Lucifer/Vol1/Text: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 12:52, 31 October 2026

Electronic journal edition: articles by authors with dictionary entries are linked to their separate pages; other materials are reproduced here in journal order. The texts reproduced in this volume are taken from the Project Gutenberg library, including its typographical corrections. For articles by H. P. Blavatsky, links lead to the texts prepared by B. de Zirkoff in her Collected Writings (BCW).

No. 1 – September 1887

14

Harmony is the law of life, discord its shadow, whence springs suffering, the teacher, the awakener of consciousness.

Through joy and sorrow, pain and pleasure, the soul comes to a knowledge of itself; then begins the task of learning the laws of life, that the discords may be resolved, and the harmony be restored.

The eyes of wisdom are like the ocean depths; there is neither joy nor sorrow in them; therefore the soul of the occultist must become stronger than joy, and greater than sorrow.

The History of a Planet

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 15-22

The Blossom and the Fruit

Mabel Collins · pp. 23-38

A Law of Life

A. Keightley · pp. 39-45

46

The Mystery of All Time.

The inner light which guides men to greatness, and makes them noble, is a mystery through all time and must remain so while Time lasts for us; but there come moments, even in the midst of ordinary life, when Time has no hold upon us, and then all the circumstance of outward existence falls away, and we find ourselves face to face with the mystery beyond. In great trouble, in great joy, in keen excitement, in serious illness, these moments come. Afterwards they seem very wonderful, looking back upon them.

What is this mystery, and why is it so veiled, are the burning questions for anyone who has begun to realise its existence. Trouble most often rouses men to the consciousness of it, and forces them to ask these questions when those, whom one has loved better than oneself, are taken away into the formless abyss of the unknown by death, or are changed, by the experiences of life, till they are no longer recognisable as the same; then comes the wild hunger for knowledge. Why is it so? What is it, that surrounds us with a great dim cloud into which all loved things plunge in time and are lost to us, obliterated, utterly taken from us? It is this which makes life so unbearable to the emotional natures, and which developes selfishness in narrow hearts. If there is no certainty and no permanence in life, then it seems to the Egotist, that there is no reasonable course but to attend to one’s own affairs, and be content with the happiness of the first person singular. There are many persons sufficiently generous in temperament to wish others were happy also, and who, if they saw any way to do it, would gladly redress some of the existing ills – the misery of the poor, the social evil, the sufferings of the diseased, the sorrow of those made desolate by death – these things the sentimental philanthropist shudders to think of. He does not act because he can do so little. Shall he take one miserable child and give it comfort when millions will be enduring the same fate when that one is dead? The inexorable cruelty of life continues on its giant course, and those who are born rich and healthy live in pleasant places, afraid to think of the horrors life holds within it. Loss, despair, unutterable pain, comes at last, and the one who has hitherto been fortunate is on a level with those to whom misery has been familiarised by a lifetime of experience. For trouble bites hardest when it springs on a new victim. Of course, there are profoundly selfish natures which do not suffer in this sense, which look only for personal comfort and are content with the small horizon visible to one person’s sight; for these, there is but little trouble in the world, there 47is none of the passionate pain which exists in sensitive and poetic natures. The born artist is aware of pain as soon as he is aware of pleasure; he recognises sadness as a part of human life before it has touched on his own. He has an innate consciousness of the mystery of the ages, that thing stirring within man’s soul and which enables him to outlive pain and become great, which leads him on the road to the divine life. This gives him enthusiasm, a superb heroism indifferent to calamity; if he is a poet he will write his heart out, even for a generation that has no eyes or ears for him; if he desires to help others personally, he is capable of giving his very life to save one wretched child from out a million of miserable ones. For it is not his puny personal effort in the world that he considers – not his little show of labour done; what he is conscious of is the over-mastering desire to work with the beneficent forces of super-nature, to become one with the divine mystery, and when he can forget time and circumstances, he is face to face with that mystery. Many have fancied they must reach it by death; but none have come back to tell us that this is so. We have no proof that man is not as blind beyond the grave as he is on this side of it. Has he entered the eternal thought? If not, the mystery is a mystery still.

To one who is entering occultism in earnest, all the trouble of the world seems suddenly apparent. There is a point of experience when father and mother, wife and child, become indistinguishable, and when they seem no more familiar or friendly than a company of strangers. The one dearest of all may be close at hand and unchanged, and yet is as far as if death had come between. Then all distinction between pleasure and pain, love and hate, have vanished. A melancholy, keener than that felt by a man in his first fierce experience of grief, overshadows the soul. It is the pain of the struggle to break the shell in which man has prisoned himself. Once broken then there is no more pain; all ties are severed, all personal demands are silenced for ever. The man has forced himself to face the great mystery, which is now a mystery no longer, for he has become part of it. It is essentially the mystery of the ages, and these have no longer any meaning for him to whom time and space and all other limitations are but passing experiences. It has become to him a reality, profound, indeed, because it is bottomless, wide, indeed, because it is limitless. He has touched on the greatness of life, which is sublime in its impartiality and effortless generosity. He is friend and lover to all those living beings that come within his consciousness, not to the one or two chosen ones only – which is indeed only an enlarged selfishness. While a man retains his humanity, it is certain that one or two chosen ones will give him more pleasure by contact, than all the rest of the beings in the Universe and all the heavenly host; but he has to remember and recognise what this preference is. It is not a selfish thing which has to be crushed out, if the love is the love that gives; freedom from attachments is not a meritorious condition 48in itself. The freedom needed is not from those who cling to you, but from those to whom you cling. The familiar phrase of the lover “I cannot live without you” must be words which cannot be uttered, to the occultist. If he has but one anchor, the great tides will sweep him away into nothingness. But the natural preference which must exist in every man for a few persons is one form of the lessons of Life. By contact with these other souls he has other channels by which to penetrate to the great mystery. For every soul touches it, even the darkest. Solitude is a great teacher, but society is even greater. It is so hard to find and take the highest part of those we love, that in the very difficulty of the search there is a serious education. We realise when making that effort, far more clearly what it is that creates the mystery in which we live, and makes us so ignorant. It is the swaying, vibrating, never-resting desires of the animal soul in man. The life of this part of man’s nature is so vigorous and strongly developed from the ages during which he has dwelt in it, that it is almost impossible to still it so as to obtain contact with the noble spirit. This constant and confusing life, this ceaseless occupation with the trifles of the hour, this readiness in surface emotion, this quickness to be pleased, amused or distressed, is what baffles our sight and dulls our inner senses. Till we can use these the mystery remains in its Sphinx-like silence.

When the unit thinks only of itself, the whole, which is built of units perishes, and the unit itself is destroyed.

So it is throughout nature on every plane of life. This, therefore, is the first lesson to be learnt.

What the true occultist seeks, is not knowledge, or growth, or happiness, or power, for himself; but having become conscious that the harmony of which he forms part is broken on the outer plane, he seeks the means to resolve that discord into a higher harmony.

This harmony is Theosophy – Divine or Universal Wisdom – the root whence have sprung all “religions,” that is all; “bonds which unite men together,” which is the true meaning of the word religion.

Therefore, Theosophy is not a “religion,” but religion itself, the very “binding of men together” in one Universal Brotherhood.

The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism

St. George Lane-Fox · pp. 49-51

The Last of a Good Lama

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 51

The Birth of Light

Éliphas Lévi · pp. 52-54

55

A True Theosophist.

A very large majority of people have no idea whatever about Theosophy, and regard Theosophists as more or less crazy members of a new sect. They naturally deny any superiority to one new sect among so many, and aver that, as a considerable number of sects have been “tried in the balances and found wanting,” this one is no better than its predecessors. Theosophists – the real ones – can only reply that they are unsectarian and superior to none. They believe that they have found a good road to the discovery of truth, and wish to share their discovery – if it can be so called – with others.

The very assumption of superiority would be a contradiction in terms to the name itself. But, while giving this emphatic denial with reference to the name “Theosophist,” no attempt is made to assert that all members of the Theosophical Society are also Theosophists. True indeed, that when they enter that society, they subscribe to rules and declare their objects to be such that, were they to carry them out thoroughly, no other name than Theosophists would be applicable. Nor does the name imply that, in the studies which Theosophists make their own, it is necessary that the sole and best place should be given to studies of Oriental philosophy. That again would be a contradiction, for it has most emphatically been stated that “there are those who are ignorant of the Eastern wisdom” who are nearer to divine wisdom, than some who have devoted their entire lives to Oriental studies. It is again the old story that, “the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.”

Still while holding to the assertion that the study of Oriental wisdom is only one road out of many, it is necessary to remember the analogy which philology may here present to “religion.” Just as philology traces all languages to a common root – the Sanskrit or rather pre-Sanskrit – so the religions of the world can also be traced to a common root and birth place, identical with the cradle and birth place of the human race, which ethnology locates on the high plateaux of Central Asia. Therefore it is, that the study of Oriental philosophy has something to be urged in its especial favour, because that philosophy has its home nearer to the source of the wisdom religion than any other.

Still more must it be borne in mind, that members of the Theosophical Society are not necessarily Theosophists, for a very considerable number are attracted merely by the name and through curiosity. They either do not understand what they profess, or if they do, they do not practise it. But this is no attempt to run counter to the proverb, that the tree is known by its fruit, although there is some amount of injustice in it. 56All that is asserted is that, if this argument is used against a Society with aims and aspirations such as the Theosophical Society has, it can be used with even more terrible effect against all religions whether Christian, Mohammedan, Buddhist, etc. The real reason why this has come to pass, lies in a few words – the cultivation of the individual; and, as a later result of this, in anthropomorphism. It is only those individuals who can “grasp their whole individuality firmly,” and by the force of their “awakened spiritual will, reach out to the life beyond individuality” – it is only they, who can shake themselves loose from the curse which has gradually spread over the whole world. It is in consequence of this growth of individualism that the “blessings of civilization” have become the curse of mankind, and every religion, originally altruistic, has become inverted, and the reign of anti-Christ and hypocrisy has superseded that of Christ and truth. No sweeping accusation is made against the whole world in this statement. A dim and misty veil has been thrown over the face of Truth, and it is as though we saw everything outside the principal focus of a lens, and consequently, under full faith that we see the real image, perceive the inverted image. In the time of Elizabeth, for instance, men learnt to cultivate the individual within the circle of the race, and to attempt to unite in patriotism for the benefit of that race or empire. But it is a vain attempt, and the dissociating effects of this culture will soon be evident in the impossibility of the attempt. Originally the attempt was to cultivate the individual, but only with a view to the increase of that race and with that object as paramount. That is to say, that an English soldier would cultivate himself to the uttermost in order that the world should see what English soldiers were. But the time came when the egoistic element appeared in overwhelming force, and the cultivation was devoted to the sole aim of making this or that man stronger than any man of his own race, or any other.

And now another aim has been substituted for the paramount one of patriotism. Mammon has superseded the latter, and the strength of the individual is cultivated and devoted to withstanding the pressure of life, and to getting a start in the great race to worship at the feet of the demon of cupidity. But again, while devoting their own lives and worse – the lives of their neighbours – to this worship, they yet professed to be Christians or members of other religions. They tried to worship two gods – Mammon on six days of the week and the other divinity on Sunday, or any day set apart for his service. But still, in most cases, it was not the divine instinct of search for the divine in their hearts, but a fear of wrath to come. It really was a pharisaical idea of “hedging,” to use a term of racing slang, with reference to the race of life. The end of it was that Mammon received the real worship of their hearts, and the other god only lip-service. Thus in the end hypocrisy became almost as paramount as Mammon. Time still passed on, and man almost lost 57sight of any idea of an offended and avenging deity, and any germ of spirituality was very nearly dead from want of cultivation. The material needs held him in complete sway, and the spread of physical science helped him mightily. Losing sight of all the subtler side of nature, he immersed himself in gross matter, and utilitarianism was the watchword and rallying cry. In all this change the age of mechanical inventions took no small part. Man can hardly be blamed as an individual nor as a whole. It is part of the great law of evolution, and the working out of the law of the survival of the fittest.

It may be asked what this has to do with the subject of the article; but in justification it is averred that a picture is most clearly seen by its contrast.

Perhaps the best definition of a Theosophist, is that given by the Alchemist, Thomas Vaughan:

“A Theosophist is one who gives you a theory of the works of God, which has not a revelation, but an inspiration of his own for basis.”

“A man once abandoning the old pathway of routine and entering on the solitary pathway of independent thought – Godward – he is a Theosophist, an original thinker, a seeker after the Eternal Truth, with an inspiration of his own to solve the Eternal problems.”

Such a one as this is the subject of the article. Count Tolstoi, the Russian novelist, is a true Theosophist, and his words and actions in contradiction and illustration of the foregoing, are taken from an interview with him by Mr. George Kennan (Century, June 1887). The interview first describes the surroundings amidst which Count Tolstoi lives, and gives also a description of the Count’s appearance.

Apparently the first thing which impressed Mr. Kennan was the sight of “a wealthy Russian noble, and the greatest of living novelists, shaking hands upon terms of perfect equality with a poor, ragged, and not over clean droshky driver,” who had been engaged in the streets.

Then follows a description of the rooms, the furniture &c., which was observed during the time that Mr. Kennan’s host had retired – not, indeed, to change his coat, but to put one on after a morning’s labour in the fields. Mr. Kennan, it seems, had journeyed through Siberia, and had there promised several of the exiles to visit Count Tolstoi on his return, and to tell him of their condition. In the course of conversation on these matters, Mr. Kennan asked Count Tolstoi whether he did not think that resistance to such oppression as the exiles had experienced was justifiable?

“That depends,” he replied, “upon what you mean by resistance; if you mean persuasion, argument, protest, I answer yes; if you mean violence – no. I do not believe that violent resistance to evil is ever justifiable under any circumstances.”

He then set forth clearly, eloquently, and with more feeling than he had yet shown, the views with regard to man’s duty as a member of society which are contained in his 58book entitled “My Religion,” and which are further explained and illustrated in a number of his recently published tracts for the people. He laid particular stress upon the doctrine of non-resistance to evil, which, he said, is in accordance with both the teachings of Christ and the results of human experience. He declared that violence, as a means of redressing wrongs, is not only futile, but an aggravation of the original evil, since it is the nature of violence to multiply and reproduce itself in all directions. “The Revolutionists,” he said, “whom you have seen in Siberia, undertook to resist evil by violence, and what has been the result? Bitterness, and misery, and hatred, and bloodshed! The evils against which they took up arms still exist, and to them has been added a mass of previously non-existent human suffering. It is not in that way that the kingdom of God is to be realised on earth.”

For a long time I did not suggest any difficulties or raise any objections.... It is one thing to ask a man in a general way whether he would use violence to resist evil, and quite another thing to ask him specifically whether he would knock down a burglar who was about to cut the throat of his mother. Many men would say yes to the first question who would hesitate at the second. Count Tolstoi, however, was consistent. I related to him many cases of cruelty, brutality, and oppression which had come to my knowledge in Siberia, and at the end of every recital I said to him, “Count Tolstoi, if you had been there and had witnessed that transaction, would you not have interfered with violence?” He invariably answered “No.” I asked him the direct question whether he would kill a highwayman who was about to murder an innocent traveller, provided there were no other way to save the traveller’s life. He replied, “If I should see a bear about to kill a peasant in the forest, I would sink an axe in the bear’s head; but I would not kill a man who was about to do the same thing.” There finally came into my mind a case which, although really not worse than many that I had already presented to him, would, I thought, appeal with peculiar force to a brave, sensitive, chivalrous man.

This was a case of most brutal treatment of a young girl who was exiled to Siberia. At a certain town on her journey the governor ordered that she was to put on the clothing of an ordinary convict. This she declined to do on the ground that administrative exiles had the right to wear their own clothing. Furthermore the clothing supplied to convicts is not always new, and it is quite possible that it is of the filthiest description and full of vermin. She argued that she would have been compelled to change at Moscow had it been necessary, and again declined. The local governor persisted and ordered that force should be used to effect the change. Accordingly, in the presence of nine or ten men, the change of clothing was effected – she was stripped naked, forcibly reclothed, and left bleeding and exhausted after ineffectual resistance.

“Now,” I said, “suppose all this had occurred in your presence; suppose that this bleeding, defenceless, half-naked girl had appealed to you for protection, and had thrown herself into your arms; suppose that it had been your daughter, would you still have refused to interfere by an act of violence?”

He was silent. Finally, ignoring my direct question as to what he personally would have done in such a case, Count Tolstoi said, “Even under such circumstances violence would not be justifiable. Let us analyse that situation carefully. I will grant, for the sake of argument, that the local governor who ordered the act of violence was an ignorant man, a cruel man, a brutal man – what you will; but he probably had an idea 59that he was doing his duty; he probably believed that he was enforcing a law of the Government to which he owed obedience and service. You suddenly appear and set yourself up as a judge in the case; you assume that he is not doing his duty – that he is committing an act of unjustifiable violence – and then, with strange inconsistency, you proceed to aggravate and complicate the evil by yourself committing another act of unjustifiable violence. One wrong added to another wrong does not make a right; it merely extends the area of wrong. Furthermore, your resistance, in order to be effective – in order to accomplish anything – must be directed against the soldiers who are committing the assault. But those soldiers are not free agents; they are subject to military discipline and are acting under orders which they dare not disobey. To prevent the execution of the orders you must kill or maim two or three of the soldiers – that is, kill or wound the only parties to the transaction who are certainly innocent, who are manifestly acting without malice and without evil intention. Is that just? Is it rational? But go a step further: suppose that you do kill or wound two or three of the soldiers; you may or may not thus succeed in preventing the completion of the act against which your violence is a protest; but one thing you certainly will do, and that is, extend the area of enmity, injustice, and misery. Every one of the soldiers whom you kill or maim has a family, and upon every such family you bring grief and suffering which would not have come to it but for your act. In the hearts of perhaps a score of people you rouse the anti-Christian and anti-social emotions of hatred and revenge, and thus sow broadcast the seeds of further violence and strife. At the time when you interposed there was only one centre of evil and suffering. By your violent interference you have created half-a-dozen such centres. It does not seem to me, Mr. Kennan, that that is the way to bring about the reign of peace and good-will on earth.”

Mr. Kennan had a manuscript written by one of those prisoners who took part in the desperate “hunger-strike” of 1884, with which he had been entrusted to hand on to Count Tolstoi. He read two or three pages of it, and then, alluding to the Nihilists, condemned their methods most heartily. Mr. Kennan appeared rather to sympathise with their motives. Count Tolstoi appears only to do so partially, and, while he earnestly desires a revolution, declines to have anything to do with one brought about by violence. Mr. Kennan objected that violence might close the mouth of the peaceable revolutionist and prevent his teaching and thoughts from ever becoming public.

“But do you not see,” replied the Count, “that if you claim and exercise the right to resist by an act of violence what you regard as evil, every other man will insist upon his right to resist in the same way what he regards as evil, and the world will continue to be filled with violence? It is your duty to show that there is a better way.”

“But,” I objected, “you cannot show anything if somebody smites you on the mouth every time you open it to speak the truth.”

“You can at least refrain from striking back,” replied the Count; “you can show by your peaceable behaviour that you are not governed by the barbarous law of retaliation, and your adversary will not continue to strike a man who neither resists nor tries to defend himself. It is by those who have suffered, not by those who have inflicted suffering, that the world has been advanced.”

I said it seemed to me that the advancement of the world had been promoted not a little by the protests – and often the violent and bloody protests – of its inhabitants against wrong and outrage, and that all history goes to show that a people which tamely submits to oppression never acquires either liberty or happiness.

“The whole history of the world,” replied the Count, “is a history of violence, and 60you can of course cite violence in support of violence; but do you not see that there is in human society an endless variety of opinions as to what constitutes wrong and oppression, and that if you once concede the right of any man to resort to violence to resist what he regards as wrong, he being the judge, you authorise every other man to enforce his opinions in the same way, and you have a universal reign of violence?”

Count Tolstoi considers it necessary to labour for and help the poor by whom he is surrounded; but he is keenly alive to the danger of pauperising them. In doing this he runs counter to the ideas of organised society and the existing traits of human character. He declines to regard these as sacred and immutable, and is doing what he can to change them.

“Count Tolstoi then related with great fulness of detail the history of his change of attitude toward the teaching of Christ, and the steps by which he was brought to see that that teaching, rightly understood, furnishes a reasonable solution of some of the darkest problems of human life. He based upon it not only his opposition to resistance as a means of overcoming evil, but his hostility to courts of justice, established churches, class distinctions, private property, and all civil and ecclesiastical organisation in existing forms. His frequent references to the New Testament, and his insistence on the precepts of Christ as furnishing the only rule for the right government of human conduct, might lead one to regard Count Tolstoi as a devout and orthodox Christian, but, judged by a doctrinal standard, he is very far from being so. He rejects the whole doctrinal framework of the Christian scheme of redemption, including original sin, atonement, the triune personality of God, and the divinity of Christ, and has very little faith in the immortality of the soul. His religion is a religion of this world, and it is based almost wholly upon terrestrial considerations. If he refers frequently to the teachings of Christ, and accepts Christ’s precepts as the rules which should govern human conduct, it is not because he believes that Christ was God, but because he regards those precepts as a formal embodiment of the highest and noblest philosophy of life, and as a revelation, in a certain sense, of the Divine will and character. He insists, however, that Christ’s precepts shall be understood – and that they were intended to be understood – literally and in their most obvious sense. He will not recognise nor tolerate any softening or modification of a hard commandment by subtle and plausible interpretation. If Christ said, ‘Resist not evil,’ he meant resist not evil. He did not mean resist not evil if you can help it, nor resist not evil unless it is unbearable; he meant resist not at all. How unflinchingly Count Tolstoi faces the logical results of his system of belief I have tried to show.”

Count Tolstoi’s views as to his own action and practice have been recently published in an authorised interview which appeared in a Russian journal. He said:

“People say to me, ‘Well, Lef Nikolaivitch, as far as preaching goes, you preach; but how about your practice?’ The question is a perfectly natural one; it is always put to me, and it always shuts my mouth. ‘You preach,’ it is said, ‘but how do you live?’ I can only reply that I do not preach – passionately as I desire to do so. I might preach through my actions, but my actions are bad. That which I say is not preaching; it is only an attempt to find out the meaning and the significance of life. People often say to me, ‘If you think that there is no reasonable life outside the teachings of Christ, and if you love a reasonable life, why do you not fulfill the Christian precepts?’ I am guilty and blameworthy and contemptible because I do not fulfill them; but at the same time I say – not in justification, but in explanation, of my inconsistency – Compare my previous life with the life I am now living, and you will see that I am trying to fulfill. I have not, it is true, fulfilled one eighty-61thousandth part, and I am to blame for it; but it is not because I do not wish to fulfill all, but because I am unable. Teach me how to extricate myself from the meshes of temptation in which I am entangled – help me – and I will fulfill all. I wish and hope to do it even without help. Condemn me if you choose – I do that myself – but condemn me, and not the path which I am following, and which I point out to those who ask me where, in my opinion, the path is. If I know the road home, and if I go along it drunk, and staggering from side to side, does that prove that the road is not the right one? If it is not the right one, show me another. If I stagger and wander, come to my help, and support and guide me in the right path. Do not yourselves confuse and mislead me, and then rejoice over it and cry, ‘Look at him! He says he is going home, and he is floundering into the swamp!’ You are not evil spirits from the swamp; you are also human beings, and you also are going home. You know that I am alone – you know that I cannot wish or intend to go into the swamp – then help me! My heart is breaking with despair because we have all lost the road; and while I struggle with all my strength to find it and keep in it, you, instead of pitying me when I go astray, cry triumphantly, ‘See! He is in the swamp with us!’”

In this report of Count Tolstoi, it is impossible not to recognise the generous, just, and sympathetic man – the true Theosophist. He may be mistaken, but he is endeavouring to carry out the precepts of Christ. Not indeed, doctrinal Christianity, but to put in practice the actual precepts of the Master he follows. He does this as far as he can; and even with this little (as he says) he is accused of quixotism, and is obliged to stay his hand in order to keep up the example he affords. Why is this. For fear of interested relatives and the lunatic asylum. Here we have a man endeavouring to carry out “under an inspiration of his own,” the precepts laid down by the last of the world’s great teachers. What is the result of his endeavours? That he is in danger of the same fate that the author of “Modern Christianity a civilized Heathenism,” threatened Christ with, were he to return in the XIXth century – the lunatic asylum. Nothing is so intolerable to modern minds as an example of what they (unconsciously to themselves) recognise as that which they ought to follow, but do not. Therefore it has to be put out of sight. Since madness has been defined as a mental state which is in contradiction to the average mental state, it is evident that all religious reformers ought to be put away in a lunatic asylum.

It is quite possible to recognise what an extraordinary effect Count Tolstoi’s principle of non-resistance to evil would have. Still it is a strictly Christian one. Christ went further, and ordained that the other cheek should be offered to the man who smites. It might be argued that this would result in a tacit acquiescence in evil. But if it be so, the whole of the Count’s life is a contradiction to this, and a standing protest against the existence of those who create, or rather perpetuate, this evil. Every reform, this included, is a protest against doing at Rome what Romans do, or the laisser aller, which is the indolent curse of human progress. Count Tolstoi desires to see the reign of Christ on Earth, and in this accords well with the Theosophists who desire “Universal Brotherhood.” But neither of these can be effected save by the cultivation of the inner 62and spiritual man, so that it shall shine through and form the guide to the outer and physical man. But unfortunately the welfare of the latter is taken as the standard at present and humanity, without the spiritual man as a guide, is left to flounder in the ditch into which it has fallen.

Those who desire to follow Count Tolstoi, or to become real working Theosophists, may find something to think about in comparing his words with his actions. He endeavours to “go about doing good,” and to help his fellow men on the hard path of life. When it is followed it will be found that to run counter to the spirit of the age, and instead of the indolent laisser aller, to work not for self, but for humanity at large, is the hardest task ever set to men. Mankind as a rule does not want an example or to be worked for; both are rude awakenings from the lotus-eating state they desire to be left in. “Let us alone,” is their cry, and they resist with violence any attempt to rouse them.

But those who desire a greater unity than that which any race or nation can afford – the unity of the human race – the Universal Brotherhood – cannot leave them alone. There is a power which impels Count Tolstoi to protest against the reign of violence, and he truly replies, that the readiest means of continuing this reign is to meet violence by violence. Therefore he, by his writings, and his words and life, endeavours to place before men the noblest philosophy of life that he recognises, in answer to the appeal which is silently uttered from the hearts of many men and women in the world.

It is a cry of despair at the ignorance which surrounds them and to which the Theosophical Society, according to its avowed aims, is an answer. It is best described in the words of Tennyson –

An infant crying in the night,
And with no language but a cry.

A. I. R.

63

A Ghost’s Revenge

Early in the year 187–, the singular and distressing attacks of mental depression from which Sir Selwyn Fox had long been a sufferer, increased in frequency.

His son Gaston (twenty-four years of age, of medicine by calling and letters by choice), whose devotion to his father was intense, urged him to go to London and procure that skilled medical advice which was not to be had in the neighbourhood of the baronet’s country seat, in Northumberland. But Sir Selwyn was inflexible in his determination to see no doctor. Affectionate as his manner always was with Gaston, he even showed impatience when pressed on this point; and Gaston, forced to abandon it, fell back on his own skill in an endeavour to assign some tangible cause for his father’s malady. But in this he was hopelessly baffled.

Nothing in Sir Selwyn’s present state, no circumstance of his past history which was known to Gaston (who had rarely been apart from him since boyhood), excused or explained in any degree the melancholy which clouded his existence. His great fortune placed him beyond suspicion or suggestion of pecuniary embarrassment. All the surroundings of his home were well calculated to administer to the refined pleasures of a man widely known as an amateur of books and art. No entanglement of the affections could be supposed seriously to trouble the peace of one who had passed his meridian, and who, moreover, cherished still the memory of the wife he had long lost. He had friendships which, while they attested his worth, would have been sufficient in themselves to endear most men to life. Yet for months he had worn the air of a man to whom life was fast becoming an unendurable burden.

His own skill and experience failing to open to Gaston any method of coping with a disease whose hidden source and origin he could not divine, he was on the point of writing to a leading London physician of his acquaintance, when a circumstance occurred which saved him from the necessity of this step.

Sir Selwyn was alone in his room one evening when Gaston, who was reading in a room immediately beneath, heard sounds overhead which at once sent him upstairs to learn the cause. He had fancied that his father was speaking in a tone of troubled remonstrance to some unwelcome visitor, though he felt persuaded that no one, unless a servant of the house, could be with him at that hour. Hastening to his father’s room, his footsteps were arrested on the threshold by the 64spectacle which the half-opened door revealed to him. Sir Selwyn sat motionless and rigid in his chair; his face was colourless, and all the features stiff, while the eyes, dilated and staring, seemed, though they were fixed on space, to hold within their vision some object not perceptible to Gaston. This was the more remarkable that Gaston stood directly in his father’s line of sight, though it was certain that Sir Selwyn neither looked at him nor saw him. In a word, it was the gaze of a man who sees, or believes that he sees, an apparition.

Gaston took a step forward; the sound fell on the baronet’s ear and broke the spell which held him.

His first look was one of inexpressible shame, succeeded immediately by one of indescribable relief. If detection were painful, as it clearly was, it appeared as though the pain were almost lost in the necessity now forced upon him of disclosing the secret of his misery. Gaston was at his father’s side in a moment.

“What is it, father?” he cried. “What is it? You have seen something. Tell me what it is.”

Sir Selwyn, in whose expression, exhaustion and pain were mingled, fixed his eyes for a while on his son’s face before he replied:

“If I should tell you, Gaston, you would not believe it. I do not believe it myself. And yet I see it, and know that it is there.”

“I shall believe whatever you tell me, father,” answered Gaston.

“Gaston,” began the baronet, “you are a doctor, and have read, read widely in all branches of science. Tell me, do you believe that we who are in the body may see and know a spirit from the dead?”

“You believe, father, that you have seen such a spirit?”

“The whole force of my reason cannot persuade me otherwise,” answered his father. “All the powers of my mind compel me to deny it, and yet the thing is there before my eyes.”

The baronet had by this time regained his usual calm of manner, and his voice was resolute and quiet.

“Is it here now, father?” asked Gaston.

“Yes,” answered Sir Selwyn.

“Where, father? Point to me the place where it stands.”

“It stands now at my elbow, side by side with you.”

Gaston started involuntarily, the baronet’s tone bespoke such absolute conviction. He moved a step, and placed himself immediately at his father’s elbow.

“Do you see it now, father?” he asked.

“No, for you have taken its place. Yes! I see it again. It is on this side now, exactly opposite to you.”

There was in all this so little of the tone and manner of the mere spectre-ridden visionary, that Gaston could not but be impressed, and his alarm for his father’s state increased proportionately.

He began to question him in the direct matter-of-fact style of a doctor 65with his patient, inquiring into the particular nature of the vision, how often and in what circumstances it presented itself, whether his father were able to connect it with any event of his life, or whether it seemed to be causeless, a mere fabric of the imagination.

His object in this was to bring his father to exert his reason upon the matter, that so, if possible, he might end by convincing himself that he was haunted merely by some spectre of the brain. He was, however, only partially successful, and for this reason, that his father, while denying – and with perfect honesty of convincement – the reality of his vision, remained nevertheless persuaded that his bodily eye beheld it.

“I cannot well remember,” went on Sir Selwyn, “how many years it is since this spectre first began to haunt me. In the beginning I thought little of it; my health was more robust then than it has been in late years, and leading a more active life at that time than I am able to do at present, I had greater strength, both of mind and body, to assist me in banishing it from my thoughts and presence. Indeed, I could then at any time rid myself of the vision by a mere exertion of will; but I can do so no longer. It torments me now as it pleases. I am powerless against it.”

“Does the form resemble that of anyone whom you have ever known?” asked Gaston.

“Yes,” replied Sir Selwyn, after a moment’s pause.

“And the person whose spirit you believe this to be is now dead, father?”

“Dead many years,” answered Sir Selwyn.

“And what is there in the vision that troubles you so greatly, father?” asked his son.

“Its presence is tormenting,” replied Sir Selwyn, “because I feel that there is evil in it; it is malignant, and seems continually to threaten me.”

“Is it here still, father?”

“No, since we have been speaking it has vanished. I shall see it no more to-night; but it will return to-morrow, and in the end it will kill me.”

“No, father, no,” said Gaston affectionately, but gravely. “Let me entreat you not to give way. You see how this vision, whatever it may be, vanishes when you begin to reason upon it. The mere fact of our having discussed it together will enable you to combat it more resolutely. Do this, and the same power will revive by which you dispelled the vision when first it troubled you.”

Indeed, the closing words of Sir Selwyn’s confession, notwithstanding the quiet assurance with which they were spoken, had practically convinced his son that the case was one of hallucination. They continued talking on the subject until, at the baronet’s usual hour of retiring, they separated for the night, when Gaston was so far satisfied that his arguments appeared at last to have given his father a somewhat increased measure of self-confidence.

66At breakfast the next day, Sir Selwyn assured his son that he had slept well, and both in speech and look he was more cheerful than Gaston had seen him during a considerable period. It seemed, in short, as though the effect of their conversation the previous night had already begun to bear out the son’s prediction; nor, at the end of a week, did this good effect appear to have been in any degree dissipated. “I have not seen it once,” said Sir Selwyn, in answer to a question from Gaston. Another week passed, and a third, and the baronet declared that there had been no recurrence of the visions. He became very reticent upon the subject, and it was evident that he now shrank from any allusion to it. Gaston, on his side, was only too willing to avoid its mention.

It was at this time that Sir Selwyn received a letter from an old friend of his college days, now holding a high place in the Indian Government, reminding him of a long-promised visit, and begging him to fulfil his word without further delay.

A better invitation, thought Gaston, could not have arrived at a more opportune moment. Their pleasant English home had become charged for the baronet with associations which were wholly painful; a new scene and fresher interests would assist to push to completion the recovery which could not but be long delayed in his present situation. Sir Selwyn himself was of the same mind, and decided at once to accept his friend’s invitation.

Then arose in Gaston’s mind the question whether, in the circumstances, it were well or advisable that his father should make the journey alone. He thought it not advisable at all, and without plainly telling this to his father, begged that he might accompany him. But Sir Selwyn showed a strong reluctance to accede to this request, which was the more marked that father and son had never yet been separated on any tour of pleasure. Gaston continued to press his point, until he perceived, or thought that he perceived, what was his father’s reason for wishing to take this journey alone.

The thing which Sir Selwyn had striven for years to hide from his son he had just been forced to reveal to him. It was the sorrowful secret of his life, a secret which, to the baronet, had something of shame in it, and the revelation had been beyond measure painful to him. If, in one sense, the confession which had been wrung from him had brought father and son more closely together, it had, in another sense, placed a certain something between them of which the presence of Gaston was a constant reminder. With Gaston at his father’s side, the secret too was there. When Gaston’s delicate intuition had realised this for him, his entreaties to accompany his father were at an end. It was decided that Sir Selwyn should go to India alone, and in a fortnight from the receipt of his friend’s invitation he was on his way.

Gaston was desolate at home, and at the end of ten days or so he went to Paris, intending to stay a week there and return to England; 67but the weather was pleasant, and from Paris he began to wander, in leasurely fashion, southwards; and before he had quite made up his mind as to where he wanted to go, he found himself in Rome. Rome was chilly, and he had lighted on a bad hotel, so he remained but a few days, and went on to Naples. He would wait to see Rome, he said, until his father was with him.

After a fortnight in Naples, he was on the point of returning home, when he received a cable message from his father, forwarded with letters from England. Sir Selwyn had reached India safely and in good health, and thought it probable that his stay would be of somewhat longer duration than his arrangements on leaving England had contemplated.

The prospect of five or six solitary months in the castle in Northumberland had no relish for Gaston, so he resolved to extend his tour by an excursion to Sicily. Accordingly, he took steamer one evening from Naples to Palermo: the beautiful old city where the traces yet linger of Saracen and Norman; with the tideless sea in front, and the purple hills behind, and between the hills and the sea the little lovely plain of the Shell of Gold. Naples is beautiful, but brutal; a paradise peopled by savages: an Oriental languor softens the life of Palermo, as it tinges with melancholy the national songs; and the rural element which enters so largely into the character of the whole Sicilian people makes them something of Arcadians in a modern Arcady.

Gaston felt the charm of the place in an hour; the sense of want of companionship which had gone with him in his listless wanderings in Italy, here deserted him; he plucked ripe oranges in the garden of the hotel, and they became his lotos fruit, for he resolved that his wanderings should end in Palermo. He would remain here until his father returned from India.

But it chanced that there were few foreign visitors in Palermo that season, and within a week of Gaston’s arrival the hotel at which he stayed was emptied of all its guests, except himself and an old German baron, and the baron waited only for a steamer to take him to Malta, on his way to Egypt. An empty hotel in a foreign land is as cheerful an abode as a catacomb, and Gaston cast about for a change of quarters.

Strolling one day in a slumbrous corner of the town, where cypress trees stood sentinels at rusty iron gates, and the air smelled of lemon groves and roses, he was struck by the aspect of a tenantless and apparently deserted villa, walled within a garden, which, untended as it was, retained a certain monastic trimness. A weather-stained board over the iron gate, which was of fine workmanship, announced that the villa was to let. Gaston tried the gate, but it was locked. A broad-hatted priest who was passing at the moment, observing Gaston’s interest in the villa, stopped, took a pinch of snuff, and said that if the signor desired to have particulars of the place, he might obtain them from such 68a person in a street close at hand, which he indicated. Gaston thanked the father for his courtesy, and went to inquire if he could see the villa, with a view to hiring it for a short time.

At dinner that evening, the baron said that he expected to sail for Malta on the following day, and expressed his regret at leaving Gaston alone in the hotel. Gaston replied that he should be sorry to lose the companionship of the baron, but that he also was about to leave the hotel, and had taken a villa for the remainder of his stay in Palermo. He described the villa, and the baron, who spoke English well, exclaimed with a laugh:

“So! Is that the place? The Villa Torcello then has found a tenant at last!”

“Has it been long without one?”

“Nearly thirty years.”

“And what is the reason?”

“How! Did they not tell you? The Villa Torcello is the famous haunted house. Yes, I assure you, a real ghost! Are you not delighted? You may be able to make a story about it, you know, you who write novels.”

“And whose is the ghost?” inquired Gaston, whose associations with this subject were by no means pleasant.

“They ought to have told you about it,” answered the baron. “Some people do not like ghosts. I do not like them myself, though to be sure I have never seen a ghost. The house, as you know, is called the Villa Torcello, but that was not its original name. Years ago it was called the Villa Verga, after its first owner, Signor Udalrico Verga, a young Sicilian of good family, who was well known and very popular in Palermo. He lived there all alone, and was much visited by a priest, a very handsome young man, a little older than himself, with whom he was on terms of great affection. One morning, thirty years ago – I believe it was in this very month – the gardener of the Signor Verga found his master lying dead in the garden, with a bullet-hole in the temple. There seemed no reason in the world why he should have killed himself, and as no weapon was found near the body, or in any part of the garden, it was concluded that he had been murdered. Suspicion fell on the priest, though for no cause except that he had been more intimate with the Signor Verga than anybody else. They were never known to have had a quarrel, and as for evidence, not a scrap could be produced against the priest, who, they say, showed the deepest grief for his friend. Indeed he died, in great distress of mind, six months afterwards. Some people, who would always regard him as the murderer, said that remorse for his crime killed him; but though I have heard this story many times since I first visited Palermo, I could never see that there was any reason whatever to suspect the priest.”

“And the murder was never brought home to anyone?”

69“It has remained a mystery from that day to this,” replied the baron. “A year or two after the death of Verga, his brother went to live in the Villa, changing its name to that of a property of his own in Calabria, the name which it still bears. But he could not stay in it, for he said that he saw the spirit of his brother walking in the garden in the evenings, on the path where the body was found. Since he left it, the house has never been occupied. As to the ghost, many stories are told, but the favourite one is that it haunts the place seeking someone to avenge the murder. That is a strange notion, don’t you think, Herr Fox?”

The baron added no more to the story, and as he was busy with his letters during the rest of the evening, Gaston only saw him again to bid him good-bye on the following morning.

A day or two afterwards, Gaston settled himself in the Villa Torcello. His coming there created a momentary flutter of excitement in the quarter where the villa was situated; but this was not known to Gaston, who had neither friends nor acquaintances in the town.

He wrote to tell his father of his new residence, and to ask him whether he had visited Palermo in the tour he had made in Italy a few years before Gaston’s birth. One morning, the post from England brought him some flattering notices of a book he had published shortly before leaving, which made him think that it was time to set to work upon a new story. But the idea he was seeking did not come to him, and the indolent charm of his surroundings favoured no severe exertion of the intellect.

