II MISCELLANEOUS ARTICLES BY H. P.

BLAVATSKY (1831 - 1891)

CONTENTS

- THE BEACON OF THE UNKNOWN

- ARE CHELAS "MEDIUMS?"
- HIERARCHIES
- FROM MADAME H.P. BLAVATSKY TO HER CORRESPONDENTS
- AN INTRO- AND RETROSPECTIVE DREAM
- KARMIC VISIONS
- LAST MESSAGE TO AMERICAN THEOSOPHISTS
- Lest We Forget!
- LITERARY JOTTINGS
- MEDIUMS AND YOGIS
- MODERN APOSTLES AND PSEUDO-MESSIAHS
- CHRISTMAS THEN AND CHRISTMAS NOW
- EXCERPTS FROM THE WRITINGS OF 1883
- FRAGMENTS
- H. P. B.' S EDITORIAL POLICY
- A MYSTIC FORCE IS RISING
- ON AFTER-DEATH STATES
- A FEW QUESTIONS TO "HIRAF"
- "She being Dead, Yet Speaketh"
- THE NEW CYCLE
- THE POOR (quote)
- THE THEOSOPHICAL MAHATMAS
- THOUGHTS ON THE NEW YEAR AND FALSE NOSES

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The Beacon of the Unknown

- H.P. Blavatsky

I.

[This series originally appeared in the French magazine La Revue Theosophique,

May 1889, under the title 'Le Phare de L'Inconnu.' One of H.P. Blavatsky's most brilliant
articles, it presents a clear statement of the meaning of true Theosophy in theory and in
practice. It shows the striking contrast between the aims and methods of those who retire
to the jungle or to the desert with the sole idea of saving their own souls, indifferent to the
woes of humanity, and the true disciple who is trained to give up thought of self and "live
to benefit mankind." It first appeared in translation from the original French in The
Theosophist, Volume X.]
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IT is written in an old book on the Occult Sciences: "Gupta Vidya (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, in color like sapphires, rubies and emeralds,
billows full of beauty and mystery, will overtake him, ready to bear the voyager away
towards other and numberless lights that burn in every direction. But these are will-o'-the-
wisps, lighted by the sons of Kaliya [2] for the destruction of those who thirst for life. Happy
are they who remain blind to these false deceivers; 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. Numberless are the pilgrims who desire to
enter those waters; very few are the strong swimmers who reach the Light. He who gets
there must have ceased to be a number, and have become all numbers. He must have
forgotten the illusion of separation, and have accepted only the truth of collective
individuality. [3] He must see with the
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1. Acquired under a Guru.
2. The great serpent conquered by Krishna and driven from the River Yanuma into
the sea, where he took for a wife a kind of siren, by whom he had a numerous family.
3. The illusion of the personality of the Ego, placed by our egotism in the first rank.
In a word, it is necessary to assimilate the whole of humanity, live by it, for it, and in it; in
other terms, cease to be `one,' and become `all' or the total.
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ears, hear with the eyes, understand the language of the rainbow, and have concentrated
his six senses in his seventh sense." [4]
The Beacon-light of Truth is Nature without the 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, those outside the temple or pro-
fanes - judge of the `lights' and the `Light' above mentioned in a reversed 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 sandbanks,
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's offering us further a rehauffee 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? In your schools you have allowed yourselves to be stuffed full of
the `diabolical sorcery' of Simon the magician, and his disciple Menander, according to the
good Father Irenaeus, the too zealous Theodoret, and the unknown author of
Philosophumena. You have permitted yourselves
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4. A Vedic expression. The senses, counting in the two mystic senses, are seven
in Occultism; but an Initiate does not separate these senses from each other, any more
than he separates his unity from Humanity. Every sense contains all the others.
5. Symbology of colors. The language of the prism, of which "the seven mother-
colors have each seven sons," that is to say, forty-nine shades or `sons' between the
seven, which graduated tints are so many letters or alphabetical characters. The language
of colors has, therefore, fifty-six letters for the Initiate. Of these letters each septenary is
absorbed by the mother color, as each of the seven mother-colors is absorbed finally in the
white ray, Divine Unity, symbolized by these colors.
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to be told on the one hand that this magic came from the devil; and on the other hand that
it was 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 the
book de Mysteriis. [6] Nevertheless, his explanations sufficed to convert Porphyry,
Plotinus, and others, who from enemies of 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, the [greek script], the science of things as they are, and with the divine
ecstasy of the Philaletheans, `the lovers of Truth.' But one can 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 Samadhi in India? [7]
A long series of men, who, had they been Christians, would have been canonized -
not by the decision of the Church, which has its partialities and predilections, but by that
of whole nations, and by the vox populi, which is hardly ever wrong in its judgments. 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 Plotinus himself, who
was for Ammonius what Plato was for Socrates - a disciple worthy of his illustrious master.
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
------
6. By Iamblichus, who used the name of his master, the Egyptian priest Abammon
as a pseudonym.
7. Samadhi is a state of abstract contemplation, defined in Sanskrit terms each of
which would require a whole sentence to explain. 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 Divinity.
8. He lived in Rome for 28 years, and was so virtuous a man that it was considered
an honor to have him as guardian for the orphans of the highest patricians. He died
without having made an enemy during these 28 years.
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has extended to our own days, all the celebrated mystics of the later centuries have been
developed, such as Jacob Boehme, Emanuel Swedenborg, and so many others. Madame
Guyon is the feminine counterpart of Iamblichus. The Christian Quietists, the Mussulman
Sufis, the Rosicrucians of all countries, drink 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-Vidya and of the Brahma-
Vidya (`secret knowledge' and ‘knowledge of Brahma') of ancient India, transmitted through
Egypt; just as the theurgy of the Philaletheans 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 aim, 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 these,
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 unexplained laws of nature and
the psychic powers latent in man." The first-named 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
openness of our proceedings, in which there is nothing mysterious, we are constantly
called upon to explain ourselves, and to satisfy the public that we do not celebrate witches'
Sabbaths, and manufacture broomsticks for the use of Theosophists. This kind of thing,
indeed, sometimes borders on the grotesque. When we are not accused of having
invented a new 'ism,' a religion extracted from the depths of a disordered brain, or else of
humbugging, we are 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 appearances 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 head, that his or her judgment could not be considered quite
equal to that of Solomon, and straight away he or she 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 care in reality only for that for which no one
else cares - themselves - in other words their little "me." Their egoism makes them fancy
that it is they only 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 egoistical mediocrities.
These people are the white ants of the Theosophical Society, which eat away its
foundations, and are a perpetual 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 little group of the
elect. Every one of us possesses the faculty, the interior sense, that is known by the name
of intuition, but how rare are those who know how to develop it! It is, however, only by the
aid of this faculty that men can ever see things in their true colors. It is an instinct of the
soul, which grows in us in proportion to the employment we give it, and which helps us to
perceive and understand the realities of things 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 only 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 in us the spiritual senses and power to act; these senses assimilate to
themselves the essence of the object or of the action under examination, and represent
it to us as it really is, not as it appears 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 certain Theosophists have been able
to appreciate the truth of his description.
"There exists," he says, "a faculty in the human mind which is immeasurably
superior to all those which are grafted or engendered in us. By 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 liberated finally from the dominion of
destiny (Karma), and we become, as it were, the arbiters of our own fates. For when the
most excellent parts in us find themselves 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 the bondage of everyday life; it exchanges its ordinary existence for another one,
it 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."
Plato expressed the same idea in these 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."
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 nothing but accomplished egoists. The one acts with the sole idea of
finding a nirvanic 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 their regiment when it is going into
action, in order to keep out of the way of 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 [9] contains, perhaps, a few sincere
fanatics; nevertheless, even these have without knowing it got off the only track that leads
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 Adam's remark on monasteries applies: "There are solitary
creatures there who seem to have fled from the rest of mankind for the sole pleasure of
communing with the Devil tete-a-tete."
Gautama, the Buddha, only remained in solitude long enough to enable him to arrive
at the truth, which he devoted himself from that time on to promulgate, begging his bread,
and living for humanity. Jesus retired to the desert for only forty days, and died for this
same humanity. Apollonius of Tyana, Plotinus, 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 days are not those who retire into inaccessible places, but those
who pass their lives in traveling from place to place, doing good and trying to raise
mankind; although, indeed, they may avoid Europe, and those civilized countries where
no one has any eyes or ears except for himself, countries divided into two camps - Cains
and Abels.
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 which has been 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 egoistical solitude. The "good and faith-
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9. A celebrated Grecian monastery.
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ful servant" who doubles his capital, by harvesting for him who has not sown because he
had not the means of doing so, and who reaps for the poor who have not scattered the
grain, acts like a true altruist. He will receive his recompense, just because he has worked
for another, without any idea of remuneration or reward. 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." That is the last word of the esoteric doctrine; and in antiquity, where was the
country, having the right to call itself civilized, that did not possess a double system of
WISDOM, of which one part was for the masses, and the other for the few - the exoteric
and the esoteric? This name, WISDOM, or as we say sometimes, the "Wisdom Religion"
or Theosophy, is as old as the human mind. The title of Sages - the priests of this worship
of truth - was its first derivative. These names were afterwards 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 [greek script] "the knowledge of things as
they are," or of the essence that is hidden beneath the external appearance. Under that
name, so noble and so correct in its definition, all the masters of antiquity designated the
aggregate of our knowledge of things human and divine. The sages and Brahmanas of
India, the magi of Chaldea and Persia, the hierophants of Egypt and Arabia, the prophets
of Nabi of Judea and of Israel, as well as the philosophers of Greece and Rome, have
always classified that science in two divisions - the esoteric, or the true, and the exoteric,
disguised in symbols. To this day the Jewish Rabbis give the name of Mercabah to the
body or vehicle of their religious system, that which contains within it the higher knowledge,
accessible only to the Initiates, and of which higher knowledge 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 vidya (secret
science) is only for the few. But where 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 to 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 Judea and Mount Carmel
required the same thing. The Nabi and the Nazars (the "separated ones" of Israel), like the
lay Chelas and the Brahmacharins of India, differed greatly from each other. The former
could, and can, be married and remain in the world, while they are studying the sacred
writings up to a certain point; the latter, the Nazars and the Brahmacharins, have always
been entirely vowed to the mysteries of initiation. The great schools of Esotericism were
international, although exclusive, as is proved by the fact that Plato, Herodotus, and others,
went to
Egypt to be initiated; while Pythagoras, after visiting the Brahmins of India, stopped at an
Egyptian sanctuary, and finally was received, according to Iamblichus, at Mount Carmel.
Jesus followed the traditional custom, and justified his reticence by quoting the well known
precept:

Give not the sacred things to the dogs,

Cast not your pearls before the swine,
Lest these tread them under their feet,
And lest the dogs turn and rend you.

Certain ancient writings - known, for that matter, to the bibliophiles - personify
WISDOM; which they represent as emanating from Ain-Soph, the Parabrahm of the
Jewish Kabbalists, and make it the associate and companion of the manifested Deity.
Thence its sacred character with every people. Wisdom is inseparable from divinity. Thus
we have the Vedas coming from the mouth of the Hindu "Brahma" (the logos); the name
Buddha comes from Budha, "Wisdom," divine intelligence; the Babylonian Nebo, Thoth
of Memphis, Hermes of the Greeks, were all gods of esoteric wisdom.
The Greek Athena, Metis and Neith of the Egyptians, are the prototypes of Sophia-
Achamoth, the feminine wisdom of the Gnostics. The Samaritan Pentateuch calls the book
of Genesis Akamauth, or "Wisdom," as also two fragments of very ancient manuscripts,
"the Wisdom of Solomon," and "the Wisdom of Iasous (Jesus)." The book called Mashalim
or "Sayings and Proverbs of Solomon," personifies Wisdom by calling it "the helper of the
(Logos) creator," in the following terms, (literally translated):

I (a) H V (e) H possessed me from the beginning.

But the first emanation in the eternities,
I appeared from all antiquity, the primordial. -
From the first day of the earth;
I was born before the great abyss.
And when there were neither springs nor waters,
When he traced the circle on the face of the deep,
I was with him Amun.
I was his delight, day by day.

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. Only the great Initiates, who
have the rare power of throwing themselves into the state of Samadhi - 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 - only these 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.

III.

DO our amiable critics always know what it is they ridicule? Have they the least idea
of the work that is being carried on in the world, and the mental changes that are being
brought about by that Theosophy at which they smile? The progress already due to our
literature is evident, and thanks to the untiring labors of a certain number of Theosophists,
it is becoming recognised even by the blindest. There are not a few who are persuaded
that Theosophy will be the philosophy and the law, if not the religion, of the future. The
reactionaries, captivated by the dolce far niente of conservatism, feel all this, and from
them come the hatred and persecution which call in criticism to their aid. But criticism has
fallen away from its original standard as inaugurated by Aristotle. The ancient
philosophers, those sublime ignoramuses according to modern civilization, when they
criticised a system or a work, did so with impartiality, and with the sole object of bettering
and making more perfect that which they were critically examining. First they studied the
subject, and then they analysed it. This was a service rendered, and was recognised 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 below the level even of the philosophical criticism of
Kant. Criticism based on unpopularity and prejudice has replaced that of `pure reason,'
and the result is that the critic tears to pieces everything he does not understand, and
above all those things that he is not willing to understand. In the last century - the golden
age of the goose quill - criticism was biting enough sometimes, but only in rendering
justice. Caesar's wife might be suspected, but she was never condemned without being
heard. In our century we give Montyon* prizes and erect public statues to 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 cruel and less deep than does the steel nib (bec) of the
modern critic, who is almost always absolutely ignorant of that which he so savagely tears
to shreds!
It is perhaps some consolation to know that the majority of our literary critics,
transatlantic and continental, are ex-scribblers who have made a fiasco in literature and
are revenging themselves now for their mediocrity upon everything they come across.
Cheap, insipid and adulterated wine often turns into excellent vinegar. Unfortunately the
press reporters in general - poor hungry devils whom we would be sorry to grudge the little
they make, even at our own expense - are not our only or our most dangerous critics. The
bigots and the materialists - the sheep and goats of religion - having placed us in turn 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 Jonas in the whale's belly, or the trans-ethereal journey of Elijah flying like
a salamander in his chariot of fire, nevertheless regards the Theosophists as wonder-
mongers and cheats. Another, the devotee of Haeckel, while he displays 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
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* Prizes instituted in France during the last century by the Baron de Montyon for
those who benefited others in various ways. - Ed.
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link), nearly dies with laughter when he finds that his neighbor believes in occult
phenomena and psychic manifestations. And yet for all that, neither the bigot nor the man
of science, nor even the academician who has been admitted to the number of the
`Immortals,' can explain to us the smallest problem of existence. The metaphysicians who
for centuries have studied the phenomena of Being in their first principles, and who smile
pityingly when they listen to the wanderings 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 is suspended and
paralysed - go on while we dream with as much activity and energy as when we are
awake? The disciple of Herbert Spencer would send anyone who asks him the direct
question, to the biologist. But he cannot satisfy us at all; for him digestion is the alpha and
omega of every dream - just as hysteria, that great Proteus of a thousand forms, is the
actor in every psychic phenomenon. Indigestion and hysteria are, in fact, twin sisters, two
goddesses, to whom the modern psychologist has raised an altar at which he himself is the
officiating priest. But that is entirely his own affair so long as he does not meddle with the
gods of his neighbors.
From all this it follows that, since the Christian characterizes Theosophy as the
`accursed science' and 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; since the missionaries associate it with idolatry and `the benighted
Hindu' - it follows, we say, that poor Theosophia is as shamefully treated as she was when
the ancients called her TRUTH and at the same time relegated her to the bottom of the
well. Even the `Christian' Kabbalists, who love so much to mirror themselves in the dark
waters of this deep well, although they see nothing there but the reflexion of their own
faces, which they mistake for that of Truth - even the Kabbalists make war upon us.
Nevertheless, all this is no reason why Theosophy should not speak in its own defense;
that it should cease to assert its right to be listened to, and that its faithful and loyal
servants should neglect their duty and declare themselves beaten.
"The accursed science," you say, good Ultramontanes? You forget though, that the
tree of knowledge is grafted on the tree of life; that the fruit which you declare `forbidden,'
and which you have proclaimed for sixteen 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. You also, good Kabbalists, ignore, or wish to ignore, the fact 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 significance than they have today
when the secrets of initiation are lost.
Protestantism and Ultramontanism are opposed to Theosophy because they are
opposed to everything not emanating from themselves; as Calvin 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. However, the Dead-
letter and Theocracy have had their day. The world must move and advance 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 of the human system as
evolution is the blood. Let the circulation stop for one moment and the heart cease also,
and what becomes of the human machine!
And these are the servants of Christ who would kill or at least paralyse the Truth
with blows from that club called: "the letter that killeth!" But their end is nigh. That which
Coleridge said of political despotism applies also to religious. The Church, unless she
withdraws her heavy hand, which weighs like a nightmare on the oppressed bosom of
millions of believers - believers nolens volens - whose reason remains paralysed in the
clutch of superstition, the ritualistic Church is sentenced to yield its place to religion - and
perish. Soon she will have but one choice. Because, once the people become
enlightened concerning the truth which she hides with so much care, one of two things will
happen: the Church will either perish by the people; or else, if the masses are left in
ignorance and in slavery to the dead letter, she will perish with the people. Will the
servants of eternal Truth - out of which Truth they have made a squirrel turning in an
ecclesiastical wheel - will they show themselves sufficiently altruistic to choose the first of
these alternative necessities? Who knows?
I say it again: it is only Theosophy, well understood, that can save the world from
despair, by reproducing the social and religious reforms once accomplished in history by
Gautama the Buddha: a peaceful reform, without one drop of blood spilt, each one
remaining in the faith of his fathers if he chose. To do this nothing is necessary but to
reject the parasitical growths that have choked every religion and sect in the world. Let him
accept but the essence, which is the same in all: that is to say, the spirit which gives life
to man in whom it resides and renders him immortal. Let each man who is inclined
towards well-doing 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 it in a manger or at the bottom of a well.
----------------

IV.
LAUGH, then, at the science of sciences without knowing the first word of it!
We will be told, perhaps, that such is the literary right of our critics. By all means. If people
always talked about what they understood, they would tell nothing but the truth, and that
would not always be so pleasant. When I read the criticisms now written on Theosophy,
the platitudes and the stupid ridicule employed against the most grandiose and sublime
philosophy in the world, of which only one aspect is found in the noble ethics of the
Philalethes, I ask myself whether the Academies of any country have understood the
Theosophy of the Alexandrian philosophers any better than they understand us now. What
do they know, what can they know, of Universal Theosophy, without having studied under
the Masters of Wisdom? And understanding so little of Iamblichus, Plotinus, and even
Proclus, i.e., of the Theosophy of the third and fourth centuries, they yet pride themselves
on delivering judgment on the New 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 practically tell us that the ancient Egyptians were the "Ethiopians of the East,"
who, according to their descriptions, came from Lanka or Ceylon? For it is generally
acknowledged that the people whom these two classical writers call Ethiopians of the East
were but a colony of very dark skinned Aryans, the Dravidians of Southern India, who took
an already-existing civilization with them to Egypt. This migration occurred during the
prehistoric ages which Baron Bunsen calls pre-Menite (before Menes), but which have a
history of their own in the ancient annals of Kaluka-Batta. Besides, apart from the esoteric
teachings which are not divulged to a mocking public, the historical researches of Colonel
Vans Kennedy, the great rival of Dr. Wilson as a Sanskritist in India, show us that pre-
Assyrian Babylonia was the home of Brahmanism, and of Sanskrit as the sacerdotal
language. We know also, if Exodus is to be believed, that long before the time of Moses -
i.e., before the XIX Dynasty - Egypt had its diviners, its hierophants and its magicians.
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 all this be so or not, Theosophy descends in a direct line from the universal
GNOSIS, a tree whose luxuriant branches, spreading over the earth like a great canopy,
gave shelter to all the temples and to all the nations of the earth at an epoch which Biblical
chronology is pleased to called `antediluvian.' That Gnosis represents the aggregate of
all the sciences, the accumulated wisdom of all the gods and demi-gods incarnated in
former times upon the earth. There are some who would like to see in these beings fallen
angels and the enemy of mankind: sons of God who, seeing that the daughters of men
were beautiful, took them for wives, and imparted to them all the secrets of heaven and
earth. Let them think as they please. We believe in Avatars and in divine dynasties, in the
age when there really were "giants upon the earth," and we absolutely repudiate the idea
of "fallen angels" and of Satan and his army.
"What then is your religion or belief?" we are asked. "What is your favorite study?"
"The TRUTH," we reply. The truth wherever we can find it; for like Ammonius
Saccas, our greatest ambition is to reconcile the different religious systems, to help each
one to find the truth in his own belief and at the same time oblige him to recognise it in the
belief of his neighbor. What does the name matter if the thing itself is essentially the
same? Plotinus, Iamblichus and Apollonius of Tyana had, all three, it is said, the wonderful
gifts of prophecy, of clairvoyance, and of healing, although they belonged to three different
schools. Prophecy was an art that was cultivated equally by the Essenes and the B'ni
Nebin among the Jews, as by the priests of the pagan oracles. The disciples of Plotinus
attributed miraculous powers to him; 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 Theodidaktos, were identical with the doctrines
of the sages of the extreme East. If Pythagoras acquired his knowledge in India (where
even today he is mentioned in old manuscripts under the name of Yavanacharya, [11] the
Greek Master), Plato gained his learning from the books of Thoth-Hermes. How it
happened that the younger Hermes, the god of the shepherds, surnamed "the good
shepherd," who presided over divination and clairvoyance, became identical with 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 saviors. He who dissipates the darkness of ignorance by
the help of the torch of science, thus revealing 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 a divine flame hitherto absent, and he has the right to our grateful worship, 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 savior in whom we believe has for an earthly name
Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, or Aesculapius, surnamed "the Savior God," we have but to
remember one thing: symbols of divine truths were not invented for the amusement of the
ignorant; they are the alpha and omega of philosophic thought.

-------------
11. A term which comes from the words Yavana or "the Ionian," and acharya,
"professor or master."
------------

As Theosophy is the way that leads to Truth, in every religion as in every science,
so occultism, so to say, is the touchstone and universal solvent. It is the Ariadne's thread
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, for ever the enigma of
the Sphinx. But the light thrown by this torch can be discerned only by the eye of the
awakened soul - by our spiritual senses; it blinds the eye of the materialists as the sun
blinds that of the owl.
Having neither dogma nor ritual - these two being but the fetters, the material form
which stifles the soul - we do not employ the "ceremonial magic" of the Western
Kabbalists; we know its dangers too well to have anything to do with it. In the T.S. every
fellow is free 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 Eliphas Levi
so openly warned the public. The occult sciences are dangerous for him who understands
them imperfectly. Those who devote themselves alone to their practice, run the risk of
becoming insane; and those who study them would do well to unite in little groups of from
three to seven. These groups ought to be uneven in numbers in order to have more
power; a group, however little cohesion it possesses at first, by forming a single united
body, whereby the senses and perceptions of those who work together 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 of the 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.
------------

V.

[With our next issue this series demonstrating H.P. Blavatsky's brilliant sword-play
in defence of Theosophy comes to an end. In the present number she shows how
Theosophy towers above physical science, and yet is not mere metaphysics, but a
universal transcendentalism which rejects any testimony not based on the evidence of the
highest principles in man - the sixth and seventh. Originally appearing in the French
magazine, La Revue Theosophique, 1889, under the title 'Le Phare de L'Inconnu,' the
series was first published in translation in The Theosophist, Volume X.]
----------

The disciples (lanoos) of the law of the Diamond Heart (magic) will always help each
other in their studies. The grammarian will be at the service of him who looks for the soul
of the metals (chemist).
- Catechism of the Gupta-Vidya
THE profane would smile if we told them that in the occult sciences the alchemist
could be of use to the philologist, and vice versa. They would understand better perhaps,
if they were told that by this word grammarian or philologist we mean one who makes a
study of the universal language of corresponding symbols; although only the members of
the Esoteric Section of the Theosophical society can understand clearly what the term
`philologist' means in this sense. All things in nature have correspondences and are
mutually interdependent. In its abstract sense Theosophy is the white ray from which are
born the seven colors of the solar spectrum, each human being assimilating one of these
rays to a greater degree than the other six. It follows, then, that seven persons, each
imbued with his special ray, can help each other mutually. Having at their service the
septenary sheaf of rays, they have the seven forces of nature at their command. But it
follows also that, to reach that end, the choosing of the seven persons who are to form a
group, should be left to an expert - to an initiate in the science of occult rays. But we are
here upon dangerous ground, where the Sphinx of Esotericism risks being accused of
mystification. Yet official Science itself furnishes us the proof of what we say, and we find
corroboration in physical and materialistic astronomy. The sun is one; its light shines for
all the world; it warms the ignorant as well as the astronomical adept. As to the
hypotheses concerning our day-star, its constitution and nature - their name is legion. Not
one of these hypotheses contains the whole truth, or even an approximation to it.
Frequently they are only fictions soon to be replaced by others. For it is to scientific
theories more than to anything else in this world here below that the lines of Malherbe
apply:

. . . . Et Rose, elle a vecu ce que vivent les roses,

L'espace d'un matin.

Nevertheless, whether or not they adorn the altar of Science, each of these theories
may contain a fragment of truth. Tested, compared, analysed, pieced together, these
hypotheses may one day supply an astronomical axiom, a fact in nature, instead of a
chimera in the scientific brain.
This does not mean at all that we accept as a portion of truth every axiom
recognised as such by the Academies. For instance, in the evolution and
phantasmagorical transformations of the sun-spots - Nasmyth's theory of the moment - Sir
William Herschel began by seeing in them the inhabitants of the sun, beautiful and gigantic
angels. Sir John Herschel, observing a prudent silence concerning these celestial
salamanders, shared the opinion of the elder Herschel that the solar globe was nothing but
a beautiful metaphor, a maya - thus announcing an occult axiom. The Sun-spots have
found a Darwin in the person of every astronomer of any eminence. They have been taken
successively for planetary spirits, solar mortals, columns of volcanic smoke (probably
issuing from their own academic brains!), opaque clouds, and finally for shadows in the
form of willow leaves. At the present time the god Sol is degraded. It is said to be nothing
more than a gigantic coal, still glowing, but quite prepared to be extinguished upon the
hearth of our little system.
Then there are speculations put forward by some of the members of the
Theosophical Society, who, although belonging to the Society have never studied the
esoteric teachings. These speculations can never be other than hypotheses, no more than
colored with a ray of truth; enveloped in a chaos of fancy and often of unreason. By
selecting them from the heap and placing them side by side, one succeeds, nevertheless,
in extracting some philosophic truth from these ideas. For, let it be well understood,
Theosophy has this in common with ordinary science, that it examines the reverse side of
every apparent truth. It tests and analyses every fact put forward by physical science,
looking only for the essence and the ultimate and occult constitution in every cosmical or
physical manifestation, whether in the domain of ethics, intellect, or matter. In a word,
Theosophy begins its researches where the materialists finish theirs.
"Then it is metaphysics you offer us? Why did you not say so before?" object the
critics.
 No, it is not metaphysics, as that term is generally understood, although it plays a
part sometimes. The speculations of Kant, of Leibnitz, and of Schopenhauer belong to the
domain of metaphysics, as also those of Herbert Spencer. Still, when one studies the
latter, one cannot help but think that Dame Metaphysics is introducing herself at the
masked ball of the Academic Sciences adorned with a false nose! The metaphysics of
Kant and of Leibnitz - as proved by his Monads - is as far above the metaphysics of our
days, as a balloon in the clouds is above a pumpkin in the field below. Nevertheless the
balloon, however much better it may be than the pumpkin, is too artificial to serve as the
vehicle for the truth of the occult sciences. The latter is a goddess perhaps a little too
decolletee to suit the taste of our extremely modest scientists. The metaphysics of Kant
taught its author, without the help of the present methods or perfected instruments, the
identity of the constitution and essence of the sun and the planets; and Kant affirmed,
when the best astronomers, even, during the first half of this century, still denied. But this
same metaphysics did not succeed in proving to him the true nature of that essence, any
more than it has helped modern physics, notwithstanding its noisy hypotheses, to discover
the true nature of that essence.
Theosophy, therefore, or rather the occult sciences it studies, is something more
than simple metaphysics. It is, if I may be allowed to use the double terms, meta-
metaphysics, meta-geometry, etc. - a universal transcendentalism. Theosophy utterly
rejects the testimony of the physical senses, if the latter have not spiritual and psychic
perception as a basis. Even in the case of the most highly developed clairvoyance and
clairaudience, the final testimony of both must be rejected, unless by those terms is meant
the photos of Iamblichus, or the ecstatic illumination of Plotinus and of Porphyry. The
same holds good for the physical sciences; the evidence of reason on the terrestrial plane
like that of our five senses should receive the imprimatur of the sixth and seventh senses
of the divine ego before a fact can be accepted by the true occultist.
Official Science hears what we say and laughs. We read its reports, we behold the
apotheoses of its soi-disant progress, its great discoveries - of which more than one,
enriching the wealthy few, has plunged millions of the poor into still more horrible misery -
and we leave it to its own devices. But, finding that physical science has not made a step
towards the knowledge of the real nature and constitution of matter since the days of
Anaximenes and the Ionian School, we laugh in our turn.
In that direction the best work has been done and the most valuable scientific
discoveries of this century have, without a doubt, been made by the great chemist William
Crookes. [12] In this particular case a remarkable intuition of occult truth has been of more
service to him than all his great knowledge of physical science. It is certain that neither
scientific methods, nor official routine have helped him much in his discovery of radiant
matter, or in his researches into protyle or primordial matter. [13]

--------------
12. Member of the Executive Council of the London Lodge of the Theosophical
Society.
13. The homogeneous element, non-differentiated, called meta-element.
--------------
 - VI -

That which the Theosophists who hold to orthodox and official science try to
accomplish in their own domain, the occultists or the Theosophists of the "inner group"
study according to the method of the esoteric school. If up to the present this method has
demonstrated its superiority only to its students, that is to say, to those who have pledged
themselves by oath not to reveal it, that circumstance proves nothing against it. Not only
have the terms magic and theurgy never been even approximately understood, but the
name Theosophy has been disfigured. The definitions thereof given in dictionaries and
encyclopaedias are as absurd as they are grotesque. Webster, for instance, in explanation
of the word Theosophy, assures his readers that it is "a direct connection or
communication with God and superior spirits"; and, further, that it is "the attainment of
superhuman and supernatural knowledge and powers by physical processes [!?], as by the
theurgic operations of Platonists, or by the chemical processes of the German Fire-
Philosophers." This is nonsensical verbiage. It is precisely as if we were to say that it is
possible to transform a cracked brain into one of the calibre of Newton's, and to develop
in it a genius for mathematics, by riding five miles every day upon a wooden horse.
Theosophy is synonymous with the Jnana-Vidya, and the Brahma-Vidya* of the
Hindus, and again with the Dzyan of the trans-Himalayan adepts, the science of the true
Raja-Yogis, who are much more accessible than one thinks. This science has many
schools in the East, but its offshoots are more numerous, each one ultimately separating
itself from the parent stem - the Archaic Wisdom - and modifying its form.
But while these forms varied, departing from the Light of Truth, more and more with
each generation, the basis of initiatory truths remained always the same. The symbols
used to express the same ideas may differ, but in their hidden sense they always express
the same thoughts. Ragon, the most erudite Mason of all the "Widow's Sons," has said the
same. There exists a sacerdotal language, the "mystery-language," and unless one knows
it well, he cannot go far in the occult sciences. According to Ragon, "to build or found a
city" meant the same thing as to "found a religion"; therefore, that phrase, when it occurs
in Homer, is equivalent to the expression to distribute the "soma juice," in the Brahmanas.
It means "to found an esoteric school," not a "religion," as Ragon avers. Was he mistaken?
We do not think so. But as a Theosophist belonging to the Esoteric Section dares not tell
to an ordinary member of The Theosophical Society the things about which he has
promised to keep silent, so Ragon found himself obliged to divulge merely relative truths
to his Trinosophists. Still, it is quite certain that he had made at least an elementary study
of the MYSTERY-LANGUAGE.
"How can one learn this language?" we may be asked. We reply: study all religions
and compare them with one another. To learn thoroughly requires a teacher, a guru; to
succeed by oneself needs more than genius; it demands inspiration like that of Ammonius
Saccas. Encouraged within the Church by Clement of Alexandria and by Athenagoras,
protected by the learned men of the Synagogue and the Academy, and adored by the
Gentiles, "he learned the mystery-language by teaching the common origin of all religions,
and a common faith." To do this he only had to teach according to the ancient canons of
Hermes which Plato and Pythagoras had studied so well, and from which they drew their
respective philosophies. Can we be surprised if, finding in the first verses of the Gospel
according to St. John the same doctrines that are contained in the three systems of
philosophy above mentioned, he concluded with every show of reason that the intention
of the great Nazarene was to restore the sublime science of ancient Wisdom in all its
primitive integrity? We think as did Ammonius. The Biblical narrations and the stories about
the gods have only two possible explanations: either they are great and profound
allegories, illustrating universal truths, or else they are fables of no use but to put the
ignorant to sleep.
Therefore all the allegories - Jewish as well as Pagan - contain truths that can only
be understood by him who knows the mystic language of antiquity. Let us see what is said
on this subject by one of our most distinguished Theosophists, a fervent Platonist and a
Hebraist, who knows his Greek and Latin like his mother tongue, Professor Alexander
Wilder of New York: *
"The root-idea of the Neo-Platonists was the existence of the One and Supreme
Essence. This was the Diu or 'Lord of the Heavens' of the Aryan nations, identical with the
[script] (Iao) of the Chaldeans and Hebrews, the Iabe of the Samaritans, the Tiu or Tuisto
of the Norwegians, the Duw of the ancient tribes of Britain, the Zeus of those of Thrace,
and the Jupiter of the Romans. It was the Being - (non-Being), the Facit, one and supreme.
It is from it that all other beings proceeded by emanation. Perchance some day a wiser
man will combine these systems in a single one. The names of these different divinities
seem often to have been invented with little or no regard to their etymological meaning, but
chiefly on account of this or another mystical significance attached to the numerical value
of the letters in their orthography."
This numerical value is one of the branches of the "mystery-language" or the ancient
sacerdotal language. It was taught in the "Lesser Mysteries," but the language itself was
reserved for the high initiates alone. The candidate must have come out victorious from the
terrible trials of the Greater Mysteries before receiving instruction in it. That is why
Ammonius Saccas, like Pythagoras, made his disciples take an oath never to divulge the
higher doctrines to any but those to whom the preliminary tenets had already been
imparted, and who, therefore, were ready for initiation. Another sage, who preceded him
by three centuries, did the same by his disciples, in saying to them that he spoke "in
similes" (or parables), "because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom
of heaven, but to them it is not given . . . because they seeing see not; and hearing they
hear not, neither do they understand." [Matt., xiii, 11, 13.]
Therefore the "similes" employed by Jesus were part of the "mystery-language," the
sacerdotal tongue of the Initiates. Rome has lost the key to it. BY rejecting Theosophy and
pronouncing her anathema against the occult sciences she loses it forever.
"Love one another," said the great Teacher to those who were studying the
mysteries of "the kingdom of God." "Preach altruism, keep unity, mutual understanding and
harmony in your groups, all of you who place yourselves among the neophytes and the
seekers after the ONE TRUTH," other Teachers tell us. "Without unity, and intellectual as
well as psychic sympathy, you will arrive at nothing. He who sows discord, reaps the
whirlwind . . ." *
Learned Kabalists, thoroughly versed in the Zohar and its numerous commentaries,
are not lacking among our members, in Europe and especially in America. What has this
led to, and what good have they done to this day for the Society which they joined in order
to work for it? Most of them, instead of uniting and helping one another, look askance at
each other, always ready to make fun of each other and mutually to criticise each other.
Envy, jealousy and a most deplorable feeling of rivalry, reign supreme in a society whose
principal object is brotherhood! "See how these Christians love each other!" said the
pagans in the first centuries of the Fathers of the Church who demolished each other in the
name of the Master who had bequeathed to them peace and love. Critics and the
indifferent begin to say as much of the Theosophists, and they are right. See what our
Journals are becoming - all of them, with the exception of The Path of New York; even The
Theosophist, the oldest of our monthly publications, since the departure for Japan five
months ago of the President-Founder, snaps right and left at the calves of its Theosophical
colleagues and collaborators. In what way are we better than the Christians of the early Councils?
"In union is strength." - This is one of the causes of our weakness. We are advised
not to wash our dirty linen in public. On the contrary, it is better to confess one's
imperfections openly, in other words, to wash one's own dirty linen, than to dirty the linen
of one's brothers in Theosophy, as some people love to do. Let us speak in general terms,
confess our errors, denounce anything that is not Theosophical, but let personalities alone;
the latter lies within the province of each individual's Karma, and Theosophical Journals
are not concerned there.
Those who desire to succeed in abstract or practical Theosophy, must remember
that disunity is the first condition of failure. Let a dozen determined and united
Theosophists get together. Let them work together, each one according to his taste, along
this or another line of universal science, if he so prefers, just as long as each is in
sympathy with his neighbour. This will be beneficial even to ordinary members who do not
care for philosophical research. If such a group, selected on the basis of esoteric rules,
were formed among mystics alone; if they pursued truth, helping each other with whatever
light they may have, we guarantee that each member of such a group would make more
progress in the sacred science in one year, than he would make in ten years on his own.
In Theosophy, what is required is emulation and not rivalry; otherwise, he who boasts of
being the first, will be the last. In true Theosophy, it is the least who becomes the greatest.
And yet, The Theosophical Society has more victorious disciples than is generally
believed. But these keep to themselves and work instead of specifying They are our most
zealous and devoted Theosophists. Writing articles, they forget their own names and use
pseudonyms. Some among them know the mystery-language perfectly, and many an
ancient book or manuscript, undecipherable to our scholars, or which appears to the latter
as a mere collection of falsehoods, as compared to modern science, is an open book to
them.
These few devoted men and women are the pillars of our temple. They alone foil
the incessant work of our Theosophical "termites."

