Writings of H P Blavatsky
Cardiff
Theosophical Society in Wales
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24 -1DL
Helena Petrovna
Blavatsky (1831 – 1891)
The Founder of
Modern Theosophy
By
H P Blavatsky
O ye Lords of Truth who are cycling in eternity . . . save me from the
annihilation in this Region of the Two Truths. Egyptian Ritual of the Dead
THAT the world moves in cycles, and events repeat themselves therein, is
an old, yet ever new truism. It is new to most, firstly, because it belongs to
a distinct group of occult aphorisms in partibus infidelium, and our
present-day Rabbis and Pharisees will accept nothing coming from that Nazareth;
secondly, because those who will swallow a camel of whatever size, provided it
hails from orthodox or accepted authorities, will strain and kick at the
smallest gnat, if only its buzz comes from theosophical regions. Yet this
proposition about the world cycles and ever-recurring events, is a very correct
one. It is one, moreover, that people could easily verify for themselves. Of
course, the people meant here are men who do their own thinking; not those
others who are satisfied to remain, from birth till death, pinned, like a
thistle fastened to the coat-tail of a country parson, to the beliefs and
thoughts of the goody-goody majority.
We cannot agree with a writer (was it Gilpin?) who said that the
grandest truths are often rejected, not so much for want of direct evidence, as
for want of inclination to search for it. This applies but to a few.
Nine-tenths of the people will reject the most overwhelming evidence, even if
it be brought to them without any trouble to themselves, only because it
happens to clash with their personal interests or prejudices; especially if it
comes from unpopular quarters. We are living in a highly moral atmosphere, high
sounding in words. Put to the test of practice, however, the morality of this
age in point of genuineness and reality is of the nature of the black skin of
the negro minstrel: assumed for show and pay, and washed off at the close of
every performance. In sober truth, our opponents advocates of official science,
defenders of orthodox religion, and the tutti quanti of the detractors of
Theosophy who claim to oppose our works on grounds of scientific evidence,
public good and truth, strongly resemble advocates in our courts of law
miscalled of justice. These in their defence of robbers and murderers, forgers
and adulterers, deem it to be their duty to browbeat, confuse and bespatter all
who bear witness against their clients, and will ignore, or if possible,
suppress, all evidence which goes to incriminate them. Let ancient Wisdom step
into the witness-box herself, and prove that the goods found in the possession
of the prisoner at the bar, were taken from her own strong-box; and she will
find herself accused of all manner of crimes, fortunate if she escape being
branded as a common fraud, and told that she is no better than she should be.
What member of our Society can wonder then, that in this our age,
pre-eminently one of shams and shows, the theosophists’
teachings so (mis-) called, seem to be the most unpopular of all the systems
now to the fore; or that materialism and theology, science and modern
philosophy, have arrayed themselves in holy alliance against theosophical
studies perhaps because all the former are based on chips and broken-up
fragments of that primordial system. Cotton complains somewhere, that the metaphysicians
have been learning their lesson for the last four (?) thousand years, and that
it is now high time that they should begin to teach something. But, no sooner
is the possibility of such studies offered, with the complete evidence into the
bargain that they belong to the oldest doctrine of the metaphysical philosophy
of mankind, than, instead of giving them a fair hearing at least, the majority
of the complainers turn away with a sneer and the cool remark: Oh, you must
have invented all you say yourself!
Dear ladies and gentlemen, has it ever occurred to you, how truly grand
and almost divine would be that man or woman, who, at this time of the life of
mankind, could invent anything, or discover that which had not been invented
and known ages before? The charge of being such an inventor would only entitle
the accused to the choicest honours. For show us, if you can, that mortal who
in the historical cycle of our human race has taught the world something
entirely new. To the proud pretensions of this age, Occultism the real Eastern
Occultism, or the so-called Esoteric Doctrine answers through its ablest
students: Indeed all your boasted knowledge is but the reflex action of the
by-gone Past. At best, you are but the modern popularisers of very ancient ideas.
Consciously and unconsciously you have pilfered from old classics and
philosophers, who were themselves but the superficial recorders cautious and
incomplete, owing to the terrible penalties for divulging the secrets of
initiation taught during the mysteries of the primæval Wisdom. Avaunt! your
modern. sciences and speculations are but the réchauffé dishes of antiquity;
the dead bones (served with a sauce piquante of crass materialism, to disguise
them) of the intellectual repasts of the gods. Ragonwas right in saying in his
Maçonnerie Occulte, that Humanity only seems to progress in achieving one
discovery after the other, a sin truth, it only finds that which it had lost.
Most of our modern inventions for which we claim such glory, are, after all, things
people were acquainted with three and four thousand years back.1 Lost to us
through wars, floods and fire, their very existence became obliterated from the
memory of man. And now modern thinkers begin to rediscover them once more.
Allow us to recapitulate a few of such things and thus refresh your
memory.
Deny, if you can, that the most important of our present sciences were
known to the ancients. It is not Eastern literature only, and the whole cycle
of those esoteric teachings which an overzealous Christian Kabalist, in France,
has just dubbed the accursed sciences that will give you a flat denial, but
profane classical literature, as well. The proof is easy.