He walked in the town until it grew familiar to him; its avenues, and terraces by the sea, its deep shadowy gardens, its groves of orange trees and lemon; its narrow streets and the multiplied variety of the houses, with their odd and glaring contrasts of colour; its churches, where the religion of the west seems out of harmony with the architectural and decorative fashions of the east.

Sometimes he hired a carriage and drove out into the country, and these excursions were usually prolonged throughout the day. On one such occasion, he was returning late in the afternoon, and the vetturino was guiding his horses in lazy fashion in and out amongst a straggling file of mule-carts laden with wine, in a narrow lane on the outskirts of the town.

“What place is this?” called out Gaston presently, pointing to an old, discoloured building of considerable extent, which lay on the left of the road.

“Il Convento de’ Cappuccini, signor,” replied the driver, and (never rejecting a chance to rest) pulled up his horses, adding: “The signor no see Il Convento? Ma, è molto curioso, signor (but it’s a queer place).”

Gaston got down from the carriage, and at that moment a sandalled and brown-robed monk appeared at the entrance to the monastery.

70“Ecco il padre, signor!” (There’s the father), said the driver, pointing to the Capucin, who bowed to Gaston with a courteous indication of readiness to receive him.

Gaston went across, and was presently following the monk through an outer chamber of the monastery, empty and cold, with bare walls and a dark stone floor.

The monk stopped at a heavy wooden door, and taking a key from his girdle, turned to Gaston and said, in a mixture of Italian and broken English, which is here translated:

“The signor probably wishes to see our subterranean chambers. Many foreigners come here to see them. It is a very curious sight; we keep here the bodies of the wealthy Palermitans, whose relatives and friends assemble every year, on the Feast of All Souls, to visit them.”

While he was speaking he unlocked the door, which led into a vaulted passage with a flight of stairs beyond. A faint, sickly smell pervaded the corridor, which became stronger and more offensive as they began to descend the steps.

They went down to a dusky place, around which Gaston’s eyes wandered for a few moments with no certain gaze, until they grew accustomed to the dimness. The daylight, such feeble daylight as filtered into that dismal magazine of mummies, was fading fast.

The monk took a bit of candle from a ledge and lighted it; at once a strange and weird effect was produced.

Thousands of corpses, and skeletons, and horrible hooded figures which were of neither state, seemed in some manner to be awakened, seemed to rouse themselves, and take cognisance of Gaston and his guide.

Tighe Hopkins.

(To be concluded in our next.)

Note. – The Editors regret that they are unable to publish, as announced, the translation of the “Death of Ivan Ilyitch,” by Count Tolstoi, a complete translation having just been issued by Messrs. Vizetelly.

Literary Jottings

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 71-75

75

The following books have been received and will be noticed in early numbers of Lucifer: –

THE HISTORY OF THE ROSICRUCIANS, by Arthur E. Waite, and THE QUABALAH UNVEILED, by S. L. Mac-Gregor Mathers, from Mr. Redway; EARTH’S EARLIEST AGES, by G. H. Pember, from Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton; THE MYSTERY OF THE AGES, by the Countess of Caithness, from Mr. C. L. H. Wallace; AN ADVENTURE AMONG THE ROSICRUCIANS, by Dr. F. Hartmann, from the Occult Publishing Company, Boston; and NINETEENTH CENTURY COMMON SENSE, from the T. B. Lippincott Company, Boston, U.S.A.

76

Correspondence

INTERESTING TO ASTROLOGERS. ASTROLOGICAL NOTES – No. 1.

To the Editor of Lucifer.

We are told that, before judging a horary figure, we must ascertain if it is radical, and to decide this point several rules have been given. The first is with regard to the number of degrees on the cusp of the ascendant. Lilly says a figure is rarely radical if the first two or last three degrees of a sign ascend. Morrison fixes the limit at the first or second and last two degrees. Pearse gives the limit as the first and last five degrees, and Raphael as the first and last three.

All the laws of nature are harmonious and rational; but in the rule of the first two authorities, this harmony seems absent. Why should the limit be 1 or 2 degrees at the beginning of the sign and 2 or 3 at the end?

Again, as an exception to the above rule, Lilly says that a figure may be radical even when 27° or more ascend, if the number corresponds to his age; and when 1° or 2° ascend, if the querent be very young, and his appearance agrees with the quality of the signs ascending. And here again there is the same want of harmony. Why should the age of the querent have to correspond accurately in one case and only approximately in the other? Furthermore, no astrologers seem to have given a logical explanation of these rules.

On reflecting on this problem I reasoned thus. In ♏︎^[1] 29° 59´ 59´´ ♃︎ is absolutely without dignity; in ♐︎ 0° 0´ 1´´ he is in his house triplicity, and terms, a threefold dignity. Is it conceivable that this great change of power should be so sudden, as to be accomplished in less than 2 seconds of space? Analogy shows that it is probably otherwise, and that as the planets and cusps of houses have orbs of influence, so also have the signs.

If this be true, it supplies the key to the above problem. If only the first or last few degrees of a sign ascend, then the cusp of the ascendant is within the orbs of the adjacent signs, and the house is not ruled solely by the planet which is its proper lord, but also partly by the planet ruling the adjacent sign; and this must hold good under all circumstances, even when the number of the degrees ascending agree with the age of the querent, or the ascending sign and planets therein describe him.

Furthermore, if this be admitted, it also follows, as a logical conclusion, that if the first and last few degrees of a sign are on the cusp of any house, no conclusion can be drawn with certainty from the aspects of the lord of that house.

The exact limits of the orbs of the signs must be decided by experience; I am induced to fix the limits at 2° 30´ and 27° 30´.

NEMO.

To the Editor of Lucifer.

The belief in the power and efficacy of talismans and amulets was, at one period of the world’s history, universal. Even during the XVth century, the latest among the innumerable revivals of civilisation, the majority of learned and cultured men had a profound conviction of their reality. But such ideas are now scouted by popular opinion, because the philosophy underlying them is not understood. Lucifer, therefore, would certainly confer a boon on many by throwing light on the following points: –

(1). Wherein does the power of a talisman lie? (2). How far does its efficacy depend on the signs traced upon it, and how far on the power and knowledge of the maker? (3). Granting that will-power and knowledge are the main factors in imparting to the talisman its power, how does that power remain attached to it after the death of the man who made it.

β

Theosophical and Mystic Publications

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 77-79

From the Note-Book of an Unpopular Philosopher

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 80

No. 2 – October 1887

The Lady of Light

G. Massey · pp. 81-82

The Signs of the Times

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 83-89

Self-Knowledge

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 89

Comments on “Light on the Path”

Mabel Collins · pp. 90-96

Will and Desire

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 96

A Law of Life

A. Keightley · pp. 97-101

[The great watch-word…]

J. W. Keightley · pp. 101

102

A Ghost’s Revenge.

(Conclusion.)

Gaston paused at the entrance to the chamber, and even detected himself in taking an involuntary step backwards, for the singular illusion was heightened by the circumstance that many of the figures which were suspended perpendicularly from the walls, and had fallen a little forward, looked as though they were trying to let themselves down. But the monk, nothing concerned, went stolidly on down the long narrow chamber, which had other chambers, or corridors, leading out of it in several directions. To speak more correctly, there was a series of vaults, branching several ways, some of which were shut off from the rest by open-work screens or gates of wool.

The walls on either side were piled high with coffins, the greater number of which had one of their sides of glass, exposing to view the hideous shrouded tenants. By whatever art it had been sought to preserve these bodies from decay, Nature had declared in every instance that it should not be, and no ghastlier assemblage of mummified and mouldering corpses could have mocked the grief of the relatives who should have given their dead to the grave. On the blackened and distorted faces of some, it was not difficult to read a look of supplication which the parted and fleshless lips seemed striving to translate in this way: “Take us away from this dreadful place and hide us in the decent earth.”

They lay there, all of them, in their coffins, in wrappings of linen, silk, and velvet; men, and women, and children, and little infants; priests, nobles, merchants – a world of dead ones; hundreds and thousands of them.

Upon the faces of some, decay seemed working with a kind of fantastic cruelty: punching a hole in the cheek or forehead; pushing one eye from its socket, and leaving the other; stripping the skin from one side of the face, and leaving it like a bit of wrinkled parchment on the other.

Some were made to laugh from ear to ear; some had the corners of the mouth drawn down and the features twisted, as though pain haunted them in death; others looked defiant, derisive, amazed, indignant. The majesty of death had fled from all of them, mockery and shame had come to take its place. The worms were being avenged on these who should have gone to feed them. Silent and rotting, they had no part in either world; and shrinking continually within their coffins, they cried mutely on decay to hasten his work, and give them the boon of nothingness.

103Above the line of coffins, on both sides of the chamber, hundreds of clothed and hooded creatures – skeletons in all except the face, which for the most part retained its covering of dried and tarnished skin – were suspended from the walls. Each had a ticket pinned to its dress, bearing the name and the date of death.

It was these figures on the walls which gave the chamber its most dreadful aspect. Some were suspended by the neck, like suicides left there for an example. Others in various gruesome fashions parodied the attitudes of life. There was a grotesque group composed of three figures which had tumbled together in such a manner that the two on either side appeared to whisper into the ears of the third. Some had the neck awry, the head on one side, in a listening or questioning attitude; of others the head had sunk forward on the narrow breast. The jaw of some had dropped, and protruded a row of teeth, with a savage or jeering air.

Every variety of grimace and grin was shown on those appalling faces; and as Gaston passed down the chamber fingers poked at him from gaping sleeves; he was laughed at, mocked at, scowled at; and when he looked behind him, all these skeletons were laughing, mocking, and scowling at one another. Many of the faces were little else but grinning mouths, and to those whose mouths stood wide open his imagination gave voices, so that the vaults seemed filled with the cries and laughter of the dead.

The monk went steadily on in front of him, waving his candle to and fro; and as the smell was nauseate and oppressed the nostrils, he spat occasionally upon the floor.

His bit of candle burnt itself out before he had taken Gaston completely round, and he returned to fetch another, leaving Gaston in a corner of the vault where the light was a mere glimmer. Right opposite to him in this place was a massive coffin with rich chasings, whose grisly inmate was wrapped from head to foot in a mantle of black velvet. Every particle of flesh had melted from the face, the hair had fallen from the head, the eyeless sockets stared from the depths of the velvet hood. The skeleton was richly dight and finely housed; it was Death himself lying in state.

The monk came up with a fresh candle, and Gaston stooped down and peered into the coffin. Above the figure’s head was affixed a miniature on ivory, which represented a young man in the first prime of life, of a refined and beautiful countenance. In the folds of the mantle a card had tumbled, and stooping lower, Gaston read on it the name of Udalrico Verga. There was a small round hole in the skull, just over the left temple.

“Ucciso, signor!” (Murdered!) said the monk, behind him.

The Italian word sounded softly in the lips of the monk; but there was the tell-tale hole in the forehead.

104This then was the hero and the victim of that old tragedy; this was the end of him! But for his punctured skull, he might have changed places with any of the least repulsive of his skeleton companions. But his little bullet-hole marked him out from all of them. Curiously, the hood had slipped off from the left side of the skull, and as this was the side next to the spectator, the bullet-hole compelled attention to itself at once.

The story of the murder which the baron had told to Gaston, and with which his thoughts had many times been occupied in the Villa Torcello, came before him again; and looking at the stark remains of the victim of that forgotten crime, he felt a sudden and irresistible longing to know its secret. If he could win it from the coffin there! But the grim rest within would be disturbed no more. And the young man pictured there beside the skeleton? Murder had no meaning for him; he had not come to know it when he was pictured thus. The face impressed Gaston strangely. He looked at it long, till he began to fancy that behind its delicate beauty he saw the tokens of a latent sensuality. But it was a face of singular sweetness, and if any evil were there, it existed only in the colourless form of a suggestion.

And the priest, who had died a suspect? Was he here, and did death whisper anything against him? No, the monk said; the priest was a native of Syracuse, and after his death his body had been carried there.

Gaston had seen enough; the chamber and its horrid tenants had given him a sense of physical sickness; and, above all, some curious malign influence seemed to issue from the coffin of Udalrico Verga, which was working its way into his brain.

The words of the Baron came into his mind: “They say the spirit haunts the place, seeking some one to avenge the murder.”

Placing a five-franc note in the hand of the monk, he left the chamber and the monastery at once; and entering the carriage, he was driven home.

By morning he had shaken off the morbid effects of his visit to the Capucins’; but his imagination had become the seat of a vague and indefinable oppression. This, at length, when analysed, resolved itself into a certain feeling of injury on account of Udalrico Verga. The wonderful amiableness, joined to an almost womanly beauty, of the face he had seen imaged in the coffin, had touched his sympathies; and now the memory of it began to lay hold on his affections. For what cause, and by whose hand, had the young Udalrico died so brutally?

The tale of the murder stuck in his mind; it possessed him; it would not be dislodged. And the tale, though begun a whole generation since, was still unfinished. It told that Verga had been murdered; but who had murdered him?

This question uttered itself again and again; it grew importunate. One evening in particular it became a kind of clamour in his ears; 105when, walking by moonlight in the garden of the villa, he was suddenly conscious that a presence other than his own was with him. Turning about, he beheld vividly, at a distance from him of twelve or fifteen paces, the figure of a young and elegant man. The view of this figure which his eyes took in, and the impression which it made upon his mind, were so distinct, that, but for a single circumstance, he would have suspected nothing abnormal in the appearance. The features were those of Udalrico Verga.

His reason still urging him to reject the testimony of his sight, Gaston advanced nearer to the figure. It remained motionless, outlined distinctly in the moonlight, on the path bordered by a row of pepper trees where the body of Verga had been found. Again Gaston went forward; he could now by stretching out his hand almost have touched the figure; his eyes looked straight into the eyes of the man whom he knew to have lain for thirty years in his coffin. While gazing fixedly and with fascination upon this creature from the grave, which, though he knew it to be bodiless, seemed full real to him, Gaston felt his senses being subdued; and, before he could exert will enough to repel an influence which flowed in upon him as it were waves of blinding light, he was rapt out of himself, and held for the space of a minute or so in what is best described as a magnetic sleep or trance. He remained upright and rigid; his brain a whirl of excitement, with an accompanying painful consciousness; the body of the emotion being a confused and very indefinite feeling of fear – whether for himself or for some other person, he did not know. This feeling becoming slightly more definite, he knew that the fear he felt was not for himself, but for another; yet who that other was, he could not tell. It was the same when a voice said plainly in his ear, that what had been begun must be finished; the voice was piercing in its clearness, and he knew that it was the voice of one dear to him; but whose, he could not divine.

This curious sleep lasted, as I have said, for about a minute; and when Gaston awoke he was standing precisely as he had been when seized in the trance. He looked for the apparition; it was not there. He moved to the path, placed himself on the very spot where, but a minute before, the form in the likeness of Udalrico Verga had stood. There was nothing. He looked round him; from this path he could see over the whole garden; it slept motionless in the moonlight, and his was the only figure in it. Gaston returned to the house in a condition of extreme nervous excitement.

In this condition, and almost before he had reached the room in which he usually sat, the story of the murder was flashed in upon his mind; he read it as plainly as if it were traced in English characters on the wall before him. Fancying himself still under some abnormous influence, which when it passed away would carry the story with it, he at once sat down and committed an abstract of it to paper.

106All that night, the story swam in his brain, and rising early next morning, he resolved – or rather was impelled – to commence writing it immediately. He did so, and in the full light of day the wraith of Udalrico Verga stood beside him, and he plainly saw it, during the whole time his pen was at work. But the vision had no longer any weakening or retarding effect upon his brain; rather its effects were quickening and coercive; and these effects increased, till it became a certainty to him that from the visible presence of the spirit of Verga he drew the main strength of his inspiration. The story grew under his pen to an elaborate romance, upon which, sustained throughout by an elation of mind that allowed little repose to the body, he was at work during many weeks.

In all this time, he never passed beyond the grounds of the villa, and when, by-and-bye, his face began to show marks of the mental and bodily stress to which his task subjected him, the peasant people of the town, who saw him walking in the garden sometimes of an evening, used to say:

“There is the English signor who went to live in the Villa Torcello eleven weeks ago; he used to go out every day, but it is nine weeks since he passed the gate. He cannot get out any more. He has seen the ghost of the Signor Verga, and it keeps him there. He grows like a ghost himself.”

But the story was finished at length, and Gaston sent the manuscript to his publishers in London. The ghost of Verga, which had remained visibly before him during the whole period of composition, vanished on the day the work was ended, and was never seen by him again. He went out every day as he had done formerly, and exercise brought back the colour to his face, and restored the tone of his mind. At this time he thought no more about the story than that it was a strange one, which had come to him in a strange manner, and that it ought to bring him the fame in fiction which he coveted.

A letter from Sir Selwyn, in which he said that he was on the point of starting for home, determined Gaston to return thither at once, that he might have everything in readiness for his father’s coming.

On the evening before his departure, while sorting a bundle of papers, he came upon a portion of manuscript of his story which he remembered having set aside as needing to be re-cast. He took it up and began to read it.

The tragedy which formed the climax of the romance, had this feature, that the man who was murdered had (unconsciously, and by a singular operation of fate) planned his own death in planning that of the friend whom he falsely believed to have betrayed him in love. The chapter upon which Gaston had lighted, was devoted to a minute analysis of the character of the man whom blind force of circumstance had driven to an act of murder which his affection for its victim had rendered abhorrent in the highest degree.

107So remote from the ordinary had been the conditions under which the story was composed, and so small (it had seemed to Gaston) was the share of its inspiration which his own brain could claim, that now, within a few weeks of its composition, he read it almost as the work of another.

This exotic notion, that his own was not his own, deepened as he read further into the chapter, for something was there which disquieted him. Some shadowy unembodied likeness, and yet no likeness, but a faint whispering of resemblance; some voiceless hint that was but the failure of an echo. He turned back, and read again. It was not there, he had deceived himself. He shut the page, his mind at ease.

In a week from this time, he was home again, awaiting the coming of his father. Sir Selwyn landed in England a month later, and Gaston, who received him at the vessel’s side, was shocked at his appearance. Sir Selwyn’s handsome face seemed not so much to have aged as to have withered; the body, too, was shrunken, and desiccated, as though the vital fluids were exhausted. The nervous irritation of manner which had characterised an earlier stage of the disease, had given way to a species of torpor, in which even speech seemed an effort. It was the mental and bodily paralysis of melancholia in its acutest form.

The journey home was a sad one. What little Sir Selwyn said, told the story of the renewal of his sufferings, which dated from the day that he had written to Gaston of his intention to return to England. “But I am persuaded,” he said in conclusion, “that it draws near the end.”

Strangely enough, however, as Gaston thought, and quite contrary to his expectations, the sight of his beautiful home revived Sir Selwyn’s spirits. They dined together, and the baronet showed a brighter face over his wine. He sent for his bailiff, and spent an hour or more discussing the affairs of his estate. Afterwards, he walked with Gaston through the gardens and park, and began, for the first time, to talk of his travels. Then he questioned Gaston about his Italian tour, and said:

“What did you do with yourself all those weeks in Palermo? You mentioned no writing; but I am sure your pen was not idle so long.”

“No,” said Gaston. “I wrote a famous story there. I did not mean to tell you of it until it was published. It was to be a surprise, for this is the book that is to make me famous.”

“Come, that sounds well!” said Sir Selwyn. “But you are beginning to be famous already. What could have been better than the reviews of your last book which you sent me?”

“Oh, but this one will do twice as much for me!” laughed Gaston.

“I am glad you feel that. No one could be more delighted than I am to hear it. Have you dedicated it to me, Gaston?”

“Otherwise, my dear father, it would be no book of mine.”

108“Thank you, Gaston. You know how dear your fame is to me.”

In another month, during which Sir Selwyn’s health, with some fluctuations, had shown, on the whole, a disposition towards improvement, Gaston’s romance was published.

On the day on which some copies were forwarded to him from the publishers, he had gone on business to the neighbouring town, and did not return until late in the evening.

Sir Selwyn’s valet, an old and devoted servant who had been with his master for many years, met him at the door, pale, and terrified.

“Sir Selwyn has been taken strangely ill, sir,” he said. “We can none of us tell what is the matter with him. He rang his bell an hour ago, and when I went upstairs he was looking like a ghost, sitting up quite stiff in his arm-chair, with one of your new books in his hand. It seemed like a dead man speaking when he asked how soon you could return, and said that no doctor was to be sent for. He would not let me stay with him either, and, indeed, though I’ve known Sir Selwyn these forty years, I believe I should have been almost afraid to do so sir, he looked so terrible. I remained close outside; but there’s not been a sound in his room ever since, sir.”

Fears which, even in thought, he dared not shape, came like a wave upon Gaston, as he hurried to his father’s room.

Death, or his image, sat there, in Sir Selwyn’s chair; or rather, the baronet’s aspect, as Gaston beheld him, grey and rigid, was like the phantom Life-in-Death; as though a corpse had been galvanised for a moment into a ghastly appearance of life. The jaw had begun to fall and the eyes were large and glassy; but the regular rising and falling of the breast showed that mechanical life was not yet extinct. Open on the ground beside Sir Selwyn lay Gaston’s new romance.

The spirit had all but taken its departure; but when Gaston bent over his father and pleaded for recognition, there was a faint twitching of the brow, and a half-convulsive movement of the whole body, as though the spirit were trying to force an entrance again; and Sir Selwyn, by an effort, fixed his eyes on his son’s face. His voice struggled in his throat, and he said, with a pause between every word:

“When I knelt beside him – for I still loved him – he said: ‘You have killed me, but I will never leave you, and one day I will come back from the grave and kill you.’ He has kept his word. This is not your book, Gaston, it-is-Udalrico’s. This is my – ”

The voice stopped. Sir Selwyn was dead. The Ghost of Udalrico Verga was avenged.

Tighe Hopkins.

The Origin of Evil

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 109-119

[Man will regain his lost Eden…]

J. W. Keightley · pp. 119

The Great Paradox

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 120-122

122

“Fear is the slave of pain and Rebellion her captive; Endurance her free companion and Patience her master. And the husband of Pain is Rapture. But the souls are few in whom that marriage is consummated.”

(L. S. C.).

The Blossom and the Fruit

Mabel Collins · pp. 123-133

[Spirituality is not what we understand by the words ‘virtue’ or ‘goodness’…]

J. W. Keightley · pp. 133

[The discovery and right use of the true essence of Being…]

J. W. Keightley · pp. 133

Desire Made Pure

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 133

134

Thoughts on Theosophy.

“The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life,” this is the keynote of all true reform. Theosophy is the vehicle of the spirit that gives life, consequently nothing dogmatic can be truly theosophical.

It is incorrect, therefore, to describe a mere unearthing of dead letter dogmas as “Theosophic work.”

When a word, phrase, or symbol, having been once used for the purpose of suggesting an idea new to the mind or minds being operated on, is insisted upon irrespective of the said idea, it becomes a dead letter dogma and loses its vitalising power, and serves rather as an obstruction to, than as vehicle of the spirit; but, alas, this insistance upon the letter is too often carried on under the honoured name of “Theosophy.”

A man cannot acquire an idea new to him unless it grows in his mind.

The mere familiarity with the sound of a word, or a phrase, or the mere familiarity with the appearance of a symbol, does not, of necessity, involve the possession of the idea properly associated with the said word, phrase or symbol. To insist, therefore, on the contrary cannot be theosophical; but would be better described as untheosophical.

It would certainly be theosophical work to point out kindly and temperately how certain words, phrases and symbols appear to have been misunderstood or misapplied, how various claims and professions may be excessive or confused as a consequence of ignorance or vanity, or both. But it is quite another thing to condemn a man or a body of men outright, for certain errors in judgment or action; even though they were the result of vanity, greed or hypocrisy; indeed such wholesale condemnation would, on the contrary, be untheosophical.

The one eternal, immutable law of life alone can judge and condemn a man absolutely. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.”

Were I asked how I would dare attempt “to dethrone the gods, overthrow the temple, destroy the law which feeds the priests and props the realm; I should answer as the Buddha is made to answer in the Light of Asia: ‘What thou bidst me keep is form which passes while the free truth stands; get thee to thy darkness.’”

“What good gift hath my brother but it comes from search and strife (inward) and loving sacrifice.”

*
* *

Correspondence

Are the Teachings Ascribed to Jesus Contradictory?

G. Massey · pp. 135-138

[Letter on the teachings of Jesus]

G. Wyld · pp. 135

Are the Teachings Ascribed to Jesus Contradictory? – continued

G. Massey · pp. 135-138

138

[Any “Bishop Egyptologist,” or even Assyriologist, of whom we have heard there are not a few in England, is cordially invited to defend his position in the pages of Lucifer. The “Son of the Morning” is the Light-Bearer, and welcomes light from every quarter of the globe.

– Ed.]

[Note. – As Lucifer cannot concur in the exclusively exoteric view, taken by Mr. Massey, of this allegorical, though none the less philosophical, scripture, the next number will contain an article dealing with the esoteric meaning of the New Testament.

– Ed.]

To the Author of “Light on the Path.”

There is a sentence in your “Comments” which has haunted me with a sense of irritation: “To obtain knowledge by experiment is too tedious a method for those who aspire to do real work,” &c. Have we any knowledge, of whatever sort, that has been of use in the world, which has been obtained otherwise than experimentally? By patient and persistent toil of sifting and testing, we have obtained the little knowledge that is of service to us. Is there such a 139thing as “certain intuition”? Has intuitive knowledge, if such there be, been accepted as positive knowledge until it has been submitted to the test of experiment? Would it be right that it should be? Your illustration of the “determined workman” brings the question down (as I think the question should be brought) to the plane of practice. Is there any workman who can know his tools until he has tried them? Is not the history of knowledge the history of intuitions put to the test of practice? Intuitions, or what we call such, seem to me quite as apt and likely to deceive us as anything in the world; we only know them for good when we have tried them.

Interrogator.

[Reply to “To the Author of Light on the Path” by Interrogator]

Mabel Collins · pp. 139-140

140

Note. – Several questions which have been received are held over to be answered next month.

To the Editors of Lucifer.

In the interesting and lucid article on “Karma” in your number of September 15th, everything seems to hinge on the theory of re-incarnation. “Very well,” says the author of that paper, “let us take the principle of re-incarnation for granted.” But is not this a rather unphilosophical way of handling a subject of such gravity? Take this or that principle for granted, and you may go about to prove anything under the sun. It is the old weakness of begging the question. Is it not this taking for granted what cannot be proved, and is not attempted to be proved, that has led astray speculators – both scientific and religious – everywhere and in every age, and is it not upon similar assumptions that the whole monstrous fabric of theology rests? Of course, in every kind of speculation one is compelled to set out with an assumption of some sort; but then the first thing the reader demands is, that the grounds shall be shown upon which the assumption rests; the assumption, whatever it be, must be made good before one can be asked to accept that which is to be raised upon it. And here comes in my question: What is the warrant or sanction for the principle of re-incarnation? What is the principle grounded upon? Do we undergo re-incarnation, and how do you know it?

Having set out with the assumption, the author does not return to it again, and at the end of the article I am as uninstructed as at the outset respecting the pivotal principle upon which all that follows seems to turn.

Interrogator.

The author of “Karma” will go into this question fully in a paper devoted entirely to the subject of re-incarnation. The two subjects are inextricably interwoven, but it was decided that to treat the two at the same time would produce too great a confusion, and offer too wide an area of speculation for the mind to grapple with. Therefore this course was adopted of taking the principle of re-incarnation for granted. It is possible that the second paper should have come first, but the two theories stand side by side, not one before the other, so that the question of precedence was a difficult one. But it is necessary, in view of this blending of the ideas, that the reader shall have the complete presentation of both before him, and then draw his conclusions. Therefore indulgence is asked until the papers dealing with each subject are completed. As many readers may have felt the same difficulty as our correspondent, we are glad to insert this letter and reply.

– Ed.

Reviews.

The Kabbalah Unveiled

W. W. Westcott · pp. 141-145

“An Adventure Among the Rosicrucians”

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 145-148

149

Tabula Bembina Sive Mensa Isiaca. The Isiac Tablet of Cardinal Bembo. Its History and Occult Significance.

By W. Wynn Westcott, M.B. Bath. R. H. Fryar, 1887.

This work is a monograph of 20 foolscap folio pages, on the celebrated Isiac Tablet. It is well and clearly printed in good-sized type on good paper, and has for frontispiece a well-executed photogravure of the Tablet itself, from a drawing made by the author some years previously. It is written in the clear style which distinguishes Dr. Westcott’s writings, and in all quotations chapter and verse are scrupulously given. Three centuries ago this Tablet greatly exercised the minds of the learned, and continued to do so till the researches of modern Egyptologists began to throw some doubt upon its authenticity as a reliable specimen of ancient Egyptian art; since which time the interest in it has gradually declined. Undoubtedly occult, as its meaning and symbolism alike are, we feel that this monograph will be of service to all lovers and students of the mystical ideas of ancient Egypt. The first thing which strikes the eye of even the most careless observer is the careful and systematic arrangement of the figures and emblems in triads, or groups of three, which system of classification prevailed in the religious symbolism of the Egyptians. The Tablet, again, is divided by transverse horizontal lines into three principal portions, Upper, Lower, and Middle, the latter being sub-divided by vertical lines into three parts, the centre of which is occupied by a throned female figure, flanked on each side by a triad, of which the central figure in each instance is seated. Thus the Upper and Lower portions of the Tablet give each a Dodecad sub-divided into Triads, while the central portion forms a Heptad. This at once corresponds to the symbolism of the ספר יצירה, Sepher Yetzirah, Chapter VI., § 3.

“The Triad, the Unity which standeth one and alone, the Heptad divided into Three as opposed to Three and the Centre Mediating between them, the Twelve which stand in war ... the Unity above the Triad, the Triad above the Heptad, the Heptad above the Dodecad and they are all bound together each with each.”

Commencing with a description of the Tablet, Dr. Westcott gives as much as is known of its history, quoting from Kircher, Keysler, Murray, and others. It appears that it was first discovered in Rome, at a spot where a Temple of Isis had once stood. After the sack of Rome by the Constable De Bourbon, it fell into the hands of a smith, who sold it to Cardinal Bembo for a large sum. At his death it came into the possession of the Dukes of Mantua, at the taking of which city in 1630, it passed into the hands of Cardinal Pava. It is now in the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities at Turin. The dimensions are 4 ft. 2 in., by 2 ft. 5½ in. Thus its experiences during the last few centuries have been rather stormy.

After mentioning Æneas De Vico and Pignorius, Dr. Westcott gives us an extensive digest of the views of Athanasius Kircher, from whose plate in the 150“Œdipus Ægyptiacus” the photogravure at the commencement is taken. Kircher undoubtedly more nearly grasped the esoteric design of the tablet than any one except Eliphas Levi, and his attempted explanation marks him alike as a profound scholar and an advanced mystic, notwithstanding the great disadvantages with which he had to contend in the utter ignorance of Egyptology as it is now understood, which prevailed at the date at which he wrote.

Quotations and notes from Montfauçon, Shuckford, Warburton, Jablonski, Caylus, Banier, Mackenzie, Kenealy, and Winckelman follow the excerpts from Kircher, and we then come to the views of modern Egyptologists on the subject, notably those of Professor Le Page Renouf as expressed to Dr Westcott in person. The reasons they assign for doubting the authenticity of the Tablet are briefly these: – that they consider the execution of the work stamps it as a Roman production; that the hieroglyphics will not read so as to make sense; that the running pattern with the masks would never have been employed by an Egyptian; and that some of the best known Egyptian deities are conspicuous by their absence. In answer to these attacks Dr. Westcott wisely remarks that

“it is a gross absurdity to suppose that any man capable of designing such a tablet, over which immense energy, research, and knowledge must have been expended, to say nothing of the skill displayed in its execution, should have wasted his abilities in perpetrating a gigantic hoax; for that is, I suppose, what some modern writers mean who call it a ‘forgery’; but a forgery is a deceitful imitation. How it can be called an imitation considering that its special character is that of being different to any other Stelé or Tablet known is not clear; and how it can be a deceit is also incomprehensible, since it bears no name or date purporting to refer it to a definite author or period.”

On page 16 Dr. Westcott observes that the Four Genii of the Dead are conspicuous by their absence, but he seems to overlook their representation in figure 41 of the Limbus, where the sepulchral vases beneath the couch have, as usual, the heads of the Genii of the Dead.

A quotation, together with a plate from Levi’s “Histoire de la Magie,” follows this, together with a disquisition on the Taro, which has so much exercised occult students of late. Altogether the book is an extremely interesting production, and Dr. Westcott puts forward his own views on the subject with much clearness.

151

Earth’s Earliest Ages
and Their Connection with Modern Spiritualism and Theosophy.

By G. H. Pember, M.A. (Hodder & Stoughton).

To meet with a book like this in the last quarter of the nineteenth century is like meeting a Pterodactyl strolling along the Row in the height of the season. But more careful perusal, while augmenting the reader’s wonder, mingles with it a certain respect for the writer’s courage and unflinching logic.

Granting his fundamental premiss – the verbal inspiration of the Bible – and accepting his first principle of interpretation, his argument is at least consistent, and is weakened by no half-hearted pandering to the facts of experience or the discoveries of science.

To quote Mr. Pember’s primary canon, he assumes –

I. “That the first chapter of Genesis, equally with those which follow it, is, in its primary meaning, neither vision nor allegory, but plain history, and must, therefore, be accepted as a literal statement of facts.”

On this basis he gives an interpretation of Genesis, the main idea of which is the interposition of “The Interval” between the creation and the “Six Days” described in the text. During this period the earth was wholly given over to Satan and his host, and the “Six Days” creation was, according to Mr. Pember, the restoration and reformation of the world from this chaos of confusion.

But space forbids to follow the author into details, since one-half of his volume is devoted to the subject indicated in its sub-title, and this portion is of greater interest to readers of Lucifer.

As an accurate and thorough student of the work of those he condemns, Mr. Pember stands unrivalled. He has both read and understood a very large part of the literature of Theosophy and Spiritualism. His quotations are fair and well chosen, his comments strictly moderate in tone and entirely free from any personal animus. And these traits are the more surprising since the author has certainly got the “Powers of the Air” very much on the brain. It is hardly even a rhetorical expression to say that it is his firm and unshakeable conviction, that all persons who do not hold the same views of Biblical criticism and Scriptural exegesis as Mr. Pember, are, to the extent of their difference from him, serving the Powers of Evil, the Personal Devil, the Antichrist, whose coming he expects in the very near future.

On this point only Mr. Pember does not seem to have the courage of his opinions; perhaps he does not see, or seeing does not realise, the inevitable conclusion to which his arguments point. But then he may, after all, take refuge in the famous credo quia absurdum.

The author, moreover, is sure to meet with scant sympathy even from the materialists to whom he is most nearly allied in thought. For he accepts, en bloc, the phenomena and wonders of spiritualism as of occultism, and never attempts even to question their reality. Meanwhile, he believes in the 152resurrection of the physical body after death, in a physical kingdom of Christ upon earth, and so on. Indeed, his views are the most remarkable compound of pure materialism and wholesale acceptance of the psychic and so-called supernatural that have ever appeared in print.

To sum up, a few passages may be quoted to give an idea of the spirit of Mr. Pember’s treatment of this part of the subject, which at the same time will be the most telling criticism of his book to the minds of those who have grasped the ideas of which he speaks.

“... the existence, in all times of the world’s history, of persons with abnormal faculties, initiates of the great mysteries and depositors of the secrets of antiquity, has been affirmed by a testimony far too universal and persistent to admit of denial.... He who would be an adept must conform to the teaching of those demons, predicted leaders of the last apostasy, who forbid to marry, and command to abstain from meat.”

^[2]“We have never met with a single reported instance of a spirit entering the lower spheres with the glad tidings, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” On the contrary, among Spiritualists, as with Theosophists and Buddhists, sin can be expiated only by personal suffering.... “Sin,” shrieks the familiar of “M. A. Oxon,” “is remediable by repentance and atonement and reparation personally wrought out in pain and shame, not by coward cries for mercy, and by feigned assent to statements which ought to create a shudder.”

Mr. Pember, therefore, believes in vicarious atonement in its crudest form? He teaches that “repentance and faith” save man from the consequences of his actions!

After describing the “Perfect Way” as “an ecclesiastical compound of Heathenism” (with a capital H), the author proceeds to expound the doctrine of reincarnation as therein set forth. Nothing can be fairer or more correct than this exposition, at the conclusion of which we read:

“Jews, Christians, Buddhists and Mahommedans ... will become able to unite in a universal belief that sin is expiated by transmigrations and in the worship of ‘the Great Goddess’. The conception of a second league of Babel has been formed in the minds of Theosophists.”

And even then, would not such a league be better than the sectarian wars, the religious persecutions, the tests and disabilities which still disfigure Christendom in the name of religion?

Further on the author refers to the occult axiom that “whereas God is I AM, or positive being, the Devil is NOT, and remarks:

“There is little doubt that the culminations of the Mysteries was the worship of Satan himself... It would appear, then, that from remote ages, probably from the time when the Nephilim [the fallen angels of Satan’s Host] were upon earth, there has existed a league with the Prince of Darkness, a Society of men consciously on the side of Satan, and against the Most High.

“The spells by which spirits may be summoned from the unseen are now known to all; and those unearthly forms which in past times were projected from the void only in the labyrinths, caverns, and subterranean chambers of the initiated, are now manifesting themselves in many a private drawing-room and parlour. Men have become enamoured of demons, and ere long will receive the Prince of the Demons as their God.”

Theosophy, says Mr. Pember, will become the creed of the intellectual and the educated, while Spiritualism influences the masses of mankind. And he traces the influences of Theosophy and Buddhism in “Broad-Churchism, Universalism, Comtism, Secularism, and Quietism.” Nay, even under the Temperance movement he spies the lurking serpent of esoteric teaching and guidance, and he cites letters from Christian friends complaining that these and other 153philanthropic movements are being swamped, and their periodicals occupied by Theosophists, who work on Buddhist principles.

In his concluding chapter, the author sums up a truly formidable array of evidences to prove that “the advocates of modern thought array themselves against every principle of the early revelations of the Divine Will,” apparently since they deny and repudiate the following “cosmic or universal laws”: –

I. The law of the Sabbath.

II. The headship of the man over the woman.

III. The institution of marriage [i.e., they practise celibacy].

IV. The law of substitution, that life must atone for life, and that without shedding of blood there is no remission, as taught in type by animal sacrifices. Latter-day philosophers affect the utmost horror of such a salvation, and will have none of Christ.

V. The command to use the flesh of animals as food.

VI. The decree that “whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.”

VII. The direction to multiply and replenish the earth.

The charge of disobedience to such laws as these every mystic will joyfully admit, with the cry, “Happy will it be for all things living when such laws shall no longer be obeyed by any living creature.”

These laws, the disobedience to which Mr. Pember so much regrets in the later schools, date from the dark past when man had to form his physical existence and root it upon the earth. If they are some of the early revelations of the “Divine Will,” that is no reason why they should rule mankind when its condition is changed and it is emerging from the darkness of Materialism, and losing, from its natural growth towards that Divine will, the desire for physical existence. The Mosaic laws were made by the Jehovah, the God of anger and cruelty. In spite of the strange inconsistency by which the followers of Jesus Christ, the teacher of a gentle and sublime faith, read in their churches these Mosaic laws, yet they are empty words from a past of bloodshed to the humane or religious man. The occultist professes even more than religion – he dares to avow himself a follower of the light, an aspirant towards knowledge, and one who is determined to live the noblest life knowledge can indicate. What to him are the laws of murder, of the shedding of blood, of marriage and giving in marriage? It is not his aim to help people the earth, for he desires to lift himself and others above the craving for earth-life. He commits no murder, for all men are his brethren, and he no longer recognises the brutal law of the criminal, by which, when blood is shed, blood must be again shed to wash it away. He can have no interest either in the straightforward laws of the past, or the complicated modern law of the present – which permits of many things the Jews would have been ashamed of. The only law he recognises is that of charity and justice.

There is a charming page in the Introduction, a ring of genuine sorrow for the failure of certain missionaries in their cowardly attack upon the theosophical leaders, as refreshing as it is ludicrous. The Jeremiad runs in this wise: –

“It would seem that the attack of the Madras Christian College upon Madame Blavatsky has by no means checked the movement in which she has been so conspicuous an actor, and, apparently, the failure is nowhere more manifest than in Madras itself. It was confidently predicted that the High Priestess of Theosophy and Buddhism would not dare to show her face again in that city. Nevertheless she did so, and ... received a warm welcome, not merely from the members of the Theosophical societies, but also from the members of the various colleges and from many other 154persons. She was conducted in procession from the shore to the Pancheappa Hall, and was there presented by the students with an address of sympathy and admiration, to which, among other signatures, were appended those of more than three hundred members of the very Christian College whose professors had assailed her.”

