< From Madame H. P. Blavatsky to her Correspondents (continued from page 1-59) >
—Occultism; that it was the mysterious lever of all intellectual forces, the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil of the Allegorical Paradise, from whose gigantic trunk sprang in every direction boughs, branches and twigs, the former shooting forth straight enough at first, the latter, deviating with every inch of growth, assuming more and more fantastical appearances, till at last one after the other, lost its vital juice, got deformed, and, drying up, finally broke off, scattering the ground afar with heaps of rubbish. To Theology, the Occultist of the future will have to demonstrate, that the Gods of the Mythologies, the Elohim of Israel as well as the religious, theological mysteries of Christianity, to begin with the Trinity, sprang from the sanctuaries of Memphis and Thebes; that their mother Eve is but the spiritualized Psyche of old, both of them paying a like penalty for their curiosity, descending to Hades or Hell, the latter to bring back to earth the famous Pandora’s box—the former, to search out and crush the head of the serpent—symbol of time and evil; the crime of both expiated by the Pagan Prometheus and the Christian Lucifer; the first, delivered by Hercules—the second conquered by the Saviour.
Furthermore, the Occultist will have to prove to the Christian Theology, publicly, what many of its priesthood are well aware of in secret—namely, that their God on earth was a Cabalist, the meek representative of a tremendous Power, which, if misapplied, might shake the world to its foundations; and that, of all their evangelical symbols, there is not one but can be traced up to its parent fount. For instance, their Incarnated Verbum or Logos was worshipped at His birth by the three Magi, led on by the star, and received from them the gold, the frankincense and myrrh, the whole of which is simply an excerpt from the Cabala our modern theologians despise, and the representation of another and still more mysterious “Ternary,”* embodying allegorically in its emblems, the highest secrets of the Cabala.
A clergy, whose main object ever has been to make of their Divine Cross the gallows of Truth, and Freedom, could not do otherwise than try and bury in oblivion the origin of that same cross, which, in the most primitive symbols of the Egyptians’ magic, represents the key to Heaven. Their anathemas are powerless in our days, the multitude is wiser; but the greatest danger awaits us just in that latter direction, if we do not succeed in making the masses remain at least neutral—till they come to know better—in this forthcoming conflict between Truth, Superstition and Presumption; or, to express it in other terms, Occult Spiritualism, Theology and Science. We have to fear neither the miniature thunderbolts of the clergy, nor the unwarranted negations of Science. But Public Opinion, this invisible, intangible, omnipresent, despotic tyrant; this thousand-headed Hydra—the more dangerous for being composed of individual mediocrities—is not an enemy to be scorned by any would-be Occultist, courageous as he may be. Many of the far more innocent Spiritualists have left their sheepskins in the clutches of this ever-hungry, roaring lion—for he is the most dangerous of our three classes of enemies. What will be the fate, in such a case, of an unfortunate Occultist, if he once succeeds in demonstrating the close relationship existing between the two? The masses of people, though they do not generally appreciate the science of truth, or have real knowledge, on the other hand are unerringly directed by mere instinct; they have intuitionally—if I may be allowed to express myself—the sense of what is formidable in its genuine strength. People will never conspire except against real Power. In their blind ignorance, the Mysteries and the Unknown have been, and ever will be, objects of terror for them. Civilization may progress, human nature will remain the same throughout all ages. Occultists, beware!