- VII -

We believe we have now sufficiently refuted in these pages several grave errors
concerning our doctrines and beliefs; among them the one which persists in representing
Theosophists - at any rate those who founded the Society - as polytheists or atheists. We
are neither the one nor the other; just as were certain Gnostics who, while believing in the
existence of planetary, solar and lunar gods, offered to them neither prayers nor altars.
Since we do not believe in a personal God, outside of man himself who is its temple - as
taught by St. Paul and other Initiates - we believe in an impersonal and absolute
PRINCIPLE,* so far beyond human conception that we consider anyone a mere
blasphemer and a presumptuous fool who attempts to define this grand universal mystery.
All that is taught us concerning this eternal and incomparable Principle, is that it is neither
spirit, nor matter, nor substance, nor thought, but the container of all these, the absolute
container. It is in other words the "God-Nothing" of Basilides, so little understood even by
the scholars and the able analysts of the Musee Guimet (tome XIV),** who define this term
with ridicule, speaking of it as "God-nothing who has ordained and foreseen all things,
though he had neither reason nor will."
Yes, certainly, and this "God-Nothing," being identical with the Parabrahman of the
Vedantins - a most philosophical and grandiose concept - is also identical with the AIN-
SOPH of the Jewish Kabalists. The latter is also the "god who is not," "Ain" signifying non-
being or the absolute, the nothing or [script] of Basilides, meaning that human intelligence,
being limited on this material plane, cannot conceive of anything that is, but that does not
exist under any form. As the idea of a being is limited to something that exists, either in
substance, actual or potential, or in the nature of things, or only in minds - that which
cannot be perceived by our senses, or conceived by our intellect which conditions all
things, does not exist for us.
"Where, then, do you locate the Nirvana, oh great Arhat?" asks a king of a
venerable Buddhist ascetic, whom he interrogates concerning the Good Law.
"Nowhere, oh great King!" is the answer.
"Nirvana, therefore, does not exist? . . ."
"Nirvana is, but does not exist."
The same is the case with the God "that is not," a term which is merely an
unsatisfactory literal translation, for esoterically, one should say the god that does not exist,
but that is. The root of [script] is [script], meaning "and not anyone," signifying that what is
being spoken of is not a person or a thing, but the negation of both [script], the neuter form,
is used as an adverb, "in nothing"). Thus the to ouden en of Basilides is absolutely identical
with the En or the "Ain-Soph" of the Kabalists. In the religious metaphysics of the Hebrews,
the Absolute is an abstraction, "without form or existence," "without any similitude to
anything else" (Franck, La Kabbale, p. 173). God, therefore, is NOTHING, without name
and without qualities; it is for this reason that it is called AIN-SOPH, for the word Ain
means nothing.
It is not this immutable and absolute Principle, which is only the potentiality of being,
from which the gods, or active principles of the manifested world, emanate. As the absolute
has no relation to the conditioned and the limited, and could not possibly have any, that
from which the emanations proceed is the "God that speaks" of Basilides, i.e., the logos
which Philo calls "the second God" and the Creator of forms. "The second God is the
Wisdom of the ONE God" (Question. et Solut., Book II, 62). "But this logos, this 'Wisdom'
is an emanation nevertheless?" will be the objection. "And to make anything emanate from
NOTHING is an absurdity!" Not at all. First, this "nothing" is so because it is the absolute,
consequently the ALL. Then, this "second God" is no more an emanation than the shadow
our body casts on a white wall is an emanation of that body. In any case, the God is not
the effect of a cause or of a premeditated act, of a deliberate and conscious will. It is
merely the periodical effect* of an immutable and eternal law, beyond time and space, of
which the logos or creative intelligence is the shadow or reflection.
"But this is an absurd idea!" we can hear those say who believe in an
anthropomorphic and personal God. "Of the two, the man and his shadow, it is the latter
that is a nothing, an optical illusion, and the man who casts it is the intelligence, however
passive it may be in this case!"
Quite so, but it is so only on our plane where everything is an illusion, where
everything appears transposed, similar to the reflection in a mirror. Moreover, as the realm
of the only real is distorted by matter, the non-real, and as - from the standpoint of absolute
reality - the universe with its conscious and intelligent beings is but a poor phantasmagoria,
it follows that it is the shadow of the Real, on the plane of the latter, that is endowed with
intelligence and attributes, while the absolute - from our viewpoint - is deprived of all
conditioned qualities by the very fact that it is absolute. It is not necessary to be well-versed
in Oriental metaphysics to understand this; and one is not required to be a distinguished
paleographer or paleologist in order to see that the system of Basilides is also the system
of the Vedanta, however distorted and disfigured it may have been by the author of
Philosophumena. This is definitely proved to us by means of the fragmentary outline of the
Gnostic systems given in that work. Only the esoteric doctrine can explain what is
incomprehensible and chaotic in the misunderstood system of Basilides, as it has been
transmitted to us by the Fathers of the Church - those executioners of the Heresies. The
Pater innatus, or the non-engendered God, the Great Archon ([script]), and the two
Demiurges, even the three hundred and sixty-five heavens - the number contained in the
name of Abraxas, their governor - all of this was derived from the Hindu systems. But all
is denied in our century of pessimism, where everything moves by steam, even life itself,
where the abstract - and nothing else is eternal - interests no one but a few rare eccentrics,
and where man dies without having lived one instant face to face with his soul, swept on,
as it is, by the whirlwind of terrestrial and selfish affairs.
Apart from metaphysics, however, everyone who enters The Theosophical Society
can find therein a science and an occupation according to his taste. An astronomer could
make more scientific discoveries in studying allegories and symbols concerning every star,*
in the ancient Sanskrit books, than he possibly could with the help of the Academies alone.
An intuitive physician could learn more in the works of Charaka,** translated into Arabic in
the VIIIth century, or in the dusty manuscripts of the Adyar Library, works misunderstood
as all others, than in the books on modern physiology. Theosophists with an inclination
toward medicine or the healing art could do worse than consult the legends and symbols
revealed and explained concerning Asklepios or Aesculapius. For, like Hippocrates of old,
consulting the votive stelae of the rotunda of Epidaurus (surnamed Tholos) at Cos,*** he
could find therein recipes of remedies unknown to modern pharmacopoeia.+ Then, instead
of killing, he might be able to heal.

------------
* Everyone of the 333,000,000 gods and goddesses which make up the Hindu
Pantheon is represented by a star. As the number of stars and constellations known to
astronomers does not reach this total, one might suspect that ancient Hindus knew more
stars than do the moderns
** Charaka was a physician of the Vedic epoch. A legend represents him as an
incarnation of the Serpent Vishnu, under his name of Sesha, ruling in Patala (the nether
regions).
*** Strabo, Geographica, XIV, ii, 19. See also Pausanias, Periegesis (Itinerary), II,
xxvii, 2-3.
+ It is known that all those who were healed in the Asklepieia left their ex-votos in
the temple; and that they engraved on the stelae the name of their diseases and the
beneficent remedies. Of late, a great number of these ex-votos were excavated on the
Acropolis. See Paul Girard, L'Asclepieion d'Athenes, Paris, Thorin, 1882.
------------

Let it be said for the hundredth time: Truth is One! When it is presented, not in all
its aspects, but according to the thousand and one opinions which its devotees have about
it, one ceases to have divine TRUTH, but only a confused echo of human voices. Where
can one look for it and find it approximately as an integral whole? Is it with Christian
Kabalists or the modern European Occultists? With the Spiritists of today or the primitive
Spiritualists?
"In France," a friend of ours once told us, "so many Kabalists, so many systems.
With us, they all pretend to be Christians. There are some among them who are for the
Pope, so much so that they dream of a universal crown for him, the crown of a Pontiff-
Caesar. Others are against Papacy, but for a Christ, not an historical one, but one created
by their own imaginations, an anti-Caesarian Christ, playing at politics, etc., etc. Each
Kabalist believes he has discovered the lost Truth. It is his own science which is the eternal
Truth, and the science of others, merely a mirage . . . And he is always ready to defend
and to uphold his own by his pen . . .
"But the Kabalist-Israelites," I asked him, "are they also for Christ?"
"Oh well, they are for their Messiah. It's just a matter of date!"
True enough, in infinity there can be no anachronisms. However, as all these
various terms and systems, all these contradictory tenets could not all of them contain
actual Truth, I do not see how the Gentlemen Kabalists of France can claim the knowledge
of Occult Sciences. They have the Kabalah of Moses de Leon,* compiled by him in the
XIIIth century; but his Zohar, as compared with the Chaldean Book of Numbers,
represents as much the work of Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai, as the Poimandres of the Greek
Christians represents the real book of the Egyptian Thoth. The

------------
* It is he who compiled the Zohar of Shimon ben Yohai, the originals of the early
centuries having been lost; it would be wrong to accuse him of having invented what he
wrote. He made a collection of all he could find, but he supplied from his own knowledge
the passages which were missing, helped in this by Christian Gnostics of Chaldea and
Syria.
------------

ease with which the Kabalah of von Rosenroth and his Latin manuscript-texts of the Middle
Ages - read according to the system of the Notaricon - transform themselves into Christian
trinitarian texts, is like a fairy scene. Between the Marquis de Mirville and his friend, the
Chevalier Drach, a converted Rabbi, the "Good Kabalah" has become a catechism of the
Roman Church. Let the Gentlemen Kabalists be satisfied with that; we prefer to keep to
the Chaldean Kabalah, the Book of Numbers. One who is satisfied with the dead letter,
parades in vain in the mantle of the Tannaim (the ancient initiates of Israel); in the eyes
of the experienced occultists, he would be but a wolf dressed in grandmother's nightcap
as in Red Ridinghood. But the wolf is not going to devour the occultist, as it devoured Red
Ridinghood - a symbol of the profane athirst for mysticism, who falls victim to its teeth. It
is rather the wolf that will perish, by falling into his own trap . . .
Like the Bible, Kabalistic works have their dead letter, their exoteric meaning, and
their true or esoteric significance. The key to the true symbolism is at the moment beyond
the gigantic peaks of the Himalayas, even the key to the Hindu systems. No other key
could open the sepulchers wherein have been buried for thousands of years all the
intellectual treasures which were deposited there by the original interpreters of divine
Wisdom. But the great cycle, the first one within the Kali-yuga, is at an end; the day of
resurrection for all that is dead may not be too far off. The great Swedish Seer, Emmanuel
Swedenborg, said: "Seek the lost word among the hierophants, in great Tartary and Tibet."
Whatever may be the seeming appearances against The Theosophical Society;
whatever may be its unpopularity among those who recoil in horror from anything that
appears to them to be an innovation, one thing, however, is sure. What you, Gentlemen
opponents, consider to be an invention of the XIXth century, is as old as the world. Our
Society is the tree of Brotherhood, grown from a kernel planted in the earth by the angel
of Charity and Justice, the day the first Cain slew the first Abel. During long centuries of the
subjugation of women and of the suffering of the poor, this kernel was watered by the bitter
tears shed by the weak and the oppressed. Blessed hands transplanted it from one corner
of the earth to another, under different climes and at epochs distant from one another. "Do
not do unto others what you would not wish others to do unto you," said Confucius to his
disciples. "Love one another, and love all living creatures," preached Gautama the Buddha
to his Arhats. "Love one another," was repeated as a faithful echo in the streets of
Jerusalem. It is to the Christian nations that belongs the honour of having obeyed this
supreme commandment of their Master in all its paradoxical force! Caligula, the pagan,
wished that humanity had but one head, so that he might sever it with one blow. Christian
powers have improved upon this desire which hitherto had remained theoretical, after
seeking and finally finding the means to put it into practice. Let them therefore prepare to
cut each other's throats and let them exterminate more people in one day in war than the
Caesars killed in a whole year. Let them depopulate whole countries and provinces in the
name of their paradoxical religion, and let them perish by the sword, they who kill by the
sword. What concern of ours is that?
Theosophists are powerless to stop them. That is true. But it is in their power to
save as many survivors as possible. Being a nucleus of a true Brotherhood, it depends
upon them to make of their Society an ark destined, in a future not too distant, to transport
the humanity of a new cycle beyond the vast muddy waters of the deluge of hopeless
materialism. These waters are rising and at the present moment flood all the civilized
countries. Are we going to let the good perish with the bad, afraid of the hue and cry and
the ridicule of the latter, either against The Theosophical Society or ourselves? Are we
going to see them perish one after the other, one from fatigue, the other vainly seeking the
ray of sunlight which shines for all, without throwing them a plank of salvation? Never!
It may well be that the beautiful utopia, the philanthropic dream, that sees as if in
a vision the triple wish of The Theosophical Society come true, is still far off: entire and
complete freedom of human conscience granted to all, brotherhood established between
the rich and the poor, and equality between the aristocrat and the plebeian recognized
in theory as well as in practice - these are so many castles in Spain, and for a good reason.
All this must take place naturally and voluntarily, on both sides; however, the time has not
yet come for the lion and the lamb to lie down together. The great reform must come about
without social upheaval, without spilling a drop of blood; solely in the name of that
axiomatic truth of Oriental philosophy which shows us that the great disparity of fortunes,
of social rank and intellect, is due but to the effects of the personal Karma of every human
being. We harvest but what we have sown. If the physical personality of man differs from
every other man, the immaterial being in him or the immortal individuality emanates from
the same divine essence as that of his neighbour. He who is thoroughly impressed by the
philosophic truth that every Ego begins and ends by being the indivisible ALL, cannot love
his neighbour less than himself. But, until the time this becomes a religious truth, no such
reform can possibly take place. The egotistical saying that "charity begins at home," or the
other which says that "each for himself, and God for all," will always move the "superior"
and Christian races to oppose the practical introduction of the beautiful pagan saying:
"Every pauper is a son of a rich man," and even more to the one that says: "Feed first the
hungry, and then eat what is left yourself."
But the time will come when that "barbarous" wisdom of the inferior races will be
better appreciated. In the meantime what we should seek is to bring some peace on earth
to the hearts of those who suffer, by lifting for them a corner of the veil which hides from
them divine truth. Let the strong point the way to the weak and help them to climb the
steep slope of existence. Let them turn their gaze upon the Beacon-light which shines upon
the horizon, beyond the mysterious and unchartered sea of Theosophical sciences, like
a new star of Bethlehem, and let the disinherited of life take hope . . .

- Theosophical Forum, July, Aug, Sept, Oct., Dec., 1942, Jan. Feb.,
1943

------------------------------

ARE CHELAS "MEDIUMS?"

- H.P. Blavatsky

(Originally published in The Theosophist, Madras, Vol. V, June, 1884, pp. 210-11.
One of the most authoritative and important articles by H. P. Blavatsky. We hope our
readers and students will give it the close attention which it deserves. It is of special value
at the present time. - Editor).

According to the newest edition of the "Imperial Dictionary," by John Ogilvie, LL.D.,
"A medium is a person through whom the action of another being is said to be manifested
and transmitted by animal magnetism, or a person through whom spiritual manifestations
are claimed to be made; especially one who is said to be capable of holding intercourse
with the spirits of the deceased."
As Occultists do not believe in any communication with the "spirits of the deceased"
in the ordinary acceptation of the term, for the simple reason that they know that the spirits
of "the deceased" cannot and do not come down and communicate with us; and as the
above expression "by aninial magnetism" would probably have been modified, if the editor
of the "Imperial Dictionary" had been an Occultist, we therefore are only concerned with
the first part of the definition of the word "Medium," which says: "A Medium is a person,
through whom the action of another being is said to be manifested and transmitted;" and
we should like to be permitted to add: "By the either consciously or unconsciously active
will of that other being."
It would be extremely difficult to find on earth a human being, who could not be
more or less influenced by the "Animal Magnetism" or by the active Will (which sends out
that "Magnetism") of another. If the beloved General rides along the front, the soldiers
become all "Mediums." They become filled with enthusiasm, they follow him without fear,
and storm the death-dealing battery. One common impulse pervades them all; each one
becomes the "Medium" of another, the coward becomes filled with heroism, and only he,
who is no medium at all and therefore insensible to epidemic or endemic moral influences,
will make an exception, assert his independence and run away.
The "revival preacher" will get up in his pulpit, and although what he says is the most
incongruous nonsense, still his actions and the lamenting tone of his voice are sufficiently
impressive to produce "a change of heart" amongst, at least, the female part of his
congregation, and if he is a powerful man, even sceptics "that came to scoff, remain to
pray." People go to the theatre and shed tears or "split their sides" with laughter according
to the character of the performance, whether it be a pantomime, a tragedy or a farce.
There is no man, except a genuine block-head, whose emotions and consequently whose
actions cannot be influenced in some way or other, and thereby the action of another be
manifested or transmitted through him. All men and all women and children are therefore
Mediums, and a person who is not a Medium is a monster, an abortion of nature; because
he stands without the pale of humanity.
The above definition can therefore hardly be considered sufficient to express the
meaning of the word "Medium" in the popular acceptation of the term, unless we add a few
words, and say: "A medium is a person through whom the action of another being is said
to be manifested and transmitted to an abnormal extent by the consciously or
unconsciously active will of that other being." This reduces the number of "Mediums" in
the world to an extent proportionate to the space around which we draw the line between
the normal and abnormal, and it will be just as difficult to determine who is a medium and
who is not a medium, as it is to say where sanity ends and where insanity begins. Every
man has his little "weaknesses," and every man has his little "mediumship"; that is to say,
some vulnerable point, by which he may be taken unawares. The one may therefore not
be considered really insane; neither can the other be called a "medium." Opinions often
differ, whether a man is insane or not, and so they may differ as to his mediumship. Now
in practical life a man may be very eccentric, but he is not considered insane, until his
insanity reaches such a degree, that he does not know any more what he is doing, and is
therefore unable to take care of himself or his business.
We may extend the same line of reasoning to mediums, and say that only such
persons shall be considered mediums, who allow other beings to influence them in the
above described manner to such an extent that they lose their self-control and have no
more power or will of their own to regulate their own actions. Now such a relinquishing of
self-control may be either active or passive, conscious or unconscious, voluntary or
involuntary, and differs according to the nature of the beings, who exercise the said active
influence over the medium.
A person may consciously and voluntarily submit his will to another being and
become his slave. This other being may be a human being, and the medium will then be
his obedient servant and may be used by him for good or bad purposes. This other "being"
may be an idea, such as love, greediness, hate, jealousy, avarice, or some other passion,
and the effect on the medium will be proportionate to the strength of the idea and the
amount of self-control left in the medium. This "other being" may be an elementary or an
elemental, and the poor medium become all epileptic, a maniac or a criminal. This "other
being" may be the man's own higher principle, either alone or put into rapport with another
ray of the collective universal spiritual principle, and the "medium" will then be a great
genius, a writer, a poet, an artist, a musician, an inventor, and so on. This "other being"
may be one of those exalted beings, called Mahatmas, and the conscious and voluntary
medium will then be called their "Chela."
Again, a person may never in his life have heard the word "Medium" and still be a
strong Medium, although entirely unconscious of the fact. His actions may be more or less
influenced unconsciously by his visible or invisible surroundings. He may become a prey
to Elementaries or Elementals, even without knowing the meaning of these words, and he
may consequently become a thief, a murderer, a ravisher, a drunkard or a cut-throat, and
it has often enough been proved that crimes frequently become epidemic; or again he may
by certain invisible influences be made to accomplish acts which are not at all consistent
with his character such as previously known. He may be a great liar and for once by some
unseen influence be induced to speak the truth; he may be ordinarily very much afraid and
yet on some great occasion and on the spur of the moment commit all act of heroism; he
may be a street-robber and vagabond and suddenly do all act of generosity, etc.
Furthermore, a medium may know the sources from which the influence comes, or
in more explicit terms, "the nature of the being, whose action is transmitted through him,"
or he may not know it. He may be under the influence of his own seventh principle and
imagine to be in communication with a personal Jesus Christ, or a satan; he may be in
rapport with the "intellectual" ray of Shakespeare and write Shakespearean poetry, and at
the same time imagine that the personal spirit of Shakespeare is writing through him, and
the simple fact of his believing this or that, would make his poetry neither better nor worse.
He may be influenced by some Adept to write a great scientific work and be entirely
ignorant of the source of his inspiration, or perhaps imagine that it was the "spirit" of
Faraday or Lord Bacon that is writing through him, while all the while he would be acting
as a "Chela," although ignorant of the fact.
From all this it follows that the exercise of mediumship consists in the more or less
complete giving up of self-control, and whether this exercise is good or bad, depends
entirely on the use that is made of it and the purpose for which it is done. This again
depends on the degree of knowledge which the mediumistic person possesses, in regard
to the nature of the being to whose care he either voluntarily or involuntarily relinquishes
for a time the guardianship of his physical or intellectual powers. A person who entrusts
indiscriminately those faculties to the influences of every unknown power, is undoubtedly
a "crank," and cannot be considered less insane than the one who would entrust his money
and valuables to the first stranger or vagabond that would ask him for the same. We meet
occasionally such people, although they are comparatively rare, and they are usually
known by their idiotic stare and by the fanaticism with which they cling to their ignorance.
Such people ought to be pitied instead of blamed, and if it were possible, they should be
enlightened in regard to the danger which they incur; but whether a Chela, who
consciously and willingly lends for a time his mental faculties to a superior being, whom he
knows, and in whose purity of motives, honesty of purpose, intelligence, wisdom and power
he has full confidence, can be considered a "Medium" in the vulgar acceptation of the term,
is a question which had better be left to the reader - after due consideration of the above -
to decide for himself.

- From Theosophia #20, July-Aug., 1947

-------------------

HIERARCHIES

Everything in the Universe, throughout all its Kingdoms, is conscious . . . . . The

Universe is worked and guided from within outwards. (S.D., I. 274).
Karana - eternal cause - is alone during the "Nights of Brahma". The previous
objective Universe has dissolved into its one primal and eternal cause, and it is, so to say,
held in solution in Space, to differentiate again and crystallize out anew at the following
Manvantaric Dawn. (S. D., I. 411) .
The Mystery in the Hierarchy of the Anupadaka is great, its apex being the universal
Spirit-Soul, and the lower rung the Manushi-Buddha; and even every Soul-endowed Man
is an Anupadaka in a latent state. (S.D., I. 54).
The Primary Breath informs the higher Hierarchies; the secondary, the lower, in the
constantly descending planes. (S.D. II. 492).
The Monads circling around any septenary chain are divided into seven classes or
hierarchies according to their respective stages of evolution, consciousness and merit.
(S.D., I. 171).
Stanza Four shows the differentiation of the Germ of the Universe into the
Septenary Hierarchies of conscious Divine Powers, who are the active manifestation of the
One Supreme Energy. They are the framers, shapers and ultimately the creators of all the
manifested Universe in the only sense in which the name "Creators" is intelligible; they
inform and guide it; they are the intelligent Beings who adjust and control evolution;
embodying in themselves those manifestations of the ONE LAW, which we know as "The
Laws of Nature." (S.D., I. 21-2).
Stanza Five proceeds with a minute classification of the Orders of the Angelic
Hierarchy - an endless enumeration of the celestial hosts and beings, each having its
distinct task in the ruling of the visible kosmos during its existence. These are the AH-HI
(Dhyan Chohans), the collective hosts of spiritual beings - the Angelic Hosts of Christianity
. . . . . . . The Hierarchy of spiritual beings through which the Universal Mind comes into
action, is like an army - a "Host", truly . . . .composed of army corps, divisions, brigades,
regiments, and so forth, each with its separate individuality or life, and its limited freedom
of action and limited responsibilities; each contained in a large individuality to which its
own interests are subservient and each containing lesser individualities in itself. (S. D., I.
38).
Fire, Flame, Day, the Bright Fortnight, Smoke, Night, are all names of various deities
which preside over the Cosmo-psychic Powers. (S.D., I. 86).
The Pitris are Lunar deities, and our ancestors because they created physical man.
(S.D., I. 86).
The Hierarchy of Creative Powers is divided into Seven (or 4 and 3) esoteric, within
the twelve great Orders, recorded in the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac ..... The highest group
is composed of the divine Flames, so-called, also spoken of as the "Fiery Lions" and the
"Lions of Life" whose esotericism is securely hidden in the Zodiacal sign of Leo. (S.D., I.
213).
The Kumaras are called the Four (though in reality Seven in number) because
Sanaka, Sananda, Sanatana, and Sanat-Kumara are the chief Vaidhata. (S.D., I, 89).
Parasakti, Jnanasakti, Itchasakti, Kriyasakti, Kundalinisakti, Mantrikasakti - These
six forces are in their unity represented by the "Daiviprakriti," the Seventh, the light of the
Logos. These six names are those of the six Hierarchies synthesized by their Primary, the
Seventh, who personify the Fifth Principle of Cosmic Nature. Each has a Conscious Entity
at its head. (S.D., I. 293).
In the Esoteric system the Dhyanis watch successively over one of the Rounds and
the great Root Races of the planetary chain. They send their Bodhisatvas, the human
correspondences of the Dhyani Buddhas, during every Round and Race . . . . .Of the
Seven Truths and Revelations only Four have been handed to us of the Fourth Round.
(S.D., I. 42).
In the world of Forces the Sun, and the Seven chief Planets constitute the visible
and active Potencies, the latter Hierarchy being, so to speak, the visible and objective
Logos, of the invisible and ever subjective Angels. (S.D., II. 23).
It becomes the task of the Fifth Hierarchy - the mysterious beings that preside over
the constellation Capricornus, Makara, or the "Crocodile" in India as in Egypt - to inform
the empty and ethereal animal form and make of it Rational Man.
(S. D., I. 233).
Many are those among the Spiritual Entities who have incarnated bodily in man,
since the beginning of his appearance, and who, for all that, still exist as independently as
they did before, in the infinitudes of space .. ... (S.D., I. 233).
As a fact insisted upon by generations of Seers, none of these Beings, high or low,
have either individuality or personality as separate Entities, i.e., they have no individuality
in the sense in which a man says, "I am myself and no one else;" in other words, they are
conscious of no such distinct separateness as men and things have on earth. Individuality
is the characteristic of their respective hierarchies, not of their units; and these
characteristics vary only with the degree of the plane to which those hierarchies belong:
the nearer to the region of Homogeneity and the One Divine, the purer and the less
accentuated that individuality in the Hierarchy. (S.D., I. 275).
A Dhyan Chohan has to become one: he must be born or appear suddenly on the
plane of life as a fullblown angel. The Celestial Hierarchy of the present Manvantara will
find itself transferred in the next cycle of life into higher superior worlds, and will make room
for a new hierarchy, composed of the elect ones of our mankind. (S.D., I. 221).
 The Gnostic's serpent with the Seven Vowels over its head, being the emblem of
the Sun Hierarchies of the Septenary or Planetary Creators. (S.D., I. 73).
Every mortal has his immortal counterpart, or rather his Archetype, in heaven. This
means that the former is indissolubly united to the latter, in each of his incarnations, and
for the duration of the cycle of births; only it is the spiritual and intellectual Principle in him,
entirely distinct from the lower self, never through the earthly personality. (S.D., III. 59).

- From Canadian Theosophist, Jan. 15, 1936

---------------------

FROM MADAME H.P. BLAVATSKY TO HER CORRESPONDENTS

An Open Letter such as few can write

[Excerpts from one of the earliest articles written by H.P. Blavatsky at the beginning
of her literary career. It was published in the Spiritual Scientist, Boston, Vol. III, September
23, 1875, pp. 25-27, under the above title which must have been selected by the Editor of
the journal. This Editor was Ethridge Gerry Brown, a promising young man who, according
to Col. H.S. Olcott, "has been taken under the favour of the powers behind H.P.B."
Instructions were sent by Master Serapis Bey that Brown was to be helped both financially
and by articles for his journal. The latter functioned for a while as the organ of H.P.B.'s
attempt to reform American Spiritualism, by awakening it to the need of a more profound
occult philosophy. Brown did not live up to expectations and the whole effort collapsed in
1878.-Editor.]

"...Unless one is prepared to devote to it his whole life, the superficial knowledge of
Occult Sciences will lead him surely to become the target for millions of ignorant scoffers
to aim their blunderbusses, loaded with ridicule and chaff, against. Besides this, it is in
more than one way dangerous to select this science as a mere pastime. One must bear
forever in mind the impressive fable of Oedipus, and beware of the same consequences.
Oedipus unriddled but one-half of the enigma offered him by the Sphinx, and caused its
death; the outer half of the mystery avenged the death of the symbolic monster, and
forced the King of Thebes to prefer blindness and exile in his despair, rather than face
what he did not feel himself pure enough to encounter. He unriddled the man, the form,
and had forgotten God - the idea.
If a man would follow in the steps of Hermetic philosophers, he must prepare
himself beforehand for martyrdom. He must give up personal pride and all selfish
purposes, and be ready for everlasting encounters with friends
and foes. He must part, once for all, with every remembrance of his earlier ideas, on all
and on everything. Existing religions, knowledge, science must rebecome a blank book
for him, as in the days of his babyhood, for if he wants to succeed he must learn a new
alphabet on the lap of Mother Nature, every letter of which will afford a new insight to him,
every syllable and word an unexpected revelation. The two hitherto irreconcilable foes,
science and theology - the Montecchi and Capuletti of the nineteenth century - will ally
themselves with the ignorant masses, against the modern Occultist. If we have outgrown
the age of stakes, we are in the heyday, per contra, of slander, the venom of the press;
and all these mephitic venticelli of calumny, so vividly expressed by the immortal Don
Basilio. To science, it will be the duty, and sterile as a matter of course - of the Cabalist
to prove that from the beginning of time there was but one positive science - 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
tile 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,
and 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 worshiped at his birth by the three Magi, led on by the star, and received from
them the gold, the frankincense and myrrh, tile 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 the 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 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 Eliphas Levi. Ten ciphers,

----------------
* The Ternarius or Ternary, the symbol of perfection in antiquity, and the Star, the
Cabalistic sign of the Microcosm.
---------------------

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 l 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 tile 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 de la
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 great result....
To fervent and persevering candidates for the above science, I have to offer but one
word of advice, "Try and become." One single journey to the Orient, made in the proper
spirit, and the possible emergencies arising from the meeting of what may seem no more
than the chance acquaintances and adventures of any traveler, may quite as likely as not
throw wide open to the zealous student the heretofore closed doors of the final mysteries.
I will go farther and say that such a journey, performed with the omnipresent idea of the
one object, and with the help of a fervent will is sure to produce more rapid, better, and far
more practical results, than the most diligent study of Occultism in books - even though one
were to devote to it dozens of years. In the name of Truth,
Yours,
H.P. Blavatsky

- From Theosophia, Jan-Feb, 1950

-----------------

AN INTRO- AND RETROSPECTIVE DREAM

- A Tale of the XXIV Century
- H.P. Blavatsky

[This article exists in the Adyar Archives in the shape of an incomplete MSS. in the
handwriting of H.P. Blavatsky. It was originally published in The Theosophist, Vol. L, May,
1929, pp. 161-67. It is especially interesting in the light of our present-day fast developing
scientific discoveries and inventions. - Editor]

PROLOGUE
Our truthful story opens in the good days of old, just five centuries ago - in fact in
1879. It was a century the history of which, as well as that of its successors, down to our
own time, is too well preserved to us in its minutest details of names and events in
chronological order that we should ever fear to commit any such blunders as those which
make us often blush for the comparative ignorance of that age - great as was the
nineteenth century. Thanks to the indestructible records of the daily Press, the time for
mere hypothesis and guesswork has vanished for ever. For as the educated readers will
all remember, it was toward the latter part of that century that, after a few foolish attempts
to print the daily papers on pieces of cloth which, subsequently washed, were transformed
into and used as pocket handkerchiefs by the economical bourgeoisie - as if ancient
Manchester was not there to supply these mean shopkeepers! - that the discovery was
made. Immortalising the genius who found that process out, it was added to the long list
of many others. It was - says one of our permanent records quoting such a paper which
escaped destructive washing - found out by a preacher in love with his sermons and who
was almost driven to despair at the drought that while his audience went to sleep over
them, the rats might destroy it in their turn a century or so ..... *
[Page 1 of the MSS. is missing.]

....recorded, each one on a separate foil of the phonograph and Antitypion, they are now
so perfected as to enable you, from the comfortable depth of your own armchair and
seated at the apparatus table, at your summer residence at Sothis Town, to choose your
individual and then give the signal through your private telephone. Of course, your
Excellency will have to specify beforehand the precise spot of the space around you where
you desire the long bygone scenes in the life of the chosen individual or individuals to be
enacted. As you are but slightly acquainted yet with the improved conditions required for
the perfect reproductions of the deceased personages reflected by means of the
Antitypion, the faithful retransmission of their voices and speeches through

----------
* This extraordinary discovery due to a young British astrologer, born in the noisy
days of the conflict between matter and spirit, has ever remained the wonder of the grateful
ages.
[This note is on the back of the sheet which ends abruptly with "so."]
---------

the phonographic foil, and their acts, deeds and even most intimate thoughts by the newly
constructed necroideograph, you must permit me to suggest that the most propitious spot
would be in as distant a neighborhood of your private biosideograph, as your own personal
ideas might easily get mixed up with those of the deceased actors, or vice versa, and thus
produce a confusion, strictly to be avoided in this age of universal restitution and .....

[Part of MSS. missing.]