And he adds, “Satan is now setting in motion intellectual forces which will be more than a match for the missionaries, if they persist in carrying on the warfare in the old way.”

Too much praise cannot be rendered to Mr. Pember for his fairness and impersonality. He writes as becomes a scholar and a gentleman, and though one may smile at his intellectual blindness and stand amazed at the mental capacity which can digest the views which he maintains, one cannot but respect his earnestness, his thoroughness, and his mastery of the subject.

B. K.

Isaure and Other Poems.

By W. Stewart Ross.

The poem which gives its name to this volume of ringing verse is, as may easily be conjectured, the lament of a poet over his love torn from him by inexorable death.

A true instinct has taught the author that it is such hours of agony as this, such piercing of the heart, such fierce and burning torture, which reveal to the noble soul capable of intense suffering the inner truths and realities of life.

To quote:

“I stand on the cis-mortal,
  And I gaze with ’wildered eye,
To the mists of the trans-mortal,
  And the signs called Live and Die.
.   .   .   .   .   .   .
Let me dream in this cis-mortal,
  And the noblest dream I can.
.   .   .   .   .   .   .
Let me dream far from the formulæ,
  And I may dream more nigh
To the sable shore of mystery,
  And the signs of Live and Die.”

Some passages in this opening poem are instinct with the breath of mysticism, and rouse a keen desire that Mr. Stewart Ross had become acquainted, in that period of his life when this book was written, with the wider and grander view of life as a whole, of its purpose and meaning, of its laws and its realities, which occultism affords to a mind capable of grasping them.

Surely the man who could write:

“For death and life are really one.”

And again:

“For the mystic Part is gathered
Unto the mystic Whole.
And the vague lines of non-Being
Are scribbled o’er thy soul.”

155must have the power to sense the keener air of the subtle life and grasp its glorious promise.

What pilgrim of the path has not felt:

“Hard-paced the iron years have gone
  Over my head since then;
I’ve haunted in a waking dream
  The paths of living men;
But of this world my kingdom’s not,
  Like him of Galilee,
For I grasp hands they cannot feel,
  See forms they cannot see.”

In “Leonore: A Lay of Dipsomania,” one of the most terrible sides of human life is depicted with a vividness which tortures the reader, and flings a gloom on the inexorable sweep of life, fitly in keeping with the vision pictured in “A Nightmare.” A mystic, struggling with the negations of modern science, battling to assert the intuitive knowledge of his true self against its captious intellectualisms, speaks through this picture of desolation and decay, protesting against the disappearance of all that is great and valuable in life under the waves of oblivion.

But no man in whom the spark of true poetic inspiration burns can ever in the depths of his own heart accept the lifeless, empty, unreal phantom which materialism offers as the aim, the purpose, the fulfilment of life. We hope, therefore, that Mr. Stewart Ross will some day give us a volume of poetry in which his true power and insight will find expression, and which will enroll his name on the list of those who have given new life to men.

One cannot fill a vacuum from within itself.

L.S.C.

Many a man will follow a misleader.

L.S.C.

It is not necessary for truth to put on boxing-gloves.

L.S.C.

You cannot build a temple of truth by hammering dead stones. Its foundations must precipitate themselves like crystals from the solution of life.

L.S.C.

When a certain point is reached pain becomes its own anodyne.

L.S.C.

Some pluck the fruits of the tree (of knowledge) to crown themselves therewith, instead of plucking them to eat.

L.S.C.

Theosophical and Mystic Publications

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 156-157

158

Correspondence

INTERESTING TO ASTROLOGERS. ASTROLOGICAL NOTES – No. 2.

To the Editor of Lucifer.

The ancients assigned to the planets certain signs and degrees, in which they were essentially dignified, being there more powerful for good, and less powerful for evil; these were called their House, Exaltation, Triplicity, Term, and Face. Opposite to the first two were the places where they were essentially debilitated, being there less powerful for good and more powerful for evil; these were called their Detriment and Fall. Whether the latter three dignities have three corresponding debilities has not been stated.

To the seven known planets, the ancients apportioned the twelve zodiacal signs as their respective houses or chief dignity, thus: ☉︎ ruled ♌︎, and ☽︎ ruled ♋︎, both by day and night; while the remaining ten signs were divided between the remaining five planets, each planet ruling two signs, one by day and the other by night. But when ♅︎ and ♆︎ were discovered, the question arose where to place them.

A. J. Pearce, the present editor of Zadkiel’s Almanac, has suggested that, as they were more remote from ☉︎ than was ♄︎, they should have the same houses and exaltations as ♄︎. Raphael dethrones ♄︎ from ♒︎, and proclaims that ♅︎ reigns in his stead. Both these suggestions involve serious difficulties, nor do they settle the question once and for all with regard to any planets which may yet be discovered. It seems unlikely that planets of such diverse natures as ♄︎, ♅︎, and ♆︎ (not to mention any still more distant planets) should all bear equal rule in the same two signs, and to depose ♄︎ from his throne, pre-supposes a grave error on the part of the ancients, whose teaching on this point has been handed down with complete unanimity from the dim past: necessitating, also, a further process of dethronement, and a further ignoring of the teachings of antiquity, as further planetary discoveries are made.

The first Raphael (the late R. C. Smith) rejected the ancient nocturnal and diurnal division of the Houses and Triplicities, in which he is followed by his successor. It appears to me that it is here that the error, with its consequent difficulties, first arose; and that by observing this distinction, ♅︎ and ♆︎ easily find their homes, with room to spare for their yet undiscovered brethren.

It is obvious that Astrology can never become an even approximately perfect science, unless we are able in our calculations to take fully into account the influence of ♅︎ and ♆︎. With this end in view, I have been endeavouring, in my leisure moments, to solve the problem. To a certain extent I have been successful; and though I have not yet been able to substantiate all my conclusions as fully as I could wish, yet I deem it is the best interests of the Science to make them now public, that their truth or falsity may be as speedily as possible established by the investigations of astrologers generally.

My conclusions are the following: that the ancient Diurnal and Nocturnal divisions are quite correct, so that if a figure is drawn for any time between sunrise and sunset, the planets which rule by day the signs on the cusps of the houses of the significators must be chiefly, and sometimes exclusively, considered; and vice versâ.

The Houses of the new planets are, I believe, these:

♒︎, which is the day-house of ♄︎, is the night-house of ♅︎.

♊︎, which is the day-house of ☿︎, is the night-house of ♆︎.

♍︎, which is the night-house of ☿︎, is the dayhouse of ♅︎.

♓︎, which is the night-house of ♃︎, is the dayhouse of ♆︎.

The first two I have verified by horary figures drawn for the time of an event; the latter two I consider as highly probable, but have not yet been able to thoroughly substantiate them.

159There is an old tradition (Esoteric Science in Human History, p. 180) that there are 12 principal planets in our solar system; this leaves 4 more to be discovered. It will be seen at a glance that these 4 will fill up the vacant signs, two planets ruling each sign, one by night and the other by day. The only alteration which will then have to be made will be to consider ☉︎ to rule ♌︎ by day only, and ☽︎ to rule ♋︎ by night only; this, however, will be only in accordance with nature: moreover, the fact that the ancients assigned only one house each to ☉︎ and ☽︎, and two to each of the other planets, denotes some essential astrological difference between them.

With regard to the other essential dignities, Raphael considers ♏︎ to be the exaltation of ♅︎; I am inclined to believe ♒︎ to be the exaltation of ♆︎. In the Triplicities there is a curious want of harmony; each, according to the ancients, being ruled by two planets, one by day and the other by night, except the watery triplicity, which is ruled by ♂︎ only. There seems to be no reason for this discrepancy, except the all-powerful one that there was no other known planet to share his dominion. I have ascertained that ♆︎ has strong dignity in ♏︎, and conclude that he rules the watery triplicity, probably by night. Furthermore, I believe ♅︎ rules the airy triplicity. As for the Terms and Faces of the planets, they also, like the Planetary Hours, require re-arrangement so as to bring in ♅︎ and ♆︎, but in what way this is to be done, I have not yet been able to discover.

I will take this opportunity of saying, in reply to inquiries, that the best books for beginners are Raphael’s Horary Astrology for that branch of the Science; A. J. Pearce’s Science of the Stars for Mundane and Atmospheric Astrology; A. J. Pearce’s Text Book of Astrology for Nativities, to be worked out by Primary Directions; and Raphael’s Guide to Astrology for the same, worked out by Secondary Directions excited by Transits. Raphael’s works are published by Foulsham and Co., 4, Pilgrim Street, E.C.; and Pearce’s works may be procured from the author, 54, East Hill, Wandsworth, S.W.

Nemo.

To the Editors of Lucifer.

For the purpose of correcting any prejudicial suspicion or erroneous misrepresentation of myself, arising from the insertion of the note at the end of the “Bath Occult Reprint Edition” of the “Divine Pymander” or as associated with the Society of the “H. B. of L.,” known to me only through the names of Peter Davidson and T. H. Burgoyne, alias D’Alton, Dalton, &c., and whose secretary is announced to be “A convicted felon, and the supposed adept to be a Hindu of questionable antecedents,” I wish it to be understood I have now no confidence, sympathy, or connection therewith, direct or indirect, since or even prior to the date hereof, viz., May, 1886.

Yours truly,
Robt. H. Fryar.
8, Northumberland Place, Bath.

From the Note Book of an Unpopular Philosopher

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 160

No. 3 – November 1887

"Let Every Man Prove His Own Work"

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 161-169

161

“To the Editors of Lucifer.

“What a grand chance is now open in this country, to the exponents of a noble and advanced religion (if such this Theosophy be^[3]) for proving its strength, righteousness and verity to the Western world, by 162throwing a penetrating and illuminating ray of its declared light upon the terribly harrowing and perplexing practical problems of our age.

“Surely one of the purest and least self-incrusted duties of man, is to alleviate the sufferings of his fellow man?

“From what I read, and from what I daily come into immediate contact with, I can hardly think it would be possible to over-rate in contemplation, the intense privation and agonizing suffering that is – aye, say it – at this moment being endured by a vast proportion of our brothers and sisters, arising in a large measure from their not absolutely having the means for procuring the bare necessaries of existence?

“Surely a high and Heaven-born religion – a religion professing to receive its advanced knowledge and Light from ‘those more learned in the Science of Life,’ should be able to tell us something of how to deal with such life, in its primitive condition of helpless submission to the surrounding circumstances of – civilization!

“If one of our main duties is that of exercising disinterested love towards the Brotherhood, surely ‘those more learned’ ones, whether in the flesh, or out of it, can and will, if appealed to by their votaries, aid them in discovering ways and means for such an end, and in organising some great fraternal scheme for dealing rightly with questions which are so appalling in their complexity, and which must and do press with such irresistible force upon all those who are earnest in their endeavours to carry out the will of Christ in a Christian Land?

“L. F. Ff.
“October 25, 1887.”

"Let Every Man Prove His Own Work" – continued

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 161-169

The Demand of the Neophyte

Mabel Collins · pp. 170-172

The Esoteric Character of the Gospels

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 173-180

The “Square” in the Hand

A. Kingsford · pp. 181-185

185

Freedom.

Know, striving soul, on truth intent,
That not with words by mortal sent –
  Faint shimmerings of earthly light –
Shall ever-living truth be taught,
Or light to gild the path be bought,
  That leads us upward from the night.

But govern mind with ordered will,
Subduing this with knowledge still,
  Fanning the spark within that glows,
The essence of that power divine,
The pledge to man from mystic time,
  The light from thrones above that flows.

Then may the spirit, bathed in light,
Soar upward from the realms of night,
  No more a fettered earth-bound thing,
But freed from clay, and doubt, and slime,
Triumphant over death and time!
  To the eternal ever cling!

P. H. D.

The Invisible World

A. P. Sinnett · pp. 186-192

192

The Mystic Thought.

When will come rest? Is it alone the silent grave
  That can bring true peace to the restless soul
  That striving, yearns to reach some distant goal,
Toss’d like a boat on the crest of a mighty wave?
Is there oblivion in the cold, dark tomb
  To dull the heart and kill the abject fear
Which loads the sense, when unknown dangers loom
  From regions that our sense perceives not here?
When from the soul goes forth the mystic thought
  That we have higher purpose than we know,
  And each must reap the fruit he cares to sow,
Or learn the duties he himself has taught:
Can this be killed? – no, surely! – but that lamp can save
That burns within us here – and burns beyond the grave.

P. H. Dalbiac.

The Blossom and the Fruit

Mabel Collins · pp. 193-202

The Science of Life

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 203-211

Sin Against Life

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 211

Brotherhood

T. B. Harbottle · pp. 212-215

215

Pythagoric Sentences of Demophilus.

Esteem that to be eminently good, which, when communicated to another, will be increased to yourself.

Be persuaded that those things are not your riches which you do not possess in the penetralia of the reasoning power.

As many passions of the soul, so many fierce and savage despots.

No one is free who has not obtained the empire of himself.

Blood-Covenanting

G. Massey · pp. 216-225

226

Correspondence.

Correspondence Addressed to the Author of “Light on the Path.”

I.

“What are the senses called astral, in reality? Are they not really spiritual, seizing on the inner essence of things and interpreting it. The ordinary psychic or clairvoyant surely does not use the astral senses? Yet he sees things which we do not see. It would be well to explain this.”

B. K.

Correspondence Addressed to the Author of “Light on the Path” – reply I

Mabel Collins · p. 226

227

II.

“Are not the astral senses used by every great poet or inventor though he does not see clairvoyantly at all? i.e. does not see elementals, astral pictures, forms, &c.”

Faust.

Correspondence Addressed to the Author of “Light on the Path” – reply II

Mabel Collins · p. 227

227

III.1.

“There is a law of nature which insists that a man shall read these mysteries for himself. Will all men seeking the occult path read these mysteries alike, or will each man find the interpretation peculiarly adapted to his own phrase of development. No two men read the mysteries contained in the Bhagavat Gita quite alike, each gains the glimpses of light which he is able to assimilate and no more.”

Correspondence Addressed to the Author of “Light on the Path” – reply III.1

Mabel Collins · p. 227

227

III.2.

“Is the outer world the reflection of the world within? like a shadowed reproduction in clumsy form, the inner being reality?”

Correspondence Addressed to the Author of “Light on the Path” – reply III.2

Mabel Collins · p. 227

227

III.3.

“How is the intuition to be developed which enables one to grasp swift knowledge?”

Correspondence Addressed to the Author of “Light on the Path” – reply III.3

Mabel Collins · p. 227

227

III.4.

“Can the laws in super-nature only act on their own plane, or can their reflection be brought down intact in their own purity to govern physical life.”

Correspondence Addressed to the Author of “Light on the Path” – reply III.4

Mabel Collins · p. 227

227

III.5.

“To be incapable of tears” – does not that mean that the physical emotions, being merged into the inner physical, that tears are impossible as being an outward phase of the physical nature – whereas the psychical emotions, to use a physical term are vibratory.

Correspondence Addressed to the Author of “Light on the Path” – reply III.5

Mabel Collins · p. 227

228

III.6.

“How is one to take the snake of self in a steady grasp and conquer it?”

W.

Correspondence Addressed to the Author of “Light on the Path” – reply III.6

Mabel Collins · p. 228

228

IV.

Wallasey, Oct. 1st.

Referring to the comments on “Light on the Path,” in the first number of Lucifer, may I ask whether the full paradox “Before the eyes can see they must be incapable of tears, and yet no eyes incapable of tears can see,” i.e., see good or God, is not truer and stronger than its part?

“Therefore the soul of the occultist must become stronger than joy and greater than sorrow” I presume means that he must not seek joy or fear sorrow, not that he may not enjoy nor sorrow?

The phrase by itself may read “Before the eyes can see they must be incapable of tears,” tearless, dry, in fact dead! which is obviously not the author’s intention in “Light on the Path.”

Yours truly,
A. E. I.

Correspondence Addressed to the Author of “Light on the Path” – reply IV

Mabel Collins · p. 228

228

V.

(1.) I desire very strongly to obtain conquest over “self;” would my using the occult means for so doing, which apparently to me lie without the ordinary experience of Christians, necessitate my sacrificing any iota of my belief in the power of Christ?

(2.) If I submit myself to the occult conditions under which the four first rules in “Light on the Path” may be “engraved on my heart and life;” will these conditions permit me to pray throughout for the Divine help and strength of the Eternal Christ, who has passed the portal, opened the “way,” and whom I believe to be the “Master of Masters,” the “Lord of Angels”?

(3.) Do the words – “the disciple” ... “must then so shut the gates of his soul that no comforter can enter there nor any enemy” – mean, that we are wilfully to exclude ourselves from any desire for the sympathy, strength, and support of the spirit of One who said “No man cometh unto the Father but by Me,” and who drank the cup of agony to the very dregs for love of the Brotherhood?

L. H. Ff.

Correspondence Addressed to the Author of “Light on the Path” – reply V

Mabel Collins · p. 229

229

VI.

“Is there any chance of self-deception? May one enter the path so gradually as to be conscious of no radical change, representing a change of life or stage of progression? How is it with one who has never experienced a great and lasting sorrow, or an all-absorbing joy, but who in the midst of both joy and sorrow strives to remember others, and to feel that he hardly deserves the joy, and that his sorrow is meagre in the presence of the great all-pain? How is such a one to enter through the gates? By what sign shall he know them?”

Y. H.

Correspondence Addressed to the Author of “Light on the Path” – reply VI

Mabel Collins · p. 229

229

“Esoteric Buddhism.”

“As the Editors of Lucifer kindly invite questions concerning Theosophy and kindred subjects, an honest enquirer into these matters would welcome an answer to the following difficulty:

“In his book on ‘Esoteric Buddhism,’ Mr. Sinnett states that souls or spirits pass the long interval between the one incarnation and another in a sort of quiescent, and at least half-unconscious, state, losing enough of their identity to preclude their carrying any recollection of one incarnation on to the next. In his novel, “Karma,” Mr. Sinnett represents one character, Mrs. Lakesby, gifted with more than usual powers, as being very fond, when she has the chance, of allowing her spirit to escape from the trammels of the body and 230meeting the spirits of departed – that is, dead friends – “and others” on the Astral plane where she holds agreeable converse with them.

“How are these two statements reconcilable?

“October 22nd, 1887.
N. D.”

[Editorial reply to “Esoteric Buddhism” by N. D.]

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 230

230

“Being courteously invited to address any questions bearing on the matter contained in Lucifer to the Editors, Madame la Marechale Canrobert would gladly know: – First, What is the distinction made (page 11) between the soul and the starry spirit? Is it that soul which is again alluded to (page 91) as the animal soul, in opposition to the Divine soul? Second, What are the external forms of the individualised being spoken of also on page 91?”

[Reply to the questions on the soul and the starry spirit by Madame la Maréchale Canrobert]

Mabel Collins · pp. 230

Reviews.

The Real History of the Rosicrucians

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 231-236

236

“Nineteenth Century Sense.”

Sense! What is “sense”? A word meaning either little or much; simple and clear to the understanding, or various and carrying with it many connotations. It is one or other according as we measure the depth, the thoroughness, or the reality of the knowledge acquired. From a purely physical “sensation” we may trace the word through endless shades of signification; through “good” sense, “sound” sense, through the artistic and finer sensibilities, the “moral” sense, till it loses itself in the vague hint of a dim, unformed consciousness, pointing the way to the new world of the “inner senses.”

All these meanings and more are connoted by the phrase “Nineteenth Century Sense;” ^[4] for, by a daring metaphor, the tools which modern science places at our disposal are considered as “senses,” and even the faculty and power of analysis is sometimes included under the word.

Beginning with the simplest, the reader is led on to the most astounding phenomena of modern spiritualism in the first thirty-seven pages of this strange work. The author depicts in vivid language his own experiences, and the triumphs of phenomena produced by one of his personal friends, in a style which is often quaint and striking, though at times the writer’s disregard of many of the accepted rules of composition becomes – to say the least – irritating. But the matter of his book earns forgiveness for the manner in which it is formulated.

After carrying his reader to a pitch of interest and expectation as to the phenomena he describes, Mr. Darby suddenly plunges him into the frozen sea of scepticism by stating that all the phenomena produced under what seemed the strictest test conditions, were produced by conjuring and legerdemain, and by explaining the physical causes of some of the visions he has so graphically described. It will suffice to cite a single instance in illustration.

“The President of the American Branch of the Indian Society of Theosophists (Professor Coues) ... spent an evening with me some time back in conversation on the subject of psychical phenomena. We parted at midnight. 237At seven o’clock the next morning I suddenly awoke, beholding the astral of the professor standing at my bed-side.”

This vision Mr. Darby explains by reference to the fact of the persistence of retinal images and the super-excitability of the nerves and brain. “Astral projections,” he concludes, “are of precisely similar significance.” We would feel obliged to the eminent American professor of physiology referred to if he would give his written opinion on the question thus raised. For Theosophists have heard of persons whose brains were in complete repose and fully occupied otherwise who have also seen the astral form of Professor Coues. How’s this?

He concludes, nevertheless, that materialistic agnosticism is the only “creed”? Far from it. This portion of the book is purely introductory; it forms the five door-steps leading to the Spiritus Sanctus – the laboratory of the Divine Spirit.

From this black depth of doubt and confusion, the reader is lifted suddenly into the clear ether, and his feet are placed on the “Rosicrucian Way.”

Whether called “Rosicrucian,” or by whatever other name, the “Way” is the “Way of Life,” the path which leads to freedom, to wisdom, to true living. Whole pages might well be quoted; a few aphorisms must suffice.

“A thing is to the sense that uses it what to the sense
It seems to be; it is never anything else.”

Many passages recall “Light on the Path,” though Mr. Darby probably never saw that book; but life is one, and true occultism is one.

Speaking of mankind as divided into two classes, men in whom is the Holy Ghost, the Divine Spirit or the Logos, he says:

“With people self-wise or over-sufficient, with the proud and the uncharitable, with all who are without understanding as to the common good being the only good, with him who fails to see that gifts are in men as almoners only – with all these the Holy Ghost is absent, otherwise so lacking in measure as to be incapable of making itself felt.”

The italicised passages give the key-note of the true science and art of living. To quote again:

“Settled into tranquillity by entirely satisfactory recognition of noumenon through phenomenon an end is reached where instrument is prepared and ready for use. Analysis has shown the Rosicrucian what he is; more than this – what he can become as to his Ego. If out of his understanding, he puts office [the service of others. – Ed.] before self, he learns directly of the God, as the God comes to live in and to make use of him.”

“Proving to one’s self that one’s self is God”; and again, “God ... the One is in all; the All is in one.”

The next chapter contrasts strangely with the one just quoted from – strangely, that is, to the outer sense. The one full of deep philosophy, of questionings of God, the Self, the World, clothed in the profound and significant paradoxes in which wisdom finds expression; the other an idyll, a sketch of nature, deeply coloured by the influence of Walt Whitman, whose style, perhaps, has had too great an influence on Mr. Darby, who has caught its jerky and unpleasant strings of detached sentences.

238This is Chapter V.; Chapter VI. deals with Matter in its relation to the Ego, the spirit of the treatment being indicated by the following conclusion:

“That there shows itself, out of a process of exclusion, conducted even only so far as the analysis of matter, a something which is not matter. The analysis demonstrates the something to be of individual signification; further, that it is to it what a flute or other instrument is to harmony.”

The final words express a purely occult doctrine, which is worked out at length in the succeeding chapter on the Ego.

This is the fundamental thought of the book, the last fifty pages of which describe the author’s individual experiences in nascent psychic development.

They are not of a very striking character, but exhibit with sufficient clearness the early forms of this new growth. Unfortunately, the author seems to have lacked the desire to pursue the road thus opened to him, and the final pages of his work are but a lame and halting conclusion to a remarkable production.

The book is well adapted for those who stand halting on the verge of mysticism, while for the student who has advanced further, its pages may serve as a means for helping others.

The Editors of Lucifer beg to acknowledge the following books, which will be noticed in future numbers: –

From Messrs. Ward and Downey: “A Modern Magician,” by Fitzgerald Molloy. “Twin Souls.”

From Messrs. David Nutt & Co.: “The Gnostics and their Remains,” by C. H. King.

From the Authors: “Natural Genesis,” by Gerald Massey. “Sepher Yezirah,” by Dr. Wynn Westcott. “Palingenesia,” by “Theosopho and Ellora.” “Mohammed Benani,” by Ion Perdicaris. “Lays of Romance,” by W. Stewart Ross.

From George Redway: “Posthumous Humanity,” translated by Col. H. S. Olcott.

⁂ The Editors regret that the pressure on their space prevents their noticing in detail the various Theosophical Magazines: – The Theosophist, The Path, Le Lotus, and L’Aurore. A full summary of their contents for November and December will appear next month. The same remark applies to a letter on “Karma,” received from Mr. Beatty, which will be published and fully answered next month.

From the Note Book of an Unpopular Philosopher

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 239-240

No. 4 – December 1887

"Lucifer" to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Greeting!

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 241-251

Emerson and Occultism

C. Johnston · pp. 252-257

The Blossom and the Fruit

Mabel Collins · pp. 258-266

266

Twilight.

I sit alone in the twilight,
Dreaming – but not as of old;
Blind to the flickering fire-light,
Mystic visions my spirit enfold.

What means this struggle within me,
This new hope of a far-off goal?
This fighting against superstition,
That would fetter my awakening soul?

Why cannot I pray as I once did,
For self before all the world?
Whence came the flash of lightning
That self from its pedestal hurled?

But what if I’m struggling blindly,
What if this new hope is vain,
Can I go back to my old faith?
A voice whispers – “Never again.”

So I will press forward – believing
Hands unseen will guide to the goal,
And tho’ dim yet the light on my pathway,
Nirväna breathes peace to my soul.

K. D. K.

267

The Spirit of Healing.

It is somewhat difficult to say what real or theosophical work is when exactly defined, and, in consequence, it becomes very easy to speak of an effort as untheosophical – that is not sufficiently unselfish in motive. The fact is that the word Theosophy has such a very wide meaning, embracing, as it does, the true spirit of all creeds and religions, and confining itself to none in particular, that no work done in the spirit of truth and wisdom is really untheosophical. Hence, unless the speaker is possessed of more knowledge than ordinary men concerning the causes which underlie our actions, the application of the word untheosophical is incorrect. In fact, if it is once granted that it is possible to work from an impersonal standpoint in favour of a particular creed or religion, that work becomes theosophical in character. Thus it is only work (in the widest sense of the word and on all planes) from the personal standpoint, and which, therefore, militates against Universal Brotherhood, which can really be described as untheosophical. But this by no means presupposes that work which has outwardly the appearance of theosophical genuineness is not really selfish. It is, of course, the old story of the wolf in sheep’s clothing. We do but need one example – the truly-called profession of Medicine. We constantly hear of the wonderful self-sacrifice of medical men; of men who die at their posts rather than desert a possible case in times of epidemic and cholera; of men who suck tracheotomy tubes with almost certain death by diphtheria staring them in the face; finally we hear, though but seldom, of the honest, earnest devotion of a lifetime in places and districts where the fees are so small that it is barely possible for the doctor to live on his earnings. These are the heroes of the profession. Their work, for the most part, consists of an unselfish devotion to the alleviation of suffering, culminating in a final sacrifice of their personal selves – for death is nothing less than this. But we must turn to the less favourable side of the picture – the struggle not for a living, but for wealth, and work, fired by ambition and the search for fame. Of course, apart from the personal, selfish element in it, the ambitious struggle in other professions than those of the Church or Medicine is of no great or unnatural harm; but in these two cases it is more than harmful, it is a degrading betrayal of trust. It is Simonism with a vengeance; yes, kind friends, it approaches very nearly to the case of Judas, who held the bag, and betrayed his Master with a kiss. It may be asked why this sweeping denunciation is made of the two noblest professions; of those two which, considered from the ethical standpoint, consist of devotion to the service of man? The reason 268is not very far to seek. The power which true healers possess – healers alike of body and soul, is not one which can be sold for money or bartered for wealth and fame. At least, if the possibility does exist, it bears a suspicious resemblance to the old idea of selling one’s soul to the devil in exchange for power and prosperity. It may be replied to this that there is no harm in bartering knowledge of drugs, of pathology, diagnosis of disease, surgical skill, etc. – in short, all the knowledge acquired by education – for money. I answer No! for it is material given for material, and nothing more. But these are not the sole properties of the true healer, and those who do not possess these other properties I speak of are not healers, and while they may profess medicine^[5] and may be in it, are yet not of it.

As regards the Church and its professors of religion, the case is even worse; they have no material products of education to barter, and for the most part are contented with telling their flock to “do as I bid you, and not as I do.” But among them there are noble examples of unswerving unselfishness and devotion, although for the most part those who enter the Church are too young to understand fully the nature of their high calling. Unfortunately the call in too many cases is not a call to minister and heal souls, but to make a living and heal the souls in the process. But again, it may be asked, what are these wonderful powers which constitute the true healer, and which are not to be bought or sold? The first one which occurs naturally to the mind is the power of sympathy. The old joke in Punch about “the good bedside manner” has a considerable substratum of truth when divested of its unpleasing folly. The substratum of that manner is that which is given by sympathy; and this is one of the first elements which constitute the power of healing. It gives the power of suffering with the patient and therefore of understanding what the sufferer is enduring. It is beyond diagnosis, although it assists it by being much surer – at least, as to the reality of the suffering. But this power of sympathy only expresses a part of the meaning of the power to heal. Sympathy tends to annihilate the personal distinctions between the healer and the sufferer; it tends to exalt the consciousness of the healer not only to know the remedy for the disease, but to be himself the power of cure, and also it is a vast occult power in virtue of which all the “elder brethren” of the Universal Brotherhood live their lives; in virtue of which the world’s great enlighteners have not only lived their lives but lived their death, in order that they might benefit the sufferers who despised and rejected them. But this power of sympathy and the kindred powers which constitute the true healer, are really secret powers and secret remedies. Therefore they are openly tabooed by the medical profession, although the said professors cannot avoid using them. But secret remedies are to some degree justly avoided. For it is but 269natural to regard secret remedies with suspicion. At best their use seems like working in the dark and blindly, and, consequently, any results obtained must be empirical. Again, the medical profession seems to plume and feather itself upon possessing a slight leaven of its ideal condition, and, by constituting itself into a kind of trades’ union, declines as a body to have anything to do with any remedy of which the composition is not made fully known. This, at least, is the more charitable view, for, on the other hand, the doctors know only too well how eagerly the public rushes after any new “quack” medicine, and seeks to cure itself without calling in their aid. The doctors reply to this that they will have nothing to do with a medicine whose composition is a secret, and which is therefore devoted, to a great extent, to replenishing the purse of its discoverer, and not to the cure of diseases from a love of man and a hatred of suffering. This is a very high-sounding idea, and a noble one, when it is not what the Americans would call only “high-falutin.” But even when a remedy is made public property, it is not necessarily pro bono publico; in fact, as a rule, it serves only the good of the dispensing chemist. He sees the prescription and notes it, the public does not; and, as a rule, the chemist obtains the drugs cheaply, and compounds them at the same rate as this medicine was originally sold under the patent of its discoverer. Still, with all the dislike of the profession for secret remedies, there is no doubt at all that in the case of the heads of the profession some of the best results are obtained by the use of prescriptions, which practically constitute a secret formula. The especial combination which the particular man has discovered to be of use is his property, and his only until he writes a book, for the various chemists who make it up, and the various patients who drink it, are not to the full aware of its value and use. The difference between this and quack medicine lies merely in the peculiar names and large advertisements, but very often these are balanced by the fame of the particular surgeon or physician. But, in all honour to physicians and surgeons, who do in many cases have and show a large-hearted sympathy for suffering, it must be remembered that many of the greatest and busiest of them give hours of their valuable time to those who are too poor to pay in any other form than that of grateful thanks. There are, again, others who disregard all the rules which govern trades’ union society, and boldly take their stand upon Christ’s dictum, that “the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.” In other words, they say that any medicine which they personally find valuable in the alleviation of pain and disease must be used even at the risk of themselves being called “unprofessional.” Again, others will use these so-called secret remedies, and say nothing about it, preferring to pin their faith to the wittily termed eleventh commandment, “Thou shalt not be found out.” At this point it is possible to draw a parallel between the use of the terms “untheosophical” and “unprofessional.” It would seem that both are used 270in very much the same trades’ union sense. In the case of the word “unprofessional,” it is to be regretted that it is due very largely to a lack of charity and of the spirit of enquiry. In the case of the word “untheosophical” it is often used in consequence of a lack of charity, and further in the spirit of scandal and gossip. Unless a man or woman is a theosophist pure and simple, who carries out in their entirety, the objects of the Theosophical Society, the use of the word untheosophical betrays them to be untheosophical and to fail in carrying out those objects which they have promised to further to the best of their power.

In the light of the foregoing it is now possible to examine the manner in which Count Mattei’s remedies have been received. The Count himself is a member of a noble family of Bologna, he has travelled much, but returned there in 1847, and took part in the movement which led to the liberation of Italy. In early life he much wished to study medicine, but was prevented from doing so by his father’s wish. Still his desire for knowledge was not quenched, and he attempted to follow the bent of his own mind. He rightly concluded that the instincts of the lower animals would lead them to search for herbs and plants which would cure their ailments, and that careful observation of these instincts might disclose medicines of the greatest value to human sufferers. Thus he adopted the habit of taking walks in the company of a number of dogs which were suffering from various diseases, and carefully watched their proceedings. Gradually the new pharmacopœia assumed shape, and the instinct of the dogs showed that particular diseases were met by particular remedies. These observations were made more than sixty years ago, and were not forgotten amid the occupations of a busy life. Indeed, when those occupations became less, Count Mattei returned with ardour to his earlier studies. He became a deputy in the Roman Parliament, but retired into private life after finding that his political views were not those of the men by whom he was surrounded. After this retirement the Count devoted himself to the study of medicine, in order that he might fit himself to apply certain principles which he believed he had discovered to be valuable for sick and suffering humanity. By his own account and the testimony of his patients he was not deceived, and the present remedies which bear his name are the result of twenty-five years’ unceasing labour and experiment. He rapidly acquired an enormous practice, and during the early years of it his advice and his medicines were entirely gratis. But an unfortunate combination of circumstances, as well as the expense entailed by the preparation of the remedies, rendered it necessary for the Count to demand some small remuneration for his services. Then he learned that his bounty was abused, and that certain doctors, who had asked and obtained the remedies from him, departed from Bologna and retailed the remedies at extravagantly exorbitant prices. To such an extent was this carried that there exist authentic cases where a thaler was demanded for a single globule, and for the 271globules (20-30) necessary to give a bath, 1,000 francs were asked in New York. Some idea of the extortion may be given when Count Mattei refers to the thaler price as being 1,350 times the price at Bologna. This would be enough to justify any amount of secrecy on Count Mattei’s part, more especially as that secrecy entirely prevents the adulteration of the medicines which would inevitably follow, were they to become commercial property.

We have only too familiar an example in the ranks of the medical profession. Many of his confrères have been appealed to for the support of a physician, named Warburg. At this date it seems hardly possible to believe that this gentleman was the happy discoverer of Warburg’s Fever Tincture. Perhaps in this country the value of the compound was not so highly appreciated as in India. But it is impossible to open any treatise on either surgery or medicine which is about twenty years old and not find the use of Warburg’s tincture specially urged in all cases of high fever, and especially in cases of malarial fever and pyæmia. The compound had an enormous sale, and yielded a very substantial income to its discoverer, but as soon as he yielded to the pressure of professional opinion, and consented to publish his formula so that it might obtain an extended use, he obtained the reward of such philanthropy. Every chemist now prepares the prescription and sells it at very nearly the original price, and what is more, never refunds a fraction of a farthing in the shape of a royalty to the discoverer. Consequently, we have before us the edifying spectacle of the learned discoverer compelled to exist on the charity of his professional confrères. Count Mattei has, at all events, protected himself against this, for although he states that in the event of his death he has provided against the loss of his secret to the world, and intends to leave it carefully as a legacy to suffering humanity, there is not the slightest doubt that he alone is the possessor of his own secret. That it is possible to obtain wealth from using this system is very evident. Certain among the chief of his followers are in the habit of visiting London at intervals, and the number of those who consult them is really wonderful. I am assured by an eye-witness that the crowd is far beyond that which besieges the door of the most fashionable physician of the day. When one reads the literature of the subject, one becomes more and more astonished at its simplicity. All diseases resolve themselves into three main forms, and constitutions vary accordingly. There are sanguine and lymphatic constitutions, and the various combinations of these two; there are also febrile disturbances and diseases of the liver and spleen. Consequently there are three chief medicines, which are used in an extraordinary state of dilution. It is no use, here at least, to discuss the value of these infinitesimal doses, so that may be left for future discussion. To a professional mind the most extraordinary claim on Count Mattei’s part will be that of curing cancer by 272internal and external medicines, and wholly without the use of the knife. He claims positively to cure every case in which the cancer has not ulcerated, and to cure a large proportion even of those which have already done so. Even of those which have been neglected, and have remained long in the ulcerated state, he claims to restore a certain proportion (though not a large one) to health. Of course, to any man who has seen the difficulty which attends the early diagnosis of cancer, these claims are very high-sounding indeed – almost to absurdity. The difficulties which attend diagnosis, even almost to the time when the knife has been used, and the tissue submitted to the microscope, are very great. But in Count Mattei’s second division there is no such difficulty. It is then possible by certain indications, as well as by the use of the microscope, to be sure of the nature of the disease. Here Mattei steps in and claims that, by the use of one of his medicines, which exerts an electric influence on cancer, and by one of what he terms his vegetable electricities, he can restore the sufferer to health. Surely conservative surgery, if it be worthy of the name, will investigate such a claim. Of the vegetable electricities there is no doubt whatever. Cases of neuralgia and sciatica and articular rheumatic pain have been seen to yield to them as to magic; consequently, even in the last stages of cancer, when there is no refuge save the grave left to the sufferer, I have reason to believe Count Mattei, to some extent, when he claims to enable the said sufferer to sink gently away in full consciousness, and without the use of morphia.

To those who know anything of the occult uses and powers of plants, the fact that Count Mattei gathers his herbs at particular phases of the moon, will convey a good deal of meaning. Further, they will feel an additional assurance as to their value, and will no longer wonder, on one side at least, that Count Mattei chooses to keep his secret. It would seem probable to some extent that Count Mattei is one of the “elder brethren” of the race, although how far he is consciously so may be a matter for speculation, which could only be set at rest by Mattei himself and his compeers and superiors. What is definitely certain is that his system of medicine in its theories, if not in its practice, is a distinct step in advance in the healing art. Mattei is one of those pioneers of advance who spend the greater part of their lives in introducing for public use a secret of which they have become possessed. Mr. Keeley of Philadelphia,^[6] appears to be another of those pioneers who are in advance of their times. But Mr. Keeley, in his work, resembles Friar Bacon, who blessed (?) the world with gunpowder. No doubt civilization has been enormously extended by its aid; but however much use it may have been to man in adapting the face of nature to his service, it has at any rate subserved the gratification of his passions. Count Mattei appears 273to have none of these “defects of his qualities,” and to have endeavoured to bless the world without giving to it attendant curses. Still it is always possible that when his secret shall become known it will draw attention to plants which have just as destructive and poisonous an influence as the plants and herbs he uses have of healing power. At all events, at present his secret is of use to the world, and so far as may be seen he makes a just and “brotherly” use of it. Has enough been said above to show that the fact that his medicines are “secret” compounds should be no barrier to their use? What is still more important is that true theosophists should recognise that Count Mattei has done what they endeavour to do, and devoted his life to Real Work.

A. I. R.

Theosophical Society's Convention of 1887

H. S. Olcott · pp. 273

A Remarkable Christmas Eve

C. Wachtmeister · pp. 274-281

281

A Half Convert.

Buddha! my earthly memory is so dimmed
    By this poor passing life which travels a hem
    Across my soul, and thought I cannot stem
Pours like a flood to wash all traces limned
Of former selves, that I shall ne’er recall
    The steps I came, nor know the fleshly tents
    In which I sojourned; – yet the fraying rents
Of time-worn garments I have seen, and all
The dust upon my feet, and I the sin
Of tiger and of cobra passions striven
To crush. These were strait gates, and through them driven
My chariot wheels, so prithee set me free
From other births, lest I seek Peter’s key,
O! Sakya Muni, let me trembling in.

Mary N. Gale.

282

Theosophy and Modern Socialism.

BY A SOCIALIST STUDENT OF THEOSOPHY.

