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Add No. 9 (December 1887) electronic text, checked page by page against the 1887 scan
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{{Style P-No indent|''"The Occult Sciences in the Temples of Ancient Egypt."''}} By Georgia Louise Leonard. ''Open Court'', September 29, October, 1887. A paper read at the "Fortnightly Conversation" in Washington. Its point of view is thoroughly sympathetic with the subject, and its conclusions are reached by an evidently thorough consideration. The shortcomings of modern scholars in Egyptology, who lack comprehension of the fundamental principles of Occultism, are exposed, "Honest and faithful, then, as these scholars may be," says the author, "It is not singular that they have failed to comprehend the full significance of ideas veiled in obscure or mystical language, and have stigmatized many a precious Egyptian scroll as childish and absurd. And yet—those who will discover in them priceless gems of truth half hid 'midst the clumsy modern renderings of a speech long dead." The author effectively rebukes the sneers of some of our self-sufficient modern scientists with the following significant words from Lord Bacon's "Novum Organum": "We have but an imperfect knowledge of the discoveries in arts and sciences made public in different ages and countries, and still less of what has been done by particular persons and transacted in private;" and Bacon further says: "As to those who set up for teachers of the sciences, when they drop their character, and at intervals speak their sentiments, they complain of the subtlety of nature, the concealment of truth, the obscurity of things, the entanglement of causes, and the imperfections of the human understanding; thus rather choosing to accuse the common state of men and things, than make confession of themselves." | {{Style P-No indent|''"The Occult Sciences in the Temples of Ancient Egypt."''}} By Georgia Louise Leonard. ''Open Court'', September 29, October, 1887. A paper read at the "Fortnightly Conversation" in Washington. Its point of view is thoroughly sympathetic with the subject, and its conclusions are reached by an evidently thorough consideration. The shortcomings of modern scholars in Egyptology, who lack comprehension of the fundamental principles of Occultism, are exposed, "Honest and faithful, then, as these scholars may be," says the author, "It is not singular that they have failed to comprehend the full significance of ideas veiled in obscure or mystical language, and have stigmatized many a precious Egyptian scroll as childish and absurd. And yet—those who will discover in them priceless gems of truth half hid 'midst the clumsy modern renderings of a speech long dead." The author effectively rebukes the sneers of some of our self-sufficient modern scientists with the following significant words from Lord Bacon's "Novum Organum": "We have but an imperfect knowledge of the discoveries in arts and sciences made public in different ages and countries, and still less of what has been done by particular persons and transacted in private;" and Bacon further says: "As to those who set up for teachers of the sciences, when they drop their character, and at intervals speak their sentiments, they complain of the subtlety of nature, the concealment of truth, the obscurity of things, the entanglement of causes, and the imperfections of the human understanding; thus rather choosing to accuse the common state of men and things, than make confession of themselves." | ||
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{{Style P-Title small caps|level=3|1=Notes on the Astral Light.}} | |||
{{Style P-Subtitle|From Eliphas Lévi's Works.}} | |||
{{Style P-No indent|''(Concluded.)''}} | |||
We have alluded, heretofore, to a substance diffused throughout Infinity: this unique substance is at once Heaven and Earth, that is to say, according to its degrees of polarization, subtile or fixed. | |||
It is this substance that Hermes Trismegistus denominates the great Telesma; when it produces brilliancy, it is called Light; it is this substance that God created, first of all, when He said, "Let there be Light." | |||
It is at once matter and motion, a fluid and a perpetual vibration; and | |||
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the force that is inherent in it, and sets it in motion, is called Magnetism. | |||
In Infinity, this unique substance is Ether or Etherial Light; in the stars, which it magnetizes, it becomes the Astral Light; in organic beings, magnetic or fluidic light; and in man, the astral body or the plastic medium. | |||
The wills of all intelligent beings act directly upon this light, and through it, on all Nature, which is thus subjected to the modifications of intelligence. | |||
This light is the universal mirror of all thought and all form; it preserves the images of all that has been, the reflections of worlds that have passed away; and, by analogy, the prophecies of worlds that are yet to come. | |||
This light, which is called in Hebrew "Aour," is the liquid and living Gold of the Hermetic philosophy; the positive principle is its sulphur, the negative its Mercury; and these principles, when equilibrated, form its Salt. All matter, therefore, is impelled to motion by reason of its double magnetism, and tends, inevitably, to equilibrium; the regularity and variety in this motion, result from different combinations of this equilibrium. | |||
