Isis Unveiled [1/2]

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Unveiled:

Isis

A MASTER-KEY TO THE

Mysteries of Ancient and Modern

AND THEOLOGY.

SCIENCE

BY

H.

P.

BLAVATSKY,

CORRESPONDING SECRETARY OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.

“ Cecy

est

un

VoL.

livre

de bonne Foy.”

Montaigne.

l.—SC lENCE.

FOURTH EDITION.

NEW YORK: J.

W. BOUTON, 706 LONDON

:

BROADWAY.

BERNARD QUARITCH. 1878.

COPTBIOHT, BY 'J.

W. BOTTTON. 1877.

fi)

BV

1^^^

Tpow’s Printing and Bookbinding Co.) PRINTERS AND BOOKBINDERS, 205-213 /iast

-iith St.,

NEW YORK.

THE AUTHOR JDcbicatcs

tljjcse

boltttnes

TO THE

THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, WHICH WAS FOUNDED AT NEW YORK,

A.D.

1875,

To Study the Subjects on which they Treat.

TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGH v

Preface

BEFORE THE

VEIL.

Dognmatic assumptions of modern science and theology. The Platonic philosophy affords the only middle ground

ix

xi

xv

Review of the ancient philosophical systems

A

Syriac manuscript on

Simon Magus

xxiii

xxiU

Glossary of terms used in this book

THE

^HlSrFALLIBILITY"

OF MODERN SCIENCE.

CHAPTER OLD THINGS WITH

I.

NEW

NAMES.

The Oriental Kabala

I

Ancient traditions supported by modern research

3

The progress of mankind marked by

5

cycles

Ancient cryptic science Priceless value of the

y

Vedas

12

Mutilations of the Jewish sacred books in translation

13

Magic always regarded

25

Achievements of

Man’s yearning

its

as a divine science

adepts and hypotheses of their

modem

for immortality

detractors

25

37

CHAPTER

II.

PHENOMENA AND FORCES. The

servility

of society

Prejudice and bigotry of

They

3^

men

of science

are chased by psychical phenomena.

4

j

41

CONTENTS.

I

PAGE

49

Lost arts

The human

will the master-force of forces

Superficial generalizations of the

57

6o

French savants.

Mediumistic phenomena, to what attributable

67

Their relation to crime

7^

CHAPTER

III.

BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND. 74

Huxley’s derivation from the Orohippus Comte, his system and disciples

The London

materialists

Borrowed robes Emanation of the

*

75 85

89 objective universe from the subjective

CHAPTER

92

IV.

THEORIES RESPECTING PSYCHIC PHENOMENA. 100

Theory of de Gasparin “ of Thury “ of des Mousseaux, de Mirville

“ “ ”

The

100 100 101

of Babinet

101

of Houdin of MM. Royer and Jobart de Lamballe “ unconscious ventriloquism. twins “ unconscious cerebration” and

1

Theory of Crookes “ of Faraday

“

102 105 12

116

116

of Chevreuil

The Mendeleyeff commission

117

of 1876

121

Soul blindness

CHAPTER

V.

THE ETHER, OR “ASTRAL LIGHT.” One primal

force,

but

many

126

correlations

127

Tyndall narrowly escapes a great discovery The impossibility of miracle

128 133

Nature of the primordial substance Interpretation of certain ancient myths

133 139

Experiments of the fakirs

153

Evolution in Hindu allegory

CHAPTER

VI.

PSYCHO-PHYSICAL PHENOMENA.

The debt we owe to Paracelsus Mesmerism— its parentage, reception,

•

potentiality

CONTENTS. PAGB

“ Psychometry ” >84

Time, space, eternity Transfer of energy from the visible to the invisible universe

The

Crookes experiments and

Cox

theory.

i

86

19S

CHAPTER

VII.

THE ELEMENTS, ELEMENTALS, AND ELEMENTARIES. Attraction and repulsion universal in

phenomena depend on Observations in Siam Psychical

all

the

kingdoms of nature

physical surroundings

in

world-soul ” and

215 216

its potentialities

217

Healing by touch, and healers “ Diakka ” and Porphyry’s bad demons

219 224

The quenchless lamp

Modem

211

214

nervous disorders

Music

The “

206

ignorance of vital force

Antiquity of the theory of force-correlation

237 241

Universality of belief in magic

247

CHAPTER

VIII.

SOME MYSTERIES OF NATURE.

Do

the planets affect

human

destiny

253

?

Very curious passage from Hermes The restlessness of matter Prophecy of Nostradamus fulfilled

254

Sympathies between planets and plants

264

Hindu knowledge of the properties of colors “ Coincidences” the panacea of modern science

265 268

The moon and

257

260

the tides

273

Epidemic mental and moral disorders

The gods of

274 280

the Pantheons only natural forces

Proofs of the magical powers of Pythagoras

283

The viewless races of ethereal space The “four truths” of Buddhism

284

CHAPTER

291

IX.

CYCLIC PHENOMENA.

Meaning of the expression “coats of skin”

293

Natural selection and its results The Egyptian “ circle of necessity ”

295 296

Pre- Adamite races

Descent of

The The

spirit into

matter

299 ^02

man

^09

lowest creatures in the scale of being

310

triune nature of

1

CONTENTS PAGE

Elementals

specifically described

31

Proclus on the beings of the air

312

Various names for elementals Swedenborgian views on soul-death.

3^3

Earth-bound human souls Impure mediums and their “ guides”

3*9

Psychometry an aid to

333

3*7

3^5

scientific research

CHAPTER

X.

THE INNER AND OUTER MAN. Pfere Edlix arraigns the scientists

33^

The “ Unknowable ” Danger of evocations by tyros Lares and Lemures Secrets of Hindu temples

34°

Reincarnation

35*

342 345

35° 353

Witchcraft and witches

The

sacred

soma

357

trance

Vulnerability of certain

“ shadows ”

3^3

Experiment of Clearchus on a sleeping boy The author witnesses a trial of magic in India

3^5

Case of the Cevennois

37*

CHAPTER

3^9

XI.

PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PHYSICAL MARVELS. Invulnerability attainable

by man

379 3^0

Projecting the force of the will Insensibility to snake-poison

3*^*

Charming serpents by music

383

Teratological phenomena discussed The psychological domain confessedly unexplored

3°5 4°7

Despairing regrets of Berzelius Turning a river into blood a vegetable phenomenon

4*

CHAPTER

*

4*3

XII.