Are not physics and natural sciences but an amplified reproduction of
the works of Anaxagoras, of Empedocles, Democritus and others? All that is
taught now, was taught by these philosophers then. For they maintained even in
the fragments of their works still extant that the Universe is composed of
eternal atoms which, moved by a subtle internal Fire, combine in millions of
various ways. With them, this Fire was the divine Breath of the Universal Mind,
but now, it has become with the modern philosophers no better than a blind and
senseless Force. Furthermore they taught that there was neither Life nor Death,
but only a constant destruction of form, produced by perpetual physical
transformations. This has now become by intellectual transformation, that which
is known as the physical correlation of forces, conservation of energy, law of
continuity, and what not, in the vocabulary of modern Science. But what’s
in a name, or in new-fangled words and compound terms, once that the identity
of the essential ideas is established?
Was not Descartes indebted for his original theories to the old Masters,
to Leucippus and Democritus, Lucretius, Anaxagoras and Epicurus? These taught
that the celestial bodies were formed of a multitude of atoms, whose vortical
motion existed from eternity; which met, and, rotating together, the heaviest
were drawn to the centres, the lightest to the circumferences; each of these
concretions was carried away in a fluidic matter, which, receiving from this
rotation an impulse, the stronger communicated it to the weaker concretions.
This seems a tolerably close description of the Cartesian theory of Elemental
Vortices taken from Anaxagoras and some others; and it does look most
suspiciously like the vortical atoms of Sir W. Thomson!
Even Sir Isaac Newton, the greatest among the great, is found constantly
mirroring a dozen or so of old philosophers. In reading his works one sees
floating in the air the pale images of the same Anaxagoras and Democritus, of
Pythagoras, Aristotle, Timæus of Locris, Lucretius, Macrobius, and even our old
friend Plutarch. All these have maintained one or the other of these
propositions, (1) that the smallest of the particles of matter would be
sufficient owing to its infinite divisibility to fill infinite space; (2) that
there exist two Forces emanated from the Universal Soul, combined in numerical
proportions (the centripetal and centrifugal forces, of the latter day
scientific saints); (3) that there was a mutual attraction of bodies, which
attraction causes the latter to, what we now call, gravitate and keeps them
within their respective spheres; (4) they hinted most unmistakably at the
relation existing between the weight and the density, or the quantity of matter
contained in a unit of mass; and (5) taught that the attraction (gravitation)
of the planets toward the Sun is in reciprocal proportion to their distance
from that luminary.
Finally, is it not a historical fact that the rotation of the Earth and
the heliocentric system were taught by Pythagoras not to speak of Hicetas,
Heraclides, Ecphantus, &c.,--over 2,000 years before the despairing and now
famous cry of Galileo, E pur, se muove? Did not the priests of Etruria and the
Indian Rishis still earlier, know how to attract lightning, ages upon ages
before even the astral Sir B. Franklin was formed in space? Euclid is honoured
to this day perhaps, because one cannot juggle as easily with mathematics and
figures, as with symbols and words bearing on unprovable hypotheses. Archimedes
had probably forgotten more in his day, than our modern mathematicians,
astronomers, geometricians, mechanicians, hydrostaticians and opticians ever
knew. Without Archytas, the disciple of Pythagoras, the application of the
theory of mathematics to practical purposes would, perchance, remain still
unknown to our grand era of inventions and machinery. Needless to remind the
reader of that which the Aryans knew, as it is already recorded in the
Theosophist and other works obtainable in India.
Wise was Solomon in saying that there is no new thing under the Sun; and
that everything that is hath been already of old time, which was before us
save, perhaps, the theosophical doctrines which the humble writer of the
present is charged by some with having invented. The prime origin of this (very
complimentary) accusation is due to the kind efforts of the S. P. R. It is the
more considerate and kind of this world famous, and learned Society of
Researches, as its scribes seem utterly incapable of inventing anything
original themselves even in the way of manufacturing a commonplace
illustration. If the inquisitive reader turns to the article which follows, he
will have the satisfaction of finding a curious proof of this fact, in a
reprint from old Izaak Walton’s Lives, which our contributor has
entitled Mrs. Donne’s Astral Body. Thus even the
scientifically accurate Cambridge Dons are not, it seems, above borrowing from
an ancient book; and not only fail to acknowledge the debt, but even go to the
trouble of presenting it to the public as new original matter, without even the
compliment of inverted commas. And thus all along.