A fluid is matter in active motion, and constantly agitated by reason of the variation of its equilibrium; a "solid," is the same matter in less active motion; or in apparent repose, because it is more or less solidly equilibrated. | |||
There is no solid that cannot be immediately reduced to powder, dissipated in smoke, and rendered invisible, if the equilibrium of its molecules should suddenly be entirely destroyed; and there is no fluid that cannot be instantly rendered harder than the diamond, if its constituent molecules could be immediately equilibrated. | |||
To direct these two magnetisms, therefore, is to destroy or create, to produce forms or to annihilate them—in a word, to exercise the omnipotence of nature. | |||
Our plastic medium is a magnet that attracts or repels the Astral Light, by the compulsion of the will: it is a luminous body, that reproduces, with the greatest fidelity, the forms that correspond to ideas: it is the mirror of the imagination. | |||
This plastic body is nourished by the Astral Light, precisely as the organic body is nourished by the products of the earth. During sleep, it absorbs the Astral Light, by immersion; and in waking hours, by a kind of respiration, more or less slow. | |||
In natural somnambulism, the plastic medium is surcharged with nutriment, which it does not perfectly assimilate: the will, although fettered by the torpor of sleep, strives to repel the medium; and a reaction, which is to some extent mechanical, ensues, whereby the light of the medium is equilibrated, by means of the movement of the body; this explains why it is dangerous to awaken somnambulists suddenly—for the surcharged medium might, in such cases instantly withdraw to the universal reservoir, and entirely abandon the organs which, at that time, are separated from the | |||
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soul, thus causing death. Hallucinations and visions, result from wounds inflicted on the plastic medium, causing local paralysis; sometimes it ceases to radiate, and substitutes images of its own, for the realities existing in the light, sometimes it radiates too powerfully, and condenses itself in some undesirable or fortuitous locality just as the blood settles in excrescences of the flesh: then the chimeras of the brain take form, and we appear to ourselves glorious or deformed, according to the ideal of our hopes or fears. | |||
Hallucinations, being dreams of our waking hours, always presuppose a state analogous to somnambulism, and somnambulism may be regarded as sleep borrowing its phenomena from waking states; hallucination is the waking state, still swayed, in part, by the astral intoxication of sleep. Our fluidic bodies attract and repel one another, according to laws analogous to those of electricity; thus are produced instinctive sympathies and antipathies, which equilibrate each other: for this reason, hallucinations are often contagious; a circle of illusion is formed, and a whole multitude is easily carried away; thus are explained the performances of the Mediums in America, and the folly of tableturning. Lunatics and idiots are more susceptible to magnetism than persons of sound mind—and the reason is apparent; it requires very little to completely turn the head of a man who has been drinking heavily, and disease is much more easily contracted, when the organs are predisposed to submit to its impressions, and already manifest its symptoms. Fluidic maladies have their fatal crises; every abnormal tension of the nervous apparatus, leads to a contrary tension, in accordance with the inexorable law of equilibrium; exaggerated love changes to aversion, and all exalted hatred approximates closely to love. The reaction comes with the violence and the suddenness of the thunderbolt. Ignorance is dismayed or indignant—science accepts the inevitable in silence. | |||
The vibrations of the voice modify the movement of the Astral Light, and are powerful factors of magnetism. Baron du Potet says, in his recent book on "Magic," that it is possible to kill by means of magnetism, just as it is by electricity; this revelation has nothing surprising for those who understand the analogies of Nature; it is certain that, by unduly dilating, or suddenly contracting, the plastic medium of a person, it can be separated from his body; cases have been known where one was thus killed, by being thrown into a paroxysm of anger, or overwhelming fear. Our plastic medium inhales and exhales the Astral Light, or the vital breath of the earth, just as our body breathes the terrestrial atmosphere; and as, in some localities, the air is impure, and unfit to be breathed, so certain phenomenal circumstances may render the Astral Light unwholesome and incapable of being assimilated; and as the air in some places is too stimulating for certain organizations, but exactly suited to others, so it is with the Astral Light. | |||
{{Style P-Signature|B. N. Acle, F. T. S.}} | |||
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{{Style P-Title small caps|level=3|1=Theosophical Activities.}} | |||
{{Style P-Subtitle|In India.}} | |||
Col. Olcott has returned from his extended tour in the North. He reached Calcutta in July, and there met again the celebrated Pandit Jibbananda Vidyasagara, from whose hands he received, in 1883, the sacred Brahmanical thread. The Pandit presented him with 150 volumes of his sanscrit publications for the Headquarters Library. After that Col. Olcott went to | |||