THE “ IMPASSABLE CHASM.” Confessions of ignorance by

The Pantheon

men

of science

of nihilism

Triple composition of fire Instinct and reason defined I hilosophy of the

Hindu Jains

Deliberate misrepresentations of Man’s astral soul not immortal

The

4*7

reincarnation of

Magical sun and

Buddha

moon

pictures of Thibet

423 425

429 43*

4

CONTENTS. PAGH

Vampirism

—

its

phenomena explained

Bengalese jugglery

CHAPTER

XIII.

REALITIES AND ILLUSION.

The

^

rationale of talismans

Unexplained mysteries Magical experiment in Bengal

Chibh Chondor’s surprising

The

feats

Indian tape-climbing trick

an

473

illusion

477

Resuscitation of buried fakirs

4

Limits of suspended animation

Mediumship

What

4 7

totally antagonistic to adeptship

493

are “materialized spirits ”

Philosophy of levitation

495 497

and alkahest

5°3

The ShudAla Mddan The

elixir

CHAPTER

XIV.

EGYPTIAN WISDOM. Origin of the Egyptians

5^5

Their mighty engineering works The ancient land of the Pharaohs

5^7 52i

5^9

monuments

Antiquity of the Nilotic

Arts of war and peace

53^

Mexican myths and Resemblances to the Egyptian

545

Moses a priest of Osiris

555 5^3

ruins'.

55^

lessons taught by the ruins of Siam

The The Egyptian Tau

at

573

Palenque

CHAPTER

XV.

INDIA THE CRADLE OF Acquisition of the

“

THE RACE. 575

secret doctrine”

Pali scholar

577

Jealous exclusiveness of the Hindus

5^*

Lydia Maria Child on Phallic symbolism The age of the Vedas and Manu

5^3

Traditions of pre-diluvian races

5^9

Atlantis and

593

Two

relics

owned by a

its

Peruvian

relics

The Gobi

desert

5^7

peoples

597

and

its

599

secrets

a.S5rJ

>0

>, Mft'XtififVr' i.i*«

,4

•

0":

V

cj‘

in

Nature.” ro

m

—

THE FORCE THAT MOVES THE ATOMS.

6l

by several of the greatest German scientists, teaches that that invisible Force, the problem of matter can only be solved by “ magical knowledge,” acquaintance with which Schopenhauer terms the must first ascertain we Thus, and “ magical effect or action of Will.” whether the “ involuntary vibrations of the experimenter’s muscular syspartly accepted

which are but “ actions of matter,” are influenced by a will within In the former case Babinet makes of him the experimenter or without. an unconscious epileptic the latter, as we will further see, he rejects altogether, and attributes all intelligent answers of the tipping or rapping ten>,”

;

tables to “ unconscious ventriloquism.”

We know

that every exertion of will results in force,

ing to the above-named

German

forces are individual actions of

and

that,

accord-

school, the manifestations of atomic resulting in the unconscious rushing

will,

of atoms into the concrete image already subjectively created by the will. Democritus taught, after his instructor Leucippus, that the first principles of

all

things contained in the universe

kabalistic sense, the

which

latent force,

vacuum means

were atoms and a vacuum.

In

its

in this instance the latent Deity, or

at its first manifestation

became will, and

thus

com-

—

municated the first impulse to these atoms whose agglomeration, is This vacuum was but another name for chaos, and an unsatismatter. factory one, for, according to the Peripatetics “nature abhors a vacuum.’

That before Democritus the ancients were familiar with the idea of the indestructibility of matter is proved by their allegories and numerous other facts. Movers gives a definition of the Phoenician idea of the ideal sun-light as a spiritual influence issuing from the highest God, Iao, “ the light conceivable only by intellect the physical and spiritual Principle of all things out of which the soul emanates.” It was the male Essence, or Wisdom, while the primitive matter or Chaos was the female. Thus the two first principles co-eternal and infinite, were already with the primitive Phoenicians, spirit and matter. Therefore the theory is as old as the world for Democritus was not the first philosopher who taught it and intuition existed in man before the ultimate development of his reason. But it is in the denial of the boundless and endless Entity, possessor of that invisible Will which we for lack of a better term call God,

—

;

—

;

;

that lies the powerlessness of every materialistic science to

occult phenomena.

It is

in

explain

the

the rejection a priori of everything which

might force them to cross the boundary of exact science and step into the domain of psychological, or, if we prefer, metaphysical physiology, that we find the secret cause of their discomfiture by the manifestations, and their absurd theories to account for them. The ancient philosophy affirmed that

it is in consequence of the manifestation of that Will termed by Plato the Divine Idea that everything visible and invisible

—

THE VEIL OF

62

ISIS.

As that Intelligent Idea, which, by directing its sprung into existence. forces called objective foims sole will-power toward a centre of localized

do the man, the microcosm of the great Macrocosm, imagiThe will-power. his same in proportion with the development of gratefully and by Democritus, nary atoms— a figure of speech employed

into being, so can

workmen moved

in-

upon by the materialists—are like automatic Will directed upon them, and vvhich, wardly by the influx of that Universal The plan of the into activity. manifesting itself as force, sets them of the Architect, and reflects his structure to be erected is in the brain coninstant of the conception it becomes will- abstract as yet, from the and point line, every faithfully follow crete through these atoms which seized

Divine Geometer. traced in the imagination of the r Given a certain intensity of create. As God creates, so man can Ha ucithe mind become subjective. will and the shapes created by as any real are they to their creator nations, they are called, although intelligent Given a more intense and visible object is to any one else. becomes concrete, visible, objecconcentration of this will, and the form of secrets ; he is a magician. the man has learned the secret tive logic, for he regards thought The materialist should not object to this mechanism contrived by Conceding it to be so, the cunning as matter. poefs brain; the gorgeous tL inventor; the fairy scenes born in the chiselled fancy ; the peerless statue painting limned bv the artist's the archipalaces and castles built in air by ether by the sculptor; the they are

ficrure

•

m

must exist, for though invisible and subjective, are no shall say, then, that there ma ter shaped and moulded. Who air-drawn these able to drag s^rinen of such imperial will as to be of gross substance casing view, enveloped in the hard

tect-aU

these,

fancies into

of invest

lanre.s in ,l«

scLti.. reaped no

“If

Mr. Crookes England, until the day when body ? Why, sins of the learned Sered himself in atonement for the be spoken actually condescended to Mr Faraday some twenty years ago, Pronounce^ .h/snbie«A'araday, rvirose nanre ,s gation what

more was done

in

“

"ron

roneror

an.i-si*l.natos

Farlday,

forraH^ published his researches have never now proved on good authority to

^bSed” belief

is

We

table ’himself at all the TotirnaL aes jueoais, !

have but puuusuc^

to

open a

events .n^ll t e.r pn co.nes^ Dr. ^oncau t of Pans one of these numbers y> eminent English experimente

^

tij j

freshness

g

.^ faXpion

England, io recall .he

.

for the

sat at a

who

THE USES OF HALF-SOFT GLUE.

