Writings of H P Blavatsky
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Helena Petrovna
Blavatsky (1831 – 1891)
The Founder of
Modern Theosophy
Elementals
By
H P Blavatsky
THE Universal Æther was not, in the eyes of
the ancients, simply a tenantless something, stretching throughout the expanse
of heaven; it was for them a boundless ocean, peopled like our familiar earthly
seas, with Gods, Planetary Spirits, monstrous and minor creatures, and having
in its every molecule the germs of life from the potential up to the most
developed. Like the finny tribes
which swarm in our oceans and familiar
bodies of water, each kind having its habitat in some spot to which it is
curiously adapted, some friendly, and some inimical to man, some pleasant and
some frightful to behold, some seeking the refuge of quiet nooks and
land-locked harbours, and some traversing great areas of water; so the various
races of the Planetary, Elemental, and other Spirits, were believed by them to
inhabit the different portions of the great ethereal ocean, and to be exactly
adapted to their respective conditions.
According to the ancient doctrines, every
member of this varied ethereal
population, from the highest
"Gods" down to the soulless Elementals, was evolved by the ceaseless
motion inherent in the astral light. Light is force, and the latter is produced
by the will. As this will proceeds from an intelligence which cannot err, for
it is absolute and immutable and has nothing of the material organs of human
thought in it, being the superfine pure emanation of the ONE LIFE itself, it
proceeds from the beginning of time, according to immutable laws, to evolve the
elementary fabric requisite for subsequent generations of what we term human
races. All of the latter, whether belonging to this planet or to some other of
the myriads in space, have their earthly bodies evolved in this
matrix out of the bodies of a certain class
of these elemental beings--the primordial germ of Gods and men--which have
passed away into the visible worlds.
In the Ancient Philosophy there was no
missing link to be supplied by what Tyndall calls an "educated
imagination"; no hiatus to be filled with volumes of materialistic
speculations made necessary by the absurd attempt to solve an equation with but
one set of quantities; our "ignorant" ancestors traced the law of
evolution throughout the whole universe. As by gradual progression from the
star-cloudlet to the development of the physical body of man, the rule holds
good, so from the Universal Æther to the incarnate human spirit, they traced
one
uninterrupted series of entities. These
evolutions were from the world of Spirit into the world of gross Matter: and
through that back again to the source of all things. The "descent of
species" was to them a descent from the Spirit, primal source of all, to
the "degradation of Matter." In this complete chain of unfoldings the
elementary, spiritual beings had as distinct a place, midway between the
extremes, as Mr. Darwin's missing-link between the ape and man.
No author in the world of literature ever
gave a more truthful or more poetical description of these beings than Sir E.
Bulwer-Lytton, the author of Zanoni. Now, himself "a thing not of
matter" but an "idea of joy and light," his words sound more
like the faithful echo of memory than the exuberant outflow of mere
imagination. He makes the wise Mejnour say to Glyndon:
Man is arrogant in proportion of his
ignorance. For several ages he saw in the countless worlds that sparkle through
space like the bubbles of a shoreless ocean, only the petty candles . . . that
Providence has been pleased to light for no other purpose but to make the night
more agreeable to man. . . .
Astronomy has corrected this delusion of
human vanity, and man now reluctantly confesses that the stars are worlds, larger
and more glorious than his own. . . . Everywhere, in this immense design,
science brings new life to light. . . . Reasoning, then, by evident analogy, if
not a leaf, if not a drop of water, but is, no less than yonder star, a
habitable and breathing world--nay, if even man himself is a world to other
lives, and millions and myriads dwell in the rivers of his blood, and inhabit
man's frame, as man inhabits earth--common sense (if our schoolmen had it)
would suffice to teach that the circumfluent infinite which you call space--the
boundless impalpable which divides earth from the moon and stars--is filled
also with its correspondent and appropriate life. Is it not a visible absurdity
to suppose that being is crowded upon every leaf, and yet absent from the immensities
of space! The law
of the great system forbids the waste even
of an atom; it knows no spot where something of life does not breathe. . . .
Well, then, can you conceive that space, which is the infinite itself, is alone
a waste, is alone lifeless, is less useful to the one design of universal being
. . . than the peopled leaf, than the swarming globule? The microscope shows
you the creatures on the leaf; no mechanical tube is yet invented to discover
the nobler and more gifted things that hover in the illimitable air. Yet
between these last and man is a mysterious and terrible affinity. . . . But
first, to penetrate this barrier, the soul with which you listen must be
sharpened by intense enthusiasm, purified from all earthly desires. . . . When
thus prepared, science can be brought to aid it; the sight itself may be
rendered more subtile, the nerves more acute, the spirit more alive and
outward, and the element itself--the
air, the space--may be made, by certain
secrets of the higher chemistry, more palpable and clear. And this, too, is not
Magic as the credulous call it; as I have so often said before, Magic (a
science that violates Nature) exists not; it is but the science by which Nature
can be controlled. Now, in space there are millions of beings, not literally
spiritual, for they have all, like the animalculæ unseen by the naked eye,
certain forms of matter, though matter so delicate, air-drawn, and subtile,
that it is, as it were, but a film, a gossamer, that clothes the spirit. . . .
Yet, in truth, these races differ most widely . . . some of surpassing wisdom,
some of horrible malignity; some hostile as fiends to men, others gentle as
messengers between earth and heaven.
Such is the insufficient sketch of
Elemental Beings void of Divine
Spirit, given by one whom many with reason
believed to know more than he was prepared to admit in the face of an
incredulous public. We have underlined the few lines than which nothing can be
more graphically descriptive. An Initiate, having a personal knowledge of these
creatures, could do no better.
We may pass now to the "Gods," or
Daimons, of the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, and from these to the Devas and
Pitris of the still more ancient Hindû Âryans. Who or what were the Gods, or
Daimonia, of the Greeks and Romans? The name has since then been monopolized
and disfigured to their own use by the Christian Fathers. Ever following in the
footsteps of old Pagan Philosophers on the well-trodden highway of their
speculations, while, as ever, trying to pass these off as new tracks on virgin
soil, and themselves as the first pioneers in a hitherto pathless forest of
eternal truths--they repeated the Zoroastrian ruse: to make a clean sweep of
all the Hindû Gods and Deities, Zoroaster had called
them all Devs, and adopted the name as
designating only evil powers. So did the Christian Fathers. They applied the
sacred name of Daimonia-the divine Egos of man--to their devils, a fiction of
diseased brains, and thus dishonoured the anthropomorphized symbols of the natural
sciences of wise antiquity, and made them all loathesome in the sight of the
ignorant and the unlearned.
What the Gods and Daimonia, or Daimons,
really were, we may learn from Socrates, Plato, Plutarch, and many other
renowned Sages and Philosophers of pre-Christian, as well as post-Christian
days. We will give some of their views.
Xenocrates, who expounded many of the
unwritten theories and teachings of his master, and who surpassed Plato in his
definition of the doctrine of invisible magnitudes, taught that the Daimons are
intermediate beings between the divine perfection and human sinfulness,2 and he
divides them into classes, each subdivided into many others. But he states expressly
that the individual or personal Soul is the leading guardian Daimon of every
man, and that no Daimon has more power over us than our own. Thus the Daimonion
of Socrates is the God or Divine Entity which inspired him all his life. It
depends on man either to open or close his perceptions to the Divine voice.
Heracleides, who adopted fully the
Pythagorean and Platonic views of the human Soul, its nature and faculties,
speaking of Spirits, calls them "Daimons with airy and vaporous
bodies," and affirms that Souls inhabit the Milky Way before descending
"into generation" or sublunary existence. Again, when the author of
Epinomis locates between the highest and lowest Gods (embodied Souls) three
classes of Daimons, and peoples the universe with invisible beings, he is more
rational than either our modern Scientists, who make between the two extremes
one vast hiatus of being, the playground of blind forces, or the Christian
Theologians, who call every pagan God, a dæmon, or devil. Of these three classes
the first two are invisible; their bodies are pure
ether and fire (Planetary Spirits); the
Daimons of the third class are clothed with vapoury bodies; they are usually
invisible, but sometimes, making themselves concrete, become visible for a few
seconds. These are the earthly spirits, or our astral souls.
The fact is, that the word Daimon was given
by the ancients, and especially by the Philosophers of the Alexandrian school,
to all kinds of spirits, whether good or bad, human or otherwise, but the appellation
was often synonymous with that of Gods or angels. For instance, the
"Samothraces" was a designation of the Fane-gods; worshipped at
Samothracia in the Mysteries. They are considered as identical with the
Cabeiri, Dioscuri, and Corybantes. Their names were mystical--denoting Pluto,
Ceres or Proserpina, Bacchus, and Æsculapius or Hermes, and they were all
referred to as Daimons. Apuleius, speaking in the same symbolical and veiled
language, of the two Souls, the human and the divine, says:
The human soul is a demon that our language
may name genius. She is an
immortal god, though in a certain sense she
is born at the same time as the man in whom she is. Consequently, we may say
that she dies in the same way that she is born.Eminent men were also called
Gods by the ancients. Deified during life, even their "shells" were
reverenced during a part of the Mysteries.
Belief in Gods, in Larvæ and Umbræ, was a
universal belief then, as it is fast becoming--now. Even the greatest
Philosophers, men who have passed to posterity as the hardest Materialists and
Atheists--only because they rejected the grotesque idea of a personal
extra-cosmic God--such as Epicurus, for instance, believed in Gods and
invisible beings. Going far back into antiquity, out of the great body of
Philosophers of the pre-Christian ages, we may mention Cicero, as
one who can least be accused of
superstition and credulity. Speaking of those whom he calls Gods and who are
either human or atmospheric spirits, he says:
We know that of all livings beings man is
the best formed, and, as the gods belong to this number, they must have a human
form. . . . I do not mean to say that the gods have body and blood in them; but
I say that they seem as if they had bodies with blood in them. . . . Epicurus,
for whom hidden things were as tangible as if he had touched them with his
finger, teaches us that gods are not generally visible, but that they are
intelligible; that they are not bodies having a certain solidity . . . but that
we can recognize them by their passing images; that as there are atoms enough
in the infinite space to produce such images, these are produced before us . .