In short, it may be said of the scientific theories, that those which
are true are not new; and those which are new are not true, or are at least,
very dubious. It is easy to hide behind merely working hypotheses, but less
easy to maintain their plausibility in the face of logic and philosophy. To
make short work of a very big subject, we have but to institute a brief
comparison between the old and the new teachings. That which modern science
would make us believe, is this: the atoms possess innate and immutable
properties. That which Esoteric, and also exoteric, Eastern philosophy calls
divine Spirit Substance (Purusha Prakriti) or eternal Spirit-matter, one
inseparable from the other, modern Science calls Force and Matter, adding as we
do (for it is a Vedantic conception), that, the two being inseparable, matter
is but an abstraction (an illusion rather). The properties of matter are, by
the Eastern Occultists, summed up in, or brought down to, attraction and
repulsion; by the Scientists, to gravitation and affinities. According to this
teaching, the properties of complex combinations are but the necessary results
of the composition of elementary properties; the most complex existences being
the physico-chemical automata, called men. Matter from being primarily
scattered and inanimate, begets life, sensation, emotions and will, after a
whole series of consecutive gropings. The latter non-felicitous expression
(belonging to Mr. Tyndall), forced the philosophical writer, Delboeuf2, to
criticize the English Scientist in very disrespectful terms, and forces us in
our turn, to agree with the former. Matter, or anything equally conditioned,
once that it is declared to be subject to immutable laws, cannot grope. But
this is a trifle when compared with dead or inanimate matter, producing life,
and even psychic phenomena of the highest mentality! Finally, a rigid
determinism reigns over all nature. All that which has once happened to our
automatical Universe, had to happen, as the future of that Universe is traced
in the smallest of its particles or atoms. Return these atoms, they say, to the
same position and order they were in at the first moment of the evolution of
the physical Kosmos, and the same universal phenomena will be repeated in
precisely the same order, and the Universe will once more return to its present
conditions. To this, logic and philosophy answer that it cannot be so, as the
properties of the particles vary and are changeable. If the atoms are eternal
and matter indestructible, these atoms can never have been born; hence, they
can have nothing innate in them. Theirs is the one homogeneous (and we add
divine) substance, while compound molecules receive their properties, at the
beginning of the life cycles or manvantaras, from within without. Organisms
cannot have been developed from dead or inanimate matter, as, firstly, such
matter does not exist, and secondly, philosophy proving it conclusively, the
Universe is not subjected to fatality. As Occult Science teaches that the
universal process of differentiation begins anew after every period of
Maha-pralaya, there is no reason to think that it would slavishly and blindly
repeat itself. Immutable laws last only from the incipient to the last stage of
the universal life, being simply the effects of primordial, intelligent and entirely
free action. For Theosophists, as also for Dr. Pirogoff, Delboeuf and many a
great independent modern thinker, it is the Universal (and to us impersonal
because infinite) Mind, which is the true and primordial Demiurge.
What better illustrates the theory of cycles, than the following fact?
Nearly 700 years B.C., in the schools of Thales and Pythagoras, was taught the
doctrine of the true motion of the earth, its form and the whole heliocentric
system. And in 317 A.D. Lactantius, the preceptor of Crispus Cæsar, the son of
the Emperor Constantine, is found teaching his pupil that the earth was a plane
surrounded by the sky, itself composed of fire and water! Moreover, the
venerable Church Father warned his pupil against the heretical doctrine of the
earth’s globular form, as the Cambridge and
Oxford Father Dons warn their students now, against the pernicious and
superstitious doctrines of Theosophy such as Universal Mind, Re-incarnation and
so on. There is a resolution tacitly accepted by the members of the T. S. for
the adoption of a proverb of King Solomon, paraphrased for our daily use: A
scientist is wiser in his own conceit than seven Theosophists that can render a
reason. No time, therefore, should be lost in arguing with them; but no
endeavour, on the other hand, should be neglected to show up their mistakes and
blunders. The scientific conceit of the Orientalists especially of the youngest
branch of these the Assyriologists and the Egyptologists is indeed phenomenal.
Hitherto, some credit was given to the ancients to their philosophers and
Initiates, at any rate of knowing a few things that the moderns could not
rediscover. But now even the greatest Initiates are represented to the public
as fools. Here is an instance. On pages 15, 16 and 17 (Introduction) in the
Hibbert Lectures of 1887 by Prof. Sayce, on The Ancient Babylonians, the reader
is brought face to face with a conundrum that may well stagger the
unsophisticated admirer of modern learning. Complaining of the difficulties and
obstacles that meet the Assyriologist at every step of his studies; after
giving the dreary catalogue of the formidable struggles of the interpreter to
make sense of the inscriptions from broken fragments of clay tiles; the
Professor goes on to confess that the scholar who has to read these cuneiform
characters, is often likely to put a false construction upon isolated passages,
the context of which must be supplied from conjecture (p. 14). Notwithstanding
all this, the learned lecturer places the modern Assyriologist higher than the
ancient Babylonian Initiate, in the knowledge of symbols and his own religion!
The passage deserves to be quoted in toto:
It is true that many of the sacred texts were so written as to be
intelligible only to the initiated; but the initiated were provided with keys
and glosses, many of which are in our hands(?) . . . We can penetrate into the
real meaning of documents which to him (the ordinary Babylonian) were a sealed
book. Nay, more than this, the researches that have been made during the last
half-century into the creed and beliefs of the nations of the world both past
and present, have given us a clue to the interpretation of these documents
which even the initiated priests did not possess.
The above (the italics being our own) may be better appreciated when
thrown into a syllogistic form.
Major premise: The ancient Initiates had keys and glosses to their
esoteric texts, of which they were the INVENTORS.
Minor premise: Our Orientalists have many of these keys.
Conclusion: Ergo, the Orientalists have a clue which the Initiates
themselves did not possess!!
Into what were the Initiates, in such a case, initiated?--and who
invented the blinds, we ask.