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Darjiling, and for the third time beheld the sublime peaks of the Himalayas. At Barisal, being detained, he lectured on Theosophy at the request of all the leading men, to 1,000 people. An extraordinary phenomenon occurs here called the "Barisal Gun." It is a sharp report like that of a heavy gun, followed by six others. It remains unexplained. This ghostly salvo of artillary greeted the President at the close of his lecture. | |||
He returned to Adyar in time to meet Bro. Fullerton, of the New York Society, before return of the latter to this city. | |||
An invitation from Japan has been extended to Col. Olcott to go there to preach Theosophy, and, after the convention in December, he expects to start. | |||
At Ceylon the work of the Society proceeds under the care of Mr. Leadbeater. At a recent public meeting, the famous Singhalese orator, Megutiwatte Gunananda, presided, and delivered a stirring address upon the good the Society has been doing there. Megutiwatte is high in the favor of High Priest, Rev. Sumangala, so that again we are made to smile on reading Mr. Arnold's account of the high priest's reply when asked about Mahatmas. | |||
{{Style P-Subtitle|In England.}} | |||
There is a new Lodge here called "The Blavatsky Lodge," intended for those who especially desire to study the phase of the subject which they think that famous woman represents. | |||
Mme. Blavatsky is now living in London, where she is editing "Lucifer" and finishing "The Secret Doctrine." While she desires privacy, she still is a centre of attraction for the thoughts and visits of many Theosophists and inquirers. | |||
{{Style P-Subtitle|In America.}} | |||
New York.—The Aryan Theosophical Society has had regular meetings as usual. It held its first open sitting this winter on Nov. 22d, at which Mr. C. H. A. Bjerregaard read a paper on the "Fifth Principle in Man," to a large audience. | |||
New Zealand.—Brother E. T. Sturdy, of Hawke's Bay, New Zealand, informs us that there is some interest in Theosophy there and that a Branch may soon be formed. He has just returned from a visit to India, and stopped at New York on his way to the South Pacific via San Francisco. | |||
Los Angeles.—The Branch here, though small, is active. | |||
The Abridgements of Discussions, which stopped at No. 3, will shortly be resumed; and No. 4 is now in the printer's hands. The ''Arjuna T. S.'', of St. Louis, and the ''Krishna T. S.'', of Philadelphia, have joined the ''Aryan'' in getting these under way again. All Theosophists and Branches are invited to send condensed expressions of views, or questions, upon Theosophical subjects, to the Secretary, care of The Path, and they will be inserted in forthcoming Abridgements. | |||
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The Purana Theosophical Society, of Santa Cruz, California, was organized October 19, 1887, under charter dated July 27, 1887, with Mrs. L. Underwood McCann as President; Dr. W. W. Gamble, Vice-President; Dr. W. Scott Hall, Secretary; and Mrs. Jennie M. Morgan, Treasurer. There are many enquirers here and considerable interest in occultism. | |||
Brother Alexander Fullerton, of the ''Aryan T. S.'', who went to India last summer, has just returned from the Head-Quarters at Adyar, Madras, where he met the President-Founder, and many Hindu Theosophists. In London he called on Madame Blavatsky, and Mrs. Sinnett, Mr. Keightly, and other European Theosophists: and during his two visits to Bombay, he was entertained by Brother Tukaram Tatya, the President of the Bombay Society there, through whose efforts mainly, the Bombay Society has published several books, and keeps up, in that quaint city, a free Theosophical Dispensary. | |||
Brother Fullerton reports several changes in the Head-Quarters building, which is a large white structure situated on a plot of land twenty-one acres in area, the property of the Society. The front hall and piazza have been recently enlarged and enclosed for Convention meetings. An annex of two rooms has also been erected, the first being devoted to the Sanscrit Library, and the second to several oil paintings of Sages. | |||
The convention in December will be, it is expected, the largest ever held at Head-Quarters. | |||
{{Style P-Title small caps|level=3|1=Correspondence.}} | |||
{{Style P-No indent|Oct. 27th, 1887.}} | |||
{{Style P-No indent|To the Editor of The Path:}} | |||
{{Style P-No indent|Dear Sir:—In view of the recent able articles in "Lucifer" apropos of the early significations of that title, your readers may be interested in a couple of extracts touching upon the more occult phase of the subject, to which Madame Blavatsky merely adverts for the moment by saying: "Whether this can explain anything is left to the reader's sagacity."<ref>History of a Planet.</ref>}} | |||
{{Style P-No indent|In the writings of Eliphas Levi this further explanation is found:}} | |||
{{Style P-No indent|"There is in Nature a force which never dies, and this force ''perpetually transforms all beings in order to preserve them.''}} | |||
{{Style P-No indent|"This force is the Reason, or the Word, of Nature.}} | |||
{{Style P-No indent|"There exists also in man a force analogous to that of Nature, and this force is the Reason or Word of man.}} | |||
