248
THE BEACON OF THE UNKNOWN
–– I ––
It is written in an old book of occult studies:
“Gupta-Vidyâ (Secret Science) is an attractive sea, but stormy and full of rocks. The navigator who risks himself thereon, if he be not wise and full of experience,[1] will be swallowed up, wrecked upon one of the thousand submerged reefs. Great billows, the colour of sapphires, rubies and emeralds, billows full of beauty and mystery will overtake him, ready to bear the voyager away towards other and numberless beacon-lights that burn in all directions. But these are false lights, will-o’-the-wisps, lighted by the sons of Kâliya[2] for the destruction of those who thirst for life. Happy are they who remain blind to these deceiving lights, more happy still those who never turn their eyes from the only true Beacon-light whose eternal flame burns in solitude in the depths of the waters of the Sacred Science. Numerous are the pilgrims who desire to enter those waters; very few are the strong swimmers who reach the Beacon. He who would get there must cease to be a number, and become all numbers. He must have forgotten the illusion of separateness, and accept only the truth of collective individuality.[3] He must see with 249the ears, hear with the eyes,[4] understand the language of the rainbow, and have concentrated his six senses in his seventh sense.”[5]
The “beacon-light” of Truth is nature without the illusory veil of the senses. It can be reached only when the adept has become absolute master of his personal self, able to control all his physical and psychic senses by the aid of his “seventh sense,” through which he is gifted also with the true wisdom of the gods—Theo-sophia.
Needless to say, the profane—the non-initiated, outside the temple or pro-fanes—judge of the “beacons” and of the “Beacon” above mentioned in the opposite sense. For them it is the Beacon-light of Occult truth which is the ignus fatuus, the great will-o’-the-wisp of human illusion and folly; and they regard all the others as marking beneficent sand-banks, which stop in time those who are excitedly sailing on the sea of folly and superstition.
“Is it not enough,” say our kind critics, “that the world by dint of ‘isms’ has arrived at theosophism, which is nothing but transcendental humbuggery [fumisterie], without the latter furthermore offering us a réchauffé of mediaeval magic, with its grand Sabbath and chronic hysteria?”
Stop, stop, gentlemen! Do you know, when you talk like that, what true magic is, or the Occult Sciences? You have allowed your schools to fill you with the “diabolical sorcery” of Simon the Magician, and his disciple Menander, 250according to the good Father Irenaeus, the too zealous Theodoret and the unknown author of the Philosophumena. You have permitted yourselves to be told on the one hand that this magic comes from the devil; and on the other hand that it is the result of imposture and fraud. Very well. But what do you know of the true nature of the system followed by Apollonius of Tyana, Iamblichus and other magi? And what is your opinion about the identity of the theurgy of Iamblichus with the “magic” of the Simons and the Menanders? Its true character is only half revealed by the author of De mysteriis.[6] Nevertheless his explanations sufficed to convert Porphyry, Plotinus, and others, who from enemies to the esoteric theory became its most fervent adherents. The reason is extremely simple. True Magic, the theurgy of Iamblichus, is in its turn identical with the gnosis of Pythagoras, ἡ γνῶσις τῶν ὄντων the science of things that are, and with the divine ecstasy of the Philaletheians, “the lovers of truth.” But, one should judge of the tree only by its fruits. Who are those who have witnessed to the divine character and the reality of that ecstasy which is called samâdhi in Inda?[7] A long series of men, who, had they been Christians, would have been canonised—not by the decision of the Church, which has its partialities and predilections, but by that of most of the people, and by the vox populi, which is seldom wrong in its judgment. There is, for instance, Ammonius Saccas, called the theodidaktos, “god-instructed”; the great master whose life was so chaste and so pure, that Plotinus, his pupil, had not the slightest hope of ever seeing any mortal comparable to him. Then there is that same Plotinus who was to Ammonius what Plato was to Socrates —a disciple worthy of the virtues of his illustrious master.