Few Orientalists could answer this query. We are more generous, however;
and may show in our next that, into which our modest Orientalists have never
yet been initiated all their alleged clues to the contrary.
II
Go to,
let
us go
down and there confound their
language that
they may not understand
one another’s
speech . . . Genesis
HAVING done with modern physical Sciences we next turn to Western
philosophies and religions. Every one of these is equally based upon, and
derives its theories and doctrines from heathen, and moreover, exoteric
thought. This can easily be traced from Schopenhauer and Mr. Herbert Spencer,
down to Hypnotism and so-called Mental Science. The German philosophers
modernize Buddhism; the English are inspired by Vedantism; while the French,
borrowing from both, add to them Plato, in a Phrygian cap, and occasionally, as
with Auguste Comte, the weird sex-worship or Mariolatry of the old Roman
Catholic ecstatics and visionaries. New systems, yclept philosophical, new
sects and societies, spring up now-a-days in every corner of our civilized
lands. But even the highest among them agree on no one point, though each
claims supremacy. This, because no science, no philosophy being at best, but a
fragment broken from the WISDOM RELIGION can stand alone, or be complete in
itself. Truth, to be complete, must represent an unbroken continuity. It must
have no gaps, no missing links. And which of our modern religions, sciences or
philosophies, is free from such defects? Truth is One. Even as the palest
reflection of the Absolute, it can be no more dual than is absoluteness itself,
nor can it have two aspects. But such truth is not for the majorities, in our
world of illusion especially for those minds which are devoid of the noëtic
element. These have to substitute for the high spiritual and quasi absolute
truth the relative one, which having two sides or aspects, both conditioned by
appearances, lead our brain-minds one to intellectual scientific materialism,
the other to materialistic or anthropomorphic religiosity. But even that kind
of truth, in order to offer a coherent and complete system of something, has,
while naturally clashing with its opposite, to offer no gaps and
contradictions, no broken or missing links, in the special system or doctrine
it undertakes to represent.
And here a slight digression must come in. We are sure to be told by
some, that this is precisely the objection taken to theosophical expositions,
from Isis Unveiled down to the Secret Doctrine. Agreed. We are quite prepared
to confess that the latter work, especially, surpasses in these defects all the
other theosophical works. We are quite ready to admit the faults charged
against it by its critics that it is badly arranged, discursive, over-burdened
with digressions into by-ways of mythology, etc., etc. But then it is neither a
philosophical system nor the Doctrine, called secret or esoteric, but only a
record of a few of its facts and a witness to it. It has never claimed to be
the full exposition of the system (it advocates) in its totality; (a) because
as the writer does not boast of being a great Initiate, she could, therefore,
never have undertaken such a gigantic task; and (b) because had she been one,
she would have divulged still less. It has never been contemplated to make of
the sacred truths an integral system for the ribaldry and sneers of a profane
and iconoclastic public. The work does not pretend to set up a series of
explanations, complete in all their details, of the mysteries of Being; nor
does it seek to win for itself the name of a distinct system of thought like
the works of Messrs. Herbert Spencer, Schopenhauer or Comte. On the contrary,
the Secret Doctrine merely asserts that a system, known as the WISDOM RELIGION,
the work of generations of adepts and seers, the sacred heirloom of
pre-historic times actually exists, though hitherto preserved in the greatest
secrecy by the present Initiates; and it points to various corroborations of
its existence to this very day, to be found in ancient and modern works. Giving
a few fragments only, it there shows how these explain the religious dogmas of
the present day, and how they might serve Western religions, philosophies and
science, as sign-posts along the untrodden paths of discovery. The work is
essentially fragmentary, giving statements of sundry facts taught in the
esoteric schools kept, so far, secret by which the ancient symbolism of various
nations is interpreted. It does not even give the keys to it, but merely opens
a few of the hitherto secret drawers. No new philosophy is set up in the Secret
Doctrine, only the hidden meaning of some of the religious allegories of
antiquity is given, light being thrown on these by the esoteric sciences, and
the common source is pointed out, whence all the world-religions and
philosophies have sprung. Its chief attempt is to show, that however divergent
the respective doctrines and systems of old may seem on their external or
objective side, the agreement between all becomes perfect, so soon as the
esoteric or inner side of these beliefs and their symbology is examined and a
careful comparison made. It is also maintained that its doctrines and sciences,
which form an integral cycle of universal cosmic facts and metaphysical axioms
and truths, represent a complete and unbroken system; and that he who is brave
and persevering enough, ready to crush the animal in himself, and forgetting
the human self, sacrifices it to his Higher Ego, can always find his way to
become initiated into these mysteries. This is all the Secret Doctrine claims.
Are not a few facts and self-evident truths, found in these volumes all the
literary defects of the exposition notwithstanding,--truths already proved
practically to some, better than the most ingenious working hypotheses, liable
to be upset any day, than the unexplainable mysteries of religious dogmas, or
the most seemingly profound philosophical speculations? Can the grandest among ‘
these speculations be really profound, when from their Alpha to their Omega
they are limited and conditioned by their author’s
brain-mind, hence dwarfed and crippled on that Procrustean bed, cut down to fit
limited sensuous perceptions which will not allow the intellect to go beyond
their enchanted circle? No philosopher who views the spiritual realm as a mere
figment of superstition, and regards man’s
mental perceptions as simply the result of the organization of the brain, can
ever be worthy of that name.