Let it be understood, then, that I address myself but to the truly courageous and persevering. Besides the danger expressed above, the difficulties to becoming a practical Occultist in this country, are next to insurmountable. Barrier upon barrier, obstacles in every form and shape will present themselves to the student; for the Keys of the Golden Gate leading to the Infinite Truth, lie buried deep, and the gate itself is enclosed in a mist which clears up only before the ardent rays of implicit Faith. Faith alone, one grain of which as large as a mustard-seed, according to the words of Christ, can lift a mountain, is able to find out how simple becomes the Cabala to the initiate, once that he has succeeded in conquering the first abstruse difficulties. The dogma of it is logical, easy and absolute. The necessary union of ideas and signs; the trinity of words, letters, numbers, and theorems; the religion of it can be compressed into a few words: “It is the Infinite condensed in the hand of an infant,” says Éliphas Lévi. Ten ciphers, 22 alphabetical letters, one triangle, a square and a circle. Such are the elements of the Cabala, from whose mysterious bosom sprang all the religions of the past and present; which endowed all the Free Masonic associations with their symbols and secrets, which alone can reconcile human reason with God and Faith, Power with Freedom, Science with Mystery, and which has alone the keys of the present, past and future.
The first difficulty for the aspirant lies in the utter impossibility of his comprehending, as I said before, the meaning of the best books written by Hermetic Philosophers. The latter who mainly lived in the mediaeval ages, prompted on the one hand by their duty towards their brethren, and by their desire to impart to them and their successors only, the glorious truths, and on the other very naturally desirous to avoid the clutches of the blood-thirsty Christian Inquisition, enveloped themselves more than ever in mystery. They invented new signs and hieroglyphs, renovated the ancient symbolical language of the high-priests of antiquity, who had used it as a sacred barrier between their holy rites and the ignorance of the profane and created a veritable Cabalistic slang. This latter, which continually blinded the false neophyte, attracted towards the science only by his greediness for wealth and power which he would have surely misused were he to succeed, is a living, eloquent, clear language; but it is and can become such, only to the true disciple of Hermes.
But were it even otherwise, and could books on Occultism, written in a plain and precise language, be obtained, in order to get initiated in the Cabala, it would not be sufficient to understand and meditate on certain authors. Galatinus and Pico della Mirandola, Paracelsus and Robertus de Fluctibus do not furnish one with the key to the practical mysteries. They simply state what can be done and why it is done; but they do not tell one how to do it. More than one philosopher who has by heart the whole of the Hermetic literature, and who has devoted to the study of it upwards of thirty or forty years of his life, fails when he believes he is about reaching the final result. One must understand the Hebrew authors, such as Sepher Yetzîrah, for instance; learn by heart the great book of the Sohar in its original tongue; master the Kabbalah Denudata, from the Collection of 1684 (Paris); follow up the Cabalistic Pneumatics at first, and then throw oneself headlong into the turbid waters of that mysterious unintelligible ocean, called the Talmud,** this compilation of “absurd monstrosities” according to some blind profanes, the final key to all the Hermetists in its dogmatic and allegorical signs.
Were I to name two of the books, which contain the most of the occult information which was derived and utilized by the greatest Cabalists of the mediaeval ages—Paracelsus was one of them—I might astonish many of my correspondents “craving for knowledge,” and they might let it pass unnoticed. Adepts more learned than I will nevertheless endorse the truths of my assertion. For prudence sake I prefer quoting from a book, written by one of our greatest modern Occultists.
“Among the sacred books of the Christians,” says Éliphas Lévi, “there exist two works, which, strange to say, the Infallible Church does not even pretend to understand and never tried to explain: the Prophecy of Ezekiel and the Apocalypse; two Cabalistic treatises, reserved, without doubt, for the commentaries of the Magi Kings; books closed with the seven seals to the faithful Christian; but perfectly clear to the Infidel initiated in the Occult Sciences.”
Thus, the works on Occultism were not, I repeat, written for the masses, but for those of the Brethren who make the solution of the mysteries of the Cabala the principal object of their lives, and who are supposed to have conquered the <... continues on page 1-61 >
* The Ternarius or Ternary, the Symbol of perfection in antiquity, and the Star, the Cabalistic sign of the Microcosm.
** Immanuel Deutsch found it otherwise, and in his celebrated Quarterly Review Essay eulogizes the Talmud as the repository of vast stores of information for the philosophical student, placing it in certain respects above even the Old Testament itself.—ED., Spiritual Scientist.