. and make us realize what are these happy, immortal beings.3If, turning from
Greece and Egypt to the cradle of universal civilization, India, we interrogate
the Brâhmans and their
most admirable Philosophies, we find them
calling their Gods and their Daimonia by such a number and variety of
appellations, that the thirty-three millions of these Deities would require a
whole library to contain only their names and attributes. We will choose for
the present time only two names out of the Pantheon. These groups are the most
important as well as the least understood by the Orientalists--their true
nature having been all along wrapped in obscurity by the unwillingness of the
Brâhmans to divulge their philosophical secrets. We will speak of but the Devas
and the Pitris.
The former aerial beings are some of them
superior, others inferior, to man. The term means literally the Shining Ones,
the resplendent; and it covers spiritual
beings of various degrees, including
entities from previous planetary periods, who take active part in the formation
of new solar systems and the training of infant humanities, as well as
unprogressed Planetary Spirits, who will, at spiritualistic séances, simulate
human deities and even characters on the stage of human history.
As to the Deva Yonis, they are Elementals
of a lower kind in comparison with the Kosmic "Gods," and are
subjected to the will of even the sorcerer. To this class belong the gnomes,
sylphs, fairies, djins, etc. They are the Soul of the elements, the capricious
forces in Nature, acting under one immutable Law, inherent in these Centres of
Force, with undeveloped consciousness and bodies of plastic mould, which can be
shaped according to the conscious or unconscious will of the human being who
puts himself en rapport with them. It is by attracting some of the beings of
this class that our modern spiritualistic mediums invest the fading shells of
deceased human beings with a kind of individual force.
These beings have never been, but will, in
myriads of ages
hence, be evolved into men. They belong to
the three lower kingdoms, and pertain to the Mysteries on account of their
dangerous nature.
We have found a very erroneous opinion
gaining ground not only among
Spiritualists--who see the spirits of their
disembodied fellow creatures
everywhere--but even among several
Orientalists who ought to know better. It is generally believed by them that
the Sanskrit term Pitris means the spirits of our direct ancestors; of
disembodied people. Hence the argument of some Spiritualists that fakirs, and
other Eastern wonder-workers, are mediums; that they themselves confess to
being unable to produce anything without the help of the Pitris, of whom they
are the obedient instruments. This is in more than one sense erroneous, the
error being first started, we believe, by M. L. Jacolliot,
in his Spiritisme dans le Monde, and
Govinda Swami; or, as he spells it, "the fakir Kovindasami's"
phenomena. The Pitris are not the ancestors of the present living men, but
those of the human kind or primitive race; the spirits of human races which, on
the great scale of descending evolution, preceded our races of men, and were
physically, as well as spiritually, far superior to our modern pigmies. In
Mânava-Dharma-Shâstra they are called the Lunar Ancestors. The Hindû--least of
all the proud Brâhman--has no such great longing to return to this land of
exile after he has shaken off his mortal coil, as has the average
Spiritualist; nor has death for him any of
the great terrors it has for the Christian. Thus, the most highly developed
minds in India will always take care to declare, while in the act of leaving
their tenements of clay, "Nachapunarâvarti," "I shall not come
back," and by this very declaration is placed beyond the reach of any
living man or medium. But, it may be asked, what then is meant by the Pitris? They
are Devas, lunar and solar, closely connected with human evolution, for the
Lunar Pitris are they who gave their Chhâyâs as the models of the First Race in
the Fourth Round, while the Solar Pitris endowed mankind with intellect. Not
only so, but these Lunar Devas passed through all
the kingdoms of the terrestrial Chain in
the First Round, and during the Second and Third Rounds "lead and
represent the human element."4
A brief examination of the part they play
will prevent all future confusion in the student's mind between the Pitris and
the Elementals. In the Rig Veda, Vishnu (or the pervading Fire, Æther) is shown
first striding through the seven regions of the World in three steps, being a
manifestation of the Central Sun. Later on, he becomes a manifestation of our
solar energy, and is connected with the septenary form and with the Gods, Agni,
Indra and other solar deities.
Therefore, while the "Sons of
Fire," the primeval Seven of our System, emanate from the primordial
Flame, the "Seven Builders" of our Planetary Chain are the
"Mind-born Sons" of the latter, and--their instructors likewise. For,
though in one sense they are all Gods and are all called Pitris (Pitara,
Patres, Fathers), a great though very subtle distinction (quite Occult) is made
which must be noticed. In the Rig Veda they are divided into two classes--the
Pitris Agni-dagdha ("Fire-givers"), and the pitris Anagni-dagdha
("non-Fire-givers") i.e., as explained exoterically--Pitris who
sacrificed to the Gods and those who
refused to do so at the
"fire-sacrifice." But the Esoteric and true meaning is the following.
The first or primordial Pitris, the "Seven Sons of Fire" or of the
Flame, are distinguished or divided into seven classes (like the Seven
Sephiroth, and others, see Vâyu Purâna and Harivamsha, also Rig Veda); three of
which classes are Arûpa, formless, "composed of intellectual not
elementary substance," and four are corporeal. The first are pure Agni
(fire) or Sapta-jiva ("seven lives," now become Sapta-jihva,
seven-tongued, as Agni is represented with seven tongues and seven winds as the
wheels of his car). As a formless, purely spiritual essence, in the first
degree of evolution, they could not create that, the prototypical form of which
was not in their minds, as this is
the first requisite. They could only give
birth to "mind-born" beings, their "Sons," the second class
of Pitris (or Prajâpati, or Rishis, etc.), one degree more material; these, to
the third--the last of the Arûpa class. It is only this last class that was
enabled with the help of the Fourth principle of the Universal Soul (Aditi,
Âkâsha) to produce beings that became objective and having a form.6 But when
these came to existence, they were found to possess such a small proportion of
the divine immortal Soul or Fire in them, that they were considered failures.
"The third appealed to the second, the second to the first, and the Three
had to become Four (the perfect square or cube representing
the 'Circle Squared' or immersion of pure
Spirit), before the first could be instructed" (Sansk. Comment.). Then
only, could perfect Beings--intellectually and physically--be shaped. This,
though more philosophical, is still an allegory. But its meaning is plain,
however absurd may seem the explanation from a scientific standpoint. The
Doctrine teaches the Presence of a Universal Life (or motion) within which all
is, and nothing outside of it can be. This is pure Spirit. Its manifested
aspect is cosmic primordial Matter coeval with, since it is, itself.
Semi-spiritual in comparison to the first, this vehicle of the Spirit-Life is
what Science calls Ether, which fills the boundless space, and it is in this
substance, the world-stuff, that germinates all the atoms and molecules of what
is called matter. However homogeneous in its eternal origin, this Universal
Element, once that its radiations were thrown into the space of
the (to be) manifested Universe, the
centripetal and centrifugal forces of perpetual motion, of attraction and
repulsion, would soon polarize its scattered particles, endowing them with
peculiar properties now regarded by Science as various elements distinct from
each other. As a homogeneous whole, the world-stuff in its primordial state is
perfect; disintegrated, it loses its property of conditionless creative power;
it has to associate with its contraries. Thus, the first worlds and Cosmic
Beings, save the "Self-Existent"--a mystery no one could attempt to
touch upon seriously, as it is a mystery perceived by the divine eye of the
highest Initiates, but one that no human language could explain to the children
of our age--the first worlds and
Beings were failures; inasmuch as the
former lacked that inherent creative force in them necessary for their further
and independent evolution, and that the first orders of Beings lacked the
immortal soul. Part and parcel of Anima Mundi in its Prâkritic aspect, the
Purusha element in them was too weak to allow of any consciousness in the
intervals (entr' actes) between their existences during the evolutionary period
and the cycle of Life. The three orders of Beings, the Pitri-Rishis, the Sons
of Flame, had to merge and blend together their three
higher principles with the Fourth (the
Circle), and the Fifth (the microcosmic) principle before the necessary union
could be obtained and result therefrom achieved. "There were old worlds,
which perished as soon as they came into existence; were formless, as they were
called sparks. These sparks are the primordial worlds which could not continue
because the Sacred Aged had not as yet assumed the form" (of perfect
contraries not only in opposite sexes but of cosmical polarity). "Why were
these primordial worlds destroyed? Because," answers the Zohar, "the
man represented by the ten Sephiroth was not as yet. The human form contains
everything {spirit, soul and body}, and as it did not as yet
exist the worlds were destroyed."
Far removed from the Pitris, then, it will
readily be seen are all the various feats of Indian fakirs, jugglers and
others, phenomena a hundred times more various and astounding than are ever
seen in civilized Europe and America. The Pitris have naught to do with such
public exhibitions, nor are the "spirits of the departed" concerned
in them. We have but to consult the lists of the principal Daimons or Elemental
Spirits to find that their very names indicate their professions, or, to
express it clearly, the tricks for which each variety is best adapted. So we
have the Mâdan, a generic name indicating wicked elemental spirits, half
brutes, half monsters, for Mâdan signifies one that looks like a cow. He is the
friend of the malicious sorcerers and helps them to effect their evil purposes
of revenge by striking men and cattle with sudden
illness and death.
The Shudâla-Mâdan, or graveyard fiend,
answers to our ghouls. He delights where crime and murder were committed, near
burial-spots and places of execution. He helps the juggler in all the fire
phenomena as well as Kutti Shâttan, the little juggling imps. Shudâla, they
say, is a half-fire, half-water demon, for he received from Shiva permission to
assume any shape he chose, to transform one thing into another; and when he is
not in fire, he is in water. It is he who blinds people "to see that which
they do not see." Shûla Mâdan is another mischievous spook. He is the
furnace-demon, skilled in pottery and baking. If you keep friends with him, he
will not injure you; but woe to him who incurs his
wrath. Shûla likes compliments and
flattery, and as he generally keeps
underground it is to him that a juggler
must look to help him raise a tree from a seed in a quarter of an hour and
ripen its fruit. Kumil-Mâdan, is the undine proper. He is an Elemental Spirit
of the water, and his name means blowing like a bubble. He is a very merry imp,
and will help a
friend in anything relative to his
department; he will shower rain and show the future and the present to those
who will resort to hydromancy or divination by water. Poruthû Mâdan is the
"wrestling" demon; he is the strongest of all; and whenever there are
feats shown in which physical force is required, such as levitations, or taming
of wild animals, he will help the performer by keeping him above the soil, or
will over-power a wild beast before the tamer has time to utter his
incantation. So, every "physical manifestation" has its own class of
Elemental Spirits to superintend it. Besides these there are in India the
Pisâchas, Daimons of the races of the gnomes, the giants and the vampires; the
Gandharvas,
good Daimons, celestial seraphs, singers;
and Asuras and Nâgas, the Titanic spirits and the dragon or serpent-headed
spirits.
