HPB-IU v.1 ch.7: Difference between revisions

But what matters it if they do deny? Can they prevent phenomena taking place in the four corners of the world, if their skepticism were a thousand times more bitter? Fakirs will still be buried and resuscitated, gratifying the curiosity of European travellers; and lamas and Hindu ascetics will wound, mutilate, and even disembowel themselves, and find themselves all the better for it; and the denials of the whole world will not blow sufficiently to extinguish the perpetually-burning lamps in certain of the subterranean crypts of India, Thibet, and Japan. One of such lamps is mentioned by the Rev. S. Mateer, of the London Mission. In the temple of Trevandrum, in the kingdom of Travancore, South India, “there is a deep well inside the temple, into which immense riches are thrown year by year, and in another place, in a hollow covered by a stone, a great golden lamp, which was lit over 120 years ago, still continues burning,” says this missionary in his description of the place. Catholic missionaries attribute these lamps, as a matter of course, to the obliging services of the devil. The more prudent Protestant divine mentions the fact, and makes no commentary. The Abbé Huc has seen and examined one of such lamps, and so have other people whose good luck it has been to win the confidence and friendship of Eastern lamas and divines. No more can be denied the wonders seen by Captain Lane in Egypt; the Benares experiences of Jacolliot and those of Sir Charles Napier; the levitations of human beings in broad daylight, and which can be accounted for only on the explanation given in the Introductory chapter of the present work.^{[#fn375 375]} Such levitations are testified to—besides Mr. Crookes—by Professor Perty, who shows them produced in open air, and lasting sometimes twenty minutes; all these phenomena and many more have happened, do, and will happen in every country of this globe, and that in spite of all the skeptics and scientists that ever were evolved out of the Silurian mud.

[#fn375anc 375]. See Art. on “Æthrobacy.”

226 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

The discovery is claimed by the ancient Egyptians, those sons of the Land of Chemistry.^{[#fn376 376]} At least, they were a people who used these lamps far more than any other nation, on account of their religious doctrines. The astral soul of the mummy was believed to be lingering about the body for the whole space of the three thousand years of the circle of necessity. Attached to it by a magnetic thread, which could be broken but by its own exertion, the Egyptians hoped that the ever-burning lamp, symbol of their incorruptible and immortal spirit, would at last decide the more material soul to part with its earthly dwelling, and unite forever with its divine self. Therefore lamps were hung in the sepulchres of the rich. Such lamps are often found in the subterranean caves of the dead,

[#fn376anc 376]. Psalm cv. 23. “The Land of Ham,” or {{Style S-Italic|chem,}} Greek {{Style S-Italic|chemi}}, whence the terms {{Style S-Italic|alchemy}} and {{Style S-Italic|chemistry.}}

227 THE WONDERFUL LAMP AT ATTESTE.

and Licetus has written a large folio to prove that in his time, whenever a sepulchre was opened, a burning lamp was found within the tomb, but was instantaneously extinguished on account of the {{Style S-Italic|desecration.}} T. Livius, Burattinus, and Michael Schatta, in their letters to Kircher,^{[#fn377 377]} affirm that they found many lamps in the subterranean caves of old Memphis. Pausanias speaks of the golden lamp in the temple of Minerva at Athens, which he says was the workmanship of Callimachus, and burnt a whole year. Plutarch^{[#fn378 378]} affirms that he saw one in the temple of Jupiter Amun, and that the priests assured him that it had burnt continually for years, and though it stood in the open air, neither wind nor water could extinguish it. St. Augustine, the Catholic authority, also describes a lamp in the fane of Venus, of the same nature as the others, unextinguishable either by the strongest wind or by water. A lamp was found at Edessa, says Kedrenus, “which, being hidden at the top of a certain gate, burned 500 years.” But of all such lamps, the one mentioned by Olybius Maximus of Padua is by far the more wonderful. It was found near Atteste, and Scardeonius^{[#fn379 379]} gives a glowing description of it: “In a large earthen urn was contained a lesser, and in that a burning lamp, which had continued so for 1500 years, by means of a most pure liquor contained in two bottles, one of gold and the other of silver. These are in the custody of Franciscus Maturantius, and are by him valued at an exceeding rate.”