63

“that the grand physicist had ever himself condescended so far as to

sit

Whence, then, came the “blushes” prosaically at a jumping table.” ” which suffused the cheeks of the “ Father of Experimental Philosophy ? Remembering this fact, we will now examine the nature of P'araday’s beautiful “ Indicator,” the extraordinary “ Medium-Catcher,” invented by him the

for the detection of

memory

mediums,

is

mediumistic fraud.

That complicated machine,

of which haunts like a nightmare the dreams of dishonest carefully described

in

Comte de

Mirville’s

Question des

Esprits.

The

better to prove to the experimenters the reality of their

own

impulsion. Professor Faraday placed several card- board disks, united to

each other and stuck to the table by a half-soft glue, which, making the whole adhere for a time together, would, nevertheless, yield to a continu-

ous pressure. to

turn before

—

Now, the table having turned yes, actually having dared Mr. Faraday, which fact is of some value, at least the

—

examined and, as they were found to have gradually displaced themselves by slipping in the same direction as the table, it thus became an unquestionable proof that the experimenters had pushed the disks were

;

tables themselves.

Another of the so called scientific tests, so useful in a phenomenon alleged to be either spiritual or psychical, consisted of a small instrument which immediately warned the witnesses of the slightest personal impulsion on their part, or rather, according to Mr. Faraday’s own expression, “ it warned them when they changed from the passive to the active state.” This needle which betrayed the active motion proved but one thing, viz. the action of a force which either emanated from the sitters or controlled them. And who has ever said that there is no such force ? Every one :

admits so much, whether

this force passes through the operator, as it is generally shown, or acts independently of him, as is so often the case.

“The whole mystery consisted in the disproportion of the force employed by the operators, who pushed because they were forced to push, with certain effects of rotation, or rather, of a really marvellous race. In the ]3resence of such prodigious effects, how could any one imagine that the Lilliputian experiments of that kind could have any value in this newly discovered Land of Giants ?” *

Professor Agassiz, who occupied in America nearly the same eminent position as a scientist which Mr. Faraday did in England, acted with a still greater unfairness. Professor R. Buchanan, the distinguished anthropologist, who has treated Spiritualism in some respects more scientifically than any one else in America, speaks of Agassiz, in a recent article, with *

Comte de

Mirville:

“ Question des

Esprits.”

THE VEIL Ot

64

For, of

a very just indignation.

all

ISIS.

other men, Professor Agassiz ought

which he had been a subject himself. But that both Faraday and Agassiz are themselves disembodied, we can

to believe in a

now

phenomenon

to

do better by questioning the living than the dead. Thus a force whose secret powers were thoroughly familiar to the ancient theurgists, is denied by modern skeptics. The antediluvian children who perhaps played with it, using it as the boys in Bulwer-Lytton’s called it the “Water of the tremendous “ z'rz'/” Coming Hace, Mundi, the soul of the Anima it the named descendants Phtha j” their and still later the mediteval hermetists termed it “ sidereal universe light,” or the “ Milk of the Celestial Virgin,” the “'Mapes,” and many But our modern learned men will neither accept nor other names. recognize it under such appellations for it pertains to 7nagic, and magic

—

—

;

;

is,

in their conception, a disgraceful superstition.

Apollonius and lamblichus held that

it

was not “

in the

knowledge of

things without, but in the perfection of the soul within, that lies the emThus they had arrived at pire of man, aspiring to be more tlran men.”*

a perfect cognizance of their godlike souls, the powers of which they used with all the wisdom, outgrowth of esoteric study of the hermetic lore, inherited by them from their forefathers. But our philosophers, not tightly shutting themselves up in their shells of flesh, cannot or dare For them there is no carry their timid gaze beyond the comprehensible. them as unscienscorn they dreams, future life ; there are no godlike tific

;

for

express

it

them the men of old are but “ ignorant ancestors,” as they and whenever they meet during their physiological researches ;

spiritual with an author who believes that this mysterious yearning after given been have cannot knowledge is inherent in every human being, and us utterly in vain, they regard him with contemptuous pity. “ The darker the sky is, the brighter the Says a Persian proverb Thus, on the dark firmament of the mediaeval ages will shine.” :

stars

formed began appearing the mysterious Brothers of the Rosie Cross. They and down like so no associations, they built no colleges for, hunted up they were unChurch, Christian many wild beasts, when caught by the 3

“

“As religion forbids it,’ says Bayle, to spill ceremoniously roasted. Ecclesia 7ion 7iovit sa7iguine7n, blood,” therefore, “ to elude the maxim, man does not shed his blood! they burned human beings, as burning a Many of these mystics, by following what they were taught by sorne generation to another, achieved distreatises, secretly preserved from one in our modern days of coveries which would not be despised even at as a quack, and laughed was Roger Bacon, the friar, exact sciences.

*

Bulwer-Lytton

:

“ Zanoni.”

FRIAR bacon’s MIRACLES.

65

numbered among “ pretenders ” to magic art but his discoveries were nevertheless accepted, and are now used by those who Roger Bacon belonged by right if not by fact to ridicule him the most. is

now

generally

;

Brotherhood which includes

that

all

those

who

study the occult sciences.

Living in the thirteenth century, almost a contemporary, therefore, of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, his discoveries such as gunpowder and optical glasses, and his mechanical achievements were con-

—

sidered by every one as so

made

many

miracles.

He

—

was accused of having

a compact with the Evil One.