Nor has a materialist any right to the appellation, since it means a
lover of Wisdom, and Pythagoras, who was the first to coin the compound term,
never limited Wisdom to this earth. One who affirms that the Universe and Man
are objects of the senses only, and who fatally chains thought within the
region of senseless matter, as do the Darwinian evolutionists, is at best a
sophiaphobe when not a philosophaster never a philosopher.
Therefore is it that in this age of Materialism, Agnosticism,
Evolutionism, and false Idealism, there is not a system, however intellectually
expounded, that can stand on its own legs, or fail to be criticized by an
exponent from another school of thought as materialistic as itself; even Mr.
Herbert Spencer, the greatest of all, is unable to answer some criticisms. Many
are those who remember the fierce polemics that raged a few years ago in the
English and American journals between the Evolutionists on the one hand and the
Positivists on the other. The subject of the dispute was with regard to the
attitude and relation that the theory of evolution would bear to religion. Mr.
F. Harrison, the Apostle of Positivism, charged Mr. Herbert Spencer with
restricting religion to the realm of reason, forgetting that feeling and not
the cognizing faculty, played the most important part in it. The erroneousness
and insufficiency of the ideas on the Unknowable as developed in Mr. Spencer’s
works were also taken to task by Mr. Harrison. The idea was erroneous, he held,
be cause it was based on the acceptation of the metaphysical absolute. It was
insufficient, he argued, because it brought deity down to an empty abstraction,
void of any meaning.3 To this the great English writer replied, that he had
never thought of offering his Unknowable and Incognizable, as a subject for
religious worship. Then stepped into the arena, the respective admirers and
defenders of Messrs. Spencer and Harrison, some defending the material
metaphysics of the former thinker (if we may be permitted to use this
paradoxical yet correct definition of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s
philosophy), others, the arguments of the Godless and Christless Roman
Catholicism of Auguste Comte,4 both sides giving and receiving very hard blows.
Thus, Count d’Alviella of Brussels,5 suddenly
discovered in Mr. H. Spencer a kind of hidden, yet reverential Theist, and
compared Mr. Harrison to a casuist of mediæval Scholasticism.
It is not to discuss the relative merits of materialistic Evolutionism,
or of Positivism either, that the two English thinkers are brought forward; but
simply to point, as an illustration, to the Babel-like confusion of modern
thought. While the Evolutionists (of Herbert Spencer’s
school) maintain that the historical evolution of the religious feeling
consists in the constant abstraction of the attributes of Deity, and their
final separation from the primitive concrete conceptions this process rejoicing
in the easy-going triple compound of deanthropomorphization, or the
disappearance of human attributes the Comtists on their side hold to another
version. They affirm that fetishism, or the direct worship of nature, was the
primitive religion of man, a too protracted-evolution alone having landed it in
anthropomorphism. Their Deity is Humanity and the God they worship, Mankind, as
far as we understand them. The only way, therefore, of settling the dispute, is
to ascertain which of the two philosophical and scientific theories, is the
less pernicious and the more probable. Is it true to say, as d’Alviella
assures us, that Mr. Spencer’s Unknowable contains all the
elements necessary to religion; and, as that remarkable writer is alleged to
imply, that religious feeling tends to free itself from every moral element;
or, shall we accept the other extremity and agree with the Comtists, that
gradually, religion will blend itself with, merge into, and disappear in
altruism and its service to Humanity?
Useless to say that Theosophy, while rejecting the one-sided-ness and
therefore the limitation in both ideas, is alone able to reconcile the two,
i.e., the Evolutionists and the Positivists on both metaphysical and practical
lines. How to do this it is no there the place to say, as every Theosophist
acquainted with the main tenets of the Esoteric Philosophy can do it for
himself. We believe in an impersonal Unknowable and know well that the
ABSOLUTE, or Absoluteness, can have nought to do with worship on
anthropomorphic lines; Theosophy rejects the Spencerian He and substitutes the impersonal
IT for the personal pronoun, whenever speaking of the Absolute and the
Unknowable. And it teaches, as foremost of all virtues, altruism and
self-sacrifice, brotherhood and compassion for every living creature, without,
for all that, worshipping Man or Humanity. In the Positivist, more-over, who
admits of no immortal soul in men, believes in no future life or reincarnation,
such a worship becomes worse than fetishism: it is Zoolatry, the worship of the
animals. For that alone which constitutes the real Man is, in the words of
Carlyle, the essence of our being, the mystery in us that calls itself ‘I’--
. . . a breath of Heaven; the Highest Being reveals himself in man. This
denied, man is but an animal the shame and scandal of the Universe, as Pascal puts
it.