[#fn377anc 377]. “Œdipi Ægyptiaci Theatrum Hieroglyphicum,” p. 544.

[#fn378anc 378]. “Lib. de Defectu Oraculorum.”

[#fn379anc 379]. Lib. i., Class 3{{Style S-Italic|, Cap. ult.}}

228 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

serted by all good Christians during the Papacy of Paul III., when upon opening a tomb in the Appian Way, at Rome, there was found the entire body of a young girl swimming in a bright liquor which had so well preserved it, that the face was beautiful and like life itself. At her feet burned a lamp, whose flame vanished upon opening the sepulchre. From some engraved signs it was found to have been buried for over 1500 years, and supposed to have been the body of Tulliola, or Tullia, Cicero’s daughter.^{[#fn380 380]}

[#fn380anc 380]. The details of this story may be found in the work of Erasmus Franciscus, who quotes from Pflaumerus, Pancirollus, and many others.

229 HOW TO MAKE THE UNQUENCHABLE LIGHT.

page 44 of his work mentions a preparation of quicksilver filtrated seven times through white sand by fire, of which, he says, lamps were made that would burn perpetually. Both Maturantius and Citesius firmly believe that such a work can be done by a purely chemical process. This liquor of quicksilver was known among alchemists as {{Style S-Italic|Aqua Mercurialis, Materia Metallorum, Perpetua Dispositio,}} and {{Style S-Italic|Materia prima Artis,}} also {{Style S-Italic|Oleum Vitri.}} Tritenheim and Bartolomeo Korndorf both made preparations for the inextinguishable fire, and left their recipes for it.^{[#fn381 381]}

[#fn381anc 381]. “{{Style S-Italic|Sulphur}}. {{Style S-Italic|Alum}} ust. a ℥ iv.; sublime them into flowers to ℥ ij., of which add of crystalline Venetian borax (powdered) ℥ j.; upon these affuse high rectified spirit of wine and digest it, then abstract it and pour on fresh; repeat this so often till the sulphur melts like wax without any smoke, upon a hot plate of brass: this is for the {{Style S-Italic|pabulum,}} but the wick is to be prepared after this manner: gather the threads or thrums of the {{Style S-Italic|Lapis asbestos,}} to the thickness of your middle and the length of your little finger, then put them into a Venetian glass, and covering them over with the aforesaid depurated sulphur or aliment, set the glass in sand for the space of twenty-four hours, so hot that the sulphur may bubble all the while. The wick being thus besmeared and anointed, is to be put into a glass like a scallop-shell, in such manner that some part of it may lie above the mass of prepared sulphur; then setting this glass upon hot sand, you must melt the sulphur, so that it may lay hold of the wick, and when it is lighted, it will burn with a perpetual flame and you may set this lamp in any place where you please.”

230 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

cannot be quenched, as Pliny and Solinus tell us. Albertus Magnus describes it as a stone of an iron color, found mostly in Arabia. It is generally found covered with a hardly-perceptible oleaginous moisture, which upon being approached with a lighted candle will immediately catch fire. Many were the experiments made by chemists to extract from it this indissoluble oil, but they are alleged to have all failed. But, are our chemists prepared to say that the above operation is utterly impracticable? If this oil could once be extracted there can be no question but it would afford a perpetual fuel. The ancients might well boast of having had the secret of it, for, we repeat, there are experimenters living at this day who have done so successfully. Chemists who have vainly tried it, have asserted that the fluid or liquor chemically extracted from that stone was more of a watery than oily nature, and so impure and feculent that it could not burn; others affirmed, on the contrary, that the oil, as soon as exposed to the air, became so thick and solid that it would hardly flow, and when lighted emitted no flame, but escaped in dark smoke; whereas the lamps of the ancients are alleged to have burned with the purest and brightest flame, without emitting the slightest smoke. Kircher, who shows the practicability of purifying it, thinks it so difficult as to be accessible only to the highest adepts of alchemy.