251 Then there is Porphyry, the pupil of Plotinus,[8] the author of the biography of Pythagoras. Under the shadow of this divine gnosis, whose beneficent influence has extended to our own days, all the celebrated mystics of the later centuries have been developed, such as Jacob Böhme, Emmanuel Swedenborg, and many others. Madame Guyon is the feminine counterpart of Iamblichus. The Christian Quietists, the Mussulman Sufis, the Rosicrucians of all countries, quenched their thirst at the waters of that inexhaustible fountain—the Theosophy of the Neo-Platonists of the first centuries of the Christian era. The gnosis preceded that era, for it was the direct continuation of the Gupta-Vidyâ (“secret knowledge” or “knowledge of Brahman”) of ancient India, transmitted through Egypt; just as the theurgy of the Philaletheians was the continuation of the Egyptian mysteries. In any case, the point from which this diabolic magic starts, is the Supreme Divinity; its end and final goal, the union of the divine spark which animates man with the parent-flame which is the Divine All.
This consummation is the ultima Thule of those Theosophists who devote themselves entirely to the service of humanity. Apart from those, others, who are not yet ready to sacrifice everything, may occupy themselves with the transcendental sciences, such as Mesmerism, and the modern phenomena under all their forms. They have the right to do so according to the clause which specifies, as one of the objects of The Theosophical Society, “the investigation of the unexplained laws of nature and the psychic powers latent in man.”
The first are not numerous—complete altruism being a rara avis even among modern Theosophists. The other members are free to occupy themselves with whatever they like. Notwithstanding this, and in spite of the fact that our behaviour is frank and devoid of mystery, we are constantly called upon to explain ourselves, and to satisfy the public that we do not celebrate witches’ Sabbaths, or manufacture 252broom-sticks for the use of Theosophists. This sort of thing sometimes borders on the grotesque. When it is not of having invented a new “ism”—a religion extracted from the depths of a disordered brain—or else of humbuggery that we are accused, it is of having exercised the arts of Circe upon men and beasts. Jests and satires fall upon The Theosophical Society thick as hail. Nevertheless it has stood unshaken during all the fourteen years during which that kind of thing has been going on; it is a “tough customer” truly.
— II —
After all, critics who judge only by appearance are not altogether wrong. There is Theosophy and Theosophy: the true Theosophy of the Theosophist, and the Theosophy of a Fellow of the Society of that name. What does the world know of true Theosophy? How can it distinguish between that of a Plotinus, and that of the false brothers? And of the latter the Society possesses more than its share. The egoism, vanity and self-sufficiency of the majority of mortals is incredible. There are some for whom their little personality constitutes the whole universe, beyond which there is no salvation. Suggest to one of these that the alpha and omega of wisdom are not limited by the circumference of his or her brain, that his judgment is not quite equal to that of Solomon, and straightaway he accuses you of anti-Theosophy. You have been guilty of blasphemy against the Spirit, which will not be pardoned in this century, nor in the next. These people say, “I am Theosophy,” as Louis XIV said, “I am the State.” They speak of fraternity and of altruism and only care in reality for that which cares for no one else—themselves, in other words their little “me.” Their egoism makes them fancy that it is they alone who represent the temple of Theosophy, and that in proclaiming themselves to the world, they are proclaiming Theosophy. Alas! The doors and windows of that “temple” are no better than so many channels through which enter, but very seldom depart, the vices and illusions characteristic of egotistical mediocrities.
These people are the termites of The Theosophical Society, who eat away its foundations, and are a perpetual
253
menace to it. It is only when they leave it that it is possible to breathe freely.
It is not such as these that can ever give a correct idea of practical Theosophy, still less of the transcendental Theosophy which occupies the minds of a small group of the elect. Everyone of us possesses the faculty, the interior sense, known as intuition, but how rare are those who know how to develop it! It is, however, the only faculty by means of which men and things are seen in their true colours. It is an instinct of the soul, which grows in us in proportion to the use we make of it, and which helps us to perceive and understand real and absolute facts with far more certainty than can the simple use of our senses and the exercise of our reason. What are called good sense and logic enable us to see the appearance of things, that which is evident to everyone. The instinct of which I speak, being a projection of our perceptive consciousness, a projection which acts from the subjective to the objective, and not vice versa, awakens the spiritual senses in us and the power to act; these senses assimilate to themselves the essence of the object or of the action under examination, and represent them to us as they really are, not as they appear to our physical senses and to our cold reason. “We begin with instinct, we end with omniscience,” says Professor A. Wilder, our oldest colleague. Iamblichus has described this faculty, and some Theosophists have been able to appreciate the truth of his description.