.... and is returned to me again. You will then immediately begin to receive the full stream
of the pictures and sounds collected by me from the depths of space. It will be necessary
that a member of the Committee should take his place at each registering table, so as to
receive and fix upon the sensitized reflectors the pictures and sounds pertaining to
individual histories, as they separate themselves from the common stream in passing
through the ethmoid diaphragm. As each individual history is closed with the scene of
death, and such glimpses of posthumous fame as it may be desired to take in, the
observer should detach the record from the repeating cylinder and lay it away with care,
properly mounted and labeled, until wanted for exhibition to the General Council upon the
stage of the Pontopticon for their final action.
The Australian or South Polar apparatus differs but slightly from the Borealian or
North Pole which you have. Briefly, it may thus be described. Upon a table of polished
rock-crystal and supported upon columns of migme* stand a large etheric reflector, an
echograph or pantophonograph, and an ideograph - of which the first reproduces for us the
pictures of the past, the second its sounds, and the third the unspoken ideas, whether of
living or dead personages. The whole forms, as you know, the apparatus to which our
Himalayan colleague has given the name of antitypion. Connected with the reflector is a
revolving zographistic cylinder, upon whose prepared surface the inflowing pictures, as
caught in their slow cyclic descent from the rays of starlight, become indelibly impressed
in their natural colours, and upon being passed in front of a pencil of "focalised akasa" or
astral light, can be thrown forward into any part of the room, so as to appear to the
spectator as a scene from real life transpiring before his view. The echograph, with like
efficacy, will reproduce the voices of the personages who are marshalled before us in our
retrospective panorama; care only being taken that the foci of light and sound shall be
convergent. Though the flight of sound through space is less rapid than that of light, and
gradually becoming feebler is arrested and fixed at no great distance from the earth, yet
as they travel in the same path, it is, as you are aware, a scientific fact that when we recall
pictures from the ether, the returning current meeting the outgoing wave of crystalised
sound takes it up

----------
* A new or rather rediscovered metal, mentioned by Proclus and other archaic
philosophers, and possessing very striking occult properties, among them that of causing
between the earth and any given star a powerful sympathetic current.
-----------

by magnetic attraction, and returns to us simultaneously the images of the past and the
vibrations of its sounds. The office of two of the three instruments above referred to is, to
separate the one from the other. A delicate sense of touch and acute hearing are required
in the observer for the proper adjustment of the pantophonograph. In our case until a
number of preliminary tests had been made, the phonetic detonator gave back only a
confused murmur of sound, instead of the desired clear articulation of speech. Members
of the Committee, who may have given little attention to astrognosical science, may
properly be informed that, unless it is accurately known under what constellation the
subject of an inquiry was born, so that it, or at least the stars that lay in its cyclic path and
were thus brought into the influence of his current, may be caught in the focus of the
etheric reflector, much time must be spent in searching for him in that quarter of the
heavens where the general reflections of his epoch are traveling. While this principle of
catoptrics was, of course, always known to occultists, physical science was ignorant of it
until the comparative late epoch of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. At that time
a conception of the truth appears to have dawned upon the minds of several observers
almost simultaneously. For example, a professor of geognosy - termed geology, doubtless
because they discoursed more about the earth than knew anything about it - a certain
Hitchock, ventured an opinion that possibly the scenes transpiring upon the earth may be
imprinted "upon the world round us," and added that it was not impossible "that there are
tests by which nature can bring out and fix these portraits as on a great canvas spread
over the material universe. Perhaps, too, they may never fade from that canvas, but
become specimens in the great gallery of eternity." This feeble, tentative prognosis should
not cause a smile, for when we consider the darkness of psychological perceptions in that
period, this must be regarded as almost an instance of psychic prevision. Again, among
the phantasmic images floating into the penumbral circle within which the zograph projects
its pictorial records, appeared that of a little pot-bellied sage with short legs, a chub-faced
head, and wearing hair only upon its rosy cheeks. Sliding with pensive countenance into
a huge armchair before his desk, he wrote the following words: "No .... no.... a shadow
never falls upon a wall without leaving thereupon a permanent trace, a trace which might
be made visible by resorting to proper processes .... A spectre is concealed on a silver or
glassy surface until, by our necromancy, we make it come forth into the visible world ....
Yes .... there exist everywhere the vestiges of all our acts, silhouettes of whatever we have
done!"
This was a paragraph from a work entitled, The Conflict between Religion and
Science. Curious to know how far these prophetic glimpses were shared by the
contemporaries of the writing figure, I drew into the vortex enough of the emanations of the
period to furnish a general view. I was fortunate enough to catch the image of a work
entitled Principles of Science by one Jevons, who quoting approvingly the opinions of
another sage, named Babbage, says: "Each particle of the existing matter must be a
register of all that has happened"; as both seemed, even in those ancient clays of
materialism, to previsionally apprehend that even unspoken thought once conceived,
displacing the particles of the brain and setting them in motion, scatters its ideas
throughout the universe, to impress them indelibly upon the eternal and boundless
expanse of ether. That such views, though unpopular among men of nascent science,
were the reverse among a very powerful, numerous and growing sect calling themselves
"Spiritualists," I infer from the reflection of a praise-worthy treatise entitled, The Unseen
Universe, which the authors - two British sages felt compelled in their modesty to publish
anonymously, doubtless to protect themselves from the overwhelming admirations and
caresses of an enthusiastic crowd of "medias." (This latter term must not he taken to
signify either mediocre persons nor any intervening substance, but to indicate a certain
class of individuals - mostly professional - of that century who kindly took upon themselves
the trouble of furnishing their organisms for the indiscriminate use of those who had none;
to wit, the larvae, those undomiciled etheric loungers who infest the electro-magnetic
currents nearer to the earth's surface, and whom we use as inferior messengers.)
These above-named sages, after having first constructed a hypothetical "bridge"
upon strictly architectural principles between the seen and the unseen universes,
immediately demolished it as their intuition unfolded, by confessing that "when energy is
carried from matter into ether, it is carried from the visible into the invisible universe, and
vice versa," in short, admitting that which is now practically taught by our demonstrators
of psycho-astrognosy to the young children in the lowest classes of our elementary
schools. We noticed further that The Unseen Universe of the two British philosophers was
immediately followed by another work, The Unseen World, written by a sage of the
Western Hemisphere, the Atlantean Continent (ancient America). He being an enthusiastic
Evolutionist and feeling impelled to prove to an ignorant and unappreciative public the
axiomatic anthropological truth that man evoluted from the race of the Aryan Hanuman,
made haste to practically demonstrate at least his own descent by aping the then popular
title, and making it a cover under which to give circulation to his own views.

[Here ends the MSS.]

- from Theosophia, Vol. 15, no. 1

---------------
KARMIC VISIONS *

[[This article was first printed by H.P. Blavatsky in Lucifer, for June, 1888. At the
end we append comments justified by current conditions, keyed to the text by numbers.
Editors, Notes.]]

Oh, sad no more! Oh, sweet No More!

Oh, strange No More!
By a mossed brook bank on a stone
I smelt a wild weed-flower alone;
There was a ringing in my ears,
And both my eyes gushed out with tears,
Surely all pleasant things had gone before,
Low buried fathom deep beneath with thee, NO MORE!
(Tennyson, "The Gem," 1831.)

I.
A camp filled with war-chariots, neighing horses and legions of long-haired soldiers
...
A regal tent, gaudy in its barbaric splendor. Its linen walls are weighed down under
the burden of arms. In its centre a raised seat covered with skins, and on it a stalwart,
savage-looking warrior. He passes in review prisoners of war brought in turn before him,
who are disposed of according to the whim of the heartless despot.
A new captive is now before him, and is addressing him with passionate
earnestness ... As he listens to her with suppressed passion in his manly, but fierce, cruel
face, the balls of his eyes become bloodshot and roll with fury. And as he bends forward
with fierce stare, his whole appearance - his matted locks hanging over the frowning brow,
his big-boned body with strong sinews, and the two large hands resting on the shield
placed upon the right knee - justifies the remark made in hardly audible whisper by a grey-
headed soldier to his neighbour:
"Little mercy shall the holy prophetess receive at the hands of Clovis!"
The captive, who stands between two Burgundian warriors, facing the ex-prince of
the Salians, now king of all the Franks, is an old woman with silver-white dishevelled hair,
hanging over skeleton-like shoulders. In spite of her great age, her tall figure is erect; and
the inspired black eyes look proudly and fearlessly into the cruel face of the treacherous
son of Gilderich.
"Aye, King," she says, in a loud, ringing voice. "Aye, thou art great and mighty now,
but thy days are numbered, and thou shalt reign but three summers longer. Wicked thou
wert born ... perfidious thou art to thy friends and allies, robbing more than one of his lawful
crown. Murderer of thy next-of-kin, thou who addest to the knife and spear in open
warfare, dagger, poison, and treason, beware how thou dealest with the servant of
Nerthus!" * ...
"Ha, ha, ha! ... old hag of Hell!" chuckles the King, with an evil, ominous sneer.
"Thou hast crawled out of the entrails of thy mother-goddess, truly. Thou fearest not my
wrath? It is well. But little need I fear thine empty imprecations ... I, a baptized Christian!"
 "So, so," replies the Sybil. "All know that Clovis has abandoned the gods of his
fathers; that he has lost all faith in the warning voice of the white horse of the Sun, and
that out of fear of the Allimani he went serving on his knees Remigius, the servant of the
Nazarene, at Reheims. But hast thou become any truer in thy new faith? Hast thou not
murdered in cold blood all thy brethren who trusted in thee, after, as well as before, thy
apostasy? Hast not thou plighted troth to Alaric, the King of the West Goths, and hast thou
not killed him by stealth, running thy spear into his back while he was bravely fighting an
enemy? And is it thy new faith and thy new gods that teach thee to be devising in thy black
soul even now foul means against Theodoric, who put thee down? ... Beware, Clovis,
beware! For now the gods of thy fathers have risen against thee! Beware, I say, for ..."
"Woman!" fiercely cries the King - "Woman, cease thy insane talk and answer my
question. Where is the treasure of the grove amassed by thy priests of Satan, and hidden
after they had been driven away by the Holy Cross? ... Thou alone knowest. Answer, or
by Heaven and Hell, I shall thrust thy evil tongue down thy throat for ever!"
She heeds not the threat, but goes on calmly and fearlessly as before, as if she had
not heard.
"... The gods say, Clovis, thou art accursed! ... Clovis, thou shalt be reborn among
thy present enemies, and suffer the tortures thou hast inflicted upon thy victims. All the
combined power and glory thou hast deprived them of shall be thine in prospect, yet thou
shalt never reach it! ... Thou shalt ..."
The prophetess never finished her sentence.
With a terrible oath the King, crouching like a wild beast on his skin-covered seat,
pounces upon her with the leap of a jaguar, and with one blow fells her to the ground. And
as he lifts his sharp murderous spear the "Holy One" of the Sun-worshipping tribe makes
the air ring with a last imprecation.
"I curse thee, enemy of Nerthus! May my agony be tenfold thine! ... May the Great
Law avenge ..."
The heavy spear falls, and, running through the victim's throat, nails the head to the
ground. A stream of hot crimson blood gushes from the gaping wound and covers king
and soldiers with indelible gore ...

--------------
* "The Nourishing" - the Earth, a Mother-Goddess, the most beneficent deity of the
ancient Germans.
---------------

II.
Time - the landmark of gods and men in the boundless field of Eternity, the
murderer of its offspring and of memory in mankind - time moves on with noiseless,
incessant step through aeons and ages ... Among millions of other Souls, a Soul-Ego is
reborn; for weal or for woe, who knoweth! Captive in its new human Form it grows with
it and together they become, at last, conscious of their existence.
Happy are the years of their blooming youth, unclouded with want or sorrow.
Neither knows aught of the Past nor of the Future. For them all is the joyful Present; for
the Soul-Ego is unaware that it had ever lived in other human tabernacles, it knows not that
it shall be again reborn, and it takes no thought of the morrow.
 Its Form is calm and content. It has hitherto given its Soul-Ego no heavy troubles.
Its happiness is due to the continuous mild serenity of its temper, to the affection it spreads
wherever it goes. For it is a noble Form, and its heart is full of benevolence. Never has
the Form startled its Soul-Ego with a too-violent shock, or otherwise disturbed the calm
placidity of its tenant.
Two score of years glide by like one short pilgrimage; a long walk through the sun-lit
paths of life, hedged by ever-blooming roses with no thorns. The rare sorrow that befall
the twin pair, Form and Soul, appear to them rather like the pale light of the cold northern
moon, whose beams throw into a deeper shadow all around the moon-lit objects, than as
the blackness of night, the night of hopeless sorrow and despair.
Son of a Prince, born to rule himself one day his father's kingdom; surrounded from
his cradle by reverence and honours; deserving of the universal respect and sure of the
love of all - what could the Soul-Ego desire more for the Form it dwelt in.
And so the Soul-Ego goes on enjoying existence in its tower of strength, gazing
quietly at the panorama of life ever changing before its two windows - the two kind blue
eyes of a loving and good man.

III.
One day an arrogant and boisterous enemy threatens the father's kingdom, and the
savage instincts of the warrior of old awaken in the Soul-Ego. It leaves its dream-land
amid the blossoms of life and causes its Ego of clay to draw the soldier's blade, assuring
him it is in defense of his country.
Prompting each other to action, they defeat the enemy and cover themselves with glory
and pride. They make the haughty foe bite the dust at their feet in supreme humiliation.
For this they are crowned by history with the unfading laurels of valour, which are those of
success. They make a footstool of the fallen enemy and transform their sire's little
kingdom into a great empire. Satisfied they could achieve no more for the present, they
return to seclusion and to the dreamland of their sweet home.
For three lustra more the Soul-Ego sits at its usual post, beaming out of its windows
on the world around. Over its head the sky is blue and the vast horizons are covered with
those seemingly unfading flowers that grow in the sunlight of health and strength. All looks
fair as a verdant mead in spring ...

IV.
But an evil day comes to all in the drama of being. It waits through the life of king
and beggar. It leaves traces on the history of every mortal born from woman, and it can
neither be scared away, entreated, nor propitiated. Health is a dewdrop that falls from the
heavens to vivify the blossoms on earth only during the morn of life, its spring and summer
... It has but a short duration and returns from whence it came - the invisible realms.

"How oft 'neath the bud that is brightest and fairest,

The seeds of the canker in embryo lurk!
How oft at the root of the flower that is rarest -
Secure in its ambush the worm is at work ..."
 The running sand which moves downward in the glass, wherein the hours of human
life are numbered, runs swifter. The worm has gnawed the blossom of health through its
heart. The strong body is found stretched one day on the thorny bed of pain.
The Soul-Ego beams no longer. It sits still and looks sadly out of what has become
its dungeon windows, on the world which is now rapidly being shrouded for it in the funeral
palls of suffering. Is it the eve of night eternal which is nearing?

V.
Beautiful are the resorts on the midland sea. An endless line of surf-beaten, bleak,
rugged rocks stretches, hemmed in between the golden sands of the coast and the deep
blue waters of the gulf. They offer their granite breast to the fierce blows of the north-west
wind and thus protect the dwellings of the rich that nestle at their foot on the inland side.
The half-ruined cottages on the open shore are the insufficient shelter of the poor. Their
squalid bodies are often crushed under the walls torn and washed down by wind and angry
wave. But they only follow the great law of the survival of the fittest. Why should they be
protected?
Lovely is the morning when the sun dawns with golden amber tints and its first rays
kiss the cliffs of the beautiful shore. Glad is the song of the lark, as, emerging from its
warm nest of herbs, it drinks the morning dew from the deep flower-cups; when the tip of
the rosebud thrills under the caress of the first sunbeam, and earth and heaven smile in
mutual greeting. Sad is the Soul-Ego alone as it gazes on awakening nature from the high
couch opposite the large bay-window.
How calm is the approaching noon as the shadow creeps steadily on the sundial
towards the hour of rest! Now the hot sun begins to melt the clouds in the limpid air and
the last shreds of the morning mist that lingers on the tops of the distant hills vanish in it.
All nature is prepared to rest at the hot and lazy hour of midday. The feathered tribes
cease their song; their soft, gaudy wings droop, and they hang their drowsy heads,
seeking refuge from the burning heat. A morning lark is busy nestling in the bordering
bushes under the clustering flowers of the pomegranate and the sweet bay of the
Mediterranean. The active songster has become voiceless.
"Its voice will resound as joyfully again tomorrow!" sighs the Soul-Ego, as it listens
to the dying buzzing of the insects on the verdant turf. "Shall ever mine?"
And now the flower-scented breeze hardly stirs the languid heads of the luxuriant
plants. A solitary palm-tree, growing out of the cleft of a moss-covered rock, next catches
the eye of the Soul-Ego. Its once upright, cylindrical trunk has been twisted out of shape
and half-broken by the nightly blasts of the north-west winds. And as it stretches wearily
its drooping feathery arms, swayed to and fro in the blue pellucid air, its body trembles and
threatens to break in two at the first new gust that may arise.
"And then, the severed part will fall into the sea, and the once stately palm will be
no more," soliloquises the Soul-Ego as it gazes sadly out of its windows.
Everything returns to life in the cool, old bower at the hour of sunset. The shadows
on the sun-dial become with every moment thicker, and animate nature awakens busier
than ever in the cooler hours of approaching night. Birds and insects chirrup and buzz their
last evening hymns around the tall and still powerful Form, as it paces slowly and wearily
along the gravel walk. And now its heavy gaze falls wistfully on the azure bosom of the
tranquil sea. The gulf sparkles like a gem-studded carpet of blue-velvet in the farewell
dancing sunbeams, and smiles like a thoughtless, drowsy child, weary of tossing about.
Further on, calm and serene in its perfidious beauty, the open sea stretches far and wide
the smooth mirror of its cool waters - salt and bitter as human tears. It lies in its
treacherous repose like a gorgeous, sleeping monster, watching over the unfathomed
mystery of its dark abysses. Truly the monumentless cemetery of the millions sun in its
depths ...

"Without a grave,
Unknell'd, uncoffined and unknown ..."

while the sorry relic of the once noble Form pacing yonder, once that its hour strikes and
the deep-voiced bells toll the knell for the departed soul, shall be laid out in state and
pomp. Its dissolution will be announced by millions of trumpet voices. Kings, princes and
the mighty ones of the earth will be present at its obsequies, or will send their
representatives with sorrowful faces and condoling messages to those left behind ... "One
point gained, over those 'uncoffined and unknown,"' is the bitter reflection of the Soul-Ego.
Thus glides past one day after the other; and as swift-winged Time urges his flight,
every vanishing hour destroying some thread in the tissue of life, the Soul-Ego is gradually
transformed in its views of things and men. Flitting between two eternities, far away from
its birthplace, solitary among its crowd of physicians, and attendants, the Form is drawn
with every day nearer to its Spirit-Soul. Another light unapproached and unapproachable
in days of joy, softly descends upon the weary prisoner. It sees now that which it had
never perceived before ...

VI.
How grand, how mysterious are the spring nights on the seashore when the winds
are chained and the elements lulled! A solemn silence reigns in nature. Alone the silvery,
scarcely audible ripple of the wave, as it runs caressingly over the moist-sand, kissing
shells and pebbles on its up and down journey, reaches the ear like the regular soft
breathing of a sleeping bosom. How small, how insignificant and helpless feels man,
during these quiet hours, as he stands between the two gigantic magnitudes, the star-hung
dome above, and the slumbering earth below. Heaven and earth are plunged in sleep, but
their souls are awake, and they confabulate, whispering one to the other mysteries
unspeakable. It is then that the occult side of Nature lifts her dark veils for us, and reveals
secrets we would vainly seek to extort from her during the day. The firmament, so distant,
so far away from earth, now seems to approach and bend over her. The sidereal
meadows exchange embraces with their more humble sisters of the earth - the daisy-
decked valleys and the green slumbering fields. The heavenly dome falls prostrate into the
arms of the great quiet sea; and the millions of stars that stud the former peep into and
bathe in every lakelet and pool. To the grief-furrowed soul those twinkling orbs are the
eyes of angels. They look down with ineffable pity on the suffering of mankind. It is not
the night dew that falls on the sleeping flowers, but sympathetic tears that drop from those
orbs, at the sight of the Great HUMAN SORROW ...
 Yes: sweet and beautiful is a southern night. But -
"When silently we watch the bed, by the taper's flickering light,
When all we love is fading fast - how terrible is night ..."

VII.
Another day is added to the series of buried days. The far green hills, and the
fragrant boughs of the pomegranate blossom have melted in the mellow shadows of the
night, and both sorrow and joy are plunged in the lethargy of soul-resting sleep. Every
noise has died out in the royal gardens, and no voice or sound is heard in that over-
powering stillness.
Swift-winged dreams descend from the laughing stars in motley crowds, and landing
upon earth disperse among mortals and immortals, amid animals and men. They hover
over the sleepers, each attracted by its affinity and kind; dreams of joy and hope, balmy
and innocent visions, terrible and awesome sights seen with sealed eyes, sensed by the
soul; some instilling happiness and consolation, others causing sobs to heave the sleeping
bosom, tears and mental torture, all and one preparing unconsciously to the sleepers their
waking thoughts of the morrow. Even in sleep the Soul-Ego finds no rest.
Hot and feverish its body tosses about in restless agony. For it, the time of happy
dreams is now a vanished shadow, a long bygone recollection. Through the mental agony
of the soul, there lies a transformed man. Through the physical agony of the frame, there
flutters in it a fully awakened Soul. The veil of illusion has fallen off from the cold idols of
the world, and the vanities and emptiness of fame and wealth stand bare, often hideous,
before its eyes. The thoughts of the Soul fall like dark shadows on the cognitative faculties
of the fast disorganizing body, haunting the thinker daily, nightly, hourly ...
The sight of his snorting steed pleases him no longer. The recollections of guns and
banners wrested from the enemy; of cities razed, of trenches, cannons and tents, of an
array of conquered spoils now stirs but little his national pride. Such thoughts move him
no more, and ambition has become powerless to awaken in his aching heart the haughty
recognition of any valorous deed of chivalry. Visions of another kind now haunt his weary
days and long sleepless nights ...
What he now sees is a throng of bayonets clashing against each other in a mist of
smoke and blood; thousands of mangled corpses covering the ground, torn and cut to
shreds by the murderous weapons devised by science and civilization, blessed to success
by the servants of his God. What he now dreams of are bleeding, wounded and dying
men, with missing limbs and matted locks, wet and socked with gore ...

VIII.
A hideous dream detaches itself from a group of passing visions, and alights heavily
on his aching chest. The night-mare shows him men, expiring on the battlefield with a
curse on those who led them to their destruction. Every pang in his own wasting body
brings to him in dream the recollection of pangs still worse, of pangs suffered through and
for him. He sees and feels the torture of the fallen millions, who die after long hours of
terrible mental and physical agony; who expire in forest and plain, in stagnant ditches by
the road-side, in pools of blood under a sky made black with smoke. His eyes are once
more riveted to the torrents of blood, every drop of which represents a tear of despair, a
heart-rent cry, a life-long sorrow. He hears again the thrilling sighs of desolation, and the
shrill cries ringing through mount, forest and valley. He sees the old mothers who have lost
the light of their souls; families, the hand that fed them. He beholds widowed young wives
thrown on the wide, cold world, and beggared orphans wailing in the streets by the
thousands. He finds the young daughters of his bravest old soldiers exchanging mourning
garments for the gaudy frippery of prostitution, and the Soul-Ego shudders in the sleeping
Form ... His heart is rent by the groans of the famished; his eyes blinded by the smoke of
burning hamlets, of homes destroyed, of towns and cities in smoldering ruins ...
And in his terrible dream, he remembers that moment of insanity in his soldier's life,
when standing over a heap of the dead and the dying, waving in his right hand a naked
sword red to its hilt with smoking blood, and in his left, the colours rent from the hand of
the warrior expiring at his feet, he had sent in a stentorian voice praises to the throne of
the Almighty, thanksgiving for the victory just obtained!...
He starts in his sleep and awakes in horror. A great shudder shakes his frame like
an aspen leaf, and sinking back on his pillows, sick at the recollection, he hears a voice -
the voice of the Soul-Ego - saying in him:
"Fame and victory are vainglorious words ... Thanksgiving and prayers for lives
destroyed - wicked lies and blasphemy!" "What have they brought thee or to thy
fatherland, those blood victories!" ...whispers the Soul in him. "A population clad in iron
armour," it replies. "Two score millions of men dead now to all spiritual aspiration and
Soul-life. A people, henceforth deaf to the peaceful voice of the honest citizen's duty,
averse to a life of peace, blind to the arts and literature, indifferent to all but lucre and
ambition. What is thy future Kingdom, now? A legion of war-puppets as units, a great wild
beast in their collectivity. A beast that, like the sea yonder, slumbers gloomily now, but to
fall with the more fury on the first enemy that is indicated to it. Indicated, by whom? It is
as though a heartless, proud Fiend, assuming sudden authority, incarnate Ambition and
Power, had clutched with iron hand the minds of a whole country. By what wicked
enchantment when their ancestors, the yellow-haired Suevi, and the treacherous Franks
roamed about in their warlike spirit, thirsting to kill, to decimate and subject each other. By
what infernal powers has this been accomplished? Yet the transformation has been
produced and it is as undeniable as the fact that alone the Fiend rejoices and boasts of the
transformation effected. The whole world is hushed in breathless expectation. Not a wife
or mother, but is haunted in her dreams by the black and ominous storm-cloud that
overhangs the whole of Europe. The cloud is approaching ... It comes nearer and nearer
... Oh woe and horror! ... I foresee once more for earth the suffering I have already
witnessed. I read the fatal destiny upon the brow of the flower of Europe's youth! But if
I live and have the power, never, oh never, shall my country take part in it again! No, no,
I will not see -

'The glutton death gorged with devouring lives ...'

"I will not hear -
'... robb'd mothers' shrieks
While from men's piteous wounds and horrid gashes
The lab'ring life flows faster than the blood!'..."
IX.
Firmer and firmer grows in the Soul-Ego the feeling of intense hatred for the terrible
butchery called war; deeper and deeper does it impress its thoughts upon the Form that
holds it captive. Hope awakens at times in the aching breast and colours the long hours
of solitude and meditation; like the morning ray that dispels the dusky shades of shadowy
despondency, it lightens the long hours of lonely thought. But as the rainbow is now
always the dispeller of the storm-clouds but often only a refraction of the setting sun on a
passing cloud, so the moments of dreamy hope are generally followed by hours of still
blacker despair. Why, oh why, thou mocking Nemesis, hast thou thus purified and
enlightened, among all the sovereigns on this earth, him, whom thou has made helpless,
speechless and powerless? Why hast thou kindled the flame of holy brotherly love for man
in the breast of one whose heart already feels the approach of the icy hand of death and
decay, whose strength is steadily deserting him, and whose very life is melting away, like
foam on the crest of a breaking wave?
And now the hand of Fate is upon the couch of pain. The hour for the fulfilment of
nature's law has struck at last. The old Sire is no more; the younger man is henceforth
a monarch. Voiceless and helpless, he is nevertheless a potentate, the autocratic master
of millions of subjects. Cruel Fate has erected a throne for him over an open grave, and
beckons him to glory and to power. Devoured by suffering, he finds himself suddenly
crowned. The wasted Form is snatched from its warm nest amid the palm groves and the
roses; it is whirled from balmy south to the frozen north, where waters harden into crystal
groves and "waves on waves in solid mountains rise;" whither he now speeds to reign and
- speeds to die.

X.
Onward, onward rushes the black, fire-vomiting monster, devised by man to partially
conquer Space and Time. Onward, and further with every moment from the health-giving,
balmy South flies the train. Like the Dragon of the Fiery Head, it devours distance and
leaves behind it a long trail of smoke, sparks and stench. And as its long, tortuous, flexible
body, wriggling and hissing like a gigantic dark reptile, glides swiftly, crossing mountain and
moor, forest, tunnel and plain, its swinging monotonous motion lulls the worn-out occupant,
the weary and heartsore Form, to sleep ...
In the moving palace the air is warm and balmy. The luxurious vehicle is full of
exotic plants; and from a large cluster of sweet-smelling flowers arises together with its
scent the fairy Queen of dreams, followed by her band of joyous elves. The Dryads laugh
in their leafy bowers as the train glides by, and send floating upon the breeze dreams of
green solitudes and fairy visions. The rumbling noise of wheels is gradually transformed
into the roar of a distant waterfall, to subside into the silvery trills of a crystalline brook. The
Soul-Ego takes its flight into Dreamland ...
It travels through aeons of time, and lives, and feels, and breathes under the most
contrasted forms and personages. It is now a giant, a Yotun, who rushes into Muspelheim,
where Surtur rules with his flaming sword.
It battles fearlessly against a host of monstrous animals, and puts them to flight with
a single wave of its mighty hand. Then it sees itself in the Northern Mistworld, it penetrates
under the guise of a brave bowman into Helheim, the Kingdom of the Dead, where a Black
Elf reveals to him a series of its lives and mysterious concatenation. "Why does man
suffer?" enquires the Soul-Ego. "Because he would become one," is the mocking answer.
Forthwith, the Soul-Ego stands in the presence of the holy goddess, Saga. She sings to
it of the valorous deeds of the Germanic heroes, of their virtues and their vices. She shows
the soul the mighty warriors fallen by the hands of many of its past Forms, on battle-field,
as also in the sacred security of home. It sees itself under the personages of maidens, and
of women, of young and old men, and of children ... It feels itself dying more than once in
those forms. It expires as a hero-Spirit, and is led by the pitying Walkyries from the bloody
battlefield back to the abode of Bliss under the shining foliage of Walhalla. It heaves its
last sigh in another form, and is hurled on to the cold, hopeless plane of remorse. It closes
its innocent eyes in its last sleep, as an infant, and is forthwith carried along by the
beauteous Elves of Light into another body - the doomed generator of Pain and Suffering.
In each case the mists of death are dispersed, and pass from the eyes of the Soul-Ego,
no sooner does it cross the Black Abyss that separates the Kingdom of the Living from the
Realm of the Dead. Thus "Death" becomes but a meaningless word for it, a vain sound.
In every instance the beliefs of the Mortal take objective life and shape for the Immortal,
as soon as it spans the Bridge. Then they begin to fade, and disappear ...
"What is my Past?" enquires the Soul-Ego of Urd, the eldest of the Norn Sisters.
"Why do I suffer?"
A long parchment is unrolled in her hand, and reveals a long series of mortal beings,
in each of whom the Soul-Ego recognizes one of its dwellings. When it comes to the last
but one, it sees a blood-stained hand doing endless deeds of cruelty and treachery, and
it shudders ... Guileless victims arise around it, and cry to Orlog for vengeance. "What is
my immediate Present?" asks the dismayed Soul of Werdanti, the second sister.
"The decree of Orlog is on thyself!" is the answer. "But Orlog does not pronounce
them blindly, as foolish mortals have it."
"What is my Future?" asks despairingly of Skuld, the third Norn Sister, the Soul-Ego.
"Is it to be for ever dark with tears, and bereaved of Hope?"...
No answer is received. But the Dreamer feels whirled through space, and suddenly
the scene changes. The Soul-Ego finds itself on a, to it, long familiar spot, the royal bower,
and the seat opposite the broken palm-tree. Before it stretches, as formerly, the vast blue
expanse of waters, glassing the rocks and cliffs; there, too, is the lonely palm, doomed to
quick disappearance. The soft mellow voice of the incessant ripple of the light waves now
assumes human speech, and reminds the Soul-Ego of the vows formed more than once
on that spot. And the Dreamer repeats with enthusiasm the words pronounced before.
"Never, oh, never shall I, henceforth, sacrifice for vainglorious fame or ambition a
single son of my motherland! Our world is so full of unavoidable misery, so poor with joys
and bliss, and shall I add to its cup of bitterness, the fathomless ocean of woe and blood,
called WAR? Avaunt, such thought! ... Oh, never more ..."

XI.
Strange sight and change ... The broken palm which stands before the mental sight
of the Soul-Ego suddenly lifts up its drooping trunk and becomes erect and verdant as
before. Still greater bliss, the Soul-Ego finds himself as strong and as healthy as he ever
was. In a stentorian voice he sings to the four winds a loud and a joyous song. He feels
a wave of joy and bliss in him, and seems to know why he is happy.
He is suddenly transported into what looks a fairy-like Hall, lit with most glowing
lights and built of materials, the like of which had never seen before. He perceives the
heirs and descendants of all the monarchs of the globe gathered in that Hall in one happy
family. They wear no longer the insignia of royalty, but, as he seems to know, those who
are the reigning Princes, reign by virtue of their personal merits. It is the greatness of
heart, the nobility of character, their superior qualities of observation, wisdom, love of Truth
and Justice, that have raised them to the dignity of heirs to the Thrones, of Kings and
Queens. The crowns, by authority and the grace of God, have been thrown off, and they
now rule by "the grace of divine humanity," chosen unanimously by recognition of their
fitness to rule, and the reverential love of their voluntary subjects.
All around seems strangely changed. Ambition, grasping greediness or envy -
miscalled Patriotism - exist no longer. Cruel selfishness has made room for just altruism,
and cold indifference to the wants of the millions no longer finds favour in the sight of the
favoured few. Useless luxury, sham pretences - social and religious - all has disappeared.
No more wars are possible, for the armies are abolished. Soldiers have turned into
diligent, hard-working tillers of the ground, and the whole globe echoes his song in
rapturous joy. Kingdoms and countries around him live like brothers. The great, the
glorious hour has come at last! That which he hardly dared to hope and think about in the
stillness of his long, suffering nights, is now realized. The great curse is taken off, and the
world stands absolved and redeemed in its regeneration!...
Trembling with rapturous feelings, his heart overflowing with love and philanthropy,
he rises to pour out a fiery speech that would become historic, when suddenly he finds his
body gone, or, rather, it is replaced by another body ... Yes, it is no longer the tall, noble
Form with which he is familiar, but the body of somebody else, of whom he as yet knows
nothing ... Something dark comes between him and a great dazzling light, and he sees the
shadow of the face of a gigantic timepiece on the ethereal waves. On its ominous dial he
reads:

"NEW ERA: 970,995 YEARS SINCE THE INSTANTANEOUS DESTRUCTION BY

PNEUMO-DYNO-VRIL OF THE LAST 2,000,000 OF SOLDIERS IN THE FIELD, ON THE
WESTERN PORTION OF THE GLOBE. 971,000 SOLAR YEARS SINCE THE
SUBMERSION OF THE EUROPEAN CONTINENTS AND ISLES. SUCH ARE THE
DECREE OF ORLOG AND THE ANSWER OF SKULD ..."

He makes a strong effort and - is himself again. Prompted by the Soul-Ego to

REMEMBER and ACT in conformity, he lifts his arms to Heaven and swears in the face of
all nature to preserve peace to the end of his days - in his own country, at least.
-------
A distant beating of drums and long cries of what he fancies in his dream are the
rapturous thanksgivings, for the pledge just taken. An abrupt shock, loud clatter, and, as
the eyes open, the Soul-Ego looks out through them in amazement. The heavy gaze
meets the respectful and solemn face of the physician offering the usual draught. The train
stops. He rises from his couch weaker and wearier than ever, to see around him endless
lines of troops armed with a new and yet more murderous weapon of destruction - ready
for the battlefield.

- SANJNA

- From Theosophical Notes, October, 1954

--------------------

H.P.B.'S LAST MESSAGE TO AMERICAN THEOSOPHISTS

(In the anniversary month of the birth of H.P.B. we are reprinting her ever-timely last
message to the Boston Convention of members of the Theosophical Society in America.
This message was dated April 15th, 1891).

For the third time since my return to Europe in 1885, I am able to send to my
brethren in Theosophy and fellow citizens of the United States a delegate from England
to attend the annual Theosophical Convention and speak by word of mouth my greeting
and warm congratulations. Suffering in body as I am continually, the only consolation that
remains to me is to hear of the progress of the Holy Cause to which my health and strength
have been given; but to which, now that these are going, I can offer only my passionate
devotion and never-weakening good wishes for its success and welfare. The news
therefore that comes from America, mail after mail, telling of new Branches and of well-
considered and patiently worked-out plans for the advancement of Theosophy cheers and
gladdens me with its evidences of growth, more than words can tell. Fellow Theosophists,
I am proud of your noble work in the New World; Sisters and Brothers of America, I thank
and I bless you for your unremitting labors for the common cause so dear to us all.
Let me remind you all once more that such work is now more than ever needed.
The period which we have now reached in the cycle that will close between 1897-98 is, and
will continue to be, one of great conflict and continued strain. If the T.S. can hold through
it, good; if not, while Theosophy will remain unscathed, the Society will perish - perchance
most ingloriously - and the World will suffer. I fervently hope that I may not see such a
disaster in my present body. The critical nature of the stage on which we have entered is
as well known to the forces that fight against us as to those that fight on our side. No
opportunity will be lost of sowing dissension, of taking advantage of mistaken and false
moves, of instilling doubt, of augmenting difficulties, of breathing suspicions, so that by any
and every means the unity of the Society may be broken and the ranks of our Fellows
thinned and thrown into disarray. Never has it been more necessary for the members of
the T.S. to lay to heart the old parable of the bundle of sticks than it is at the present time;
divided, they will inevitably be broken, one by one; united, there is no force on earth able
to destroy our Brotherhood. Now I have marked with pain a tendency among you, as
among the Theosophists in Europe and India, to quarrel over trifles, and to allow your very
devotion to the cause of Theosophy to lead you into disunion. Believe me, that apart from
such natural tendency, owing to the inherent imperfections of Human Nature, advantage
is often taken by our ever-watchful enemies of your noblest qualities to betray and to
mislead you. Sceptics will laugh at this statement, and even some of you may put small
faith in the actual existence of the terrible forces of these mental, hence subjective and
invisible, yet withal living and potent influences around all of us. But there they are, and
I know of more than one among you who have felt them, and have actually been forced to
acknowledge these extraneous mental pressures. On those of you who are unselfishly and
sincerely devoted to the Cause, they will produce little, if any, impression. On some others,
those who place their personal pride higher than their duty to the T.S., higher even than
their pledge to their divine SELF, the effect is generally disastrous. Self-watchfulness is
never more necessary than when a personal wish to lead, and wounded vanity, dress
themselves in the peacock's feathers of devotion and altruistic work; but at the present
crisis of the Society a lack of self-control and watchfulness may become fatal in every
case. But these diabolical attempts of our powerful enemies - the irreconcilable foes of the
truths now being given out and practically asserted - may be frustrated. If every Fellow in
the Society were content to be an impersonal force for good, careless of praise or blame
so long as he subserved the purposes of the Brotherhood, the progress made would
astonish the World and place the Ark of the T.S. out of danger. Take for your motto in
conduct during the coming year, "Peace with all who love Truth in sincerity," and the
Convention of 1892 will bear eloquent witness to the strength that is born of unity.
Your position as the fore-runners of the sixth sub-race of the fifth root-race has its
own special perils as well as its special advantages. Psychism, with all its allurements and
all its dangers, is necessarily developing among you, and you must beware lest the Psychic
out-runs the Manasic and Spiritual development. Psychic capacities held perfectly under
control, checked and directed by the Manasic principle, are valuable aids in development.
But these capacities running riot, controlling instead of controlled, using instead of being
used, lead the Student into the most dangerous delusions and the certainty of moral
destruction. Watch therefore carefully this development, inevitable in your race and
evolution-period so that it may finally work for good and not for evil; and receive, in
advance, the sincere and potent blessings of Those whose goodwill will never fail you, if
you do not fail yourselves.
Here in England I am glad to be able to report to you that steady and rapid progress
is being made. Annie Besant will give you details of our work, and will tell you of the
growing strength and influence of our Society; the reports which she bears from the
European and British Sections speak for themselves in their record of activities. The
English character, difficult to reach, but solid and tenacious when once aroused, adds to
our Society a valuable factor, and there are being laid in England strong and firm
foundations for the T.S. of the twentieth century. Here, as with you, attempts are being
successfully made to bring to bear the influence of Hindu on English thought, and many
of our Hindu brethren are now writing for Lucifer short and clear papers on Indian
philosophies. As it is one of the tasks of the T.S. to draw together the East and West, so
that each may supply the qualities lacking in the other and develop more fraternal feelings
among nations so various, this literary intercourse will, I hope, prove of the utmost service
in Aryanising Western thought.
The mention of Lucifer reminds me that the now assured position of that magazine
is very largely due to the help rendered at a critical moment by the American Fellows. As
my one absolutely unfettered medium of communication with Theosophists all over the
World, its continuance was of grave importance to the whole Society. In its pages, month
by month, I give such public teaching as is possible on Theosophical doctrines and so
carry on the most important of our Theosophical work. The magazine now just covers its
expenses, and if Lodges and individual Fellows would help in increasing its circulation, it
would become more widely useful than it is at the present time. Therefore, while thinking
from the bottom of my heart all those who so generously helped to place the magazine on
a solid foundation, I should be glad to see a larger increase in the number of regular
subscribers, for I regard these as my pupils, among whom I shall find some who will show
the capacity for receiving further instruction.
And now I have said all. I am not sufficiently strong to write a more lengthy
message, and there is the less need for me to do so as my friend and trusted messenger
Annie Besant, she who is my right arm here, will be able to explain to you my wishes more
fully and better than I can write them. After all, every wish, and thought I can utter are
summed up in this one sentence, the never-dormant wish of my heart, "Be Theosophists,
work for Theosophy!" Theosophy first, and Theosophy last; for its practical realization
alone can save the Western world from that selfish and unbrotherly feeling that now divides
race from race, one nation from the other; and from that hatred of class and social
considerations that are the curse and disgrace of so-called Christian peoples. Theosophy
alone can save it from sinking entirely into that mere luxurious materialism in which it will
decay and putrefy as civilizations have done. In your hands, brothers, is placed in trust the
welfare of the coming century; and great as is the trust, so great is also the responsibility.
My own span of life may not be long, and if any of you have learned aught from my
teachings, or have gained by my help a glimpse of the True Light, I ask you, in return, to
strengthen the Cause by the triumph of which that True Light, made still brighter and more
glorious through your individual and collective efforts, will lighten the World, and thus to let
me see, before I part with this worn-out body, the stability of the Society secured.
May the blessings of the past and present great Teachers rest upon you. From
myself accept collectively the assurance of my true never-wavering fraternal feelings, and
the sincere, heartfelt thanks for the work done by all the workers.
From their servant to the last,
- H. P. BLAVATSKY .'.