The writer of the article on “Brotherhood” in your last issue has given an erroneous impression of Socialism, which, as a student of Theosophy (I do not know if I can yet call myself a disciple), who has been, in a large measure, drawn to this great study through Socialism, I may, perhaps, be allowed to correct. Indeed, I should feel that I was shirking a task clearly indicated to me at the present moment, were I to leave such errors, so far as all readers of Lucifer are concerned, uncorrected.

“T.B.H.,” the writer of the article in question – an interesting and, I believe, useful article in many respects – has, I venture to conjecture, confused the general system or class of systems known as Socialism, with certain methods of propagating its principles. Let me commence by quoting the paragraph in his article to which I take exception. He says (Lucifer No. 3, p. 213): –

(1). “Socialism, as preached in this nineteenth century, it [the Universal Brotherhood, which is the mainspring of Theosophy. – J.B.B.] certainly is not. (2). Indeed, there would be little difficulty in showing that modern materialistic Socialism is directly at variance with all the teachings of Theosophy. (3). Socialism advocates a direct interference with the results of the law of Karma, and would attempt to alter the dénouement of the parable of the talents by giving to the man, who hid his talent in a napkin, a portion of the ten talents acquired by the labour of his more industrious fellow.”

I will first take the three statements contained in this paragraph separately, and, for convenience’s sake, in inverted order. The allegation against Socialism contained in the third is the most specific, and that which, in the eyes of Theosophists, must appear the most serious. This statement, namely, that “Socialism advocates a direct interference with the results of the law of Karma, and would attempt &c.,” constitutes, in fact, the only definite premise in his argument. Of course, if Socialists do advocate, consciously or unconsciously, anything of the sort, they advocate a physical and psychical impossibility, and their movement is fore-doomed to failure. More than this, if they do so consciously, they are sinning against the light, and are impious as well as childish in their efforts. Of such, clearly, the Universal Brotherhood is not.

But neither Socialists nor Socialism, “as preached in this nineteenth century,” do anything of the kind. By “Materialistic” Socialism, I presume “T.B.H.” implies (if he has really studied Socialism at all, which I venture to doubt) so much of it as can be urged upon purely worldly grounds, such as the better feeding, housing, &c., of those who do the active work of society, technical instruction, such general education as fits a man for the domestic and secular duties of life, and the reorganisation of society with these objects upon a 283“co-operative” basis,^[7] in which public salaried officers, elected by their fellows, will take the place of capitalists and landlords, and in which the production and distribution of wealth will be more systematically regulated. This system, of course, takes no account of the law of Karma.

In a rough sort of way, however, all Socialists recognise the law, so far as its effects are visible in this world on the physical, intellectual, and moral planes. The fact that “the evil that men do,” and classes and nations of men also, “lives after them,” none are more ready to own and act upon. The action and reaction of individual will and individual and social circumstance, both upon each other and upon individual and social conditions, forms part of the foundations of Socialism. Quâ Socialists we do not, of course, take any more account of the law of Karma than do non-Socialist Christians and Agnostics, but I maintain there is nothing whatever in Socialism repugnant to a belief in this law. If anything, it is the other way. All Socialists, whether they call themselves Collectionists or Anarchists, Christian Socialists,^[8] Communists, or purely economic Socialists, are anxious to give freer play to human abilities and social impulses, by creating leisure and educational opportunities for all. We may thus, if it is permitted to me to speculate while criticising, become the instruments of a greater equalisation, distribution, and acceleration of Karmic growth, “good” or “evil,” upon and among individual souls, during their incarnation on this planet. This would come to pass by the transferring of a great deal of the responsibility for Karmic results which now lies with each individual in his personal capacity, upon the collective entities composed of individuals acting in public capacities; e.g., as nations, provinces, communes, or trade corporations.

It is surely true, even now, to speak of a collective, e.g., a national or municipal Karma, as we do of a national conscience. We speak of reward or retribution to nations and cities as if they had distinct personalities – are these mere “figures of speech”? But what is more important is that Socialists may prepare the way for a revelation of the noble truths of Theosophy to the multitude; they may help to raise the intellectual and instinctive moral standard of the whole community to such an extent that all will, in the next generation following after the Social Revolution,^[9] be amenable to those truths. In this way Socialism would not, indeed, interfere with the results of the law of Karma, but 284would, as the precursor of Theosophy, be the indirect means of enabling multitudes to rise and free themselves from its bonds.

As to the parable of the talents, well, Socialists would be only too glad to see its moral better enforced in this and other “civilised” countries. To them it seems impossible that it could be less enforced or taken to heart than it is now. They see that under the present system of Society – that vast engine of usury by which whole classes are held in economic servitude to other classes – many are encouraged to live in sloth and hide their talents, even if they put them to no worse uses than that. This could hardly happen under a régime of economic Socialism (such a régime, for instance, as Laurence Grönlund contemplates in his “Co-operative Commonwealth”); for these able-bodied or talented citizens who declined to work would simply be left to starve or sponge upon their relatives. Under a purely communist régime,^[10] no doubt there would be a few who would shirk their proper share in the social work, but at least none would be brought up from infancy, as now, to “eat the bread of idleness.”

Finally on this point, if to advocate such changes as Socialists advocate, the substitution of social co-operation for competition; of production with a view to use, for production with view to profit; of peace between nations, classes, and individuals, for war; of harmonious organisation to the advantage of all, for laissez faire, and chaos for the advantage (or supposed advantage) of a few. If I say, to advocate such changes be to advocate interference with the results of the law of Karma, so is every proposal for the amelioration of the physical or intellectual welfare of our fellows. And if participation in this and other movements, which may with equal justice be called “materialistic,” be prohibited to Theosophists, they may as well, for all good their Universal Brotherhood will do to the mass of those at present outside it, stay at home and content themselves with communing with the select few who alone will ever be in a position to appreciate them. If, for one reason or other, they do not care to co-operate with Socialists, let them, at least, recognise that the latter are preparing their way for them, doing the dirty (?) and laborious work, without which Theosophy can never descend from the serene heights in which it now dwells, to replenish, spiritually, this sadly benighted world. For, apart from a healthier physical and psychical atmosphere than “civilised” life engenders in either rich or poor (collective Karmic effects), a fair amount of leisure and freedom from sordid care are indispensable in most human beings for the higher development of the perceptive or gnostic faculties. At present this minimum of leisure and economic independence is probably unattainable by nineteen-twentieths of the population. Yet this self-same society, with its scientific learning and experience, its machinery, and its business organisation, contains within it all the germs of such a reconstruction of the physical environment as shall very 285shortly place the means of spiritual and psychical regeneration within the reach of all.

“T. B. H.’s” second statement is that “Indeed there would be very little difficulty in showing that modern materialistic Socialism is directly at variance with all the teachings of Theosophy.” Such an expression as “materialistic Socialism” is, as I have already hinted, erroneous. All Socialism is materialistic in the sense that it concerns itself primarily with the material or physical conditions of mankind. So do chemistry and mechanics, pure or applied; so, in ordinary politics, do Liberalism and Conservatism. No Socialism is materialistic in the sense that it is based upon any materialistic, as distinct from spiritualistic or pantheistic conceptions of the universe. It has hardly any more to do with such questions than have cotton-spinning or boot-making. I do not, however, pretend to mistake “T. B. H’s” meaning. Taking Socialism in its essentially economic aspect (which I admit is the foremost for the present, and must remain so until it has been disposed of), he asserts that “there would be very little difficulty in proving &c.” This is a mere general charge against it, although, I think, a less plausible, and therefore – from the point of view of harmony between Socialists and Theosophists – a less serious one, than the particular charge which follows it, and with which I have already endeavoured to deal. For my own enlightenment, I should be glad to have some samples, taken at random, of his skill in showing this variance; but I doubt if such a demonstration could effect any good. Meanwhile it is impossible to answer the charge on account of its vague, albeit sweeping and all-comprehensive character. “All the teachings of Theosophy” are quite too much for a student like myself to attempt to compare with Economic Socialism, as a system; nor do I think one with ten times the learning and discernment that I can claim, would readily attempt it. I merely record, therefore, my sincere conviction that on this general point “T. B. H.” is also mistaken, and that it is not Socialism, economic, or otherwise, which he has really been scrutinising and balancing, but the sayings or doings of some particular “Socialist,” whom he has seen or read of.

Individual Socialists have, of course, many faults which cannot fairly be charged to the social and economic tenets they profess. Thus one besetting fault of militant advocates of the cause is the use of violent language against individual capitalists, police officials and landlords. It, is so easy, even for men of a calibre superior to the average, to be drawn on from righteous indignation at a corrupt system, to abuse of the creatures and instruments thereof – or even, on occasion, to personal violence against them. Every good cause has its Peters, no less than its Judases. Socialism unfortunately has a rich crop of the former. Another still worse fault on the part of certain agitators, but one which might easily be predicted from the character of the struggle and the condition of the classes who must form the backbone of the Socialist Party, is the frequent appeal to lower motives, such as revenge and love of luxury.

286But such faults, although by all human prevision necessary incidents in the movement, are by no means inherent in Socialism. Even the purely “materialistic” socialism of Karl Marx, to which “T. B. H.” seems (although I think not with any clear picture of it in his mind) to refer, aims simply at securing the decencies and ordinary comforts of life to all, as a recompense for more evenly distributed social labour. The very conditions of life under a co-operative commonwealth such as Hyndman, Grönlund, and other followers of the late Karl Marx’s economic ideal, have in view – above all the obligation (virtual, at any rate) under which every able-bodied member of the community would find himself or herself, to do a few hours of useful work of one kind or another every day, and the elimination of the commercial and speculative element, with the wretched insecurity and dangerous temptations which it involves, – would preclude inordinate luxury. A healthy simplicity of life would become, first, “fashionable,” then usual.^[11] Communism, of course, goes further than economic socialism, as it implies not only the claim of the individual upon the community for the means of labour and the enjoyment of its fruits or their equivalent, but his claim for subsistence, irrespective of the amount and social value of the labour which he is able to perform. It would abolish, therefore, not only individual property in the means of production, but in the products themselves. The practicability of Communism, the motto of which is, “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs,” obviously depends upon the prevalence of more generous motives, of a higher sense of duty both to work and to give – a more perfect development, in fact, of the sense of human solidarity. It is for this very reason more commendable than mere economic socialism, as an ideal, to the attention of Theosophists; although its application, on the national or universal scale, cannot yet be said to have entered “the sphere of practical politics.”

Communism, which may be either Collectivist or Anarchist, leads me to add a few words about Anarchism. I refer, of course, to the social ideal philosophically denoted by this name, and not to the means advocated by some of its supporters for putting an end to the present society. Anarchism involves Communism, as well as extreme decentralisation; more than this, it involves the abolition of all permanent machinery of law and order, such as “the State” is supposed to provide, and the abolition of physical force as a method of suasion, even for criminals and lunatics. As a protest against political domination of all kinds, and an antidote to the excessive centralisation advocated by some state-Socialists, Anarchism may be of some use, but it is obviously further even than Communism (of the Collectivist variety) from becoming a school of “practical” politics. It could only become so after society at large, all the world over, had grown sufficiently homogeneous and solidaire for its 287members to co-operate spontaneously and automatically for all necessary purposes, grouping themselves into large or small organizations (limbs and organs) as required, and forming a complete body-social, or Mesocosm, if I may be allowed to coin a word for the purpose.

The erroneous conceptions of Socialism which I believe “T. B. H.” to have formed, do not necessarily invalidate the first statement in the paragraph of his article upon which I have been commenting, to wit, that the Universal Brotherhood which he has in view (and which, I understand from him, forms the first part of the programme of the Theosophical Society) is not “Socialism as preached in this 19th century,” – or at any other time, past or future, for that matter. Still, I am inclined to hope that a more intimate study of Socialism will lead him to see that, whether identical or not, they are at any rate not antagonistic. My own belief is that Theosophy and “materialistic” Socialism will be found to be working along different planes in the same direction.

Any Universal Brotherhood of Theosophists must be based upon Socialist principles, inter alia: its foundations may extend further and deeper than those of Socialism, but cannot be less extensive. Greed and War (political or industrial) Social Caste and Privilege, Political Domination of Man over Man, are as out of place in a true Brotherhood as wolves in a flock of sheep. Yet the exclusion of these anti-social demons and the enthronement in their place of Universal Love and Peace, if effected by such a Brotherhood, would simply leave Socialists nothing to do but to organize the material framework of their co-operative commonwealths. To preach economic or “materialistic” Socialism to a world already converted to the highest and completest form of Socialism, would be to advocate the plating of gold with tin or copper.

Modern Socialism, if the noble aspirations of some of its apostles may be taken as an earnest of its future, is already developing (incidentally, of course, to its main economic and ethical doctrines) strong æsthetic and spiritual tendencies. No reader of William Morris or Edward Carpenter, to speak of English Socialists only, will fail to notice this. At present the mass of Socialists content themselves with basing their social and economic faith upon the ethical principles of Justice, Freedom and Brotherhood. But the highest, because most mystical of these principles, that of Brotherhood, or better, Human Solidarity – the ancient conception of “Charity” – forms the unconscious link between modern Socialism on the one hand, and Esoteric Buddhism, Esoteric Christianity, and Theosophy generally, on the other. I say unconscious link, but I mean to imply that it may soon be rendered conscious and visible. As the various “orthodox” varieties, first of Christianity, then of Mohammedanism, perish with the destruction or collapse of the Social systems that have grown up along with them, this simple religion of Human Solidarity will take possession of the deserted shrines of Christ and Allah, and will begin to seek out its own fount of inspiration. Then will be the time for the Universal Brotherhood of Theosophists to step into the breach.

J. Brailsford Bright (M.A. Oxon.).

The Great Quest

W. Scott-Elliot · pp. 288-291

[Introduction to “God Speaks for Law and Order” by W. Eldon Serjeant]

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 292-293

An Interpretation of the Vision, by Serjeant

W. C. Eldon Serjeant · pp. 293-295

An Infant Genius

W. A. Ellis · pp. 296-298

298

Fear.

Why fearest thou the darksome shades
    That creep across the path of life?
    Why tremble at the thought of strife
That oftentimes the soul invades?

Why sicken at the thought of ills?
    The horrors that invade thy dreams,
    The shadowland of forms, that seems
Dark terror to the soul it fills?

Why weary of the onward way,
    Or dread the roughness of the road?
    Why fear to struggle ’gainst the load,
The heavy burthen of life’s clay?

Hast thou not seen? – when gone the night
    And stilled the dropping of the shower,
    The weary drooping wayside flower
Drink in new life from sunbeams bright.

Hast thou not loved, at dawn, to feast,
    The longing of thy mortal eyes
    With vivid colours of the skies,
Burst free from floodgates of the East?

And hast thou never tried, in thought,
    To gain a clearer, truer view?
    A mystic glimpse, a vision new,
That shows the darkness as it ought?

A phantom of material fear
    Unworthy of a moment’s dread;
    For darkness would itself be dead,
Unless its mother light were near!

Then learn to grasp the purer light,
    And learn to know the holier creed –
    The brighter glow – the greater need,
The nearer day – the murkier night.

P. H. D.

The Esoteric Character of the Gospels

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 299-310

310

Similitudes of Demophilus.

It is the business of a musician to harmonize every instrument, but of a well educated man to adapt himself harmoniously to every fortune.

It is necessary that a well educated man should depart from life elegantly, as from a banquet.

Golden Sentences of Democritus.

It is beautiful to impede an unjust man; but if this be not possible, it is beautiful not to act in conjunction with him.

Sin should be abstained from, not through fear, but, for the sake of the becoming.

Many who have not learnt to argue rationally, still live according to reason.

Vehement desires about any one thing render the soul blind with respect to other things.

The equal is beautiful in everything, but excess and defect to me do not appear to be so.

It is the property of a divine intellect to be always intently thinking about the beautiful.

311

Correspondence.

A Law of Life: Karma.

[The following letter has been received by the editors, in criticism on Mr. Keightley’s article on “Karma”; and as it raises many rather important points, an attempt has been made to answer them. Mr. Beatty’s letter is somewhat difficult to deal with, for though it asks many questions, they are so inextricably mingled with its author’s thoughts that it would be unfair to disentangle them from the context. It is a pity that Mr. Beatty, in his haste to criticize, did not wait for the conclusion of the article, as he might have saved himself some trouble. If his real desire is to learn, it would be well that he should approach the endeavour in a less flippant spirit and evolve the critic out of the criticaster. In many of his arguments he has, so to say, “given himself away,” but, in the interests of space and of the readers of Lucifer, only those questions and arguments which bear directly on the points at issue have been selected for answer. The point which Mr. Beatty does “not care to discuss,” and which refers to the mystery of Godliness, has been omitted. Perhaps, if Mr. Beatty continues to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest, he may in some future incarnation solve the mystery.]

In an article in Lucifer, under the above heading, Mr. Keightley declares it to be “very difficult, if not well-nigh impossible,” to understand Karma, and I grant him that his essay is a practical demonstration of his allegation. The difficulty (1.) does not, however, hinder him from attempting to define the refractory term. “Karma,” he says, “is the working of the great law which governs reincarnation,” or “a manifestation of the One, Universal, Divine Principle in the phenomenal world,” or again, “the great law of harmony which governs the universe.” Now, waiving altogether the question of reincarnations, I shall proceed to examine whether Mr. Keightley makes good his contention that “harmony,” in his sense of the word, “governs the Universe.” He says, “the man who denies the existence of harmony in the universe has transgressed the law and is experiencing punishment. He does this unconsciously to himself, because the law of harmony forms an unconscious impulse to its readjustment when it has been broken.” Here there are several things to be considered. In the first place, it may be asked: (2.) Does a man, by merely denying the existence of a law of Nature or the universe, transgress that law? I think not.^[12] Secondly. Can a law of the universe be “broken”? Here again I must reply in the negative; for who is going to contend that the law of gravitation has ever been “broken,”^[13] has ever ceased to act, has ever required “re-adjustment”? A man 312can break no law of Nature in the sense of bringing that law into abeyance. If then, a law of harmony governs the universe there can be no such thing as discord. (3.) Yet Mr. Keightley admits that there is discord, that the law of harmony has been “broken” and needs “readjustment.” This is a surrendering of his position and a patent admission that harmony is not constant or universal. He then proceeds to draw an illustration from music. “In musical chords, the composing notes, if taken by twos and threes, will be found in discord, but, when taken together, produce a harmony.” This is a particularly unfortunate subject of illustration. For does it not show that discord is an element in the universe as well as harmony? Why are discords introduced into music? Simply to make the harmony more effective. The reason for this, however, does not lie in any so-called universal law of harmony, but rather in the constitution of animate existences. Fundamentally, sensation is the consciousness of difference. Where the difference is great the feeling is great. If we wish to have the keenest sensation of sweetness we must first taste something bitter. Thus it is that occasional discords heighten harmony. But are the discords any less real on that account? Certainly not; for there can no more be harmony without discord, than there can be an up without a down. This, moreover, is only another illustration of the fact that human knowledge is merely relative. Must we, however, admit that the universal law may be harmony while our experience tells us that there are discords without number? Unless ignorance be considered as superior to positive knowledge, I see no room for the admission. If a man’s house tumbles about his ears, does it become any less a fact by trying to persuade himself and his neighbours that it is still standing? This seems to be the method of Mr. Keightley. He has, however, yet another argument. “The universe ... is essentially an evidence of harmony; otherwise it could not exist, for it would fall to pieces.” This is a palpable begging of the question, and, besides, very absurd. The universe is a harmony, because a universe must be a harmony! “Otherwise it could not exist.” Now how does our harmonist know whether it could exist or not? Of what other universe has he experience or knowledge? “It would fall to pieces.” Where, I wonder, would it fall to? Perhaps it is even now fast falling to pieces, and who can tell us differently? As far as ordinary people can judge, it seems, as regards the parts we are acquainted with, to be falling into more or less concrete masses, but not many sane people believe it can fall into nothingness. After all this vain contention for universal harmony we find Mr. Keightley settling down like ordinary mortals to the conviction that the world is far from harmonious or perfect. One unfortunate individual who cannot be persuaded that all is harmony, is told that “he is incapable of understanding it because his attention is solely devoted to that which produces discord.” How comes it that the universe does not fall to pieces as a result of this discord? Surely we are in a precarious condition, if every obstinate fool who persists in crying out when he has been hurt, endangers the stability of the universe. Did ever anyone meet with a universe where there is less evidence of harmony? One brute force ever in conflict with another. Infernal forces piling up mountain on the top of mountain; supernal forces blasting, rending, excoriating and tumbling these mountains down again into the valleys; the oak struggling against the inwarping ivy, the fawn attempting vainly to escape from the claws of the 313tiger, the child agonising while parasites eat slowly and mercilessly into its lungs, liver, or brain; the strong everywhere victorious over the weak; each sect and each party exerting itself ferociously to scoop out the viscera of its rival. Such is the world, such all records declare it to have been, and such it gives ample promise of continuing. But if the world is not really so, and on the contrary is one immensity of joyous harmony, who can tell us why the evidence is so deceptive? Here again, Mr. Keightley introduces to us a most remarkable statement. “The one Divine principle is divided by man’s actions into two opposing forces of good and evil, and man’s progress depends on the exertion of his will to preserve harmony and prevent deviation to one side or the other.” Give us by all means in preference to this for common sense, for rationality and for every other quality that makes it digestible, the childish story of Eve, the apple and the fall.

Beyond doubt, Mr. Keightley has a profound faith in man as a power in the universe and an instrument for evil. By a most singular process of metaphysical alchemy man decomposes the “Divine principle” into “two opposing forces of good and evil.” It seems from this revised version of an old story that man introduced evil into the universe. Why is man so important that a universe should be polluted for his sake? Surely man did not make himself, and whatever powers were in him for evil or for good must have been potential in that from which he sprang. Man can create nothing, neither evil nor good, neither a tendency to do right nor an inclination to do wrong. “Man’s will” is always a tremendous force for good or evil in the hands of theologians and metaphysicians. Did man make his own “will?” If not, how can he be responsible for what he does? Everybody knows that man can act according to his likes or dislikes. But does anybody imagine that he can make his own likes or dislikes? (4.) He can do as he wishes, but he wishes according to his nature, and this he cannot transcend, consequently he is not responsible to the Author of his nature for what his nature inclines him to do. But what are we to understand by the rest of the sentence? Man’s will is “to preserve harmony and prevent deviation to one side or the other.” First the will brings about evil in the “Divine principle,” destroying harmony, then it is to reproduce harmony and at the same time to maintain a balance between good and evil, and “prevent deviation to the one side or the other.” This to Mahatmas and possessors of the “sixth sense” may seem plain logic, but it far surpasses my comprehension.^[14] I am, perhaps, as averse to “the pernicious doctrine of reward and punishment after death, in heaven or in hell” as Mr. Keightley can be, but I can by no means deduce from it the results which to him appear so inevitable. “Nothing,” he says, “could have been found more calculated to circumscribe the view of life as a whole, and concentrate man’s attention on temporary matters.... He either rejected the idea of soul as altogether worthless, or else he transferred his interest to the soul’s welfare in heaven – in either case concentrating his attention on what is inevitably transient.” How the idea of never-ending existence in heaven or in hell can have the effect of circumscribing “the view of life as a whole,” and of concentrating “man’s attention on 314temporary matters,” is to me an insolvable puzzle. That it should have quite the opposite effect, does not seem to require proof. Why, in the name of mystery, should he “reject the idea of soul as worthless,” and how can transferring “his interest to the soul’s welfare in heaven” be called a concentrating of “his attention on what is inevitably transient?” Truly this Karma is a bewildering subject!^[15]

Do plants and animals come under the law of Karma? is the next question discussed by Mr. Keightley. An extract from the Theosophist seems to discountenance such a thing. But are its arguments really conclusive against it? I do not think so. It says, “A piece of iron is attracted to a magnet without having any desire in the matter.” Now, in the first place, this is pure assumption, and has its origin in vainglorious human egotism.^[16] It is evident that from objective data alone we cannot decide what is the subjective state of the molecules of the attracted iron. In the second place, we are only acquainted with the iron as a cause producing changes in us. No matter how we interpret these changes, they cannot even tell us the real nature of iron, merely considered objectively. Again the extract proceeds: “An animal usually follows the instincts of its nature without any merit or demerit for so doing; a child or an idiot may smilingly kick over a lamp, which may set a whole city on fire.... A person can only be held responsible according to his ability to perceive justice, and to distinguish between good and evil.” According to this doctrine, man is not an “animal,” and does not follow his instincts. To those who are acquainted, even slightly, with the method and regularity of Nature, this contention will appear, on the face of it, untenable. For why should there be an exception in the case of man?^[17] Has man instincts, desires, and inclinations, or has he not? If he has, why should he have them if he is not to follow them? And if in any case he does not follow them, is it not with him as with the “animals”? Is it not because he is deterred by influences from without, or hereditary influences from within? And of all these instincts, desires and influences, how is he to know which to obey, to know which is of Divine sanction? He has conscience, of course, but conscience is a very variable quantity, and indeed, it might not be too much to say that there is hardly a crime in the world that has not, at one time or another, been commended by conscience. Conscience is only one phase of the man’s mental activity, and was no more created by him than was his power of vision. We talk of “children and idiots,” and their being irresponsible, but are not untamed savages also irresponsible? And if we admit that there may be beings as much 315higher than we, as we are higher than children, idiots, and savages, will they not, with reason and justice, regard us as irresponsible? The truth is, there never was a greater chimera conjured up by unreasoning fancy than that one of man’s responsibility to a Supreme Power. Man is responsible only to man, and man’s conduct is without merit except from a human view-point. We are good or bad by reason of all the forces that act on and through us.

My object in writing what I have written is to show to Theosophists the dense darkness in which I wander. Will some God-illumined mind not take pity upon, and draw me up from the labyrinthian gloom, where illusions mislead me at every step? My “sixth sense” seems wholly dormant, and Nirvana, that haven of rest, seems distant, by many a weary league of rocky path and burning desert. Pity me.

5, Christie Street, Paisley.
J. H. Beatty.

[Reply to “A Law of Life: Karma” by J. H. Beatty]

A. Keightley · pp. 315-318

318

“The Latest Attack on Christianity.”

In the July number of the Quarterly Review there is an article reviewing the recent book of J. C. Morrison upon “The Service of Man or the Future Religion.” And although Mr. Morrison, in his book, writes to urge that the chief and primary principle of religion is “to promote the spirit of self-sacrifice, and to direct men’s energies to the service of their fellow creatures,” yet the Quarterly Review pours every kind of insult and obloquy on Mr. Morrison.

But herein is the gross contradiction, that the Quarterly Review admits that the primary principle of Christianity has the very same objects in view, as Mr. Morrison urges the future religion should have. And yet the Quarterly Review ridicules Mr. Morrison, and describes his book as an attack upon Christianity.

Then, surely, when two persons thus fall out with one another, whilst both advocate the same lofty and noble principles, there must be some gross misunderstanding between them!

The error thus which they both labour under, is one and the same; for the Quarterly Review errs, in assuming that the teaching or doctrine of the Church is indisputably, and infallibly, the teaching or doctrine of Christ. And Mr. Morrison errs in assuming that the teaching or doctrine of Christ is the same as the doctrine of the Church.

So that if the teaching of the Church is not the teaching of Christ, then Mr. Morrison in attacking the supposed Christianity of the Church is not really 319attacking Christianity, but only attacking the spurious doctrine of the Church, which has passed current as Christianity; ex gr., Isaiah, Jeremiah and Elijah, in denouncing the religion of the priests, did not attack true religion (as the priests would assert), but only their adulterated and spurious religion.

And Christ tells us that the Priests and Pharisees made the word of God of none effect by their traditions. And St. Paul tells us that, with the authority of the Chief Priest, he had, before conversion, imprisoned and put men to death, and made them blaspheme (Acts xxvi., 11) against God and the Church.

Therefore, before we accept the Church and Christianity to be synonymous terms, and not only signifying but being actually the Church of Christ, and so, verily, Christianity, we must have a clear and definite understanding as to what we mean, and wish others to understand what we mean, by “the Church.”

For the world, outside of Christianity, and often inside, is at its wits’ end to know which of the numerous churches and sects, which all claim to be the Church of Christ, is really and truly the Church of Christ; because the World witnesses that they all reject one another.

Then surely, whilst the world witnesses rival and hostile churches all claiming to be “the Church” and Christianity, Mr. Morrison is not at all necessarily attacking the Church of Christ, or true Christianity, when he attacks the doctrine, or the Christianity of the churches.

And this proposition of course, opens and raises the question as to what is Christianity, which the Quarterly Review either avoids or assumes to be established, as being “a sound belief in the merits of the Saviour,” which of course means belief in the Atonement as commonly taught. But how can the truth of Christianity be possibly established, whilst to this day the doctrine of Atonement taught by the Church as Christianity, cannot be reconciled as either good or true; and is moreover a mystery to the leaders of it, a stumbling block to the Jews, and foolishness to the world, making the preaching of the Church as Canon Liddon admits, utterly powerless? The Quarterly Review assumes that the doctrine of the Church has been taught as Christianity for 1,800 years; and that 1,800 years’ teaching of it has proved it to be Christianity, because the Quarterly Review assumes that there has been liberty for 1,800 years to disprove the doctrine of the Church, and that the doctrine of the Church, not having been disproved, is a proof that it cannot be disproved. But the fact that to this very day there is no liberty allowed in the pulpits of the National Churches to discuss the doctrine of the Church (it being a law with the rulers of the Church that “the doctrine of the Church may not be touched”), utterly refutes all the assumptions of the Quarterly Review.

For whilst there is no liberty, even for fair and candid criticism in the pulpit, on the doctrine of the Church, even in this age of liberty and education, there could have been none when the Church, for centuries, had power to imprison, slay, and excommunicate or boycott; and used it against those who even questioned the doctrine of the Church.

But we are told, by the great Bishop Butler, in his “Analogy of Religion” (and whom the Quarterly Review admits to be an authority of the very highest class), that the doctrine of Atonement is positively immoral, excepting for the supposed divine authority; and the Bishop himself looked forward to the day, 320when the progress of liberty and education should throw greater light upon this doctrine of the Church, and indisputably determine whether or no it has the divine authority, it was then supposed or asserted to have.

So great has been our progress in education and liberty that The Guardian of the 3rd August, in its review of this book of Mr. Morrison’s, says, if Christianity is Calvinism with its doctrine of substitution and justification, then it is madness any longer to attempt defending the morality of Christianity.

It is true that it is one thing to make this admission in the review of a book, and another thing to publish it from the pulpit; and it is true that the admission would be withdrawn or crucified by silence; but the Quarterly Review itself, in its argument by analogy of the human and divine mind, admits that this doctrine of Atonement is immoral, because it admits that no authority could be divine which called immorality morality, as it asserts that whatever is moral humanly speaking, is also moral divinely speaking, only in an infinitely greater degree, and the converse. So that an attack on an immoral doctrine of the Church is not an attack on Christianity, if the doctrine of the Church is not the teaching of Christ, as it can be shown that it is not, as soon as liberty is allowed in the pulpits of the National Churches, for explaining the truth of a Crucified Christ, and removing the mystery that has been created, which causes it to be a stumbling block to the Jews, and foolishness to the world.

We are told that the late Archbishop Whately said, that if the Christian Religion did not come from God, miraculously (in the sense commonly taught), yet the religion, nevertheless, exists, and therefore the phenomenon has to be explained how it could have arisen and been propagated without miracles.

But the Quarterly Review asserts that for 1,800 years all the attempts to explain it, without the aid of miracles, have utterly failed, and therefore it must be assumed to be miraculous.

But before there can be any justification for such a bold assumption, as that what is taught as Christianity is infallibly, and indisputably, the teaching of Jesus Christ, what is meant by the term Christianity, or Christian religion must be clearly defined: for the Roman Catholic Church denounces the Protestant, and the Protestant denounces the Roman Church, as having naught to do with Christianity; so that even if there is anything held in common between these Churches (as “the faith of the Primitive Church,” or “the faith once delivered to the Saints,” or any other faith), yet whatever it is, or is called, it would seem to be of not the slightest value whatever, in saving them from rejecting one another absolutely.

Canon Liddon, however, asserts that all the doctrine and teaching of the Church derives its authority from a miraculous resurrection of Jesus, with a material and physical body of flesh, blood, and bones, in direct defiance of the teaching of Jesus, that the flesh profiteth nothing, and that it was the words which He spoke, “They were spirit, they were life.” (John vi., 63.)

And if we believe that the Holy Spirit of God could speak without the aid of a material body, composed of flesh, blood, and bones, in a still small voice to the conscience or soul of Moses and Elijah (1 Kings xix., 12); and if we believe that the same Holy Spirit is present even now (where two or three are gathered together – Matt. xvii., 23), why should not the presence of the still 321small voice of the Holy Spirit, speaking to the conscience or soul of the Apostles, be of itself deemed sufficient, without needing the aid of a material body?

Again, if the presence of the still small voice of the Holy Spirit, speaking to the soul of man, has been deemed sufficient by the world both before the crucifixion of Christ, and since the crucifixion of Christ, why should it be deemed necessary to raise up the crucified One, with a body of flesh, blood and bones, only to teach what the still small voice of the Holy Spirit was able, willing, and present to teach, and to doubt which would be Atheism? And, moreover, whilst such teaching was sufficient, it would be a contradiction to vouchsafe more.

Therefore, if the still small voice of the Holy Spirit is sufficient and present to guide us into all truth, it must have been sufficient for the Apostles also (John xvi., 13); and, therefore, Christ’s religion is not dependent upon a material resurrection of the body, with flesh, blood and bones.

Here, once more, we see the necessity of liberty being allowed in the pulpit, for fair and candid criticism on the doctrine of the Church, for the purpose of eliminating error and eliciting truth; so that it may be clearly seen and known what is Christ’s religion, as it might indeed be possible that a material resurrection would seem necessary to support the doctrine of the Church, though wholly unnecessary for the support of Christ’s religion, or gospel.

Although the Quarterly Review asserts that men have failed for 1,800 years to account for the existence of Christianity, unless it had a miraculous resurrection to support it, yet it by no means follows that, because a miracle is supposed to be needed to support a doctrine of the Church, therefore a miracle is needed for supporting the doctrine, gospel, or religion of Christ; which exists, and will continue to exist, without needing the aid of belief in a miraculous resurrection of the material body, to support it. And it only needs that there should be liberty allowed in the pulpits of the National Churches to show the deficiency of faith in Christ’s spiritual resurrection, to see there is no need for belief in that carnal, gross, and material resurrection of the body, with flesh, blood and bones.

Then, let there be liberty allowed in the pulpits of the National Churches; because it is not true that there has ever been liberty for 1,800 years to explain the Mystery of a Crucified Christ; for, it is refused to the present day. If any man, on behalf of the Church, contradicts this, and asserts there is liberty to explain, in the Church, the truth of a crucified Christ, let him mention one Church, or one clergyman that will allow it, and I will test its truth by asking for the same permission that the rulers of the Synagogue accorded to St. Paul at Antioch, Acts xiii., 15.

The Quarterly Review says the clergy have no objection to free discussion – that it is the very air they breathe, and that it has been the life of Christian Truth. These are bold and brave words, but where is there even one clergyman that will endorse them, and act upon them? Where?

Isaiah says, “Open ye the gates that the truth may enter in” (xxvi., 2). But instead of reverencing the just and righteous “Son of Man,” the chief priests and rulers of the Ancient Church condemned “the Just One,” to be slain as a blasphemer, whose blood ought to be shed for an Atonement. And the chief priests of our Church have combined that this doctrine should not be 322touched, so that by their practice they make their statement of the Quarterly Review utterly untrue. For if there is one clergyman, A.D. 1887, who will support the Quarterly Review’s statement, and open his pulpit for explaining the truth of “Christ crucified” and proclaiming Christian truth, as taught by Christ – Where is he? and who is he?

And if there is not one, then need the Church be surprised that men attack, not the Christianity of Jesus Christ, but only an erroneous doctrine of the Church, miscalled Christianity?

(Rev.) T. G. Headley.
Manor House, Petersham, S. W.

P.S. – Although the Quarterly Review admits that Mr. Morrison has established a high position in literature, and that he seeks to promote the same lofty and noble principles as true Christianity inculcates; yet it speaks of Mr. Morrison’s book as bad and incomplete; feeble and illogical; full of perversities, monstrosities, misrepresentations, and misquotations; adding, that it is bitter, unscrupulous, ignorant, inconsistent, offensive, bullying, brow-beating, overbearing, absurd, and ridiculous, as well as indecent and false; insulting and flagrant; inconsecutive and unjust; full of jugglery and a disgrace.

Is this an exhibition of how theologians, or the clergy, as the reviewer is most probably a clergyman, love free discussion, and crucify those from whom they differ by damning them in this gross manner?

Islam and Christianity.

To the Editors of Lucifer.

In the numerous letters that have repeatedly appeared recently in the Times opposing the statements of the Rev. Canon Isaac Taylor, in his speech at the late Church Congress, on the very great progress of Islam, and the comparative failure of Christianity (as taught), in India and Africa, it is frequently asserted that “Islam is the only religion that has laid an immutable barrier on human progress;” and that “no system could have been devised with more consummate skill (than the Koran of Islam) for shutting out the light of truth, from the Nations over which Islam has sway.”

But surely this is equally as true of our Church, whilst it also makes it an immutable law, as it has done to this day, that “the doctrine of the Church may not be touched”? For how could any system have been devised with more consummate skill for shutting out the light of truth, than to delude the people to crucify “the Just One,” as a blasphemer whose blood ought to be shed for an atonement, and afterwards to quote Scripture in support of this doctrine (as necessary to be believed in order to escape being cursed here and damned hereafter), and stamp out and boycott all who doubted it?

And yet this is the present state of things.

And therefore, whilst the clergy have power to say that “the doctrine of the Church may not be touched,” how is the mystery of a Crucified Christ to be explained and translated, so that it may be seen to be “a light to lighten the Gentiles, and also the glory of Israel,” instead of being, as it is now, a stumbling block to the Jews, foolishness to the world, and a mystery to the 323teachers of it, making those who accept it, in India and Africa, worse than they were before?

Then is there not a cause for demanding that liberty should be allowed in the Church, for explaining, in the pulpit, the mystery of a Crucified Christ, so that it may no longer remain a mystery for want only of this liberty?

(Rev.) T. G. Headley.

Hylo-Idealism – An Apology

R. Lewins · pp. 323

Hylo-Ideaism

H. L. Courtney · pp. 323-325

Answers to Queries

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 325-328

325

.... “The Editors of Lucifer would confer a great benefit on those who are attracted to the movement which they advocate, if they would state:

“(1.) Whether a would-be-theosophist-occultist is required to abandon his worldly ties and duties such as family affection, love of parents, wife, children, friends, etc.?

“I ask this question because it is rumoured here that some theosophical publications have so stated, and would wish to know whether such a sine quâ non condition really exists in your Rules? The same, however, is found in the New Testament. ‘He that loveth father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me, etc., etc.,’ is said in Matthew (x. 37). Do the Masters of Theosophy demand as much?

“Yours in the Search of Light,
“L. M. C.”

Answers to Queries – continued

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 325-328

Literary Jottings

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 329-334

335

Theosophical
and Mystic Publications

THE THEOSOPHIST for October opens with the first of a series of articles on the “Elohistic Cosmogony.” The views put forward by the writer are certainly both striking and original, and, although Dr. Pratt diverges very considerably from the recognised standard of kabalistic orthodoxy, his interpretation of the Jewish version of cosmic evolution will assuredly excite considerable interest.

Following on Dr. Pratt’s learned article, come a few – unfortunately, too few – pages of extremely interesting notes on the Folk-lore of the Himalayan tribes, contributed by Captain Banon. The Theosophist has often been indebted to Captain Banon for similar notes respecting such little known tribes and people; and it is much to be regretted that the many members of the Theosophical Society who reside in or visit such out-of-the-way places, do not make it a rule to collect these traditions and send them for publication in the Theosophist or one of the other Theosophical magazines.

Dr. Hartmann continues his series of “Rosicrucian Letters,” with a number of extracts from the papers of Karl von Eckartshausen, who died in 1792. Dr. Hartmann deserves the gratitude of all students for rendering accessible these records and notes of past generations of “seekers after the Truth.”

Dr. Buck contributes a pithy and thoughtful article on “The Soul Problem,” and Mr. Lazarus continues his exposition of the kabalistic doctrine of the Microcosm. Besides these there are further instalments of two valuable translations from Hindu works of great antiquity and authority; the “Crest Jewel of Wisdom,” by Sankaracharya and the “Kaivalyanita.” It is much to be desired that one of our Hindu brothers, who adds to a knowledge of his own mystic literature, an acquaintance with Western modes of thought and expression, would devote a series of articles to the exposition of the fundamental standpoint and ideas of such works as these. Such an article would add enormously to the value of these translations to the Western world.