St. Augustine, who attributes the whole of these arts to the Christian scapegoat, the devil, is flatly contradicted by Ludovicus Vives,^{[#fn382 382]} who shows that all such would-be magical operations are the work of man’s industry and deep study of the hidden secrets of nature, wonderful and miraculous as they may seem. Podocattarus, a Cypriote knight,^{[#fn383 383]} had both flax and linen made out of another asbestos, which {{Style S-Italic|Porcacchius}} says^{[#fn384 384]} he saw at the house of this knight. Pliny calls this flax {{Style S-Italic|linum vinum}}, and Indian flax, and says it is done out of {{Style S-Italic|asbeston sive asbestinum,}} a kind of flax of which they made cloth that was to be cleaned by throwing it in the fire. He adds that it was as precious as pearls and diamonds, for not only was it very rarely found but exceedingly difficult to be woven, on account of the shortness of the threads. Being beaten flat with a hammer, it is soaked in warm water, and when dried its filaments can be easily divided into threads like flax and woven into cloth. Pliny asserts he has seen some towels made of it, and assisted in an experiment of purifying them by fire. Baptista Porta also states that he found the same, at Venice, in the hands of a Cyprian lady; he calls this discovery of Alchemy a {{Style S-Italic|secretum optimum.}}

[#fn382anc 382]. “Commentary upon St. Augustine’s ‘Treatise de Civitate Dei.’”

[#fn383anc 383]. The author of “De Rebus Cypriis,” 1566 a.d.

[#fn384anc 384]. “Book of Ancient Funerals.”

231 THE WICK OF THE LAMP, ASBESTOS.

(seventeenth century), believes the art, as well as the use of such linen, altogether lost, but it appears that it was not quite so, for we find the Museum Septalius boasting of the possession of thread, ropes, paper, and net-work done of this material as late as 1726; some of these articles made, moreover, by the own hand of Septalius, as we learn in Greenhill’s {{Style S-Italic|Art of Embalming,}} p. 361. “Grew,” says the author, “seems to make {{Style S-Italic|Asbestinus Lapis}} and {{Style S-Italic|Amianthus}} all one, and calls them in English the thrum-stone;” he says it grows in short threads or thrums, from about a quarter of an inch to an inch in length, parallel and glossy, as fine as those small, single threads the silk-worms spin, and very flexible like to flax or tow. That the secret is not altogether lost is proved by the fact that some Buddhist convents in China and Thibet are in possession of it. Whether made of the fibre of one or the other of such stones, we cannot say, but we have seen in a monastery of female Talapoins, a yellow gown, such as the Buddhist monks wear, thrown into a large pit, full of glowing coals, and taken out two hours afterward as clear as if it had been washed with soap and water.

The ancients made the wick of their perpetual lamps from another stone also, which they called {{Style S-Italic|Lapis Carystius.}} The inhabitants of the city of Carystos seemed to have made no secret of it, as {{Style S-Italic|Matthaeus Raderus}} says in his work^{[#fn385 385]} that they “kemb’d, spun, and wove this downy stone into mantles, table-linen, and the like, which when foul they purified again with fire instead of water.” Pausanias, in {{Style S-Italic|Atticus,}} and Plutarch^{[#fn386 386]} also assert that the wicks of lamps were made from this stone; but Plutarch adds that it was no more to be found in his time. Licetus is inclined to believe that the perpetual lamps used by the ancients in their sepulchres had no wicks at all, as very few have been found; but Ludovicus Vives is of a contrary opinion and affirms that he has seen quite a number of them.

[#fn385anc 385]. “Comment. on the 77th Epigram of the IXth Book of Martial.”

[#fn386anc 386]. “De Defectu Oraculorum.”