“ well as in an old play In the legendary history of Friar Bacon, as written bv Robert Green, a dramatist in the days of Queen Elizabeth, it is recounted, that, having been summoned before the king, the friar was induced to show” some of his skill before her majesty the queen. So he waved his hand (/i/s wafid, says the text), and “ presently was heard such excellent music, that they all said they had never heard the like.” Then there was heard a still louder music and four apparitions suddenly presented themselves and danced until they vanished and disappeared in

Then he waved

wand

and suddenly there was such a if all the rich perfumes in the whole world had been there prepared in the best manner that art conld set them out.” Then Roger Bacon having promised a gentleman to show him his sweeetheart, he pulled a hanging in the king’s apartment aside and every one in the room saw “ a kitchen-maid with a basting-ladle in her hand.” The proud gentleman, although he recognized the maiden who disappeared as suddenly as she had appeared, was enraged at the humiliating spectacle, and threatened the friar with his revenge. What does the magician do ? He “ Threaten not, lest I do you more shame and do you simply answers ; take heed how you give scholars the lie again ” As a commentary on this, the modern historian * remarks “ This may be taken as a sort of exemplification of the class of exhibitions which were probably the result of a superior knowledge of natural sciences.” No one ever doubted that it was the result of precisely such a knowledge, and the hermetists, magicians, astrologers and alchemists never claimed anything else. It certainly was not their fault that the ignorant masses, under the influence of an unscrupulous and fanatical clergy, should have attributed all such works to the agency of the devil. In view of the atrocious tortures provided by the Inquisition for all suspected of either black or the

air.

his

again,

smell “ as

:

!

:

white magic,

it is not strange that these philosophers neither boasted nor even acknowledged the fact of such an intercourse. On the contrary,

their

own

writings prove that they held that magic * T.

5

Wright

:

“

NixiTatives of Sorcery

is

“ no more than the

and Magic.”

THE VEIL OF

66

ISIS.

subjects ; by application of natural active causes to passive things or means thereof, many tremendously surprising but yet natuial effects are

produced.”

Roger of the mystic odors and music, exhibited by of nothing Bacon, have been often observed in our own time. To say correspondents of our personal experience, we are informed by English of the most strains heard of the Theosophical Society that they have a sucinhaled and ravishing music, coming from no visible instrument, believed, by spirit-agency. cession of delightful odors produced, as they one of these familiar was powerful One correspondent tells us that so impregnated with odors—that of sandal-wood— that the house would be The medium in this case was a member of after the seance.

The phenomena

it

for

weeks

made within the domestic a private family, and the experiments were all “ Ihe potencies rap.” musical Another describes what he calls a circle. existed now capable of producing these phenomena must have that are

Roger Bacon. As to the apnow in spiritualistic cirevoked are it suffices to say that they Roger Bacon is guarantied by scientists, and their evocation by

and been equally paritions,

efficacious in the days of

cles,

and

thus

made more probable than

Baptista

Porta, in

ever.

his treatise

on Natural Magic, enumeiates

a

extraordinary effects whole catalogue of secret formulie for producing Athough the “ mapcians by employing the occult powers of nature. world of invisible spirits, none believed as firmly as our spiritualists in a under their control or through their of them claimed to produce his effects away the eleThey knew too well how difficult it is to keep sole help. the door wide open. Even mentary creatures when they have once found knowledge of the profound was but a the magic of the ancient Chaldeans only when the theurgist desired powers of simples and minerals. It was matters that he sought direct communidivine help in spiritual and earthly pure spiritual beings. With them even cation through religious rites, with communicate with moitals throug those spirits who remain invisible and clairvoyance, clairaudience and trance their awakened inner senses, as in as a result of purity of life and could only be evoked subjectively and produced simply by appljung But all physical phenomena were prayer. o although certainly not by the method a knowledge of natural forces, conjurers. legerdemain, practiced in our days by such powers patient y Men possessed of such knowledge and exercising Seekfame. the vain glory of a passing toiled for something better than good of the as do all who labor or the ing it not, they became immortal, with the light of eternal tru h, raL forgetful of mean self. Illuminated things that he their attention upon the these rich-poor alchemists fixed the l-,rs. recognising nothing tnscrutable but lliyond .he coe.mon ken,

!

THE SOULLESS “KATIE KING.”

67

To dare, to know, to unsolvable. Cause, and finding no question rule ; to be beneficent, unselfish, and REMAIN SILENT, was their constant Disdaining the impulses. and unpretending, were, with them, spontaneous power, worldly and pomp, rewards of petty traffic, spurning wealth, luxury, acquisitions. satisfying of all they aspired to knowledge as the most evil report of men, as none the They esteemed poverty, hunger, toil, and They, who might have lam too great a price to pay for its achievement. to die in hospitals on downy, velvet-covered beds, suffered themselves than debase their souls and allow the profane will,

and by the wayside, rather cupidity of those who tempted them

triumph over their sacred vows.

to

The lives of Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa, and known to repeat the old, sad story. If spiritualists are anxious to

keep

strictly

Philalethes are too well

dogmatic in their notions

investigate their pheof the “ spirit-world,” they must not set scientists to nomena in the true experimental spirit. The attempt would most surely that of Moses and result in a partial re-discovery of the magic of old Under the deceptive beauty of some of their apparitions, Paracelsus.

—

Rosiciucians they might find some day the sylphs and fair Undines of the force. odic and playing in the currents of psychic Already Mr. Crookes, who fully credits the being, feels that under the skin of Katie, covering a simulacrum of heart borrowed partially And the learned authors from the medium and the circle, there is no soul fair

“ electro-biological ” theory, of The Unseen Universe, abandoning their begin to perceive in the universal ether the possibility that it is a photographic album of

En-Soph

—the Boundless.

are far from believing that all the spirits that communicate at cir“ Elementary.” Many cles are of the classes called “ Elemental,” and speak, subjectively to medium the control who among those especially

We

—

—

and otherwise act in various ways are human, disembodied, spirits. Whether the majority of such spirits are good or bad, largely depends on the private morality of the medium, much on the circle present, and a If this object is great deal on the intensity and object of their purpose. merely to gratify curiosity and to pass the time, it is useless to expect anything serious. But, in any case, human spirits can never materialize persona. These can never appear to the investigathemselves in tor clothed with warm, solid flesh, sweating hands and faces, and grosslymaterial bodies. The most they can do is to project their aethereal reflection on the atmospheric waves, and if the touch of their hands and cloth-

write,

ing can

become upon

rare occasions objective to the senses of a living

as a passing breeze gently sweeping over the it will be felt It is useless to touched spot, not as a human hand or material body. ” “ themselves with materialized spirits that have exhibited plead that the

mortal,

THE VEIL OF

6S

ISIS.

and loud voices (with or without a trumpet) are human spirits. The \ oices if such sound can be termed a voice at all of a spiritual apparition once heard can hardly be forgotten. That of a pure spirit is like the tremulous murmur of an .®olian harp echoed from a distance the voice of a suffering, hence impure, if not utterly bad spirit, may be assimilated to a human voice issuing from an empty barrel.