There exists [he says] a faculty in the human mind which is immensely superior to all those which are grafted or engendered in us. By means of it we can attain to union with superior intelligences, finding ourselves raised above the scenes of this earthly life, and partaking of the higher existence and superhuman powers of the inhabitants of the celestial spheres. By this faculty we find ourselves finally liberated from the dominion of Destiny [Karman], and we become, so to say, arbiters of our own fate. For when the most excellent part of us finds itself filled with energy, and when our soul is lifted up towards essences higher than science, it can separate itself from the conditions which hold it in bondage to every-day life; it exchanges its ordinary existence for another one, and renounces the conventional habits which belong to the external order of things, to give itself up to, and mix itself with, another order of things which reigns in that most elevated state of existence . . .[9]
254 Plato expressed the same idea in a couple of lines:
The light and spirit of the Divinity are the wings of the soul. They raise it to communion with the gods, above this earth, with which the spirit of man is too ready to soil itself . . . To become like the gods, is to become holy, just and wise. That is the end for which man was created, and that ought to be his aim in the acquisition of knowledge.[10]
This is true Theosophy, inner Theosophy, that of the soul. But, followed with a selfish aim, Theosophy changes its nature and becomes demonosophy. That is why Oriental Wisdom teaches us that the Hindu Yogi who isolates himself in an impenetrable forest, like the Christian hermit who, as was common in former times, retires to the desert, are both of them but accomplished egoists. The one acts with the sole idea of finding in the One essence of Nirvâna refuge against reincarnation; the other acts with the unique idea of saving his soul—both of them think only of themselves. Their motive is altogether personal; for, even supposing they attain their end, are they not like cowardly soldiers, who desert the regiment when it goes into action, in order to protect themselves from the bullets? In isolating themselves as they do, neither the Yogi nor the “saint” helps anyone but himself; on the contrary, both show themselves profoundly indifferent to the fate of mankind whom they fly from and desert. Mount Athos[11] contains, perhaps, a few sincere fanatics; nevertheless even these have unwittingly gotten off the only track that could lead them to the truth—the path of Calvary, on which each one voluntarily bears the cross of humanity, and for humanity. In reality it is a nest of the coarsest kind of selfishness; and it is to such places that Adams’ remark on monasteries applies: “There are solitary creatures who seem to have fled from the rest of mankind for the sole pleasure of communing with the Devil tête-à-tête.”
255 Gautama the Buddha only remained in solitude long enough to enable him to arrive at the truth, to the promulgation of which he devoted himself from that time on, begging his bread, and living for humanity. Jesus retired to the desert for forty days only, and died for this same humanity. Apollonius of Tyana, Plotinus and Iamblichus, while leading lives of singular abstinence, almost of asceticism, lived in the world and for the world. The greatest ascetics and saints of our own day are not those who retire into inaccessible places, but those who pass their lives in travelling from place to place, doing good and trying to raise mankind; although they may avoid Europe, and those civilized countries where no one has any eyes or ears except for himself countries divided into two camps—those of Cain and Abel.
Those who regard the human soul as an emanation of the Deity, as a particle or ray of the universal and ABSOLUTE soul, understand the parable of the talents better than do the Christians. He who hides in the earth the talent given him by his “Lord” will lose that talent, as the ascetic loses it, who takes it into his head to “save his soul” in egotistical solitude. The “good and faithful servant” who doubles his capital, by harvesting for him who has not sown, because he had no means of doing so, and who reaps where the poor could not scatter the grain, acts like a true altruist. He will receive his recompense, just because he has worked for another, without the idea of reward or recognition. That man is the altruistic Theosophist, while the other is an egoist and a coward.
The Beacon-light upon which the eyes of all real Theosophists are fixed is the same towards which in all ages the imprisoned human soul has struggled. This Beacon, whose light shines upon no earthly seas, but which has mirrored itself in the sombre depths of the primordial waters of infinite space, is called by us, as by the earliest Theosophists, “Divine Wisdom.” This is the last word of the esoteric doctrine. Where was the country in ancient days, with the right to call itself civilized, that did not possess a double system of WISDOM, one for the masses, and the other for the few, the exoteric and the esoteric? This WISDOM, or, as we sometimes say, the “Wisdom-Religion” or Theosophy, is as 256old as the human mind. The title of sages—the high-priests of this worship of truth—was its first derivative. These names were transformed into philosophy and philosophers—the “lovers of science” or of wisdom. It is to Pythagoras that we owe that name, as also that of gnosis, the system of ἡ γνῶσις τῶν ὄντων “the knowledge of things that are,” or of the essence that is hidden beneath the external appearances. Under that name, so noble and so correct in its definition, all masters of antiquity designated the aggregate of human and divine knowledge. The sages and Brâhmanas of India, the magi of Chaldea and Persia, the hierophants of Egypt and Arabia, the prophets or nebi’im of Judaea and of Israel, as well as the philosophers of Greece and Rome, have always classified that special science in two divisions—the esoteric, or the true, and the exoteric, disguised by symbols. To this very day the Jewish Rabbis give the name of Merkabah to the body or vehicle of their religious system, that which contains within itself the higher sciences accessible only to the initiates, and of which it is only the husk.
