the West and the East will march together under the conduct of the same Christ-Spirit, and, vive Dieu, we shall indeed finish by re-entering the Paradise! The future is ours, thanks to the wise strategy of our Redeemer, and thanks to the sufferings of the Chrestos.

Madame Blavatsky contradicts me far less than she thinks she does. I withdraw the words Yliaster and Sat which she does not allow, in order to propose that of telesme which was employed by Hermes-Trismegistus. Will she accept that? I doubt it. The fact is, there is no expression in our poor language to denote what I wish to say; but she certainly must have understood me, and that is enough.

Outside or beyond God, she accepts nothing, absolutely nothing, not even a mathematical point. She is right. However if one is not a pantheist—and Madame Blavatsky is no more that than I am—one must express oneself in such a way that our readers will not take us for such. To be better understood, let us say, then, that God is immanent in the Cosmos, present through all and in all, but distinct from all. Are you satisfied, Madame? Yes, indeed? Well, so am I.

But, really, I do not understand how she can tease me about the triple meaning that we canonically recognize in our Holy Scriptures. The Gnosis, she says, in agreement with the Gupta-Vidyâ, provides seven keys, and not merely three, to open the seven mysteries. Is Madame Blavatsky ignorant of the fact that the Christian Doctrine is essentially ternary in all points in which the Buddhist teaching is septenary? This is not to say that we do not appreciate the real basis of the Oriental system any more than you could misunderstand the real foundation of the Western system. We have simplified and summed up your theory without distorting it. Our three keys are equivalent to your seven and include them, as your seven are equivalent to our three which they subdivide.

Everyone knows that the white ray is decomposed into three principal colours which, themselves composite, produce, by a new decomposition, the seven colours of the rainbow. Similarly, analyzing the human being, St. Paul, the true father of our sacred science, describes in him three chief elements which he calls spirit, soul, and body: “integer spiritus et anima et corpus”; the Buddhists, being able to analyze man still further, discovered seven principles in him. There is no contradiction in that; you are right and we also: your seven are our three and our three are your seven. Such is our dogma, appropriate to our intellect and our mental categories, less subtle and less penetrating than yours, but also simpler because more rudimentary. We confess and adore in God a unique essence, proceeding in three distinct persons, in three diverse principles of action, and energizing the creature by seven operations which we call the seven manifestations or the seven gifts of the Paraclete. There is in all this something which recalls the seven distinct states of your prajñâ, which answer in their turn to the seven modifications of matter, and to the seven forms or seven classes of the phenomena of force.

{{Style P-Signature|ABBÉ ROCA, Honorary Canon.}}