HPB-SB-7-292

T i

vol. 7, p. 292

H. P. Blavatsky Scrapbooks

from Adyar archives of the International Theosophical Society

vol. 7 (March-September 1878)

 

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<Untitled> (Capt. R. F. Burton, Her Majesty’s Consul...)

Capt. R. F. Burton, Her Majesty’s Consul at Trieste, honorary member of the British National Association of Spiritualists, is now in England, and will, during the month of December, read a paper at the fortnightly discussion meetings on “Spiritualism in the East.” Capt. Burton’s name was some time ago, in the discussion on Theosophy, alluded to as a probable assailant of the veracity of Madame Blavatsky with respect to the manners and complexion of the Todas. It appears, however, that he agrees in the main entirely with her statement of fact, Possibly some may desire to interrogate him on this subject.

Religion of Magic

(From Bonwick’s “Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought.”)

Few things have more excited the wonder of Egyptologists than the discovery of papyri containing magical texts and formulae. They were employed to ward off evil and bring good. They were of service to the dead as well as to the living, since the dead were alive in another world, to be influenced in their course there by the prayers and rites of the faithful still dwelling by the Nile.

The Spiritualism, if such it may be called, of the ancients has been little understood and much derided. Whatever folly and deceit were connected with it, there was sense or fascination enough about it to hold the greatest and wisest in its folds. Plato said that magic consisted in the worship of the gods; and Psellus, that “magic formed the last part of the sacerdotal science.” Proclus the Platonist has the following reasoning upon magic:—

“As lovers gradually advance from that beauty which is apparent in sensible forms, to that which is divine, so the ancient priests, when they considered that there is a certain alliance and sympathy in natural things to each other, and of things manifest to occult powers, and discovered that all things subsist in all, they fabricated a sacred science from this mutual sympathy and similarity. Now, the ancients, having contemplated this mutual sympathy of things, applied for occult purposes, both celestial and terrene natures, by means of which, through a certain similitude, they deduced divine virtues into this inferior abode.”

We notice this sympathy in objects, and call it chemical affinity, natural attraction, &c. Swedenborg talked of correspondencies between heaven and earth. Some philosophers, even in this age of blank materialism, are beginning to recognise subtle influences in nature not to be explained, but which in olden times formed the groundwork of magic. In fact, as Dr. Carter Blake pithily has it, “The nineteenth century is not that which has observed the genesis of new, nor the completion of the old, methods of thought.” If the ancients knew but little of our mode of investigation into the secrets of nature, we know less of their mode of research.

The ancients recognised the action of divinity on man through sensible objects. But they believed in the power of man, under what is called magic, to command the services of the gods. Magic is, then, religion. “Magic was considered,” Deveria remarks, “as a sacred science or sacred art, inseparable from religion.” It is important, then, says F. Lenormant, “to determine the influence which religious belief of different peoples and of different ages have had upon it, and the influence which in its turn it has exercised on these same beliefs.”

The power of magic with the Egyptians is thus spoken of by Jamblichus: “They, through the sacerdotal theurgy, announce that they are able to ascend to more elevated and universal essences, and to those that are established above fate, viz., to God and the Demiurgus: neither employing matter, nor assuming any other things besides, except the observation of a sensible time.” Thus, quoting Dr. Blake, “Nearly all the higher facts of Spiritualism are mere" repetitions of the conceptions of intellectual men in past generations.” Egyptian mystics could levitate, walk the air, handle fire, live under water, sustain great pressure, harmlessly suffer mutilation, read the past, foretell the future, make themselves invisible, and cure diseases. Their great priestly teachers were known as Rekh-get-amen.

Admission to the mysteries did not confer magical powers. These depended upon two things: the possession of innate capacities, and the knowledge of certain formulae employed upon suitable circumstances.

Divination, therefore, was practised by those who had special gifts or faculties born with them, and carefully developed by prayer and fasting, which kept down the grosser impulses of the soul. Justin Martyr supposed Joseph a great proficient. To divine, however, the person must have an object by which to work, and must repeat approved magical texts. Joseph’s divining cup was quite an Egyptian institution. Ezekiel notices the divining arrows without points. Books of divination were common, like calendars of good and bad days. They divined then from the elements, trees, birds, &c.

Dreams were held important in certain cases. The dreams of Pharaohs were interpreted according to fixed rule by special magicians. A long story is hieroglyphically detailed on a granite monument at Napata, of the dream of King Amen-meri Nout. He thought he saw two serpents, one on each side of him. The explanation afforded was this: “The land of the South shall be thine, thou shalt take the land of the North.” This, we are told, came true. He was first King of Ethiopia, and then captured Memphis. The stone is called “The Stele of the Dream.” The gods sent the dream to the king, and gave the wise men the interpretation.

Oracles were communications from the gods to favoured persons, that is, to mediums. They were delivered from the holy place of the temple, and by special prietesses. They evidenced prophetic powers clairvoyance, discerning of spirits, second sight, or whatever else that faculty may be called, undoubtedly possessed by some, and, perhaps, capable of development by exercise. But the ancients, like some moderns, not content with simple and natural explanation, ascribed the action to supernatural visitation, and so connected it with religion. Spirits were believed to convey the information. It might bp Isis, or Apollo, or the sainted dead.

The early Christians had no doubt of the reality of Egyptian oracles. Among the believing fathers were' Tatian, Clemens Alexandrinus, Chrysostom, Origen, Justin Martyr, Cyprian, Tertullian, Jerome, and Augustine. It was natural for the last named, as an African, to place credence in spiritualistic movements. He thus refers to the prophetic power of the spirits.

“They, for the most part, foretell what they are about to perform; for often they received power to send diseases by vitiating the atmosphere. Sometimes they predict what they foresee by natural signs, which signs transcend human sense; at others they learn, by outward bodily tokens, human plans, even though unspoken, and thus foretell things to the astonishment of those ignorant of the existence of such plans.”

Spirits played a conspicuous part in Egyptian magic. They are called gods, of course. The Chaldean Magi believed in elementary spirits, something between the divine and human, floating in air or water, existing in fire, or dwelling in caves and rocks. The Egyptians, on the contrary, thought, says Lenormant, “the possessing spirits, and the spectres who affright or torment the living, were damned souls come again to earth, before being submitted to the annihilation of the second death.” They believed what Swedenborgians and a crowd of Spiritualists now believe in England and America.

They had no doubt about possession, any more than the Jews had at the time of the Gospels. Josephus assures us that his countrymen were tormented by the spirits of the wicked dead possessing bodies, Maspero thus describes the Egyptian notion: “The damned sought a human body to lodge there; and, when finding it, overwhelmed it with diseases, and sent it to murder and folly.” Allan Kardec, the re-incarnationist, has another view of the case; saying, “Since two spirits cannot inhabit simultaneously the same body, there is no such thing as possession. But from the days of the pyramids to our own time, possession has been acknowledged. All sects of Christians have declared this belief.

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Editor's notes

Sources

• 

  London Spiritualist, No. 317, September 20, 1878, p. 134

• 

  London Spiritualist, No. 317, September 20, 1878, p. 135