We are accused of mystery, and we are reproached with making a secret of the higher Theosophy. We confess that the doctrine which we call gupta-vidyâ (secret science) is only for the few. But who were the masters in ancient times who did not keep their teachings secret, for fear they would be profaned? From Orpheus and Zoroaster, Pythagoras and Plato, down to the Rosicrucians, and the more modern Freemasons, it has been the invariable rule that the disciple must gain the confidence of the master before receiving from him the supreme and final word. The most ancient religions have always had their greater and lesser mysteries. The neophytes and catechumens took an inviolable oath before they were accepted. The Essenes of Judaea and Mount Carmel required the same thing. The Nabi and the Nazars (the “separated ones” of Israel), like the lay Chelas and the Brahmachârins of India, differed greatly from each other. The former could, and can, be married and remain in the world, while studying the sacred writings up to a certain point; the latter, the Nazars and the Brahmachârins, have always been entirely pledged to the mysteries of initiation. The great schools of Esotericism were international, 257although exclusive, as is proved by the fact that Plato, Herodotus, and others, went to Egypt to be initiated; while Pythagoras, after visiting the Brâhmanas of India, stopped at an Egyptian sanctuary, and finally was received, according to Iamblichus, at Mount Carmel. Jesus followed the traditional custom, and justified the reticence by quoting the well-known precept: “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you” [Matt., vii, 6].
Some ancient writings known to Bibliophiles, personify WISDOM, representing it as emanating from AIN-SOPH, the Parabrahman of Jewish Kabalists, and being an associate and companion of the manifested deity. Hence its sacred character among all nations. Wisdom is inseparable from Divinity. Thus we have the Vedas emanating from the mouth of the Hindu Brahmâ (the logos). Buddha comes from Budha, “Wisdom,” divine intelligence. The Babylonian Nebo, the Thoth of Memphis, the Greek Hermes, were all gods of esoteric wisdom.
The Greek Athena, Mêtis, and Neith of the Egyptians, are the prototypes of Sophia-Akhamôth, the feminine wisdom of the Gnostics. The Samaritan Pentateuch calls the book of Genesis—Akamauth, or “Wisdom,” as is also the case in two fragments of very ancient manuscripts, the Wisdom of Solomon and the Wisdom of Iaseus (Jesus). The work known as Mashalim, or “Discourses and Proverbs of Solomon,” personifies Wisdom by calling it “the assistant of the (Logos) creator,” in the following terms (I translate verbatim):
I(a)HV(e)H possessed me from the beginning.[12] |
This is exoteric, like all that has reference to the personal gods of the nations. The INFINITE cannot be known to our reason, which can only distinguish and define; but we can always conceive the abstract idea thereof, thanks to that faculty higher than our reason—intuition, or the spiritual instinct of which I have spoken. The great initiates, who have the rare power of throwing themselves into the state of samâdhi—which can be but imperfectly translated by the word ecstasy, a state in which one ceases to be the conditioned and personal “I,” and becomes one with the ALL—are the only ones who can boast of having been in contact with the infinite; but no more than other mortals can they describe that state in words . . .
These few characteristics of true Theosophy and its practice have been sketched for the small number of our readers who are gifted with the desired intuition. As to the others, either they would not understand us, or would laugh.