These must not be confused with
Elementaries, the souls and shells of departed human beings; and here again we
have to distinguish between what has been called the astral soul, i.e., the lower
part of the dual Fifth Principle, joined to the animal, and the true Ego. For
the doctrine of the Initiates is that no astral soul, even that of a pure,
good, and virtuous man, is immortal in the strictest sense, "from elements
it was formed--to elements it must return." We may stop here and say no
more: every learned Brâhman, every Chelâ and thoughtful Theosophist will
understand why. For he knows that while the soul of the wicked
vanishes, and is absorbed without
redemption, that of every other person, even moderately pure, simply changes
its ethereal particles for still more ethereal ones; and, while there remains
in it a spark of the Divine, the god-like man, or rather, his individual Ego,
cannot die. Says Proclus:
After death, the soul (the spirit)
continueth to linger in the aërial body
(astral form), till it is entirely purified
from all angry and voluptuous
passions . . . then doth it put off by a
second dying the aërial body as it did the earthly one. Whereupon, the ancients
say that there is a celestial body always joined with the soul, which is
immortal, luminous, and star-like--while the purely human soul or the lower
part of the Fifth Principle is not. The above explanations and the meaning and
the real attributes and mission of the Pitris, may help to better understand
this passage of Plutarch:
And of these souls the moon is the element,
because souls resolve into her, as the bodies of the deceased do into earth.
Those, indeed, who have been virtuous and honest, living a quiet and
philosophical life, without embroiling themselves in troublesome affairs, are
quickly resolved; being left by the nous (understanding) and no longer using
the corporeal passions, they incontinently vanish away.8The ancient Egyptians,
who derived their knowledge
from the Âryans of India, pushed their
researches far into the kingdoms of the "elemental" and
"elementary" beings. Modern archæologists have decided that the
figures found depicted on the various papyri of The Book of the Dead, or other
symbols relating to other subjects painted upon their mummy cases, the walls of
their subterranean temples and sculptured on their buildings, are merely
fanciful representations of their Gods on the one hand, and on the other, a
proof of the worship by the Egyptians of cats, dogs, and all manner of creeping
things. This modern idea is wholly wrong, and arises from ignorance of the
astral world and its strange denizens.
There are many distinct classes of
"Elementaries" and "E1ementals." The highest of the former
in intelligence and cunning are the so-called "terrestrial spirits."
Of these it must suffice to say, for the present, that they are the Larvæ, or
shadows of those who have lived on earth, alike of the good and of the bad.
They are the lower principles of all disembodied beings, and may be divided
into three general groups. The first are they who having refused all spiritual
light, have died deeply immersed in the mire of matter, and from whose sinful
Souls the immortal Spirit has gradually separated itself. These are, properly,
the disembodied Souls of the depraved;
these Souls having at some time prior to death separated themselves from their
divine Spirits, and so lost their chance of immortality. Eliphas Levi and some
other Kabalists make little, if any, distinction between Elementary Spirits who
have been men, and those beings which people the elements, and are the blind
forces of nature. Once divorced from their bodies, these Souls (also called
"astral bodies"), especially those of purely materialistic persons,
are irresistibly attracted to the earth, where they live a temporary and finite
life amid elements congenial to their gross natures. From having never, during
their natural lives, cultivated their spirituality, but subordinated it to the
material and gross, they are now unfitted for the lofty career of the pure,
disembodied being, for whom the atmosphere of earth is stifling and mephitic.
Its attractions are not only away
from earth, but it cannot, even if it
would, owing to its Devachanic condition, have aught to do with earth and its
denizens consciously. Exceptions to this rule will be pointed out later on.
After a more or less prolonged period of time these material souls will begin to
disintegrate, and finally, like a column of mist, be dissolved, atom by atom,
in the surrounding elements.
These are the "shells" which
remain the longest period in the Kâma Loka; all saturated with terrestrial
effluvia, their Kâma Rûpa (body of desire) thick with sensuality and made
impenetrable to the spiritualizing influence of their higher principles,
endures longer and fades out with difficulty. We are taught that these remain
for centuries sometimes, before the final disintegration into their respective
elements.
The second group includes all those, who,
having had their common share of spirituality, have yet been more or less
attached to things earthly and
terrestrial life, having their aspirations
and affections more centred on earth than in heaven; the stay in Kâma Loka of
the reliquiæ of this class or group of men, who belonged to the average human
being, is of a far shorter duration, yet long in itself and proportionate to
the intensity of their desire for life. Remains, as a third class, the
disembodied souls of those whose bodies have perished by violence, and these
are men in all save the physical body, till their life-span is complete.
Among Elementaries are also reckoned by
Kabalists what we have called psychic embryos, the "privation" of the
form of the child that is to be. According to Aristotle's doctrine there are
three principles of natural bodies: privation, matter, and form. These
principles may be applied in this particular case. The "privation" of
the child which is to be, we locate in the invisible mind of the Universal
Soul, in which all types and forms exist from eternity--privation not being
considered in the Aristotelic philosophy as a principle in the composition of
bodies, but as an external property in their production; for the production is
a change by which the matter passes from the shape it has not to that which
it assumes. Though the privation of the
unborn child's form, as well as of the future form of the unmade watch, is that
which is neither substance nor extension
nor quality as yet, nor any kind of existence, it is still something which is,
though its outlines, in order to be, must acquire an objective form--the
abstract must become concrete, in short. Thus, as soon as this privation of
matter is transmitted by energy to universal Æther, it becomes a material form,
however sublimated. If modern Science teaches that human thought "affects
the matter of another universe simultaneously with this," how can he who
believes in a Universal Mind deny that the divine thought is equally
transmitted, by the same law of energy, to our common mediator, the universal
Æther--the lower World-Soul? Very true,
Occult Philosophy denies it intelligence and consciousness in relation to the
finite and conditioned manifestations of this phenomenal world of matter. But
the Vedântin and Buddhist Philosophies alike, speaking of it as of Absolute
Consciousness, show thereby that the form and progress of every atom of the
conditioned universe must have existed in it throughout the infinite cycles of
Eternity. And, if so, then it must follow that once there, the Divine Thought
manifests itself objectively, energy faithfully reproducing the outlines of
that whose "privation" is already in the divine mind. Only it must
not be understood that this Thought creates matter, or even
the privations. No; it develops from its
latent outline but the design for the future form; the matter which serves to
make this design having always been in existence, and having been prepared to
form a human body, through a series of progressive transformations, as the
result of evolution. Forms pass; ideas that created them and the material which
gave them objectiveness, remain.
These models, as yet devoid of immortal
spirits, are "Elementals"--better yet, psychic embryos--which, when
their time arrives, die out of the invisible world, and are born into this
visible one as human infants, receiving in transitu that Divine Breath called
Spirit which completes the perfect man. This class cannot communicate, either
subjectively or objectively, with men.
The essential difference between the body
of such an embryo and an Elemental proper is that the embryo--the future
man--contains in himself a portion of each of the four great kingdoms, to wit:
fire, air, earth and water; while the Elemental has but a portion of one of
such kingdoms. As for instance, the salamander, or the fire Elemental, which
has but a portion of the primordial fire and none other. Man, being higher than
they, the law of evolution finds its illustration of all four in him. It
results therefore, that the Elementals of the fire are not found in water, nor
those of air in the fire kingdom. And yet,
inasmuch as a portion of water is found not only in man but also in other
bodies, Elementals exist really in and among each other in every substance just
as the spiritual world exists and is in the
material. But the last are the
Elementals in their most primordial and
latent state.
Another class are those elemental beings
which will never evolve into human beings in the present Manvantara, but
occupy, as it were, a specific step of the ladder of being, and, by comparison
with the others, may properly be called nature-spirits, or cosmic agents of
nature, each being confined to its own element and never transgressing the
bounds of others. These are what Tertullian called the "princes of the
powers of the air."
In the teachings of Eastern Kabalists, and
of the Western Rosicrucians and Alchemists, they are spoken of as the creatures
evolved in and from the four kingdoms of earth, air, fire and water, and are
respectively called gnomes, sylphs, salamanders and undines. Forces of nature,
they will either operate effects as the servile agents of general law, or may
be employed, as shown above, by the disembodied spirits--whether pure or
impure--and by living adepts of magic and sorcery, to produce desired
phenomenal results. Such beings never become men.
Under the general designation of fairies,
and fays, these spirits of the
elements appear in the myths, fables,
traditions, or poetry of all nations, ancient and modern. Their names are
legion--peris, devs, djins, sylvans, satyrs, fauns, elves, dwarfs, trolls,
norns, nisses, kobolds, brownies, necks, stromkarls, undines, nixies, goblins,
ponkes, banshees, kelpies, pixies, moss people, good people, good neighbours,
wild women, men of peace, white ladies--and many more. They have been seen,
feared, blessed, banned, and invoked in every quarter of the globe and in every
age. Shall we then concede that all who have met them were hallucinated?
These Elementals are the principal agents
of disembodied but never visible "shells" taken for spirits at
séances, and are, as shown above, the producers of all the phenomena except the
subjective.
In the course of this article we will adopt
the term "Elemental" to designate only these nature-spirits,
attaching it to no other spirit or monad that has been embodied in human form.
Elementals, as said already, have no form, and in trying to describe what they
are, it is better to say that they are "centres of force" having
instinctive desires, but no consciousness, as we understand it. Hence their
acts may be good or bad indifferently.