232 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

but strongly resist the fire, nor the fire consume the matter, but be restrained by it, as it were with a chain, from flying upward.” To this, Sir Thomas Browne,^{[#fn387 387]} speaking of lamps which have burned many hundred years, included in small bodies, observes that “this proceeds from the purity of the oil, which yields no fuliginous exhalations to suffocate the fire; for if air had nourished the flame, then it had not continued many minutes, for it would certainly in that case have been spent and wasted by the fire.” But he adds, “the art of preparing this inconsumable oil is lost.”

We are told, in behalf of science, that she accepts no other mode of investigation than observation and experiment. Agreed; and have we not the records of say three thousand years of observation of facts going to prove the occult powers of man? As to experiment, what better opportunity could have been asked than the so-called modern phenomena have afforded? In 1869, various scientific Englishmen were invited by the London Dialectical Society to assist in an investigation of these phenomena. Let us see what our philosophers replied. Professor Huxley wrote: “I have no time for such an inquiry, which would involve much trouble and (unless it were unlike all inquiries of that kind I have known) much annoyance. . . . I take no interest in the subject . . . but supposing the phenomena to be genuine—they do not interest me.”^{[#fn388 388]} Mr. George H. Lewes expresses a wise thing in the following sentence: “When any man says that phenomena are produced by no known physical laws, he declares he knows the laws by which they are produced.”^{[#fn389 389]} Professor Tyndall expresses doubt as to the possibility of good results at any seance which he might attend. His presence, according to the opinion of Mr. Varley, throws everything in confusion.^{[#fn390 390]} Professor Carpenter writes, “I have satisfied myself by personal investigation, that, whilst a great number of what pass as such ({{Style S-Italic|i.e}}., spiritual manifestations) are the results of intentional imposture, and many others of self-deception, there are certain phenomena which are quite genuine, and must be considered as fair subjects of scientific study . . . the source of these phenomena does not lie in any communication {{Style S-Italic|ab-extra}}, but depends upon the {{Style S-Italic|subjective}} condition of the individual which operates according to certain recognized physiological laws . . .the process to which I have given the name ‘{{Style S-Italic|unconscious cerebration’}}. . . performs a

[#fn387anc 387]. “Vulgar Errors,” p. 124.

[#fn388anc 388]. “London Dialectical Society’s Report on Spiritualism,” p. 229.

[#fn389anc 389]. Ibid., p. 230.

[#fn390anc 390]. Ibid., p. 265.

233 DO FLYING GUITARS UNCONSCIOUSLY CEREBRATE?

large part in the production of the phenomena known as spiritualistic.”^{[#fn391 391]}

Yet, despite the indifference of Huxley, the jocularity of Tyndall, and the “unconscious cerebration” of Carpenter, many a scientist as noted as either of them, has investigated the unwelcome subject, and, overwhelmed with the evidence, become converted. And another scientist, and a great author—although not a spiritualist—bears this honorable testimony: “That the spirits of the dead occasionally revisit the living, or haunt their former abodes, has been in all ages, in all European countries, a fixed belief, not confined to rustics, but participated in by the intelligent. . . . If human testimony on such subjects can be of any value, there is a body of evidence reaching from the remotest ages to the present time, as {{Style S-Italic|extensive and unimpeachable as is to be found}} in support of anything whatever.”^{[#fn392 392]}

{{Style P-Quote|“Oh shame to men! devil with devil damn’d

Firm concord holds,—{{Style S-Italic|men}} only disagree

Of creatures rational. . . .”^{[#fn393 393]} }}

[#fn391anc 391]. Ibid., p. 266.

[#fn392anc 392]. Draper: “Conflict between Religion and Science,” p. 121.

[#fn393anc 393]. Milton: “Paradise Lost.”

234 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

source? Clearly, this is but one more corroboration of the truism that no two men see the same thing exactly alike. This idea is admirably formulated by Dr. J. J. Garth Wilkinson, in a letter to the Dialectical Society.