—III—
Do our kind critics always know what they are laughing at? Have they the smallest idea of the work which is being performed in the world and the mental changes that are being brought about by Theosophy at which they smile? The progress due to our literature is already evident, and, thanks to the untiring labours of a certain number of Theosophists, it is becoming recognized even by the blindest. There are not a few who are persuaded that Theosophy will be the philosophy and the moral code, if not the religion, 259of the future. The reactionaries captivated by the dolce farniente of conservatism sense it, hence the hatred and persecution which call in criticism to their aid. But criticism, inaugurated by Aristotle, has fallen away from its primitive standard. The ancient philosophers, those sublime ignoramuses as regards modern civilization, when they criticised a system or a work, did so with impartiality, and with the sole object of improving and perfecting that with which they found fault. First they studied the subject, and then they analyzed it. It was a service rendered, and was recognized and accepted as such by both parties. Does modern criticism always conform to that golden rule? It is very evident that it does not. Our judges of today are far beneath the level even of the philosophical criticism of Kant. Criticism, which takes unpopularity and prejudice for its canons, has replaced that of “pure reason”; and the critic ends by tearing to pieces with his teeth everything he does not comprehend, and especially whatever he does not care in the least to understand. In the last century—the golden age of the goose-quill— criticism was biting enough sometimes; but still it did justice. Caesar’s wife might be suspected, but she was never condemned without being heard in her defence. In our century Montyon prizes[14] and public statues are for him who invents the most murderous engine of war; today, when the steel pen has replaced its more humble predecessor, the fangs of the Bengal tiger or the teeth of the terrible saurian of the Nile would make wounds less deep than does the steel nib of the modern critic, who is nearly always absolutely ignorant of that which he tears to pieces so thoroughly.
It is some consolation, perhaps, to know that the majority of our literary critics, transatlantic and continental, are ex-scribblers who have made a fiasco in literature, and are now avenging themselves for their mediocrity upon everything they come across. The thin blue wine, insipid and processed, almost always turns into strong vinegar. Unfortunately, the reporters of the press in general (poor devils, 260hungry for promotion), whom we would be sorry to begrudge the little they make—even at our expense—are not our only or our most dangerous critics. Bigots and materialists—the sheep and goats of religion—having in turn placed us in their index expurgatorius, our books are banished from their libraries, our journals are boycotted, and ourselves subjected to the most complete ostracism. One pious soul, who accepts literally the miracles of the Bible following with emotion the ichthyographical investigations of Jonah in the whale’s belly, or the trans-ethereal journey of Elias, flying off, salamander-like, in his chariot of fire, nevertheless regards the Theosophists as wonder-mongers and cheats. Another—âme damnée of Haeckel—while displaying a credulity as blind as that of the bigot in his belief in the evolution of man and the gorilla from a common ancestor (considering the total absence of every trace in nature of any connecting link whatever), splits his sides laughing when he finds that his neighbour believes in occult phenomena and psychic manifestations. Nevertheless, neither the bigot nor the man of science, nor even the academician, numbered among the “Immortals,” can explain to us the smallest of the problems of existence. The metaphysician who for centuries has studied the phenomenon of being in its first principles, and who would smile pityingly while listening to the ramblings of Theosophy, would be greatly embarrassed to explain to us the philosophy or even the cause of dreams. Which of them can tell us why all the mental operations, except reasoning, which faculty alone finds itself suspended and paralyzed—function while we dream with as much activity and energy as when we are awake? The disciple of Herbert Spencer would send one who squarely asked him that question to the biologist. The latter, for whom digestion is the alpha and omega of every dream—as well as hysteria, that great Proteus of a thousand forms, which is present in all psychic phenomena—could by no means satisfy us. Indigestion and hysteria are, in fact, twin sisters, two goddesses to whom the modern physiologist has raised an altar at which he has constituted himself the officiating priest. That is his own business, so long as he does not meddle with the gods of his neighbours.
261 From all this it follows that, since the Christian characterizes Theosophy as the “accursed science” and the forbidden fruit; since the man of science sees nothing in metaphysics but “the domain of the crazy poet” (Tyndall); since the reporter touches it only with poisoned forceps; and since the missionaries associate it with the idolatry of the “benighted Hindu,” it follows, we say, that poor Theo-sophia is as shamefully treated as she was when the ancients called her the TRUTH—while they relegated her to the bottom of the well. Even the “Christian” Kabalists, who love to mirror themselves in the dark waters of this deep well, although they see nothing there but the reflection of their own faces, which they mistake for that of Truth, even the Kabalists make war upon us! . . . Nevertheless, all that is no reason why Theosophy should have nothing to say in its own defense, and in its own favour; or that it should cease to assert its right to be listened to; or why its loyal and faithful servants should neglect their duty by acknowledging themselves beaten.