- Canadian Theosophist, July 15, 1948

----------------------------

Lest We Forget!
- From the Writings of H.P. Blavatsky

(Excerpts from `A Year of Theosophy.' The Theosophist, Vol. ii, No. 4, January,
1884, pp. 115-116)

Many misconceptions prevail as to the nature and objects of the Theosophical

Society. Some....fancy it is a religious sect; many believe it is composed of atheists; a
third party are convinced that its sole object is the study of occult science and the initiation
of green hands into the Sacred Mysteries. If we have had one we certainly have had an
hundred intimations from strangers that they were ready to join at once if they could be
sure that they would shortly be endowed with siddhis, or the power to work occult
phenomena .... So then Iet us again say: - (1) The Theosophical Society teaches no new
religion, aims to destroy no old one, promulgates no creed of its own, follows no religious
leader, and, distinctly and emphatically, is not a sect, nor ever was one. It admits worthy
people of any religion to membership, on the condition of mutual tolerance and mutual help
to discover truth. The Founders have never consented to be taken as religious leaders,
they repudiate any such idea, and they have not taken and will not take disciples. (2) The
Society is not composed of atheists, nor is it any more conducted in the interests of
atheism than in that of deism or polytheists. It has members of almost every religion, and
is on equally fraternal terms with each and all. (3) Not a majority, nor even a respectable
minority, numerically speaking, of its fellows are students of occult science or ever expect
to become adepts. All who cared for information leave been told what sacrifices are
necessary in order to gain the higher knowledge, and few are in a position to make one
tenth of them. He who joins our Society gains no siddhis by that act, nor is there any
certainty that he will even see the phenomena, let alone meet with an adept. Some have
enjoyed both those opportunities and so the possibility of the phenomena and the
existence of "Siddhas" do not rest upon our unverified assertions. Those who have seen
things have perhaps been allowed to do so on account of some personal merit detected
by those who showed them the siddhis, or for other reasons known to themselves and over
which we have no control.
For thousands of years these things have, whether rightly or wrongly, been guarded
as sacred mysteries, and Asiatics at least need not be reminded that often even after
months or years of the most faithful and assiduous personal service, the disciples of a Yogi
have not been shown "miracles" or endowed with powers. What folly, therefore, to imagine
that by entering any society one might make a short cut to adeptship! The weary traveler
along a strange road is grateful even to find a guidepost that shows him his way to his
place of destination. Our Society, if it does nauglit else, performs this kindly office for the
searcher after Troth. And it is much.
Before closing, one word must be said in correction of an unfortunate impression
that has got abroad. Because our pamphlet of Rules mentions a relationship between our
Society and certain proficients in Occult Science, or "Mahatmas," many persons fancy that
these great men are personally engaged in the practical direction of its affairs; and that,
in such a case, being primarily responsible for the several mistakes that have occurred in
the admission of unworthy members and in other matters, they can neither be so wise, so
prudent, or so far-seeing as is claimed for them. It is also imagined that the President and
Corresponding Secrctary (especially the latter) are, if not actually Yogis and Mahatmas
themselves, at least persons of ascetic habits, who assume superior moral excellence.
Neither of these suppositions is correct, and both are positively absurd. The administration
of the Society is, unless in exceptionally important crises, left to the recognized officials,
and they are wholly responsible for all the errors that are made . . .
(Excerpts from 'The Shylocks of Lahore,' The Theosophist, Vol. iv, No. 8,
Supplement, May, 1883, pp. 9-11)

. . . our Society . . . has one general, and several - if not minor at least less
prominent aims. The earnest pursuit of one of the latter - occult science in this case - far
from being rearded as the common duty and the work of all, is limited .. . to a very small
faction of the Society, its pursuit resting with the personal tastes and aspirations of the
members. As to the former - the chief aim of the Theosophical Fraternity - it is hardly
necessary to remind any Fellow of what it is. Our fundamental object is Universal
Brotherhood, kind feelings and moral help proffered to all and every brother, whatever his
creed and views. Based upon the conviction that a brotherhood of all faiths and
denominations, composed of Theists and Atheists, Christians and Gentiles throughout the
world, might without anyone surrendering his particular opinion be united into one strong
Society or Fraternity for mutual help, and having one and same purpose in view, i.e., the
relentless, though at the same time calm and judicious pursuit of Truth wherever found,
especially in Religion and Science - it is the first duty of our Society as a united body to
extirpate every weed that overgrows and stifles that truth which only can be one and entire.
The best recognized way to make both the psychological arid physical sciences, as all
sectarian and dogmatic religions, yield their respective verities, is, in construing them, to
take the middle path between the extremes of opinion. The men of science - especially
the extreme materialists - being often as bigoted in their denial, and as intolerant of
contradiction as the theologians are in their self-assertions and assumed infallibility, there
is not much choice left in the treatment of, or the attitude to be chosen toward both.
Nevertheless, there being an abyss between the methods and claims of science and
religion, the former being based upon close observation, experiment, and the mathematical
demonstration of what it does know and the latter resting merely upon faith or anti-
empirical observations and personal emotional deductions therefrom, very naturally - and
though they have to be tolerated and outwardly respected on the principles of mutual
indulgence for our respective shortcomings and fallibility of human opinion - the religious
and various personal arid sectarian beliefs of our Fellows cannot yet be always taken into
consideration or exalted above plain facts and scientific demonstrations. In other words,
ready as we all may and must be to avoid hurling the religious feelings and even the
prejudices of our brothers, we cannot promise to he ever foregoing what in our honest
convictions is truth, lest we should inadvertently expose the error of a brother, much as it
may appear to him also truth.
The greatest, as the most mischievous feature of fanaticism - the synonym in most
cases of insane conceit and a selfish reverence for one's personal conclusions and self-
assertions regarded as infallible - is the fanatical persecution of opinions and persons
holding them whenever they clash with the preconceived views of the persecutors. And,
since the latter have always proved an impediment to both progress and truth, hence - the
Theosophical Society is pledged collectively to wage incessant war, combat and denounce
every such outburst of bigotry and intolerance - the most fiendish, injurious and degrading
of all feelings. Thus only can the jealousy, hatred and mutual persecution among sects
which, to the distraction of undetermined yet serious minded people, and the scandal of
those who accept only facts upon a scientific basis, now so plentifully abound - be
gradually destroyed and, perhaps, extinguished forever.
Has the above programme been carried out as originally intended by either our
Branches or individual members? With the exception of a few self-sacrificing devoted
Fellows, it certainly has not even been attempted, since our best "active" fellows while
carrying out one part of the prescribed programme, on the principle of "live and let live"
they yet keep silent . . . before the manifestations of individual and sectarian fanaticism .
. . lndeed, the Biblical parable of the sower and the seeds applies perfectly in the case in
hand. Sown broadcast, the seeds of membership fell in some (happily few) cases into
queer places and brought forth as queer fruits. "Some seeds fell by tile wayside and the
fowls (our opponents) came and devoured them up"; . . . some "fell upon stony places,"
and having not deepness of earth, forthwith they sprung with promise and enthusiasm, and
as they had no root in them, "they withered away."
Nevertheless, and we may say they are in the majority, some of the "seeds" falling
into really good ground, they brought forth fruit "some thirty-fold, some sixty-fold and some
hundred-fold." Such members are the pride and glory of the Society. And because they
are true and honest, unflinchingly devoted and ready to die for that which they know to be
truth - though as real Theosophists they neither force nor proclaim to unwilling ears their
faith and knowledge, they are hated and persecuted by their own brother-members who
have remained as bigoted as before they joined our Society. These are the members born
from the seeds that "fell among thorns, and the thorns sprung up and choked them" - THE
THORNS OF BITTER SECTARIANISM AND BIGOTRY.

- From Theosophia, July-August, 1946

----------------

LITERARY JOTTINGS
On Criticism, Authorities, and Other Matters
by An Unpopular Philosopher

Theosophists and editors of Theosophical periodicals are constantly warned, by the

prudent and the faint hearted, to beware of giving offence to "authorities," whether scientific
or social. Public Opinion, they urge, is the most dangerous of all foes. Criticism of it is
fatal, we are told. Criticism can hardly hope to make the person or subject so discussed
amend or become amended. Yet it gives offence to the many, and makes Theosophists
hateful. "Judge not, if thou wilt not be judged," is the habitual warning.
It is precisely because Theosophists would themselves be judged and court
impartial criticism, that they begin by rendering that service to their fellowmen. Mutual
criticism is a most healthy policy, and helps to establish final and definite rules in life -
practical, not merely theoretical. We have had enough of theories. The Bible is full of
wholesome advice, yet few are the Christians who have ever applied any of its ethical
injunctions to their daily lives. If one criticism is hurtful so is another; so also is every
innovation, or even the presentation of some old thing under a new aspect, as both have
necessarily to clash with the views of this or another "authority". I maintain, on the
contrary, that criticism is the great benefactor of thought in general; and still more so of
those men who never think for themselves but rely in everything upon acknowledged
"authorities" and social routine.
For what is an "authority" upon any question, after all? No more, really, than a light
streaming upon a certain object through one single, more or less wide, chink, and
illuminating it, from one side only. Such light, besides being
the faithful reflector of the personal views of but one man - very often merely that of his
special hobby - can never help in the examination of a question or a subject from all its
aspects and sides. Thus, the authority appealed to will often prove but of little help, yet the
profane, who attempts to present the given question or object under another aspect and
in a different light, is forthwith hooted for his great audacity. Does he not attempt to upset
solid "authorities," and fly in the face of respectable and time-honoured routine thought?
Friends and foes! Criticism is the sole salvation from intellectual stagnation. It is the
beneficent goad which stimulates to life and action - hence to healthy changes - the heavy
ruminants called Routine and Prejudice, in private as in social life. Adverse opinions are
like conflicting winds which brush from the quiet surface of a lake the green scum that
tends to settle upon still waters. If every clear stream of independent thought, which runs
through the field of life outside the old grooves traced by Public Opinion, had to be arrested
and to come to a standstill, the results would prove very sad. The streams would no longer
feed the common pond called Society, and its waters would become still more stagnant
than they are. Result: it is the most orthodox "authorities" of the social pond who would
be the first to get sucked down still deeper into its ooze and slime.
Things, even as they now stand, present no very bright outlook as regards progress
and social reforms. In this last quarter of the century it is women alone who have achieved
any visible beneficent progress. Men, in their ferocious egoism and sex-privilege, have
fought hard, but have been defeated on almost every line. Thus, the younger generations
of women look hopeful enough. They will hardly swell the future ranks of stiff-necked and
cruel Mrs. Grundy. Those who today lead her no longer invincible battalions on the war-
path, are the older Amazons of respectable society, and her young men, the male "flowers
of evil," the nocturnal plants that blossom in the hothouses known as clubs. The Brummels
of our modern day have become worse gossips than the old dowagers ever were in the
dawn of our century.
To oppose or criticize such foes, or even to find the least fault with them, is to
commit the one unpardonable social sin. An Unpopular Philosopher, however, has little
to fear, and notes his thoughts, indifferent to the loudest "war-cry" from those quarters. He
examines his enemies of both sexes with the calm and placid eye of one who has nothing
to lose, and counts the ugly blotches and wrinkles on the "sacred" face of Mrs. Grundy, as
he would count the deadly poisonous flowers in the branches of a majestic mancenillier -
through a telescope from afar. He will never approach the tree, or rest under its lethal
shade.
"Thou shalt not set thyself against the Lord's anointed," said David. But since the
"authorities," social and scientific, are always the first to break that law, others may
occasionally follow the good example. Besides, the "anointed" ones are not always those
of the Lord, many of them being more of the "self-anointed" sort.
Thus, whenever taken to task for disrespect to Science and its "authorities," which
the Unpopular Philosopher is accused of rejecting, he demurs to the statement. To reject
the infallibility of a man of Science is not quite the same as to repudiate his learning. A
specialist is one, precisely because he has some one specialty, and is therefore less
reliable in other branches of Science, and even in the general appreciation of his own
subject. Official school Science is based upon temporary foundations, so far. It will
advance upon straight lines so long only as it is not compelled to deviate from its old
grooves, in consequence of fresh and unexpected discoveries in the fathomless mines of
knowledge.
Science is like a railway train which carries its baggage van from one terminus to
the other, and with which no one except the railway officials may interfere. But passengers
who travel by the same train can hardly be prevented from quitting the direct line at fixed
stations, to proceed, if they so like, by diverging roads. They should have this option,
without being taxed with libeling the chief line. To proceed beyond the terminus on
horseback, cart or foot, or even to undertake pioneer work, by cutting entirely new paths
through the great virgin forests and thickets of public ignorance, is their undoubted
prerogative. Other explorers are sure to follow; nor less sure are they to criticize the
newly-cut pathway. They will thus do more good than harm. For truth, according to an old
Belgian proverb, is always the result of conflicting opinions, like the spark that flies out from
the shock of two flints struck together.
Why should men of learning be always so inclined to regard Science as their own
personal property? Is knowledge, a kind of indivisible family estate, entailed only on the
elder sons of Science? Truth belongs to all, or ought so to belong; excepting always those
few special branches of knowledge which should be preserved ever secret, like those two-
edged weapons that both kill and save. Some philosopher compared knowledge to a
ladder, the top of which was more easily reached by a man unencumbered by heavy
luggage, than by him who has to drag along an enormous bale of old conventionalities,
faded out and dried. Moreover, such a one must look back every moment, for fear of
losing some of his fossils. Is it owing to such extra weight that so few of them ever reach
the summit of the ladder, and that they affirm there is nothing beyond the highest rung they
have reached? Or is it for the sake of preserving the old dried-up plants of the Past that
they deny the very possibility of any fresh, living blossoms, on new forms of life, in the
Future?
Whatever their answer, without such optimistic hope in the ever-becoming, life
would be little worth living. What between "authorities," their fear of, and wrath at the
slightest criticism - each and all of them demanding to be regarded as infallible in their
respective departments - the world threatens to fossilize in its old prejudices and routine.
Fogeyism grins its skeleton-like sneer at every innovation or new form of thought. In the
great battle of life for the survival of the fittest, each of these forms becomes in turn the
master, and then the tyrant, forcing back all new growth as its own was checked. But the
true Philosopher, however "unpopular", seeks to grasp the actual life, which, springing
fresh from the inner source of Being, the rock of truth, is ever moving onward. He feels
equal contempt for all the little puddles that stagnate lazily on the flat and marshy fields of
social life.
- H.P.B.

* This article first appeared in Lucifer for September, 1892.

(Canadian Theosophist, May 15, 1949)

-------------------
MEDIUMS AND YOGIS
What is the Difference Between the Two?
by ***

[Originally published in The Theosophist, Vol. III, No. 8, May, 1882, pp. 197-98.
Though the actual author of this article is not known, there is evidence that it may have
been written by one of the high chelas or initiates connected with the early phase of the
Theosophical Movement. The footnotes are by H.P. Blavatsky herself.]

A Yogi is a man who has prepared himself by a long discipline of body and spirit,
and is thereby rendered capable of dealing with phenomena, and receiving occult
communications at will, the theory being that he, so to say, paralyzes his physical brain and
reduces his mind to complete passivity by one of the numerous modes at his command,
one of which is the magnetization of the second set of faculties pertaining to and exercised
by the spiritual or inner man. The soul is inducted by the body, and, in its turn, is used to
liberate the spirit, which is thus placed into direct rapport with the object desired. For
example: - A telegraph line at stations A, B, C, D, E, in ordinary cases, sends messages
from A to B, B to C, and so on; but, when the several stations are connected, the message
may be received direct at E from A without the intermediate stations being made aware of
it. In the same manner, the nerves becoming passive, the "Yog" power controls the other
faculties, and finally enables the spirit to receive a communication, which, in the other case,
it cannot, because it must act through several mediums.
As the magnetic power is directed to any particular faculty, so that faculty at once
forms a direct line of communication with the spirit,* which, receiving the impressions,
conveys them back to the physical body.** The spirit cannot grasp at the communications
it desires to receive, unassisted by the physical organization, just as, in the case of a
lunatic, the spirit is present, but the faculty of reason is lost, and, therefore, the spirit cannot
make the man sane; or as in the case of a blind man, the spirit and reasoning powers are
sound, but the faculty of sight is destroyed; hence the soul of the blind man cannot realize
the impressions which would be conveyed to it by the optic nerves and retina.

----------------
* Sixth principle - spiritual soul.
** In the normal or natural state, the sensations are transmitted from the lowest
physical to the highest spiritual body, i.e., from the first to the 6th principle (the 7th being
no organized or conditioned body, but an infinite hence unconditioned principle or state),
the faculties of each body having to awaken the faculties of the next higher one to transmit
the message in succession, until they reach the last, when, having received the
impression, the latter (the spiritual soul) sends it back in an inverse order to the body.
Hence, the faculties of some of the "'bodies" (we use this word for want of a better term)
being less developed, they fail to transmit the message correctly to the highest principle,
and thus also fail to produce the right impression upon the physical senses, as a telegram
may have started, from the place of its destination, faultless and have been bungled up
and misinterpreted by the telegraph operator at some intermediate station. This is why
some people, otherwise endowed with great intellectual powers and perceptive faculties,
are often utterly unable to appreciate - say, the beauties of nature, or some particular moral
quality; as, however perfect their physical intellect, - unless the original material or rough
physical impression conveyed has passed in a circuit through the sieve of every "principle"
- (from 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, up to 7, and down again, from 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, to No. 1) - and that
every "sieve" is in good order, - the spiritual perception will always be imperfect. The Yogi,
who, by a constant training and incessant watchfulness, keeps his septenary instrument
in good tune and whose spirit has obtained a perfect control over all, can, at will, and by
paralyzing the functions of the 4 intermediate principles, communicate from body to spirit
and vice versa - direct. - Editor, The Theosophist, [H.P. Blavatsky]
-------------------------

The spirit is an immortal ether (principle?) which cannot be impaired in any way,
and, although it is, to a certain extent, subservient to the body and its faculties during the
life-time of the body it is attached to, it can, through their agency, be so liberated in a
higher or lesser degree as to be made to act independently of the other principles. This
can be achieved by magnetic power or nerve power, if preferred, and thus the spiritual man
be enabled to receive communications from other spirits, to traverse space and produce
various phenomena, to assume any shape and appear in any form it desires.
The secret of the theory is this, that the Yogi, possessing the power of self-
mesmerization and having a perfect control over all his inner principles, sees whatever he
desires to see, rejecting all elementary influences which tend to contaminate his purity.
The medium receives his communications differently. He wishes for "spirits"; they
are attracted towards him, their magnetic influences controlling his faculties in proportion
to the strength of their respective magnetic powers and the passivity of the subject; the
nervous fluid conveys their impressions to the soul or spirit in the same manner, and often
the same results are produced as in the case of the Yogi, with this important difference that
they are not what the medium or spiritist wishes, but what the spirits (elementary
influences) will produce; hence it is that sometimes (in spiritism) a question on one subject
is asked, and a reply of a different nature received, irrelevant to the point and more or less
after the "Elementary's" disposition. The spiritist cannot at desire produce a fixed result, -
the Yogi can. The spiritist runs the risk of evil influences, which impair the faculties the
soul has to command, and these faculties - being more prone to evil than good (as
everything having a great percentage of impure matter in it) - are rapidly influenced. The
Yogi overcomes this, and his faculties are entirely within his control, the soul acquiring a
greater scope for working them and keeping them in check; for, although the soul is their
ruler, yet it is subservient to them. I will give a familiar illustration: - A battery generates
electricity, the wires convey the current, and the mechanism is put in motion. Just so, the
soul is the generator or battery, the nerves the wires, and the faculties the mechanism
made to work. The Yogi forms a direct connection between his spiritual soul and any
faculty, and, by the power of his trained will, that is by magnetic influence, concentrates all
his powers in the soul, which enables him to grasp the subject of his enquiry and convey
it back to the physical organs, through the various channels of communication.*
If the Yogi desires to see a vision, his optic nerves receive the magnetic fluid; if an
answer to a question is wanted, the faculties of thought and perception are charged by him;
and so on. If he desires to traverse space in spirit, this is easily done by him by
transferring the faculty of will,** and, as he may have acquired more or less power, so will
he be able to produce greater or minor results.
 The soul of the medium does not become the generator. It is not the battery. It is
a Leyden jar, charged from the magnetic influence of the "spirits." The faculties are put in
action just as the spirits, so-called, make them work from the jar they have charged with
their own currents. These currents, being magnetic, take after the invisibles' own good or
evil disposition. The influence of a really good spirit is not left upon the earth after death,
so that, in reality, there are no good spirits, although some may not be mischievous, while
others may be full of real devilry. The question arises, how the influences of the bad ones
are left behind, when the soul exists no more on earth after death? Well, just as light from
the sun illumines an object, which reflects certain invisible active rays, and these,
concentrated in a camera, produce a latent image on a photographic plate; in like manner
the evil propensities of man are developed and form an atmosphere around him, which is
so impregnated with his magnetic influence that this outer shell (as it were) retains the
latent impressions of good or evil deeds. These, after death, are attached to certain
localities, and travel as quick as thought wherever an attractive influence is exercised the
stronger, they being less dangerous as less attracted to men in general, but more to
spiritists who attract them by the erratic power of their will, i.e., their own ill-governed
magnetic power. Have not many experienced coming across a man unknown to them,
whose very appearance has been repulsive, and, at the sight of whom, feelings of distrust
and dislike spring up in them spontaneously, although they knew nothing of or against him?
On the other hand, how often do we meet a man who, at first sight, seems to attract us to
him, and we feel as if we could make a friend of him, and if, by chance, we become
acquainted with that person, how much we appreciate his company. We seem lost in
hearing him speak, and a certain sympathy is established between us for which we cannot
account. What is this, but our own outer shell coming in contact with his and partaking of
the magnetic influences of that shell or establishing a communication between each other.

----------------
*Or - direct, which is oftener the case, we believe. - Editor, The Theosophist [H.P.
Blavatsky]
** From the physical to the Spiritual body and concentrating it there, as we
understand it. - Editor, The Theosophist [H.P. Blavatsky]
-----------------

The medium is also influenced by his own spirit sometimes, the reaction of his
nerves magnetizing some faculties accidentally, while the elementary spirits are
magnetizing the other senses; or a stray current reaches some faculty which their
magnetism has not reached, and this leads to some of those incomprehensible messages,
which are quite irrelevant to what is expected, and a frequent occurrence which has always
been the great stumbling block at all seances.

- Theosophia, Fall 1956

-----------------
MODERN APOSTLES AND PSEUDO-MESSIAHS
- H.P. Blavatsky

[Originally published in Lucifer, London, Vol. VI, No. 35, July 15th, 1890, pp. 379-
383, wherein the article was signed by the pseudonym "Spectator". It is as timely today
as it was on the day of its first appearance. We commend it to the careful attention of our
many readers. - Editor]

There has probably never been a period within our recollection more given to the
production of "great missions" and missionaries than the present. The movement began,
apparently, about a hundred years ago. Before that, it would have been unsafe to make
such claims as are common in the present day. But the revelators of that earlier time were
few and far between compared to those who are to be found now, for they are legion. The
influence of one or two was powerful; of others, whose beliefs were dangerously akin to
a common form of lunacy - next to nothing. All will recognize a wide difference between
Anne Lee, whose followers flourish at the present time, and Joanna Southcote, whose
hallucination long ago, and in her own day, excited smiles from rational people. The
venerable Shaker lady, the "Woman" of Revelation XII, taught some truths amid confused
ideas as to their practical working. At least, in a rather loose age, she held up an ideal of
pure living which must always appeal to the spiritual nature and aspirations of man.
Then followed a period of moral decadence in the messianic perceptions and works.
The polygamy taught and practised by Joseph Smith and Brigham Young has been one
of the strangest features of any modern revelation or so-called religion. Zeal and
martyrdom were both illustrated in these leaders of the blind - the one without knowledge,
and the other worse than useless. It was a prophecy of more lawless prophets, and more
disastrous followings.
With the spread of the spiritualistic cult, the Messiah craze has vastly increased, and
men and women alike have been involved in its whirlpools. Given, a strong desire to
reform somehow the religious or social aspect of the world, a personal hatred of certain of
its aspects, and a belief in visions and messages, and the result was sure; the "Messiah"
arose with a universal panacea for the ills of mankind. If he (very often she) did not make
the claim, it was made for him. Carried away by the magnetic force, the eloquence, the
courage, the single idea of the apostle pro tem, numbers, for very varied reasons, accepted
him or her as the revelator of the hour and of all time.
With burning indignation at the enthralment of womanhood in marriage, Victoria
Woodhull arose to proclaim freedom. The concentrated forces within and around her
withstood insult, calumny, and threats. What her exact utterances were, or what she
meant herself, it is not easy now to discover. If she indeed preached free love, she only
preached woman's damnation. If she merely tore down social veils, and rifled whited
sepulchres, she did the human race a service. Man has fallen to so material a level that
it is impossible to suppress sexual passion - but its exaltation is manifestly his ruin. Some
saw in her teachings a way of liberty dear to their own sympathies and desires, and their
weaknesses and follies have for ever dealt a death-blow to any real or imagined doctrine
of free love, upheld no matter by whom. Victoria Woodhull grew silent, and the latest
interpretations of the Garden of Eden and the fall of man, with which she has broken the
silence, do not approach anywhere near in truth and lucidity to Laurence Oliphant's
inspirational catches at the meaning of some of those ancient allegories in the book of
Genesis. Blind as he was to the key of human life in the philosophy of reincarnation, with
its impregnable logic, he gave some vivid side-glimpses of truth in his Scienlific Religion.
Yet Victoria Woodhull should have her due. She was a power in the land, and after
her appearance, which stirred up thought in the sluggish, it became more possible to speak
and write on the social question, and its vast issues. So much plain-spoken and acted folly
created a hearing for a little wisdom.
After this, in the spiritualistic field, many lesser lights stood forth. Some openly
advocated sexual freedom, and were surrounded by influences of the most dangerous
order. The peace and happiness of many a home have been wrecked by these teachings,
never more to return. They wrecked the weak and unwary, who reaped hours of agony,
and whom the world falsely regarded as wicked. The crusade at last against these more
open dangers of spiritualism became fierce, but although publicly denounced - an Oneida
Creek never could become popular! - the disguised poison creeps about in underhand
channels, and is one of the first snares the mediumistic inquirer into Spiritualism has to
beware of. "Affinities" were to redeem the world; meanwhile they have become a by-word.
There is an unwritten history in Spiritualism which, none of its clever advocates will ever
record. Some of its latest Messiahs and their claims are ignored, and their names hardly
mentioned, but we hear nothing of the hot-house process by which their abnormal
condition was produced. Certain of these have been, verily, the victims of their belief -
persons whose courage and faith in a more righteous cause would have won them lasting
victory. And certain of these are mad vortices in which the inexperienced are at last
engulfed. The apotheosis of passion, from the bitter fruit of which, man has everlasting
need to be redeemed, is the surest sign of moral degradation. Liberty to love according
to the impulse of the senses, is the most profound slavery. From the beginning nature has
hedged that pathway with disease and death. Wretched as are countless marriages, vile
as are man-made laws which place marriage on the lowest plane, the salvation of free-love
is the whisper of the snake anew in the ear of the modern Eve.
No one denies that there are aspects of Spiritualism which have been useful in
some ways. With this, however, we have nothing to do. We are pointing now to the way
in which it has accentuated a common illusion.
The claims to final appropriation of the prophesied year 1881, the two witnesses,
and the woman clothed with the sun, are so varied and diverse that there is safety in
numbers. A true understanding of Kabbalistic allegory, and the symbolic galleries and
chambers of the Great Pyramid, would at once disperse these ideas, and enlighten these
illuminations. To distinguish the white rays of truth from influx from the astral sphere,
requires a training which ordinary sensitives, whether avowed spiritualists or not, do not
possess. Ignorance emboldens, and the weak will always worship the bold.
Some of these apostles denounce alike Spiritualism and Theosophy; some accept
the latter, but weave it anew into a version of their own; and some have apparently arisen,
independently of any other cult, through the force of their own or somebody else's
conviction.
No one can doubt the poetical nature of the inspiration of Thomas Lake Harris. He
had an intellectual head and a heart for poetry. Had he kept clear of great claims, he
would have ranked at least as a man of literary ability, and a reformer with whom other
reformers would wish to shake hands. His poem on Womanhood must echo in every
thoughtful heart. But the assumption of personal privilege and authority over others, and
"affinity" theories, have stranded him on a barren shore.
There is an avowed re-incarnation of Buddha in the United States, and an avowed
re-incarnation of Christ. Both have followers; both have been interviewed and said their
best. They and others like unto them have had signs, illuminations, knowledge not
common to men, and events pointing in a marked way to this their final destiny. There has
even been a whisper here and there of supernatural births. But they lacked the clear-
seeing eye which could reduce these facts to their right order, and interpret them aright.
Kings and potentates appear, and dreamers of dreams, but there is never a prophet or
Daniel in their midst. And the result is sorry to behold, for each seems to be putting the
crown upon his own head.
If Theosophy had done nothing else, it would have made a demand on human
gratitude in placing the truth and falsehood of these psychic experiences, unfoldments, or
delusions as the case might be, plainly before the people, and explaining their rationale.
It showed a plane of manhood, and proved it unassailably to a number of persons, which
transcends any powers or capacities of the inspirational psychic who may imagine himself
or herself to be a messenger to the world at large. It placed personal purity on a level
which barred out nine-tenths of these claimants from all thought of their presumed
inheritance, and showed that such a condition of purity, far transcending any popular ideal
of such virtue, was the absolute and all-essential basis of spiritual insight and attainment.
It swept the ground from under the feet of those poor men and women who had been
listening to the so-called messages from the angels, that they were the chosen of heaven,
and were to accomplish world-wide missions. The Joan of Arcs, the Christs, the Buddhas,
the Michaels, were fain to see truths they had not dreamed of, and gifts they had never
possessed, exercised in silence and with potent force by men whose names were unknown
even to history, and recognized only by hidden disciples, or their peers. Something higher
was placed before the sight of these eager reformers than fame: it was truth. Something
higher than the most purified union between even one man and one woman in the most
spiritual of sympathies, was shown; it was the immortal union of the soul of man with God.
Wherever Theosophy spreads, there it is impossible for the deluded to mislead, or the
deluded to follow. It opens a new path, a forgotten philosophy which has lived through the
ages, a knowledge of the psychic nature of man, which reveals alike the true status of the
Catholic saint, and the spiritualistic medium the Church condemns. It gathers reformers
together, throws light on their way, and teaches them how to work towards a desirable end
with most effect, but forbids any to assume a crown or sceptre, and no less delivers from
a futile crown of thorns. Mesmerisms and astral influences fall back, and the sky grows
clear enough for higher light. It hushes the "Lo here! and lo there!" and declares the Christ,
like the kingdom of heaven, to be within. It guards and applies every aspiration and
capacity to serve humanity in any man, and shows him how. It overthrows the giddy
pedestal, and safely cares for the human being on solid ground. Hence, in this way, and
in all other ways, it is the truest deliverer and saviour of our time.
To enumerate the various "Messiahs" and their beliefs and works would fill volumes.
It is needless. When claims conflict, all, on the face of it, cannot be true. Some have
taught less error than others. It is almost the only distinction. And some have had fine
powers imperilled and paralysed by leadings they did not understand.
 Of one thing, rationally-minded people, apart from Theosophists, may be sure. And
that is, service for humanity is its all-sufficient reward: and that empty jars are the most
resonant of sound. To know a very little of the philosophy of life, of man's power to redeem
wrongs and to teach others, to perceive how to thread the tangled maze of existence on
this globe, and to accomplish aught of lasting and spiritual benefit, is to annihilate all desire
or thought of posing as a heaven-sent saviour of the people. For a very little self-
knowledge is a leveler indeed, and more democratic than the most ultra-radical can desire.
The best practical reformers of the outside abuses we have known, such as slavery,
deprivation of the rights of woman, legal tyrannies, oppressions of the poor, have never
dreamed of posing as Messiahs. Honor, worthless as it is, followed them unsought, for a
tree is known by its fruits and to this day "their works do follow them". To the soul
spending itself for others those grand words of the poet may be addressed evermore:

"Take comfort - thou hast left behind

Powers that will work for thee; air, earth, and skies;
There's not a breathing of the common wind
That will forget thee - thou has great allies;
Thy friends are exultations, agonies,
And love, and man's unconquerable mind!"