It is the old, old story, the struggle of matter and spirit, the
survival of the unfittest, because of the strongest and most material. But the
period when nascent Humanity, following the law of the natural and dual
evolution, was descending along with spirit into matter is closed. We
(Humanity) are now helping matter to ascend toward spirit; and to do that we
have to help substance to disenthral itself from the viscous grip of sense. We,
of the fifth Root Race, are the direct descendants of the primeval Humanity of
that Race; those, who on this side of the Flood tried, by commemorating it, to
save the antediluvian Truth and Wisdom, and were worsted in our efforts by the
dark genius of the Earth the spirit of matter, whom the Gnostics called Ildabaoth
and the Jews Jehovah. Think ye, that even the Bible of Moses, the book you know
so well and understand so badly, has left this claim of the Ancient Doctrine
without witness? It has not. Allow us to close with a (to you) familiar
passage, only interpreted in its true light.
In the beginning of time, or rather, in the childhood of the fifth Race,
the whole earth was of one lip and of one speech, saith chapter XI of Genesis.
Read esoterically, this means that mankind had one universal doctrine, a
philosophy, common to all; and that men were bound by one religion, whether
this term be derived from the Latin word relegere, to gather, or be united in
speech or in thought, from religens, revering the gods, or, from religare, to
be bound fast together. Take it one way or the other, it means most undeniably
and plainly that our forefathers from beyond the flood accepted in common one
truth i.e., they believed in that aggregate of subjective and objective facts
which form the consistent, logical and harmonious whole called by us the Wisdom
Religion.
Now, reading the first nine verses of chapter XI between the lines, we
get the following information. Wise in their generation, our early fathers were
evidently acquainted with the imperishable truism which teaches that in union
alone lies strength in union of thought as well as in that of nations, of
course. Therefore, lest in disunion they should be scattered upon the face of
the earth, and their Wisdom-religion should, in consequence, be broken up into
a thousand fragments; and lest they, themselves, instead of towering as
hitherto, through knowledge, heavenward, should, through blind faith begin
gravitating earthward the wise men, who journeyed from the East, devised a
plan. In those days temples were sites of learning, not of superstition;
priests taught divine Wisdom, not man-invented dogmas, and the ultima thule of
their religious activity did not centre in the contribution box, as at present.
Thus ’Go to,’ they
said, ‘let us build a city and a tower,
whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make a name.’ And
they made burnt brick and used it for stone, and built therewith a city and a
tower.
So far, this is a very old story, known as well to a Sunday school
ragamuffin as to Mr. Gladstone. Both believe very sincerely that these
descendants of the accursed Ham were proud sinners whose object was like that
of the Titans, to insult and dethrone Zeus-Jehovah, by reaching heaven, the
supposed abode of both. But since we find the story told in the revealed6
Scripts, it must, like all the rest in them, have its esoteric interpretation.
In this, Occult symbolism will help us. All the expressions that we have
italicized, when read in the original Hebrew and according to the canons of
esoteric symbolism, will yield quite a different construction. Thus:
1. And the whole earth (mankind),
was of one lip (i.e., proclaimed the same teachings) and of the same words not
of speech as in the authorized version.
Now the Kabalistic meaning of the term words and word may be found in
the Zohar and also in the Talmud. Words (Dabarim) mean powers, and word, in the
singular, is a synonym of Wisdom; e.g., By the uttering of ten words was the
world created--(Talmud Pirkey Aboth c. 5., Mish. I). Herethe words refer to the
ten Sephiroth, Builders of the Universe. Again: By the Word, (Wisdom, Logos) of
YHVH were the Heavens made (ibid.).
2-4. And the man7 (the chief leader) said to his neighbour, ‘Go
to, let us make bricks (disciples) and burn them to a burning (initiate, fill
them with sacred fire), let us build us a city (establish mysteries and teach
the Doctrine8) and a tower (Ziggurrat, a sacred temple tower) whose top may
reach unto heaven’
(the highest limit reachable in space). The great tower of Nebo, of Nabi
on the temple of Bel, was called the house of the seven spheres of heaven and
earth, and the house of the stronghold (or strength, tagimut) and the
foundation stone of heaven and earth.
Occult symbology teaches, that to burn bricks for a city means to train
disciples for magic, a hewn stone signifying a full Initiate, Petra the Greek
and Kephas the Aramaic word for stone, having the same meaning, viz.,
interpreter of the Mysteries, a Hierophant. The supreme initiation was referred
to as the burning with great burning. Thus, the bricks are fallen, but we will
build (anew) with hewn stones of Isaiah becomes clear. For the true
interpretation of the four last verses of the genetic allegory about the
supposed confusion of tongues we may turn to the legendary version of the Yezidis
and read verses 5, 6, 7, and 8 in Genesis, ch. xi, esoterically:
And Adonai (the Lord) came down and said: ‘Behold,
the people is one (the people are united in thought and deed) and they have one
lip (doctrine).’ And now they begin to spread it and ‘nothing
will be restrained from them (they will have full magic powers and get all they
want by such power, Kriyasakti,) that they have imagined’.