In the November number, Dr. Pratt takes up the Jehovistic cosmogony, which he contrasts and compares with the Elohistic version already referred to. In his view, the Jehovistic teaching embodies the conception of the world as “created” and “ruled” by an extra-natural and personal deity, as opposed to the more philosophical and pantheistic conception of the earlier Elohistic writers.

Under the title of An Ancient Weapon, this issue contains an instructive account of the evocation of certain astral forces according to the ancient Vedic rites. As here described, the evil intention, with which the rite is performed, transforms it into a ceremony of Black Magic, but this does not render the account any less valuable.

This is followed by the first of a series of articles on The Allegory of the Zoroastrian Cosmogony, which promises to furnish much food for thought and study.

Rosicrucian Letters contains this time an extract from an old MS., headed The Temple of Solomon, which is well worthy of careful attention.

Besides these we have a sketch of the life and writings of Madvachary, the great teacher of Southern India, and some further testimonies to the fact of “self-levitation” from eye-witnesses. Rama Prasad gives some most valuable details of the “Science of Breathing,” one of the most curious branches of occult physics, while the remainder of the number is occupied by an article on “Tetragrammaton,” which may be interesting to students of the Kabbala, and continuations of the “Kabbala and the Microcosm,” and of the translations from Indian books mentioned in connection with the October number.

These two numbers contain much valuable matter and well maintain the reputation which the Theosophist originally gained for itself.

In THE PATH for October we notice especially the following articles:

Nature’s Scholar, a most poetically-conceived and well-worked-out Idyll, by J. C. Ver Plank, in which the underlying occult truth is presented to the reader in a most attractive form.

Following this is a much needed warning against the dangers of Astral Intoxication. Admirably expressed, it points out the true, and indicates the false, path 336with great clearness; and we desire to call the earnest attention of such of our readers as are engaged in psychic development to its importance.

“Pilgrim” contributes some further Thoughts in Solitude, the leading idea of which may be indicated by its concluding lines, which are quoted from Sir Philip Sydney of heroic fame:

“Then farewell, World! thy uttermost I see,
Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me!”

Tea-Table Talk is even more interesting and suggestive than usual, and, besides those above mentioned, this well-filled number contains Part IV. of the series of articles on The Poetry of Re-incarnation in Western Literature, which deals with the Platonic Poets.

The November number opens with an able continuation of Mr. Brehon’s article on The Bhagavat-Gita, commenced so long ago as last April, of which we hope to peruse a further instalment. Following this is a short article indicating the term “Medium” from the loathsome connotations which phenomenal spiritualism has attached to it. We then come to a paper on Goethe’s Faust, read before one of the branches of the Theosophical Society in America. It is of great interest to students of literature and will furnish a clue to the real meaning of much of the poet’s writing.

Mr. Johnston makes some most suggestive remarks on Cain and Abel; Harij speaks in no uncertain tones of Personalities and Truth, while Hadji Erinn points out the Path of Action, and warns the members of the T. S. that they must not expect their road to become easier and plainer before them, while yet the society is undergoing the trials of its education.

Zadok gives some able answers to questions on various points of practical occultism and Julius, in Tea-Table Talk, points out how many people are really entering on the path of Theosophy – even though unconsciously.

LE LOTUS, for October and November, is even more interesting than usual. In the October number are contained two very valuable articles. The first of these is a paper on Paracelsus from the pen of Dr. Hartmann, who is especially qualified to handle the subject by his profound study of the work, and especially the manuscripts, of that great occultist. M. “Papus” contributes a most lucid and able exposition of some Kabbalistic doctrines, the practical value of which has been hitherto but little realised even by professed students of mysticism.

The opening article in the November issue is headed, The Constitution of the Microcosm. It is written in a clear and attractive style, and contains a most thorough and complete explanation of the various classifications of the principles which enter into the constitution of man.

“Amaravella” has evidently studied the whole subject very deeply, and he shows the relation of these various classifications to one another in a way which will clear up many of the misconceptions which have arisen.

M. “Papus” writes on Alchemy in a manner which shows how conversant he is with this little-understood topic. We therefore look forward with great anticipations to the perusal of his book “Traité élémentaire de science occulte,” the fourth chapter of which contains the article referred to.

It is very evident that Theosophy is making great and rapid progress in France, and this is in great measure due to the untiring and unselfish devotion of the editor of Le Lotus, M. Gaboriau, whom we congratulate most warmly on the success which has attended his efforts.

L’Aurore for October contains an article on the so-called “Star of Bethlehem,” which repeats the assurance that the world is entering on a new and happier life-phase.

Unfortunately, it seems more than probable that before this amelioration takes place, the world must pass through the valley of the shadow of Death, and endure calamities far worse than any it has yet seen. Lady Caithness continues her erudite and interesting article on the lost ten tribes of Israel. Her thesis is put forward in admirable language, and supported by a great wealth of biblical quotations. Unfortunately, the task undertaken is an impossible one. There never were twelve tribes of Israel – two only – Judah and the Levites, having had a real existence in the flesh. The remainder are but euhemerizations of the signs of the Zodiac, and were introduced because they were necessary to the Kabalistic scheme on which the “History” of the Jews was written.

Lady Barrogill relates the well-known story of an English bishop and the ghost of a Catholic priest, who haunted his former residence in order to secure the destruction of some notes he had taken (contrary to the rule of the Church) of an important confession which he had heard.

Besides these articles we find the continuation of the serial romance, “L’amour Immortel,” and Lucifer has to thank the editor for the appreciative notice contained in this number.

No. 5 – January 1888

1888

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 337-338

339

To the Morning Star.

Lucifer, Lucifer Son of the Morning,
  Trembling and fair on the opening skies,
Heralding, truly, a day that is dawning,
  Telling the “Light of the World” shall arise.

Lucifer, Lucifer, all through the Ages
  Weary hearts struggled and watched for the light,
Now it is coming, and thou the forerunner,
  Mystical prophet, the herald of Right.

There in the desert of Night where thou dwellest,
  Round thee in myriads the feebler lights stand;
Lucifer, Lucifer, ever thou tellest
  The glorious Kingdom of Right is at hand.

Rising and setting, O, Star of the Morning!
  Strangely prophetic, thou atom of light;
Revealing in silence the law of creation.
  Out from the unseen abyss of the night,

Into a world where the stars, sympathetic,
  Seem to be fraught with a pulsating breath;
Brilliant, yet shining like tear-drops pathetic,
  But sinking at last in oblivion of death!

Sinking, but wrapped in the shroud of the Morning,
  Folded in splendour as light shall arise;
Lucifer, herald of Truth that is dawning,
  Ride through thy glorious pathway, the skies!

Soon in the east, with a splendour triumphant,
  Morning shall break like a great altar-fire,
Ignorance, darkness, and gross superstition,
  Shall melt in its beams, and in silence expire!

Helen Fagg.

[“The faith that you call sacred…”]

R. G. Ingersoll · pp. 339

“To the Readers of ‘Lucifer.’”

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 340-343

343

Adaptations.

We have been asked to give permission for Mr. Gerald Massey’s lines on Lucifer, Lady of Light, to be “adapted” and sung to the “Lord Jesus Christ” in a chapel. This is flattering for both parties concerned. The editors have no objection, but Mr. Massey is obdurate enough to refuse his permission and sufficiently unfeeling to have called the pretty “adaptation” a parody. The “Lady of Light” was to have run in this wise: –

“Star of the Day and the Night,
Star of the Dark that is dying,
Star of the Dawn that is nighing,
Jesu, our Saviour, our Light!” etc.

But how truly appropriate it would be if Mr. Massey’s lines on Shakspeare were also “adapted” and applied to the Lord Buddha.

“FOR HIM NO MARTYR-FIRES HAVE BLAZED,
NO RACK BEEN USED, NOR SCAFFOLDS RAISED;
FOR HIM NO LIFE WAS EVER SHED
TO MAKE THE CONQUEROR’S PATHWAY RED.
OUR PRINCE OF PEACE IN GLORY HATH GONE,
WITHOUT A SINGLE SWORD BEING DRAWN;
WITHOUT ONE BATTLE-FLAG UNFURLED,
TO MAKE HIS CONQUEST OF OUR WORLD.
AND FOR ALL TIME HE WEARS HIS CROWN
OF LASTING, LIMITLESS, RENOWN;
HE REIGNS WHATEVER MONARCHS FALL,
HIS THRONE IS AT THE HEART OF ALL.”

344

Some Words on Daily Life.

(Written by a Master of Wisdom.)

“It is divine philosophy alone, the spiritual and psychic blending of man with nature, which, by revealing the fundamental truths that lie hidden under the objects of sense and perception, can promote a spirit of unity and harmony in spite of the great diversities of conflicting creeds. Theosophy, therefore, expects and demands from the Fellows of the Society a great mutual toleration and charity for each other’s shortcomings, ungrudging mutual help in the search for truths in every department of nature – moral and physical. And this ethical standard must be unflinchingly applied to daily life.

“Theosophy should not represent merely a collection of moral verities, a bundle of metaphysical ethics, epitomized in theoretical dissertations. Theosophy must be made practical; and it has, therefore, to be disencumbered of useless digressions, in the sense of desultory orations and fine talk. Let every Theosophist only do his duty, that which he can and ought to do, and very soon the sum of human misery, within and around the areas of every Branch of your Society, will be found visibly diminished. Forget Self in working for others – and the task will become an easy and a light one for you....

“Do not set your pride in the appreciation and acknowledgment of that work by others. Why should any member of the Theosophical Society, striving to become a Theosophist, put any value upon his neighbours’ good or bad opinion of himself and his work, so long as he himself knows it to be useful and beneficent to other people? Human praise and enthusiasm are short-lived at best; the laugh of the scoffer and the condemnation of the indifferent looker-on are sure to follow, and generally to out-weigh the admiring praise of the friendly. Do not despise the opinion of the world, nor provoke it uselessly to unjust criticism. Remain rather as indifferent to the abuse as to the praise of those who can never know you as you really are, and who ought, therefore, to find you unmoved by either, and ever placing the approval or condemnation of your own Inner Self higher than that of the multitudes.

“Those of you who would know yourselves in the spirit of truth, learn to live alone even amidst the great crowds which may sometimes surround you. Seek communion and intercourse only with the God within your own soul; heed only the praise or blame of that deity which can never be separated from your true self, as it is verily that God itself: called the Higher Consciousness. Put without delay your good intentions into practice, never leaving a single one to remain only an intention – expecting, meanwhile, neither reward nor even acknowledgment for 345the good you may have done. Reward and acknowledgment are in yourself and inseparable from you, as it is your Inner Self alone which can appreciate them at their true degree and value. For each one of you contains within the precincts of his inner tabernacle the Supreme Court – prosecutor, defence, jury and judge – whose sentence is the only one without appeal; since none can know you better than you do yourself, when once you have learned to judge that Self by the never wavering light of the inner divinity – your higher Consciousness. Let, therefore, the masses, which can never know your true selves, condemn your outer selves according to their own false lights....

“The majority of the public Areopagus is generally composed of self-appointed judges, who have never made a permanent deity of any idol save their own personalities – their lower selves; for those who try in their walk in life, to follow their inner light will never be found judging, far less condemning, those weaker than themselves. What does it matter then, whether the former condemn or praise, whether they humble you or exalt you on a pinnacle? They will never comprehend you one way or the other. They may make an idol of you, so long as they imagine you a faithful mirror of themselves on the pedestal or altar which they have reared for you, and while you amuse or benefit them. You cannot expect to be anything for them but a temporary fetish, succeeding another fetish just overthrown, and followed in your turn by another idol. Let, therefore, those who have created that idol destroy it whenever they like, casting it down with as little cause as they had for setting it up. Your Western Society can no more live without its Khalif of an hour than it can worship one for any longer period; and whenever it breaks an idol and then besmears it with mud, it is not the model, but the disfigured image created by its own foul fancy and which it has endowed with its own vices, that Society dethrones and breaks.

“Theosophy can only find objective expression in an all-embracing code of life, thoroughly impregnated with the spirit of mutual tolerance, charity, and brotherly love. Its Society, as a body, has a task before it which, unless performed with the utmost discretion, will cause the world of the indifferent and the selfish to rise up in arms against it. Theosophy has to fight intolerance, prejudice, ignorance, and selfishness, hidden under the mantle of hypocrisy. It has to throw all the light it can from the torch of Truth, with which its servants are entrusted. It must do this without fear or hesitation, dreading neither reproof nor condemnation. Theosophy, through its mouthpiece, the Society, has to tell the Truth to the very face of Lie; to beard the tiger in its den, without thought or fear of evil consequences, and to set at defiance calumny and threats. As an Association, it has not only the right, but the duty to uncloak vice and do its best to redress wrongs, whether through the voice of its chosen lecturers or the printed word of its journals and publications – making its accusations, however, as impersonal 346as possible. But its Fellows, or Members, have individually no such right. Its followers have, first of all, to set the example of a firmly outlined and as firmly applied morality, before they obtain the right to point out, even in a spirit of kindness, the absence of a like ethic unity and singleness of purpose in other associations or individuals. No Theosophist should blame a brother, whether within or outside of the association; neither may he throw a slur upon another’s actions or denounce him, lest he himself lose the right to be considered a Theosophist. For, as such, he has to turn away his gaze from the imperfections of his neighbour, and centre rather his attention upon his own shortcomings, in order to correct them and become wiser. Let him not show the disparity between claim and action in another, but, whether in the case of a brother, a neighbour, or simply a fellow man, let him rather ever help one weaker than himself on the arduous walk of life.

“The problem of true Theosophy and its great mission are, first, the working out of clear unequivocal conceptions of ethic ideas and duties, such as shall best and most fully satisfy the right and altruistic feelings in men; and second, the modelling of these conceptions for their adaptation into such forms of daily life, as shall offer a field where they may be applied with most equitableness.

“Such is the common work placed before all who are willing to act on these principles. It is a laborious task, and will require strenuous and persevering exertion; but it must lead you insensibly to progress, and leave you no room for any selfish aspirations outside the limits traced.... Do not indulge personally in unbrotherly comparison between the task accomplished by yourself and the work left undone by your neighbours or brothers. In the fields of Theosophy none is held to weed out a larger plot of ground than his strength and capacity will permit him. Do not be too severe on the merits or demerits of one who seeks admission among your ranks, as the truth about the actual state of the inner man can only be known to Karma, and can be dealt with justly by that all-seeing Law alone. Even the simple presence amidst you of a well-intentioned and sympathising individual may help you magnetically.... You are the free volunteer workers on the fields of Truth, and as such must leave no obstruction on the paths leading to that field.

“The degree of success or failure are the landmarks the masters have to follow, as they will constitute the barriers placed with your own hands between yourselves and those whom you have asked to be your teachers. The nearer your approach to the goal contemplated – the shorter the distance between the student and the Master.”

The Blossom and the Fruit

Mabel Collins · pp. 347-364

364

Speculation.

Man’s reasoning faith can outlive and can ride
  O’er countless speculations. Navies float
  On changeful waves, and for this ark-like boat
Winds from all quarters, every swelling tide
Will serve. By all the virgin spheres that glide
  Like timid guests across sky-floor we note
  Where lies the pole-star. Those who only quote
Their compass, fail, and antique charts must slide
To error, in this shifting sand of thought
And new-found science, where sweet isles of palm
And olive sink, that were as land-marks sought,
While others rise from Ocean’s fertile bed.
No storm, nor heat, nor cold I fear; my dread
Is lest the ship should meet a death-like calm.

Revolution.

Ah! wondrous happy rounding universe
  Where suns and moons alike as tears e’er mould
  Themselves to beauteous circles! He that rolled
The planets, curved their paths; though seas immerse
Both shattered ship and shell, naught shall escape
  Th’ inevitable wheel that must restore
  The seeming lost. The potent buried lore
Of saint and sage revives to melt and shape
Our thoughts to comeliness, and souls that leave
Earth’s shores float back as craft that cruising sails;
Each blessed gift that hourly from us flies,
God will rain down albeit in other guise; –
And e’en the very dew-drop noon exhales
May find again the self-same rose at eve.

Mary W. Gale.

Twilight Visions

W. C. Eldon Serjeant · pp. 365-367

Esotericism of the Christian Dogma

Abbé Roca · pp. 368-374

374

[This is a very optimistic way of putting it, and if realized would be like pouring the elixir of life into the decrepit body of the Latin Church. But what will his Holiness the Pope say to it? – Ed.]

The Great Quest

W. Scott-Elliot · pp. 375-378

378

Whisper of a Rose.

Behold me! an offspring of Darkness and Light.
With soft, tender petals of radiant white,
With golden heart mystery, full of perfume
That is Soul of my Breath – the Secret of Bloom.

Infinity’s centre is heart of the rose,
And th’ breath of Creation its perfume that flows
Through ages and eons and time yet untold –
But the Soul of the Breath I may not unfold.

Mora.

The Seclusion of the Adept

Mabel Collins · pp. 379-383

384

The White Monk.

By the Author of the “Professor of Alchemy.”

Part I. – Ralph’s Story.

“It was after this manner, as they say,” began Ralph, swinging himself on to a bench and pouring out for himself a tankard of our good home-brewed, as I crouched in the hay opposite to him. “Two centuries agone and thirty years or so, there dwelt in this very house which I serve – and which one day, young master, you shall rule! – Sir Gilbert de Troyes, your ancestor, and his lady, and four fair sons, and a lovely daughter. Of these sons, twain were at the wars, one was in his nurse’s lap, and another was gone to Italy, to finish his studies at Parma. Thus did the old nobles use to ruin their sons!

“This young foregoer of yours (a goodly youth!) fell in with the usual temptations of Satan. He held, with the poets, that the world is the best book for men to read; and he studied it, I ween, with diligence. Now there was a certain damsel, winsome enough, I doubt not, in the Italian style, with black hair and the devil – save the mark! – in her wandering eyes. So it came to pass that Master Gilbert, younger, wooed her for his bride, like an honest gentleman, as the old tales say he was; and so great is the power of one upright soul amongst others, that the young witch – she was but young, poor soul! and teachable – was charmed herself from her Italian ways, and vowed to love and follow only him; and the day before their marriage, she was walking with him in the streets of Parma, by night – for Master Gilbert had a governor along with him in Italy, who must be hoodwinked – when there chanced to espy them one Pietro Rinucci, a clerkly fellow (with a curse upon him!) who was even studying also at Parma, and who loved the Italian witch himself.

“This Rinucci had been favoured of the girl, and only when she saw the Englishman, with his blue eyes and his honest ways, had she scorned her countryman and left him. Rinucci, after the manner of his race-fellows, then dogged her steps, tracked her to her early meetings with young Gilbert de Troyes, who was his unsuspecting friend, and listened to their innocent ravings of love conjoined to virtue.

“Afterward, had he gone to the damsel’s poor lodging and there, with Heaven knows what direful threats! conjured her to renounce her honest lover and return to himself. The signorina was not like an English girl – she neither stormed nor yielded – she cajoled and blinded him. ‘If he would go, she would consider; perchance she did not love the Briton truly; perchance it was a whim; she knew not. Might she but think? it was a whirl, and her heart, alas! was o’er susceptible; 385’twould pass; he must leave her now, at least, and she would see. Meantime Pietruccino should wear this pretty crimson ribbon of hers till they met again.’ After even such words, and for a kiss, he left her. But the cunning villain was more than her match, and waited all the next day round the corners, whence he could see her goings out and comings in. He saw her glide to her trysting-place; he followed cautiously; he heard her give a signalling whispered call; he heard it answered by a short, low whistle; young Gilbert de Troyes swung merrily round the corner and fell into his Italian sweetheart’s arms.

“He met his death, poor, noble young fellow! ’Tis an old tale repeated. I need scarce have wasted all these words upon it – but that one’s heart must needs ache at these things. In the course of nature that Italian snake, Rinucci, was bound to finish his rival there and then. So he got behind the unwary schoolboy – for the lad was, indeed, little more – and stabbed him, all too deep, in the back of the neck.

“Folk say Rinucci triumphed as he set his foot on his dying college-mate, and wiped his dagger, with a laugh, before the horror-stricken girl. Myself can scarcely believe it; he was too young in murder then for that.

“Be this as it may, certain it is that he dragged away the mourning damsel from the corpse of the man who would have saved her soul, and took her back to himself.

“A sickening story, boy. Wilt thou have more, young master? Yea? Why, there is worse to come. For Mistress Italiana – no tradition tells her name – was spirited as any gipsy woman, and full of crafty lore, such as her race delight in. She broke her heart over her English lover’s corpse; but she had still the Southern amusement left her of revenge. She concocted an evil greenish powder, and coloured Signor Pietro’s sweetmeats with it.

“The fellow ate largely, praising the daintiness of the confection. It was deadly enough, I daresay, in all conscience, but it killed him not. These reptiles live on poison; morally, ’tis certain, belike, and also physically it agreed with him. Perchance he may have felt a qualm or two, though tradition says nought of it. Anyway, the next fytte of this story shows us the mysterious disappearance of the Italian girl, of whom no word hath ever since been told.

“She left behind her, whether willingly or no, a quantity of the false seasoning, which Master Pietro had caused to be analysed, and which he seems to have carefully preserved.

“Some time after these events, we find Signor Pietro Rinucci entered into the Monastery of Dominicans at Brescia, a repentant neophyte. He had turned remorseful, no doubt, and in good time! The fellow had ever strong imaginations. He was received in due time as a brother; wore the garb of the Order, and cast his eyes down. 386Tradition saith he was in great turmoil of soul at this time – judge for yourself, young master, by what followed.

“One fine morning Brother Petrus was missing from his small, damp cell, and none could tell what had become of him. None, that is, save the poverty-stricken ropemaker who had supplied him with cords to scale the monastery walls; and his discretion had been paid for. The fact being, I doubt not, that discipline being ever repugnant to our young bravo’s manners, he had fled it.

“In the meantime, the news of Gilbert de Troyes’ death had been brought to these very doors, and certainly the grooms who then tended the good horses of your ancestors must, even in this saddle-room, have spent their sorrow in each other’s company. But Ambrose de Troyes, newly back from the wars, and second-born of the family, rose in his wrath, and swore to avenge his brother. For all might know that the death blow had been dealt by one Pietro Rinucci, fellow-scholar of Gilbert’s, whose absence afterward from the University had puzzled the doctors and caused inquisition into the matter.

“So away went Ambrose, the soldier, to Parma. And mind ye, Ambrose was no careless school-boy, no mean foe to a man, but a great, staunch fellow who had seen service, and who was, moreover, by Nature something stern and hard of purpose.

“But at Parma they told him Rinucci was escaped into a monastery which they named, and showed a painted portrait of him, and did so minutely, point by point, describe the man, that Ambrose swore he should know him, should he meet him in Heaven. And that was a strong assertion, note ye.

“Well, Ambrose journeyed on towards the secluded spot where the Monastery of Dominicans lay, and was enforced to rest one night at the village of Santa Rosa on his road. Having stabled his steed, refreshed it and himself, and practised his arm some moments with the good sharp sword, he slung the weapon round him and went forth for a stroll to pass the time.

“He came to the equivalent of what would be to us in England an ale-house, but some way out of the village, meet for travellers to pause and rest a moment on their way. Ambrose went in to look about him and ordered drink for himself. He lacked a companion to pledge, but looking round the little room saw no one but a moody man who seemed lost in thought, though enjoying some passing sour wine. Ambrose himself could stomach neither the fare nor the company, so he quickly got him on his way a little further; when, meeting with a simple shrine to the Virgin, the God-fearing soldier took his rosary from under his baldrick, and knelt him down to pray. For something had sore perplexed him; he had seemed to see in the features of that morose comrade at the inn the most exact resemblance of Rinucci. But Rinucci was safe at the Monastery, waiting till his time should come, and 387the avenger should denounce him. But even as he rose from prayer did Ambrose see a mounted messenger speeding to him, who told him breathlessly the news had just reached Santa Rosa that the Monk Petrus was escaped and roaming at large somewhere in the country.

“Then Ambrose de Troyes knew he had his man; and natheless, like the large-hearted fellow he was, he would but meet him quite alone. So he rewarded the newsbringer and sent him away. Once more he fell on his knees before our Lady’s image, and besought that his cause might find Heaven’s favour, and his action in it be in every point just and serviceable. (For he looked upon himself as sent to do such things as might cause his brother’s soul to rest in peace.) Then he went rapidly retracing his steps towards the inn again, and, led by Destiny, out came Pietro Rinucci, unarmed, to meet him. Ambrose de Troyes looked into the assassin’s eyes and knew him. Stranger still, the piercing eyes of the cunning Italian saw, in the traits of this bronzed warrior, relationship to the Gilbert who had been his friend and victim.

“‘I arrest thee, Pietro Rinucci, for the murder of my brother, Gilbert de Troyes, and, though I may not draw upon a tonsured monk (yea, I know thee through all thy false disguises!), yet, before I hale thee to the ecclesiastical courts, I will show thee, snake, what I think of thee, and of all such!’

“And Ambrose de Troyes smote the villain a shameful blow upon the face.

“Even at that instant, the monk whips me Ambrose’s sword from its scabbard, and, with the fatal dexterity of his race, ran in upon the stately Englishman and laid him, bleeding quick to death, upon the hot white road.

“‘Oh Margaret, my sister Margaret!’ the dying man raved, as if he thirsted for help from the hand that had been kind to him.

“‘A right pestilent breed of Britons! but easy to kill – easy to kill,’ quoth the Monk, as he laid down the red sword by the dying man’s side and left him alone in his agony.

“This scene was witnessed by a terrified young country-girl, who crouched behind a heap of stones, meanwhile, until the murderer’s flight, and then ran to assist De Troyes, who thought she was his sister Margaret, and said marvellous tender words, of home and of her kindness, and of the little brother he had left in the nursery.

“After this, there comes a period of Rinucci’s life of which we know but little. He seems to have raced about the country, in hiding always, but doing little harm for him. Italy, however, is debateable ground for one of her own recreant monks, so we find Messer Pietro fleeing Justice and coming over here to England. Whether he had had some of his heart-searchings that he knew so often, I know not, but deem it very likely. Here is the flaw, to my mind, in the foreigners’ constitutions. They 388recognize their sins as such, not so we English! We say our evil deeds are fate, congenital infirmity, ignorance, negligence, or even virtues; they say their sins are sins, and yet they do them. Had I but half the talent of sinning that Messer Pietro seems to have owned, my faith, I would have gloried in it! So did not he, however; he went to a father confessor, fell on the earth, and implored absolution – for life was still sweet to him, he said, and he would not die yet awhile.

“The father sent him for penance to travel as a pilgrim, in a white penitential garb to England, there to walk to the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket, foully slain on earth by violence.

“The father did well for his mother-country, but evilly for us.

“The monk Petrus performed at all points the penalty enjoined him, and afterward, having no especial call to Italy again, he followed his roving instincts and wandered about England, even till chance brought him to this, our, town. In this country he knew no men well enough to desire to kill them; besides, at this period, one of his fits of penitence seems to have been on him. Certes, he wore the monkish habit, only different in its white colour from that of other fraternities, and the folk grew acquainted with his white figure as he roamed the land in deepest meditation, with his eyes bent upon the ground.

“Now, one day, say the chronicles (which are made up of village tales), the White Monk, as our townsfolk called him, was sitting in a thicket by a brook in which he was bathing his travelled feet, when there came by the sister of his victims, even Mistress Margaret de Troyes herself, and walked the pleasant fringes of the forest, very near to where the wanderer sat, on the further side the elders. She was accompanied by her mother and by another lady, both of whom were pressing the claims of some noble suitor upon her.

“The other ladies were in deepest mourning for Gilbert and for Ambrose, and Mistress Margaret herself, though she wore no such signs of grief, was most plainly clad in a pale, pure garb of lavender. She listened quietly to all they urged, then spoke and said:

“‘My mother, he is a light, false man. I care not for him.’

“It was protested to her, her high birth, the respect in which he would hold her for herself; above all, her fair beauty, would all ensure his faithfulness. But Margaret said:

“‘I beseech ye, press me no further. Heaven knows I wish the gentleman much good, and that he may aspire to higher things. I will pray for him, weep for him if need be; but, ladies, though I be but a simple English maiden, I hold myself all too good for such as he to marry and draw down, perchance, to like thoughts with himself. I hate all evil – not the doers, mother; but the evil. We are all weak and changeable, and I dare not come in contact of my free will with evil influence. God might punish me by weakness of resolve against infection.’

389“They urged her yet once more; she might triumph and convert a soul.

“‘In truth,’ confessed fair Margaret de Troyes, ‘ye wound me sorely, dearest ladies mine! At such a time, when good Ambrose de Troyes is scarce cold in his grave, to bid his sister make her choice amongst his townsfolk; and celebrate the marriage feast with a breaking heart! My Ambrose – to think that thou, who, if I but spake of a moment’s weariness, would quickly place a cushion for my head, and sit by the hour on our window-seat chafing my feet, that thou should’st be bleeding in the death-struggles, on the hard, parched road, in a foreign land, and I be far away, not able so much as to raise thy dear head upon my knee! Oh, I loved him so tenderly, strong brother of mine! I gloried in my brown-maned soldier. We prayed together the night before he left on his sacred errand, and, at his entreaty, I laid my hand upon his head and blessed him in Our Lady’s name. He was a grave, good man; and you would have me turn my thoughts from him to that other! What though I know Ambrose to be now one of God’s angels; yet he hath left me behind him on the earth – the first unkindness he hath ever done me! And his mother and mine would have me think of wedlock!’

“The fair, pale Englishwoman bent her head, and Pietro heard her weeping.

“Well, it is but guesswork thenceforth. Folk say, in their coarse way of speaking, that the White Monk ‘loved’ the lady Margaret. Forfend! The love of such a man were an insult all too gross to offer to the memory of any Damoiselle de Troyes. Say, rather, he kindled to the worship of goodness in that form first of all.

“We know that from that hour when he first saw and heard her, Rinucci, the stained wretch, wandered ever where there was a chance to see her, even from afar. Once, indeed he even spoke with her. Under the favour of his sacred garment he dared to near her, and asked:

“‘Maiden, how say you? Is there mercy in Heaven for the worst sinners, or no?’

“‘Nay, holy father,” answered the damsel, smiling, ‘thou must be better seen in these high mysteries than I who dwell in the world, where we all need mercy. We can but hope that our God is more pitiful than are our fellow creatures to our faults.’

“‘Maiden,’ besought the White Monk further, ‘can such as thou look pityingly upon a vice-stained fellow man?’

“But Margaret wept, and answered him:

“‘Oh, father, search me not over this problem. I have lost the dearest to me in the world, two brothers, by an assassin’s hand. If that man stood before me, tell me, could I look at him forgivingly? Oh, never, father! Human nature is too weak.’

“The rencounter was over, for Pietro dared speak no more. But, 390according to the custom of that day, Mistress Margaret bent her fair head to receive the blessing of the holy father.

“The monk started back in horror; even he was not too base to feel that. But as the maiden still stood humbly waiting, he was forced to stretch his hands forth from the distance, and murmur: ‘Benedicite!’

“The days went by and the townsfolk noted how the White Monk wasted, and how strange he was. He would mutter to himself like a madman. He never said a word of holy import to the cottagers with whom he lodged at small cost. He ate almost nothing and appeared to spend his days in solitary musing. His conduct smacked so oddly of mania that Giles Hughson, his landlord, took to watching whither he went and what he did. He saw him always following Margaret, but seeking to avoid her if she turned where she might see him. He seemed to dread her greatly, yet, to worship her, or, at least to follow her like a lost soul looking after the light from some vanishing angel’s wing.

“Once Margaret turned and saw him, but recognised him not as the man she had spoken withal. She, taking him for a frère quetant, silently, without looking upon him, pressed into his hand money, which he took, and which was found on him when he died, as you shall hear.”

Percy Ross.

(To be continued.)

The following remarkable passage was published some five years ago in the Theosophist, of Madras (1883); and it is needless to call attention in more detail to the fidelity with which it is being since then verified.

Protesting against the arbitrary chronology of the Sanskritists in the question of Indian antiquity who make it dependent on the Greeks and Chandragupta – whose date is represented as “the sheet-anchor of Indian chronology” that “nothing will ever shake” (Prof. Max Müller and Weber), the author of the prophecy remarks that “it is to be feared that as regards India, the chronological ship of the Sanskritists has already broken from her moorings and gone adrift with all her precious freight of conjectures and hypotheses.” And then adds: –

“We are at the end of a cycle – geological and other – and at the beginning of another. Cataclysm is to follow cataclysm. The pent-up forces are bursting out in many quarters; and not only will men be swallowed up or slain by thousands, “new” land appear and “old” subside, volcanic eruptions and tidal waves appal; but secrets of an unsuspected past will be uncovered to the dismay of Western theorists and the humiliation of an imperious science. This drifting ship, if watched, may be seen to ground upon the upheaved vestiges of ancient civilisations, and fall to pieces. We are not emulous of the prophet’s honours: but still, let this stand as a prophecy.”

(See also “Five Years of Theosophy,” p. 388.)

391

Love with an Object.

Some distinguished contributors to theosophical literature have of late been describing what qualities are necessary to constitute a perfect man, i.e., an Adept. They said that among other things it was absolutely and indispensably necessary, that such a being should possess Love – and not merely Love in the abstract – but love regarding some object or objects. What can they possibly mean by speaking of “love with an object,” and could there possibly be love without any object at all? Can that feeling be called love, which is directed solely to the Eternal and Infinite, and takes no cognizance of earthly illusions? Can that be love which has no object or – in other words – is the love of forms or objects the true love at all? If a man loved all things in the universe alike, without giving any preference to any of them, would not such a love be practically without any object; would it not be equal to loving nothing at all; because in such a case the individuality of any single object would be lost to sight?

A love which is directed towards all things alike, an universal love, is beyond the conception of the mortal mind, and yet this kind of love, which bestows no favours upon any one thing, seems to be that eternal love, which is recommended by all the sacred books of the East and the West; because as soon as we begin to love one thing or one being more than another, we not only detract from the rest an amount of love which the rest may rightfully claim; but we also become attached to the object of our love, a fate against which we are seriously warned in various pages of these books.

The Bhagavad Gita teaches that we should not love or hate any object of sense whatsoever, nor be attached to any object or thing, but renounce all projects and fix our thoughts solely on It, the Eternal, which is no-thing and no object of cognition for us, but whose presence can be only subjectively experienced by, and within ourselves. It says: “He is esteemed, who is equal-minded to companions, friends, enemies, strangers, neutrals, to aliens and kindred, yea to good and evil men” (Cap. vi., 14); and further on it says:

“He whose soul is united by devotion, seeing the same in all around, sees the soul in everything and everything in the soul. He who sees Me (Brahmâ) everywhere and everything in Me, him I forsake not and he forsakes not me.... He who sees the same in everything – Arjuna! – whether it be pleasant or grievous, from the self-resemblance, is deemed to be a most excellent Yogin”

(Cap. vi., 29, 32).

On almost every page of the Bhagavad Gita we are instructed only to direct our love to that which is eternal in every form, and let the form 392itself be a matter of secondary consideration.

“He must be regarded as a steadfast renouncer, who neither hates nor desires.”... “In a learned and modest Brahman, in a cow, in an elephant, in a dog, and a Swapāka; they who have knowledge see the same thing.”... “Let no man rejoice in attaining what is pleasant, nor grieve in attaining what is unpleasant; being fixed in mind, untroubled, knowing Brahma and abiding in Brahma.”... “He who is happy in himself, pleased with himself, who finds also light in himself, this Yogin, one with Brahmâ, finds Nirvana in Him.”

The great Hermes Trismegistus teaches the same identical doctrine; for he says: “Rise and embrace me with thy whole being, and I will teach thee whatsoever thou desirest to know.” The Bible also tells us that “God is Love” (I. John iv., 8), and that we should love Him with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind (Math. xxii., 37), and while it teaches that we should love nothing else but God (Math. xx., 37), who is All in All (Ephes. i., 23), yet it affirms, that this God is omnipresent, eternal and incomprehensible to the finite understanding of mortals (I. Timoth. vi., 16). It teaches this love to be the most important of all possessions, without which all other possessions are useless (I. Corinth. xiii., 2), and yet this God, whom we are to love, is not an “object” (John i., 5), but everywhere. He is in us and we in Him (Rom. xii., 5). We are to leave all objects of sense and follow Him alone (Luc. v., 2), although we have no means of intellectually knowing or perceiving Him, the great Unknown, for whose sake we are to give up house and brethren, sisters, father, mother, wife, children and lands (Mark x., 29).

What can all this mean, but that love itself is the legitimate object of love? It is a divine, eternal, and infinite power, a light, which reflects itself in every object while it seeks not the object, but merely its own reflection therein. It is an indestructible fire and the brighter it burns, the stronger will be the light and the clearer will its own image appear. Love falls in love with nothing but its own self, it is free from all other attractions. A love which becomes attached to objects of sense, ceases to be free, ceases to be love, and becomes mere desire. Pure and eternal love asks for nothing, but gives freely to all who are willing to take. Earthly love is attracted to persons and things, but Divine spiritual love seeks only that which is divine in everything, and this can be nothing else but love, for love is the supreme power of all. It holds together the worlds in space, it clothes the earth in bright and beautiful colours, it guides the instincts of animals and links together the hearts of human beings. Acting upon the lower planes of existence it causes terrestrial things to cling to each other with fond embrace; but love on the spiritual plane is free. Spiritual love is a goddess, who continually sacrifices herself for herself and who accepts no other sacrifice but her own self, giving for whatever she may receive, herself in return. Therefore the 393Bhagavad Gita says: “Nourish ye the gods by this and let the gods nourish you. Thus nourishing each other ye shall obtain the highest good” (Cap. iii., ii.,); and the Bible says: “To him who has still more shall be given, and from him who has not, even what he has shall be taken away” (Luke xix., 26).

Love is an universal power and therefore immortal, it can never die. We cannot believe that even the smallest particle of love ever died, only the instruments through which it becomes manifest change their form; nor will it ever be born, for it exists from eternity, only the bodies into which it shines are born and die and are born again. A Love which is not manifest is non-existent for us, to come into existence means to become manifest. How then could we possibly imagine a human being possessed of a love which never becomes manifest; how can we possibly conceive of a light which never shines and of a fire which does not give any heat?

But “as the sun shines upon the lands of the just and the unjust, and as the rain descends upon the acres of the evil-minded as well as upon those of the good”; likewise divine love manifesting itself in a perfect man is distributed alike to every one without favour or partiality. Wherever a good and perfect human being exists, there is divine love manifest; and the degree of man’s perfection will depend on the degree of his capacity to serve as an instrument for the manifestation of divine love. The more perfect he is, the more will his love descend upon and penetrate all who come within his divine influence. To ask favours of God is to conceive of Him as an imperfect being, whose love is not free, but subject to the guidance of, and preference to, mortals. To expect favours of a Mahatma is to conceive him as an imperfect man.

True, “prayer,” i.e. the elevation and aspiration of the soul “in spirit and in truth” (John xiv., 14), is useful, not because it will persuade the light to come nearer to us, but because it will assist us to open our eyes for the purpose of seeing the light that was already there. Let those who desire to come into contact with the Adepts enter their sphere by following their doctrines; seeking for love, but not for an object of love, and when they have found the former, they will find a superabundance of the latter throughout the whole extent of the unlimited universe; they will find it in everything that exists, for love is the foundation of all existence and without love nothing can possibly continue to exist.

Love – divine love – is the source of life, of light, and happiness. It is the creative principle in the Macrocosm and in the Microcosm of man. It is Venus, the mother of all the gods, because from her alone originates Will and Imagination and all the other powers by which the universe was evolved. It is the germ of divinity which exists in the heart of man, and which may develop into a life-giving sun, illuminating the mind and sending its rays to the centre of the universe; for it 394originates from that centre and to that centre it will ultimately return. It is a divine messenger, who carries Light from Heaven down to the Earth and returns again to Heaven loaded with sacrificial gifts.

It is worshipped by all, some adore it in one form and some in another, but many perceive only the form and do not perceive the divine spirit. Nevertheless the spirit alone is real, the form is an illusion. Love can exist without form, but no form can exist without love. It is pure Spirit, but if its light is reflected in matter, it creates desire and desire is the producer of forms. Thus the visible world of perishable things is created. “But above this visible nature there exists another, unseen and eternal, which, when all created things perish, does not perish” (Bh. G. viii. 20), and “from which they who attain to it never return.” This is the supreme abode of Love without any object, unmanifested and imperishable, for there no object exists. There love is united to love, enjoying supreme and eternal happiness within her own self and that peace, of which the mortal mind, captivated by the illusion of form, cannot conceive. Non-existent for us, and yet existing in that Supreme Be-ness, in which all things dwell, by which the universe has been spread out, and which may be attained to by an exclusive devotion.

Emanuel.