With the advent of Theosophy, the Messiah-craze surely has had its day, and sees
its doom. For if it teaches, or has taught, one thing more plainly than another, it is that the
"first shall be last, and the last first". And in the face of genuine spiritual growth, and true
illumination, the Theosophist grows in power to most truly befriend and help his fellows,
while he becomes the most humble, the most silent, the most guarded of men.
Saviours to their race, in a sense, have lived and will live. Rarely has one been
known. Rare has been the occasion when thus to be known has been either expedient or
possible. Therefore, fools alone will rush in "where angels fear to tread".
- Spectator

- Theosophia, Jan-Feb, 1951

-----------------

CHRISTMAS THEN AND CHRISTMAS NOW

- H.P. Blavatsky
(Originally published in The Theosophist, Vol. I, December, 1879, pp. 58-59)

We are reaching the time of the year when the whole Christian world is preparing
to celebrate the most noted of its solemnities - the birth of the Founder of their religion.
When this paper reaches its Western subscribers, there will be festivity and rejoicing in
every house. In North-Western Europe and in America the holly and ivy will decorate each
home, and the churches be decked with evergreens; a custom derived from the ancient
practices of the pagan Druids "that sylvan spirits might flock to the evergreens, and remain
unnipped by the frost till a milder season." In Roman Catholic countries large crowds flock
during the whole evening and night of "Christmas-eve" to the churches, to salute waxen
images of the divine Infant, and his Virgin mother, in her garb of "Queen of Heaven." To
an analytical mind, this bravery of rich gold and lace, pearl-broidered satin and velvet, and
the bejewelled cradle do seem rather paradoxical. When one thinks of the poor-worm-
eaten, dirty manger of the Jewish country-inn, in which, if we must credit the Gospel, the
future "Redeemer" was placed at his birth for lack of a better shelter, we cannot help
suspecting that before the dazzled eyes of the unsophisticated devotee the Bethlehem
stable vanishes altogether. To put it in the mildest terms, this gaudy display tallies ill with
the democratic feelings and the truly divine contempt for riches of the "Son of Man," who
had "not where to lay his head." It makes it all the harder for the average Christian to
regard the explicit statement that - "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a
needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven," as anything more than a
rhetorical threat. The Roman Church acted wisely in severely forbidding her parishioners
to either read or interpret the Gospels for themselves, and leaving the Book, as long as it
was possible, to proclaim its truths in Latin - "the voice of one crying in the wilderness."
In that, she but followed the wisdom of the ages - the wisdom of the old Aryans, which is
also "justified of her children"; for, as neither the modern Hindu devotee understands a
word of Sanskrit, nor the modern Parsi one syllable of the Zend, so for the average Roman
Catholic the Latin is no better than Hieroglyphics. The result is that all the three -
Brahmanical High Priest, Zoroastrian Mobed, and Roman Catholic Pontiff, are allowed
unlimited opportunities for evolving new religious dogmas out of the depths of their own
fancy, for the benefit of their respective churches.
To usher in this great day, the bells are set merrily ringing at midnight, throughout
England and the Continent. In France and Italy, after the celebration of the Mass in
churches magnificently decorated, "it is usual for the revelers to partake of a collation
(reveillon) that they may he better able to sustain the fatigues of the night," saith a book
treating upon the Popish church ceremonials. This night of Christian fasting reminds one
of the Sivaratree of the followers of the god Siva, - the great day of gloom and fasting, in
the eleventh month of the Hindu year. Only, with the latter, the night's long vigil is
preceded and followed by a strict and rigid fasting. No reveillon or compromises for them.
True, they are but wicked "heathens," and therefore their way to salvation must be tenfold
harder.
Though now universally observed by Christian nations as the anniversary of the birth
of Jesus, the 25th of December was not originally so accepted. The most movable of the
Christian feast days, during the early centuries, Christmas was often confounded with the
Epiphany, and celebrated in the months of April and May. As there never was any
authentic record, or proof of its identification, whether in secular or ecclesiastical history,
the selection of that day long remained optional; and it was only during the fourth century
that, urged by Cyril of Jerusalem, the Pope (Julius I) ordered the bishops to make an
investigation and come finally to some agreement as to the presumable date of the nativity
of Christ. Their choice fell upon the 25th of December, - and a most unfortunate choice
it has since proved! It was Dupuis, followed by Volney, who aimed the first shots at this
natal anniversary. They proved that for incalculable periods before our era, upon very
clear astronomical data, nearly all the ancient peoples had celebrated the births of their
sun-gods on that very day. "Dupuis shows that the celestial sign of the VIRGIN AND
CHILD was in existence several thousand years before Christ" - remarks Higgins in his
Anacalypsis. As Dupuis, Volney, and Higgins have all been passed over to posterity as
infidels, and enemies of Christianity, it may be well to quote, in this relation, the
confessions of the Christian Bishop of Ratisbone, "the most learned man that the Middle
Ages produced" - the Dominican, Albertus Magnus. "The sign of the celestial Virgin rises
above the horizon at the moment in which we fix the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ," he
says, in the Recherches historiques sur Falaise, par Langevin pretre. So Adonis, Bacchus,
Osiris, Apollo, etc., were all born on the 25th of December. Christmas comes just at the
time of the winter solstice; the days then are shortest, and Darkness is more upon the face
of the earth than ever. All the sun-gods were believed to be annually born at that epoch;
for from this time its Light dispels more and more darkness with each succeeding day, and
the power of the Sun begins to increase.
However it may be, the Christmas festivities that were held by the Christians for
nearly fifteen centuries, were of a particularly pagan character. Nay, we are afraid that
even the present ceremonies of the Church can hardly escape the reproach of being
almost literally copied from the mysteries of Egypt and Greece, held in honour of Osiris and
Horus, Apollo and Bacchus. Both Isis and Ceres were called "Holy Virgins," and a DIVINE
BASE may be found in every "heathen" religion. We will now draw two pictures of the
Merrie Christmas; one portraying the "good old times," and the other the present state of
Christian worship. From the first days of its establishment as Christmas, the day was
regarded in the double light of a holy commemoration and a most cheerful festivity: it was
equally given up to devotion and insane merriment. "Among the revels of the Christmas
season were the so-called feasts of fools and of asses, grotesque saturnalia, which were
termed 'December liberties,' in which everything serious was burlesqued, the order of
society reversed, and its decencies ridiculed" - says one compiler of old chronicles.
"During the Middle Ages, it was celebrated by the gay fantastic spectacle of dramatic
mysteries, performed by personages in grotesque masks and singular costumes. The
show usually represented an infant in a cradle, surrounded by the Virgin Mary and St.
Joseph, by bulls' heads, cherubs, Eastern Magi (the Mobeds of old), and manifold
ornaments." The custom of singing canticles at Christmas, called Carols, was to recall the
songs of the shepherds at the Nativity. "The bishops and the clergy often joined with the
populace in caroling, and songs were enlivened by dances and by the music of tambours,
guitars, violins and organs . . . ." We may add that down to the present times, during the
days preceding Christmas, such mysteries are being enacted, with marionettes and dolls,
in Southern Russia, Poland, and Galicia; and known as the Kaliadowki. In Italy Calabrian
minstrels descend from their mountains to Naples and Rome and crowd the shrines of the
Virgin-Mother, cheering her with their wild music.
In England, the revels used to begin on Christmas-eve, and continue often till
Candlemas (Feb. 2) every day being a holiday till Twelfth-night (Jan. 6). In the houses of
great nobles a "lord of misrule," or "abbot of unreason" was appointed, whose duty it was
to play the part of buffoon. "The larder was filled with capons, hens, turkeys, geese, ducks,
beef, mutton, pork, pies, puddings, nuts, plums, sugar and honey." . . . . "A glowing fire,
made of great logs, the principal of which was termed the 'Yule log,' or Christmas block,
which might be burnt till Candlemas eve, kept out the cold; and the abundance was shared
by the lord's tenants amid music, conjuring, riddles, hot-cockles, foolplough, snap-dragon,
jokes, laughter, repartees, forfeits and dances."
 In our modern times, the bishops and the clergy join no more with the populace in
open caroling and dancing; and feasts of "fools and asses" are enacted more in sacred
privacy than under the eyes of the dangerous, argus-eyed reporter. Yet the eating and
drinking festivities are preserved throughout the Christian world; and, more sudden deaths
are doubtless caused by gluttony and intemperance during the Christmas and Easter
holidays, than at any other time of the year. Yet, Christian worship becomes every year
more and more a false pretense. The heartlessness of this lip-service has been
denounced innumerable times, but never, we think, with more affecting touch of realism
than in a charming dream-tale, which appeared in the New York Herald about last
Christmas. An aged man, presiding at a public meeting, said he would avail himself of the
opportunity to relate a vision he had witnessed on the previous night. "He thought he was
standing in the pulpit of the most gorgeous and magnificent cathedral he had ever seen.
Before him was the priest or pastor of the church, and beside him stood an angel with a
tablet and pencil in hand, whose mission it was to make record of every act of worship or
prayer that transpired in his presence and ascended as an acceptable offering to the
throne of God. Every pew was filled with richly-attired worshipers of either sex. The most
sublime music that ever fell on his enraptured ear filled the air with melody. All the
beautiful ritualistic Church services, including a surpassingly eloquent sermon from the
gifted minister, had in turn transpired, and yet the recording angel made no entry in his
tablet! The congregation were at length dismissed by the pastor with a lengthy and
beautifully-worded prayer, followed by a benediction, and yet the angel made no sign!
"Attended still by the angel, the speaker left the door of the church in rear of the
richly-attired congregation. A poor, tattered castaway stood in the gutter beside the
curbstone, with her pale, famished hand extended, silently pleading for alms. As the richly-
attired worshipers from the church passed by, they shrank from the poor Magdalen, the
ladies withdrawing aside their silken, jewel-bedecked robes, lest they should be polluted
by her touch.
"Just then an intoxicated sailor came reeling down the side-walk on the other side.
When he got opposite the poor forsaken girl, he staggered across the street to where she
stood, and, taking a few pennies from his pocket, he thrust them into her hand,
accompanied with the adjuration, 'Here, you poor forsaken cuss, take this!' A celestial
radiance now lighted up the face of the recording angel, who instantly entered the sailor's
act of sympathy and charity in his tablet, and departed with it as a sweet sacrifice to God."
A concretion, one might say, of the Biblical story of the judgment upon the woman
taken in adultery. Be it so; yet it portrays with a master hand the state of our Christian
society.
According to tradition, on Christmas-eve, the oxen may always be found on their
knees, as though in prayer and devotion; and, "there was a famous hawthorn in the
churchyard of Glastonbury Abbey, which always budded on the 24th, and blossomed on
the 25th of December"; which, considering that the day was chosen by the Fathers of the
church at random, and that the calendar has been changed from the old to the new style,
shows a remarkable perspicacity in both the animal and the vegetable! There is also a
tradition of the church, preserved to us by Olaus, archbishop of Upsala, that, at the festival
of Christmas, "the men, living in the cold Northern parts, are suddenly and strangely
metamorphosed into wolves; and that a huge multitude of them meet together at an
appointed place and rage so fiercely against mankind, that it suffers more from their
attacks than ever they do from the natural wolves." Metaphorically viewed, this would
seem to be more than ever the case with men, and particularly with Christian nations, now.
There seems no need to wait for Christmas-eve to see whole nations changed into "wild
beasts" - especially in time of war.

- from Theosophia, Nov-Dec, 1950

----------------------

EXCERPTS FROM THE WRITINGS OF 1883

- H.P. Blavatsky

[The passages reproduced below are selected from the articles of H.P. Blavatsky
contained in the forthcoming volume of her Collected Writings, to be soon published by the
Philosophical Research Society, Inc., of Los Angeles, California. They provide a fair
illustration of the variety and depth of occult subjects which she treated of in her prolific
literary output of this particular year.]

[Translated from the original French text of an article called "Theosophie et

Spiritisme," published in the Bulletin Mensuel de la Society Scientifique d'Etudes
Psychologiques, Paris, July 15, 1883.]

". . . . It is therefore an error to say:

"'According to the Theosophists no one reincarnates on earth except children who
die young and congenital idiots,' for the sentence being incomplete, does not tell
everything. The difference between the souls mentioned above and those of people in
general is that the former incarnate immediately, 'because neither the infants nor the idiots,
being irresponsible for their actions, are able to receive either reward or punishment.
Failures of nature - they begin a new life immediately; while reincarnations in general take
place after rather long periods passed in the intermediate and invisible spheres. So that
if a Spiritist-Theosophist tells an Occultist-Theosophist that he is a reincarnation of Louis
XV, or that Mrs. X is a reincarnation of Joan of Arc, the Occultist would answer that
according to his doctrine it is impossible. It is quite possible that he might be a
reincarnation of Sesostris or of Semiramis, but the time period that has passed since the
death of Louis XV and even of Joan of Arc is too short according to our calculations, which
are mathematically correct. Should we be thoroughly ostracized if we were to say that the
souls of idiots and extremely young children (dying before the age of personal
consciousness of personality) are the exact parallels to those who are annihilated? Can
the personalities of the infants and the idiots leave a greater trace on the monadic memory
with which they have not been able to become united, than those of the souls of marked
animal tendencies who have also, though not more than the former, failed to become
assimilated therein? In both cases the final result is the same. The sixth element or the
spiritual EGO which has not had either the time or the possibility to unite with the lower
principles in the cases of the idiot and the infant, has had the time but not the possibility
to accomplish that union in the case of the totally depraved person. Now it is not that the
"spiritual EGO is dissipated and ceases to exist," as it seems to say, but really does not,
in Fragment No. I. This was immediately elucidated in The Theosophist. It would be
absurd to say that something which is immortal in its essence can be dissipated or cease
to be. The spiritual EGO is dissociated from the lower elements and following its divine
monad - the seventh element, disappears in the case of the utterly vicious man and ceases
to exist for him, for the personal and physical man as well as for the astral man. As for the
latter, once being depraved, whether it belong to an idiot or to a Newton, if it has failed to
grasp, or has lost the Ariadne's thread which must lead it through the labyrinth of matter
into the regions of eternal light - it must disappear."
---------

[Editor's Note from The Theosophist, Vol. IV, No. 12(-18), September, 1883, p. 325.]

"On the exoteric authority of Herodotus, and the esoteric authority of the occult
sciences we have shown in Isis that the Abyssinians (though a mixed race at present) and
the Egyptians were what Herodotus calls the 'Eastern Ethiopians' who had come from
Southern India and colonized Egypt and a part of Africa - most of them having inhabited
Lanka, not the present Ceylon; but when it was yet part and parcel of the Indian continent
and many more islands like Ceylon extended South and formed part of the Aryan's Lanka
of the Ramayana. And though the Egyptians did not belong to the fourth race, yet they
were Atlanteans whose islands perished still earlier than Poseidonis."
--------

[From an article entitled "Projection of the Double," The Theosophist, Vol. V, No.
1(49), October, 1883, pp. 1-2]

". . . . The existence of the Mahatmas, their power to travel in the inner or astral
body at will, to preserve full command of all their intelligence, and to condense their
'phantom' form into visibility or dissolve it into invisibility at their own pleasure, are now
facts too well established to permit us to regard it as an open question.
"Objectors to the above propositions are found only among the inexperienced, as
objectors to every other new thing have been. There must be a particular moment in every
case when doubt and disbelief vanish, to give place to knowledge and certainty. Few,
comparatively, of any generation have ever or in the nature of things could ever see the
splendid phenomenon of a Mahatma's astral apparition; for merely the magneto-psychic
law of attraction and repulsion keeps Adepts and the reeking stew of social corruption far
apart. Sometimes, under very favorable conditions they may approach an individual
devoted to occult research, but this happens rarely; for even he, pure though he be, is
wallowing in the world's corrupt akasa or magnetic aura and contaminated by it. To his
inner self it is as stifling and deadly as the heavy vapour of carbonic oxide to his physical
lungs. And, remember, it is by the inner, not the outer, self that we come into relations with
Adepts and their advanced Chelas. One would not expect to hold improving conversation
with a besotted inebriate, lying in a state of swine-like stupefaction after a debauch; yet
it is quite as impracticable for the spiritualized Mahatma to exchange thoughts with a man
of society, living daily in a state of psychic intoxication among the magnetic fumes of its
carnality, materialism, and spiritual atrophy.
--------

[Editor's Footnote from The Theosophist, Vol. V, No. 3(51), December, 1883, p. 75.]

"We are forced to reply to our venerable friend that if the Theists claim to go
'further,' the Theosophists (of that school, at any rate, to which the writer belongs) claim
to go deeper. Rejecting all Externals as true guides, they accept but the Internal, the
invisible, the never to be described by any adjective or human qualification. And going
deeper they reject the idea of 'the soul of the soul' - anima; from which the word animal
is derived. For us there is no over-soul or under-soul; but only ONE - substance: the last
word being used in the sense Spinoza attached to it; calling it the ONE Existence; we
cannot limit its significance and dwarf it to the qualification 'over'; but we apply it to the
universal, ubiquitous Presence, rejecting the word 'Being,' and replacing it with 'All-Being.'
Our Deity as the 'God' of Spinoza and of the true Adwaitee - neither thinks, nor creates,
for it is All-thought and All-creation. We say with Spinoza - who repeated in another key
but what the Esoteric doctrine of the Upanishads teaches: 'Extension is visible Thought:
Thought is invisible Extension.' For Theosophists of our school the Deity is a UNITY in
which all other units in their infinite variety merge and from which they are indistinguishable
- except in the prism of theistic Maya. The individual drops of the curling wave of the
universal Ocean have no independent existence. In short, while the Theist proclaims his
God a gigantic universal BEING, the Theosophist declares with Heraclitus, as quoted by
a modern author, that the ONE Absolute is not Being - but becoming: the ever-developing,
cyclic evolution, the Perpetual Motion of Nature visible and invisible - moving, and
breathing even during its long Pralayic Sleep."
---------

[Editor's Note from The Theosophist, Vol. V, No. 3(51), Dec., 1883, p. 100]

"We have much heard of, but little believed in, 'gifts of miracles.' We may go further
and say at once that we deny most emphatically the possibility of producing 'miracles,' yet
we believe as firmly in the possession by great Sadhus and Initiates of the power of
stopping or rather of delaying and magnetically paralyzing the rain cloud. We say that the
facts of the story given are possible, though by no means probable. Sadhus who possess
such power are not usually grihasthas, passing their lives in small villages; and certainly
it requires more than three hours a day of 'constant concentration' to produce such a
phenomenon, however much it may be based on the knowledge of natural laws."
--------

[From "'Historical Difficulty' - Why?", The Theosophist, Vol. V, No. 1(49), October,
1883, p. 4]

"The 'Adept' therefore, has little, if anything, to do with difficulties presented by

Western History. To his knowledge - based on documentary records from which, as said,
hypothesis is excluded, and as regards which even psychology is called to play a very
secondary part - the history of his and other nations extends immeasurably beyond that
hardly discernible point that stands on the far-away horizon of the Western world as a land-
mark of the commencement of its history. Records made throughout a series of ages
based on astronomical chronology and zodiacal calculations cannot err. . . ."
----------

[From "Leaflets from Esoteric History," Ibid., p. 10]

". . . . The `Adept' is more than content to be allowed to remain silent, keeping what
he may know to himself, unless worthy seekers wish to share it. He has done so for ages,
and can do so for a little while longer. Moreover, he would rather not 'arrest attention' or
'command respect' at present. Thus he leaves his audience to first verify his statements
in every case by the brilliant though rather wavering light of modern science: after which
his facts may be either accepted or rejected, at the option of the willing student. In short,
the 'Adept' - if one indeed - has to remain utterly unconcerned with, and unmoved by, the
issue. He imparts that which it is lawful for him to give out, and deals but with facts. . . ."
--------------

[From "Sakya Muni's Place in History," The Theosophist, Vol. V, No. 2(50),
November, 1883, p. 43.]

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

- from Theosophia, Nov-Dec, 1949

---------------------

FRAGMENTS
- H.P. Blavatsky
[Lucifer, Vol. XVIII, No. 108, August, 1896, pp. 449-455]

IDOLATRY
The outward form of idolatry is but a veil, concealing the one Truth, like the veil of
the Saitic Goddess. Only that truth, being for the few, escapes the majority. To the pious
profane, the veil recovers a celestial locality thickly peopled with divine beings, dwarfs and
giants, good and wicked powers, all of whom are no better than human caricatures. Yet,
while for the great majority the space behind the veil is really impenetrable - if it would but
confess the real state of its mind - those, endowed with the "third eye" (the eye of Shiva),
discern in the Cimmerian darkness and chaos a light in whose intense radiance all shape
born of human conception disappears, leaving the all-informing divine PRESENCE, to be
felt - not seen; sensed - never expressed.
A charming allegory translated from an old Sanskrit manuscript illustrates this idea
admirably:
Toward the close of the Pralaya (the intermediate period between two "creations"
or evolutions of our phenomenal universe), the great IT, the One that rests in infinity and
ever is, dropped its reflection, which expanded in limitless Space, and felt a desire to make
itself cognizable by the creatures evolved from its shadow. The reflection assumed the
shape of a Maharaja (great King). Devising means for mankind to learn of his existence,
the Maharaja built out of the qualities inherent in him a palace, in which he concealed
himself, satisfied that people should perceive the outward form of his dwelling. But when
they looked up to the place where stood the palace, whose one corner stretched into the
right, and the other into the left infinitude the little men saw nothing; the palace was
mistaken by them for empty space, and being so vast remained invisible to their eyes.
Then the Maharaja resorted to another expedient. He determined to manifest himself to
the little creatures whom he pitied - not as a whole but only in his parts. He destroyed the
palace built by him from his manifesting qualities, brick by brick, and began throwing the
bricks down upon the earth one after the other. Each brick was transformed into an idol,
the red ones becoming Gods and the grey ones Goddesses; into these the Devatas and
Devatis - the qualities and the attributes of the Unseen - entered and animated them.
This allegory shows polytheism in its true light and that it rests on the One Unity, as
does all the rest. Between the Dii majores and the Dii minores there is really no difference.
The former are the direct, the latter the broken or refracted, rays of one and the same
Luminary. What are Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, but the triple Ray that emanates directly
from the Light of the World? The three Gods with their Goddesses are the three dual
representations of Purusha the Spirit, and Prakriti - matter; the six are synthesized by
Svayambhuva the self-existent, unmanifested Deity. They are only the symbols
personifying the Unseen Presence in every phenomenon of nature.

AVATARAS
"The seven [regions]* of Bhumi, hang by golden threads [beams or rays] from the
Spiritual central Sun [or 'God']. Higher than all, a Watcher for each [region]. The Suras
come down this [beam]. They cross the six and reach the Seventh [our earth]. They are
our mother earth's [Bhumi] supporters [or guardians]. The eighth watches over the [seven]
watchers." Suras are in the Vedas deities, or beings, connected with the Sun; in their
occult meaning they are the seven chief watchers or guardians of our planetary system.
They are positively identical with the "Seven Spirits of the Stars." The Suras are connected
in practical Occultism with the Seven Yogic powers. One of these, Laghima(n) or "the
faculty of assuming levity," is illustrated in a Purana as rising and descending along a
sunbeam to the solar orb with its mysteries; e.g., Khatvanga, in Vishnu-Purana (Book 1V.).
"It must be equally easy to the Adept to travel a ray downwards," remarks Fitzedward Hall
(p. 311). And why not, if the action is understood in its right and correct sense?
Eight great Gods are often reckoned, as there are eight points of the compass, four
cardinal and four intermediate points over which preside also inferior Lokapalas or the
"doubles" of the greater Gods. Yet, in many instances where the number eight is given it
is only a kind of exoteric shell. Every globe, however, is divided into seven regions, as 7
x 7 = 49 is the mystic number par excellence.
To make it clearer: in each of the seven Root-Races, and in every one of the seven
regions into which the Occult Doctrine divides our globe, there appears from the dawn of
Humanity the "Watcher" assigned to it in the eternity of the Aeon. He comes first in his
own "form," then each time as an Avatara.

INITIATIONS
In a secret work upon the Mysteries and the rites of Initiation, in which very rough
but correct prints are given of the sacramental postures, and of the trials to which the
postulant was subjected, the following details are found:
(1) The neophyte - representing the Sun, as "Sahasrakirana" "he of the thousand
rays" - is shown kneeling before the "Hierophant." The latter is in the act of cutting off
seven locks of the neophyte's long hair,** and in the following - (2) - illustration, the
postulant's bright crown of golden beams is thrown off, and replaced by a wreath of sharp
ligneous spines, symbolizing

------------------
* In every ancient cosmography the universe and the earth are divided into seven
parts or regions.
**See Judges xvi, again, where Samson, the symbolic personification of the Sun,
the Jewish Hercules, speaks of his seven locks which, when cut off, will deprive him of his
(physical) strength, i.e., kill the material man, leaving only the spiritual. But the Bible fails
to explain, or rather, conceals purposely, the esoteric truth, that the seven locks symbolize
the septenary physical or terrestrial man, thus cut off and separated from the spiritual. To
this day the High Lamas cut off during public consecrations a lock of the hair of the
candidates for the religious life, repeating a formula to the effect that the six others will
follow, when the "upasaka" is READY. The lock of hair or tonsure of the Roman Catholic
priests is a relic of the same mystery-idea.
--------

the loss.* This was enacted in India. In trans-himalayan regions it was the same.
In order to become a "Perfect One," the Sakridagamin ("he who will receive new
birth," lit.) had, among other trials, to descend into Patala, the "nether world," after which
process only he could hope to become an "Anagamin" - "one who will be reborn no more."
The full Initiate had the option of either entering this second Path by appearing at will in the
world of men under a human form, or he could choose to first rest in the world of Gods (the
Devachan of the Initiates), and then only be reborn on this our earth. Thus, the next stage
shows the postulant preparing for this journey.
(3) Every kind of temptation - we have no right to enumerate these or speak of them
- was being placed on his way. If he came out victorious over these, then the further
Initiation was proceeded with; if he fell - it was delayed, often entirely lost for him.
These rites lasted seven days.

ON CYCLES AND MODERN FALLACIES

 The Hermetic axiom has been made good by astronomy and geology. Science has
become convinced now that the milliards of the heavenly hosts - suns, stars, planets, the
systems in and beyond the Milky Way - have all had a common origin, our earth included.
Nevertheless that a regular evolution, incessant and daily, is still going on. That "cosmic
life-times have began at different epochs and proceed at different rates of change. Some
began so far back in eternity or have proceeded at so rapid a rate, that their careers are
-brought to a conclusion in the passing age. Some are even now awaking into existence;
and it is probable that worlds are beginning and ending continually. Hence cosmic
existence, like the kingdoms of organic life, presents a simultaneous panorama of a
completed cycle of being. A taxonomic arrangement of the various grades of animal
existence presents a succession of forms which we find repeated in the embryonic history
of a single individual, and again in the succession of geological types; so the taxonomy
of the heavens is both a cosmic embryology and a cosmic paleontology." (World Life, p.
539.)
So much for cycles again in modern orthodox science. It was the knowledge of all
these truths - scientifically demonstrated and made public now, but in those days of
antiquity occult and known to Initiates alone - that led to the formation of various cycles into
a regular system. The grand Manvantaric system was divided into other great cycles; and
these in their turn into smaller cycles, regular wheels of time, in Eternity. Yet no one
outside of the sacred precincts ever had the key to the correct reading and interpretation
of cyclic notation, and therefore even the ancient classics disagreed on many points.
Thus, Orpheus is said to have ascribed to the "Great" Cycle 120,000 years' duration, and
Cassandrus 136,000, according to Censorinus (De Die Natali,

------------
* No need of explaining that Sanjna - pure spiritual conscience - is the inner
perception of the neophyte (or chela) and Initiate; the scorching of it by the too ardent
beams of the Sun being symbolical of the terrestrial passions. Hence the seven locks are
symbolical of the seven cardinal sins, and as to the seven cardinal virtues - to be gained
by the Sakridagamin (the candidate "for new birth") they could be attained by him only
through severe trial and suffering.
---------------------

Chron, and Aston. Fragments). Analogy is the law, and is the surest guide in occult
sciences, as it ought to be in the natural philosophy made public. It is perhaps mere vanity
that prevents modern science from accepting the enormous periods of time insisted upon
by the ancients, as elapsed since the first civilizations. The miserable little fragment torn
out from the Book of the Universal History of Mankind, now called so proudly "Our History,"
forces historians to dwarf every period in order to wedge it in within the narrow limits
primarily constructed by theology. Hence the most liberal among them hesitate to accept
the figures given by ancient historians. Bunsen, the eminent Egyptologist, rejects the
period of 48,863 years before Alexander, to which Diogenes Laertius carries back the
records of the priests, but he is evidently more embarrassed with the ten thousand of
astronomical observations, and remarks that "if they were actual observations, they must
have extended over 10,000 years" (p. 14). "We learn, however," he adds, "from one of
their own old chronological works . . . . that the genuine Egyptian traditions concerning the
mythological period, treated of myriads of years." (Egypte, I, p. 15)
We must notice and try to explain some of these great and smaller cycles and their
symbols. Let us begin with the cycle of Mahayuga, personified by Shesha - the great
serpent called "the couch of Vishnu," because that God is Time and Duration personified
in the most philosophical and often poetical way.
It is said that Vishnu appeared on it at the beginning of every Manvantara as "the
Lord of Creation." Shesha is the great Serpent-Cycle, represented as swallowing its own
tail - thence the emblem of Time within Eternity. Time, says Locke (On the Human
Understanding) - Time is "duration set forth by measures," and Shesha sets forth evolution
by symbolizing its periodical stages. On him Vishnu sleeps during the intervals of rest
(pralayas) between "creations"; the blue God - blue because he is space and the depth
of infinity - awakens only when Shesha bends his thousand heads, preparing to again bear
up the Universe which is supported on them. The Vishnu-Purana describes him thus:
"Below the seven Patalas is the form of Vishnu, proceeding from the quality of darkness,
which is Shesha, the excellences of which neither Daityas nor Danavas can fully
enumerate. This being is called Ananta [the infinite] by the spirits of Siddha (Yoga
Wisdom, sons of Dharma, or true religion), and is worshiped by sages and by gods. He
has a thousand heads, which are embellished with the pure and visible mystic sign
[Svastika]; and the thousand jewels in his crests (phana) gives light to all the regions. . .
In one hand he holds a plough* and in the other a pestle. . . . From his mouths, at the end
of the Kalpa, proceeds the venomed fire that, impersonated as Rudra [Shiva, the
'destroyer'] . . . devours the three worlds" (ii. 211).
Thence Shesha is the cycle of the great Manvantara, and also the spirit of vitality
as of destruction, since Vishnu, as the preserving or conservative force, and Shiva as the
destroying potency, are both aspects of Brahma.

------------------
* An emblem referring to the "ploughing" and sowing the renewed earth (in its new
Round) with fresh seeds of life.
------------------

Shesha is said to have taught the sage Garga - one of the oldest astronomers in India,
whom, nevertheless, Bentley places only 548 B.C. - the secret sciences, the mysteries of
the heavenly bodies, of astrology, astronomy and various omens. Shesha is so great and
mighty, that it is more than likely he will some day, in far off future ages, render the same
service to our modern astronomers. Nothing like "Time" and cyclic changes to cure
sceptics of their blindness.
But Occult truths have to contend with a far more blind foe than science can ever
be to them, namely, the Christian theologians and bigots. These claim unblushingly the
number of years lived by their Patriarchs some four thousand years ago, and pretend to
prove that they have interpreted "the symbolic predictions of scripture" and have "traced
the historic fulfilment of two of the most important of them" - handling Biblical chronology
as reverently as though it had never been a rehash of Chaldaean records and cyclic
figures, to hide the true meaning under exoteric fables! They speak of "that history that
unrolls before our eyes a record extending over six thousand years" from the moment of
creation; and maintain that there are "very few of the prophetic periods whose fulfilment
cannot be traced in some parts of the scrolls." (The Approaching End of the Age)
Moreover they have two methods and two chronologies to show those events
verified - the Roman Catholic and the Protestant. The first relies on the calculations of
Kepler and Dr. Sepp; the latter on Clinton, who gives the year of the Nativity as A.M. 4138;
the former holds to the old calculation of 4320 by lunar, and 4004 by solar years.

- Theosophia, July-Aug, 1952

------------------------

H. P. B.' S EDITORIAL POLICY

I.
....Elsewhere we have clearly explained the nature of Theosophy; it remains for us
to say a few words as to the policy of our paper.
It has been shown that the individual members of our Society have their own private
opinions upon all matters of a religious, as of every other, nature. They are protected in
the enjoyment and expression of the same; and, as individuals, have an equal right to
state them in the Theosophist, over their own signatures. Some of us prefer to be known
as Arya Samajists, some as Buddhists, some as idolaters, some as something else. What
each is, will appear from his or her signed communications. But neither Aryan, Buddhist,
nor any other representative of a particular religion, whether an editor or a contributor, can,
under the Society's rules, be allowed to use these editorial columns exclusively in the
interest of the same, or unreservedly commit the paper to its propaganda. It is designed
that a strict impartiality shall be observed in the editorial utterances; the paper
representing the whole Theosophical Society, or Universal Brotherhood, and not any single
section. The Society being neither a church nor a sect in any sense, we mean to give the
same cordial welcome to communications from one class of religionists as to those from
another; insisting only that courtesy of language shall be used towards opponents. And
the policy of the Society is also a full pledge and guarantee that there will be no
suppression of fact nor tampering with writings, to serve the ends of any established or
dissenting church, of any country. - (H.P.B. in The Theosophist, I, p. 2.)

II.
Anyone who, like the Theosophists, knows how infinite is that ocean of eternal
wisdom, to be fathomed by no one man, class, or party, and realizes how little the largest
vessel made by man contains in comparison to what lies dormant and still unperceived in
its dark, bottomless depths, cannot help but be tolerant. For he sees that others have filled
their little water-jugs at the same great reservoir at which he has dipped his own, and if the
water in the various pitchers seems different to the eye, it can only be because it is
discoloured by impurities that were in the vessel before the pure crystalline element - a
portion of the one eternal and immutable truth - entered into it . . . . . .
. . . . We know. . . that a portion of truth, great or small, is found in every religious
and philosophical system, and that if we would find it, we have to search for it at the very
origin and source of every such system, at its roots and first growth, not in its later
overgrowth of sects and dogmatism. Our object is not to destroy any religion but rather to
help to filter each, thus ridding them of their respective impurities. In this we are opposed
by all who maintain, against evidence, that their particular pitcher alone contains the whole
ocean . . . .
. . . .Free discussion, temperate, candid, undefiled by personalities and animosity,
is, we think, the most efficacious means of getting rid of error and bringing out the
underlying truth . . . . Readers . . . should remember that precisely because Lucifer is a
theosophical magazine, it opens its columns to writers whose views of life and things may
not only slightly differ from its own, but even be diametrically opposed to the opinion of the
editors. The object of the latter is to elicit truth, not to advance the interest of any particular
ism . . . .
. . . .Justice demands that when the reader comes across an article in this magazine
which does not immediately approve itself to his mind by chiming in with his own peculiar
ideas, he should regard it as a problem to solve rather than as a mere subject of criticism.
Let him endeavour to learn the lesson which only opinions differing from his own can teach
him. Let him be tolerant, if not actually charitable, and postpone his judgment till he
extracts from the article the truth it must contain, adding this new acquisition to his store.
One ever learns more from one's enemies than from one's friends . . . .
- (H.P.B., Lucifer, I, pp. 341/343).)

III.
. . . . Moreover, we have given good proofs of our impartiality. We published articles
and letters criticizing not alone our personal theosophical and philosophical views, but
discussing upon subjects directly connected with our personal honour and reputation;
reviving the infamous calumnies in which, not simple doubts, but distinctly formulated
charges of dishonesty were cast into our teeth and our private character was torn to shreds
(Vide "A Glance at Theosophy from the Outside", Lucifer for October, 1888). And if the
editor will never shrink from what she considers her duty to her readers, and that she is
prepared to throw every possible light upon mooted questions in order that truth should
shine bright and hideous lies and superstitions be shown under their true colors - why
should our contributors prove themselves so thin-skinned? Magna est veritas et prevalebit.
Every hitherto far-hidden truth, whether concealed out of sight by Nature's secretiveness
or human craft, must and shall be unveiled some day or other. Meanwhile, we do our best
to help poor, shivering, naked Truth in her arduous progress, by cutting paths for her
through the inextricable jungle of theological and social shams and lies. The best means
of doing it is to open the pages of our magazine to free controversy and discussion,
regardless of personalities or prejudices - though some of our friends may object to such
modes of excavating far hidden truths. They are wrong, evidently. It is by this means
alone that he who holds correct views has a chance of proving them, hence of seeing them
accepted and firmly established; and he who is mistaken of being benefitted by having his
better sense awakened and directed to the other side of the question he sees but in one
of its aspects. Logic, Milton says to us, teaches us "that contraries laid together more
evidently appear; it follows, then, that all controversy being permitted, falsehood will
appear more false, and truth the more true; which must needs conduce much to the
general confirmation of an implicit truth." Again, "if it (controversy) be profitable for one
man to read, why should it not at least be tolerable and free for his adversary to write?"
. . . . Lucifer has a settled and plainly outlined policy of its own, and those who write for it
have either to accept it, or - turn their backs on our magazine. No discourteous epithets
or vulgar abuse of personalities shall ever be allowed in our Monthly. . . No individual -
friend or foe - risks being called in our journal "adventurer", "hallucinated lunatic". "impostor
and free lover", "charlatan", or "credulous fool" . . . .
But, on the other hand, no one of whatever rank or influence - as nothing however
"time-honoured", shall ever be pandered to or propitiated in our magazine. Nor shall any
error, sham or superstition be daubed with the whitewash of propriety, or passed over in
prudent silence. As our journal was not established for a money-making enterprise, but
verily as a champion for every fact and truth, however tabooed and unpopular, - it need
pander to no lie or absurd superstition. For this policy the Theosophical Publishing Co. is,
already, several hundred pounds out of pocket. The editor invites free criticism upon
everything that is said in Lucifer; and while protecting every contributor from direct
personalities is quite willing to accept any amount of such against herself, and promises
to answer each and all to the best of her ability. Fas est ab hoste doceri. . . "Fais que dois,
advienne que pourra." -(H.P.B. in Lucifer, III, pp. 344-5.)