And now what are the Yezidis and their version and what is Ad-onai? Ad
is the Lord, their ancestral god; and the Yezidis are a heretical Mussulman
sect, scattered over Armenia, Syria, and especially Mosul, the very site of
Babel (see Chaldean Account of Genesis), who are known under the strange name
of Devil-worshippers. Their confession of faith is very original. They
recognize two powers or gods Allah and Ad, (or Adonai) but identify the latter
with Sheitân or Satan. This is but natural since Satan is also a son of god9
(see Job I). As stated in the Hibbert Lectures (pp. 346 and 347), Satan the
Adversary, was the minister and angel of God. Hence, when questioned on the
cause of their curious worship of one who has become the embodiment of Evil and
the dark spirit of the Earth, they explain the reason in a most logical, if
irreverent, manner. They tell you that Allah, being All-good, would not harm
the smallest of his creatures. Ergo, has he no need of prayers, or
burnt-offerings of the firstlings of the flock and the fat thereof. But that
their Ad, or the Devil, being All-bad, cruel, jealous, revengeful and proud,
they have, in self-preservation, to propitiate him with sacrifices and burnt
offerings smelling sweet in his nostrils, and to coax and flatter him. Ask any
Sheik of the Yezidis of Mosul what they have to say, as to the confusion of
tongues, or speech when Allah came down to see the city and the tower which the
children of men had builded; and they will tell you it is not Allah but Ad, the
god Sheitan, who did it. The jealous genius of the earth became envious of the
powers and sanctity of men (as the god Vishnu becomes jealous of the great
powers of the Yogis, even when they were Daityas); and therefore this deity of
matter and concupiscence confused their brains, tempted and made the Builders
fall into his nets; and thus, having lost their purity, they lost therewith
their knowledge and magic powers, intermarried and became scattered upon the
face of the earth.
This is more logical than to attribute to one’s God,
the All-good, such ungodly tricks as are fathered upon him in the Bible.
Moreover, the legend about the tower of Babel and the confusion of speech, is
like much else, not original, but comes from the Chaldeans and Babylonians.
George Smith found the version on a mutilated fragment of the Assyrian tablets,
though there is nothing said in it about the confusion of speech. I have
translated the word ‘speech’ with a
prejudice, he says (Chaldean account of Genesis, p. 163), I have never seen the
Assyrian word with this meaning. Anyone who reads for himself the fragmentary
translation by G. Smith, on pages 160-163 in the volume cited, will find the
version much nearer to that of the Yezidis than to the version of Genesis. It
is he, whose heart was evil and who was wicked, who confused their counsel, not
their speech, and who broke the Sanctuary . . . which carried Wisdom, and
bitterly they wept at Babel.
And so ought to weep all the philosophers and lovers of Ancient Wisdom;
for it is since then that the thousand and one exoteric substitutes for the one
true Doctrine or lip had their beginning, obscuring more and more the
intellects of men, and shedding innocent blood in fierce fanaticism. Had our
modern philosophers studied, instead of sneering at, the old Books of Wisdom
say the Kabala they would have found that which would have unveiled to them
many a secret of ancient Church and State. As they have not, however, the
result is evident. The dark cycle of Kali Yug has brought back a Babel of
modern thought, compared with which the confusion of tongues itself appears a
harmony. All is dark and uncertain; no argument in any department, neither in
sciences, philosophy, law, nor even in religion. But, woe unto them that call
evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness,
saith Isaiah. The very elements seem confused and climates shift, as if the
celestial upper ten themselves had lost their heads. All one can do is to sit
still and look on, sad and resigned, while
The slack sail shifts from side to side;
The boat untrimm’d admits the tide;
Borne down adrift, at random toss’d,
The oar breaks short, . . . the rudder’s lost
Lucifer, January, February, 1891
1 The learned Belgian Mason would be nearer the mark by adding a few
more ciphers to his four thousand years.
2 In the Revue Philosophique of 1883, where he translates such gropings
by atonements successifs.
3 As the above is repeated from memory. it does not claim to be quoted
with verbal exactitude, but only to give the gist of the argument.
4 The epithet is Mr. Huxley’s. In
his lecture in Edinburgh in 1868, On the Physical Basis of Life, this great
opponent remarked that Auguste Comte’s
philosophy in practice might be compendiously described as Catholicism minus
Christianity, and antagonistic to the very essence of Science.
5 Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Brussels, in
a philosophical Essay on the religious meaning of the Unknowable.
6 A curious and rather unfortunate word to use, since, as a translation
from the Latin revelare, it signifies diametrically the opposite of the now
accepted meaning in English. For the word to reveal or revealed is derived from
the Latin revelare, to reveil and rot to reveal, i.e., from re again or back
and velare to veil, or to hide something, from the word velum or a vail (or veil),
a cover. Thus, instead of unvailing, or revealing, Moses has truly only
reveiled once more the Egypto-Chaldean theological legends and allegories, into
which, as one learned in all the Wisdom of Egypt he had been initiated. Yet
Moses was not the first revealer or reveiler, as Ragon well observes. Thousands
of years before him Hermes was credited with veiling over the Indian mysteries
to adapt them for the land of the Pharaohs. Of course, at present there is no
longer classical authority to satisfy the orthodox philologist, but the occult
authority which maintains that originally the word revelare meant to veil once
more, and hence that revelation means the throwing a veil over a subject, a
blind is positively overwhelming
7 This is translated from the Hebrew original. Chief-leader (Rab-Mag)
meaning literally Teacher-Magician, Master or Guru, as Daniel is shown to have
been in Babylon.