This class is believed to possess but one
of the three chief attributes of man. They have neither immortal spirits nor
tangible bodies; only astral forms, which partake, to a distinguishing degree,
of the element to which they belong and also of the ether. They are a
combination of sublimated matter and a rudimental mind. Some remain throughout
several cycles changeless, but still have no separate individuality, acting
collectively, so to say. Others, of certain elements and species, change form
under a fixed law which Kabalists explain. The most solid of their bodies is
ordinarily just immaterial enough to escape perception by our physical
eyesight, but not so unsubstantial but that they can be perfectly recognized by
the inner or clairvoyant vision. They not only exist and can all live in ether,
but can handle and direct it for the production of physical effects, as readily
as we can compress air or water for the same purpose by pneumatic and hydraulic
apparatus; in which occupation they are readily helped by the "human
elementaries," or the "shells." More than this; they can so
condense it as to make for themselves tangible bodies, which by their Protean
powers they can cause to assume such likeness as they choose, by taking as
their models the portraits they find stamped in the memory of the persons
present.
It is not necessary that the sitter should
be thinking at the
moment of the one represented. His image
may have faded many years before. The mind receives indelible impression even
from chance acquaintances or persons encountered but once. As a few seconds' exposure
of the sensitized photograph plate is all that is requisite to preserve
indefinitely the image of the sitter, so is it with the mind.
According to the doctrine of Proclus, the
uppermost regions from the Zenith of the Universe to the Moon belonged to the
Gods or Planetary Spirits, according to their hierarchies and classes. The
highest among them were the twelve Huper-ouranioi, or Super-celestial Gods,
with whole legions of subordinate Daimons at their command. They are followed
next in rank and power by the Egkosmioi, the Inter-cosmic Gods, each of these
presiding over a great number of Daimons, to whom they impart their power and
change it from one to another at will. These are evidently the personified
forces of nature in their mutual
correlation, the latter being represented
by the third class, or the Elementals we have just described.
Further on he shows, on the principle of
the Hermetic axiom--of types, and prototypes--that the lower spheres have their
subdivisions and classes of beings as well as the upper celestial ones, the
former being always subordinate to the higher ones. He held that the four
elements are all filled with Daimons, maintaining with Aristotle that the
universe is full, and that there is no void in nature. The Daimons of the
earth, air, fire, and water are of an elastic, ethereal, semi-corporeal
essence.
It is these classes which officiate as
intermediate agents between the Gods and men. Although lower in intelligence
than the sixth order of the higher Daimons, these beings preside directly over
the elements and organic life. They direct the growth, the inflorescence, the
properties, and various changes of plants. They are the personified ideas or
virtues shed from the heavenly Hylê into
the inorganic matter; and, as the vegetable kingdom is one remove higher than
the mineral, these emanations from the celestial Gods take form and being in
the plant, they become its soul. It is that which Aristotle's doctrine terms
the form in the three principles of natural bodies, classified by him as
privation, matter, and form. His philosophy teaches that besides the original
matter, another principle is necessary to complete the triune nature of every
particle, and this is form; an invisible, but still, in an ontological sense of
the word, a substantial being, really distinct from matter proper. Thus, in an
animal or a plant--besides the bones,
the flesh, the nerves, the brains, and the
blood, in the former; and besides the pulpy matter, tissues, fibres, and juice
in the latter, which blood and juice, by circulating' through the veins and
fibres, nourishes all parts of both animal and plant; and besides the animal
spirits, which are the principles of motion, and the chemical energy which is
transformed into vital force in the green leaf--there must be a substantial
form, which Aristotle called in the horse, the
horse's soul; Proclus, the daimon of every
mineral, plant, or animal, and the mediæval philosophers, the elementary
spirits of the four kingdoms.
All this is held in our century as
"poetical metaphysics" and gross
superstition. Still on strictly ontological
principles, there is, in these old
hypotheses, some shadow of probability,
some clue to the perplexing missing links of exact science. The latter has
become so dogmatic of late, that all that lies beyond the ken of inductive
science is termed imaginary; and we find Professor Joseph Le Conte stating that
some of the best scientists "ridicule the use of the term 'vital force,'
or vitality, as a remnant of superstition.''10 De Candolle suggests the term
"vital movement," instead of vital force;11 thus preparing for a
final scientific leap which will transform the immortal, thinking man, into an
automaton with clock-work inside him. "But," objects Le Conte, "can
we conceive of movement without force? And if the movement is peculiar, so also
is the form of force."
In the Jewish Kabalah, the nature-spirits
were known under the general name of Shedim, and divided into four classes. The
Hindûs call them Bhûtas and Devas, and the Persians called them all Devs; the
Greeks indistinctly designated them as Daimons; the Egyptians knew them as
Afrites. The ancient Mexicans, says Kaiser, believed in numerous spirit-abodes,
into one of which the shades of innocent children were placed until final
disposal; into another, situated in the sun, ascended the valiant souls of
heroes; while the hideous spectres of incorrigible sinner were sentenced to
wander and despair in subterranean caves, held in the bonds of the
earth-atmosphere, unwilling and unable to liberate
themselves. This proves pretty clearly that
the "ancient" Mexicans knew
something of the doctrines of Kâma Loka.
These passed their time in
communicating with mortals, and frightening
those who could see them.
Some of the African tribes know them as
Yowahoos. In the Indian Pantheon, as we have often remarked, there are no less
than 330,000,000 of various kinds of spirits, including Elementals, some of
which were termed by the Brâhmans, Daityas. These beings are known by the
adepts to be attracted toward certain quarters of the heavens by something of
the same mysterious property which makes the magnetic
needle turn toward the north, and certain
plants to obey the same attraction If we will only bear in mind the fact that
the rushing of planets through space must create as absolute a disturbance in
the plastic and attenuated medium of the ether, as the passage of a cannon shot
does in the air, or that of a steamer in the water, and on a cosmic scale, we
can understand that certain planetary aspects, admitting our premises to be
true, may produce much more violent agitation and cause much stronger currents
to flow in a given direction than others.
We can also see why, by such various
aspects of the stars, shoals of
friendly or hostile Elementals might be
poured in upon our atmosphere, or some particular portion of it, and make the
fact appreciable by the effects which ensue. If our royal astronomers are able,
at times, to predict cataclysms, such as earthquakes and inundations, the
Indian astrologers and mathematicians can do so, and have so done, with far
more precision and correctness, though they act on lines which to the modern
sceptic appear ridiculously absurd. The various races of spirits are also
believed to have a special sympathy with certain human
temperaments, and to more readily exert
power over such than others.
Thus, a bilious, lymphatic, nervous, or
sanguine person would be affected favourably or otherwise by conditions of the
astral light, resulting from the different aspects of the planetary bodies.
Having reached this general principle, after recorded observations extending
over an indefinite series of years, or ages, the adept astrologer would require
only to know what the planetary aspects were at a given anterior date, and to
apply his knowledge of the succeeding changes in the heavenly bodies, to be
able to trace, with approximate accuracy, the varying
fortunes of the personage whose horoscope
was required, and even to predict the future. The accuracy of the horoscope
would depend, of course, no less upon the astrologer's astronomical erudition
than upon his knowledge of the occult forces and races of nature.
Pythagoras taught that the entire universe
is one vast series of mathematically correct combinations. Plato shows the
Deity geometrizing. The world is sustained by the same law of equilibrium and
harmony upon which it was built. The centripetal force could not manifest
itself without the centrifugal in the harmonious revolutions of the spheres;
all forms are the product of this dual force in nature. Thus, to illustrate our
case, we may designate the spirit as the centrifugal, and the soul as the
centripetal, spiritual energies. When in perfect harmony, both forces produce
one result; break or damage the centripetal motion of the earthly soul tending
toward the center which attracts it; arrest
its progress by clogging it with a heavier
weight of matter than it can bear, and the harmony of the whole, which was its
life, is destroyed.
Individual life can only be continued if
sustained by this two-fold force. The least deviation from harmony damages it;
when it is destroyed beyond redemption, the forces separate and the form is
gradually annihilated. After the death of the depraved and the wicked, arrives
the critical moment. If during life the ultimate and desperate effort of the
inner self to reunite itself with the faintly-glimmering ray of its divine
monad is neglected; if this ray is allowed to be more and more
shut out by the thickening crust of matter,
the soul, once freed from the body, follows its earthly attractions, and is
magnetically drawn into and held within the dense fogs of the material
atmosphere of the Kâma Loka. Then it begins to sink lower and lower, until it
finds itself, when returned to consciousness, in what the ancients termed
Hades, and we--Avichî. The annihilation of such a soul is never instantaneous;
it may last centuries, perhaps; for nature never proceeds by jumps and starts,
and the astral soul of the personality being formed of elements, the law of
evolution must bide its time. Then begins the fearful law of compensation, the
Yin-youan of the Buddhist initiates.
This class of spirits are called the
"terrestrial," or "earthly elementaries," in
contradistinction to the other classes, as we have shown in the beginning.
But there is another and still more
dangerous class. In the East, they are known as the "Brothers of the
Shadow," living men possessed by the earth-bound elementaries; at
times--their masters, but ever in the long run falling victims to these
terrible beings. In Sikkhim and Tibet they are called Dugpas (red-caps), in
contradistinction to the Geluk-pas (yellow-caps), to which latter most of the
adepts belong. And here we must beg the reader not to misunderstand us. For
though the whole of Bûtan and Sikkhim belongs to the old religion of the Bhons,
now known generally as the Dug-pas, we do not mean to have it understood
that the whole of the population is
possessed, en masse, or that they are all sorcerers. Among them are found as
good men as anywhere else, and we speak above only of the élite of their
Lamaseries, of a nucleus of priests, "devil-dancers," and fetish
worshippers, whose dreadful and mysterious rites are utterly unknown to the
greater part of the population. Thus there are two classes of these terrible
"Brothers of the Shadow"--the living and the dead. Both cunning, low,
vindictive, and seeking to retaliate their sufferings upon humanity, they
become, until final annihilation, vampires, ghouls, and prominent actors at
séances. These are the leading "stars," on the great spiritual stage
of
"materialization," which
phenomenon they perform with the help of the more intelligent of the
genuine-born "elemental" creatures, which hover around and welcome
them with delight in their own spheres. Henry Kunrath, the great German
Kabalist, in his rare work, Amphitheatrum Sapientæ Æternæ has a plate with
representations of the four classes of these human "elementary
spirits." Once past the threshold of the sanctuary of initiation, once
that an adept has lifted the "Veil of Isis," the mysterious and
jealous Goddess, he has nothing to fear;
but till then he is in constant danger.