Professor Carpenter vaunts the advanced philosophy of the present day which “ignores no fact however strange that can be attested by valid evidence;” and yet he would be the first to reject the claims of the ancients to philosophical and scientific knowledge, although based upon evidence quite “as valid” as that which supports the pretensions of men of our times to philosophical or scientific distinction. In the department of science, let us take for example the subjects of electricity and electro-magnetism, which have exalted the names of Franklin and Morse to so high a place upon our roll of fame. Six centuries before the Christian era, Thales is said to have discovered the electric properties of amber; and yet the later researches of Schweigger, as given in his extensive works on Symbolism, have thoroughly demonstrated that all the ancient mythologies were based on the science of natural philosophy, and show that the most occult properties of electricity and magnetism were known to the theurgists of the earliest Mysteries recorded in history, those of Samothrace. Diodorus, of Sicily, Herodotus, and Sanchoniathon, the Phœnician—the oldest of historians—tell us that these Mysteries originated in the night of time, centuries and probably thousands of years prior to the historical period. One of the best proofs of it we find in a most remarkable picture, in Raoul-Rochette’s {{Style S-Italic|Monuments d’Antiquité Figurés,}} in which, like the “erect-haired Pan,” all the figures have their hair streaming out in every direction—except the central figure of the Kabeirian Demeter, from whom the power issues, and one other, a kneeling man.^{[#fn394 394]} The picture, according to Schweigger, evidently represents a part of the ceremony of initiation. And yet it is not so long since the elementary works on natural philosophy began to be ornamented with cuts of {{Style S-Italic|electrified}} heads, with hair

[#fn394anc 394]. See Ennemoser: “History of Magic,” vol. ii., and Schweigger: “Introduction to Mythology through Natural History.”

235 THE LOST KEY TO THE THEURGIC ARCANA.

standing out in all directions, under the influence of the electric fluid. Schweigger shows that a {{Style S-Italic|lost natural philosophy of antiquity}} was connected with the most important religious ceremonies. He demonstrates in the amplest manner, that {{Style S-Italic|magic}} in the prehistoric periods had a part in the mysteries and that the greatest phenomena, the so-called miracles—whether Pagan, Jewish, or Christian—rested in fact on the arcane knowledge of the ancient priests of physics and all the branches of chemistry, or rather alchemy.

The theurgists so well understood the minutest properties of magnetism, that, without possessing the lost key to their arcana, but depending wholly upon what was known in their modern days of electro-magnetism, Schweigger and Ennemoser have been able to trace the identity of the “twin brothers,” the Dioskuri, with the polarity of electricity and magnetism. Symbolical myths, previously supposed to be meaningless fictions, are now found to be “the cleverest and at the same time most profound expressions of a strictly scientifically defined truth of nature,” according to Ennemoser.^{[#fn395 395]}

[#fn395anc 395]. “History of Magic,” vol. ii.

236 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

legitimate sovereign, this throne is but a whitened sepulchre, inside of which all is rottenness and corruption! That matter without the spirit which vivifies it, and of which it is but the “gross purgation,” to use a hermetic expression, is nothing but a soulless corpse, whose limbs, in order to be moved in predetermined directions, require an intelligent operator at the great galvanic battery called Life!