- From Canadian Theosophist, Nov. 15, 1929

-------------------------

A MYSTIC FORCE IS RISING

Extracts from 'The New Cycle', La Revue Theosophique, Paris, Vol. I, No. 1, March
21, 1889, pp. 3-13
- H.P. Blavatsky

Nearly a hundred years ago H.P. Blavatsky, in her article "The New Cycle", flung
down the gauntlet to materialism and sounded its death-knell. In one of her most inspiring
and exhortative articles she challenges Theosophists (and mystics) to work boldly for those
principles which will free the world from dogma and materialistic slavery and thus prepare
"for a future of which but few in your midst have dared to dream." The year was 1889; the
occasion the inauguration of La Revue Theosophique. The first sentence of the article "Le
Cycle Nouveau" reads: "No initial issue of an orthodox and official Theosophical journal
should be allowed to appear without giving to our readers some information which we
deem to be of absolute necessity." Then HPB speaks out.
A century has passed. How much of what she says - "that first gentle rustling" - will
be seen by the alert mind today as prophetic, how much still cries for resolution and a great
giving, responsive action from every Theosophist will, no doubt, be abundantly clear. The
whole article calls for intent study, but here we give only a few paragraphs. Turn to
Blavatsky Collected Writings, XI, which covers the year of 1889, for the original French and
also the English translation.
- Editors
 . . . This is again the hour of the great cyclic return of the rising tide of mystical
thought in Europe. On every side we are surrounded by the ocean of universal science -
the science of life eternal - bearing on its waves the forgotten and submerged treasures
of vanished generations, treasures still unknown to the modern civilized races ...
We must prepare and study truth under every aspect, endeavoring to ignore
nothing, if we do not wish to fall into the abyss of the unknown when the hour shall strike.
It is useless to leave it to chance and await the intellectual and psychic crisis which is
preparing, with indifference, if not with crass disbelief, saying that at the worst the rising
tide will carry us naturally towards the shore; for it is very likely that the tidal wave will cast
up nothing but a corpse. The strife will be terrible in any case between brutal materialism
and blind fanaticism on the one hand, and philosophy and mysticism on the other -
mysticism, that veil of more or less translucency which hides the eternal Truth.
But it is not materialism which will gain the upper hand ... For from the depths of the
dark, muddy waters of materiality which, on every side, hide from them the horizons of the
great Beyond, a mystic force is rising during these last years of the century. At most it is
but the first gentle rustling, but it is a superhuman rustling - 'supernatural' only for the
superstitious and the ignorant. The spirit of truth is passing now over the face of the dark
waters, and in parting them, is compelling them to disgorge their spiritual treasures. This
spirit is a force that can neither be hindered nor stopped. Those who recognize it and feel
that this is the supreme moment of their salvation will be uplifted by it and carried beyond
the illusions of the great astral serpent. The joy they will experience will be so poignant
and intense, that if they were not mentally isolated from their bodies of flesh, the beatitude
would pierce them like sharp steel. It is not pleasure that they will experience, but a bliss
which is a foretaste of the knowledge of the gods, the knowledge of good and evil, and of
the fruits of the tree of life.
But although the man of today may be a fanatic, a skeptic, or a mystic, he must
become thoroughly convinced that it is useless for him to struggle against the two moral
forces today unleashed and in supreme contest. He is at the mercy of these two
adversaries, and no intermediary force is capable of protecting him. It is but a question of
choice, whether to let himself be carried along without a struggle on the wave of mystical
evolution, or to writhe against the reaction of moral and psychic evolution, and so find
himself engulfed in the Maelstrom of the new tide. At the present time, the whole world,
with its centers of high intelligence and human culture, its focal points of political, artistic,
literary, and commercial life, is in a turmoil; everything is shaking and crumbling in its
movement towards reform. It is useless to remain blind, it is useless to hope that anyone
can remain neutral between the two contending forces; one has to choose either the one
or the other, or be crushed between them. . . . All of you who hesitate on the path of
Theosophy and the occult sciences, who are trembling on the golden threshold of truth -
the only one within your grasp, for all others have failed you, one after another - squarely
face the great Reality which is offered you.
It is to mystics only that these words are addressed, for them alone have they any
importance; for those who have already made their choice they are vain and useless. But
you, Occultists, Kabbalists and Theosophists, you well know that a Word, old as the world,
though new to you, has been sounded at the beginning of this cycle, and the potentiality
of which, unperceived by others, lies hidden in the sum of the digits of the year 1889; you
well know that a note has just been struck which has never been heard by mankind of this
era; and that a New Idea is revealed, ripened by the forces of evolution. This Idea differs
from everything that has been produced in the nineteenth century; it is identical, however,
with the thought that has been the dominant tone and the keynote of every century,
especially the last - absolute freedom of thought for humanity ...
... Our century must be saved from itself before its last hour strikes. For all those
who see the sterility and folly of an existence blinded by materialism and ferociously
indifferent to the fate of their neighbor, this is the moment to act; now is the time for them
to devote all their energies, all their courage and all their efforts to a great intellectual
reform. This reform can only be accomplished by Theosophy, and, let us add, by
Occultism or the wisdom of the Orient. The paths that lead to it are many; but the wisdom
is one. Artistic souls envision it, those who suffer dream of it, the pure in heart know it.
Those who work for others cannot remain blind to its reality, though they may not always
recognize it by its name ...

- Eclectic Theosophist, No. 70

------------------------

On After-Death States
- from H.P. Blavatsky's The Key to Theosophy

ON THE KAMA-LOKA
ENQ. You spoke of Kama-loka, what is it?
THEO. When the man dies, his lower three principles leave him for ever; i.e., body,
life, and the vehicle of the latter, the astral body or the double of the living man. And then,
his four principles - the central or middle principle, the animal soul or Kama-rupa, with what
it has assimilated from the lower Manas, and the higher triad find themselves in Kama-loka.
The latter is an astral locality, the limbus of scholastic theology, the Hades of the ancients,
and, strictly speaking, a locality only in a relative sense. It has neither a definite area nor
boundary, but exists within subjective space; i.e., is beyond our sensuous perceptions.
Still it exists, and it is there that the astral eidolons of all the beings that have lived, animals
included, await their second death. For the animals it comes with the disintegration and
the entire fading out of their astral particles to the last. For the human eidolon it begins
when the Atma-Buddhi-Manasic triad is said to "separate" itself from its lower principles,
or the reflection of the ex-personality, by falling into the Devachanic state.
ENQ. And what happens after this?
THEO. Then the Kama-rupic phantom, remaining bereft of its informing thinking
principle, the higher Manas, and the lower aspect of the latter, the animal intelligence, no
longer receiving light from the higher mind, and no longer having a physical brain to work
through, collapses.
ENQ. In what way?
THEO. Well, it falls into the state of the frog when certain portions of its brain are
taken out by the vivisector. It. can think no more, even on the lowest animal plane.
Henceforth it is no longer even the lower Manas, since this "lower" is nothing without the
"higher".
ENQ. And it is this nonentity which we find materializing in Seance rooms with
Mediums?
THEO. It is this nonentity. A true nonentity, however, only as to reasoning or
cogitating powers, still an Entity, however astral and fluidic, as shown in certain cases
when, having been magnetically and unconsciously drawn toward a medium, it is revived
for a time and lives in him by proxy, so to speak. This "spook," or the Kama-rupa, may be
compared with the jelly-fish, which has an ethereal gelatinous appearance so long as it is
in its own element, or water (the medium's specific AURA), but which, no sooner is it
thrown out of it, than it dissolves in the hand or on the sand, especially in sunlight. In the
medium's Aura, it lives a kind of vicarious life and reasons and speaks either through the
medium's brain or those of other persons present. But this would lead us too far, and upon
other people's grounds, whereon I have no desire to trespass. Let us keep to the subject
of reincarnation.
ENQ. What of the latter? How long does the incarnating Ego remain in the
Devachanic state?
THEO. This, we are taught, depends on the degree of spirituality and the merit or
demerit of the last incarnation. The average time is from ten to fifteen centuries, as I
already told you.
ENQ. But why could not - this Ego manifest and communicate with mortals as
Spiritualists will have it? What is there to prevent a mother from communicating with the
children she left on earth, a husband with his wife, and so on? It is a most consoling belief,
I must confess; nor do I wonder that those who believe in it are so averse to give it up.
THEO. Nor are they forced to, unless they happen to prefer truth to fiction, however
"consoling." Uncongenial our doctrines may be to Spiritualists; yet, nothing of what we
believe in and teach is half as selfish and cruel as what they preach.
ENQ. I do not understand you. What is selfish?
THEO. Their doctrine of the return of Spirits, the real "personalities" as they say;
and I will tell you why. If Devachan - call it "paradise" if you like, a "place of bliss and of
supreme felicity," if it is anything - is such a place (or say state), logic tells us that no
sorrow or even a shade of pain can be experienced therein. "God shall wipe away all the
tears from the eyes" of those in paradise, we read in the book of many promises. And if
the "Spirits of the dead" are enabled to return and see all that is going on on earth, and
especially in their homes, what kind of bliss can be in store for them?

WHY THEOSOPHISTS DO NOT BELIEVE IN THE RETURN OF PURE "SPIRITS."

ENQ. What do you mean? Why should this interfere with their bliss?
THEO. Simply this; and here is an instance. A mother dies, leaving behind her
little helpless children - orphans whom she adores - perhaps a beloved husband also. We
say that her "Spirit" or Ego - that individuality which is now all impregnated, for the entire
Devachanic period, with the noblest feelings held by its late personality, i.e., love for her
children, pity for those who suffer, and so on - we say that it is now entirely separated from
the "vale of tears," that its future bliss consists in that blessed ignorance of all the woes it
left behind. Spiritualists say, on the contrary, that it is as vividly aware of them, and more
so than before, for "Spirits see more than mortals in the flesh do." We say that the bliss
of the Devachanee consists in its complete conviction that it has never left the earth, and
that there is no such thing as death at all; that the post-mortem spiritual consciousness of
the mother will represent to her that she lives surrounded by her children and all those
whom she loved; that no gap, no link, will be missing to make her disembodied state the
most perfect and absolute happiness. The Spiritualists deny this point blank. According
to their doctrine, unfortunate man is not liberated even by death from the sorrows of this
life. Not a drop from the life-cup of pain and suffering will miss his lips; and nolens volens,
since he sees everything now, shall he drink it to the bitter dregs. Thus, the loving wife,
who during her lifetime was ready to save her husband sorrow at the price of her heart's
blood, is now doomed to see, in utter helplessness, his despair, and to register every hot
tear he sheds for her loss. Worse than that, she may see the tears dry too soon, and
another beloved face shine on him, the father of her children; doomed to tear her orphans
giving the holy name of "mother" to one indifferent to them, and to see those little children
neglected, if not ill-treated. According to this doctrine the "gentle wafting to immortal life"
becomes without any transition the way into a new path of mental suffering! And yet, the
columns of the "Banner of Light," the veteran journal of the American Spiritualists, are filled
with messages from the dead, the "dear departed ones," who all write to say how very
happy they are! Is such a state of knowledge consistent with bliss? Then "bliss" stands
in such a case for the greatest curse, and orthodox damnation must be a relief in
comparison to it!
ENQ. But how does your theory avoid this? How can you reconcile the theory of
Soul's omniscience with its blindness to that which is taking place on earth?
THEO. Because such is the law of love and mercy. During every Devachanic
period the Ego, omniscient as it is per se, clothes itself, so to say, with the reflection of the
"personality" that was. I have just told you that the ideal efflorescence of all the abstract,
therefore undying and eternal qualities or attributes, such as love and mercy, the love of
the good, the true and the beautiful, that ever spoke in the heart of the living "personality,"
clung after death to the Ego, and therefore followed it to Devachan. For the time being,
then, the Ego becomes the ideal reflection of the human being it was when last on earth,
and that is not omniscient. Were it that, it would never be in the state we call Devachan
at all.
ENQ. What are your reasons for it?
THEO. If you want an answer on the strict lines of our philosophy, then I will say
that it is because everything is illusion (Maya) outside of eternal truth, which has neither
form, color, nor limitation. He who has placed himself beyond the veil of maya - and such
are the highest Adepts and Initiates - can have no Devachan. As to the ordinary mortal,
his bliss in it is complete. It is an absolute oblivion of all that gave it pain or sorrow in the
past incarnation, and even oblivion of the fact that such things as pain or sorrow exist at
all. The Devachanee lives its intermediate cycle between two incarnations surrounded by
everything it had aspired to in vain, and in the companionship of everyone it loved on earth.
It has reached the fulfilment of all its soul-yearnings. And thus it lives throughout long
centuries an existence of unalloyed happiness, which is the reward for its sufferings in
earth-life. In short, it bathes in a sea of uninterrupted felicity spanned only by events of still
greater felicity in degree.
ENQ. But this is more than simple delusion, it is an existence of insane
hallucinations!
 THEO. From your standpoint it may be, not so from that of philosophy. Besides
which, is not our whole terrestrial life filled with such delusions? Have you never met men
and women living for years in a fool's paradise? And because you should happen to learn
that the husband of a wife, whom she adores and believes herself as beloved by him, is
untrue to her, would you go and break her heart and beautiful dream by rudely awakening
her to the reality? I think not. I say it again, such oblivion and hallucination - if you call it
so - are only a merciful law of nature and strict justice. At any rate, it is a far more
fascinating prospect than the orthodox golden harp with a pair of wings. The assurance
that "the soul that lives ascends frequently and runs familiarly through the streets of the
heavenly Jerusalem, visiting the patriarchs and prophets, saluting the apostles, and
admiring the army of martyrs" may seem of a more pious character to some.
Nevertheless, it is a hallucination of a far more delusive character, since mothers love their
children with an immortal love, we all know, while the personages mentioned in the
"heavenly Jerusalem" are still of a rather doubtful nature. But I would, still, rather accept
the "new Jerusalem", with its streets paved like the show windows of a jeweler's shop, than
find consolation in the heartless doctrine of the Spiritualists. The idea alone that the
intellectual conscious souls of one's father, mother, daughter or brother find their bliss in
a "Summer land" - only a little more natural, but just as ridiculous as the "New Jerusalem"
in its description - would be enough to make one lose every repect for one's "departed
ones." To believe that a pure spirit can feel happy while doomed to witness the sins,
mistakes, treachery, and, above all, the sufferings of those from whom it is severed by
death and whom it loves best, without being able to help them, would be a maddening
thought.
ENQ. There is something in your argument. I confess to having never seen it in this
light.
THEO. Just so, and one must be selfish to the core and utterly devoid of the sense
of retributive justice, to have ever imagined such a thing. We are with those whom we
have lost in material form, and far, far nearer to them now, than when they were alive. And
it is not only in the fancy of the Devachanee, as some may imagine, but in reality. For pure
divine love is not merely the blossom of a human heart, but has its roots in eternity.
Spiritual holy love is immortal, and Karma brings sooner or later all those who loved each
other with such a spiritual affection to incarnate once more in the same family group.
Again we say that love beyond the grave, illusion though you may call it, has a magic and
divine potency which reacts on the living. A mother's Ego filled with love for the imaginary
children it sees near itself, living a life of happiness, as real to it as when on earth - that
love will always be felt by the children in flesh. It will manifest in their dreams, and often
in various events - in providential protections and escapes, for love is a strong shield, and
is not limited by space or time. As with this Devachanic "mother," so with the rest of
human relationships and attachments, save the purely selfish or material. Analogy will
suggest to you the rest.
ENQ. In no case, then, do you admit the possibility of the communication of the
living with the disembodied spirit?
THEO. Yes, there is a case, and even two exceptions to the rule. The first
exception is during the few days that follow immediately the death of a person and before
the Ego passes into the Devachanic state. Whether any living mortal, save a few
exceptional cases - (when the intensity of the desire in the dying person to return for some
purpose forced the higher consciousness to remain awake, and therefore it was really the
individuality, the "Spirit" that communicated) - has derived much benefit from the return of
the spirit into the objective plane is another question. The spirit is dazed after death and
falls very soon into what we call "pre-devachanic unconsciousness." The second
exception is found in the Nirmanakayas.
ENQ. What about them? And what does the name mean for you?
THEO. It is the name given to those who, though they have won the right to Nirvana
and cyclic rest - (not "Devachan," as the latter is an illusion of our consciousness, a happy
dream, and as those who are fit for Nirvana must have lost entirely every desire or
possibility of the world's illusions) - have out of pity for mankind and those they left on earth
renounced the Nirvanic state. 'Such an adept, or Saint, or whatever you may call him,
believing it a selfish act to rest in bliss while mankind groans under the burden of misery
produced by ignorance, renounces Nirvana, and determines to remain invisible in spirit on
this earth. They have no material body, as they have left it behind; but otherwise they
remain with all their principles even in astral life in our sphere. And such can and do
communicate with a few elect ones, only surely not with ordinary mediums.

- From Canadian Theosophist, Feb. 1944

-----------------------------------

A FEW QUESTIONS TO "HIRAF"

Author of the article "Rosicrucianism."
- by Madame H.P. Blavatsky

[This remarkable article from the pen of H.P. Blavatsky may he considered as the
"opening gun" of her occult literary career. The clippings from the Spiritual Scientist,
Boston, Vol II, Nos. 19 and 20, July 15 and 22, 1875, pp. 217-18, 224, and 236-37,
respectively, where this article appeared, were pasted by H.P.B. in her Scrapbook 1, where
she added the following pen-and-ink notation: "My first occult shot. H.P.B." It is as timely
today as it was seventy-five years ago, and deserves the most careful study. - Editor.]

Among the numerous sciences pursued by the well-disciplined army of earnest

students of the present century, none has had less honors or more scoffing than the oldest
of them - the science of sciences, the venerable mother-parent of all our modern pigmies.
Anxious, in their petty vanity, to throw the veil of oblivion over their undoubted origin, the
self-styled positive scientists, ever on the alert, present to the courageous scholar who tries
to deviate from the beaten highway traced out for him by his dogmatic predecessors, a
formidable range of serious obstacles.
As a rule, Occultism is a dangerous, double-edged weapon for one to handle, who
is unprepared to devote his whole life to it. The theory of it, unaided by serious practice,
will ever remain in the eyes of those prejudiced against such an unpopular cause an idle,
crazy speculation, fit only to charm the ears of ignorant old women. When we cast a look
behind us, and see how, for the last thirty years, modern Spiritualism has been dealt with,
notwithstanding the occurrence of daily, hourly proofs which speak to all our senses, stare
us in the eyes, and utter their voices from "beyond the great gulf," how can we hope that
Occultism, or Magic, which stands in relation to Spiritualism as the Infinite to the Finite, as
the cause to the effect, or as unity to multifariousness, how call we hope, I say, that it will
easily gain ground where Spiritualism is scoffed at? One who rejects a priori, or even
doubts, the immortality of man's soul can never believe in its Creator, and blind to what is
heterogeneous in his eyes, will remain still more blind to the proceeding of the latter from
Homogeneity. In relation to the Cabala, or the compound mystic text-book of all the great
secrets of Nature, we do not know of anyone in the present century who could have
commanded a sufficient dose of that moral courage which fires the heart of the true adept
with the sacred flame of propagandism - to force him into defying public opinion, by
displaying familiarity with that sublime work. Ridicule is the deadliest weapon of the age,
and while we read in the records of history of thousands of martyrs who joyfully braved
flames and faggots in support of their mystic doctrines in the past centuries, we would
scarcely be likely to find one individual in the present times, who would be brave enough
even to defy ridicule by seriously undertaking to prove the great truths embraced in the
traditions of the Past.
As an instance of the above, I will mention the article on Rosicrucianism, signed
"Hiraf." This ably-written essay, notwithstanding some fundamental errors, which, though
they are such would be hardly noticed except by those who had devoted their lives to the
study of Occultism in its various branches of practical teaching, indicates with certainty to
the practical reader that, for theoretical knowledge, at least, the author need fear few rivals,
still less superiors. His modesty, which I cannot too much appreciate in his case, though
he is safe enough behind the mask of his fancy pseudonym - need not give him any
apprehensions. There are few critics in this country of Positivism who would willingly risk
themselves in an encounter with such a powerful disputant, on his own ground. The
weapons he seems to hold in reserve, in the arsenal of his wonderful memory, his learning,
and his readiness to give any further information that enquirers may wish for, will
undoubtedly scare off every theorist, unless he is perfectly sure of himself, which few are.
But book-learning - and here I refer only to the subject of Occultism - vast as it may be, will
always prove insufficient even to the analytical mind, the most accustomed to extract the
quintessence of truth, disseminated throughout thousands of contradictory statements,
unless supported by personal experience and practice. Hence Hiraf can only expect an
encounter with some one who may hope to find a chance to refute some of his bold
assertions on the plea of having just such a slight practical experience. Still, it must not be
understood that these present lines are intended to criticize our too modest essayist. Far
from poor, ignorant me be such a presumptuous thought. My desire is simply to help him
in his scientific but, as I said before, rather hypothetical researches, by telling a little of the
little I picked up in my long travels throughout the length and breadth of the East - that
cradle of Occultism - in the hope of correcting certain erroneous notions he seems to be
labouring under, and which are calculated to confuse uninitiated sincere enquirers, who
might desire to drink at his own source of knowledge.
In the first place, Hiraf doubts whether there are in existence, in England or
elsewhere, what we term regular colleges for the neophytes of this Secret Science. I will
say from personal knowledge that such places there are in the East - in India, Asia Minor,
and other countries. As in the primitive clays of Socrates and other sages of antiquity, so
now, those who are willing to learn the Great Truth will ever find the chance if they only
"try" to meet some one to lead them to the door of one "who knows when and how." If
Hiraf is right about the seventh rule of the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross which says that
"the Rose-crux becomes and is not made," he may err as to the exceptions which have
ever existed among other Brotherhoods devoted to the pursuit of the same secret
knowledge. Then again, when he asserts, as he does, that Rosicrucianism is almost
forgotten, we may answer him that we do not wonder at it, and add, by way of parenthesis,
that, strictly speaking, the Rosicrucians do not even exist, the last of that Fraternity having
departed in the person of Cagliostro.*
Hiraf ought to add to the word Rosicrucianism "that particular sect," at least, for it
was but a sect after all, one of many branches of the same tree. By forgetting to specify
that particular denomination, and by including under the name of Rosicrucians all those
who, devoting their lives to Occultism, congregated together in Brotherhoods, Hiraf
commits an error by which he may unwittingly lead people to believe that the Rosicrucians
having disappeared, there are no more Cabalists practicing Occultism on the face of the
earth. He also becomes thereby guilty of an anachronism,** attributing to the Rosicrucians
the building of the Pyramids and other majestic monuments, which indelibly exhibit in their
architecture the symbols of the grand religions of the Past. For it is not so. If the main
object in view was and still is alike with all the great family of the ancient and modern
Cabalists, the dogmas and formulae of certain sects differ greatly. Springing one after the
other from the great Oriental mother-root, they scattered broadcast all over the world, and
each of them desiring to outrival the other by plunging deeper and deeper into the secrets
jealously guarded by Nature, some of them became guilty of the greatest heresies against
the primitive Oriental Cabala.

----------------
* Knowing but little about Occultism in Europe I may be mistaken; if so, any one
who knows to the contrary will oblige me by correcting my error.
** The same mistake pervades the whole of that able book, The Rosicrucians, by
Hargrave Jennings.
---------------

While the first followers of the secret sciences, taught to the Chaldeans by nations
whose very name was never breathed in history, remained stationary in their studies,
having arrived at the maximum, the Omega of the knowledge permitted to man, many of
the subsequent sects separated from them, and, in their uncontrollable thirst for more
knowledge, trespassed the boundaries of truth and fell into fictions. In consequence of
Pythagoras - so says Iamblichus - having by sheer force of energy and daring penetrated
into the mysteries of the Temple of Thebes and obtained therein his initiation, and
afterwards studied the sacred sciences in Egypt for twenty-two years, many foreigners
were subsequently admitted to share the knowledge of the wise men of the East, who, as
a consequence, had many of their secrets divulged. Later still, unable to preserve them
in their purity, these mysteries were so mixed up with fictions and fables of the Grecian
mythology that truth was wholly distorted.
As the primitive Christian religion divided, in course of time, into numerous sects,
so the science of Occultism gave birth to a variety of doctrines and various brotherhoods.
So the Egyptian Ophites became the Christian Gnostics, shooting forth the Basilideans of
the second century, and the original Rosicrucians created subsequently the Paracelsists,
or Fire Philosophers, the European Alchemists, and other physical branches of their sect.
(See Hargrave Jennings' The Rosicrucians.) To call indifferently every Cabalist a
Rosicrucian, is to commit the same error as if we were to call every Christian a Baptist on
the ground that the latter are also Christians.
The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross was not founded until the middle of the
thirteenth century, and notwithstanding the assertions of the learned Mosheim, it derives
its name, neither from the Latin word Ros (dew), nor from a cross, the symbol of Lux. The
origin of the Brotherhood can be ascertained by any earnest, genuine student of Occultism,
who happens to travel in Asia Minor, if he chooses to fall in with some of the Brotherhood,
and if he is willing to devote himself to the head-tiring work of deciphering a Rosicrucian
manuscript - the hardest thing in the world, for it is carefully preserved in the archives of
the very Lodge which was founded by the first Cabalist of that name; but which now goes
by another name. The founder of it, a German Reuter, of the name of Rosencranz, was
a man who, after acquiring a very suspicious reputation through the practice of the Black
Art, in his native place, reformed in consequence of a vision. Giving up his evil practices,
he made a solemn vow, and went on foot to Palestine, in order to make his amende
honorable at the Holy Sepulcher. Once there, the Christian God, the meek, but well-
informed Nazarene - trained as he was in the high school of the Essenes, those virtuous
descendants of the botanical as well as astrological and magical Chaldeans - appeared
to Rosencranz, a Christian would say, in a vision, but I would suggest, in the shape of a
materialized spirit. The purport of this visitation, as well as the subject of their
conversation, remained for ever a mystery to many of the Brethren; but immediately after
that, the ex-sorcerer and Reuter disappeared, and was heard of no more till the mysterious
sect of Rosicrucians was added to the family of Cabalists, and their powers aroused
popular attention, even among the Eastern populations, indolent, and accustomed as they
are to live among wonders. The Rosicrucians strove to combine together the most various
branches of Occultism, and they soon became renowned for the extreme purity of their
lives and their extraordinary powers, as well as for their thorough knowledge of the secret
of the secrets.
As alchemists and conjurers they became proverbial. Later (I need not inform Hiraf
precisely when, as we drink at two different sources of knowledge), they gave birth to the
more modern Theosophists, at whose head was Paracelsus, and to the Alchemists, one
of the most celebrated of whom was Thomas Vaughan (seventeenth century) who wrote
the most practical things on Occultism, under the name of Eugenius Philalethes. I know
and can prove that Vaughan was, most positively, "made before he became."
The Rosicrucian Cabala is but an epitome of the Jewish and the Oriental ones,
combined, the latter being the most secret of all. The Oriental Cabala, the practical, full,
and only existing copy, is carefully preserved at the headquarters of this Brotherhood in the
East, and, I may safely vouch, will never come out of its possession. Its very existence has
been doubted by many of the European Rosicrucians. One who wants "to become" has
to hunt for his knowledge through thousands of scattered volumes, and pick up facts and
lessons, bit by bit. Unless he takes the nearest way and consents "to be made," he will
never become a practical Cabalist, and with all his learning will remain at the threshold of
the "mysterious gate." The Cabala may be used and its truths imparted on a smaller scale
now than it was in antiquity, and the existence of the mysterious Lodge, on account of its
secrecy, doubted: but it does exist and has lost none of the primitive secret powers of the
ancient Chaldaeans.* The lodges, few in number, are divided into sections and known but
to the Adepts; no one would be likely to find them out, unless the sages themselves found
the neophyte worthy of initiation. Unlike the European Rosicrucians - who, in order "to
become and not to be made," have constantly put into practice the word of St. John, who
says, "Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force," and who have struggled
alone, violently robbing Nature of her secrets, the Oriental Rosicrucians (for such we will
call them, being denied the right to pronounce their true name), in the serene beatitude of
their divine knowledge, are ever ready to help the earnest student struggling "to become"
with practical knowledge, which dissipates, like a heavenly breeze, the blackest clouds of
sceptical doubt.

-----------------------
* For those who are able to understand intuitionally what I am about to say, my
words will be but the echo of their own thoughts. I draw the attention of such only, to a
long series of inexplicable events which have taken place in our present century; to the
mysterious influence directing political cataclysms; the doing and undoing of crowned
heads: the tumbling down of thrones; the thorough metamorphosis of nearly the whole
of the European map, beginning with the French Revolution of '93, predicted in every detail
by the Count St. Germain, in an autograph MS., now in the possession of the descendants
of the Russian nobleman to whom he gave it, and coming down to the Franco-Prussian
War of the latter days. This mysterious influence called "chance" by the skeptic and
Providence by Christians, may have a right to some other name. Of all these degenerated
children of Chaldaean Occultism, including the numerous societies of Freemasons, only
one of them in the present century is worth mentioning in relation to Occultism, namely the
" Carbonari." Let some one study all he can of that secret society, let him think, combine,
deduce. If Raymond Lully, a Rosicrucian, a Cabalist, could so easily supply king Edward
I of England with six million sterling to carry on war with the Turks in that distant epoch,
why could not some secret lodge in our day furnish, as well, nearly the same amount of
millions to France, to pay their national debt - this same France, which was so wonderfully,
quickly defeated, and as wonderfully set on her legs again. Idle talk! - people will say.
Very well, but even an hypothesis may be worth the trouble to consider sometimes.
------------------------