Magi and theurgic philosophers objected
most severely to the "evocation of souls." "Bring her (the soul)
not forth, lest in departing she retain
something," says Psellus. "It
becomes you not to behold them before your body is initiated, since, by always
alluring, they seduce the souls of the uninitiated"--says the same philosopher,
in another passage.
They objected to it for several good
reasons. 1. "It is extremely difficult to distinguish a good Daimon from a
bad one," says Iamblichus.
If the shell of a good man succeeds in
penetrating the density of the earth's atmosphere--always oppressive to it,
Often hateful--still there is a danger that it cannot avoid; the soul is unable
to come into proximity with the material world without that on "departing,
she retains something," that is to say, she contaminates her purity, for which
she has to suffer more or less after her departure. Therefore, the true
theurgist will avoid causing any more suffering to this pure denizen of
the higher sphere than is absolutely
required by the interests of humanity. It is only the practitioners of black
magic--such as the Dugpas of Bhûtan and Sikkhim--who compel the presence, by
the powerful incantations of necromancy, of the tainted souls of such as have
lived bad lives, and are ready to aid their selfish designs.
Of intercourse with the Augœides, through
the mediumistic powers of subjective mediums, we elsewhere speak. The
theurgists employed chemicals and mineral substances to chase away evil
spirits. Of the latter, a stone called Mnizurin was one of the most powerful
agents. "When you shall see a terrestrial Daimon approaching, exclaim, and
sacrifice the stone
Mnizurin"--exclaims a Zoroastrian Oracle (Psel., 40).
These "Daimons" seek to introduce
themselves into the bodies of the
simple-minded and idiots, and remain there
until dislodged therefrom by a powerful and pure will. Jesus, Apollonius, and
some of the apostles, had the power to cast out "devils," by
purifying the atmosphere within and without the patient, so as to force the
unwelcome tenant to flight. Certain volatile salts are particularly obnoxious
to them; Zoroaster is corroborated in this by Mr. C. F. Varley, and ancient
science is justified by modern. The effect of some chemicals used in a saucer
and placed under the bed, by Mr. Varley of London, for the purpose of keeping
away some disagreeable physical phenomena at night, are corroborative of this
great truth. Pure or even simply inoffensive human spirits fear nothing, for
having rid themselves of terrestrial matter, terrestrial compounds can affect
them in no wise; such spirits are like a
breath. Not so with the earth-bound souls
and the nature-spirits.
It is for these carnal terrestrial Larvæ,
degraded human spirits, that the ancient Kabalists entertained a hope of
reïncarnation. But when, or how? At a fitting moment, and if helped by a
sincere desire for his amendment and repentance by some strong, sympathizing
person, or the will of an adept, or even a desire emanating from the erring
spirit himself, provided it is powerful enough to make him throw off the burden
of sinful matter. Losing all consciousness, the once bright monad is caught
once more into the vortex of our terrestrial evolution, and repasses the
subordinate kingdoms, and again breathes as a living child.
To compute the time necessary for the
completion of this process would be impossible. Since there is no perception of
time in eternity,
the attempt would be a mere waste of
labour.
Speaking of the elementary, Porphyry says:
These invisible beings have been receiving
from men honours as gods; . . . a universal belief makes them capable of
becoming very malevolent; it proves that their wrath is kindled against those
who neglect to offer them a legitimate worship.13Homer describes them in the
following terms: Our gods appear to us when we offer them sacrifice . . .
sitting themselves at our tables, they partake of our festival meals. Whenever
they meet on his travels a solitary Phœnician, they serve to him as guides, and
otherwise manifest their presence. We can say that our piety approaches us to
them as much as crime and bloodshed unite the Cyclopes and the ferocious race
of Giants. The latter proves that these Gods were kind and beneficent Daimons,
and that, whether they were disembodied spirits or elemental beings, they were no
"devils."
The language of Porphyry, who was himself a
direct disciple of Plotinus, is still more explicit as to the nature of these
spirits.
Daimons are invisible; but they know how to
clothe themselves with forms and configurations subjected to numerous
variations, which can be explained by their nature having much of the corporeal
in itself. Their abode is in the neighbourhood of the earth . . . and when they
can escape the vigilance of the good Daimons, there is no mischief they win not
tare commit. One day they will employ brute force; another, cunning. Further,
he says:
It is a child's play for them to arouse in
us vile passions, to impart to
societies and nations turbulent doctrines,
provoking wars, seditions, and
other public calamities, and then tell you
"that all of these are the work of the gods." . . . These spirits
pass their time in cheating and deceiving
mortals, creating around them illusions and
prodigies; their greatest ambition is to pass as gods and souls (disembodied
spirits).16Iamblichus, the great theurgist of the Neoplatonic school, a man
skilled in sacred magic, teaches that:
Good Daimons appear to us in reality, while
the bad ones can manifest
themselves but under the shadowy forms of
phantoms.Further, he corroborates Porphyry, and tells how that:
The good ones fear not the light, while the
wicked ones require darkness . . .
The sensations they excite in us make us
believe in the presence and reality of things they show, though these things be
absent.17Even the most practised theurgists sometimes found danger in their
dealings with certain elementaries, and we have Iamblichus stating that:
The gods, the angels, and the Daimons, as
well as the souls, may be summoned through evocation and prayer . . . But when,
during theurgic operations, a mistake is made, beware! Do not imagine that you
are communicating with beneficent divinities, who have answered your earnest
prayer; no, for they are bad Daimons, only under the guise of good ones!
For the elementaries often clothe
themselves with the similitude of the good, and assume a rank very much
superior to that they really occupy. Their boasting betrays them.18The
ancients,
who named but four elements, made of ether
a fifth. On account of its essence being made divine by the unseen presence, it
was considered as a medium between this world and the next. They held that when
the directing intelligences retired from any portion of ether, one of the four
kingdoms which they are bound to superintend, the space was left in possession
of evil. An adept who prepared to converse with the "invisibles," had
to know his ritual well, and be perfectly acquainted with the conditions
required for the perfect equilibrium of the four elements in the astral light.
First of all, he must purify the essence, and
within the circle in which he sought to
attract the pure spirits,equilibrize
the elements, so as to prevent the ingress
of the Elementals into their
respective spheres. But woe to the
imprudent enquirer who ignorantly trespasses upon forbidden ground; danger will
beset him at every step. He evokes powers that he cannot control; he arouses
sentries which allow only their masters to pass. For, in the words of the immortalRosicrucian:
Once that thou hast resolved to become a
coöperator with the spirit of the living God, take care not to hinder Him in
His work; for, if thy heat exceeds the natural proportion, thou hast stirr'd
the wrath of the moyst natures, and they will stand up against the central
fire, and the central fire against them, and there will be a terrible division
in the chaos.20The spirit of harmony and union will depart from the elements,
disturbed by the imprudent hand; and the currents of blind forces will become
immediately infested by numberless creatures of matter and instinct--the bad
demons of the theurgists, the devils of theology; the gnomes, salamanders,
sylphs, and undines will assail he rash performer under multifarious aërial
forms. Unable to invent anything, they will
search your memory to its very depths;
hence the nervous exhaustion and mental oppression of certain sensitive natures
at spiritual circles.
The Elementals will bring to light
long-forgotten remembrances of the past; forms, images, sweet mementoes, and
familiar sentences, long since faded from our own remembrance, but vividly
preserved in the inscrutable depths of our memory and on the astral tablets of
the imperishable "Book of Life."
The author of the Homoiomerian system of
philosophy, Anaxagoras of Clazomene, firmly believed that the spiritual
prototypes of all things, as well as their elements, were to be found in the
boundless ether, where they were generated, whence they evolved, and whither
they returned from earth. In common with the Hindûs who had personified their
Âkâsha, and made of it a deific entity, the Greeks and Latins had deified
Æther. Virgil calls Zeus, Pater Omnipotens Æther, Magnus, the Great God, Ether.
These beings, the elemental spirits of the Kabalists, are those whom the
Christian clergy denounce as "devils," the enemies of mankind!
Every organized thing in this world,
visible as well as invisible, has an
element appropriate to itself. The fish
lives and breathes in the water; the plant consumes carbonic acid, which for
animals and men produces death; some beings are fitted for rarefied strata of
air, others exist only in the densest.
Life to some is dependent on sunlight, to
others, upon darkness; and so the wise economy of nature adapts to each
existing condition some living form. These analogies warrant the conclusion
that, not only is there no unoccupied portion of universal nature, but also
that for each thing that has life, special conditions are furnished, and, being
furnished, they are necessary. Now, assuming that there is an invisible side to
the universe, the fixed habit of nature warrants the conclusion that this half
is occupied, like the other half; and that each group of its occupants is
supplied with the indispensable conditions of existence. It is as illogical to
imagine that identical conditions are furnished to all, as it would be to
maintain such a theory respecting the inhabitants of the domain of visible
nature. That there are "spirits" implies that there is a diversity of
"spirits"; for men differ, and human "spirits" are but
disembodied men.
To say that all "spirits" are
alike, or fitted to the same atmosphere, or
possessed of like powers, or governed by
the same attractions--electric,
magnetic, odic, astral, it matters not
which--is as absurd as though one should say that all planets have the same
nature, or that all animals are amphibious, or that all men can be nourished on
the same food. To begin with, neither the elementals, nor the elementaries
themselves, can be called "spirits" at all. It accords with reason to
suppose that the grossest natures among them will sink to the lowest depths of
the spiritual atmosphere--in other words, be found nearest to the earth.
Inversely, the purest will be farthest away. In what, were we to
coin a word, we should call the
"psychomatics" of Occultism, it is as
unwarrantable to assume that either of
these grades of ethereal beings can occupy the place, or subsist in the
conditions, of the other, as it would be in hydraulics to expect that two
liquids of different densities could exchange their markings on the scale of
Beaume's hydrometer.