Self Mastery.
(A Sonnet.)

O! for the power to lay this burden low!
  This weight of self; to kill all vain desire
  To clasp to our outer selves the scorching fire,
So that the God within shall live and grow!
O! for the strength to face the hidden foe,
  To raise our being higher still and higher,
  To breathe the breath that Holy ones inspire,
To break the bonds that bind to Earth below!

Great, Infinite Soul! that broodeth o’er us ever,
  Say, can the human will unaided win
The Victor’s crown (and earthly bondage sever),
  – A Heavenly flight, triumphant over sin?
O Human and Divine, forsake us never,
  Thine is the power by which we enter in!

Dum Spiro, Spero.

Reviews.

A Modern Magician

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 395-397

397

“THE TWIN SOUL: a Psychological and Realistic Romance,” in two volumes, by an Anonymous Author. Ward & Downey, 12, York Street, Covent Garden.

This is quite another kind of literary production than the “Modern Magician,” just reviewed. It aspires to more serious and philosophical mysticism, but fails rather ungloriously. There are passages in it which, taken out of the work, especially at the beginning of Volume I., might be made the subjects of short and rather useful little treatises upon mystic theories; but, as a whole, the book is one of the most disappointing novels published for some time. It begins well, goes on from bad to worse, promises much, holds nothing, and ends nowhere, seeming to be written not as a work of fiction, but simply to ventilate the author’s ideas. These – the work being anonymous – have to be judged by the novel alone. It is rumoured that the “Twin Soul” is the occasional work of twelve years’ labour, and the disconnected character of its events bears out the rumour. Its style is pedantic, though good in writing, while the matter and plot are heavy, and delivered in a long-winded and didactic manner.

The story is that of one Mr. Rameses, an exceedingly virtuous, learned, and solemn Oriental millionaire, whose real nationality remains to the end a mystery, and whose story is narrated by a somewhat cynical English philosopher, called De Vere. The latter tells the story in the style which suits him best, and is 398perfectly natural. He is humorous and amusing, even if slightly ponderous. But alas for the reader! Mr. De Vere suddenly stops short at an early stage, and the story is taken up, without any apparent cause or reason, by a man unknown, who “had less sympathy with Mr. Rameses,” and who has all the defects of Mr. De Vere’s qualities, and a good many of his own besides, for he is even more ponderous and more cynical, without his humour. Mr. Rameses is a peculiar character, but, as sketched, he is quite in keeping with his Oriental origin. He believes in many theories: re-incarnation, socialism, certain occult doctrines, the possibility of recovering the memory of past incarnations, and, as a matter of course, the modern craze of the day, the theory of “twin souls.” He is perpetually in search of his “twin,” and hunts her with the pertinacity of a sleuth-hound under all forms, and in all places. Mr. De Vere is the possessor of an Assyrian collection, Egyptian papyri, and also of two female mummies – Amenophra and Lurulâ, the first the daughter of a Pharaoh, the second a priestess of Isis – of which the sarcophagi are covered with hieroglyphics, which Mr. Rameses reads with most surprising ease. The hero, claiming his memory as a palimpsest, which by certain processes clearly discovers the obliterated record of his past incarnations, cannot, in spite of this, make up his mind which of the two mummies was formerly the body of his twin-soul. Finally, he solves the doubt by declaring them both to have been the mortal casket of his beloved – with Lurulâ for choice. The reader here has great hopes held out to him that there will be a grand ceremony, at which the mummies are to be unrolled, and at which the soul of the deceased mummy will be summoned back to shuffle on a mortal coil again. Alas! such hopes are fallacious; for the ceremony never takes place, owing to Mr. Rameses falling in love with the sister of a Hindu lady married to an English baronet. After much hesitation the lady so honoured by his choice is also declared to be the vehicle of his twin-soul, i.e., to save appearances – to be a re-incarnation of the ego which formerly dwelt in the mummy or mummies. Finally, after a long-winded oration over the mystic properties of a magnificent present of jewels, Mr. Rameses wins “the fair Niona,” as she is called – who, although a Hindu, is a Zoroastrian Sun-worshipper. They are married, notwithstanding their “paganism,” according to Roman Catholic rites, and the pair start to spend the honeymoon in Egypt, where, in the Temple of Isis at Thebes, they are to be again united according to the – to them – more sacred ritual of Sun-worship. After a very interesting dream about the Deluge, which broke through an isthmus uniting Gibraltar to North Africa, and destroyed a vast civilization which occupied the floor of the present Mediterranean Sea, they arrive safely in Egypt. Here the fair Hindu of Zoroastrian persuasion and Italian name, has another interesting psychic vision, an interview with the Sphinx, which makes her incontinently faint, and lose consciousness. Then they proceed to Thebes, and, after due care, make selection of the site of the Temple of Isis. They build their bonfire and ignite it, but at the supreme moment Niona gives a gasp, faints, and this time dies outright, with as little reason for it as every other incident in the novel has. The return to Cairo is immediately commenced, and here Niona, in strict keeping with Mr. Rameses’s habits, is at once converted into a mummy. It must be rather interesting to possess the body of three defunct twin souls, and reflect upon their virtues.

The rest of the book is occupied by various disquisitions of the author, 399disguised flimsily under conversations of his characters on the social and political customs of the Nineteenth century. Read carefully, the conversations contain ideas, but are likely to offend on account of their length and ponderousness. As regards the construction of the book and the characters, Mr. Rameses is interesting, in spite of his solemnity and his love of mummies, and Mr. De Vere is amusing. The other dramatis personæ seem to have been created merely as pegs upon which to hang the author’s opinions. What, for instance, is the object of entering into detail upon the passionate episodes in the career of Mr. Rameses’s secretary, or the mercenary marriage of Lady Gwendoline Pierrepoint with “Old Methusaleh”? Their only excuse can be that they may serve to increase the contrast between such marriages and that with a twin soul. Taken as a whole, the ideas are interesting, and the mystic utterances in the first volume almost correct from the orthodox occult point. But the manner in which they are displayed is irritating, and this chiefly because the reader is perpetually being brought up to a point of interest, and as perpetually left disappointed.

Posthumous Humanity.^[18]

This is a translation from the French by Colonel H. S. Olcott, President of the Theosophical Society, of the remarkable work of that name, by a well-known savant, Adolphe d’Assier. The original work appeared a few years ago, and produced a stir both in the sceptical public and unbelieving science, and an outcry among the spiritists of France, whose pet theories about the “spirits” of the dead it upset. “Posthumous Humanity” was not only a singularly interesting work, but it was one of the first, and perhaps the loudest, of the bugle notes that heralded the last act of the fierce battle between materialistic science and spiritualism; for it ended in the virtual defeat of the former, at any rate, upon one line: it forced the hand of the majority of sceptics in the recognition of what is called in mysticism the “astral body” of man and animal, and by more pretentious than wise investigators “the phantasms of the living,” forgetting those of the dead.

That a learned member of an academy of science should, of all men, write a serious book on the phenomena of “the Borderland,” accepting as facts in nature such things as ghostly appearances, and the projection of the double, is almost a phenomenon in itself. And what makes the case the more remarkable as an indication of a new current in public opinion, is the fact that these things, which it has hitherto been the fashion to consign with a laugh or a shudder to the limbo of exploded superstitions, are treated by the author in a perfectly scientific spirit. He accounts for them, not by the usual supposition of hallucination or stupidity on the part of observers, but by an exceedingly ingenious and plausible postulation of forces at work in us, and around us, which are as little “supernatural” as any of the recognised forces of nature, or portions of man’s constitution. Not only has M. d’Assier the courage to face the probable ridicule of the wiseacres, but he has the audacity to turn the tables upon “men of 400science,” by actually making fun of their unmeasured pretensions, and twitting them mercilessly about their past mistakes. Not the least remarkable feature in the case is the fact that the author, who started into these researches an ardent positivist, has come out of them an ardent positivist still. He believes that what he has accomplished is to extend the reign of matter into a region previously believed to belong to spirit, thus planting the standard of positivism in a wider and more fruitful region, which he has happily reclaimed from the winds and tides of superstition. But the fact is, that although our author has gone a good deal further than most of those who start out “on their own hook” to explore the realms of the Occult, he cannot be said to have penetrated very far into the mysteries of being. He has peeped in at the door of the psychic antechamber to the spiritual world proper – the ante-chamber in which the members of Psychical Research Societies amuse themselves and others by playing blindman’s buff with hypothesis – and his interesting volume tells us of the wonderful things that go on there. The result of his researches, as he says in his Preface, is the conclusion that “posthumous humanity is, in fact, but a special example of posthumous animality, and that the latter presents itself as the immediate consequence of the living world.” Every tyro in theosophy knows that this conclusion is a fair approximation to the truth, and were man nothing but an animal of high degree, it might possibly be the whole truth. But man is an animal, plus something, and this something more, is precisely what M. d’Assier leaves entirely out of sight, as indeed he could hardly help doing if he attached any importance to remaining a Positivist. It is this something more, of whose very existence our author seems profoundly unconscious, that has the chief interest for us, for that is the spiritual and eternal part of man, in contradistinction to the psychic portion which fades away and disappears after a time, as M. d’Assier very justly declares.

It seems a pity that a learned and ingenious man, like our author, should not have begun investigations of this kind by making himself familiar with at least the bare outline of the metaphysical and psychological system that underlies the schools of philosophy of India. This system is the result of very profound research into such phenomena as our author deals with, and also into other far deeper and more important manifestations that he has not considered at all; and these researches have for thousands of years occupied, to a greater or lesser degree, almost every thinking man among races which are acknowledged to be possessed of a very high degree of intellectual acuteness and spiritual insight. Were our Western adventurers into the borderland between spirit and matter – the astral world – to take this obvious precaution, they would know that the ground over which they now laboriously make their way, has not only been traversed before, but pretty fully surveyed and mapped out, and that their supposed discoveries amount virtually to no more than a verification of results long ago obtained by others. This very needed exception in the work under review has been obviated by the translator’s notes and supplement, without diminishing the practical value of M. d’Assier’s treatise as a useful contribution to occult literature. For, as his labours do actually confirm much of the teachings of Theosophy, with regard to that part of the constitution of man, which is common to him and the animals, the work, as it now stands, is really a valuable occult treatise as to facts. The important question with the world, in these times, being not so much what is 401said, as who it is that says it, the fact that an incorrigible positivist, has published his belief in the actuality of a psychic plane of existence, and of the temporary survival in it after death of a certain part or principle of the animal (including man), is of the greatest help and importance to theosophy. It will probably affect public opinion far more profoundly than if a thousand Eastern sages proclaimed the same elementary fact of Occultism in chorus. No better illustration of, and testimony to, the reality of plain, broad facts in connection with wraiths, “doubles,” and other such apparitions, can be found than in d’Assier’s “Posthumous Humanity” in its new English garb, by Colonel Olcott, and with the translator’s Preface and annotations to the text. These add greatly to the value of the book for the student of Occultism. In fact, these additions serve the same purpose which a notice of the work in Lucifer might have been expected to have in view; for they correct the author in some particulars, add additional information in others, and generally forestall the critic who writes from the Theosophical standpoint. Besides this, the translator has added a highly interesting and unique appendix, giving the opinions of numerous Hindus of various castes and sects upon psychic phenomena of that kind, collected from various parts of India, which, by itself, has considerable value to the student of mystical sciences. In conclusion, we may record almost a general opinion – save, of course, that of rank materialists – that no work yet published on the subject dealt with by our author is better calculated to reach the scientifically-minded enquirer. It is written with calmness and logical clearness that takes the scoffer’s laugh out of his mouth. It goes as far as anyone new to the subject could be reasonably expected to follow; and the direction it takes is the right one. It is preeminently the book for the too sceptical and ignorant enquirer to begin with.

ספר יצירה, Sepher Yetzirah, The Book of Formation, and the Thirty-two Paths of Wisdom; translated from the Hebrew, and collated with Latin Versions. By Dr. W. Wynn Westcott, Bath: Robert H. Fryar, 1887.

This is a treatise of about 30 quarto pages on that well-known Hebrew occult work, the Sepher Yetzirah. It consists of an introduction, giving the historic aspects of the matter, an English translation of the Sepher Yetzirah and the Thirty-two Paths, and several pages of notes, giving remarks on and variant readings of difficult and disputed passages.

The introductory pages bear the stamp of considerable literary research, and the translation of the Book of Formation itself is intelligible and concise. But we can hardly say as much for the Thirty-two Paths, which, abstruse and difficult of comprehension in the original, are, we are afraid, no more intelligible in the translation. Owing to the unpopularity of the subject, there are readers who will be readily drawing the conclusion that Dr. Westcott himself does not altogether understand their mystical bearing and symbolism. Yet the notes on the actual text of the “Sepher Yetzirah” are valuable, and show considerable occult knowledge. But a still greater error is made by the translator. We notice that Dr. Westcott has invariably rendered the word Elohim by “God,” 402notwithstanding that it is a plural noun, as shown by the plural word “Chiim” joined thereto in the ninth section of the first chapter. This will, no doubt, prove grateful to the staff and readers of the Jewish World, whose editors pride themselves, against all fact and truth, on the Monotheism of their early ancestors. It cannot fail to strike the Kabalists as an unfortunate deviation from the original meaning in favour of one laboriously fabricated by both Jewish and Christian falsificators.

The “Book of Formation” is a treatise consisting of 6 chapters and 33 sections, and thus its compilation is pentacular. The 6 chapters refer to the Yetziratic World, the 6 periods of Genesis; while the 33 sections have a close analogy with the Thirty-two Paths which are added at the end of the work. It is a philosophical disquisition on the occult meanings of the ten numbers of the decimal scale, and the 22 letters of the Hebrew sacred alphabet. The first chapter deals with the numbers, which it divides into a Tetrad (symbolising Spirit, Air, Water, and Fire), and a Hexad (symbolising Height, Depth, East, West, South and North). The second chapter treats generally of the 22 letters, produced from the Air or the number 2, and divided into 3 Mother-letters, 7 double-letters, and 12 simple letters. The third chapter shows the symbolic reference of the 3 Mother-letters to Air, Water, and Fire; the fourth chapter that of the 7 double-letters to the Planets &c.; the fifth chapter that of the 12 simple letters to the signs of the Zodiac, &c.; and the sixth chapter forms the synthesis.

The 32 paths are no other than symbolical developments of the 10 Sephiroth or numbers, and the 22 letters which form the connecting links between them.

Altogether the work is interesting and worthy of careful study.

Treble Chords.

Poems by Catherine Grant Furley. Edinburgh: R. and R. Clark.

This is an inviting little book of verse, with an ill-chosen title. Why “Treble Chords,” when the author cannot compose anything more than a single part? The octave is spanned by treble or threefold chords, but Miss Furley has not yet reached the octave of attainment! No, the book must be re-christened at its second birth; and the protest of the Girton Girl, and the more sustained poem of the Other Isolt, are assuredly good enough to interest and delight a sufficient number of women to send it into a second edition. The writer has a distinct faculty of seeing, as well as the tendency to take the “other side,” as she does in Isolt of Brittany and in Galatea to Pygmalion. The moral of the latter poem is thus presented:

“O, frequent miracle! so often seen
We scarcely pause to think what it may mean –
Man’s power to raise within a woman’s heart
A love he does not know, nor could impart;
To wake a soul within the marble breast,
Then long to soothe it back to stony rest;
For, though the woman’s sweeter to caress,
The statue’s more convenient to possess.”

403Here is a specimen of the sonnets, not the best, perhaps, but to the purpose:

Circe.

Men call me Circe, but my name is Love;
  And my cup holds the draught of sweet and sour,
  Of gain, joy, loss, renouncement, all the dower
That woman’s love brings man. I hold above
Your outstretched hand the chalice; ere you prove
  Its potency, bethink you; it has power
  To test your soul. If in a sinful hour
You touch it, you shall sink as those who strove
  Of old to win my heart. Lo! there they be,
Not men but beasts; for with impure desire
  They sought me, and Love holds that blasphemy;
And for their sin doth bid them dwell in mire
Nor know their shame. Had they been pure in thought,
My cup had strengthened them and injured not.

It is but a tiny handful, this, of first flowers; not even a gathering of first-fruits. But they have the fragrance of promise, and a freshness of real rarity. Whether the fruit will set and mature must depend upon the sunshine and the rain and other surroundings of the struggling life, and on the depth of soil and strength of rootage. Of these we cannot judge; but the first-flowers are sweet and pretty and worth a word of welcome.

G. M.

The Creator, and What we may know of the method of creation

W. Oxley · pp. 403-408

Absolute Monism; or, Mind is Matter and Matter is Mind

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 408-411

411

Editors’ Notes.

We have a good deal of correspondence now in type, but must stand over till next month owing to lack of space.

In particular we wish to acknowledge a letter on Hylo-Idealism, signed C. N., forwarded to us by Dr. Lewins from a correspondent of his now in the East. This letter places Hylo-Idealism in a new and very different light, and its straightforward style and language are in strong contrast to the turgid effusions of such writers as G. M. McC. An extract from one of the latter’s letters to the “Secular Review” (January 7, 1888), for instance, says that

“Specialism is Superficialism, and vice versa, both being fractionalism; and that the true desideratum is generalisationism (i.e. all-roundism and all-throughism), whereby and wherein the Kantian and Hegelian metaphysic may be precipitated and modern Materialism sublimed? There is only one alembic for both, and that is Solipsism – that true ‘wisdom of the ages,’ in which the profoundest thinker is at one with the little child.

– G. M. McC.”

!!!^[19]

The following books have been received and will be noticed in due course: –

“Absolute Relativism; or, the Absolute in Relation,” by W. B. McTaggart. (W. Stewart & Co.)

“Spirit Revealed,” by Captain William C. Eldon Serjeant. (George Redway.)

“A Modern Apostle,” and other Poems, by Constance C. W. Naden. (Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.)

“Manuel of Etheropathy,” by Dr. Count Manzetti.

412

Correspondence.

The Church and the Doctrine of Atonement.

To the Editors of Lucifer.

As it is often supposed that the clergy are required to be united as one man in teaching a doctrine called Atonement, and that this doctrine requires the clergy either to teach that “God required the blood of Jesus to be shed and offered as a sacrifice for an Atonement,” or to leave the Church if they reject it; therefore, since I reject this doctrine, it is sometimes wondered how I can either have been admitted to ordination, or, being admitted, how I can remain in, or expect to have a hearing in, the pulpits of the National Churches.

The explanation of my position is as follows:

I offered myself as a candidate for ordination much later than is usual; and one of the three beneficed clergy, whose testimonials, as to the candidate’s religious views being orthodox, each candidate is required to provide before being accepted as a candidate for examination and ordination, informed the Bishop of London (Jackson) that I did not hold Church of England views on the Atonement. The Bishop, therefore, before accepting me as a candidate, required a personal interview; when I told the Bishop, in reply to his question, whether I had any difficulty in accepting the doctrine of Atonement as taught in the second of the XXXIX. Articles, that I was entering the Church in order to teach, that it was the work of Jesus Christ to devote His life a living sacrifice to persuade us to believe that in His love, His mind, His spirit towards us, we saw (so far as it could be manifested in the human form) the love, mind, and spirit of God towards us; and that the sacrifice of Jesus consisted in His leaving nothing undone that love could do or suffer, even to drinking to its very dregs the cup of our hatred, whilst blind and ignorant, in order that we might accept and believe His testimony.

And, in addition, I told the Bishop that if the XXXIX. Articles did not allow of this teaching, and demanded of the clergy to believe and teach that “God required the blood of Jesus to be shed and offered as a sacrifice for an Atonement, either to appease God’s wrath, satisfy His justice, or propitiate His favour,” then such a doctrine was immoral, anti-Christian, contrary to the Scriptures, and made God to be no better than Shylock, a wolf, or a devil. And I dared the Bishop to refuse accepting me as a candidate.

The Bishop made no reply, neither assenting nor dissenting, and I returned to Petersham to await the result of this interview. After a day or two the Bishop’s chaplain wrote that I might consider my proposal to come to the Bishop’s examination for Orders accepted; and I was ordained without one word of comment upon the conversation at this private interview. But my first vicar only allowed me to preach three times, and then for the rest of the year he boycotted me from either preaching, reading, or even speaking in the parish, excepting only in a particular part of it. My second vicar, after allowing me 413to preach three times, also boycotted me entirely. I appealed to the Bishop, but he declined to interfere. So after striving in vain to find a clergyman who would allow me to preach what I was ordained to teach, I published pamphlets, and delivered them by the hundred and thousand at the church doors after the service, wherever there was a large congregation; but after a time the Bishop was appealed to to stop me; when he not only denied me, as Peter denied Jesus, but he threatened to instruct the police to prevent me; and the ruling powers at St. Paul’s Cathedral did instruct the chief of the police to prevent me.

As a last resort, I write letters in the Press wherever I can find a newspaper willing to open its columns, to explain my views and appeal to the people to obtain liberty in the Church for teaching the truth of “Christ Crucified.” But so great is the opposition to this, that the chief organ of the Church and the Press (the Times) refuses even to allow me to advertise for a pulpit, on the ground that it is inadmissible; notwithstanding all the minutest details of divorce trials are freely admissible, thus proving that everything is admissible excepting one thing, viz.: the truth of Christ Crucified.

And yet the Archbishop of Canterbury has recently told the world that “the Church wishes the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, to be told,” and the Bishops of Carlisle, Durham, Peterborough, Manchester, Liverpool and Bedford, have also used words to the same effect. But although I have spent the best part of my life (17 years) in striving to find one clergyman (from the highest to the lowest), I have not found one who would allow this liberty to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, concerning Christ Crucified. And I appeal to the rulers of the Church to allow this liberty – and to the people to demand and obtain this liberty, if the rulers of the Church refuse it. For I have a letter from Canon Liddon, in which he says to me, “I can believe with all my heart, although I only know you from the two letters which you have written to me (upon my sermons), that if you were to preach, people would go to hear you as they go to hear me.” Is there not a cause then, why I should complain of being thus cruelly and unjustly boycotted for 17 years without any reason?

The chief organ of the Church and the Press (the Times) in the supposed chief Christian city in the world, refused to publish, even as an advertisement, any one of the three following appeals, on the ground that they were inadmissible. Yes, inadmissible, whilst all the minutest details of the Barrett trial, the Dilke trial, the Colin Campbell trial, the Seabright trial, and a host of others of a like nature, were all freely admissible.

I.

“A pulpit wanted, in the National Church, in which liberty will be allowed to teach the truth of Christ Crucified, openly and fearlessly, in order that it may no longer remain either a stumbling-block to the Jews, foolishness to the world, or a mystery to the teachers of it (as it is to this day, for want only of this liberty), but may verily be seen to be, as it is, and as St. Paul asserted it to be, the power of God, and wisdom of God for the salvation of all men.”

II.

“The Rev. T. G. Headley, of Petersham, S.W., appeals to the Clergy and people of the Church of England for a pulpit in which he may be allowed to 414preach seven sermons: I. on Unbelief; II. the Trial of Abraham; III. the Day of Judgment; IV. Mary Magdalene; V. Conversion of St. Paul; VI. Jesus, only; VII. Inspiration.”

III.

“The Rev. T. G. Headley, of Petersham, S.W., appeals to the Clergy for a pulpit in which he may be allowed to explain the mystery of Christ Crucified, that it may no longer remain a mystery.”

Rev. T. G. Headley.
Manor House, Petersham, S.W.

[Editorial reply to “The Church and the Doctrine of Atonement” by T. G. Headley]

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 414

Socialism and Theosophy

T. B. Harbottle · pp. 415-417

417

What is Theosophy?

The question is answered by Schopenhauer as follows:

“... Starting from the plane of mental conception (Vorstellung), and proceeding on our way towards the attainment of objective knowledge, we shall never be able to arrive at a higher point than our own conception (imagination), i.e. of the external appearance of the object of our observation; but we shall never be able to penetrate into the interior of the things and to find out what they really are (not what they merely appear to be). So far I agree with Kant. But as a counterpoise to this truth I have called attention to another one; namely, that we are not merely the cognising subject, but we are also ourselves a part of object of our cognition, we are ourselves the Thing itself. There is consequently an interior way open to us from that self-existing and interior essence of things, which we cannot approach from the outside; a kind of sub418terranean passage, a secret connection, by which we by treason, as it were, may at once penetrate into a fortress which was impregnable from the outside. The Thing itself can as such enter our consciousness only in a direct manner, i.e. by becoming conscious of its own self. To attempt to know it objectively is to ask for a self-contradiction.”

(The World as Will and Conception. Vol. ii., Cap. 18).

What Schopenhauer expresses in modern philosophical language might perhaps be stated in a few words by saying, that man cannot become conscious of the truth unless the truth is in him, and in that case it is not the man who recognises the truth, but the truth which recognises itself in man. He who wants to know it objectively must separate himself from it, because no one can see his own face without the help of a mirror; but if he separates himself from it, the truth exists in him no longer. It is therefore the truth itself which may become self-conscious in man, provided there exists any truth in him.

F. H.

A Note of Explanation

G. Massey · pp. 418-421

421

Hylo-Idealism – The Secret of Jesus.

“Behold, the Kingdom of Heaven is within you.”

The primacy of Self is indisputable, if by reason of one fact only – that this, self-same, Self is the initial postulate of all sane philosophy. And, when Philosophy soars to Metaphysic, Scientific Analysis “takes up the wondrous tale,” and its burden is Self-hood also. All roads lead to Rome. All analysis runs into the Egoistic Synthesis. “The One [Ego] remains, the Many change and pass.” Yet the passing is only the flux and ebb of the One. In Hegel’s words, “that which passes away passes away into its own self: only the passing away passes away.” Which things are an allegory, and yet “solvitur ambulando.” A recent traveller in the United States tells us, that, in the Emerson country, he chanced upon cross-roads, and found there an apparently contradictory direction-post. One arm of it bore the inscription, “This is the way to Concord,” the other, pointing in the opposite direction, was similarly worded, “This is the way to Concord.” The Hylo-Ideal Thesis is this Ideal Concord, to be reached whether you travel by way of Eastern Idealism, or by the route of plainer Western Materialism. For, and here all contradictions are reconciled, in the one Subject-object which is Self, there is no diversity, neither Jew nor Greek, neither Idealism only, nor Materialism only, or exclusively, but all is one.^[20] And in Unity there is no class distinction, no nomenclature, no “otherness,” no Ebal and Gerizim, but only the Mount of God. What the Ego is, all is.^[21] It is the x of every problem and answers to any value save the spurious and indifferent one of the Dualist.

I find Hylo-Idealism (Auto-centricism) – this “pearl of great price” – canvassed and examined by many modern thinkers, only to be contemptuously cast away, though it would have made each one of them in turn “richer than all his tribe.” But it was ever thus. In this rejection there is no despair in 422the view of the illuminati. All is ours, and paltering with the central truth of SOLIPSISM, as men have ever paltered, does not change or diminish the truth itself, or lessen the assurance of its ultimate victory, since to go from, or flee from, the Egoistic presence is an impossibility. We wander here and there, but to seek to transcend ourselves is vain. There must, sooner or later, be the resipiscentia, the coming home at last to Self, and Self only, as to the better home at last.

In this view there is no Logos – save that indisputable one, which maketh all things to every one of us – no “true Light” save that effulgent one which “lighteth every man that cometh into the world,” namely, his own creative and illuminating Egoity – sans which there is but nothingness. Such a Gospel as this should be termed the Evangel of common-sense were it not that that phrase shows only one side of the question – “Virginibus, puerisque est” but it is also the very acme of the exalted intelligence, “the last and sharpest height” of human thought where the atmosphere is all too rare for mortal breath.

The highest and the lowliest^[22] are ever thus akin – “Aryan worship secreted in the Holy of Holies the utensils of the dairy.” Grasp but the centre truth of truths – that the Ego and its products are one, that every one of us spins, from his own consciousness, the web of thing and circumstance, which envelopes him – and you see at once and as it were instinctively, that in this Universe-circle of Egoity there is no “otherness” even thinkable, no lower and no higher, no difference, nothing essentially common or unclean, everything being, not so much cleansed of God, as very THEOBROMA,^[23] God’s food and nutrient element, seeing that in it, and by it, and through it, we and all things CONSUBSTANTIALLY EXIST.

Thus veræ causæ and other figments are not so much unsearchable, or past finding out, as out of court or indifferent. Whether all be of God, or all be from a “clam-shell,” does not matter – does not, by one jot, affect our Thesis. Indifferently we are by origin, patricians or “gutter-snipes.” The Ego is free of the Cosmos – equal to either fortune, high or low, makes its own universe, calls it by its own name, and it “lives and moves and has its being.”

G. M. McC.

Gerald Massey on Shakspeare.

Mr. Massey has sent us a circular, the contents of which should be of interest to the lovers of Shakspeare and the buyers of rare books. The writer says:

[Circular on a new edition of The Secret Drama of Shakspeare’s Sonnets]

G. Massey · pp. 422-423

424

Correspondence

Interesting to Astrologers.

Astrological Notes – No. 3.

To the Editor of Lucifer.

Question, at London, 11.45 a.m., Feb. 26th, 1887.

Will the quesited die from his present illness?

Hearing by letter that my uncle, an octogenarian, was seriously ill from pneumonia, I drew a figure for the moment of the impression to do so, which occurred while reading the communication. His illness had commenced about February 7th, and he was now confined to his bed.

The following are the elements of the figure: –

Cusp of	10th	house 0° ♓︎.
–	11th	house 3° ♈︎.
–	12th	house 20° ♉︎.
–	1st	house 4° 38’ ♋︎.
–	2nd	house 20° ♋︎.
–	3rd	house 8° ♌︎.

Planets’ places: ♆︎ 25° 10’ ♉︎; ♅︎ 11° 46 R ♎︎; ♄︎ 15° 54’ R ♋︎. ♃︎ 5° 48’ R ♏︎; ♂︎ 20° 31’ 31” ♓︎; ☉︎ 7° 35’ 50” ♓︎; ♀︎ 27° 53’ 14” ♓︎; ☿︎ 23° 18’ 58” ♓︎; ☽︎ 16° 22’ 36” ♈︎. Caput Draconis 27° 35’ ☊; ⨁︎ 13 24’ ♌︎.

As the quesited was the 4th of my mother’s brothers and sisters, my mother being the 8th and last, I took the 10th house of the figure for herself, the 12th (or 3rd from the 10th) for her eldest brother or sister, the 2nd for the 2nd, the 4th for the 3rd, the 6th for the 4th – the quesited – and the 1st (the 8th from the 6th) for his 8th, or house of death. ♂︎ was lord of his first house, and ☽︎ of his 8th. The aspect was ☽︎ 25° 51’ 5” ♂︎, separating from the quindecile, and applying to the semisextile. As the significators were in good aspects, separating from one and applying to the other, and within orbs of both, it signified sure recovery; more especially as ♂︎ received ☽︎ by house, and was dignified by triplicity. Nevertheless, the severity of the illness was shown by Cauda Draconis in quesited’s 4th house; by ♄︎, lord of quesited’s 4th, posited in quesited’s 8th, retrograde, in his detriment, and in close □ to ☽︎, lady of quesited’s 8th and posited in his 6th. Furthermore, as ☽︎, the applying planet of the two significators, was in a cardinal sign and in a succeedent house of the figure, each degree signified a week; therefore as ☽︎ wanted 4° 8’ 55” of the perfect semisextile aspect, I judged that he would be convalescent in 4 weeks and 1 day, or March 27th. On March 29th he walked out in his garden for the first time, and fully recovered from his attack.

Nemo.

Erratum. – Page 76, 2nd column, line 2, for ♍︎ read ♏︎.

No. 6 – February 1888

"What is Truth?"

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 425-433

434

The Soldier’s Daughter.

(Judges xi., 6 – xi., 39.)

In the early days of Israel’s history, whilst Israel was struggling to be a nation and a kingdom, there was a people called the Ammonites, who were making war upon the Israelites.

And we are told that the Israelites, in great distress and fear, went out of their country, into the land of Tob, to find a man named Jephthah, who was a man of mighty valour, in order to persuade him to return with them, and be the captain and leader of their army, to fight against, and save them from the Ammonites.

Now this man Jephthah was himself an Israelite by birth, but because his mother had not been legally married to his father, Gilead, the sons of Gilead’s lawful wife conspired together to drive him from his hearth, home, and country, as a disgrace to the family and to Israel; but the true reason was that they were envious and jealous of him, in like manner as the brethren of Joseph who had previously conspired against him.

For Jephthah himself was wholly innocent of having done anything to disgrace either the family or the nation. And therefore, in common justice, he ought not to have been made to suffer merely for the form and manner of his birth; over which neither Jephthah nor any of us have any control, either as to the time when, or the manner in which we should be born. But although Jephthah was despised and cast out as a dog, in the days of Israel’s prosperity, yet in the day of Israel’s adversity and weakness, Israel no longer allowed any mean and petty distinctions to prevent her from recognising the noble character of Jephthah, and she entreated him to forget past ill-usage, and return to be her captain and leader to save her from the Ammonites.

And as this proposal of Israel afforded Jephthah the long wished-for opportunity of returning to his country, and of establishing an honourable reputation, therefore he was not only ready to forget and forgive the insults and injuries which he had received in the past from his brethren, but he was also ready to return with them, and share their troubles and dangers, even to sacrificing his life, if need be, in order to save their lives and property.

Jephthah was the more willing to return and make this sacrifice because he had a daughter, an only daughter and child; and she was all the world to him, as he was to her; “for beside her he had neither son nor daughter,” and she had patiently and willingly suffered with him, and borne all his sorrows as her own.

But imagine the horror of Jephthah, after having saved the lives and 435property of his brethren and countrymen by risking his own life, at being then required, by these very brethren and countrymen, to shed the blood of his only child! Immediately after the war was over, Jephthah was required to sacrifice his daughter as a burnt offering to the Lord of Battles, for having assisted Israel to overcome the Ammonites; and so great was the love of this heroine for her father, and for everything that concerned his honour and glory, that she willingly consented to be sacrificed as a burnt offering.

Can anything be conceived more heartrending and terrible than that Jephthah should thus be required by these very brethren and countrymen whom he had saved, to shed the blood of his only child as a sacrifice, in acknowledgment that he owed his victory to miraculous assistance and favour, and not to his own skill and valour?

What to him was the deliverance either of Israel or of his brethren (who had cared naught for him), if they now required him to sacrifice the only being in the world that he loved, and that loved him, and who was therefore all the world to him?

It is true that Jephthah had made a foolish and rash vow, in the mad excitement of the moment before going into battle, that if he came out of the battle victorious, he would sacrifice, as a burnt offering to the Lord, the first thing that came to meet him from his house as he returned from the battle; but when the first person that met Jephthah was his only daughter, what could that Deity be, which accepted as a sacrifice the blood of this child? What could the religion of Jephthah’s brethren and countrymen be, that allowed and required him to commit such an evil deed?

For if Jephthah had saved his brethren and countrymen from their enemies, could they not now save Jephthah from shedding the blood of his daughter as a sacrifice, in the name of religion, when the very deed itself proclaimed the religion, and their conception both of religion and of the Deity, to be evil? And if his brethren and countrymen would not save his daughter, but even required him to fulfil his vow, could not Jephthah save himself and his child by refusing to commit this evil deed? But if, in order to save his own blood from being shed as a blasphemer for an atonement, Jephthah had to flee from the country as an outcast and a criminal, whither could he flee to, that would make life worth keeping? For surely the world would be no desirable place for an honest man to live in, if he had to live at enmity with men both at home and abroad, because he had made a rash and foolish vow, which no Deity worthy of being worshipped could or would require him to perform?

Because under such a sanguinary conception of religion, and of the Deity, there was no remission, or redemption either, with, or without, the shedding of blood. If Jephthah refused to shed the blood of his daughter, then both his own and his daughter’s would be shed by his 436brethren and countrymen, whilst if Jephthah shed the blood of his daughter, as a sacrifice to save his own, what remission or redemption was there in this? None!

And he cried for a deliverer to save him and his daughter, from this great trouble. For he had staked his life and his all upon obtaining a position and reputation for himself and his daughter at home in Israel; and now, to give up hope of this for ever, and to shed the blood of his daughter, or again flee as an outcast – what was it but a living death to Jephthah, either way, whether he remained and sacrificed his daughter, or fled to save her?

But who, in this agonising moment of Jephthah’s trouble, could raise his voice to demand, in the name of religion, this diabolical sacrifice of his innocent child?

Yes; diabolical. For what spirit, or voice, but that of a devil or fiend could counsel men to shed the blood of this pure and noble girl? And where could the devil or fiend be found who would commit the deed itself?

Jephthah is mockingly told that he is the fiend who must sacrifice his child, as Abraham is said to have offered Isaac. And Jephthah is told that he has no one to blame but himself, for having made the vow. But who heard the vow? or who accepted the vow? Who could he, or they be, who would require the fulfilling of it?^[24]

Are they worthy of the name of brethren and countrymen who would persuade Jephthah to assassinate his daughter, in the name of religion, or even look on at such an assassination? Would it not be blasphemy to say that a good Deity required Jephthah to kill his innocent child? And would not a good Deity release Jephthah from his vow, and forbid him to sacrifice his daughter, in like manner as the Scriptures teach us Abraham was forbidden to sacrifice his son Isaac? And if it is said, it would have been faithless and sinful of Jephthah after returning from the battle victorious, to have refused the offering of his daughter as a sacrifice; yet surely to bind Jephthah to break the Sixth Commandment, and to shed innocent blood in the name of religion, would be making the Deity that required such a sacrifice to be evil, and His worshippers to be the doers of evil; and thus Jephthah would be required to sell himself to the devil.

And how could men be other than the doers of evil, and the priests of 437evil, who would counsel Jephthah to commit this evil deed, and be ready to commit it themselves if he hesitated? How? Whether Jephthah received any miraculous assistance or not, in the war, yet he was in no wise bound to surrender his personality and to become an abject slave to the supposed power that helped him. For Jephthah’s personal services were needed as an instrument to deliver and save the Israelites, or his services would not have been asked for. It was also possible that he might have given certain services, which even a miraculous power was unable to give – as we read in the Book of Judges that “Judah could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.” (Judges i. 19.)^[25]

And again, if all the glory of Jephthah’s victory had to be ascribed to a miraculous power, then likewise all the shame would have to be ascribed to that power also, for having ordained that Jephthah’s daughter should be the first person to meet him after the war, to pay the price of victory to Jephthah, with death to his child – for whom, alone, he coveted victory.

Victory on such terms was defeat and shame, not glory; for surely such views of religious worship must be the d’evil worship which the Psalmist speaks of (Psalm cvi., 37), and not the service or worship of a good God who would have mercy and not sacrifice, as Abraham learnt when he went out of the Philistine city into the wilderness, and communed with God alone on Mount Moriah.

But it was one thing for a single individual like Abraham, at the close of a long life, to acquire the knowledge “that God would have mercy and not sacrifice”; and quite another thing for a Town, a City, a Nation, or the World, to have acquired this knowledge in its infancy; as even Abraham only acquired this knowledge by going out of the city into the wilderness, and communing alone with God.

We can well understand how impossible it would have been for Abraham even to have attempted, on his return from the mountain, to teach the Philistines the faith or gospel (that God would have mercy and not sacrifice), from the very fact that when Jesus Christ came into the world to teach the faith or gospel, which Abraham had gone out of the world to learn, Jesus was condemned by Caiaphas to be crucified with malefactors, as a blasphemer. And to this very day this doctrine of the power of Caiaphas, the adversary of Jesus, continues to be taught as the doctrine of the Church, which it is necessary to believe in order to obtain the blessing of the Church here and of God hereafter.

Therefore it is manifestly evident that after Abraham had acquired the knowledge that God would have mercy and not sacrifice, yet he could not publish it, but could only lay it up in his heart as a secret 438treasure, to be disclosed in the distant future, which in the vision of his mind he saw. Meanwhile he prayed that the Lord would raise up messengers and stewards to prepare the world to receive this faith or gospel, because of its being too Herculean a task for any one person to alter suddenly the religion of a people.

For whilst priests continued to teach, and the people to believe that sacrifices of human beings were acceptable to God, how was the man who dared (suddenly and without the cloak of a parable) to reveal and publish the contrary, to escape being himself slain as a blasphemer, whose blood it would be doing God service to shed for an atonement? And until the world was sufficiently educated to declare the generation of him who should be unjustly slain (Isaiah liii.), it could only be like throwing pearls to swine for such an one to attempt the task.

Then from whence, and from whom could Jephthah, who had saved others, now look for the salvation of his daughter, or of himself, if he refused to sacrifice that daughter?

And, in the anguish of his soul, Jephthah rent his clothes, and bemoaned his trouble, whilst his daughter fled to the mountains to pour out the sorrow of her soul, during the few short days she had yet to live.