Ideating hearts

—

—

;

This

not our philosophy, but that of the numberless generations of

is

and magicians, and based upon their practical experience. The testimony of antiquity is positive on this subject Aai/xoviiov tfiojval avapOpoi theurgists

;

ei(TL.

.

.

The

.

voices of spirits are not

articulated.

The

spirit-

voice consists of a series of sounds which conveys the impression of a column of compressed air ascending from beneath upward, and spreading around the living interlocutor. in the case of Elizabeth Eslinger,

The many eye-witnesses who namely

:

f

testified

the deputy-governor of the

Mayer, Eckhart, Theurer, and Knorr (sworn evidence), Diittenhbfer, and Kapff, the mathematician, testified that they saw For the space of eleven weeks, the apparition /ike a pillar of clouds. ministers, the advocate Lutheran several sons, Doctor Kerner and his Fraas, the engraver Diittenhbfer, two physicians, Siefer and Sicherer, the

prison of Weinsberg,

judge Heyd, and the Baron von Hugel, with many others, followed this During the time it lasted, the prisoner Elizabeth manifestation daily. spirit” was prayed with a loud voice uninterruptedly; therefore, as the talking at the same time, it could be no ventriloquism ; and that voice, they say, “ had nothing human in it ; no one could imitate its sounds.” Further on we will give abundant proofs from ancient authors concern-

ing this neglected truism.

claimed by the

We

spiritualists to

sufficient testimony.

and communicated

The

now only be human was will

again assert that no spirit

ever proved to be such on

influence of the disembodied ones can be

felt,

They can produce

by them to sensitives. cannot produce themselves otherwise They can control the body of a medium, and

subjectively

objective manifestations, but they

than as described above.

express their desires and ideas in various modes well known to spiritualpurely spiritual their ists ; but not materialize what is matterless and Thus every so-called “ materialization ’’—when genuine divine essence. {perhaps) by the will of that spirit whom the “ ap-

—

"

—is

either

produced

claimed to be but can only personate at best, or by the elementary goblins themselves, which are generally too stupid to deserve Upon rare occasions the spirits are the honor of being called devils. are ever ready to able to subdue and control these soulless beings, which

pearance”

is

* See f

Des Mousseaux’s “Dodone,” and “ Dieu

“ Apparitions,”

et les dieux,” p. 326.

translated by C. Crowe, pp. 388, 391, 399.

;

;

materialized spirits not i-iuman. assume pompous names

if left

to themselves, in

69

such a way that the mis-

image of the human spirit, of the air,” shaped in the real either act or like a marionette, and unable to will be moved by the latter “ soph immortal the by imposed on him utter other words than those of circles the generally unknown to But this requires many conditions hot regularly attending seances, even spiritualists most in the habit of human spirits who likes. One of the most powerchievous

spirit “

every one can attract ones ful attractions of our departed

is

their strong affection for those

draws them irresistibly, by degrees, vibrating between the person syminto the current of the Astral Light condithem and the Universal Soul. Another very important

whom

they have

left

on

earth.

It

pathetic to

present. harmony, and the magnetic purity of the persons “ forms emerging materialized the If this philosophy is wrong, if all cabinets, are spirits of men who once in darkened rooms from still darker the ghosts upon this earth, why such a difference between them and

tion

is

’

lived

abrupto— Without either cabinet or medium ? appear unexpectedly— Who ever heard of the apparitions, unrestful “ souls,” hovering about the back for some other mysspots where they were murdered, or coming “ feeling like living fleWi, hands” warm terious reasons of their own, with not distinguishand but that they are known to be dead and buried, such apfrom living mortals? We have well-attested facts of that

able

paritions

making themselves suddenly

ginning of the era of the

visible,

materializations,

but never, until the bedid we see anything like

we read them. In the Medium and Day Break, of September 8, 1876, circuma narrating continent,” the on a letter from “a lady travelling stance that happened in a haunted house.

She

A

saj'^s

stiange

sound proceeded from a darkened corner of the library .... on look.... the ing up she perceived a cloud or column of luminous vapor earth-bound spirit was hovering about the spot rendered accursed by his ” As this spirit was doubtless a genume elementary appaevil deed it in short, an umbra rition, v/hich made itself visible of its own free will

—

—

was, as every respectable shadow should be, visible but impalpable, or if palpable at all, communicating to the feeling of touch the sensation of a

mass of water suddenly clasped in the hand, or of condensed but cold for aught we can tell it might have It was luminous and vapory steam. “ spirit,” persecuted, and earth-bound, the of umbra personal real been the or those crimes of another person or spirit. either by its own remorse and

The

mysteries of after-death are many, and

make them cheap and ridiculous in To these assertions may be opposed

only

ualists

forms.

:

modern “materializations”

the eyes of the indifferent.

a fact well

known among

spirit-

having seen such materialized

The writer has publicly certified to have most assuredly done so, and are ready

We

to repeat the

THE VEIL OF

70

ISIS.

We

have recognized such figures as the visible representacompany tions of acquaintances, friends, and even relatives. We have, in with many other spectators, heard them pronounce words in languages room, unfcimiliar not only to the medium and to every one else in the meeveiy except ourselves, but, in some cases, to almost if not quite tribes dium in America and Europe, for they were the tongues of Eastern concluas regarded justly were instances and peoples. At the time, these uneducated Vermont farmer sive proofs of the genuine mediumship of the But, nevertheless, these figures were not the sat in the “ cabinet.” testimony.

who

their portrait forms of the persons they appeared to be. They were simply If we elementaries. the statues, constructed, animated and operated by spiritualistic have not previously elucidated this point, it was because the

fundamental proposition public was not then ready to even listen to the Since that time this subspirits. that there are elemental and elementary less widely discussed. ject has been broached and more or less sea of criticism the in attempting to launch upon the restless

hazard now been some prepararion hoary philosophy of the ancient sages, for there has impartiality and deliberation. of the public mind to consider it with Two years of agitation have effected a marked change for the better. battle of Marathon, Pausanias writes that four hundred years after the neighing of horses the fought, there were still heard in the place where it was Supposing that the spectres of the and the shouts of shadowy soldiers. they looked like “ shadows,” slaughtered soldiers were their genuine spirits, what, produced the neighing of not materialized men. Who, then, or And if it be pronounced untrue that horses “ spirits ? ” horses

have

?