{{Style P-No indent|"The Word of man is the expression of his will, directed by his Reason.}} | |||
{{Style P-No indent|"This Word is all powerful when it is reasonable, for it is then analogous to the Word of God himself.}} | |||
{{Style P-No indent|"By his Word, man may become conqueror of life, and can triumph over death.}} | |||
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{{Style P-No indent|"The entire life of man is only the parturition or the miscarriage of his Word: Human beings who die without having understood and formulated the Word of Reason, died without eternal hope.}} | |||
{{Style P-No indent|"The terrible and just force which perpetually destroys all these abortions, has been named Samaël by the Hebrews; Satan by the Orientals; and by the Latins, ''Lucifer''."}} | |||
{{Style P-No indent|Jacob Behmen, in his Threefold Life of Man, speaks of Lucifer in a chapter in which he declares in opening: "Our philosophers, in the schools of the third principle, of this world, do not understand; but the theosophers of the school of ''Pentecost'' understand it well."}} | |||
{{Style P-No indent|"Consider the Center of the Earth, which God hath created by his Word even of the Center of the Deep Eternity, out of the Darkness, out of the Center of the desirous will, but not out of any ''separate place'', but out of the space and depth, so far as the Word hath yielded itself unto the ''Ether''; there hath the Centre been everywhere, and is so now, and remaineth so in Eternity for it hath been so from Eternity.}} | |||
{{Style P-No indent|"And we understand by the Word (''Schuff'', which signifieth created) a separation of the essences, in the center, in the sour matrix: and therefore there is also such great diversity in the spirits, as there is great diversity in the will of the essences. * * And we give you highly to understand, the heavy fall of ''Lucifer''; which was that he put his will back again into the matrix of the fire, in the Centre, and turned away from the will of the Eternal Mind, which tended wholly to the heart of God; * * and therefore he was thrust back also (into the darkness, into the anguishing mind) in the sinking down of death." (Elsewhere called the "coporeity of darkness," the weight sinking down below fire and cooling to matter.)}} | |||
{{Style P-No indent|"But to satisfy the high enquiring mind, and to fill its apprehension concerning what moved ''Lucifer'' to this, we offer the matrix of the Genetrix to be considered; and there you find all the forms which can be found in the whole Nature.}} | |||
{{Style P-No indent|"And as we have shown you already, concerning the seven forms of the ''Center'' of the Eternal Nature, where every form is a several well-spring of Nature; in like manner out of every form, out of every well-spring, go forth spirits.}} | |||
{{Style P-No indent|"And the uppermost Principal Dominion proceedeth from the Head Source, which is a cause of the multiplicity therein, as the mind is a cause of the senses, (or various thoughts) and we entreat you to consider the matrix earnestly, wherein you shall quickly know the conceived Will of Lucifer, what it is in its original; how the creature hath imagined into the ''matrix'', and suffered itself to be withheld there; and yet God created all Spirits in the Light.}} | |||
{{Style P-No indent|"For we cannot know any otherwise than that ''Lucifer'' was created in the fourth form of the ''matrix''; for there stand the anger and the love in opposition, and this is the strife and overcoming; where the ''light overcometh'' and holdeth the darkness captive. The fourth form is in the midst of the seven forms, and ''may turn'' itself to the three in the anger, or to the three in the Love of God, and is severally drawn and desired by each of the three."}} | |||
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By "anger" he says he means the "Fire life," and by "Love" the "Light life," of that original Substance which orientalists call the Astral Light, or Akasa. So this striving force, which "may turn" either way, shows us the contraries necessary to manifestation. Levi also says: | |||
{{Style P-No indent|"When all was light, the light was nowhere: it filled the bosom of God, who was about to beget it. | |||
"And when He said: Let there be Light ! He permitted night to repel the light, and the universe sprang from chaos. | |||
"The negation of the angel,<ref>Referring to a previous legend of Lucifer, the Light Bearer, given in the magazine so named.</ref> who being refused to be enslaved, established the equilibrium of the World, and the movement of the spheres began"}} | |||
It seems that the Editors of ''Lucifer'' have done well to name their magazine after this Principle militant, which institutes in matter that strife of contraries which we call "Life," and so ensures to all the opportunity of evolution and Real Being. Perhaps Mercury, the Separator, the St. Michael who conquered Lucifer, and whom Behmen calls "Noise, Sound, Mercurie," is not a stranger to the mystic significance of Om. | |||
{{Style P-No indent|Yours Truly,}} | |||
{{Style P-Signature|J. Campbell Ver Planck, F. T. S.}} | |||
{{Vertical space|2em}} | |||
<hr> | |||
{{Style P-No indent|That word which all the Vedas record, which all penances proclaim, that men desire when they live as religious students, that word I tell thee briefly, it is}} | |||
{{Style P-No indent|<center>OM.</center>}} | |||
{{Footnotes}} | {{Footnotes}} | ||