Görres, describing a conversation he had
with some Hindûs of the Malabar coast, reports that upon asking them whether
they had ghosts among them, they replied:
Yes, but we know them to be bad bhûts
[spirits, or rather, the "empty" ones, the "shells", . . .
good ones can hardly ever appear at all. They are principally the spirits of
suicides and murderers, or of those who die violent deaths. They constantly
flutter about and appear as phantoms. Night-time is favourable to them, they
seduce the feeble-minded and tempt others in a thousand different
ways.23Porphyry presents to us some hideous facts whose verity is substantiated
in the experience of every student of magic. He writes:
The soul,24 having even after death a
certain affection for its body, art affinity proportioned to the violence with
which their union was broken, we see many spirits hovering in despair about
their earthly remains; we even see them eagerly seeking the putrid remains of
other bodies, but above all freshly-spilled blood, which seems to impart to
them for the moment some of the faculties of life. Though spiritualists
discredit them ever so much, these nature-spirits--as much as the
"elementaries," the "empty shells," as the Hindus call
them--are realities. If the gnomes, sylphs, salamanders and undines of the
Rosicrucians existed in their days, they
must exist now. Bulwer Lytton's
"Dweller on the Threshold" is a
modern conception, modelled on the ancient type of the Sulanuth of the Hebrews
and Egyptians, which is mentioned in the Book of Jasher.26
The Christians are very wrong to treat them
indiscriminately, as "devils," "imps of Satan," and to give
them like characteristics names. The elementals are nothing of the kind, but
simply creatures of ethereal matter, irresponsible, and neither good nor bad,
unless influenced by a superior intelligence. It is very extraordinary to hear
devout Catholics abuse and misrepresent the nature-spirits, when one of their
greatest authorities, Clement the Alexandrian, has described these creatures as
they really are. Clement, who perhaps had been a theurgist as well as an
Neoplatonist, and thus argued upon good authority, remarks, that it is absurd
to call them devils, for they are only inferior angels, "the powers which
inhabit elements, move the winds and distribute showers, and assuch are agents
and subject to God."28 Origen, who before he
became a Christian also belonged to the
Platonic school, is of the same opinion. Porphyry, as we have seen, describes
these daimons more carefully than any one else.
The Secret Doctrine teaches that man, if he
wins immortality, will remain for ever the septenary trinity that he is in
life, and will continue so throughout all the spheres. The astral body, which
in this life is covered by a gross physical envelope, becomes--when relieved of
that covering by the process of corporeal death--in its turn the shell of another
and more ethereal body. This begins developing from the moment of death, and
becomes perfected when the astral body of the earthly form finally separates
from it. This process, they say, is repeated at every new transition from
sphere to sphere of life. But the immortal soul, the "silvery spark,"
observed by Dr. Fenwick in Margrave's brain
(in Bulwer Lytton's Strange Story), and not
found by him in the animals, never changes, but remains indestructible "by
aught that shatters its tabernacle." The descriptions by Porphyry and
Iamblichus and others, of the spirits of animals, which inhabit the astral
light, are corroborated by those of many of the most trustworthy and
intelligent clairvoyants. Sometimes the animal forms are even made visible to
every person at a spiritual circle, by being materialized. In his People from
the Other World, Colonel H. S. Olcott describes a materialized squirrel which
followed a spirit-woman into the view of the spectators, disappeared and
reappeared before their eyes several times, and finally followed
the spirit into the cabinet. The facts
given in modern spiritualistic literature are numerous and many of them are
trustworthy.
As to the human spirit, the notions of the
older philosophers and mediæval Kabalists while differing in some particulars,
agreed on the whole; so that the doctrine of one may be viewed as the doctrine
of the other. The most substantial difference consisted in the location of the
immortal or divine spirit of man.
While the ancient Neoplatonists held that
the Augœides never descends
hypostatically into the living man, but
only more or less sheds its radiance on the inner man--the astral soul--the
Kabalists of the middle ages maintained that the spirit, detaching itself from
the ocean of light and spirit, entered into man's soul, where it remained
through life imprisoned in the astral capsule. This difference was the result
of the belief of Christian Kabalists, more or less, in the dead letter of the
allegory of the fall of man. The soul, they said, became, through the
"fall of Adam," contaminated with the world of matter, or Satan.
Before it could appear with its enclosed divine spirit in the presence
of the Eternal, it had to purify itself of
the impurities of darkness. They compared--
The spirit imprisoned within the soul to a
drop of water enclosed within a
capsule of gelatine and thrown in the
ocean; so long as the capsule remains whole the drop of water remains isolated;
break the envelope and the drop becomes a part of the ocean--its individual
existence has ceased. So it is with the spirit. As long as it is enclosed in
its plastic mediator, or soul, it has an individual existence. Destroy the
capsule, a result which may occur from the agonies of withered conscience,
crime, and moral disease, and the spirit returns back to its original abode.
Its individuality is gone.
On the other hand, the philosophers who
explained the "fall into generation" in their own way, viewed spirit
as something wholly distinct from the soul. They allowed its presence in the
astral capsule only so far as the spiritual emanations or rays of the
"shining one" were concerned. Man and his spiritual soul or the
monad--i.e., spirit and its vehicle--had to conquer their immortality by
ascending toward the unity with which, if successful, they were finally linked,
and into which they were absorbed, so to say. The individualization of man
after death depended on the spirit, not on his astral or human soul--Manas and
its
vehicle Kâma Rûpa--and body. Although the
word "personality," in the sense in which it is usually understood,
is an absurdity, if applied literally to our immortal essence, still the latter
is a distinct entity, immortal and eternal, per se; and when (as in the case of
criminals beyond redemption) the shining thread which links the spirit to the
soul, from the moment of the birth of a child, is violently snapped, and the
disembodied personal entity is left to share the fate of the lower animals, to
gradually dissolve into ether, fall into the terrible state of Âvîchi, or
disappear entirely in the eighth sphere and have its complete personality
annihilated--even then the spirit remains a distinct being. It becomes a
planetary spirit, an angel; for the gods of the Pagan or the archangels of the
Christian, the direct emanations of the One Cause, notwithstanding the
hazardous statement of Swedenborg, never were nor
will they be men, on our planet, at least.
This specialization has been in all ages
the stumbling-block of metaphysicians. The whole esotericism of the Buddhistic
philosophy is based on this mysterious teaching, understood by so few persons,
and so totally misrepresented by many of the most learned scholars. Even
metaphysicians are too inclined to confound the effect with the cause. A person
may have won his immortal life, and remain the same inner self he was on earth,
throughout eternity; but this does not imply
necessarily that he must either remain the
Mr. Smith or Brown he was on earth, or lose his individuality. Therefore, the
astral soul, i.e., the personality, like the terrestrial body and the lower
portion of the human soul of man, may, in the dark hereafter, be absorbed into
the cosmical ocean of sublimated elements, and cease to feel its personal
individuality, if it did not deserve to soar higher, and the divine spirit, or
spiritual individuality, still remain an unchanged entity, though this
terrestrial experience of his emanations may be totally obliterated at the
instant of separation from the unworthy vehicle.
If the "spirit," or the divine
portion of the soul, is preëxistent as a distinct being from all eternity, as
Origen, Synesius, and other Christian fathers and philosophers taught, and if
it is the same, and nothing more than the metaphysically-objective soul, how
can it be otherwise than eternal? And what matters it in such a case, whether
man leads an animal or a pure life, if, do what he may, he can never lose his
personality? This doctrine is as pernicious in its consequences as that of
vicarious atonement. Had the latter dogma, in company with the false idea that
we are all personally immortal, been demonstrated to the world in its true
light, humanity would have been bettered by its propagation. Crime and sin
would be avoided, not for fear of earthly punishment, or of a ridiculous hell,
but for the sake of that which lies the most deeply rooted in our nature--the
desire of a personal and distinct life in
the hereafter, the positive assurance that
we cannot win it unless we "take the kingdom of heaven by violence,"
and the conviction that neither human prayers nor the blood of another man will
save us from personal destruction after death, unless we firmly link ourselves
during our terrestrial life with our own immortal spirit--our only personal
God. Pythagoras, Plato, Timæus of Locris, and the whole Alexandrian School
derived the soul from the universal World-Soul; and a portion of the latter
was, according to their own teachings--ether; something of such a fine nature
as to be perceived only by our inner sight. Therefore, it cannot be the essence
of the Monas, or Cause,29 because the Anima Mundi is but the effect, the
objective emanation of the former. Both the divine spiritual soul and the human
soul are preëxistent. But, while the former exists as a distinct entity, an individualization,
the soul (the vehicle of the former) exists only as preëxisting matter, an
unscient portion of an intelligent whole. Both were originally formed from the
Eternal Ocean of Light; but as the Theosophists expressed it, there is a
visible as well as invisible spirit in fire. They made a difference between the
Anima Bruta and the Anima Divina. Empedocles firmly believed all men and
animals to possess two souls; and in Aristotle we find that
he calls one the reasoning soul, Nous, and
the other, the animal soul, Psuche. According to these philosophers, the
reasoning soul comes from without the Universal Soul (i.e., from a source
higher than the Universal Soul--in its cosmic sense; it is the Universal
Spirit, the seventh principle of the Universe in its totality), and the other
from within. This divine and superior region, in which they located the
invisible and supreme deity, was considered by them (by Aristotle himself, who
was not an initiate) as a fifth element--whereas it is the seventh in the
Esoteric Philosophy, or Mûlaprakriti--purely spiritual and divine, whereas the
Anima Mundi proper was considered as composed of a fine, igneous, and ethereal
nature spread throughout the Universe, in short--Ether.30
The Stoics, the greatest materialists of
ancient days, excepted the Divine Principle and Divine Soul from any such a
corporeal nature. Their modern commentators and admirers, greedily seizing the
opportunity, built on this ground the supposition that the Stoics believed in
neither God nor soul, the essence of matter. Most certainly Epicurus did not
believe in God or soul as understood by either ancient or modern theists. But
Epicurus, whose doctrine (militating directly against the agency of a Supreme
Being and Gods, in the formation or government of the world) placed him far
above the Stoics in atheism and materialism, nevertheless taught that the soul
is of a fine, tender essence formed from the smoothest, roundest, and finest
atoms--which description still brings us to the same sublimated ether. He
further believed in the Gods.