Eqinne

spirits

—which

assuredly no one

among

zoologists, physiologists or

prove or disprove— then psychologists, or even spiritualists, can either “ immortal souls ” of men which must we take it for granted that it was the the historical battle scene produced the neighing at Marathon to make dogs, cats, and various other more vivid and dramatic ? The phantoms of the world-wide testimony is as animals have been repeatedly seen, and with respect to human apparitions. trustworthy upon this point as that expression, the ghosts Who or tvhat personates, if we are allowed such an As the matter now Is it, again, human spirits? of departed animals? have either to admit that animals have stands, there is no side issue ; we that ourselves, or hold with Porphyry surviving spirits and souls as well as demons malicioiis and kind of tricky there are in the invisible world a men and “ gods,” spirits that de ig t living intermediary beings between human shape, beginning with the appearing under every imaginable of multifarious animals^* form, and ending with those

in

*

“ De Abstinentia,”

etc.

;

elementaries incite to crimes. spectral animal the question whether the Before venturing to decide attested are the returning farms so frequently seen and Do consider their reported behavior. beasts we must carefully as instincts same the habits and display spectres act according to the for wait in he Do the spectral beasts of prey the animals during life ? or do the before the presence of man ; victims, and timid animals flee to their disposition to annoy, quite forejn latter show a malevolence and perafflicted Many victims of these obsessions— notably, the natures ?

witchcrafts— testify to having seen sons of Salem and other historical entering their rooms, biting tiem, dogs, cats, pigs, and other animals, talking to them trampling upon their sleeping bodies, and In the well-attested case of Elizabeth other crimes. ;

them

to suicide

and

ancient priest

apparition of the Eslinger, mentioned by Dr. Kerner, the * was accompanied by a large black dog, which he called of Wimmenthal presence of numerous witnesses jumped his father, and which dog in the another time the priest appeared on all the beds of the prisoners. At Most of those accused at and sometimes with two lambs.

with a lamb,

and plotting mischief Salem were charged by the seeresses with consulting or on the beams shoulder with yellow birds, which would sit on their overhead.f

And

unless

we

discredit the testimony of thousands of wit-

and allow a monopoly appear and manifesi, do of seership to modern mediums, spectre-animals without themselves being all the worst traits of depraved human nature, human. What, then, can they be but elementals? that to Descartes was one of the few who believed and dared say •' destined to extend the domain occult medicine we shall owe discoveries and Brierre de Boismont not only shared in these hopes philosophy

nesses, in all parts of the world,

and in

all

ages,

of

he conbut openly avowed his sympathy with “ supernaturalism,” which We think with Guizot,” sidered the universal “grand creed” .

he says, “that the existence of society is bound up in it. It is in vain that modern reason, which, notwithstanding its positivism, cannot explain it is unithe intimate cause of any phenomena, rejects the supernatural versal,

and

at the

root of

all

hearts.

The most

elevated minds are

its most ardent disciples.” \ Christopher Columbus discovered America, and Americus Vespucius Theophrastus Paracelsus rereaped the glory and usurped his dues.

frequently

discovered the occult properties of the magnet

— “ the bone

of

Homs”

which, twelve centuries before his time, had played such an important and he very naturally became the founder part in the theurgic mysteries

—

•C. Crowe:

“On

Apparitions,”

t Brierre de Boismont

:

“

On

p. 398.

tUpham: “ Salem

Hallucinations,” p. 60.

Witchcraft.”

!

THE VEIL OF

72 of the

ISIS.

school of magnetism and of mediaeval magico-theurgy.

But hundred years after him, and as a disciple of his school brought the magnetic wonders before the public, reaped the glory that was due to the fire-philosopher, while the great master died in a hospital So goes the world new discoveries, evolving from old sciences ; new men the same old nature

Mesmer, who

lived

nearly three

:

—

1

CHAPTER

III.

both earth and heaven r« " The mirror of the soul cannot reflect „ deep. its upon glassed as the other is

;

and

the one vanishes from

its

surface,

Zanoni.

pas-quel avant^e au peuple que la Divinity n’existe " Qui. done, da donn4 la mission d’annoncer d’t hazard le 4 ses destinies et frappe au preside aveugle force me qu’une trouves tu 4 persuader 4 I’homme crime et la vertu ?

W

Robespierre (Discours),

”

May

7,

1794-

are few of those physical phenomena which Still, even spirits. genuine are caused by disembodied human happen as such nature, of forces those that are produced by occult by the employed consciously through a few genuine mediums, and are Egypt, deserve a careful and serious so-called “jugglers” of India and that a number of respected investigation by science ; especially now the hypothesis of fraud does authorities have testified that in many cases “ conjurors ” who can perdoubt, there are professed

E

believe

not hold.

that

No

English “John Kings form cleverer tricks than all the American and Robert Houdin unquestionably could, but this did not pretogether. when they vent his laughing outright in the face of the academicians, a table make could he that newspapers, him to assert in the desired

the move, or rap answers to questions, without contact of hands, unless The fact alone, that a now notorious Lontable was a prepared one.* Mr, don juggler refused to accept a challenge for p^i,ooo offered him by

Algernon Joy, f to produce such manifestations as are usually obtained hand^ through mediums, unless he was left unbound and fvee from the Clever phenomena. occult the of his exfost of a committee, negatives under the same as he may be, we defy and challenge him to reproduce,

For

juggler. the “ tricks” exhibited even by a common moment the at investigators the chosen by be instance, the spot to

the and the juggler to know nothing of the choice experiment to be made in broad daylight, without the least preparations without any confederate but a boy absolutely naked, and the jugfor it

of the performance,

;

3

gler to

be in a condition of semi-nudity.

After that,

we should

select

out of a variety three tricks, the most common among such public jugbelonging to glers, and that were recently exhibited to some gentlemen * See de Mirville’s

“Question des Esprits,” and the works on the “ Phfenom^nes

by de Gasparln. Honorary Secretary

Spirites,” f

to the National Association of Spiiitualisls of

London.

THE VEIL OF

74

ISIS.

—

firm!)' claspec i. To transform a rupee which would of bite cobra, the living a in 2. To cause a show. fangs would of its prove fatal, as an examination the first semin seed chosen at random by the spectators, and planted blance of a flower-pot, furnished by the same skeptics, to grow, mature,

the suite of the Prince of Wales the hand of a skeptic

:

—into

3. To stretch himself on than a quarter of an hour. in the ground at their hilts, the sharp three swords, stuck perpendicularly after that, to have removed first one of the swords, then j)oints upward

and bear fruit in

less

;

the juggler the other, and, after an interval of a few seconds, the last one, miraculously suspended air, on the jiothing on remaining, finally, lying

—

about one yard from the ground. When any prestidigitateur, to begin gratuitous with Houdin and end with the last trickster who has secured but only then sccjnc^ the does spiritualism, attacking advertisement by evolved been has mankind that then we will train ourselves to believe out of the hind-toe of Mr. Huxley’s Eocene Orohippus. We assert again, in full confidence, that there does not exist a profes-

at

who can compete with sional wizard, either of the North, South or West, naked sons of the anything approaching success, with these untutored, East.