It is true that, in order to save her father from the cruel pain of assassinating his devoted child, the noble girl may have voluntarily leapt into the sulphurous flames on the burning altar; just as the noble Roman soldier Curtius on his horse leapt down into the dark and awful volcanic gulf as a sacrifice to save his countrymen.

But the more heroic and divine these persons were, the more demoniacal and diabolical must be the religion of those persons who required them thus to suffer.^[26]

It is true that the priests of such a religion may have believed in it themselves, and may have been ready to sacrifice their own sons and daughters in like manner; but that in no wise lessens the crime, but on the contrary it intensifies it a hundred fold. How were the people to be saved from a religion, of which the priests themselves needed to be saved, whilst the priests had the sole education of the people from infancy upwards, as well as the Chief power in the State to make and unmake its laws, even to making and unmaking its kings?

Whilst the priests and rulers of the church taught such a cruel religion,^[27] would not the people and priests need a Mediator to deliver and save them from practising it?

If He who mediated to deliver and save us was Himself condemned to be slain, and crucified with thieves as a blasphemer whose blood ought to be shed for an Atonement, what hope of salvation can there be for the world from such a Religion, until the people not only uplift the 439Crucified Jesus as having been no blasphemer, but also expose the doctrine to be evil and false which is quoted as an authority for requiring the blood of “the Just one” to be shed for an Atonement? And if it is said that we have no longer women brought like Jephthah’s daughter to be assassinated and burnt as a sacrifice, or noble men condemned to be burnt as heretics, yet we have to the present day noble men and women condemned by the Church as evil (to be accursed here and damned hereafter), simply and solely because they refuse to believe this evil doctrine of Atonement, which is oftentimes such a burden to their soul (either to accept or reject) that they are driven to the very verge of madness.

It is no uncommon thing to hear priests revile even our Queen as being no true Christian, simply because they suppose she does not believe in this evil doctrine of atonement, which is the doctrine of Caiaphas, the enemy of Christ, and not Christ’s doctrine, teaching, or gospel.

Should not such scriptural stories as these of the assassination of Jephthah’s noble daughter, of the crucifixion of Jesus, and the spilling of the blood of a whole host of martyrs, awaken men who have slumbered to rise, to hear, to see, to speak, and run to save the world from having to believe in this sanguinary doctrine, which is a stumbling-block to the Jews, foolishness to the world, and a mystery even to the teachers of it. This doctrine of Atonement can not be reconciled as either good or true; and therefore it is the cause of all progress being prevented so far as the world is dependent on the Church for progress.

Yet the man who doubts or denies the goodness of this doctrine is branded by the Church, to the present day, as a Sceptic and Atheist, whom all sound Churchmen should avoid. And for sixteen centuries the Church used its sovereign power to condemn those who rejected its doctrine of Atonement as criminals, whom it would be doing God service to burn as heretics; and the Church is only prevented from doing so now because (to its great regret) it has no longer the power which it formerly had in the days of “the Inquisition.” The doctrine remains the same still, and therefore the people owe it, as a duty to the long roll of martyrs, to expose it. For it has been the cause of much evil, and even to this day it assassinates the souls of noble men and women, who incarcerate themselves in monasteries and nunneries in the vain attempt to attain a sound belief in it.

But when the Church is willing to allow (what it has refused to the present day) liberty in the pulpit for explaining the mystery and translating the truth of a “Crucified Christ,” then it will be seen that the truth is not only a light to the Gentiles, but also the glory of Israel; and the truth shall make us free.^[28] (John viii., 32.)

Luniolatry

G. Massey · pp. 440-442

The Blossom and the Fruit

Mabel Collins · pp. 443-460

Twilight Visions

W. C. Eldon Serjeant · pp. 461-465

465

Editors’ Note.

This second part of the three which form the bulk of the poem called “Twilight Visions” by their author – from a purely Kabalistic standpoint of universal symbolical Esotericism, is most suggestive. Its literary value is apparent. But literary form in occultism counts for nothing in such mystic writing if its spirit is sectarian – if the symbolism fails in universal application or lacks correctness. In this, Part II., however (of the third to come we can yet say nothing), the Christian-Judæan names may be altered and replaced by their Sanskrit or Egyptian equivalents, and the ideas will remain the same. It seems written in the universal “mystery-language,” and may be readily understood by an occultist, of whatever school or nationality. Nor will any true mystic, versed in that international tongue, whose origin is lost in the dark night of pre-historic ages, fail to recognise a true Brother, who has adopted the phraseology of the Initiates of the ancient Judæan Tanaim – Daniel and St. John of the Apocalypse – and partially that of the Christian Gnostics, only to be the more readily understood by the profane of Christian lands. Yet the author means precisely the same thing that would be in the mind of any Brahminical or Buddhist Initiate, who, while deploring the present degenerated state of things, would place all his hope in the transient character of even the Kali Yuga, and trust in the speedy coming of the Kalki Avatar. We say again, the divine Science and Wisdom – Theosophia – is universal and common property, and the same under every sky. It is the physical type and the outward appearance in the dress, that make of one individual a Chinaman and of another a European, and of a third a red-skinned American. The inner man is one, and all are “Sons of God” by birth-right.

The editors regret that, by an over-sight, the sub-title, “The Cross,” that headed Part I. of “Twilight Visions,” published in our January number, should have been omitted.

466

The White Monk.

By the Author of “A Professor of Alchemy.” (Continued.)

“Margaret had been in grief so sad and potent since her brother’s death, that it at last brought her into a fever, from which, with difficulty, she recovered, and which kept her long to her chamber.

“During this time the monk roamed like a restless spirit, seeming to seek her, and despairing because he found her not. Giles Hughson even went so far as to suspect he was no true priest at all, until he had seen his tonsure. Even then he was drawn into most sacrilegious surmises by what he beheld some few nights after.

“Having some work to do in Castle Troyes garden, he noted the White Monk, his lodger, glide noiselessly through the grounds, hidden behind the thick black walls of yew, and pause under the casement of Mistress Margaret and stand there listening intently for a certain space. At last, with a gesture of despair, he slung himself with infinite agile stillness up some feet of the ivy that covered the wall, from which insecure footing he did long and earnestly search if he might see her shadow cross the room. Giles, the gardener, swore afterwards that the sight of that priest, with his cowl fallen back from his dark face, and that look of straining, terrified attention had in it something so partaking of the unearthly, that for the life of him he dared not accost the daring intruder. ‘Time enough if there were need,’ he excused himself afterwards, ‘but Castle Troyes is ever well enow defended, and at that time there must have been enough of inmates watching over Margaret, the beautiful, to win her back to life.’

“The horrible recklessness of an act such as this, with the carbines of a round thirty men within a few yards of him, made the monk seem to Giles a creature of charmed life, who may not be addressed as ordinary mortals.

“But the White Monk saw his discoverer when he descended and glided away again, scared by some noise made by Margaret’s attendants. And thus there occurred a tragedy, which you shall learn as far as it was ever known.

“Now Giles Hughson had a young son afflicted with total dumbness, but whom Mistress Margaret de Troyes had taught to write; and it is through this scholarship of his that we come to know as much as we do of what really happened. The White Monk appeared fond of this boy, possibly because he had seen Margaret kiss him. Thus the lad had greater access to the monk’s small attic than any other; and this is the tale he tells of the night after Giles had espied his lodger clinging to the wall of Castle Troyes.

467“The boy had noiselessly, so as not to disturb the often musings of the solitary one, stepped up the attic stairs to fetch some trifle he wanted of the monk. Pausing timidly at the door, he beheld the familiar white-clad figure, with an air of terrible malignity, mixing some powder of a greenish colour, which, at the sight of the intruder, he hastily laid aside, thinking it had not been seen.

“But the lad was unnerved by the expression he had caught on the monk’s face, and he forgot not so lightly.

“At the frugal supper, that very night, he observed the monk ate even less than was his wont, and of one dish only, the which he also pressed upon the young lad by his side, seeming to wish to keep the others from him. The others of the family, Giles Hughson and his dame, did eat as usual, and were both found dead on the morrow.

“The monk strove to comfort the poor boy by every means in his power, but it was all of no avail. The lad seized a moment, fled into the wood, and there wrote down all that he had seen and suspected, with which account he presently did seek the justices. These caused proper inquiry into the manner of the deaths of the workman and his wife to be made, and, finding they had died of potent poison, instituted careful search for the person of the White Monk, who had vanished from the cottage.

“At length they found him, in a strange state for one of his way of living. Into the wood had he gone, but not so far as that he could hide him. He had stopped beside a little brook, where he had sat when first he saw fair Margaret, the sister of his victims. There, even there, was he found, in so deep contemplation that he never heard his pursuers’ footsteps. He had made a cross of two elder branches (folk about us say that the elder-wood formed the Cross whereon Christ died), and having set it on the summit of a bank, was deep in prayer, as it seemed, before it.

“One of his Italian repentances, I doubt not.

“He seemed in sore distress of mind, and lost to all thought of his surroundings.

“So they took him; the foreign wild beast, tracked at last. But not without trouble for he fought like the panther he was. Escaping lissomely from their hands at the moment when they would have bound him, the ex-bravo snatched a genuine stiletto from the folds of his monastic frock and stabbed one man to death, laughing coarsely at the stupid astonishment of the harquebusiers to see this weapon in so unseemly a hand.

“He had no chance, being taken thus unawares, and exhaustion came upon him; so, with tremours, the officers of justice held him fast. Before the first cord was fastened round his struggling wrists, he fell back, rigid, in their arms; sighed once or twice, smiled bitterly to himself at their consternation, and flung his head back, dead.

468“A small quantity of a green powder was found on him (a large dose, I ween, had killed so hardy a villain!), and by comparing the signs of death with those of Giles Hughson and his wife, they saw he had poisoned himself some time within the last five hours. Whether he had seen Margaret again, and by seeing her upon the earth, had come to know himself too bad for it; or whether the weariness attendant upon sins so heavy had worn him out at last, remains a mystery. The leeches said a man so wasted and wan as this could scarce, in the way of Nature, have lived many years longer; but I question this, and so did the men who had so great trouble to hold him!

“News travelled slowly in those days from Italy to England, and it was not until very shortly after the White Monk’s death that our town learnt it had harboured Pietro Rinucci, the slayer of the two good brothers, Ambrose and Gilbert de Troyes. No one ever told Mistress Margaret that she had spoken with such a man. And now the beautiful maiden rose from her bed, and asked for her mostly costly gowns, of amber, blue and rosy colours; and went amongst her friends brightly, wreathed with pearls and radiant in smiles. She was thought to have recovered, though she looked ethereal as a daisy or white cloud; but she said and averred that she was dying, and that her brother Ambrose had appeared to her in a vision, bidding her make all speed to do what remained to her upon the earth and be soon ready, when he should come behind the angels to fetch her hence. Her kinsfolk thought she wandered in her mind. She asked for the man who had wooed her, and held long speech with him, very merrily, and yet with tears; beseeching him to pause e’er he rashly threw away his life on this earth, since we know not in the beginning, whither our pleasant sins may carry us, and when we have no enjoyment of them, save by memory, what are they to us? The instruments of our present ruin.

“‘All this,’ said the lovely Margaret with a smile, ‘hath right off, my Lord, been heard, by you and others; but from a lady’s lips (and that lady who is even now bent to consider the past failings of her own life, soon to be taken from her) it hath been made evident to me, these poor oft-repeated words shall have some power. God bless you, my Lord – farewell.’

“The gentleman came out from her boudoir exceeding sobered, and essaying as he might to conceal his tears.

“The words of this dying angel – for so indeed she seemed – he vowed should be as a challenge to him from God to purify his ways. And indeed from that day the gentleman made such progress in godliness as can be made by one of his complexion.

“And now a strange and terrible portent was observed.

“Those who watched by the Lady Margaret, began to see a vision, and of that most dreaded being, the White Monk!

“Night or day, it mattered not; with a chill like to that of Death 469itself, the horrified watchers knew the presence of the phantom. In the dark corners of the room would shape themselves dimly the features of the murderer, Rinucci, and his monastic gown, so glaring white in its dimness through the dark that the eye could not search it, and gone, ever gone, if some bold spirit neared the spot where he had thought he saw it.

“No one said aught of this to the Lady Margaret, in fear to fright her; and she alone, of all who watched, did never see nor feel the constant presence. It seemed sometimes as though the phantom yearned to make itself visible to her kind, half-divine eyes, but her thoughts were too high-set for it to be given her to see a sight so horrible.

“She was much upheld by visions then – her contemplative soul shaped to itself many fair sights and sounds that others knew not. Sitting by the open casement in her sun-coloured gown, with white arms, pearl encircled, leaning out, and her smile ever brighter as she murmured to herself, she would stretch far over the lattice and grasp at rosy clouds, which she said floated past her in the peopled air. She would reply, still leaning out and smiling, to what she vowed was said to her by wandering happy spirits. And all this while, behind her, there would stand the White Mystery, with slight hand lifting the cowl from a face whose eyes were as deep as death and more despairing.

“Small marvel that the murderer’s ghost should cling to our saint while she yet lived on earth! He may have known that, once dead, restored to Heaven, she would thenceforth move in worlds where such as he should never have the force to breathe.

“And in her due hour she died; and after that for a space no one saw aught of the dread ghost. His spirit, drawn by some power to enter our house, wherein was held all he knew of goodness, had now no further business there, for a while. His loathed name, fraught with horror to your ancestors’ home, was now never spoken. It was thought, doubtless, that since Margaret de Troyes – the innocent avenger – had unwittingly caused the murderer’s death, the house he had so deeply injured was for ever free from his godless presence. And, indeed, for a while, the chronicles are silent respecting him. The next two generations were happy, and no great misfortune blasted the house. But in the third generation there were harsh feuds in the city, and much bloodshed, and several of your name came to violent and sometimes mysterious ends. Then it was that there arose a searching into past traditions to discover the secret of a certain white spectre said to appear about the castle previous to each calamity. Not all saw it; but still it grew known, and it bore a marked resemblance to an ancient portrait – hung up for curiosity’s sake – of Pietro Rinucci.

“Well, young master, I myself served your grandfather, and I myself 470can bear witness to the presence of the White Monk’s ghost on one of the shrewd moments of the family destinies. Wilt hear it? So your father was then a stalwart young man, away at the wars in Spain. Your uncles, two blithe young gallants, were at home at the time I speak of, and there was some merry-making toward in the castle. Myself was seeing to the torches in the garden, when I chanced to see your uncle, Geoffrey de Troyes, come hastily into the yew-walk with his rapier drawn, followed by another youth whom I knew well, his rival, and in some sort, his enemy.

“As the guests danced within, these nobles fought without. A man dared not have interposed; it was matter of life and death to them, and they were there to prove it.

“I was glad, as I stood on the further side the hedge, to mark the vigour and the skill of our Geoffrey. Methought the vantage was with him, and with my whole heart I hated his opponent, the cold, selfish Ernle Deane, and wished him to succumb.

“And so, by mine honour, he should have done, for my boy was the pride of us all for swordsmanship; but it was not to be.

“Geoffrey de Troyes never suffered more from his mortal wound than I did in my heart and my pride, as I led him, bleeding piteously to this very stable-room, where he sank on the hay and said he must die.

“‘Look to it,’ groaned the poor young noble, as he lay dying, ‘that Mistress Beatrice Savile has this token from me – my gold chain – warn her from me when I am dead, that she wed not Ernle Deane – he is bad to the core, and she is too good to mend him. Oh! but for that hateful vision!’

“‘What vision, a God’s name?’ I cried.

“And he told me trembling – he who had never trembled of his whole life! – that even at the moment when he had thought to subdue his enemy – even as he raised his sword to strike home to a worthless heart – even then had his arm fallen paralysed and a frightful shiver quite unmanned him at the sight of a poor monk in white, who stood some yards away, and raised his cowl with a thin white hand, and fixed unearthly eyes upon him with a steadfast look that drew the soul away from the deadliest earthly peril.

“‘And so I fell!’ cried the shamed noble, crimsoning though the pallor of exhaustion. ‘I – a practised hand, a not unworthy courage – a De Troyes! I fell – for this! – and so would any man have fallen,’ he defiantly ended, ‘for ’twas a devil – ’twas Pietro Rinucci himself, who came from hell to lure me from my hopes of earthly happiness. O, life! O, Beatrice!’

“And I nursed him and wept over him like any woman, whilst one young, bright life more departed,

“In truth, young master,” ended honest Ralph, “the noble Geoffrey 471may have been deceived, and fancied this; but, you shall pardon me, I would rather think that armies of devils nightly march these grounds than that one De Troyes was ever seen to quail, save under magic! Thus it is that I, and that many of us yet believe in the spectre of Pietro Rinucci, ‘the White Monk.’”

Oh these faithful servitors, they would die for us children of the house, I believe, and yet they have ever this curious bent to terrify the childish minds. I know not when it was precisely that I thus first heard the White Monk’s story, but this I know, I was young enough to sit with my clenched fistlets supporting my chin, and my eyes and mouth very wide open.

“And was he always in white, that fearful man?” I asked, somewhere toward the middle of the story. “Always in white?” I know not why, but this detail struck my child’s phantasy more powerfully than all the rest; this was awful, this was the pith of the whole matter, and from that moment I sat trembling, and drinking in the history with reluctant suspense, until it became the bane of my life for a term of years.

For hours I lay shuddering ofttimes in my bed, dreading with my body and my soul lest the Monk should appear to me! And never had I courage to speak of this to anyone of the many loving house mates who would so promptly have put an end to my fears by leaving me no more alone at night. There is a keen, hard honour for children to maintain, and to them the confession of nocturnal terror is as flight to the soldier. So, as the banquet sped its course below, I shuddered lonely in my bed in the oaken room, often weeping angrily amidst my fears because I alone, the only son of the house, was the only soul in it left desolate.

A little later I was comforted in some sort by my baby sister Margaret, who was put to sleep in an adjacent cot, and being too tiny for Fear to reach, would sleep secure, all gold and white in the dusky gleam of our rushlight – the one oasis of hope throughout the terrible oaken room. Yet she in her turn, became a source of fear to me. Should the Monk appear, and should the dire extremity cause me to shriek, what would become of Marguerite? She would die of sudden terror. Worse – if he should stand by her bedside, raising his cowl off the awful face, and her blue eyes should open at that instant? How should I protect her?

But before I wander further, I must begin straight and tell how we lived, and where, and to what end.

Percy Ross.

(To be continued.)

472

An Auto-Hypnotic Rhapsody.

“When all desires that dwell in the heart cease, then the mortal becomes immortal, and obtains Brahman.

When all the fetters of the heart here on earth are broken;

When all that bind us to this life is undone, then the mortal becomes immortal – here my teaching ends.”

– Katha Upanishad.

I (Âtman) have crossed the sea – I have reached the other shore – I have triumphed over gravitation, my soul is in the sun-currents, moving sunwards with the sun.

Where the currents are bearing me to I scarcely know, but yet something has been revealed.

I died the mystical death, I was received by the Dawn-Maidens – the bright ones of the eternal twilights, the two bright Ushas, Ahana and Antigone, Isis, and Nephtys of Aanru.^[29]

The Ahana-Aurora of Eternity laid me asleep on her bosom, giving me amrita^[30] to drink, as Hebe gave to Herakles, and then I at once knew that I (Atman) was immortal; the Mask of Personality had fallen to earth, the Âtma was revealed – my true Self – I knew my name, and found myself soaring sunwards. Then the Voice of that Dawn said, “I give you the ‘Amrita’ of the cessation of deaths,” and her lips burning with sun-ardours, kissed my forehead, and said, “I bring you to the sun; when blind – on earth, that Sanskara of sorrow – you fancied your sun was nothing but a great centre of physical force – light and heat, and their equivalents; but it was Maya, the Earth-Queen of illusions, who thus deceived your earth eyes. Look now, and you can see nothing but a vast group of mighty spirit-wills clustered round a yet mightier Spirit centre, drawing from thence inspiration, and ever-radiating sun effluxes, for the good and advancement of those unhappy lower wills yet sunk in the earth. What you called light was intelligence, and heat was – love. Did not Koré suggest this to you, O my weak child, for she, too, was one of the Ushas, a Maiden of the Dawn, kindling your soul to love?”

I was silent to this question, for a dread sorrow clung to me.

“Though” (began again the Voice) “the sun-souls attract the earth-souls, the lost ones, for a while, to bring them up to themselves by the path that leads to Nirvana^[31] ‘where there is no sorrow’; yet the sun-groups 473of Spirits are themselves attracted by a grander centre of force, and the Sun, with his planet-children, are speeding in a mighty orbit round a far mightier Soul-centre – the lost Pleiad – lost on earth to be found in Heaven. Dost thou not hear the solemn music of that tempest flight?” And then she touched my ears, and I heard the myriad voiced song of the blessed ones as they passed on rejoicing, and the Voice continued: “That lost Pleiad, the dove-woman, the ‘Woman Clothed with the Sun,’ who, as Jeremiah prophesied, should ‘compass man,’ is that eternal womanhood which attracts all men.” And the chorus of the psalm I heard them sing, as they passed on Pleiad-ward, was “Freedom and Love – Love in Bi-unity. The Two in One foretold has come even to earth.” And the souls in that Pleiad-world are infinite in number as the sands of the seas of countless worlds, elective affinities attract like to like, forming celestial choirs, each member of which breathes the akasian air synchronously with the other, and what you call in your earth-symbol-language their “hearts,” beat and throb in unison together as one heart, and thus become coalesced in, and by, love.

“Listen, O my child, to the music of their breathing,” and I said, “Is Koré there?” Then I heard voices in Heaven, and I began to breathe the interior akasa breath synchronously with her – our breaths became one, I was mingled with, and melted in her; and lo! a great mystery! that Dawn-maiden changed to Koré, and Koré gave me the amrita of the Pleiad, and I knew that our biune love was immortal.

I have passed over the deep waters, I am free, I have infinite peace and infinite joy, at rest for ever.

Have I not, like Herakles, slept on the bosom of Athéné, breathing the wisdom of her breaths? I, too, breathe internally akasian love-breaths, I live in the love-choirs of the Pleiad Sun, I am in the true Nirvana, where there is no sorrow and no desire, for desire is lost in an ever-abiding and eternal fruition. The Lotus has bloomed in the Sun-fire,^[32] and my soul is newborn in the pure white calyx, and floats down the golden waters that wash the eternal shores. I have found the “Path,” “suffering, and the cause of suffering” (separation from the loved one) have been seen, and have passed away, whilst we ever rise and pass onwards by the star-paths. I am no more blind, but, like Orion of old, gazing eastwards on that rising sun, the red flush of whose dawn is ever blushing in our central souls. I have received my sight. – Om....

A. J. C.

Lucerne.

Since writing the foregoing, A. J. C. has met with the following note contained in Mr. Edwin Arnold’s interesting essay, “Death and After474wards,” which throws light on the views in said Rhapsody:

“That which safely bears our ‘solid world’ in the gulfs of space is no base or basis, no moveless central rock, but throbbing energies in complex and manifold action, in swing and wave and thrill; whirling us onward in mighty sweeps of three-fold rythm to which our hearts are set. So therefore not solidity of base in fixity of status is our supreme and vital need, but moving power beyond our ken or senses; known to us in energising action, and working through blue ‘void’; impelling us in rings of spiral orbit round a moving sun in which we are dependent.”

The same book contains Walt Whitman’s beautiful and striking poem on Death, in which the poet says:

“Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?”

Yes, one other, the writer of the foregoing Rhapsody, has attempted a song in praise of Death the deliverer, and the Italian poet, Leopardi, stated in beautiful verse years ago that the world had two good things in it – Love and Death.

“Due belle cose ho il mondo
L’amor e la Morte”...

Our Other Half.

When our ancient brethren, the Kabalists, Jewish as well as Oriental, taught that the divine monad, starting on its long journey from the bosom of the Infinite One was divided into halves, they had a double meaning, one exoteric, the other esoteric. The exoteric one, being that the two halves, swept through cycles upon cycles of time, in search of each other; and, that, when they finally met, in a perfect union, or marriage, the two halves became one on earth, and after death, united again. The true explanation, however, the esoteric one, is, that each and every one of us, contains within himself, both the halves: the feminine predominating through some incarnations, the masculine through others. It adds that, when we evolute into the perfect being, the Adept, the Mahatma, both principles are in perfect harmony. Or, as the Kabalists have recorded it, harmony is in equilibrium, and equilibrium exists by the analogy of contraries. How often we discern in the most masculine of men, distinct feminine traits of character, and vice versa, in the gentlest of the fair sex, discover masculine traits.

The Jewish Kabbalists represented these two principles in the letters forming their Ineffable Name. Its first three characters mean Eve, or Eva, or Hâyah חוה or woman, or by another reading it means mother, and is, in fact, the proper name as given in Genesis for Eve, “the mother of all living.” Adding the character י Yodh or Yah, the male, the number one, the masculine, we have Jehovah, or Jah-eve, or being as male-female, the perfect number – 10, symbolised by the Sephirothal Adam Kadmon.

A few evenings ago, while pondering on this subject, in a room devoted 475to occult research, where an Eastern incense burning with a ruddy glow on the triangular-shaped altar, sent its refreshing fragrance through the apartment, my outer senses were lulled, and the inner ones came into play, and I became conscious of my other “half.” I saw standing before me, a being, whom I had hitherto considered as my guardian angel stretching out her hands to me, and saying – “my beloved one, know thy-self.”

The fire on the altar burnt low. The north-east wind, which had been blowing in furious gusts outside, lashing the bosom of the lake into white foam, died away, sounding like some far distant choral chant. An unearthly silence ensued, and seemed to pervade the infinitudes of space. A thousand voices spoke to me, saying, “Man, know thyself.” Shadowy, ghostly forms filled the apartment. One, more distinct than the rest, tall in form, clad in a long flowing garment of pure white, the long black hair falling in curly locks over his shoulders, the silky beard reaching to his waist, the light of centuries of centuries gleaming forth from his dark eyes – extended his right hand toward me. A thrill of unutterable delight passed through my being. Slowly I emerged from my earthly casket, looked for an instant at its sleeping form, then felt irresistibly drawn to the fair being, who still stood with outstretched hands, and seemed to lose myself in her. The twain had become one. The mystic union had taken place. For a few brief moments I realized the possibilities of jnânayoga, the wisdom-power of the adepts. Space was annihilated. I could see systems upon systems of worlds, galaxies of stars, suns and systems of suns, whirling through space. I thought of some distant place, and I was there. Complex problems solved themselves quite naturally: I had become all thought....

The extended hand of the tall form flashed before my eyes, and I became unconscious. When I awoke, I found lying on the altar a full-blown white rose. The north-east wind was again roaring in fierce gusts, the fire on the altar had died out. The mirrors had draped themselves with their curtains of black. The two interlaced triangles had merged into a circle, of pure gold in colour. Once more I took upon myself my objective life. But I had solved the problem which has taken me seven years to solve. I was content....

“Bertrand Stonex,” F.T.S.

476

The Three Desires.

The first three of the numbered rules of “Light on the Path” must appear somewhat of an unequal character to bracket together. The sense in which they follow each other is purely spiritual. Ambition is the highest point of personal activity reached by the mind, and there is something noble in it, even to an Occultist. Having conquered the desire to stand above his fellows, the restless aspirant, in seeking what his personal desires are, finds the thirst for life stand next in his way. For all that are ordinarily classed as desires have long since been subjugated, passed by, or forgotten, before this pitched battle of the soul is begun. The desire for life is entirely a desire of the spirit, not mental at all; and in facing it a man begins to face his own soul. But very few have even attempted to face it; still fewer can guess at all at its meaning.

The connection between ambition and the desire of life is of this kind. Men are seldom really ambitious in whom the animal passions are strong. What is taken for ambition in men of powerful physique is more often merely the exercise of great energy in order to obtain full gratification of all physical desires. Ambition pure and simple is the struggle of the mind upwards, the exercise of a native intellectual force which lifts a man altogether above his peers. To rise – to be preeminent in some special manner, in some department of art, science, or thought, is the keenest longing of delicate and highly-tuned minds. It is quite a different thing from the thirst for knowledge which makes of a man a student always – a learner to the end, however great he may become. Ambition is born of no love for anything for its own sake, but purely for the sake of oneself. “It is I that will know, I that will rise, and by my own power.”

“Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition;
By that sin fell the angels.”

The place-seeking for which the word was originally used, differs in degree, not in kind, from that more abstract meaning now generally attached to it. A poet is considered ambitious when he writes for fame. It is true; so he is. He may not be seeking a place at court, but he is certainly seeking the highest place he knows of. Is it conceivable that any great author could really be anonymous, and remain so? The human mind revolts against the theory of the Baconian authorship of Shakespeare’s works, not only because it deprives the world of a splendid figure, but also because it makes of Bacon a monster, unlike all other human beings. To the ordinary intelligence it is inconceivable that a 477man should hide his light in this purposeless manner. Yet it is conceivable to an occultist that a great poet might be inspired by one greater than himself, who would stand back entirely from the world and all contact with it. This inspirer would not only have conquered ambition but also the abstract desire for life, before he could work vicariously to so great an extent. For he would part with his work for ever when once it had gone to the world; it would never be his. A person who can imagine making no claim on the world, neither desiring to take pleasure from it nor to give pleasure to it, can dimly apprehend the condition which the occultist has reached when he no longer desires to live. Do not suppose this to mean that he neither takes nor gives pleasure; he does both, as also he lives. A great man, full of work and thought, eats his food with pleasure; he does not dwell on the prospect of it, and linger over the memory, like the gluttonous child, or the gourmand pure and simple. This is a very material image, yet sometimes these simple illustrations serve to help the mind more than any others. It is easy to see, from this analogy, that an advanced occultist who has work in the world may be perfectly free from the desires which would make him a part of it, and yet may take its pleasures and give them back with interest. He is enabled to give more pleasure than he takes, because he is incapable of fear or disappointment. He has no dread of death, nor of that which is called annihilation. He rests on the waters of life, submerged and sleeping, or above them and conscious, indifferently. He cannot feel disappointment, because although pleasure is to him intensely vivid and keen, it is the same to him whether he enjoys it himself or whether another enjoys it. It is pleasure, pure and simple, untarnished by personal craving or desire. So with regard to what occultists call “progress” – the advance from stage to stage of knowledge. In a school of any sort in the external world emulation is the great spur to progress. The occultist, on the contrary, is incapable of taking a single step until he has acquired the faculty of realizing progress as an abstract fact. Someone must draw nearer to the Divine in every moment of life; there must always be progress. But the disciple who desires that he shall be the one to advance in the next moment, may lay aside all hope of it. Neither should he be conscious of preferring progress for another or of any kind of vicarious sacrifice. Such ideas are in a certain sense unselfish, but they are essentially characteristic of the world in which separateness exists, and form is regarded as having a value of its own. The shape of a man is as much an eidolon as though no spark of divinity inhabited it; at any moment that spark may desert the particular shape, and we are left with a substantial shadow of the man we knew. It is in vain, after the first step in occultism has been taken, that the mind clings to the old beliefs and certainties. Time and space are known to be non-existent, and are only regarded as existing in practical life 478for the sake of convenience. So with the separation of the divine-human spirit into the multitudes of men on the earth. Roses have their own colours, and lilies theirs; none can tell why this is when the same sun, the same light, gives the colour to each. Nature is indivisible. She clothes the earth, and when that clothing is torn away, she bides her time and re-clothes it again when there is no more interference with her. Encircling the earth like an atmosphere, she keeps it always glowing and green, moistened and sun-lit. The spirit of man encompasses the earth like a fiery spirit, living on Nature, devouring her, sometimes being devoured by her, but always in the mass remaining more ethereal and sublime than she is. In the individual, man is conscious of the vast superiority of Nature; but when once he becomes conscious that he is part of an indivisible and indestructible whole, he knows also that the whole of which he is part stands above nature. The starry sky is a terrible sight to a man who is just self-less enough to be aware of his own littleness and unimportance as an individual; it almost crushes him. But let him once touch on the power which comes from knowing himself as part of the human spirit, and nothing can crush him by its greatness. For if the wheels of the chariot of the enemy pass over his body, he forgets that it is his body, and rises again to fight among the crowd of his own army. But this state can never be reached, nor even approached, until the last of the three desires is conquered, as well as the first. They must be apprehended and encountered together.

Comfort, in the language used by occultists, is a very comprehensive word. It is perfectly useless for a neophyte to practise discomfort or asceticism as do religious fanatics. He may come to prefer deprivation in the end, and then it has become his comfort. Homelessness is a condition to which the religious Brahmin pledges himself; and in the external religion he is considered to fulfil this pledge if he leaves wife and child, and becomes a begging wanderer, with no shelter of his own to return to. But all external forms of religion are forms of comfort, and men take vows of abstinence in the same spirit that they take pledges of boon companionship. The difference between these two sides of life is only apparent. But the homelessness which is demanded of the neophyte is a much more vital thing than this. It demands the surrender from him of choice or desire. Dwelling with wife and child, under the shelter of a familiar roof-tree, and fulfilling the duties of citizenship, the neophyte may be far more homeless, in the esoteric sense, than when he is a wanderer or an outcast. The first lesson in practical occultism usually given to a pledged disciple is that of fulfilling the duties immediately to hand with the same subtle mixture of enthusiasm and indifference as the neophyte would imagine himself able to feel when he had grown to the size of a ruler of worlds and a designer of destinies. This rule is to be found in the Gospels and in the Bhagavad Gita. The immediate work, whatever 479it may be, has the abstract claim of duty, and its relative importance or non-importance is not to be considered at all. This law can never be obeyed until all desire of comfort is for ever destroyed. The ceaseless assertions and re-assertions of the personal self must be left behind for ever. They belong as completely to the character of this world as does the desire to have a certain balance at the bank, or to retain the affections of a loved person. They are equally subject to the change which is characteristic of this world; indeed, they are even more so, for what the neophyte does by becoming a neophyte is simply to enter a forcing-house. Change, disillusionment, disheartenment, despair will crowd upon him by invitation; for his wish is to learn his lessons quickly. And as he turns these evils out they will probably be replaced by others worse than themselves – a passionate longing for separate life, for sensation, for the consciousness of growth in his own self, will rush in upon him and sweep over the frail barriers which he has raised. And no such barriers as asceticism, as renunciation, nothing indeed which is negative, will stand for a single moment against this powerful tide of feeling. The only barrier is built up of new desires. For it is perfectly useless for the neophyte to imagine he can get beyond the region of desires. He cannot; he is still a man, Nature must bring forth flowers while she is still Nature, and the human spirit would loose its hold on this form of existence altogether did it not continue to desire. The individual man cannot wrench himself instantly out of that life of which he is an essential part. He can only change his position in it. The man whose intellectual life dominates his animal life, changes his position; but he is still in the dominion of desire. The disciple who believes it possible to become selfless in a single effort, will find himself flung into a bottomless pit as the consequence of his rash endeavour. Seize upon a new order of desires, purer, wider, nobler; and so plant your foot upon the ladder firmly. It is only on the last and topmost rung of the ladder, at the very entrance upon Divine or Mahatmic life, that it is possible to hold fast to that which has neither substance or existence.

The first part of “Light on the Path” is like a chord in music; the notes have to be struck together though they must be touched separately. Study and seize hold of the new desires before you have thrust out the old ones; otherwise in the storm you will be lost. Man while he is man has substance and needs some step to stand on, some idea to cling to. But let it be the least possible. Learn as the acrobat learns, slowly and with care, to become more independent. Before you attempt to cast out the devil of ambition – the desire of something, however fine and elevated, outside of yourself, – seize on the desire to find the light of the world within yourself. Before you attempt to cast out the desire of conscious life, learn to look to the unattainable or in other language to that which you know you can only reach in un480consciousness. In knowing that your aim is of this lofty character, that it will never bring conscious success, never bring comfort to you, that it will never carry you in your own temporary personal self to any haven of rest or place of agreeable activity, you cut away all the force and power of the desires of the lower astral nature. For what avail is it, when these facts have been once realised, to desire separateness, sensation or growth?

The armour of the warrior who rises to fight for you in the battle depicted in the second part of “Light on the Path,” is like the shirt of the happy man in the old story. The king was to be cured of all his ills by sleeping in this shirt; but when the one happy man in his kingdom was found, he was a beggar, without care, without anxiety – and shirtless. So with the divine warrior. None can take his armour and use it, for he has none. The king could never find happiness like that of the careless beggar. The man of the world, however fine and cultivated he may be, is hampered by a thousand thoughts and feelings which have to be cast aside before he can even stand on the threshold of occultism. And, be it observed, he is chiefly handicapped by the armour he wears, which isolates him. He has personal pride, personal respect. These things must die out as the personality recedes. The process described in the first part of “Light on the Path,” is one which takes off that shell, or armour, and casts it aside for ever. Then the warrior arises, armourless, defenceless, offenceless, identified with the afflicters and the afflicted, the angered and the one that angers; fighting not on any side, but for the Divine, the highest in all.

Golden Sentences of Democritus.

It is beautiful to impede an unjust man; but if this be not possible, it is beautiful not to act in conjunction with him.

Sin should be abstained from, not through fear, but for the sake of the becoming.

Many who have not learnt to argue rationally, still live according to reason.

Vehement desires about any one thing render the soul blind with respect to other things.

The equal is beautiful in everything, but excess and defect to me do not appear to be so.

It is the property of a divine intellect to be always intently thinking about the beautiful.

The Relation of Colour to the Interlaced Triangles, or the Pentacle

M. L. Brainard · pp. 481-485

485

Questions.

What can we do in temptation’s hour?
How shall we conquer its fiery power?
How can we master it – standing alone,
Just on the threshold of things unknown?

Strong is its power as Death and Hell,
Led by its lure, even angels fell!
Dazed by the glare of a rising light
How shall poor mortals see aright?

Tempted we were in the morning of life,
With earth’s simple joys that are ever rife,
To idly bask in the sun’s warm beam
And to care no jot for a holier dream.

Tempted again in the heyday sun,
To choose fair paths and in gardens run,
Claiming as ours, all joy – all love,
Flowerets of bliss from the Heavens above.

Temptings come now, in life’s later prime,
Deeper and stronger than in past time,
To feed with fuel the inward fire,
The passionate dream of the soul’s desire!

Two feet are creeping on paths unknown,
Weary and mournful, sad and lone;
Two eyes are looking and longing for light,
Two hands are locked in a desperate fight.

A heart is breaking with pain and grief,
A soul in strong agony cries for relief;
Echoes no kindred chord above?
Stretcheth no Hand in responsive love?

Is our Great God, but a God of stone?
Are we – His people – dazed and alone?
Is there no Ear that can hear us cry?
No Christ, – to succour us e’er we die?

L. F. Ff.

486

A Theory of Hauntings.

Very few persons realise the powerful and long-lasting effects of human “auras” – those mysterious psychical emanations which are mentally cognised, and which silently impress one as to the character of a locality, the idiosyncrasies of a nation, a family, or an individual. Personal auras are strictly speaking the effects of the innate, and presumably hidden natures, of individuals, and are entirely the effluence of soul and mind. A house, or a neighbourhood, becomes imbued with the individual or collective auras of its inhabitants, which convey to the psychic senses, and thence to the mind, a powerful impression of character. At the same time within the aura of individuals, or families, are indelibly imprinted their thought-pictures, which may, or may not, have been embodied in acts; the faces and forms of relatives, friends, visitors, of the very animals they pet, the image of their pursuits, in short the whole life. These are imprinted in the astral element which surrounds each individual soul, as the atmosphere surrounds our bodies; and as the air we breathe becomes changed in respiration, so this ethereal atmosphere becomes transformed by personal impress.

Education, morality, religion, health, disease, happiness or misery, are largely the effects of the widely diffused auras of individuals continually given forth into the ambient atmosphere. As a man, or body of men, think, act, and live, such is the quality of the aura, or odylic sphere they emanate. This has an effect for good or evil upon all who approach within its radius; a formative, educating effect upon the ignorant, if it is of a high, intellectual, or spiritual quality; or a depressing, stultifying, deforming effect upon the minds and souls of innocent, or negative sensitives, when it is of an impure, debased, or brutal character.

Thought governs the world. It is by thought, and its embodiment in acts, that progress is made. Every thought has its aura, and nothing can prevent its diffusion in the atmospheres, both the astral and the natural or physical. Hence being continually surrounded by the effects of thoughts universally diffused, we are insensibly governed by their aura of good or evil, and we grow in beauty, or are warped in deformity, mental and bodily, from infancy, under the moulding consequences of the local thought-auras of the family, neighbourhood and nation in which we happen to be born.