Hiraf is right again when he says that "knowing that their mysteries, if divulged, in
the present chaotic state of society, would produce mere confusion and death," they shut
up that knowledge within themselves. Heirs to the early heavenly wisdom of their first
forefathers, they keep the keys which unlock the most guarded of Nature's secrets, and
impart them only gradually and with the greatest caution. But still they do impart
sometimes.
Once in such a cercle vicieux, Hiraf sins likewise in a certain comparison he makes
between Christ, Buddha, and Khoung-foo-tsee, or Confucius. A comparison can hardly
be made between the two former wise and spiritual Illuminati, and the Chinese philosopher.
The higher aspirations and views of the two Christs can have nothing to do with the cold,
practical philosophy of the latter; brilliant anomaly as he was among a naturally dull and
materialistic people, peaceful and devoted to agriculture from the earliest ages of their
history. Confucius can never bear the slightest comparison with the two great Reformers.
Whereas the principles and doctrines of Christ and Buddha were calculated to embrace
the whole of humanity, Confucius confined his attention solely to his own country; trying
to apply his profound wisdom and philosophy to the wants of his countrymen, and little
troubling his head about the rest of mankind. Intensely Chinese in patriotism and views,
his philosophical doctrines are as much devoid of the purely poetic element which
characterizes the teachings of Christ and Buddha, the two divine types, as the religious
tendencies of his people lack in that spiritual exaltation which we find, for instance, in India.
Khoung-foo-tsee has not even the depth of feeling and the slight spiritual striving of his
contemporary, Lao-tse. Says the learned Ennemoser: "The spirits of Christ and Buddha
have left indelible, eternal traces all over the face of the world. The doctrines of Confucius
can be mentioned only as the most brilliant proceedings of cold human reasoning."
Harvey, in his Universal History, has depicted the Chinese nation perfectly, in a few words:
"Their heavy, childish, cold, sensual nature explains the peculiarities of their history."
Hence any comparison between the first two reformers and Confucius, in an essay on
Rosicrucianism, in which Hiraf treats of the Science of Sciences and invites the thirsty for
knowledge to drink at her inexhaustible source, seems inadmissible.
Further, when our learned author asserts so dogmatically that the Rosicrucian
learns, though he never uses, the secret of immortality in earthly life, he asserts only what
he himself, in his practical inexperience, thinks impossible. The words "never" and
"impossible" ought to be erased from the dictionary of humanity, until the time at least
when the great Cabala shall all be solved, and so rejected or accepted. The Count St.
Germain is, until this very time, a living mystery, and the Rosicrucian Thomas Vaughan
another one. The countless authorities we have in literature, as well as in oral tradition
(which sometimes is the more trustworthy) about this wonderful Count's having been met
and recognized in different centuries, is no myth. Anyone who admits one of the practical
truths of the Occult Sciences taught by the Cabala tacitly admits them all. It must be
Hamlet's "to be or not to be," and if the Cabal is true, then St. Germain need be no myth.
But I am digressing from my object, which is, firstly, to show the slight differences
between the two Cabalas - that of the Rosicrucians and the Oriental one; and, secondly,
to say that the hope expressed by Hiraf to see the subject better appreciated at some
future day than it has been till now, may perhaps become more than a hope. Time will
show many things; till then, let us heartily thank Hiraf for this first well-aimed shot at those
stubborn scientific runaways, who, once before the Truth, avoid looking her in the face, and
dare not even throw a glance behind them, lest they should he forced to see that which
would greatly lessen their self-sufficiency. As a practical follower of Eastern Spiritualism,
I can confidently wait for the time when, with the timely help of those "who know," American
Spiritualism, which even in its present shape has proved such a sore in the side of the
materialists, will become a science and a thing of mathematical certitude, instead of being
regarded as the crazy delusion of epileptic monomaniacs.
The first Cabala in which a mortal man ever dared to explain the greatest mysteries
of the universe, and show the keys to "these masked doors in the ramparts of Nature
through which no mortal can ever pass without rousing dread sentries never seen upon this
side of her wall," was compiled by a certain Simeon Ben Iochai, who lived at the time of the
second Temple's destruction. Only about thirty years after the death of this renowned
Cabalist, his MSS. and written explanations, which had till then remained in his possession
as a most precious secret, were used by his son Rabbi Eliazar and other learned men.
Making a compilation of the whole, they so produced the famous work called Sohar (God's
splendour). This book proved an inexhaustible mine for all the subsequent Cabalists, their
source of information and knowledge, and all more recent and genuine Cabalas were more
or less carefully copied from the former. Before that, all the mysterious doctrines had
come down in an unbroken line of merely oral traditions as far back as man could trace
himself on earth. They were scrupulously and jealously guarded by the Wise Men of
Chaldea, India, Persia and Egypt, and passed from one initiate to another, in the same
purity of form as when handed down to the first man by the angels, students of God's great
Theosophic Seminary. For the first time since the world's creation, the secret doctrines,
passing through Moses who was initiated in Egypt, underwent some slight alterations. In
consequence of the personal ambition of this great prophet-medium, he succeeded in
passing off his familiar spirit, the wrathful "Jehovah," for the spirit of God himself, and so
won undeserved laurels and honors. The same influence prompted him to alter some of
the principles of the great oral Cabala in order to make them the more secret. These
principles were laid out in symbols by him in the first four books of the Pentateuch, but for
some mysterious reasons he withheld them from Deuteronomy. Having initiated his
seventy Elders in his own way, the latter could give but what they had received themselves,
and so was prepared the first opportunity for heresy, and the erroneous interpretations of
the symbols. While the Oriental Cabala remained in its pure primitive shape, the Mosaic
or Jewish one was full of drawbacks, and the keys to many of the secrets forbidden by the
Mosaic law - purposely misinterpreted. The powers conferred by it on the initiates were
formidable still, and of all the most renowned Cabalists, King Solomon and his bigoted
parent, David, notwithstanding his penitential psalms, were the most powerful. But still the
doctrine remained secret and purely oral, until, as I have said before, the days of the
second "Temple's destruction. Philologically speaking, the very word Cabala is formed
from two Hebrew words, meaning to receive, as in former times the initiate received it orally
and directly from his Master, and the very Book of the Sohar was written out on received
information, which was handed down as an unvarying stereotyped tradition by the
Orientals, and altered through the ambition of Moses, by the Jews.
If the primitive Rosicrucians learned their first lessons of wisdom from Oriental
masters, not so with their direct descendants, the fire-philosophers or Paracelsists; for in
many things the Cabala of the latter Illuminati proves to be degenerated into a twin sister
of the Jewish. Let us compare. Besides admitting the "Shedim," or intermediate spirits of
the Jews - the elementary ones, which they divide into four classes, those of the air, of the
water, the fire, and of minerals - the Christian Cabalist believes like the Jewish, in
Asmodeus, the Ever-accursed One, or our good friend the orthodox Satan. Asmodeus,
or Asmodi, is the chief of the elementary goblins. "This doctrine alone differs considerably
from the Oriental philosophy, which denies that the great Ain-soph (the Endless or
Boundless) who made his existence known through the medium of the spiritual substance
sent forth from his Infinite Light - the oldest of the ten Intelligences or Emanations - the first
Sephira - could ever create an endless macrocosmal evil. It (Oriental philosophy) teaches
us that, though the first three spheres out of the seven - taking it for granted that our planet
comes in fourth - are inhabited by elementary or future men (this might account for the
modern doctrine of Reincarnation, perhaps) and, though until they become such men they
are beings with immortal souls in them and but the "grossest purgations of the celestial
fire," still they do not belong to Eternal Evil. Every one of them has the chance in store of
having its matter reborn on this "fourth sphere," which is our planet, and so have "the gross
purgation" purified by the Immortal Breath of the Aged of the Aged, who endows every
human being with a portion of his boundless self. Here, on our planet, commences the first
spiritual transition, from the infinite to the Finite, of the elementary matter which first
proceeded from the pure Intelligence, or God, and also the operation of that pure Principle
upon this material purgation. Thus begins the immortal man to prepare for Eternity.
In their primitive shape, the elementary spirits, so often mistaken in modern
Spiritualism for the undeveloped or unprogressed spirits of our dead, stand in relation to
our planet as we stand in relation to the Summer Land. When we use the term
"disembodied spirit," we only repeat what the elementary ones most certainly think or say
of us human beings, and if they are as yet devoid of immortal souls, they are, nevertheless,
gifted with instinct and craft, and we appear as little material to them as the spirits of the
fifth sphere appear to us. With our passage into each subsequent sphere, we throw off
something of our primitive grossness. Hence, there is eternal progress - physical and
spiritual - for every living being. The transcendental knowledge and philosophy of the
greatest Oriental Cabalists never penetrated beyond a certain mark, and the Hermetist, or
rather Rosicrucian, if we would be precise, never went farther than to solve the majestic,
but more limited problems of the Jewish Cabala; which we can divide thus:
1. The nature of the Supreme Being;
2. The origin, creation, or generation, or outflowing of angels and man;
4. [[sic]] The ultimate destiny of angels, man and the Universe; or the inflowing;
5. To point out to humanity the real meaning of the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures.
As it is, the real, the complete Cabala of the first ages of humanity is in possession,
as I said before, of but a few Oriental philosophers, where they are, who they are, is more
than is given me to reveal. Perhaps I do not know it myself, and have only dreamed it.
Thousands will say it is all imagination; so be it. Time will show. The only thing I can say
is that such a body exists, and that the location of their Brotherhoods will never be revealed
to other countries, until the day when Humanity shall awake in a mass from its spiritual
lethargy, and open its blind eyes to the dazzling light of Truth. A too premature discovery
might blind them, perhaps for ever. Until then, the speculative theory of their existence,
will be supported by what people erroneously believe to be supernal facts. Notwithstanding
the selfish, sinful opposition of science to Spiritualism in general, and that of the scientists
in particular, who, forgetting that their first duty is to enlighten Humanity, instead of that,
allow millions of people to lose themselves and drift about like so many disabled ships,
without pilot or compass, among the sandbanks of superstition; notwithstanding the toy-
thunderbolts and harmless anathemas hurled around by the ambitious and crafty clergy,
who, above all men, ought to believe in spiritual truths; notwithstanding the apathetic
indifference of that class of people who prefer believing in nothing, pretending the while to
believe in the teachings of their churches, which they select according to their best notions
of respectability and fashion; notwithstanding all these things, Spiritualism will rise above
all, and its progress can be as little helped as the dawn of the morning or the rising of the
sun. Like the former, will the glorious Truth arise among all these black clouds gathered
in the East; like the latter, will its brilliant light pour forth upon awakening humanity its
dazzling rays. These rays will dissipate these clouds and the unhealthy mists of a
thousand religious sects which disgrace the present century. They will warm up and recall
into new life the millions of wretched souls who shiver and are half frozen under the icy
hand of killing skepticism. Truth will prevail at last, and Spiritualism, the new world's
conqueror, reviving, like the fabulous Phoenix out of the ashes of its first parent Occultism,
will unite for ever in one Immortal Brotherhood all antagonistic races; for this new St.
Michael will crush for ever the dragon's head-of Death!
I have but a few words more to say before I close. To admit the possibility of
anyone becoming a practical Cabalist (or a Rosicrucian, we will call him, as the names
seem to have become synonymous) who simply has the firm determination to "become"
one, and hopes to get the secret knowledge through studying the Jewish Cabala, or every
other one that may come into existence, without actually being initiated by another, and so
being "made" such by someone who "knows," is as foolish as to hope to thread the famous
labyrinth without the clue, or to open the secret locks of the ingenious inventors of the
mediaeval ages, without having possession of the keys. If the Christian New Testament,
the easiest and youngest of all the Cabalas known to us, has presented such immense
difficulties to those who would interpret its mysteries and secret meanings (which were they
only once studied with the key of modern Spiritualism would open as simply as the casket
in Aesop's fable), what hope can there be for a modern Occultist, learned only in
theoretical knowledge, to ever attain his object? Occultism without practice will ever be like
the statue of Pygmalion, and no one can animate it without infusing into it a spark of the
sacred Divine Fire. The Jewish Cabala, the only authority of the European Occultist, is all
based on the secret meanings of the Hebrew scriptures, which, in their turn, indicate the
keys to them, by signs hidden and unintelligible to the uninitiated. They afford no hope for
the adepts to solve them practically. The Seventh Rule of the Rosicrucian "who became,
but was not made" has its secret meaning, like every other phrase left by the Cabalists to
posterity, in writing. The words: "The dead letter killeth," which Hiraf quotes, can be
applied in this case with still more justice than to the Christian teachings of the first
apostles. A Rosicrucian had to struggle ALONE, and toil long years to find some of the
preliminary secrets - the A B C of the great Cabala - only on account of his ordeal, during
which were to be tried all his mental and physical energies. After that, if found worthy, the
word "Try" was repeated to him for the last time before the final ceremony of the ordeal.
When the High Priests of the Temple of Osiris, of Serapis, and others, brought the
neophyte before the dreaded Goddess Isis, the word "Try" was pronounced for the last
time; and then, if the neophyte could withstand that final mystery, the most dreaded as
well as the most trying of all horrors for him who knew not what was in store for him; if he
bravely "lifted the veil of Isis," he became an initiate, and had naught to fear more. He had
passed the last ordeal, and no longer dreaded to meet face to face the inhabitants from
"over the dark river."
The only cause for the horror and dread we feel in the presence of death, lies in its
unsolved mystery. A Christian will always fear it, more or less; an initiate of the secret
science, or a true Spiritualist, never; for both of the latter have lifted the veil of Isis, and the
great problem is solved by both, in theory and in practice.
Many thousand years ago the wise King Solomon declared that "There is nothing
new under the Sun," and the words of this very wise man ought to he repeated till the
farthest ends of time. There is not a science, nor a modern discovery in any secretion of
it, but was known to the Cabalists thousands of years since. This will appear a bold and
ridiculous assertion, I know; and one apparently unconfirmed by any authority. But I will
answer that where truth stares one in the face, there can be no other authority than one's
senses. The only authority I know of, lies scattered throughout the East. Besides, who
would ever dare, in the ever-changing, ever-discovering Europe, or adolescent America,
to risk proclaiming himself as an authority? The scientist, who was an authority yesterday,
becomes by the mere lucky chance of a contemporary discoverer, a worn-out hypothesist.
How easily the astronomer of today forgets that all his science is but the picking up of
crumbs left by the Chaldean astrologists. What would not modern physicians, practitioners
of their blind and lame science of medicine, give for a part of the knowledge of botany and
plants - I won't say of the Chaldeans - but even of the more modern Essenians. The
simple history of the Eastern people, their habits and customs, ought to be a sure
guarantee that what they once knew, they cannot have totally forgotten. While Europe has
changed twenty times its appearance, and been turned upside down by religious and
political revolutions and social cataclysms, Asia has remained stationary. What was, two
thousand years ago, exists now with very little variation. Such practical knowledge as was
possessed by the ancients could not die out so soon with such a people. The hope of
finding remnants even of such wisdom as Ancient Asia possessed, ought to tempt our
conceited modern science to explore her territory.
And thus is it that all we know of what we profess and live upon, comes to us from
the scorned, despised Occultism of the East. Religion and sciences, laws and customs -
all of these, are closely related to Occultism, and are but its result, its direct products,
disguised by the hand of time, and palmed upon us under new pseudonyms. If people ask
me for the proof, I will answer that it does not enter my province to teach others what they
can learn themselves with very little difficulty, provided they give themselves the trouble to
read and think over what they read. Besides, the time is near when all the old superstitions
and the errors of centuries must be swept away by the hurricane of Truth. As the prophet
Mohammed, when he perceived that the mountain would not come to him, went himself
towards the mountain, so Modern Spiritualism made its unexpected appearance from the
East, before a skeptical world, to terminate in a very near future the oblivion into which the
ancient secret wisdom had fallen.
Spiritualism is but a baby now, an unwelcome stranger, whom public opinion, like
an unnatural foster-mother, tries to crush out of existence. But it is growing, and this same
East may one day send some experienced clever nurses to take care of it. The immediate
danger of Salem tragedies has passed away. The Rochester knockings, tiny as they were,
awoke some vigilant friends, who, in their turn, aroused thousands and millions of jealous
defenders for the true Cause. The most difficult part is done; the door stands ajar; it
remains for such minds as Hiraf invites to help earnest truth-seekers to the key which will
open for them the gates, and aid them to pass the threshold dividing this world from the
next, "without rousing the dread sentries never seen upon this side of her wall." It belongs
to the exact knowledge of the Occultist to explain and alter much of what seems "repulsive"
in Spiritualism, to some of the too delicate Orthodox souls. The latter may object the more
to Spiritualistic phenomena, on the ground that Cabalism is mixed up with it. They will
begin to prove that Occultism, if it does exist, is the forbidden "Black Art," the sorcery for
which people were burnt, not so long ago. In such a case I will humbly reply, that there is
nothing in nature but has two sides to it. Occultism is certainly no exception to the rule,
and is composed of White and Black magic. But so in Orthodox religion, likewise. When
an Occultist is a real Rosicrucian, he is a thousand times purer and nobler, and more
divine, than any of the holiest Orthodox priests; but when one of the latter gives himself
up to the turbulent demon of his own vile passions, and so rouses all the fiends, they shout
with joy at the sight of such a perversity, in what, pray, is this Orthodox priest better than
the blackest of all the sorcerers' dealings with the Elementary "Dweller," or with the
"Diakka" of A.J. Davis? Verily, we have White and Black Christianity, as well as White and
Black magic.
O, you very Orthodox priests and clergymen of various creeds and denominations,
you who are so intolerant towards Spiritualism, this purest of the Children of Ancient Magic,
can you tell me why, in such a case, you practice daily yourselves, all the most prominent
rites of magic in your churches, and follow the antitypes of the very ceremonies of
Occultism? Can you light a taper, or illuminate your altars with circles of wax lights, for
instance, and not repeat the rites of magic? What is your altar with the vertical burning
candles, but the modern mimicry of the original magic monolith with the Baal fires upon it?
Don't you know that by doing so you are following in the steps of the ancient fire-
worshipers, the Persian Heathen Guebres? And your Pope's sparkling mitre, what is it but
the direct descendant of the Mithraic Sacrifice, symbolical covering invented for the heads
of the high priests of this very Occultism in Chaldea? Having passed through numerous
transformations it now rests in its last (?) Orthodox shape, upon the venerable head of your
successor of St. Peter. Little do the devout worshipers of the Vatican suspect, when they
lift up their eyes in mute adoration upon the head of their God on Earth, the Pope, that
what they admire, is after all, but the caricatured head-dress, the amazon-like helmet of
Pallas Athene, the heathen goddess Minerva! In fact, there is scarcely a rite or ceremony
of the Christian Church, that does not descend from Occultism.
But say or think what you will, you cannot help that which was, is, and ever will be,
namely, the direct communication between the two worlds. We term this intercourse
modern Spiritualism, with the same right and logic as when we say the "New World," in
speaking of America.
I will close by startling, perhaps, even Orthodox Spiritualists by re-affirming that all
who have ever witnessed our modern materializations of genuine spirit-forms, have,
unwittingly, become the initiated neophytes of Ancient Mystery, for each and all of them
have solved the problem of Death, have "lifted the veil of Isis."

- From Theosophia, Vol. 6-6, Vol. 7-1

-------------------

"She being Dead, Yet Speaketh"

In the will of the late H. P. Blavatsky was made the request that her friends should
assemble on the anniversary of her death and read passages from the Bhagavad-Gita and
the Light of Asia. This was accordingly done on May 8th, in Adyar, London, New York, and
other places. In New York, among other interesting items reported at the time, Mrs. J.
Campbell Keightley read, after a few introductory remarks, extracts from the private letters
of H. P. B. In response to many requests we print these as follows. The remarks, being
extemporaneous, are quoted from memory.
MR. PRESIDENT, FRIENDS:
This being the first occasion upon which I have ever spoken in public, I will ask you
to condone my inexperience while I make a few remarks upon the extracts chosen from
the letters of Madame Blavatsky to a few friends.
In regard to Mme. Blavatsky, the world, to use a phrase of Charles Lamb, was "the
victim of imperfect sympathies." It failed to know her; that failure was its own great loss.
Among the many accusations flung at her was one which, at the last ditch, it never failed
to make; it said that Mme. Blavatsky had no Moral Ideal. This was false.
She had this ideal; she had also the Eastern reverence for an ideal - a reverence
to the Western world unknown. We might hence expect to find her teaching that Ideal to
a great extent under the privacy of a pledge, and there are indications of this in all that has
been published concerning the Esoteric School. That her ideal was ever present to her
mind and heart these extracts from private letters to her friends will show.
Her main teachings can be reduced to the following propositions:
That Morals have a basis in Law and in fact.
That Moral Law is Natural Law.
That Evolution makes for Righteousness.
That the "fundamental identity of all souls with the Oversoul" renders moral
contagion possible through the subtle psychic medium.
That the Spiritual Identity of all Being renders Universal Brotherhood the only
possible path for truth-seeking men.
She distrusted the appeal to sentiment. She saw that existing religions fail in it; that
modern civilization frustrates it; that emotionalism is no basis for the Will which annuls all
temptations of the flesh, and the Faith which shall make mountains move.
Hence she taught the scientific aspect and bearing of sin. Taught that Universal
Law, in every department, rigidly opposes and avenges the commission of sin, showing the
free will of man counterbalanced by the declaration "Vengeance is mine, saith the Law;
I will repay". She taught that the awful responsibility of the occultist, extending down to the
least atom of substance, forever forbade our asking that question of Cain which we do ask
daily - "Am I my Brother's keeper?" She taught that the deep reply reverberated down the
ages, as we may read it in our bibles: "What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother's
blood crieth to me from the ground".
Justice she taught, and the true discrimination of it; Mercy, too, and Love. She
wrote of one: "He has developed an extraordinary hatred to me, but I have loved him too
much to hate him". Above all she taught that the pure in heart see God": taught it as a
scientific fact; showed it to be, so to say, materially as well as spiritually possible through
the spiritual laws working in the one Substance, and, in the showing, lifted our courage
higher than the visible stars.
The first of these extracts from H. P. B.'s letters is dated Nov. 29, 1878, and is
interesting from the fact that it speaks of the original institution of three degrees of the T.
S., a fact often disputed in these later days.
"You will find the aims and purposes of the Theosophical Society in the two inclosed
circulars. It is a brotherhood of humanity, established to make away with all and every
dogmatic religion founded on dead-letter interpretation, and to teach people and every
member to believe but in one impersonal God; to rely upon his (man's) own powers; to
consider himself his only saviour; to learn the infinitude of the occult psychological powers
hidden within his own physical man: to develop these powers; and to give him the
assurance of the immortality of his divine spirit and the survival of his soul; to make him
regard every man of whatever race, color, or creed, and to prove to him that the only truths
revealed to man by superior men (not a god) are contained in the Vedas of the ancient
Aryas of India, to demonstrate to him that there never were, will be, nor are, any miracles;
that there can be nothing 'supernatural' in this universe, and that on earth, at least, the only
god is man himself.
"It lies within his powers to become and to continue a god after the death of his
physical body. Our society receives nothing the possibility of which it cannot demonstrate
at will. We believe in the phenomena, but we disbelieve in the constant intervention of
'spirits' to produce such phenomena. We maintain that the embodied spirit has more
powers to produce them than a disembodied one. We believe in the existence of spirits,
but of many classes, the human spirits being but one class of the many.
"The Society requires of its members but the time they can give it without
encroaching upon that due to their private affairs. There are three degrees of membership.
It is but in the highest or third that members have to devote themselves quasi entirely to
the work of the T. S. . . .
"Every one is eligible, provided he is an honest, pure man or woman, no free lover,
and especially no bigoted Christian. We go dead against idolatry, and as much against
materialism.
"Of the two unpardonable sins, the first is Hypocrisy - Pecksniffianism. Better one
hundred mistakes through unwise, injudicious sincerity and indiscretion than Tartuffe-like
saintship as the whitened sepulchre, and rottenness and decay within. . . This is not
unpardonable, but very dangerous, . . . doubt, eternal wavering - it leads one to wreck. .
. . One little period passed without doubt, murmuring, and despair; what a gain it would be;
a period a mere tithe of what every one of us has had to pass through. But every one
forges his own destiny."
"Those who fall off from our living human Mahatmas to fall into the Saptarishi - the
Star Rishis, are no Theosophists."
"Allow me to quote from a very esoterically wise and exoterically foolish book, the
work and production of some ancient friends and foes: 'There is more joy in the Kingdom
of Heaven for one repentant sinner than for ninety-nine saints.' . . . Let us be just and give
to Caesar what is Caesar's, however imperfect, even vicious, Caesar may be. 'Blessed be
the peacemakers,' said another old adept of 107 years B. C., and the saying is alive and
kicks to the present day amongst the MASTERS."

- The Path, June, 1892

--------------------

"The Esoteric Section is to be a School for earnest Theosophists who would learn
more (than they can from published works) of the true Esoteric tenets. . . . There is no
room for despotism or ruling in it; no money to pay or make; no glory for me, but a series
of misconceptions, slanders, suspicions, and ingratitude in almost an immediate future:**
but if out of the . . . Theosophists who have already pledged themselves I can place on the
right and true path half a dozen or so, I will die happy. Many are called, few are chosen.
Unless they comply with the lines you speak of, traced originally by the Masters, they
cannot succeed.*** I can only show the way to those whose eyes are open to the truth,
whose souls are full of altruism, charity, and love for the whole creation, and who think of
themselves last. The blind . . . will never profit by these teachings. They would make of
the 'strait gate' a large public thoroughfare leading not to the Kingdom of Heaven, now and
hereafter, to the Buddha-Christos in the Sanctuary of our innermost souls, but to their own
idols with feet of clay. . . The Esoteric Section is not of the earth, earthy; it does not
interfere with the exoteric administration of Lodges; takes no stock in external Theosophy;
has no officers or staff; needs no halls or meeting rooms . . . Finally, it requires neither
subscription fees nor money, for 'as I have not so received it, I shall not so impart it', and
that I would rather starve in the gutter than take one penny for my teaching the sacred
truths.... Here I am with perhaps a few years or a few months only (Master knoweth) to
remain on earth in this loathsome, old, ruined body; and I am ready to answer the call of
any good Theosophist who works for Theosophy on the lines traced by the Masters, and
as ready as the Rosicrucian pelican to feed with my heart's blood the chosen 'Seven'. He
who would have his inheritance before I die . . . let him ask first. What I have, or rather
what I am permitted to give, I will give."
"Many are called but few are chosen. Well, no need breaking my heart over spilt
milk. Come what may, I shall die at my post, Theosophical banner in hand, and while I live
I do fervently hope that all the splashes of mud thrown at it will reach me personally. At
any rate I mean to continue protecting the glorious truth with my old carcass so long as it
lasts. And when I do drop down for good, I hope in such Theosophists as ... and ... to carry
on the work and protect the banner of Truth in their turn. Oh, I do feel so sick at heart in
looking round and perceiving nothing save selfishness, personal vanity, and mean little
ambitions. What is this about 'the soldier not being free'?**** Of course no

----------
** Dated December 1, '88. Subsequent events proved the prediction true.
*** Her correspondent had quoted the Simla letter of "K. H." in The Occult World.
**** Referring to the dilemma of an F. T. S. soldier in the army, presented to her.
------------

soldier can be free to move about his physical body wherever he likes. But what has the
esoteric teaching to do with the outward man? A soldier may be stuck to his sentry box like
a barnacle to its ship, and the soldier's Ego be free to go where it likes and think what it
likes best. . . No man is required to carry a burden heavier than he can bear; nor do more
than it is possible for him to do. A man of means, independent and free from any duty, will
have to move about and go, missionary like, to teach Theosophy to the Sadducees and
the Gentiles of Christianity. A man tied up by his duty to one place has no right to desert
it in order to fulfil another duty, let it be however much greater; for the first duty taught in
Occultism is to do one's duty unflinchingly by every duty. Pardon these seemingly absurd
paradoxes and Irish Bulls; but I have to repeat this ad naseum usque for the last month.
'Shall I risk to be ordered to leave my wife, desert my children and home if I pledge
myself?' asks one. No I say, because he who plays truant in one thing will be faithless in
another. No real, genuine Master will accept a chela who sacrifices anyone except himself
to go to that Master." If one cannot, owing to circumstances or his position in life, become
a full adept in this existence, let him prepare his mental luggage for the next, so as to be
ready at the first call when he is once more reborn. What one has to do before he pledges
himself irretrievably is, to probe one's nature to the bottom, for self-discipline is based on
self-knowledge. It is said somewhere that self-discipline often leads one to a state of self-
confidence which becomes vanity and pride in the long run. I say, foolish is the man who
says so. This may happen only when our motives are of a worldly character or selfish;
otherwise, self-confidence is the first step to that kind of WILL which will make a mountain
move:
'To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou can'st not
then be false to any man.'
The question is whether Polonius meant this for worldly wisdom or for occult
knowledge: and by 'own self' the false Ego (or the terrestrial personality) or that spark in
us which is but the reflection of the 'One Universal Ego'.
But I am dreaming. I had but four hours' sleep . . . Give me sincere, fraternal
respects to . . . and let him try to feel my old hand giving him the Master's grip, the strong
grip of the Lion's paw of Punjab (not of the tribe of Judah) across the Atlantic. To you my
eternal affection and gratitude.
- Your H. P. B."

"To live like cats and dogs in the T. S. is positively against all rules - and wishes of
the Masters', as against our Brotherhood - so-called - and all its rules. THEY are
disgusted. THEY look on, and in that look (oh Lord! if you could only see it as I have!)
there's an ocean deep of sad disgust, contempt, and sorrow. . . The ideal was besmeared
with mud, but as it is no golden idol on feet of clay it stands to this day immovable . . . and
what the profane see is only their own mud thrown with their own hands, and which has
created a veil, an impassable barrier between them and the ideal . . . Without touching the
latter. . . Have a large Society, the more the better; all that is chaff and husk is bound to
fall away in time; all that is grain will remain. But the soil is in the bad and evil man as well
as in the good ones, - only it is more difficult to call into life and cause it to germinate. The
good husbandman does not stop to pick out the seeds from the handful. He gives them
all their chance, and even some of the half-rotten seeds come to life when thrown into
good soil. Be that soil . . . Look at me - the universal Theosophical manure - the rope for
whose hanging and lashing is made out of the flax I have sown, and each strand it is
twisted of represents a mistake (so-called) of mine. Hence, if you fail only nine times out
of ten in your selections you are successful one time out of ten and that's more than
many other Theosophists can say. . . Those few true souls will be the nucleus for future
success, and their children will . . . Let us sow good - and if evil crops up, it will be blown
away by the wind like all other things in this life - in its time."
"I am the Mother and the Creator of the Society; it has my magnetic fluid, and the
child has inherited all of its parent's physical, psychical, and spiritual attributes - faults and
virtues if any. Therefore I alone and to a degree .... can serve as a lightning conductor of
Karma for it. I was asked whether I was willing, when on the point of dying - and I said Yes
- for it was the only means to save it. Therefore I consented to live - which in my case
means to suffer physically during twelve hours of the day - mentally twelve hours of night,
when I get rid of the physical shell. . . It is true about the Kali Yuga. Once that I have
offered myself as the goat of atonement, the Kali Yuga* recognizes its own - whereas any
other would shrink from such a thing - as I am doomed and overburdened in this life worse
than a poor weak donkey full of sores made to drag up hill a cart load of heavy rocks. You
are the first one to whom I tell it, because you force me into the confession .... You have
a wide and noble prospect before you if you do not lose patience .... Try ... to hear the
small voice within."
"Yes, there are 'two persons' in me. Bunt what of that? So there are two in You;
only mine is conscious and responsible - and yours is not. So you are happier than I am.
I know you sympathise with me, and you do so because you feel that I have always stood
up for you, and will do so to the bitter or the happy end - as the case may be."
"He may be moved to doubt - and that is the beginning of wisdom."
"Well, sir, and my only friend, the crisis is nearing, I am ending my Secret Doctrine,
and you are going to replace me, or take my place in America. I know you will have
success if you do not lose

----------
* Kali Yuga - the Dark Age, the present cycle.
----------

heart; but do, do remain true to the Masters and Their Theosophy and the names.... May
They help you and allow us to send you our best blessings."
"There are traitors, conscious and unconscious. There is falsity and there is
injudiciousness. ... Pray do not imagine that because I hold my tongue as bound by my
oath and duty I do not know who is who. . . . I must say nothing, however much I may be
disgusted. But as the ranks thin around us, and one after the other our best intellectual
forces depart, to turn into bitter enemies, I say - Blessed are the pure-hearted who have
only intuition - for intuition is better than intellect."
"The duty, - let alone happiness - of every Theosophist - and especially Esotericist -
is certainly to help others to carry their burden; but no Theosophist or other has the right
to sacrifice himself unless he knows for a certainty that by so doing he helps some one and
does not sacrifice himself in vain for the empty glory of the abstract virtue. . . Psychic and
vital energy are limited in every man. It is like a capital. If you have a dollar a day and
spend two, at the end of the month you will have a deficit of $30."
"One refuses to pledge himself not to listen without protest to any evil thing said of
a brother - as though Buddha our divine Lord - or Jesus - or any great initiate has ever
condemned any one on hearsay. Ah, poor, poor, blind man, not to know the difference
between condemning in words - which is uncharitable - and withdrawing in silent pity from
the culprit and thus punishing him, but still giving him a chance to repent of his ways. No
man will ever speak ill of his brother without cause and proof of the iniquity of that brother,
and he will abstain from all backbiting, slandering, and gossip. No man should ever say
behind a Brother's back what he would not say openly to his face. Insinuations against
one's neighbor are often productive of more evil consequences than gross slander. Every
Theosophist has to fight and battle against evil, - but he must have the courage of his
words and actions, and what he does must be done openly and honestly before all."

(The Path, July, 1892)

----------------

"Every pledge or promise unless built upon four pillars - absolute sincerity,
unflinching determination, unselfishness of purpose, and moral power, which makes the
fourth support and equipoises the three other pillars - is an insecure building. The pledges
of those who are sure of the strength of the fourth alone are recorded."
"Are you children, that you want marvels? Have you so little faith as to need
constant stimulus, as a dying fire needs fuel! . . . Would you let the nucleus of a splendid
Society die under your hands like a sick man under the hands of a quack? . . . You should
never forget what a solemn thing it is for us to exert our powers and raise the dread
sentinels that lie at the threshold. They cannot hurt us, but they can avenge themselves
by precipitating themselves upon the unprotected neophyte. You are all like so many
children playing with fire because it is pretty, when you ought to be men studying
philosophy for its own sake."
"If among you there was one who embodied in himself the idea depicted, it would
he my duty to relinquish the teacher's chair to him. For it would be the extreme of audacity
in me to claim the possession of so many virtues. That the MASTERS do in proportion to
their respective temperaments and stages of Bodhisatvic development possess such
Paramitas, constitutes their right to our reverence as our Teachers. It should be the aim
of each and all of us to strive with all the intensity of our natures to follow and imitate Them
. . . Try to realize that progress is made step by step, and each step gained by heroic effort.
Withdrawal means despair or timidity . . . Conquered passions, like slain tigers, can no
longer turn and rend you. Be hopeful then, not despairing. With each morning's
awakening try to live through the day in harmony with the Higher Self. 'Try' is the battle-cry
taught by the teacher to each pupil. Naught else is expected of you. One who does his
best does all that can be asked. There is a moment when even a Buddha ceases to be
a sinning mortal and takes his first step towards Buddhahood. The sixteen Paramitas
(virtues) are not for priests and yogis alone, as said, but stand for models for us all to strive
after - and neither priest nor yogi, Chela nor Mahatma, ever attained all at once . . . The
idea that sinners and not saints are expedied to enter the Path is emphatically stated in the
Voice of the Silence."
"I do not believe in the success of the ... T. S. unless you assimilate Master or
myself; unless you work with me and hand in hand, heart . . . Yes; let him who offers
himself to Masters as a chela, unreservedly, . . . let him do what he can if he would ever
see Them. . . . Then things were done because I alone was responsible for the issues. I
alone had to bear Karma in case of failure and no reward in case of success. . . . I saw the
T. S. would be smashed or that I had to offer myself as the Scapegoat for atonement. It
is the latter I did. The T. S. lives, - I am killed. Killed in my honor, fame, name, in
everything H. P. B. held near and dear, For this body is MINE and I feel acutely through
it. . . . I may err in my powers as H. P. B. I have not worked and toiled for forty years,
playing parts, risking my future reward, and taking karma upon this unfortunate appearance
to serve Them without being permitted to have some voice in the matter. H. P. B. is not
infallible. H. P. B. is an old, rotten, sick, worn-out body, but it is the best I can have in this
cycle. Hence follow the path I show, the Masters that are behind - and do not follow me
or my PATH. When I am dead and gone in this body, then will you know the whole truth.
Then will you know that I have never, never,- been false to any one, nor have I deceived
anyone, but had many a time to allow them to deceive themselves, for I had no right to
interfere with their Karma. . . Oh ye foolish blind moles, all of you; who is able to offer
himself in sacrifice as I did!"

(The Path, Aug., 1892)

--------------------

THE NEW CYCLE

- H.P. Blavatsky

[We publish below a faithful English translation of certain passages from H.P.B.'s
powerful article originally written in French and printed in the first issue of La Revue
Theosophique of Paris, March 21, 1889. Today, almost an entire century later, we witness
all around us the signposts and developments of precisely that which she had in mind
when writing this important pronouncement. We call for close attention to her words on the
part of all readers. - Editor, Theosophia.]

The principal aim of our organization, which we are laboring to make a real
brotherhood, is fully expressed in the motto of The Theosophical Society and all of its
official organs: "There is no religion higher than Truth." As an impersonal Society, we must
seize the truth wherever we find it, without permitting ourselves more partiality for one
belief than for another. This leads directly to a very logical conclusion: if we acclaim and
receive with open arms all sincere truth-seekers, there can be no place in our ranks for the
vehement sectarian, the bigot or the hypocrite, enclosed in Chinese Walls of dogma, each
stone beating the words: "No admission!" What place indeed could such fanatics occupy
amongst us, fanatics whose religion forbids all inquiry and does not admit any argument
possible, when the mother-idea, the very root whence springs the beautiful plant we call
Theosophy is known to be - absolute and unfettered liberty to investigate all the mysteries
of Nature, human or divine.
With this exception, the Society invites everyone to participate in its activities and
discoveries. Whoever feels his heart beat in unison with the great heart of humanity;
whoever feels his interests are one with those of every being poorer and less fortunate
than himself, every man or woman who is ready to hold out a helping hand to those who
suffer; whoever understands the true meaning of the word "Egoism," is a Theosophist by
birth and right. He can always be sure of finding sympathetic souls in our midst. Our
Society is actually a sort of miniature humanity where, as in the human species at large,
one can always find one's counterpart.
If we are told that in our Society the atheist elbows the deist, and the materialist
elbows the idealist, we would reply: What does it matter? Be an individual a materialist,
i.e., one who would find in matter an infinite potency for creation or rather for the evolution
of all terrestrial life; or be he a Spiritualist, endowed with a spiritual perception which the
former does not have - in what way does this prevent the one or the other from being a
good Theosophist? Moreover, the worshipers of a personal god or a divine Substance are
much more materialistic than the Pantheists who reject the idea of a carnalized god, but
who perceive the divine essence in every atom. Everyone knows that Buddhism does not
recognize either one god or many gods. Yet the Arhat, for whom every atom of dust is as
much replete with Svabhavat (plastic substance, eternal and intelligent, though impersonal)
as he is himself, and who strives to assimilate that Svabhavat by identifying himself with
the All, in order to attain Nirvana, must travel the same painful road of renunciation, of
good works and of altruism, and must lead the same saintly life, though less egotistical in
its motive, as the beatified Christian. What matters the passing form, if the goal to be
attained is the same eternal essence, whether that essence manifests itself to human
perception as substance, as an immaterial breath, or as nothing! Let us admit the
PRESENCE, whether called personal God or universal substance, and recognize a cause
if we all see its effects. But these effects being the same for the atheist-Buddhist and for
the deist-Christian, and the cause being invisible and inscrutable for the one as for the
other, why waste our time in running after a shadow that cannot be grasped? When all is
said, the greatest of materialists, as well as the most transcendental of philosophers, admit
the omnipresence of an impalpable Proteus, omnipotent in its ubiquity throughout all the
kingdoms of nature, including man; Proteus indivisible in its essence, and eluding form,
yet appearing under all and every form; who is here and there and everywhere and
nowhere; is All and Nothing; ubiquitous yet One; universal Essence binding, bounding,
containing everything, contained in all. Where is the theologian who could go any farther?
It is sufficient to recognize these truths, to be a Theosophist, for this recognition is
tantamount to admitting that not only humanity - composed as it is of thousands of races -
but everything that lives and vegetates, in short, everything that is, is made of the same
essence and substance, is animated by the same spirit, and that, consequently, everything
in nature, whether physical or moral, is bound in solidarity.
We have already said elsewhere, in The Theosophist, that "born in the United
States of America the Theosophical Society was constituted on the model of its Mother
Land." The latter, as we know, has omitted the name of God from its Constitution, for fear,
said the Fathers of the Republic, that the word might one day become the pretext for a
State religion; for they desired to grant absolute equality to all religions under the law, so
that each form would support the State, which in its turn would protect them all.
The Theosophical Society was founded on that excellent model . . . . Thus, every
Branch, like every member, being free to profess whatever religion and to study whatever
philosophy or science it prefers, provided all remain united in the tie of Solidarity or
Brotherhood, our Society can truly call itself a "Republic of Conscience."
Though free to pursue whatever intellectual occupation pleases him the best, each
member of our Society must, however, furnish some reason for belonging thereto, which
amounts to saying that each member must contribute his part, small though it be, in mental
or other labor for the benefit of all. If one does not work for others one has no right to be
called a Theosophist. All must strive for freedom of human thought, for the elimination of
selfish and sectarian superstitions, and for the discovery of all the truths that are within the
reach of the human mind. That object cannot be attained more certainly than by the
cultivation of unity in intellectual labors. No honest worker, no earnest seeker can remain
empty handed, and there is hardly a man or woman, busy as they may think themselves
to be, incapable of laying their tribute, moral or pecuniary, on the altar of truth. The duty
of Branch and Section Presidents will be henceforth to see to it that the Theosophical
beehive is kept free from those drones which keep merely buzzing......
We are face to face with all the glorious possibilities of the future. This is again the
hour of the great cyclic return of the rising tide of mystical thought in Europe. On every
side we are surrounded by the ocean of universal science - the science of life eternal -
bearing on its waves the forgotten and submerged treasures of vanished generations,
treasures still unknown to the modern civilized races. The strong current which rises from
the watery depths, from the depths where lie the prehistoric learning and arts swallowed
up with the antediluvian giants - demigods, though but mere outlines of mortal men - that
current strikes us in the face and murmurs: "That which has been still exists; that which
has been forgotten, buried for aeons in the depths of the Jurassic strata, may reappear to
view once more. Prepare yourselves."
Happy are those who can interpret the language of the elements. But where are
they bound for whom the word element has no other meaning than that given to it by
physics or materialistic chemistry? Will it be towards well-known shores that the surge of
the great waters will bear them, when they have lost their footing in the deluge which is
approaching? Will it be towards the peaks of a new Ararat that they will find themselves
carried, towards the heights of light and sunshine, where there is a ledge on which to place
the feet in safety, or perchance is it to a fathomless abyss that will swallow them as soon
as they try to struggle against the irresistible billows of an unknown element?
We must prepare and study truth under every aspect, endeavoring to ignore
nothing, if we do not wish to fall into the abyss of the unknown when the hour shall strike.
It is useless to leave it to chance and to await the intellectual and psychic crisis which is
preparing, with indifference, if not with crass disbelief, saying that at the worst the rising
tide will carry us naturally towards the shore; for it is very likely that the tidal wave will cast
up nothing but a corpse. The strife will be terrible in any case between brutal materialism
and blind fanaticism on the one hand, and philosophy and mysticism on the other -
mysticism, that veil of more or less translucency which hides the eternal Truth.
But it is not materialism which will gain the upper hand. Every fanatic whose ideas
isolate hm from the universal axiom, "There is no religion higher than Truth" will see
himself by that very fact rejected, like an unworthy stone from the new Archway called
Humanity. Tossed by the waves, driven by the winds, reeling in that element which is so
terrible because unknown, he will soon find himself engulfed ......
Yes, it must be so and it cannot be otherwise, when the artificial and chilly flame of
modern materialism is extinguished for lack of fuel. Those who cannot become used to
the idea of a spiritual Ego, a living soul and an eternal Spirit within their material shell
(which owes its illusory existence to those principles) ; those for whom the great hope of
an existence beyond the grave is a vexation, merely the symbol of an unknown quantity,
or else the subject of a belief sui generis, the result of theological and mediumistic
hallucinations - these will do well to prepare for the worst disappointment the future could
possibly have in store for them. For from the depths of the dark, muddy waters of
materiality which, on every side, hide from them the horizons of the great Beyond, a mystic
force is rising during these last years of the century. At most it is but the first gentle
rustling, but it is a superhuman rustling - "supernatural" only for the superstitious and the
ignorant. The spirit of truth is passing now over the face of the dark waters, and in parting
them, is compelling them to disgorge their spiritual treasures. This spirit is a force that can
neither be hindered nor stopped. Those who recognize it and feel that this is the supreme
moment of their salvation will be uplifted by it and carried beyond the illusions of the great
astral serpent. The joy they will experience will be so poignant and intense, that if they
were not mentally isolated from their bodies of flesh, the beatitude would pierce them like
sharp steel. It is not pleasure that they will experience, but a bliss which is a foretaste of
the knowledge of the gods, the knowledge of good and evil, and of the fruits of the tree of
life.
But although the man of today may be a fanatic, a skeptic, or a mystic, he must
become thoroughly convinced that it is useless for him to struggle against the two moral
forces today unleashed and in supreme contest. He is at the mercy of these two
adversaries, and no intermediary force is capable of protecting him. It is but a question of
choice, whether to let himself be carried along without a struggle on the wave of mystical
evolution, or to writhe against the reaction of moral and psychic evolution, and so find
himself engulfed in the Maelstrom of the new tide. At the present time, the whole world,
with its centers of high intelligence and human culture, its focal points of political, artistic,
literary, and commercial life, is in a turmoil; everything is shaking and crumbling in its
movement towards reform. It is useless to remain blind, it is useless to hope that anyone
can remain neutral between the two contending forces; one has to choose either the one
or the other, or be crushed between them. The man who imagines that he has chosen
freedom, but who, nevertheless, remains submerged in that boiling caldron, foaming with
foul matter called social life, most terribly betrays his own divine Self, a betrayal which will
blind that Self in the course of a long series of future incarnations. All of you who hesitate
on the path of Theosophy and the occult sciences, who are trembling on the golden
threshold of truth - the only one within your grasp, for all the others have failed you one
after another - squarely face the great Reality which is offered you. It is to mystics only that
these words are addressed, for them alone have they any importance; for those who have
already made their choice they are vain and useless. But you, Occultists, Kabbalists and
Theosophists, you well know that a Word, old as the world, though new to you, has been
sounded at the beginning of this cycle, and the potentiality of which, unperceived by others,
lies hidden in the sum of the digits of the year 1889; you well know that a note has just
been struck which has never been heard by mankind of this era; and that a new Idea is
revealed, ripened by the forces of evolution. This Idea differs from everything that has
been produced in the nineteenth century: it is identical, however, with the thought that has
been the dominant tone and the keynote of every century, especially the last - absolute
freedom of thought for humanity.
Why try to strangle and suppress what cannot be destroyed? Why struggle when
there is no other choice than allowing yourselves to be raised on the crest of the spiritual
wave to the very heavens, beyond the stars and the universes, or to be engulfed in the
yawning abyss of an ocean of matter? Vain are your efforts to sound the unfathomable,
to reach the ultimate of this wonderful matter so glorified in our century; for its roots grow
in the spirit and in the Absolute; they do not exist, though they are eternally. This constant
contact with flesh, blood and bones, the illusion of differentiated matter, does nothing but
blind you; and the more you penetrate into the region of the impalpable atoms of
chemistry, the more you will be convinced that they exist only in your imagination. Do you
truly expect to find therein every Truth and every reality of existence? For Death is at
everyone's door, waiting to close it behind a beloved soul that escapes from its prison,
upon the soul which alone has made the body a reality; how can eternal love associate
itself with the molecules of matter which change and disappear? ....
But you, friends and readers, you who aspire to something more than the life of the
squirrel everlastingly turning the same wheel; you who are not content with the seething
of the caldron whose turmoil results in nothing; you who do not mistake the deaf echoes,
as old as the world, for the divine voice of truth; prepare yourselves for a future of which
but few in your midst have dared to dream, unless they have already entered upon the
path. For you have chosen a path that, although thorny at the start, soon widens out and
leads you to the divine truth. You are free to doubt while still at the beginning of the way,
you are free to decline to accept on hearsay what is taught respecting the source and the
cause of that truth, but you are always able to hear what its voice is telling you, and you
can always study the effects of the creative force coming from the depths of the unknown.
The arid soil upon which the present generation of men is moving, at the close of this age
of spiritual dearth and of purely material surfeit, has need of a divine omen above its
horizon, a rainbow, as symbol of hope. For of all the past centuries our nineteenth has
been the most criminal. It is criminal in its frightful selfishness, in its skepticism which
grimaces at the very idea of anything beyond the material; in its idiotic indifference to all
that does not pertain to the personal self, more than any of the previous centuries of
ignorant barbarism and intellectual darkness. Our century must be saved from itself before
its last hour strikes. For all those, who see the sterility and folly of an existence blinded by
materialism and ferociously indifferent to the fate of the neighbour, this is the moment to
act: now is the time for them to devote all their energies, all their courage and all their
efforts to a great intellectual reform. This reform can only be accomplished by Theosophy,
and, let us add, by Occultism or the wisdom of the Orient. The paths that lead to it are
many; but the wisdom is one. Artistic souls envision it, those who suffer dream of it, the
pure in heart know it. Those who work for others cannot remain blinded to its realm,
though they may not always recognize it by its name. Only light and empty minds,
egotistical and vain drones, confused by their own buzzing, will remain ignorant of the
supreme ideal. They will continue to exist until life becomes a grievous burden to them.
It must be distinctly remembered, however: these pages are not written for the
masses. They are neither an appeal for reforms, nor an effort to win over to our views the
fortunate in life; they are addressed solely to those who are constitutionally able to
comprehend them, to those who suffer, to those who hunger and thirst after some Reality
in this world of Chinese Shadows. As for those, why should they not show themselves
courageous enough to abandon their world of frivolous occupations, their pleasures above
all and even their personal interests, except when those interests form part of their duties
to their families or others? No one is so busy or so poor that he cannot create a noble
ideal and follow it. Why then hesitate in clearing a path towards this ideal, through all
obstacles, over every stumbling block, every petty hindrance of social life, in order to march
straight forward until the goal is reached? Those who would make this effort would soon
find that the "strait gate" and the "thorny path" lead to the broad valleys of limitless horizon,
to that state where there is no more death, because one feels oneself rebecoming a god!
It is true that the first conditions required to reach it are an absolute disinterestedness, a
boundless devotion to the welfare of others, and a complete indifference to the world and
its opinions. In order to make the first step on that ideal path, the motive must be
absolutely pure; not an unworthy thought must attract the eyes from the end in view, not
a doubt or hesitation shackle the feet. There do exist men and women thoroughly qualified
for this, whose only aim is to dwell under the Aegis of their Divine Nature. Let them, at
least, take courage to live the life and not conceal it from the eyes of others! No one else's
opinion should he considered superior to the voice of one's own conscience. Let that
conscience, therefore, developed to its highest degree, guide us in all the ordinary acts of
life. As to the conduct of our inner life, let us concentrate our entire attention on the ideal
we have set ourselves, and look beyond, without paying the slightest attention to the mud
upon our feet ....
Those who are capable of making this effort are true Theosophists; all others are
but members, more or less indifferent, and very often useless.