The “accursed science,” you say, Gentlemen Ultramontanes? You should remember, nevertheless, that the tree of science is grafted on the tree of life; that the fruit which you declare “forbidden,” and which you have proclaimed for eighteen centuries to be the cause of the original sin that brought death into the world, that this fruit, whose flower blossoms on an immortal stem, was nourished by that same trunk, and that therefore it is the only fruit which can insure us immortality. And you, Gentlemen Kabalists, are either ignorant of the fact, or wish to deny, that the allegory of the earthly paradise is as old as the world, and that the tree, the fruit, and the sin had once a far profounder and more philosophic meaning than they have today, since the secrets of initiation are lost.
Protestantism and Ultramontanism are opposed to Theosophy, just as they were opposed to everything not emanating from themselves; as Calvinism opposed the replacing of its two fetishes, the Jewish Bible and the Sabbath, by the Gospel and the Christian Sunday; as Rome opposed secular education and Freemasonry. Dead letter and Theocracy have, however, had their day. The world must move and 262advance, under penalty of stagnation and death. Mental evolution progresses pari passu with physical evolution, and both advance towards the ONE TRUTH, which is the heart, as evolution is the blood, of the system of Humanity. Let the circulation stop for one moment, and the heart stops and it is all up with the human machine! And it is the servants of Christ who wish to kill, or at least paralyze, the Truth by the blows of a club called “the letter that kills”! That which Coleridge said of political despotism applies even more to religious despotism. The Church, unless she withdraws her heavy hand, which weighs like a nightmare on the oppressed bosoms of millions of believers nolens volens, and whose reason remains paralyzed in the clutch of superstition, the ritualistic Church is sentenced to yield its place to religion and—to die. Soon it will have to choose. For, once the people become enlightened about the truth which it hides with so much care, one of two things will happen: the Church will either perish by means of the people; or else, if the masses are left in ignorance and in slavery to the dead letter, it will perish with the people. Will the servants of eternal Truth, which has been made by them a squirrel running around an ecclesiastical wheel, show themselves sufficiently altruistic to choose the first of these alternative necessities? Who knows?
I repeat: it is only Theosophy, well understood, that can save the world from despair, by re-enacting the social and religious reform once before in history accomplished by Gautama the Buddha; a peaceful reform, without one drop of spilt blood, permitting everyone to remain in the faith of his fathers if he so choose. To do this, one would have only to reject the parasitic plants of human fabrication which at the present moment are choking all religions and cults in the world. Let him accept but the essence, which is the same in all; namely, the spirit which gives life to man in whom it resides, and renders him immortal. Let every man inclined to good find his ideal—a star before him to guide him Let him follow it without ever deviating from his path, and he is almost certain to reach the “beacon-light” of life—TRUTH; no matter whether he seeks for and finds it at the bottom of a cradle or of a well.
263
— IV —
Laugh then at the science of sciences without knowing the first word of it! We will be told that such is the literary right of our critics. I am glad it is. It is true that if people always talked about what they understood, they would only say things that are true, and that would not always be so amusing. When I read the criticisms now written on Theosophy, the platitudes and the jests in bad taste at the expense of the most grandiose and sublime philosophy in the world—one of whose aspects only is found in the noble ethics of the Philaletheians—I ask myself whether the Academies of any country have ever understood the Theosophy of the philosophers of Alexandria any better than they understand us now? What is known, what can be known of Universal Theosophy, unless one has studied under the Masters of Wisdom? And understanding so little of Iamblichus, Plotinus, and even Proclus, that is to say of the Theosophy of the third and fourth centuries, people yet pride themselves upon delivering judgment on the Neo-Theosophy of the nineteenth.
Theosophy, we say, comes to us from the extreme East, as did the Theosophy of Plotinus and Iamblichus, and even the mysteries of ancient Egypt. Do not Homer and Herodotus tell us, in fact, that the ancient Egyptians were the “Ethiopians of the East,” who came from Lankâ or Ceylon, according to their descriptions? For it is generally acknowledged that the people whom those two authors call Ethiopians of the East were no other than a colony of very dark-skinned Âryans, the Dravidians of Southern India, who took an already existing civilization with them to Egypt. This took place during the prehistoric ages which Baron Bunsen calls pre-Menite (before Menes), but which have a history of their own, to be found in the ancient Annals of Kullûka-Bha˜˜a. Besides, and apart from the esoteric teachings, which are not divulged to a mocking public, the historical researches of Colonel Vans Kennedy, the great rival in India of Dr. Wilson as a Sanskritist, show us that pre-Assyrian Babylonia was the home of Brâhmanism, and of Sanskrit 264as a sacerdotal language.[15] We also know, if Exodus is to be believed, that Egypt had, long before the time of Moses, its diviners, its hierophants and its magicians; that is to say, before the XIXth dynasty. Finally Brugsch-Bey sees in many of the gods of Egypt, immigrants from beyond the Red Sea and the great waters of the Indian Ocean.