Arnobius, Tertullian, Irenæus, and Origen,
notwithstanding their Christianity, believed, with the more modern Spinoza and
Hobbes, that the soul was corporeal, though of a very fine nature—an
anthropomorphic and personal something,
i.e., corporeal, finite and conditioned. Can it under such conditions become
immortal? Can the mutable become the immutable?
This doctrine of the possibility of losing
one's soul and, hence, individuality, militates with the ideal theories and
progressive ideas of some spiritualists, though Swedenborg fully adopts it.
They will never accept the kabalistic doctrine which teaches that it is only
through observing the law of harmony that individual life hereafter can be
obtained; and that the farther the inner and outer man deviate from this fount
of harmony, whose source lies in our divine spirit, the more
difficult it is to regain the ground.
But while the spiritualists and other
adherents of Christianity have little, if any, perception of this fact of the
possible death and obliteration of the human personality by the separation of
the immortal part from the perishable, some Swedenborgians--those, at least,
who follow the spirit of a philosophy, not merely the dead letter of a
teaching--fully comprehend it. One of the most respected ministers of the New
Church, the Rev. Chauncey Giles, D.D., of New York, recently elucidated the
subject in a public discourse as follows. Physical
death, or the death of the body, was a
provision of the divine economy for the benefit of man, a provision by means of
which he attained the higher ends of his being. But there is another death
which is the interruption of the divine order and the destruction of every
human element in man's nature, and every possibility of human happiness. This
is the spiritual death which takes place before the dissolution of the body.
"There may be a vast development of man's natural mind without that
development being accompanied by a particle of the
divine love, or of unselfish love of
man." When one falls into a love of self and love of the world, with its
pleasures, losing the divine love of God and of the neighbour, he falls from
life to death. The higher principles which constitute the essential elements of
his humanity perish, and he lives only on the natural plane of his faculties.
Physically he exists, spiritually he is dead. To all that pertains to the
higher and the only enduring phase of existence he is as much dead as his body
becomes dead to all the activities, delights, and sensations of the world when
the spirit has left it. This spiritual death results from disobedience of the
laws of spiritual life, which is followed by the same penalty as the
disobedience of the laws of the natural life. But the spiritually dead have
still their delights; they have their intellectual endowments, and power, and
intense activities. All the animal delights are theirs, and to multitudes of
men and women these constitute the highest ideal of human happiness. The
tireless pursuit of riches, of the amusements and entertainments of social
life; the cultivation of graces of manner, of taste in dress, of social
preferment, of scientific distinction,
intoxicate and enrapture these dead-alive;
but, the eloquent preacher remarks, "these creatures, with all their
graces, rich attire, and brilliant accomplishments, are dead in the eye of the
Lord and the angels, and when measured by the only true and immutable standard
have no more genuine life than skeletons whose flesh has turned to dust."
Although we do not believe in "the
Lord and the angels"--not, at any rate, in the sense given to these terms
by Swedenborg and his followers, we nevertheless admire these feelings and
fully agree with the reverend gentleman's opinions. A high development of the intellectual
faculties does not imply spiritual and true life. The presence in one of a
highly developed human, intellectual soul (the fifth principle, or Manas), is
quite compatible with the absence of Buddhi, or the spiritual soul. Unless the
former evolves from and develops under the beneficent and vivifying rays of the
latter, it will remain for ever but a direct progeny of the terrestrial, lower
principles, sterile in spiritual perceptions; a magnificent, luxurious
sepulchre, full of the dry bones of decaying matter within. Many of our
greatest scientists are but animate
corpses--they have no spiritual sight
because their spirits have left them, or, rather, cannot reach them. So we
might go through all ages, examine all occupations, weigh all human attainments,
and investigate all forms of society, and we would find these spiritually dead
everywhere.
Although Aristotle himself, anticipating
the modern physiologists, regarded the human mind as a material substance, and
ridiculed the hylozoïsts, nevertheless he fully believed in the existence of a
"double" soul, or soul plus spirit, as one can see in his De Generat.
et Corrupt. (Lib. ii.). He laughed at Strabo for believing that any particles
of matter, per se, could have life and intellect in themselves sufficient to
fashion by degrees such a multiform world as ours.31 Aristotle is indebted for
the sublime morality of his Nichomachean Ethics to a
thorough study of the Pythagorean Ethical
Fragments; for the latter can be easily shown to have been the source at which
he gathered his ideas, though he might not have sworn "by him who the
Tetraktys found."32
But indeed our men of
science know nothing certain about
Aristotle. His philosophy is so abtruse that he constantly leaves his reader to
supply by the imagination the missing links of his logical deductions.
Moreover, we know that before his works ever reached our scholars, who delight
in his seemingly atheistical arguments in support of his doctrine of fate, they
passed through too many hands to have remained immaculate. From Theophrastus,
his legator, they passed to Neleus, whose heirs kept them mouldering in
subterranean caves for nearly 150 years; after which, we learn that his
manuscripts were copied and much augmented by Appelicon of Theos,
who supplied such paragraphs as had become
illegible, by conjectures of his own, probably many of these drawn from the
depths of his inner consciousness. Our scholars of the nineteenth as anxious to
imitate him practically as they are to throw his inductive method and
materialistic theories at the heads of the Platonists. We invite them to
collect facts as carefully as he did, instead of denying those they know
nothing about.
What we have said here and elsewhere of the
variety of "spirits" and other invisible beings evolved in the astral
light, and what we now mean to say of mediums and the tendency of their
mediumship, is not based upon conjecture, but upon actual experience and
observation. There is scarcely one phase of mediumship, of either kind, that we
have not seen exemplified during the past thirty-five years, in various
countries. India, Tibet, Borneo, Siam, Egypt, Asia Minor, America (North and
South), and other parts of the world, have each displayed to us its peculiar
phase of mediumistic phenomena and magical power.
Our varied experience has fully
corroborated the teachings of our Masters and of The Secret Doctrine, and has
taught us two important truths, viz., that for the exercise of
"mediumship" personal purity and the exercise of a trained and indomitable
will-power are indispensable; and that spiritualists can never assure
themselves of the genuineness of mediumistic manifestations unless they occur
in the light and under such reasonable test conditions as would make an
attempted fraud instantly noticed.
For fear of being misunderstood, we would
remark that while, as a rule, physical phenomena are produced by the
nature-spirits, of their own motion and under the impulse of the elementaries,
still genuine disembodied human spirits, may, under exceptional
circumstances--such as the aspiration of a pure, loving heart, or under the
influence of some intense thought or unsatisfied desire, at the moment of
death--manifest their presence, either in dream, or vision, or even bring about
their objective appearance--if very soon after physical death. Direct writing
may be produced in the genuine handwriting of the "spirit," the
medium
being influenced by a process unknown as
much to himself as to the modern spiritualists, we fear. But what we maintain
and shall maintain to the last is, that no genuine human spirit can
materialize, i.e., clothe his monad with an objective form. Even for the rest
it must be a mighty attraction indeed to draw a pure, disembodied spirit from
its radiant, Devachanic state--its home--into the foul atmosphere from which it
escaped upon leaving its earthly body.
When the possible nature of the manifesting
intelligences, which science
believes to be a "psychic force,"
and spiritualists the identical "spirits of
the dead," is better known, then will
academicians and believers turn to the old philosophers for information. They
may in their indomitable pride, that becomes so often stubbornness and
arrogance, do as Dr. Charcot, of the Salpêtrière of Paris, has done: deny for
years the existence of Mesmerism and its phenomena, to accept and finally
preach it in public lectures--only under the assumed name, Hypnotism. We have
found in spiritualistic journals many instances where apparitions of
departed pet dogs and other animals have
been seen. Therefore, upon
spiritualistic testimony, we must think
that such animal "spirits" do appear although we reserve the right of
concurring with the ancients that the forms are but tricks of the elementals.
Notwithstanding every proof and probability the spiritualists will,
nevertheless, maintain that it is the "spirits" of the departed human
beings that are at work even in the "materialization" of animals.
We will now examine with their permission
the pro and con of the mooted
question. Let us for a moment imagine an
intelligent orang-outang or some African anthropoid ape disembodied, i.e.,
deprived of its physical and in possession of an astral, if not an immortal
body. Once open the door of communication between the terrestrial and the
spiritual world, what prevents the ape from producing physical phenomena such
as he sees human spirits produce? And why may not these excel in cleverness and
ingenuity many of those which have been witnessed in spiritualistic circles?
Let spiritualists answer. The orang-outang of Borneo is little, if any,
inferior to the savage man in intelligence. Mr. Wallace and other great
naturalists give instances of its wonderful acuteness, although its brains are
inferior in cubic capacity to the most undeveloped of savages. These apes lack
but speech to be men of low grade.
The sentinels placed by monkeys; the
sleeping chambers selected and built by orang-outangs; their prevision of
danger and calculations, which show more than instinct; their choice of leaders
whom they obey; and the exercise of many of their faculties, certainly entitle
them to a place at least on a level with many a flat-headed Australian. Says
Mr. Wallace, "The mental requirements of savages, and the faculties
actually exercised by them, are very little above those of the
animals."