These require no Egyptian Hall

for their performances,

nor any

moment s notice, to preparations or rehearsals ; but are ever ready, at a for European which, nature, evoke to their help the hidden powers of Verily, as a closed book. prestidigitateurs as well as for scientists, are men are not always wise; neither do the aged

it, “great of the English divine. Dr. understand judgment.” * To repeat the remark indeed, if there were any modesty Henry More, we may well say: “. of the Bible might abundantly assuie men left in mankind, the histories The same eminent man adds, “ I of the existence of angels and spirits.” fresh examples Providence that look ui)on it as a special piece of our benumbed and lethargic minds into an

Elihu puts

.

.

•

•

of apparitions

•

•

•

may awaken

beings besides those that are assurance that there are other intelligent for this evidence, showing that there clothed in heavy earth or clay .... a door to the belief that there are are bad spirits, will necessarily open The instance above given is a God.”

good ones, and

lastly, that

Lrries a moral with

it,

there

scientists,

not only to

but theologians.

Men

wlio

in professors’ chairs, are con-

and have made their mark in the pulpit really know so little of psycholothey that tinually showing the lay public who comes their way and take up with any plausible schemer gy, as to so

make themselves

ridiciilo.ts

in

student the eyes of the thoughtful and jugglers by been manufactured

Public opinion upon this subject has self-styled savants,

unworthy of respectful consideration. * Job.

PRETENDED EXPOSURES.

75

of psychological science has been retarded far more the inherent difficulties by the ridicule of this class of pretenders, than by The empty laugh of the scientific nursling or of the fools of of its study. of his imperial psychical fashion, has done more to keep man ignorant that cluster powers, than the obscurities, the obstacles and the dangers

Xhe development

especially the case with spiritualistic phenomena. incapables, is due their investigation has been so largely confined to

about the subject. This

That

to the fact that

men

is

of science,

who might and would have

studied them,

have been frightened off by the boasted exposures, the paltry jokes, and the impertinent clamor of those who are not worthy to tie their shoes. There are moral cowards even in university chairs. The inherent vitality of modern spiritualism is proven in its suiwival of the neglect of the scientific body, and of the obstreperous boasting of its pretended exposers. with the contemptuous sneers of the patriarchs of science, such as Faraday and Brewster, and end with the professional (?) expos'es of London, we will of the successful mimicker of the phenomena, If

we begin

,

not find them furnishing one single, well-established argument against “ theory is,” says this the occurrence of spiritual manifestations. individual, in his recent soi-disant '•'expose^ “ that Mr. Williams dressed

My

up and personified John King and Peter.

Thus

wasn’t so.” tion,

it is

it

Nobody can prove

that

it

appears that, notwithstanding the bold tone of asserall, and spiritualists might well retort upon

but a theory after

the exposer, and

demand

that he should prove that

it is

so.

,

But the most inveterate, uncompromising enemies of Spiritualism are a class very fortunately composed of but few members, who, nevertheless, declaim the louder and assert their views with a clamorousness worthy of a better cause.

America

—a

opening of

mongrel

this

These are the pretenders class of

to science of

young

pseudo-philosophers, mentioned at the

chapter, with sometimes no better right to be regarded as

scholars than the possession of an electrical machine, or the delivery of

a puerile lecture believe them

—

—

Such men are if you there is none of your are Positivists the mental

on insanity and mediomania.

profound thinkers and physiologists

;

—

tliey them sucklings of Auguste Comte, whose bosoms swell at the thought of plucking deluded humanity from the dark abyss of superstition, and rebuilding Irascible psychophobists, no more the cosmos on improved principles. cutting insult can be offered them than to suggest that they may be endowed with immortal spirits. To hear them, one would fancy that there can be no other souls in men and women than “scientific” or

metaphysical nonsense about

“ unscientific Souls

” ;

;

whatever that kind of soul may be.*

* See Dr. F. R. Marvin’s

“ Lectures on Mediomania and Insanity.”

THE VEIL OF

76

Some

thirty or forty years ago, in

ISIS.

France, Auguste

Comte —a

pupil of

the Ecole Polytechniqiie^ who had remained for years at that establishment as a repeiiteiir of Transcendant Analysis and Rationalistic Mechanics awoke one fine morning with the very irrational idea of becoming a prophet. In America, prophets can be met with at every But France street-corner in Europe, they are as rare as black swans. Auguste Comte became a prophet and so is the land of novelties. that even in sober England he was consometimes, fashion, infectious is

—

;

;

sidered, for a certain time, the

Newton

of the nineteenth century.

spread like wildfound adepts inFrance, but

extended, and for the time being,

The epidemic

over Germany, England, and America. the excitement did not last long with these.

fire

It

it

The prophet needed money The fever of admiration for the disciples were unwilling to furnish it. a religion without a God cooled off as quickly as it had come on of all :

\

the enthusiastic apostles of the prophet, there remained but one worthy any attention. It was the famous philologist Littre, a member of the

French

and a would-be member of the Imperial Academy of

Institute,

the archbishop of Orleans maliciously prevented * from becoming one of the “ Immortals.” The philosopher-mathematician the high-priest of the “ religion of

whom

Sciences, but

—

do all his brother-prophets of our He deified woman,” and furnished her with an altar days. laughed at but the goddess had to pay for its use. The rationalists had they had laughed at the St. Simonthb mental aberration of Fourier and their scorn for Spiritualism knew no bounds. The same rationists many empty-headed sparalists and materialists were caught, like so future ’’-—taught his doctrine as

the

,

;

;

some by the bird-lime of the new prophet’s rhetoric. A longing for in congenital feeling a is “unknown,” kind of divinity, a craving for the Deceived it. from man hence the worst atheists seem not to be exempt rows,

;

by the outward

brilliancy of this Ignus fatuus, the disciples followed

it

found themselves floundering in a bottomless morass. PosCovering themselves with the mask of a pretended erudition, the commitinto clubs and itivists of this country have organized themselves pretending to imparwhile Spiritualism, tees with the design of uprooting

until they

tially investigate

it.

openly challenge the churches and the Chiistian docman s all religion is based trine, they endeavor to sap that upon which that ridicule to is policy Their faith in God and his own immortality.