Whether that be so or not, Theosophy is a descendant in direct line of the great tree of universal GNOSIS, a tree, the luxuriant branches of which, spreading over the whole earth like a great canopy, overshadowed during the epoch—which Biblical chronology is pleased to call antediluvian—all the temples and all the nations of the earth. That Gnosis represents the aggregate of all the sciences, the accumulated knowledge [savoir] of all the gods and demi-gods incarnated in former times upon the earth. There are some who would like to see in these the fallen angels and the enemy of mankind; those sons of God who, seeing that the daughters of men were fair, took them for wives and imparted to them all the secrets of heaven and earth. Let them do so. We believe in Avatâras and in divine dynasties, in an epoch when there were in fact “giants upon the earth,” but we emphatically repudiate the idea of “fallen angels” and of Satan and his army.
“What then is your religion or your belief?” we are asked. “What is your favourite study?”
“TRUTH,” we reply. Truth wherever we find it; for, like Ammonius Saccas, our great ambition would be to reconcile the different religious systems, to help each one to find the truth in his own religion, while obliging him to recognize it in that of his neighbour. What matters the name if the thing itself is essentially the same? Plotinus, Iamblichus, and Apollonius of Tyana, all three, had, it is said, the wonderful 265gifts of prophecy, of clairvoyance, and of healing, although they belonged to three different schools. Prophecy was an art cultivated by the Essenes and the benim nabim among the Jews, as well as by the priests of the pagan oracles. The disciples of Plotinus attributed miraculous powers to their master. Philostratus has claimed the same for Apollonius, while Iamblichus had the reputation of surpassing all the other Eclectics in Theosophic Theurgy. Ammonius declared that all moral and practical WISDOM was contained in the Books of Thoth or Hermes Trismegistus. But “Thoth” means a “college,” school or assembly, and the works of that name, according to the theodidaktos, were identical with the doctrines of the sages of the extreme East. If Pythagoras acquired his knowledge in India (where he is mentioned to this day in old manuscripts under the name of Yavanâchârya,[16] the “Greek Master”), Plato gained his from the books of Thoth-Hermes. How it is that the younger Hermes —the god of the shepherds, surnamed “the good shepherd”—who presided over divination and clairvoyance, became identical with the Thoth (or Thot), the deified sage and the author of the Book of the Dead—only the esoteric doctrine can reveal to the Orientalists.
Every country has had its Saviours. He who dissipates the darkness of ignorance by the help of the torch of science, thus disclosing to us the truth, deserves that title as a mark of our gratitude, quite as much as he who saves us from death by healing our bodies. Such a one awakens in our benumbed souls the faculty of distinguishing the true from the false, by kindling therein a divine flame hitherto absent, and he has the right to our grateful reverence, for he has become our creator. What matters the name or the symbol that personifies the abstract idea, if that idea is always the same and is true? Whether the concrete symbol bears one title or another, whether the Saviour in whom we believe has for an earthly name Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, or Aesculapius —also called the “Saviour-God,” Σωτήρ,—we have but to 266remember one thing: symbols of divine truth were not invented for the amusement of the ignorant; they are the alpha and omega of philosophic thought.
Theosophy being the way that leads to Truth, in every religion as in every science, occultism is, so to say, the touchstone and universal solvent. It is the thread of Ariadne given by the master to the disciple who ventures into the labyrinth of the mysteries of being; the torch that lights him through the dangerous maze of life, forever the enigma of the Sphinx. But the light thrown by this torch can only be discerned by the eye of the awakened soul, by our spiritual senses; it blinds the eye of the materialist as the sun blinds the owl.