Now, people assume that there can be no
apes in the other world, because apes have no "souls." But apes have
as much intelligence, it appears, as some men; why, then, should these men, in
no way superior to the apes, have immortal spirits, and the apes none? The
materialists will answer that neither the one nor the other has a spirit, but
that annihilation overtakes each at physical death. But the spiritual
philosophers of all times have agreed that man occupies a step one degree
higher than the animal, and is possessed of that something
which it lacks, be he the most untutored of
savages or the wisest of
philosophers. The ancients, as we have
seen, taught that while man is a
septenary trinity of body, astral spirit,
and immortal soul, the animal is but a duality--i.e., having but five instead
of seven principles in him, a being having a physical body with its astral body
and life-principle, and its animal soul and vehicle animating it. Scientists can
distinguish no difference in the elements composing the bodies of men and
brutes; and the Kabalists agree with them so far as to say that the astral
bodies (or, as the physicists would call it, the "life-principle") of
animals and men are identical in essence. Physical man is but the highest
development of animal life. If, as the scientists tell us, even thought is
matter, and every sensation of pain or pleasure, every transient desire is
accompanied by a disturbance of ether; and those bold speculators, the authors
of the Unseen Universe believe that thought is conceived "to affect the
matter of another universe simultaneously with this";
why, then, should not the gross, brutish
thought of an orang-outang, or a dog, impressing itself on the ethereal waves of
the astral light, as well as that of man, assure the animal a continuity of
life after death, or a "future state"?
The Kabalists held, and now hold, that it
is unphilosophical to admit that the astral body of man can survive corporeal
death, and at the same time assert that the astral body of the ape is resolved
into independent molecules. That which survives as an individuality after the
death of the body is the astral soul, which Plato, in the Timæus and Gorgias,
calls the mortal soul, for, according to the Hermetic doctrine, it throws off
its more material particles at every progressive change into a higher sphere.
Let us advance another step in our
argument. If there is such a thing as
existence in the spiritual world after
corporeal death, then it must occur in accordance with the law of evolution. It
takes man from his place at the apex of the pyramid of matter, and lifts him
into a sphere of existence where the same inexorable law follows him. And if it
follows him, why not everything else in nature? Why not animals and plants,
which have all a life-principle, and whose gross forms decay like his, when
that life-principle leaves them? If his astral body becomes more ethereal upon
attaining the other sphere, why not theirs?*
1 Bulwer-Lytton, Zanoni.
2 Plutarch, De Isid., ch. xxv, p. 360.
3 De Natura Deorum, lib. i. Cap. xviii.
4 Let the student consult The Secret
Doctrine on this matter, and he will there find full explanations.
5 In order to create a blind, or throw a
veil upon the mystery of primordial evolution, the later Brâhmans, with a view
also to serve orthodoxy, explained the two, by an invented fable; the first
Pitris were "sons of God" and offended Brahmâ by refusing to
sacrifice to him, for which crime, the Creator cursed them to become fools, a
curse they could escape only by accepting their own sons as instructors and
addressing them as their Fathers--Pitris. This is the exoteric
version.
6 We find an echo of this in the Codex
Nazaræus. Bahak-Zivo, the "father of Genii" (the seven) is ordered to
construct creatures. But, as he is "ignorant of Orcus" and
unacquainted with "the consuming fire which is wanting in light," he
fails to do so and calls in Fetahil, a still purer spirit, to his aid, who
fails still worse and sits in the mud (Ilus, Chaos, Matter) and wonders why the
living fire is so changed. It is only when the "Spirit" (Soul) steps
on the stage of creation (the feminine Anima Mundi of the Nazarenes and Gnostics)
and awakens Karabtanos--the spirit of matter and concupiscence--who consents to
help his
mother, that the "Spiritus"
conceives and bring forth "Seven Figures," and again
"Seven" and once more "Seven" (the Seven Virtues, Seven
Sins and Seven Worlds). Then Fetahil dips his hand in the Chaos and creates our
planet. (See Isis Unveiled, vol. i. 298-300 et seq.)
7 Idra Suta, Zohar, iii. 292b.
8Of late, some narrow-minded
critics--unable to understand the high philosophy of the above doctrine, the
Esoteric meaning of which reveals when solved the widest horizons in
astro-physical as well as in psychological sciences--chuckled over and
pooh-poohed the idea of the eighth sphere, that could discover to their minds,
befogged with old and mouldy dogmas of an unscientific faith, nothing better
than our "moon in the shape of a dust-bin to collect the sins of
men!"
9Persons who believe in clairvoyant
power, but are disposed to discredit the existing of any other spirits in
nature than disembodied human spirits, will be interested in an account of
certain clairvoyant observations which appeared in the London Spiritualist of
June 29th, 1877. A thunderstorm approaching, the seeress saw "a bright
spirit emerge from a dark cloud and pass with lightning speed across the sky,
and, a few minutes after, a diagonal line of dark spirits in the clouds."
These are the Maruts of the Vedas. The well-known lecturer, author,and
clairvoyant, Mrs. Emma Hardinge Britten, has published accounts of her frequent
experiences with these elemental spirits.
If Spiritualists will accept her
"spiritual" experience they can hardly reject her evidence in favour
of the occult theories.
10 Correlation of Vital with Chemical
and Physical Forces, by J. Le Conte.
11Archives des Sciences, xiv. 345,
December, 1872.
12 Mr. Cromwell F. Varley, the
well-known electrician of the Atlantic Cable Company, communicates the result
of his observations, in the course of a debate at the Psychological Society of
Great Britain, which is reported in the Spiritualist (London, April 14th, 1876,
pp. l74, 175). He thought that the effect of free nitric acid in the atmosphere
was able to drive away what he calls "unpleasant spirits." He thought
that those who were troubled by unpleasant spirits at home, would find relief
by pouring one ounce of vitriol upon two ounces of finely-powdered nitre in a
saucer and putting the mixture under the bed. Here is a scientist, whose
reputation extends over two continents, who gives a recipe to drive away bad
spirits! And yet the general public mocks at as a "superstition" the
herbs and incenses employed by Hindus, Chinese, Africans, and other races to
accomplish the self-same purpose!
13 "Of Sacrifices to Gods and
Daimons," chap. ii.
14 Odyssey, vii.
15 Porphyry, "Of Sacrifices to Gods
and Daimons," chap. ii.
16 Ibid.
17 Iamblichus, De Mysteriis Egyptorum.
18 Ibid., "On the Difference
between the Daimons, the Souls," etc.
19 We give the spelling and words of
this Kabalist, who lived and published his works in the seventeenth century.
Generally he is considered as one of the most famous alchemists among the
Hermetic philosophers.
20 The most positive of materialistic
philosophers agree that all that exists was evolved from ether; hence, air,
water, earth, and fire, the four primordial elements must also proceed from
ether and chaos the first duad; all the imponderables, whether now known or
unknown, proceed from the same source. Now, if there is a spiritual essence in
matter, and that essence forces it to shape itself into millions of individual
forms, why is it illogical to assert that each of these spiritual kingdoms in
nature is peopled with beings evolved out of its own material? Chemistry
teaches us that in man's body there are air, water,
earth, and heat, or fire--air is present
in its components; water in the
secretions; earth in the inorganic
constituents; and fire in the animal heat.
The Kabalist knows by experience that an
elemental spirit contains only one of these, and that each one of the four
kingdoms has its own peculiar elemental spirits; man being higher than they,
the law of evolution finds its illustration in the combination of all four in
him.
21 Virgil, Georgica. book ii.
22 Porphyry and other philosophers
explain the nature of the dwellers They are mischievous and deceitful, though
some of them are perfectly gentle and harmless, but so weak as to have the
greatest difficulty in communicating with mortals whose company they seek
incessantly. The former are not wicked through intelligent malice. The law of
spiritual evolution not having yet developed their instinct into intelligence,
whose highest light belongs but to immortal spirits, their powers of reasoning
are in a latent state, and, therefore, they themselves, irresponsible.
But the Latin Church contradicts the
Kabalists. St. Augustine has even a
discussion on that account with
Porphyry, the Neoplatonist. "These spirits," he says, "are
deceitful, not by their nature, as Porphyry, the theurgist, will have it, but
through malice. They pass themselves off for gods and for the souls of
the defunct" (Civit. Det, x. 2). So
far Porphyry agrees with him; "but they do not claim to be demons [read
devils], for they are such in reality!"--adds the Bishop of Hippo. So far,
so good, and he is right there, But then, under what class should we place the
men without heads, whom Augustine wishes us to believe he saw himself; or the
satyrs of St. Jerome, which he asserts were exhibited for a considerable length
of time at Alexandria? They were, he tells us, "men with the legs and
tails of goats"; and, if we may believe him, one of these satyrs was
actually pickled and sent in a cask to the Emperor Constantine!!!
23 Görres, Mystique, iii; 63.
24 The ancients called the spirits of
bad people "souls"; the soul was the
"larva" and
"lemure." Good human spirits became "gods."
25 Porphyry, De Sacrificiis. Chapter on
the true Cultus.
26 Chap. lxxx. vv. 19, 20. "And
when the Egyptians hid themselves on account of the swarm [one of the plagues
alleged to have been brought on by Moses] . . . they locked their doors after
them, and God ordered the Sulanuth . . . [a sea-monster, naively explains the
translator, in a foot-note] which was then in the sea, to come up and go into
Egypt . . . and she had long arms, ten cubits in length . . . and she went upon
the roofs and uncovered the rafting and cut them . . . and stretched forth her
arm into the house and removed the lock and the bolt and opened the houses of
Egypt . . . and the swarm of animals destroyed the
Egyptians, and it grieved them
exceedingly."
27 Strom., vi. 17, § 159.
28 Ibid., vi. 3, §30.
29As says Krishna--who is at the same
time Purusha and Prakriti in its totality, and the seventh principle, the
divine spirit in man--in the Bhagavad Gita: "I arn the Cause. I am the
production and dissolution of the whole of Nature. On me is all the Universe
suspended as pearls upon a string." (Ch. vii.) "Even though myself
unborn, of changeless essence, and the Lord of all existence, yet in presiding
over Nature (Prakriti) which is mine, I am born but through my own Mâyâ [the
mystic power of Self-ideation, the Eternal Thought in the Eternal Mind]." (Ch.
iv.)
30 Ether is the Âkâsha of the Hindus.
Âkâsha is Prakriti, or the totality of the manifested Universe, while Purusha
is the Universal Spirit, higher than the Universal Soul.
31 De Part., i. 1.
32 A Pythagorean oath. The Pythagoreans
swore by their Master.
*The article here comes to an abrupt
termination--whether it was ever finished or whether some of the MS. was lost,
it is impossible to say.--EDS. [Lucifer].
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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.
Geoffrey of Monmouth
(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.
Pendragon Castle
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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