The greatest ancient philosophers are accused of shallowness and a superficiality of knowledge of those details in exact sciences of which the moderns boast so much. Plato is declared by his various commentators to have been utterly ignorant of the anatomy and functions of the human body; to have known nothing of the uses of the nerves to convey sensations; and to have had nothing better to offer than vain speculations concerning physiological questions. He has simply generalized the divisions of the human body, they say, and given nothing reminding us of anatomical facts. As to his own views on the human frame, the microcosmos being in his ideas the image in miniature of the macrocosmos, they are much too transcendental to be given the least attention by our exact and materialistic skeptics. The idea of this frame being, as well as the universe, formed out of triangles, seems preposterously ridiculous to several of his translators. Alone of the latter, Professor Jowett, in his introduction to the {{Style S-Italic|Timæus,}} honestly remarks that the modern physical philosopher “hardly allows to his notions the merit of being ‘the dead men’s bones’ out of which he has himself risen to a higher knowledge;”^{[#fn396 396]} forgetting how much the metaphysics of olden times has helped the “physical” sciences of the present day. If, instead of quarrelling with the insufficiency and at times absence of terms and definitions strictly scientific in Plato’s works, we analyze them carefully, the {{Style S-Italic|Timæus,}} alone, will be found to contain within its limited space the germs of every new discovery. The circulation of the blood and the law of gravitation are clearly mentioned, though the former fact, it may be, is not so clearly defined as to withstand the reiterated attacks of modern

[#fn396anc 396]. B. Jowett, M.A.: “The Dialogues of Plato,” vol. ii., p. 508.

237 THE HONEST MASTER OF BALLIOL COLLEGE.

science; for according to Prof. Jowett, the specific discovery that the blood flows out at one side of the heart through the arteries, and returns through the veins at the other, was unknown to him, though Plato was perfectly aware “that blood is a fluid in constant motion.”

238 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

credit: 1. “That the nebular theory was the received belief of the early physicists.” Therefore it could not have rested, as Draper asserts,^{[#fn397 397]} upon the telescopic discovery made by Herschel I. 2. “That the development of animals out of frogs who came to land, and of man out of the animals, was held by Anaximenes in the sixth century before Christ.” The professor might have added that this theory antedated Anaximenes by some thousands of years, perhaps; that it was an accepted doctrine among Chaldeans, and that Darwin’s evolution of species and monkey theory are of an antediluvian origin. 3{{Style S-Italic|.}} “. . . that, even by Philolaus and the early Pythagoreans, the earth was held to be a body like the other stars revolving in space.”^{[#fn398 398]} Thus Galileo, studying some Pythagorean fragments, which are shown by Reuchlin to have yet existed in the days of the Florentine mathematician;^{[#fn399 399]} being, moreover, familiar with the doctrines of the old philosophers, but reasserted an astronomical doctrine which prevailed in India at the remotest antiquity. 4. The ancients “. . . thought that there was a sex in plants as well as in animals.” Thus our modern naturalists had but to follow in the steps of their predecessors. 5. “That musical notes depended on the relative length or tension of the strings from which they were emitted, and were measured by ratios of number.” 6. “That mathematical laws pervaded the world and even qualitative differences were supposed to have their origin in number;” and 7. “The annihilation of matter was denied by them, and held to be a {{Style S-Italic|transformation}} only.”^{[#fn400 400]} “Although one of these discoveries might have been supposed to be a happy guess,” adds Mr. Jowett, “we can hardly attribute them all to mere coincidences.”^{[#fn401 401]}

[#fn397anc 397]. “Conflict between Religion and Science,” p. 240.

[#fn398anc 398]. “Plutarch,” translated by Langhorne.

[#fn399anc 399]. Some kabalistic scholars assert that the Greek original Pythagoric sentences of Sextus, which are now said to be lost, existed still, in a convent at Florence, at that time, and that Galileo was acquainted with these writings. They add, moreover, that a treatise on astronomy, a manuscript by Archytas, a direct disciple of Pythagoras, in which were noted all the most important doctrines of their school, was in the possession of Galileo. Had some {{Style S-Italic|Ruffinas}} got hold of it, he would no doubt have perverted it, as Presbyter Ruffinas has perverted the above-mentioned sentences of Sextus, replacing them with a fraudulent version, the authorship of which he sought to ascribe to a certain Bishop Sextus. See Taylor’s Introduction to Iamblichus’ “Life of Pythagoras,” p. xvii.

[#fn400anc 400]. Jowett: Introduction to the “Timæus,” vol. ii., p. 508.

[#fn401anc 401]. Ibid.