Psychometry proves that even stones retain the impression of the scenes which have been enacted in their neighbourhood. That is, the stone having been bathed in the psychic emanations of creatures, human and animal, during, perhaps, centuries, retains such auras indestructibly 487in its atmosphere; and a psychometric clairvoyant will gradually perceive the most trivial details of the more active life which has daily passed in the vicinity of the stone. A fragment from the Temple of Diana of Ephesus, for instance, were it procurable, would enable a good psychometrist to describe every minute particular of the ancient temple worship and ceremonies. A stone from the Colosseum held in the hand, or to the forehead of a psychometrist, would produce a vision of the scenes in the arena which were wont to attract the Roman population. A fossil of some antediluvian animal would bring before the mind’s eye surroundings corresponding to the period in which the animal had lived. In truth, upon the plane of more ethereal matter adjacent to this, are to be found the images of all things, subject neither to time nor the changes of time; and there our image-producing faculties, temporarily divested of the blinding veil of flesh, may call them up at will.

The aura of a great crime becomes diffused in the neighbourhood of its commission, and concealment would be impossible if the psychic vision of men were open instead of being closed. A picture of the deed committed becomes impressed upon the astral atmosphere, with the faces and forms of those engaged in its commission. This effect is never destroyed, but may be recalled at will by a good clairvoyante. At the same time the aura of good deeds is equally powerful and indestructible. The one is like a transitory convulsion, disturbing the beauty of order and harmony with Nature; the other is the fixed and equable moral atmosphere arising from thoughts and actions consonant with wisdom. In short, the aura of good thoughts and deeds is the pabulum of souls; the invigorating and supporting air they inspire and respire, producing health, happiness, mental activity, and inciting to progress. If it were not for the good on the earth, we might doubtless often cry in vain – “Heaven help us!” – for we should be so smothered under evil auras that spiritual breathing, and rapport with purer realms of life, would be a radical impossibility.

A crime is the insane product of an unbalanced, disordered mind. It causes a species of astral electric disturbance, which is as sensibly felt by sensitives as any explosion or convulsion on the natural plane. Astral, or ethereal molecules become violently displaced, and forced into new conditions of juxtaposition. A mysterious terror pervades the air, which affects all neighbouring minds, even to the very animals. It is as if the living soul of Nature had been violently wrenched from its normal condition of peace and happiness, and stood electrified with horror, whilst upon its veil of ethereal matter is fixed an indestructible image of the painful tragedy which has been suddenly enacted.

We are, in fact, surrounded, upon the soul plane of life, by an atmosphere which receives, so to speak, a photographic impression of even our very thoughts, which is a mirror to reflect our whole life, an image-world, retaining sounds as well as forms. It may be made 488subject to our will, which can call up before the mind, and make visible to the eye of the soul whatsoever, without exception, we will to see, to hear, or to know. The phantoms or apparitions of which we so frequently hear, are matters of fact to all psychic seers; are things as absolutely existent as any objects on the more familiar plane of dense matter. Once to realise this great fact, and to understand some of the laws which would enable us consciously to control, and illustrate to our satisfaction, certain of the hidden mysteries of the inner world of ethereal matter, from which our own proceeds as an effect from a cause, would set us upon a mountain height of knowledge whence all clouds of superstition, doubt, and uncertainty, would roll away.

There are many stories extant of certain haunting apparitions which have been seen at various times during the lapse of centuries, reappearing again and again in the same families as warnings, or otherwise; or it may be a mysterious sound, such as the cry of the “banshee” in Ireland. The popular fallacy regarding such apparitions is that a human soul, or “spirit” – it may be wrongly called – is compelled, as a retribution for the commission of some crime, to remain on the earth haunting the scene of its former sins. Or, if the visitant be a benevolent ghost, it is supposed that it is some ancestor or ancestress, ever present in loving watchfulness over the destinies of the family, giving warning of death or danger. The idea of a human soul being chained in this melancholy fashion to the earth is exceedingly repugnant to most minds, and naturally excites the utmost compassion for the poor ghost which has to wear out so dreary a doom. Such a hypothesis contradicts all those religious teachings which assign to souls either a state of absolute unconscious sleep, until the day of judgment, or an abode, presumably in a conscious state, in heaven or hell. It contradicts all those more modern teachings of “progress” after death, of the gradual ascension of the soul to its place of rest. If we accept the ideas of Eastern teachers concerning those occult mysteries – that the higher self, the spiritualised entity, gradually separates from its more animal, or lower principles of organism, which adhere together for a longer or shorter period as a shell-like or shadowy personality – even then, these principles or ethereal molecules which go to form an astral body, disintegrate after a time. They would not be likely, at all events, to endure over a century. Apparitions of persons deceased within a century might be considered as essentially ghosts, or shades – the shadowy, sidereal shapes of personalities passed away from the physical plane, and in a condition of gradual separation from all that can attach them to the earth. And it is presumable that a phantom which is seen repeatedly during the lapse of centuries, is merely a reflection in the astral light, called up by the will of a seer; or projected upon the plane of soul-vision either by some psychological disturbance, or by some change of condition on the part of those who see the phantom. The 489immediate action may be due to “elementals,” those mysterious entities called by Liebnitz “Monads,” which are in close attendance upon mankind, and have so much to do with his very existence that he would fare but indifferently without them. Not only are they as intimately consociated with him as his own thoughts, but certain grades of them depend upon him also for their existence. These beings often become tutelary, or “house-spirits,” and the rôle of re-appearing again and again, as a sort of hereditary ghost, to give warning of death or danger, is not incompatible with their condition of existence. Time does not exist for them, and one century would be like any other. They live in the personal or family aura, and become intimately blended with the daily lives of its members. When, as in the case of royal or noble houses, the family aura remains undisturbed in its ancient palaces or castles during centuries, a haunting elemental would find it an easy matter to make itself visible, frequently by a semi-materialisation, or a condensation of the ethereal atoms of its body. In such a case it would be seen objectively by anyone who happened to be present. In other cases, when an apparition is only a reflection in the astral light, a sensitive in moments of abnormal or psychic lucidity would perceive it. Others sympathetically inclined would perceive the same. At length, after repeated similar visions, the locality would get the name of being haunted. The image so repeatedly beheld becomes fixed in the atmosphere of that particular spot. Upon entering a locality with such a reputation a species of psychological inebriation would assail every individual so constituted as to fall under the effects of the aura already established, and they would then always behold the spectre thus ideally produced. These mental or astral spectres need not necessarily be merely immovable pictures. They will move, or walk, threaten, or act a pantomime exactly as they may have the reputation of doing; or as the person who beholds them expects or imagines them to be doing.

In some respects these apparitions or warning cries may be mental legacies left indelibly impressed in the astral light by the powerful will of a departed ancestor, friendly or inimical, as a blessing or a curse; or even by a member of some alien family, as a pursuing Nemesis which falls as a retribution upon the perpetrator of evil, but can possess no power over the innocent and good.

Frank Fairholme.

(To be continued.)

The Esoteric Character of the Gospels

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 490-496

Reviews.

Spirit Revealed

W. A. Ellis · pp. 497-499

Traité Élémentaire de Science Occulte

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 499-500

500

The New Wagner Journal.

We have received from Mr. Geo. Redway, Publisher, 15, York Street, W.C., the prospectus of a new Journal, “The Meister,” which is about to be edited for the Richard Wagner Society by Mr. Wm. Ashton Ellis, author of “Theo501sophy in the Works of Richard Wagner” (Theosophical Society’s Transactions), and of “Richard Wagner as Poet, Musician and Mystic,” read before the Society of Fine Arts. As Mr. Ellis is a member of the Committee of the Wagner Society, and a member of Council of the London Lodge of the Theosophical Society, we hope that prominence will be given to the esoteric side of Richard Wagner’s works; and for this hope we have justification not only in the pamphlets above alluded to but also in the words of the prospectus of the Meister. “Religion, Art, and Social Questions are in these works (Wagner’s) presented to his readers under novel aspects, and such as are of the greatest interest to a generation which is eagerly scanning the horizon for some cloud which may be the harbinger of refreshing rain long looked for to quench the thirst of the arid sands of Materialistic Science.”

The prospectus presents us with a specimen of the cover of the journal, designed by Mr. Percy Anderson, an artist who has already made a name for himself in other walks of the decorative art, and whose first attempt in this direction shows great power of broad effects of light and shade, and considerable expertness in symbolism. We hope in our next issue to review the first number of the Meister which, we understand, will appear on the 13th inst. It will be published for the present quarterly, at the subscription rate of 4s. per annum, but we trust that it may shortly become a full-fledged “monthly.”

New Year’s Eve.

All sound was hushed, except the sad sad bells,
Chanting their requiem o’er the dying year;
Alone I knelt beneath the watchful stars,
And held communion with my restless soul.

* * * * *

The Old Year died, the sad bells all were stilled,
And o’er a silent city, shone the pure cold moon.
Then unrestrained my soul poured forth its cry,
“O God Eternal, Changless, Sacred, O. M.
Let my past die with the Old Year to-night.
And when the joy-bells hail the New Year’s birth,
Let each sweet note waft up a pæan of praise,
Straight from a new-born Soul unto its Maker.”

* * * * *

The New Year dawned, madly the bells clashed forth
Beneath the stars, I still knelt on – in peace.

Katie Duncan King.

502

Correspondence.

Autocentricism.^[33]

Man has made God in his own image. Taking his thoughts and passions, fears, hope and aspirations, with part thereof he endows his fellow-men, whose natures he knows only as figured and interpreted by his own, and thus he becomes a social being; with part thereof he inspires the inanimate world – “the sun, the moon, the stars, the sea, the hills, and the plains,” and thus he becomes a poet; “with the residue” he forms his God, and “falleth down unto it, and worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, Deliver me, for thou art my God.”

The first of these processes is legitimate, indeed necessary, for there is a foundation of unity in human nature, however diverse and complex are its varied developments; and the humanity which dwells in all can recognize itself under strange disguises.

The second process is innocent and elevating, so long as it is kept within just limits, and claims to reach results subjectively, not objectively, true.

The third process is inevitable at a certain stage of racial evolution, but beyond that stage becomes absolutely noxious and degrading, because it extols as truth that which conscience and reason have begun to condemn as untruth.

Dead are the Gods of Egypt, those supreme plutocrats, under whom costly mummification and burial in a sculptured tomb were the conditions of posthumous life, so that a poor man could by no means enter into the kingdom of Osiris. Dead are Jupiter, Apollo, Pallas, Aphrodite, the products and reflexes of Greek majesty, beauty and intellect; or, if not dead, they are immortalised only by the art of their human creators. Dead, or dying, as a power to be loved and feared, is that Jehovah who reproduces the cruelty, selfishness and stubbornness of the typical Jew, with his substratum of conscience, showing itself from time to time in a more or less wrong-headed zeal for righteousness.

In its infancy, every race unconsciously forms an ideal, and makes this ideal its God. As the race grows in civilisation the ideal is modified, and for some time the god continues to undergo corresponding changes, and is, so to speak, kept up to date. But increasing experience and knowledge bring increasing secularism of thought and feeling, and incapacitate the mind for reconstructing its Divinity. Religion loses its life-blood. In this stage, the Deity is either an anachronism, incompatible with the highest instincts of his worshippers, and therefore holding them back morally and intellectually, or else he becomes a nonentity, an abstraction, which can have no influence on life and conduct. It is this effete conception which Dr. Lewins combats in the tract entitled “Autocentricism, or the Brain Theory of Life and Mind.”

Man, in brief, is his own God. Saints and mystics, and all the most beautiful souls of all religions, have seen this truth as in a glass darkly. Christ expressed it in mystic form when he said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you,” and, “I and my Father are one.” But in Christ’s time Animism 503was so ingrained in human nature that it was impossible he could escape it.^[34] He had not the scientific data on which to found a true cosmology; and even had he possessed the data, he would have lacked the power to use them. Scientific habits of thought were necessarily alien to the mind of the Galilean peasant.^[35] He could feel rather than comprehend the unity of God, Man, and the World; but he could not know that this unity is centred in the thought-cells of the cerebral hemispheres, and that the Divine glory is the offspring of a material organism.^[36] Scientific synthesis can now give a solid basis to Christian and Buddhist mysticism, to Berkleyan and Kantian Idealism, by declaring that the brain is the one phenomenon which certifies its own nomenal existence. It thinks, therefore it is; it creates, therefore it exists. Yet Dualism is condemned, whatever stand-point we adopt. “For my main argument ... it matters not a jot or tittle whether you proceed on the nöetic or hyloic basis. A European ought to take the latter, which admits of scientific research and discovery. An Asiatic or African, who has not the genius for original realistic research, may safely be left to the former.”^[37] Beyond himself, no man can think. We are apt to be deluded by the exigencies of language, and to look upon “our” ideas, “our” imaginations, as in some way separable from ourselves; as possessions rather than components of the Ego. Yet nothing is clearer than that the sum of these sentient states actually constitutes the Ego, so far as it knows itself; and that a “dominant” idea, engrossing the attention to the exclusion of all others, is for the time absolutely identical with and equivalent to the mind which it is said to “rule.” For moments which are eternities, because the sense of time is abolished, the musician may be “absorbed in” or identified with his sonata, the poet with his verse, the mystic with his vision of the Divine Essence. “I am as great as God, and He as small as I,” sings Angelus Silesius; but we may rather say that in such states of rapture the relations of “great” and “small,” of “internal” and “external,” of “space” and “infinitude,” of “time” and “eternity,” are annihilated, and the whole universe fused into one point of light.

This feeling, rationalised and stripped of mystery, though not of wonder and solemnity, is the truth and life of Hylo-Idealism. Worship is done away with, not by iconoclasm, but by apotheosis. “By it we are, indeed, for ever and entirely relieved from the humiliating and overwhelming sense of human insignificance, thus making ourselves quite at home in the more than terrestrial grandeurs of the universe, in which our planet is but a sand-grain.”^[38]

In conclusion, I should like to recommend Dr. Lewins’s tractate, with its Introduction by Mr. Courtney, and its succinct and luminous Appendix by G. M. Mc., and also Mr. Courtney’s articles reprinted from “Our Corner” to the attention of all sincere souls. Hylo-Idealism, or “Autocentricism,” has the merit of not being negative merely, but also positive and constructive, substituting for the “renunciation” preached by Christ and Buddha, a perfect fulfilment of self, and conquering selfishness by self-expansion. It is thus especially potent in the fields of theoretical and practical ethics, indeed the central idea of Spinoza’s admirable and still unsurpassed analysis of the Passions is distinctly deducible from our thesis, though generally regarded as 504an excrescence rather than a natural growth from his own. Upon all this I cannot, at present, dwell, but must content myself with the bare indication of fields of thought and action which are “white already to the harvest.”

On the Nile, Dec. 1887.

C. N.

What of Phenomena?

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 504-506

504

To the Editors of Lucifer:

“I avail myself of your invitation to correspondents, in order to ask a question.

“How is it that we hear nothing now of the signs and wonders with which Neo-theosophy was ushered in? Is the ‘age of miracles’ past in the Society?

“Yours respectfully,
“•.”

What of Phenomena? – continued

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 504-506

Mr. Mohini M. Chatterji

A. P. Sinnett · pp. 506

To the President of the London Lodge of the Theosophical Society

M. M. Chatterji · pp. 506

To the Editors of Lucifer

B. Keightley · pp. 506

Correspondence

[Editorial introduction to the letters on hylo-idealism by Robert Lewins and G. M. McC.]

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 507

Re Hylo-Idealism

R. Lewins · pp. 507-508

508

Hylo-Idealism.

To the Editors of Lucifer.

I have to thank you for your kind insertion of my note on above in January issue of the Magazine.

I have not the slightest desire to quarrel with your prefaced comments on my style of writing. It seems to you to be “turgid,” and you take advantage of some unkind epithets lately dealt out to Theosophy in the Secular Review to return the compliment to me with interest added. Be it so. It would seem but fair to, let me say, compliment those, and those only, who have directly complimented you; but I have no wish, as I have just said, to find fault with any comment on Hylo-Idealism or on the methods of its advocacy. All criticism is, I know, received by the excogitator of the system with thanks, and, save that both he and I think your note re “Theobroma” not a little at fault (for explanation I refer you to the well-known Messrs. Epps), I can say the same for myself.

I can see, however, in spite of the raillery with which you honour us, that a right understanding of Hylo-Idealism – I beg pardon, High-low Idealism – is still very far from being yours. Why, in a recent issue of Lucifer the old difficulty of, as I call it, the “Coincident assumption of Materiality” is started as if it had never before been thought of. It is, in point of fact, fully dealt with in my “Appendix” to the “Auto-Centricism” pamphlet, which has already passed under your review! It is not worth while to enter once more upon this point; suffice it then to say, in addition, that I explained it also, at full length, to a Theosophical writer – Mr. E. D. Fawcett – in the Secular Review, some months ago. He had started the same venerable objection, but after my reply, he so far honoured me as not to return to the charge. Let him do so now, and then a Theosophical attack and a Hylo-Ideal defence will be before you. But, really, it is no argument against my position to extract some half-dozen lines of my writing from a contemporary and to follow this soupçon with three printer’s “shrieks.”

I shall wait with interest the promised letter from “C. N.,” placing Hylo-Idealism in a “new and very different light,” as you say. This is something quite new. Dr. Lewins, C. N., and I have, none of us, been able, hitherto, to find any material difference between our several presentations of the system.

I have the honour to be, Mesdames,
Your most obedient servant,
G. M. McC.

To Dr. Lewins, and the Hylo-Idealists at Large

H. P. Blavatsky · pp. 508-512

512

Interesting to Astrologers.

Astrological Notes – No. 4.

To the Editor of Lucifer.

Question, at London, 1887, March 2nd, 6.8 p.m. What will be the duration of quesited’s life?

Though the preceding figure showed that my relative would recover from his illness,^[39] yet it was obvious that the end could not be far distant; and I drew the present figure for the minute of the impression, to interrogate the stars.

The following are the elements of the figure: –

Cusp of 10th house 14 ♊︎.

– 11th house 21 ♋︎.

– 12th house 22 ♌︎.

– 1st house 17° 45’ ♍︎.

– 2nd house 10 ♎︎.

– 3rd house 9 ♏︎.

Planets’ places are:

♆︎ 25. 13. 15 ♉︎.

♅︎ 11. 37. 30 R ♎︎.

♄︎ 15. 46. 30 R ♋︎.

♃︎ 5. 41. 30 R ♏︎.

♂︎ 23. 50. 45 ♓︎.

☉︎ 11. 52. 19 ♓︎.

♀︎ 3. 10. 30 ♈︎.

☿︎ 29. 36. 15 ♓︎.

☽︎ 8. 28. 15 ♊︎.

Caput Draconis 27. 21. 38 ♌︎.

⨁︎ 14. 20. 56 ♐︎.

As in the previous figure the 6th house is the quesited’s 1st, and the 1st house is his 8th. As the time of the question was after sunset, ☿︎ ruling ♍︎ by night was lord of his 8th, and ♅︎ ruling ♒︎ by night was lord of his 1st. The aspect of the significators is ☿︎ 167° 58’ 45” ♅︎, separating from the Quincunx and applying to the Opposition. The Quincunx is, like the Conjunction and Parallel, convertible in nature, being good with benefics and evil with malefics, and when a benefic and malefic are thus joined, the stronger rules. It was therefore in this case doubly evil, as the significators were separating from one evil aspect and applying to another though not within orbs of either. As ☿︎, the applying planet, was in a common sign, and is an angle of the figure, each degree signified a week; and as 12° 1′ 15″ were wanted to complete the opposition, the critical period was shown to be a fraction over 12 weeks, or May 25th.

Danger to life was also shown by Cauda Draconis in quesited’s 1st house; by ☉︎ in quesited’s 1st afflicted by a very close Quincunx of ♅︎ lord of his 1st, ♅︎ moreover receiving ☉︎ in his Detriment, and ☉︎ receiving ♅︎ in his Fall; and by ☽︎, lady of quesited’s 6th, posited in his 4th, and afflicted by a rather close Quartile of ☉︎ posited in his 1st, ☉︎ moreover receiving ☽︎ in his Anti-triplicity (sit venia verbo). Nevertheless, as the significators were not actually in any evil aspect, ☿︎ moreover receiving ♅︎ in his Triplicity, and being almost out of ♓︎ his Fall and Detriment, and the Detriment of ♅︎; ☽︎, lady of his 6th, and posited in his 4th, applying to a Trine of ♅︎ lord of his 1st; and ☿︎ lord of his 8th applying to Conjunction with ♀︎ lady of his 4th, ♀︎ moreover receiving ☿︎ in her exaltation; – all this denoted that May 25th would be the time, not indeed of certain death, but of imminent danger, the beginning of the end.

⨁︎ being in the 4th house of the figure, almost on the cusp, denoted a legacy to my father.

The actual result was as follows: After having been for some time in fair health, considering his age and recent illness, he was suddenly taken ill and in great danger on the night of May 27th, and on the morning of May 31st was in articulo mortis, and given up by his two physicians. From this, however, he rallied; relapsed on the night of July 6th; rallied again; but died on July 19th at 8.30 a.m., after a sudden seizure of only 15 minutes’ duration, and my father received a legacy under his will.

The quesited suffered much in his last illness from cough and dyspnœa. The certificate of death was – “Primary: emphysema, morbus cordis. Secondary: thrombus, syncope.” With this may be compared ♄︎ in ♋︎, having dignity in quesited’s 8th house, and afflicting ♅︎ lord of quesited’s 1st. ♄︎ in ♋︎ denotes “phthisis, ulceration in lungs, obstructions and bruises in breast, ague, scurvy, cancer, and cough.”

Nemo.

Footnotes

↑ Editor’s note (LUC-ERR-01-001). The printed sign ♍︎ has been corrected to ♏︎ in accordance with the Erratum published in this same volume on p. 424: “Page 76, 2nd column, line 2, for ♍︎ read ♏︎.” Lucifer, vol. I, p. 424 (original edition).
↑ Editor’s note (LUC-ERR-01-151). The Project Gutenberg transcribers flag the quotation marks in this paragraph as ambiguous and retain the printed punctuation where no simple resolution is apparent. Project Gutenberg library.
↑ “This” Theosophy is not a religion, but rather the religion – if one. So far, we prefer to call it a philosophy; one, moreover, which contains every religion, as it is the essence and the foundation of all. Rule III. of the Theos. Body says: “The Society represents no particular religious creed, is entirely unsectarian, and includes professors of all faiths.”
↑ Nineteenth Century Sense: The Paradox of Spiritualism. By John Darby. J. B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, and 10, Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London.
↑ So medicine is, in the Shakespearian use of the word, and also from its Greek derivation, not to give drugs, but to cure or heal.
↑ The discoverer of the new power now known as the Keeley-motor and inter-etheric force.
↑ Co-operative, that is to say, in the sense that the various sections and individual members of society shall willingly co-operate, being fully conscious of their interdependance.
St. George Lane Fox.
↑ Socialists who consider their Christianity to supply them with sufficient motives for their Socialism. They do not strictly form a sect either of Socialists or of Christians.
↑ This word, of course, is employed in the general sense, without any reference to the physical character which the revolution may assume. It may be attended with violence, or it may be as peaceful as, for instance, the religious revolution accomplished by Constantine in the fourth century. All I am postulating is a more or less sudden transformation of the existing social order, effected by one of those impulses with which evolution seems to complete its periods, and of which Theosophy may some day afford the explanation.
↑ The only kind to which T. B. H.’s remarks are in any way applicable.
↑ I do not, of course, mean to predict that “sin” (or its Theosophical equivalent) would die out. It is, after all, a relative matter to the capacities and potentialities of the individual and his surroundings. Under Socialism, sensuality, social or plutocratic pride, and other sins fostered by the present order, would simply give way to ambition (to obtain popular distinction, e.g., as an artist or inventor) and perhaps to magic and other at present unfashionable vices.
↑ Mr. Keightley’s meaning (and it is difficult for the words to bear any other interpretation) was that the denial of harmony is evidence that, at some previous time, the man who denies has set himself in opposition to the law, in virtue of those very desires and instincts of his animal personality to which Mr. Beatty alludes later on. In this sense, Mr. Beatty is right in saying that a law of the universe cannot be broken; but its limits may be transgressed, and consequently an attempt made by man to make himself into a small, but rival universe. It is the old story of the china pot and the iron kettle, and the fact that china gets the worst of it is conclusive that the china is struggling against Nature.
↑ Will Mr. Beatty explain the phenomenon of a comet flirting its tail round the sun in defiance of the “law of gravitation”?
↑ Very little doubt that it does. Mankind is only very gradually developing its fifth sense on the intellectual plane. Intuition might have carried our critic over the difficulty, but in some parts of his criticism he seems hardly to have begun to evolute the intellectual sense.
↑ “This Karma,” as Mr. Beatty expresses it, would not be quite so bewildering a subject if critics would bear in mind the context and not fall foul of a detached expression – not even a sentence. The “interest of the soul’s welfare in heaven” is concentrated by John Smith on John Smith as John Smith in heaven, and in order that the said John Smith may go on enjoying the things he loved on earth. As his earth life has ended, John Smith has changed and is “transient.” If he were not transient a very natural inference would follow, that progress, evolution, &c., on whatever plane of being does not prevail.
↑ Mr. Beatty hardly maintains his position of consistent materialism here; and it is at least as vainglorious to deny as to assert.
↑ Man has the “animal” in him of course, but he has also the power of judgment or discrimination. Mr. Beatty’s wish to be critically pessimistic seems here to run away with his power of discrimination.
↑ Posthumous Humanity, a study of Phantoms, by Adolphe d’Assier, Member of the Bordeaux Academy of Sciences. Translated and annotated by Henry S. Olcott, President of the Theosophical Society. George Redway, London, 1887. 8vo. pp. 360.
↑ See also his letter under Correspondence.
↑ Hence the Spirit of Non-Separateness in esoteric philosophy must be the one truth. – Ed.
↑ Only this “Ego” is universal, not individual: Absolute Consciousness, not the human Brain. – Ed.
↑ Then why not term the philosophy “High-Low-Idealism” vice “Hylo-Idealism”? – Ed.
↑ “Theobroma” – the same as cacao-butter. We take exception to the phraseology, not to Dr. Lewins’ ideas. – Ed.
↑ Jehovah, of course, in his own national character of Baal, Moloch, Typhon, etc. The final and conclusive identification of the “Lord God” of Israel with Moloch, we find in the last chapter of Leviticus, concerning things devoted not to be redeemed.... “A man shall devote unto the Lord of all that he hath, both of man and beast.... None devoted, which shall be devoted of men, shall be redeemed, but shall surely be put to death ... for it is most holy unto the Lord.” (See Leviticus xxvii., 28, 29, 30.) “Notwithstanding the numerous proofs that the Israelites worshipped a variety of gods, and even offered human sacrifices until a far later period than their Pagan neighbours, they have contrived to blind posterity in regard to truth. They sacrificed human life as late as 169 B.C. (Vide “Joseph. contra Apion,” 11, 8 – what Antiochus Epiphanius found in the Temple), and the Bible contains a number of such records. At a time when the Pagans had long abandoned the abominable practice, and had replaced the sacrificial man by the animal, and the ox of Dionysius was sacrificed at the Bacchic Mysteries (“Anthon,” p. 365), Jephthah is represented sacrificing his own daughter to the ‘Lord’ for a burnt-offering.” Isis Unveiled, vol. ii., pp. 524, 525.
↑ It is said in the “Holy Book,” that it was “the Lord (who) was with Judah,” who “could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron,” (Judges i. 19), and not “Judah” at all. This is but natural, according to popular belief and superstition that “the Devil is afraid of iron.” The strong connection and even identity between Jehovah and the Devil is ably insisted upon by the Rev. Haweis. See his “Key” (p. 22). – Ed.
↑ And yet it is this “demoniacal and diabolical religion” that passed part and parcel into Protestantism. – Ed.
↑ So “the people and priests” do now. And as the late Rev. Henry Ward Beecher once said in a sermon, “could Jesus come back and behave in the streets of Christian cities as he did in those of Jerusalem, he would be declared an impostor and then confined in prison.” – Ed.
↑ Only, as such truth and freedom amounts to the Church committing suicide and burying herself with her own hands, she will never allow such a thing. She will die her natural death the day when there will not exist a man, woman or child to believe any longer in her dogmas. And this beneficent result might be achieved within her own hierarchy, were there many such sincere, brave and honest clergymen who, like the writer of this article, fear not to speak the truth – whatever may come – [Ed.]
↑ Aanru is the celestial field where the defunct’s soul received wheat and corn, growing therein seven cubits high. (See “Book of the Dead,” 124 et seq.) – Ed.
↑ Amrita (immortal) applied to the Soma juice, and called the “Water of Life.” – Ed.
↑ This is a doctrine of the Visishtadwaita sect of the Vedantins. The Jiva (spiritual life principle, the living Monad) of one who attained Moksha or Nirvana, “breaks through the Brahmarandra and goes to Suryamandala (the region of the sun) through the Solar rays. Then it goes, through a dark spot in the Sun, to Paramapeda to which it is directed by the Supreme Wisdom acquired by Yoga, and helped thereinto by the Devas (gods) called Archis, the “Flames,” or Fiery Angels, answering to the Christian archangels. – Ed.
↑ Vide Legend of Jyotishka, mentioned in “Life of Buddha from the Bkah-Hgyur.”
↑ “Autocentricism; or, the Brain Theory of Life and Mind,” being the substance of letters written to the Secular Review (1883-4). By Robert Lewins, M.D. “The New Gospel of Hylo-Idealism, or Positive Agnosticism.” By Herbert L. Courtney.
↑ “Autocentricism,” &c., p. 10.
↑ Christ – A Galilean peasant! [Ed.]
↑ Nor does Dr. Lewins know: assumption is no proof. [Ed.]
↑ “Autocentricism,” &c., p. 33.
↑ Ibid, p. 19.
↑ Note. – This was shown by the preceding figure; a weak aspect in horary astrology can only symbolize a weak result. Hence, though the weakly good semisextile was sufficient to indicate convalescence from a self-limited disease like pneumonia, yet it did not denote complete restoration to health. Had the significators been applying to a Trine, I should have judged not only convalescence from the acute attack, but a continuance of a vigorous old age.

[nf195-1] Editor’s note (LUC-ERR-01-001). The printed sign ♍︎ has been corrected to ♏︎ in accordance with the Erratum published in this same volume on p. 424: “Page 76, 2nd column, line 2, for ♍︎ read ♏︎.” Lucifer, vol. I, p. 424 (original edition).

[nf321-2] Editor’s note (LUC-ERR-01-151). The Project Gutenberg transcribers flag the quotation marks in this paragraph as ambiguous and retain the printed punctuation where no simple resolution is apparent. Project Gutenberg library.

[nf32-3] “This” Theosophy is not a religion, but rather the religion – if one. So far, we prefer to call it a philosophy; one, moreover, which contains every religion, as it is the essence and the foundation of all. Rule III. of the Theos. Body says: “The Society represents no particular religious creed, is entirely unsectarian, and includes professors of all faiths.”

[nf56-4] Nineteenth Century Sense: The Paradox of Spiritualism. By John Darby. J. B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, and 10, Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London.

[nf59-5] So medicine is, in the Shakespearian use of the word, and also from its Greek derivation, not to give drugs, but to cure or heal.

[nf60-6] The discoverer of the new power now known as the Keeley-motor and inter-etheric force.

[nf61-7] Co-operative, that is to say, in the sense that the various sections and individual members of society shall willingly co-operate, being fully conscious of their interdependance.
St. George Lane Fox.

[nf62-8] Socialists who consider their Christianity to supply them with sufficient motives for their Socialism. They do not strictly form a sect either of Socialists or of Christians.

[nf63-9] This word, of course, is employed in the general sense, without any reference to the physical character which the revolution may assume. It may be attended with violence, or it may be as peaceful as, for instance, the religious revolution accomplished by Constantine in the fourth century. All I am postulating is a more or less sudden transformation of the existing social order, effected by one of those impulses with which evolution seems to complete its periods, and of which Theosophy may some day afford the explanation.

[nf64-10] The only kind to which T. B. H.’s remarks are in any way applicable.

[nf65-11] I do not, of course, mean to predict that “sin” (or its Theosophical equivalent) would die out. It is, after all, a relative matter to the capacities and potentialities of the individual and his surroundings. Under Socialism, sensuality, social or plutocratic pride, and other sins fostered by the present order, would simply give way to ambition (to obtain popular distinction, e.g., as an artist or inventor) and perhaps to magic and other at present unfashionable vices.

[nf107-12] Mr. Keightley’s meaning (and it is difficult for the words to bear any other interpretation) was that the denial of harmony is evidence that, at some previous time, the man who denies has set himself in opposition to the law, in virtue of those very desires and instincts of his animal personality to which Mr. Beatty alludes later on. In this sense, Mr. Beatty is right in saying that a law of the universe cannot be broken; but its limits may be transgressed, and consequently an attempt made by man to make himself into a small, but rival universe. It is the old story of the china pot and the iron kettle, and the fact that china gets the worst of it is conclusive that the china is struggling against Nature.

[nf108-13] Will Mr. Beatty explain the phenomenon of a comet flirting its tail round the sun in defiance of the “law of gravitation”?

[nf109-14] Very little doubt that it does. Mankind is only very gradually developing its fifth sense on the intellectual plane. Intuition might have carried our critic over the difficulty, but in some parts of his criticism he seems hardly to have begun to evolute the intellectual sense.

[nf110-15] “This Karma,” as Mr. Beatty expresses it, would not be quite so bewildering a subject if critics would bear in mind the context and not fall foul of a detached expression – not even a sentence. The “interest of the soul’s welfare in heaven” is concentrated by John Smith on John Smith as John Smith in heaven, and in order that the said John Smith may go on enjoying the things he loved on earth. As his earth life has ended, John Smith has changed and is “transient.” If he were not transient a very natural inference would follow, that progress, evolution, &c., on whatever plane of being does not prevail.

[nf111-16] Mr. Beatty hardly maintains his position of consistent materialism here; and it is at least as vainglorious to deny as to assert.

[nf112-17] Man has the “animal” in him of course, but he has also the power of judgment or discrimination. Mr. Beatty’s wish to be critically pessimistic seems here to run away with his power of discrimination.

[nf129-18] Posthumous Humanity, a study of Phantoms, by Adolphe d’Assier, Member of the Bordeaux Academy of Sciences. Translated and annotated by Henry S. Olcott, President of the Theosophical Society. George Redway, London, 1887. 8vo. pp. 360.

[nf134-19] See also his letter under Correspondence.

[nf142-20] Hence the Spirit of Non-Separateness in esoteric philosophy must be the one truth. – Ed.

[nf143-21] Only this “Ego” is universal, not individual: Absolute Consciousness, not the human Brain. – Ed.

[nf144-22] Then why not term the philosophy “High-Low-Idealism” vice “Hylo-Idealism”? – Ed.

[nf145-23] “Theobroma” – the same as cacao-butter. We take exception to the phraseology, not to Dr. Lewins’ ideas. – Ed.

[nf148-24] Jehovah, of course, in his own national character of Baal, Moloch, Typhon, etc. The final and conclusive identification of the “Lord God” of Israel with Moloch, we find in the last chapter of Leviticus, concerning things devoted not to be redeemed.... “A man shall devote unto the Lord of all that he hath, both of man and beast.... None devoted, which shall be devoted of men, shall be redeemed, but shall surely be put to death ... for it is most holy unto the Lord.” (See Leviticus xxvii., 28, 29, 30.) “Notwithstanding the numerous proofs that the Israelites worshipped a variety of gods, and even offered human sacrifices until a far later period than their Pagan neighbours, they have contrived to blind posterity in regard to truth. They sacrificed human life as late as 169 B.C. (Vide “Joseph. contra Apion,” 11, 8 – what Antiochus Epiphanius found in the Temple), and the Bible contains a number of such records. At a time when the Pagans had long abandoned the abominable practice, and had replaced the sacrificial man by the animal, and the ox of Dionysius was sacrificed at the Bacchic Mysteries (“Anthon,” p. 365), Jephthah is represented sacrificing his own daughter to the ‘Lord’ for a burnt-offering.” Isis Unveiled, vol. ii., pp. 524, 525.

[nf149-25] It is said in the “Holy Book,” that it was “the Lord (who) was with Judah,” who “could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron,” (Judges i. 19), and not “Judah” at all. This is but natural, according to popular belief and superstition that “the Devil is afraid of iron.” The strong connection and even identity between Jehovah and the Devil is ably insisted upon by the Rev. Haweis. See his “Key” (p. 22). – Ed.

[nf150-26] And yet it is this “demoniacal and diabolical religion” that passed part and parcel into Protestantism. – Ed.

[nf151-27] So “the people and priests” do now. And as the late Rev. Henry Ward Beecher once said in a sermon, “could Jesus come back and behave in the streets of Christian cities as he did in those of Jerusalem, he would be declared an impostor and then confined in prison.” – Ed.

[nf152-28] Only, as such truth and freedom amounts to the Church committing suicide and burying herself with her own hands, she will never allow such a thing. She will die her natural death the day when there will not exist a man, woman or child to believe any longer in her dogmas. And this beneficent result might be achieved within her own hierarchy, were there many such sincere, brave and honest clergymen who, like the writer of this article, fear not to speak the truth – whatever may come – [Ed.]

[nf162-29] Aanru is the celestial field where the defunct’s soul received wheat and corn, growing therein seven cubits high. (See “Book of the Dead,” 124 et seq.) – Ed.

[nf163-30] Amrita (immortal) applied to the Soma juice, and called the “Water of Life.” – Ed.

[nf164-31] This is a doctrine of the Visishtadwaita sect of the Vedantins. The Jiva (spiritual life principle, the living Monad) of one who attained Moksha or Nirvana, “breaks through the Brahmarandra and goes to Suryamandala (the region of the sun) through the Solar rays. Then it goes, through a dark spot in the Sun, to Paramapeda to which it is directed by the Supreme Wisdom acquired by Yoga, and helped thereinto by the Devas (gods) called Archis, the “Flames,” or Fiery Angels, answering to the Christian archangels. – Ed.

[nf165-32] Vide Legend of Jyotishka, mentioned in “Life of Buddha from the Bkah-Hgyur.”

[nf183-33] “Autocentricism; or, the Brain Theory of Life and Mind,” being the substance of letters written to the Secular Review (1883-4). By Robert Lewins, M.D. “The New Gospel of Hylo-Idealism, or Positive Agnosticism.” By Herbert L. Courtney.

[nf184-34] “Autocentricism,” &c., p. 10.

[nf185-35] Christ – A Galilean peasant! [Ed.]

[nf186-36] Nor does Dr. Lewins know: assumption is no proof. [Ed.]

[nf187-37] “Autocentricism,” &c., p. 33.

[nf188-38] Ibid, p. 19.

[nf194-39] Note. – This was shown by the preceding figure; a weak aspect in horary astrology can only symbolize a weak result. Hence, though the weakly good semisextile was sufficient to indicate convalescence from a self-limited disease like pneumonia, yet it did not denote complete restoration to health. Had the significators been applying to a Trine, I should have judged not only convalescence from the acute attack, but a continuance of a vigorous old age.

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Latest revision as of 12:52, 31 October 2026

No. 1 – September 1887

The Mystery of All Time.

A True Theosophist.

A Ghost’s Revenge

Correspondence

No. 2 – October 1887

A Ghost’s Revenge.

Thoughts on Theosophy.

Correspondence

To the Author of “Light on the Path.”

Reviews.

Tabula Bembina Sive Mensa Isiaca. The Isiac Tablet of Cardinal Bembo. Its History and Occult Significance.

Earth’s Earliest Ages and Their Connection with Modern Spiritualism and Theosophy.

Isaure and Other Poems.

Correspondence

No. 3 – November 1887

Pythagoric Sentences of Demophilus.

Correspondence.

Correspondence Addressed to the Author of “Light on the Path.”

“Esoteric Buddhism.”

Reviews.

“Nineteenth Century Sense.”

No. 4 – December 1887

The Spirit of Healing.

Theosophy and Modern Socialism.

Similitudes of Demophilus.

Golden Sentences of Democritus.

Correspondence.

A Law of Life: Karma.

“The Latest Attack on Christianity.”

Islam and Christianity.

Theosophical and Mystic Publications

No. 5 – January 1888

Adaptations.

Some Words on Daily Life.

The White Monk.

Part I. – Ralph’s Story.

Love with an Object.

Reviews.

Posthumous Humanity.[18]

Treble Chords.

Editors’ Notes.

Correspondence.

The Church and the Doctrine of Atonement.

What is Theosophy?

Hylo-Idealism – The Secret of Jesus.

Gerald Massey on Shakspeare.

Correspondence

Interesting to Astrologers.

Astrological Notes – No. 3.

No. 6 – February 1888

The Soldier’s Daughter.

Earth’s Earliest Ages
and Their Connection with Modern Spiritualism and Theosophy.

Theosophical
and Mystic Publications

Posthumous Humanity.^[18]