Having neither dogma nor ritual—these two being but fetters, a material body which suffocates the soul—we do not employ the “ceremonial magic” of the Western Kabalists; we know its dangers too well to have anything to do with it. In the T.S. every Fellow is at liberty to study what he pleases, provided he does not venture into unknown paths which would of a certainty lead him to black magic, the sorcery against which Éliphas Lévi so openly warned the public. The occult sciences are dangerous for him who understands them imperfectly. Anyone who gave himself to their practice alone would run the risk of becoming insane and those who study them would do well to unite in small groups of from three to seven. These groups ought to be of uneven numbers in order to have more power; a group, however little cohesion it may possess, forming a single united body, wherein the senses and perceptions of the single units complement and mutually help each other, one member supplying to another the quality in which he is wanting—such a group will always end by becoming a perfect and invincible body. “Union is strength.” The moral fable of the old man bequeathing to his sons a bundle of sticks which were never to be separated, is a truth which will forever remain axiomatic.
267
Footnotes
- ↑ Acquired under the guidance of a guru or Master.
- ↑ The great serpent conquered by Krishna and driven from the river Yamunâ into the sea, where the serpent Kâliya took for wife a kind of Siren, by whom he had a numerous family.
- ↑ The illusion of the personality, of a separate ego, placed by our egotism in the forefront. In one word, it is necessary to assimilate all humanity, live by it, for it; and in it; in other terms, cease to be “one,” and become “all” or the total.
- ↑ A Vedic expression. The senses, including the two mystic senses, are seven in Occultism; but an Initiate does not separate these senses one from the other, any more than he separates his unity from Humanity. Each one of the senses contains all the others.
- ↑ Symbology of colours. The language of the prism, of which “the seven mother-colours have each seven sons,” i.e., 49 shades or “sons” between the seven, are so many letters or alphabetical characters. The language of colours has, therefore, fifty-six letters for the Initiate (not to be confused with an adept; see my article “A Danger Signal”). Of these letters each septenary is absorbed by the mother-colours, as each of the seven mother-colours is finally absorbed in the white ray, Divine Unity symbolized by these colours.
- ↑ By Iamblichus, who used the name of his master, the Egyptian priest Abammon, as a pseudonym. Its title is in Greek:
᾿Αβάμμωνος διδασκάλου πρὸς τὴν Πορφυρίου πρὸς ᾿Ανεβὼ
ἐπιστολὴν ἀπόκρισις, καὶ τῶν ἐν αὐτῆι ἀπορημάτων λύσεις. - ↑ Samâdhi is a state of abstract contemplation, defined in Sanskrit terms each of which requires a complete sentence to explain it. It is a mental, or, rather, spiritual state, which is not dependent upon any perceptible object, and during which the subject, absorbed in the region of pure spirit, lives in the Divinity.
- ↑ Citizen of Rome for 28 years, he was so virtuous a man that it was considered an honour to have him as guardian for the orphans of the wealthiest patricians. He died without having made a single enemy during those 28 years.
- ↑ Iamblichus, De mysteriis, VIII, 6 and 7.
- ↑ Phaedrus, 246 D. E.; Theaetetus, 176 B.
- ↑ [A celebrated monastic community situated on the peninsula of the same name, which is the most eastern of the three promontories which extend, like the prongs of a trident, southwards from the coast of Macedonia into the Aegean Sea. It is also called Hagion Oros. The peak rises like a pyramid, with a steep summit of white marble, to a height of 6,350 feet.—Compiler.]
- ↑ JHVH, or Jahveh (Jehovah) is the Tetragrammaton, consequently the emanated Logos and the creator; the ALL, without beginning or end, or AIN-SOPH, in its quality of ABSOLUTE, being unable of creating or of desiring to create.
- ↑ [Though the wording differs somewhat, yet the ideas expressed in this passage are identical with Proverbs viii, 22-30. Mashalim is the plural of Mashal, meaning “example,” “fable,” “allegory,” i.e., a teaching that is illustrated. The Proverbs of Solomon are known in Hebrew as Mishle Shelomah. The Wisdom of Iaseus is the same work as the one known as The Wisdom of Jesus the son of Sirach, or as Ecclesiasticus.—Compiler.]
- ↑ [Prizes instituted in France in the nineteenth century by Baron Antoine de Montyon (1733-1820), a French philanthropist, for those who benefited others in various ways.—Compiler.]
- ↑ [Reference is most likely to the two remarkable works of Col. Vans Kennedy: Researches into the Origin and Affinity of the Principal Languages of Asia and Europe, London, 1828; and Researches into the Nature and Affinity of Ancient and Hindu Mythology, London, 1831.––Compiler.]
- ↑ A term which comes from the words Yavana, or “the Ionian,” and achârya, professor or master.”