- From Theosophia #163, Summer 1980

-------------

THE POOR

"There is but one way of ever ameliorating human life and it is by the love of one's
fellow man for his own sake and not for personal gratification. The greatest Theosophist -
he who loves divine truth under all its forms - is the one who works for and with the poor.
There is a man known to the entire intellectual Europe-America who possibly may never
have heard the name of The Theosophical Society; I mean Count Leo N. Tolstoy, model
for all aspirants to true Theosophy. He is the first in European aristocracy to have solved
this problem: 'What can I do to make happy any poor man whom I may meet?' This is what
he says:
"'I think that it is the duty of everyone to work for all who may need help; to work
with the hands, remember, a certain portion of your day. It is more practical to work with
and for the poor man than to give him a portion of your intellectual labor ... you preach by
means of example ... you show them that you do not consider their prosaic work as being
below your dignity, and thus you inculcate in him the feeling of respect and esteem for
himself and of satisfaction with his destiny ... It is not ... owing to scientific and intellectual
progress, that we can ever hope to assist the poor, or to inculcate into humanity the idea
of a true fraternity."' (Blavatsky Collected Writings, Vol. VIII, pp 77-8)

--------------------

THE THEOSOPHICAL MAHATMAS

MAHATMAS

With the passing of H.P.B. in 1891, the real position of the Mahatmas, in regard to
the Theosophical movement, seems to have been lost sight of. For a short time, some of
the outstanding figures that were left in the society, had vague and uncertain impressions
of what the Mahatmas really were, but, without the enlightened and unerring guidance of
H.P.B., they began to drift, with the result that, as she had predicted in the closing chapter
of the Key to Theosophy, which deals with the future of the T.S., nearly the whole society
has drifted "on to some sand bank or other, there to remain a stranded carcass, to moulder
and die." Even in the lifetime of H.P.B. there was the same tendency that exists today, to
ignore the status of the Mahatmas, and to entirely misconceive their objectives.
The first branch of the Theosophical society, after the formation of the parent body
in New York City in 1875, was a. Rochester branch organized in 1882, through the efforts
of Mrs. J.W. Cables, who in 1884, began the publication, intermittently, of a small
magazine known as The Occult Word.
Mrs. Cables was a refined, intellectual woman; psychic and a sensitive who went
into trance conditions, and delivered addresses alleged to be inspired by the spirits of the
departed. She was associated in this work with W.T. Brown, who, in 1884, under the
authority of the London lodge, published a pamphlet entitled dome Experiences in India.
Brown was a member of the London lodge, and went to India late in 1883, where he
proffered his services in the cause of the Mahatmas and of humanity, and where,
according to his own pamphlet, he was accepted as a chela on probation, January 7, 1884.
His observation on this experience was as follows: "On that occasion I was warned
of the difficulties of the road which I desired to tread, but was assured that by close
adherence to truth and trust in my master, all must turn out well."
He joined forces with Mrs. Cables in 1885, and a year later, over their joint signature
they published a repudiation of the Mahatmas. To this manifesto H.P.B. replied in W.Q.
Judge's magazine, The Path, in December 1886, using the same title as that used by Mrs.
Cables and Brown "The Theosophical Mahatmas." The article is as timely today as it was
44 years ago, and it is as follows:
(W.M.W.)

It is with sincere and profound regret, though with no surprise, prepared as I am for
years of such declarations, that I have read in the Rochester Occult Word, edited by Mrs.
J. Cables, the devoted president of the T.S. of that place, her joint editorial with Mr. W.T.
Brown. This sudden revulsion of feeling is perhaps quite natural in the lady for she has
never had the opportunities given her as Mr. Brown has; and her feeling when she writes
that after `a great desire. . . to be put into communication with the Theosophical Mahatmas
we (they) have come to the conclusion that it is useless to strain the physical eyes toward
the Himalayas' is undeniably shared by many theosophists. Whether the complaints are
justified, and also, whether it is the Mahatmas or Theosophists themselves who are to
blame for it, is a question that remains to be settled. It has been a pending case for
several year's, and will have to be now decided, as the two complainants declare over their
signature that `we' (they) need not run after Oriental Mystics, who deny their ability to help
us". The last sentence, in italics, has to be seriously examined. I ask the privilege to make
a few remarks thereon.
To begin with, the tone of the whole article is that of a true manifesto. Condensed
and weeded of its exuberance of Biblical expressions, it comes to this paraphrastical
declaration; "We have knocked at their door, and they have not answered us; we have
prayed for bread, they have denied us even a stone". The charge is quite serious;
nevertheless, that it is neither just nor fair - is what I propose to, show.
 As I was the first in the United States to bring the existence of our Masters into
publicity; and, having exposed the holy names of two members of a Brotherhood, hitherto
unknown to Europe and America (except to a few mystics and initiates of every age) yet
sacred and revered throughout the East and especially India; causing vulgar speculation
and curiosity to grow around those blessed names, and finally leading to a public rebuke,
I believe it is my duty to contradict the fitness of the latter by explaining the whole situation,
as I feel myself the chief culprit. It may do good to some, perchance, and will interest
some others.
Let no one think withal, that I come out as a champion or a defender of those who
most assuredly need no defence. What I intend, is to present simple facts and let after
this, the situation be judged on its own merits. To the plain statement of our brothers and
sisters that they have been living on husks, "hunting after strange gods" without receiving
admittance, I would ask in my turn as plainly; "Are you sure of having knocked at the right
door? Do you feel certain that you have not lost your way by stopping so often on your
journey at strange doors, behind which lie in wait the fiercest enemies of those you were
searching for? "Our Masters are not 'a jealous god'; they are simply holy mortals,
nevertheless, however, higher than any in this world, morally, intellectually and spiritually.
However holy and advanced in the science of Mysteries - they are still men, members of
a Brotherhood who are the first in it to show themselves subservient to its time-honored
laws and rules. And one of the first rules in it demands that those who start on their
journey Eastward, as candidates to the notice and favours of those who are the custodians
of those Mysteries, should proceed by the straight road, without stopping on every sideway
and path, seeking to join other "Masters" and professors often of the Left-Hand Science;
that they should have confidence and show trust and patience, besides several other
conditions to fulfill. Failing in all of this from first to last, what right has any man or woman
to complain of the liability of the Masters to help them?
Truly " `The Dwellers of the threshold' are within!"
Once that a theosophist would become a candidate for either chelaship or favors,
he must be aware of the mutual pledge tacitly, if not formally offered and accepted
between the two parties, and, that such a pledge is sacred. It is a bond of seven years' of
probation. If during that time, notwithstanding the many human shortcomings and
mistakes of the candidates (save two which it is needless to specify in print) he remains
throughout every temptation true to the chosen Master, or Masters; (in the case of lay
candidates) and as faithful to the Society founded at their wish and under their orders, then
the theosophist will be initiated into . . . . . thenceforward allowed to communicate with his
guru unreservedly, all his failings, save this one, as specified, may be overlooked, they
belong to his future Karma, but are left for the present, to the discretion and judgment of
the Master. He alone has the power of judging whether even during those long seven
years, the chela will be favoured regardless of his mistakes and sins, with occasional
communications with, and from the guru. The latter, thoroughly posted as to the causes
and motives that led the candidate into sins of omission and commission, is the only one
to judge of the advisability or inadvisability of bestowing encouragement; as he alone is
entitled to it, seeing that he is himself under the inexorable law of Karma, which no one
from the Zulu savage up to the highest archangel can avoid - and that he has to assume
the great responsibility of the causes created by himself.
 Thus, the chief and only indispensable condition required in the candidate or chela
on probation, is simply unswerving fidelity to the chosen Master and his purposes. This
is a condition sine qua non, not, as I have said, on account of any jealous feeling, but
simply because the magnetic rapport between the two, once broken, it becomes at each
time doubly difficult to reestablish it again, and that it is neither just nor fair, that the
Masters should strain their powers for those whose future course and final desertion they
very often can plainly foresee. Yet, how many of those who, expecting as I would call it
"favours by anticipation", and being disappointed, instead of humbly repeating mea culpa
tax the Masters with selfishness and injustice. They will deliberately break the thread of
connection ten times in one year, and yet expect each time to be taken back on the old
lines! I know of one theosophist - let him be nameless, though it is hoped he will recognize
himself - a quiet intelligent young gentleman, a mystic by nature, who, in his ill-advised
enthusiasm and impatience, changed Masters, and his ideas, about half a dozen times in
less than three years. First he offered himself, was accepted on probation, and took the
vow of chelaship; about a year later he suddenly got the idea of getting married, though
he had several proofs of the corporeal presence of his Master, and had several favors
bestowed upon him. Projects of marriage failing, he sought "Masters" under other climes,
and became an enthusiastic Rosicrucian; then he returned to theosophy as a Christian
mystic; then again sought to enliven his austerities with a wife; then gave up the idea and
turned a spiritualist. And then having applied once more "to be taken back as a chela" (I
have his letter) and his Master remaining silent - he renounced him altogether to seek in
the words of the above manifesto - his old "Essenian Master and to test the spirits in his
name."
The able and respected editor of the Occult Word and her secretary, are right, and
have chosen the only true path in which, with a very small dose of blind faith, they are sure
to encounter no deceptions or disappointments. "It is pleasant for some of us" they say
"to obey the call of `The Man of Sorrows' who will not turn away because they are unworthy
or have not scored up a certain percentage of personal merit." How do they know? unless
they accept the cynically awful and pernicious dogma of the Protestant Church, that
teaches the forgiveness of the blackest crime, provided the murderer believes sincerely
that the blood of his Redeemer has saved him at the last hour - what is it but blind
unphilosophical faith? Emotionalism is not philosophy; and Buddha devoted his long self-
sacrificing life to tear people away precisely from that evil breeding superstition. Why
speak of Buddha, then, in the same breath? The doctrine of salvation, by personal merit
and self forgetfulness, is the corner stone of the teaching of the Lord Buddha. Both the
writers may have and very likely they did - "hunt after strange gods" but these were not our
Masters. They have "denied him thrice" and now propose "with bleeding feet and prostrate
spirit" to pray that he (Jesus) may take us (them) once more under his wing", etc.
The "Nazarene Master" is sure to oblige them so far. Still they will be "living on
husks" plus "blind faith." But in this, they are the best judges, and no one has a right to
meddle with their private beliefs in our society; and heaven grant that they should not in
their fresh disappointment turn our bitterest enemies one day.
Yet, to those Theosophists who are displeased with the Society, in general, no one
has ever made to you any rash promises; least 'of all, has either the Society or its
founders ever offered their "Masters" as a chromo-premium to the best behaved. For
years every new member has been told that he was promised nothing, but had everything
to expect only from his own personal merit. The Theosophist is left free and untrammeled
in his actions. Whenever displeased - alia tentanda via est - no harm in trying elsewhere;
unless indeed one has offered himself and decided to win the Masters favors. To such
especially, I now address myself and ask; Have you fulfilled your obligations and pledges?
Have you, who would fain lay all the blame on the Society and the Masters - the latter the
embodiment of charity, tolerance, justice and universal love - have you led the life requisite
and the conditions required from one who becomes a candidate? Let him who feels in his
heart and conscience that he has - that he has never once failed seriously, never doubted
his Master's wisdom, never sought other Master or Masters in his impatience to become
an Occultist with powers; and that he has never betrayed his theosophical duty in thought
or deed - let him I say, rise and protest. He can do so fearlessly; there is no penalty
attached to it and he will not even receive a reproach, let alone be excluded from the
society -t he broadest and most liberal in its views, the most Catholic of all the Societies
known or unknown.
I am afraid that my invitation will remain unanswered. During the eleven years of
the existence of the Theosophical society, I have known out of the seventy-two regularly
accepted chelas on probation, and the hundreds of lay candidates, only three who have
not hitherto failed and one only who had a full success. . . No one forces any one into
chelaship; no promises are uttered, none, except the mutual pledge between Master and
the would-be chela. Verily, verily, many are called but few are chosen, or rather few who
have the patience of going to the bitter end, if bitter we can call simple perseverance and
singleness of purpose.
And what about the society in general, outside of India. Who, among the many
thousands of members, does lead the life? Shall anyone say because he is a strict
vegetarian -elephants and cows are that - or happens to lead a celibate life after a stormy
youth in the opposite direction, or because he studies the Bhagavat-Gita or the "Yoga
philosophy" upside down, that he is a theosophist according to the Masters' hearts? As
it is not the cowl that makes the monk, so, no long hair, with a poetical vacancy on the
brow are sufficient to make of one a faithful follower of divine Wisdom. Look around you,
and behold our Universal Brotherhood so called. The Society founded to remedy the
glaring evils of Christianity, to shun bigotry and intolerance, cant and superstition and to
cultivate real universal love extending even to the dumb brute, what has it become in
Europe and America in these eleven years of trial? In one thing only we have succeeded
to be considered higher than our Christian Brothers, who, according to Lawrence Oliphant's
graphic expression "Kill one another for Brotherhood's sake and fight as devils for the love
of God", and this is that we have made away with every dogma, and are now justly and
wisely trying to make away with the last vestige of even nominal authority. But in every
other respect we are as bad as they are; backbiting, slander, uncharitableness, criticism
and incessant war cry and ding of mutual rebukes that Christian Hell itself might be proud
of. And all this, I suppose is the Masters' fault; They will not help those who help others
on the way of salvation and liberation from selfishness - with kicks and scandals. Truly we
are an example to the world, and fit companions for the holy ascetics of the snowy Range!
And now a few words more before I close. I will be asked "And who are you to find
fault with us? Are you, who claim, nevertheless, communion with the Masters and receive
daily favors from Them; are you so holy, faultless and so worthy?" To this I answer I Am
Not. Imperfect and faulty is my nature; many and glaring are my shortcomings - for this
my Karma is heavier than that of any other Theosophist. It is and must be so - since for
so many years I stand set in the pillory, a target for my enemies and some friends also.
Yet I accept the trial cheerfully. Why? Because I know that I have, all my faults
notwithstanding, Master's protection extended over me. And if I have it, the reason for it
is simply this; for thirty-five years and more, ever since 1851 that I saw my Master bodily
and personally for the first time, I have never once denied or even doubted Him - not even
in thoughts. Never a reproach or a murmur against Him has escaped my lips or entered
even my brain for one instant under the heaviest trials. From the first I knew what I had to
expect, for I was told that which I have never ceased repeating to others; as soon as one
steps on the Path leading to the Ashrum of the blessed Masters - the last and only
custodians of primitive Wisdom and Truth - his Karma, instead of having to be distributed
throughout his long life falls upon him in a block and crushes him with its whole weight.
He who believes in what he professes and in his Master, will stand it and come out
of the trial victorious; he who doubts, the coward who fears to receive his just dues and
tries to avoid justice being done - Fails. He will not escape Karma just the same, but he
will only lose that for which he has risked its untimely visits. This is why having been so
constantly, so mercilessly slashed by my Karma using my enemies as unconscious
weapons, that I have stood it all. I felt sure that Master would not permit that I should
perish; that he would always appear at the eleventh hour - and so he did. Three times I
was saved from death by Him, the last time almost against my will; when I went again into
the cold, wicked world out of love for Him, who has taught me what I know and made me
what I am. Therefore I do his work, and bidding, and this is what has given me the lion's
strength to support shocks, physical and mental, one of which would have killed any
theosophist who would go on doubting of the mighty protection. Unswerving devotion to
Him who embodies the duty traced for me, and belief in the wisdom, collectively of that
grand, mysterious, yet actual Brotherhood of holy men - is my only merit, and the cause
of my success in Occult philosophy.
And now, repeating after the Paraguru - My Master's Master - the words He had
sent as a message to those who wanted to make of the Society a "miracle club" instead
of a Brotherhood of Peace, Love and mutual assistance - "perish rather, the Theosophical
Society and its hapless Founders", I say perish their twelve years' labour and their very
lives, rather than that I should see what I do today, theosophists outvying political "rings"
in their search for personal power and authority theosophists slandering and criticizing
each other as two rival Christian sects might do; finally theosophists refusing to lead the
life and then criticizing and throwing slurs on the grandest and noblest of men, because
tied by their wise laws, hoary with age and based on an experience of human nature
milleniums old - those Masters refuse to interfere with Karma and to play second fiddle to
every theosophist who calls upon them and whether he deserves it or not.
Unless radical reforms in our American and European Societies are speedily
resorted to, I fear that before long there will remain but one centre of Theosophical
Societies and Theosophy in the whole world - namely in India; on that country I call all the
blessings of my heart. All my love and aspirations belong to my beloved brothers, the
Sons of Aryavarta, the Motherland of my Master.

- H. P. Blavatsky.
 - From Canadian Theosophist, Jan. 15, 1930

------------------------

HPB as Muckraker and Environmentalist

[Few students realize how strongly HPB expressed herself regarding our so-called
"civilization." The filth and the pollution and the gross chicanery based on greed get some
attention in this French article printed in La Revue Theosophique, Paris, Vol. II, January
21, 1890, pp. 193-98. We have used the translation in Volume XII of Blavatsky Collected
Writings, pp. 98-104. It has not been reprinted by ULT nor does it exist on the Internet.
The "symbol" endnotes were footnotes in the original article; the "numbered" endnotes are
added as an aid to the student.]

--------

Thoughts on the New Year and False Noses

"Annum novum faustum felicemque tibi!" [May the new year bring you happiness
and prosperity.]

Such was the sacramental phrase on the lips of all Gentiles, great or lowly, rich or
poor, during the day of the first of January, centuries before the Christian era; and we hear
it even today, especially in Paris. This mutual greeting was exchanged on that day
throughout the length and breadth of the Roman Empire. It awoke the echoes in the
palaces of Caesars, made cheerful the poor hovel of the slave, and soared to the clouds
in the spacious open galleries of the Colosseum, at the Capitol and the Forum, everywhere
under the blue sky of Rome. On that day, everybody assumed, in honor of the double-
faced Janus, a more or less prominent false nose of goodness, frank cordiality and
sincerity.
"May the New Year bring you happiness and prosperity!" - we say to every one of
our readers. "Let it be light to you," we say to our enemies and traducers. Brothers - we
say to Theosophists in every part of the world - Brothers, let us discard, at least for today,
all our respective false noses, in order to wish each other health and success, and
especially, a little more cordial mutual understanding than in the year 1889, now happily
defunct.
However, whether we repeat the old Latin formula one way or another, in French
or in English, it will never be but a variation of the ancient pagan phrase. For the New
Year, as well as every other festival, is but a legacy to the Christian people from the
worshipers of the Olympian gods. Let us, by all means, exchange wishes and gifts
(etrennes) but let us not be ungrateful, Theosophists! Let us not forget that these customs
come to us from paganism; and that felicitations and gifts also came to us from the same
source.
 As a matter of fact, gifts (etrennes) are but the strenae, the presents exchanged by
the Latins on the first of January,* the date that opened the New Year. As everybody does
or does not know - which is all the same to me - this day was consecrated to Janus, who
gave his name to the month of Januarius or January, and even to the Saint of that name,
the patron of Naples and of its lazzarone [beggars]. But, after all, this amiable Saint is but
one of the false noses of the god Bifrons. The old pagan was called in his early youth
Diaus, after his Vedic name, the beautiful god of the day and of light. Having immigrated
to Thessaly, and thence to Italy, where he established himself in the little hamlet of
Janiculum, on the Tiber, latinizing his name and becoming Dianus, god of light (whence
Diana). His false noses were many, and history has lost count of them. However, since
those days he has let himself be converted. Thus it is that for more than eighteen
centuries, having replaced his latest and more modest false nose with a more respectable,
if not more impenetrable mask - he is called Saint Peter.
Let the reader kindly abstain from protesting, and particularly from slinging offensive
epithets at us, which would not harm us, but might well lower him in our estimation. I am
but the humble interpreter of the more or less veiled truths and symbols, well known to all
who have studied their Virgil and their Horace, as well as their Ovid. Neither a false nose
nor a mask could prevent an old pagan from recognizing his double-faced Janus in the
Apostle who denied his Master. The two are identical, and everybody has the right to take
what is his own, wherever he finds it. Saint Peter is the coeli Janitor merely because Janus
was that too. The old doorkeeper of heaven, who pulled the door-cord at the palace of the
Sun, at every dawn and every New Year, and closed it again when ushering them out, is
but too easily recognizable in his new role. It is written in the stars which rule the destiny
of gods as well as mortals, that Janus - who held the key to heaven in one hand and a
halberd in the other, just as St. Peter, having succeeded him does - would relinquish his
role of janitor to the Sun to him who would become the guardian of the portals to Paradise,
the abode of Christ-Sun. The new coeli Janitor has become the successor to all the
functions and privileges of the ancient one, and we see no harm in that.
Solomon has said: "There is nothing new under the sun;" and he was right. It
would be silly to invent new functions and new gods - which we fashion in our image -
when our forefathers on the other side of the flood went to all the trouble of doing so for
us. That is why everything has been allowed to remain as in the past, and why nothing has
been changed in this world - except the names.
In all the religious ceremonies the name of Janus was always invoked first, for it was
only through his immediate intercession that the prayers of the pagan devotees could
reach the ear of the immortal gods. Thus it is even today. Anyone who would presume
to communicate with one of the personages of the Trinity over the head of St. Peter would
certainly be caught. His prayer would suffer the fate of a petition one sought to leave at
the office of the janitor, after having had an argument with him and having called him "old
door-keeper;" it would never reach the higher levels.
The fact is, the Great Army of the "Pipelets"** and the "Anastasies" should
recognize Janus Bifrons as their patron, the god in whose image it was created. It is only
then that it would have a legal right to its gifts, the first of the year, while its great patron
would receive his mite from the beginning to the end of the year.
Everything is relative in this world of illusion; nevertheless there should exist a
difference of degree between a celestial and a terrestrial janitor. As for the gifts, they have
existed in all ages both for lowly and great men alike. Caligula, emperor as he was, did not
disdain remaining throughout New Year's day in the vestibule of his palace, in order to
receive the strenae of his trembling subjects; sometimes, their own heads, for a change.
The Virgin-Queen, "Queen Bess" of England, when she died, left three thousand court
dresses, which represented her most recent gifts. Both great and lowly behave similarly
even now, in the year of our Lord 1890, on this crazy ball we call Terra - the "footstool" of
God.
Did not this same God of Abraham and of Jacob allow himself to be moved to pity
by promises and presents, just like the gods of other nations? This God and these gods,
did they not receive, just like mortals, gifts for services rendered or about to be rendered?
Did not Jacob himself bargain with his God, promising him as gifts "the tithe of all that thou
[God] wilt give me"? And he added, this good patriarch, at Luz near "Bethel": "... If God
will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and
raiment to put on .... then shall the Lord be my God." Saying this he did not forget to make
an offering (etrenner) to the stone "Bethel" which he had raised, by pouring some oil on its
top, in a simple but beautiful phallic ceremony (Genesis xxviii, 18, 20-22).
This touching ceremony came to the Israelites direct from India, where the stone of
Siva, the lingham, is today the object of the same exoteric rite with oil and flowers, every
time his worshipers celebrate the festival of the god of Destruction (of brute matter) and
of the Yogis.
All has remained as of yore. In Christian countries, especially in France, the New
Year makes its triumphal entrance just as it did two thousand years ago, when the Pagans
celebrated it with indigestion caused by the figs and gilded prunes they ate. The latter fruit
have migrated since to the Christmas tree, which does not alter the fact that they came to
us from the temples of Janus.* It is true that the priests no longer sacrifice a young white
bull upon his altar, that is replaced by a lamb of the same color, but whole hecatombs of
quadrupeds and fowl are slaughtered annually in his honor on that day. Certainly more
innocent blood is spilled today to satisfy the voracious appetite of one Paris street alone,
on New Year's day, than was necessary to feed a whole Roman city in the time of the
Caesars. The gentle Julian,(1) the pagan who rediscovered his well-beloved gods in
Lutetia - after the gods of Gaul had been disguised by order of Caesar, with the false
noses of Roman divinities - spent his leisure hours taming doves in honor of Venus. The
ferocious potentates who came after him, the elder sons of the Church, tamed only
Venuses that made pigeons out of them. Servile history called the former Apostate, to
please the Church, and added to the names of the others some high-sounding epithets:
the "Great," the "Saint," the "Beautiful." But if Julian became the "Apostate," it was
perhaps because he had a horror of false noses, while his Christian successors would
hardly be presentable in good society without such an artificial appendage. A false nose,
when necessary, becomes a guardian angel, and upon occasion even a god. This is
history. The metamorphosis of the divinities of barbarous Gaul into the gods of Olympus
and Parnassus did not stop there. In their turn, these Olympians had to undergo treatment
by order of the successors of Janus - St. Peter - namely, a forced baptism. With the help
of tinsel and brass, of paste and cement, we find the beloved gods of Julian appearing,
after their violent death, in the Golden Legend and the calendar of the good Pope Gregory,
under the titles of beatified Saints.
 The world is like the sea: it often changes in appearance, but remains basically the
same. The false noses of civilization and of the bigots, however, have hardly embellished
it: on the contrary, with every New Year it becomes more ugly and dangerous. We ponder
and compare, but in the sight of a philosopher comparison with its predecessors of ancient
days does not reflect favorably upon the modern New Year's Day. The millions stored in
the safes and vaults of state banks do not make the rich or the poor any happier. Ten
bronze coins with the effigy of Janus, given as a gift, were worth more in those days than
ten gold coins, with the effigy of the Republic or the Queen, are worth today; the baskets
of gilded prunes, a few cents worth, contained less cause of indigestion than the boxes of
candy exchanged on New Year's Day today - these candies representing in Paris alone the
sum of half a million francs. Five hundred thousand francs in candies, and the same
number of men and women dying from hunger and privations!
Let us go back in our minds, my readers, fifteen centuries, and try to make a
comparison between a New Year's dinner in the years 355 to 360, and a similar dinner in
1890. Let us seek out the same good and kind Julian,(3) when he lived in the palace of
Thermae, which is known today as the Hotel de Cluny - or what is left of it. Do you see
him, this great general, at his dinner, surrounded by his soldiers whom he loves better than
anyone else in the world outside of his gods, and who idolize him! It is the first of January
and they are celebrating the day of Janus. In two days, the third of January, they will
render a similar homage to Isis, patroness of the good city of Lutetia Parisiorum. Since
those days, the virgin-mother of ancient Egypt was rebaptized as Genevieve, and this Saint
and Martyr (of Typhon?) has remained the patroness of the good city of Paris - true symbol
of a false nose furnished by Rome for the Christian world. We see neither knives nor forks,
neither silver nor porcelain of Sevres, at that imperial table, not even a napkin; but the
meats and other foods which the guests consume with so much appetite do not have to
be inspected under the microscope of chemists attached to public health offices. No
artificial or poisonous product is to be found in their bread or wine. Arsenic does not add
to their vegetables the false nose of a deceptive freshness; rust does not hide itself in the
corners of their preserved food containers, and red brick pulverized in a mortar does not
play the role of their pepper. Their sugar (or that which takes its place) is not extracted
from the tar in the wheels of their chariots of war; in swallowing their liqueurs and cognac,
they do not swallow a solution made from the old boots of a policeman, found in the basket
of a rag picker; they did not devour, with a casual smile on their lips, a bouillon condensed
from the grease of corpses (of men as well as animals) and the rags used in all the
hospitals of Paris - as a substitute for butter. For all of this is a product of modern culture,
the fruit of civilization and scientific progress, while Gaul at the time of Julian was but a
barbarous and savage land. But what they ate on their New Year's Day could be eaten
with safety and with advantage (except for the doctors) at the dinners on the first of the
year 1890.
"They had neither forks nor silver," will be said, "and they ate with their fingers,
those barbarians!"
That's true; they had no use for forks, and probably for handkerchiefs also; but on
the other hand, they did not have to swallow their ancestors in their kitchen grease, and
the bones of their dogs in their white bread, as we do daily.
If given a choice, we would definitely not choose the gala dinner of the first of the
year of grace 1890, at Paris, but the one of a thousand years ago, at Lutetia. A case of
barbarian taste, don't you see! A ridiculous and baroque preference, according to the
opinion of the majority, for natural in the fourth century, attracts us infinitely more than the
false noses and the artificiality of everything in the nineteenth century.

- H.P. Blavatsky

* From Janua - "door" or any kind of entrance; the door that opens up the year.
** Monsieur and Madame Pipelet are characters in Eugene Sue's work, Mysteres
de Paris (1842), who typify the habits and peculiarities of the French portier, or Janitor or
Concierge, in constant comment and gossip about the owners; while Anastasie typified
the Censor carrying a huge pair of scissors.
1. In "Civilization: The Death of Art & Beauty," we find HPB saying:
"...Our modern civilization... its roots are rotten to the core. It is to its progress that
selfishness and materialism, the greatest curses of the nations, are due; and the latter will
most surely lead to the annihilation of art and of the appreciation of the truly harmonious
and beautiful. Hitherto, materialism has only led to a universal tendency to Unification on
the material plane aid a corresponding diversity on that of thought and spirit. It is this
universal tendency, which by propelling humanity, through its ambition and selfish greed,
to an incessant chase after wealth and the obtaining at any price of the supposed
blessings of this life, causes it to aspire or rather gravitate to one level, the lowest of all -
the plane of empty appearance. ... Like a hideous leprosy our Western civilization has
eaten its way through all quarters of the globe and hardened the human heart."
OR again:
"Owing to the triumphant march and the invasion of civilization, Nature, as well as
man and ethics, is sacrificed, and is fast becoming artificial. Climates are changing, and
the face of the whole world will soon be altered. Under the murderous hand of the
pioneers of civilization, the destruction of whole primeval forests is leading to the drying up
of rivers. ... A few years more and there will not remain within a radius of fifty miles around
our large cities one single rural spot inviolate from vulgar speculation. In scenery, the
picturesque and the natural are daily replaced by the grotesque and the artificial. Scarce
a landscape in England but the fair body of nature is desecrated by the advertisements of
"Pears' Soap" and "Beecham's Pills." . . . .
"[In an earlier era one might be] robbed under the vault of thick woods and the
protection of darkness; people are robbed now-a-days under the electric light of saloons
and the protection of trade-laws and police regulations."
2. Julian was an initiate. If our readers would like a story about Julian let us know.
[Ed.]

- Aquarian Theosophist, Jan. 17, 2001

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