8 Some Homeric heroes also when they are said, like Laomedon, Priam’s
father, to have built cities, were in reality establishing the Mysteries and
introducing the Wisdom-Religion in foreign lands.
9 It is commanded in Ecclesiasticus XXI, 30, not to curse Satan, lest
one should forfeit his own life. Why? Because in their permutations the Lord
God, Moses, and Satan are one. The name the Jews gave while in Babylon to their
exoteric God, the substitute for the true Deity of which they never spoke or
wrote, was the Assyrian Mosheh or Adar, the god of the scorching sun (the Lord
thy God is a consuming flame verily!) and therefore, Mosheh or Moses, shone
also. In Egypt, Typhon (Satan) the red, was identified both with the red Ass or
Typhon called Set or Seth (and worshipped by the Hittites) and the same as El
(the Sun god of the Assyrians and the Semites, or Jehovah), and with Moses, the
red, also. (See Isis Unv. Vol. II. 523-24.) For Moses was red-skinned.
According to the Zohar (Vol. I. p. 28) B’ sar d’
Mosheh soomaq. i.e., the flesh of Moses was deep red, and the words refer to
the saying, The face of Moses was like the face of the Sun (see Qabbalah by
Isaac Myer p. 93). These three were the three aspects of the manifested God
(the substitute for Ain Suph the infinite Deity) or Nature, in its three chief
Kingdoms the Fiery or Solar, the Human or Watery, the Animal or Earthy. There
never was a Mosheh or Moses, before the Captivity and Ezra, the deep Kabalist;
and what is now Moses had another name 2,000 years before. Where are the Hebrew
scrolls before that time? Moreover, we find a corroboration of this in Dr.
Sayce’s Hibbert Lectures (1887). Adar is
the Assyrian War God or the Lord of Hosts and the same as Moloch. The Assyrian
equivalent of Mosheh (Moses) is Masu, the double or the twin, and Masu is the
title of Adar meaning also a hero. No one who reads carefully the said Lectures
from page 40 to 58, can fail to see that Jehovah, Mâsu and Adar, with several
others are permutations.
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Preface
Theosophy and the Masters General Principles
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Arthur draws the Sword from the Stone
The Knights of The Round Table
The Roman Amphitheatre at Caerleon,
Eamont Bridge, Nr Penrith, Cumbria, England.
(History of the Kings of Britain)
The reliabilty of this work has long been a subject of
debate but it is the first definitive account of Arthur’s
Reign
and one which puts Arthur in a historcal context.
and his version’s political agenda
According to Geoffrey of Monmouth
The first written mention of Arthur as a heroic figure
The British leader who fought twelve battles
King Arthur’s ninth victory at
The Battle of the City of the Legion
King Arthur ambushes an advancing Saxon
army then defeats them at Liddington Castle,
Badbury, Near Swindon, Wiltshire, England.
King Arthur’s twelfth and last victory against the Saxons
Traditionally Arthur’s last battle in which he was
mortally wounded although his side went on to win
No contemporary writings or accounts of his life
but he is placed 50 to 100 years after the accepted
King Arthur period. He refers to Arthur in his inspiring
poems but the earliest written record of these dates
from over three hundred years after Taliesin’s death.
Mallerstang Valley, Nr Kirkby Stephen,
A 12th Century Norman ruin on the site of what is
reputed to have been a stronghold of Uther Pendragon
From
wise child with no earthly father to
Megastar
of Arthurian Legend
History of the Kings of Britain
Drawn from the Stone or received from the Lady of the Lake.
Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur has both versions
with both swords called Excalibur. Other versions
5th & 6th Century Timeline of Britain
From the departure of the Romans from
Britain to the establishment of sizeable
Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms
Glossary of
Arthur’s uncle:- The puppet ruler of the Britons
controlled and eventually killed by Vortigern
Amesbury, Wiltshire, England. Circa 450CE
An alleged massacre of Celtic Nobility by the Saxons
History of the Kings of Britain
Athrwys / Arthrwys
King of Ergyng
Circa 618 - 655 CE
Latin: Artorius; English: Arthur
A warrior King born in Gwent and associated with
Caerleon, a possible Camelot. Although over 100 years
later that the accepted Arthur period, the exploits of
Athrwys may have contributed to the King Arthur Legend.
He became King of Ergyng, a kingdom between
Gwent and Brycheiniog (Brecon)
Angles under Ida seized the Celtic Kingdom of
Bernaccia in North East England in 547 CE forcing
Although much later than the accepted King Arthur
period, the events of Morgan Bulc’s 50 year campaign
to regain his kingdom may have contributed to
Old Welsh: Guorthigirn;
Anglo-Saxon: Wyrtgeorn;
Breton: Gurthiern; Modern Welsh; Gwrtheyrn;
*********************************
An earlier ruler than King Arthur and not a heroic figure.
He is credited with policies that weakened Celtic Britain
to a point from which it never recovered.
Although there are no contemporary accounts of
his rule, there is more written evidence for his
existence than of King Arthur.
How Sir Lancelot slew two giants,
From Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur
How Sir Lancelot rode disguised
in Sir Kay's harness, and how he
From Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur
How Sir Lancelot jousted against
four knights of the Round Table,
From Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur
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