Too

timid to

which affords an unusual basis

for -

-

such a

faith

—phenomenal

Spiritualism.

—

4

*Vapereau

:

“ Biographie Contemporaine,”

Hants Phenomenes de

la

Magie,”

ch. 6.

art.

Littre

;

and DesMousseaux

:

Let

COMTE’S RELIGION OF THE FUTURE. Attacking

it

at

weakest

its

inductive method,

side, they

make

and of the exaggerations

transcendental doctrines of

the

most of

77 its

lack of an

that are to be found in the

Taking advantage of its unpopularity, and displaying a courage as furious and out of place as that of the errant knight of La Mancha, they claim recognition as philanthroits

propagandists.

and benefactors who would crush out a monstrous superstition. Let us see in what degree Comte’s boasted religion of the future

pists

superior to Spiritualism, and

is

how much

less likely its advocates are to need the refuge of those lunatic asylums which they officiously recommend for the mediums whom they have been so solicitous about.

Before beginning,

let

us call attention to the fact that three-fourths of the

disgraceful features exhibited in

able

to

the

materialistic

modern

adventurers

Spiritualism are directly trace-

pretending to be

spiritualists.

Comte

has fulsomely depicted the “artificially-fecundated” woman of the future. She is but elder sister to the Cyprian ideal of the free-lovers.

The immunity

against the future offered

by the teachings of his moonhas inoculated some pseudo-spiritualists to such an extent as to lead them to form communistic associations. None, however, have proved long-lived. Their leading feature being generally a materialistic animalism, gilded over with a thin leaf of Dutch-metal philosophy and tricked out with a combination of hard Greek names, the community could not prove anything else than a failure. struck

disciples,

Plato, in the

fifth book of the Republic, suggests a method for improvrace by the elimination of the unhealthy or deformed individuals, and by coupling the better specimens of both sexes. It was not to be expected that the “genius of our century,” even were he a prophet, would squeeze out of his brain anything entirely new. Comte was a mathematician. Cleverly combining several old utopias, he colored the whole, and, improving on Plato’s idea, materialized it’ and presented the world with the greatest monstrosity that ever emanated from a human mind

ing the

human

!

We

beg the reader to keep in view, that we do not attack Corate as a phfiosopher, but as a professed reformer. In the

irremediable darkness of his political, philosophical and religious views, we often meet with isolated observations and remarks in which profound logic and judiciousness of thought rival the brilliancy of their interpretation. But then, these dazzle you like flashes of lightning on a‘ gloomy night, to leave you, the next moment, more in the dark than ever. If condensed and repunctuated, his several works might produce, on the whole, a volume of very onginal aphorisms, giving a very clear and really clever definition of most of our social evils but it would be vain to seek, either through the tedious circumlocution of the six volumes of his Cours de Philoso;

:

THE VEIL OF

78

ISIS.

priesthood, in the form of a dialogue phie Positive, or in that parody on suggestive —The Catechism of the Religion of Positivism-zxvy ideasuggest that such evils. His disciples of even provisional remedies for were not intended for the vulgar. prophet the sublime doctrines of their with their practical exPositivism dogmas preached by

Comparing the emplifications by

its

apostles,

we must

confess

While the high-pnest bottom of it achromatic doctrine being at the to be the female of the man preaches that “ woman must cease family, chiefly legislators on marriage and the the theory of the positivist by ridding man the “mere companion of consists in making the woman and while they are preparing against f her of every maternal function “to the chaste that function by applying the future a substitute for preach po yopenly lay priests woman” “ a latent force," % some of its ot doctrines are the quintessence gamy, and others affirm that their _

"^’'"iTthe^opTffi^

the devil,

mare of

cQinn of the

^^^or under a chronic nighte p o his “ woman of the future prosaic persons, the In the opinion of more regarded ae a biped brood-

Romish Comte offers

“incubi” §

clergy,

who

henceteh be

Even

nrare

Littr6.

restrictions while

made prudent

accepHng the apos-

This is what he wrote in 1859 found the principles, traced Comte not only thought that he conthat he had deduced the and furnished the method, but .

religion. tleship of this marvellous

»M the

o^mes

future.

of the social and religious edifice sequences and constructed the make our reservations, decHrmg, Itl in this second division that we of the an inheritance, the whole Line time, that we accept as ffie

c

“M.

Farther he says: of the Positive

phy Rl which must

physS

in

a grand work

entitled

supplant direct apP^ca Necessarily contains a

societies

;

find therein a real science

as [?J,

my

aanesion

to

u

my

^

1

or a true son of his

L‘f.be word

r/,X

hn^ow^bat

it

means i.puMcU, vol.

p., Positive,” romte- “Svst^me de Politique ’ PMuouiiue. de Huuts SrMouiaeuux See Ibid

. a

•

^

i.

Littre

:

P™^-

and so on.

203, etc. is

i

§

11

the

philosoestablished the basis of a metaof whole every theology and the

finally

Suchawork

^„:=r„mc„. of

Comte,

“ Paroles de Philosophie Positive.

\ Mug.e,” eh.p.

6.

!

—

POSITIVISM BUT A NEGATION. Being a religion based on a theory of negation,

its

79

adherents can hardly

carry it out practically without saying white when meaning black “ Positive Philosophy,” continues Littre, “ does not accept atheism, for the atheist is

a theologian

still

how

he knorvs

not a really-emancipated mind, but ;

they begun

It really

!

.

.

.

.

Atheism

and thus belongs

quite theological yet,

would be losing time

Comte

dissertations.

to

is

And, as

is

in his

Pantheism

own way,

;

this

system

;

is

to the ancient party.” *

quote any more of these paradoxical

and incona “ Religion.”

attained to the apotheosis of absurdity

sistency when, after inventing his philosophy, he in

is,

he gives his explanation about the essence of things

named

it

usually the case, the disciples have surpassed the reformer

absurdity.

Supposititious philosophers,

who

shine in the

American

academies of Comte, like a lampyris noctiluca beside a planet, leave us in no doubt as to their belief, and contrast “ that system of thought and life ”

elaborated by the French apostle with the “ idiocy ” of Spiritualism “ To destroy, you must reof course to the advantage of the former. ;

place

” exclaims the author of the Cathechism

;

of the Religion of Posiby the way, without crediting him with the proceed to show by what sort of a loathsome

tivism, quoting Cassaudiere,

thought

;

and

his disciples

system they are anxious to replace Christianity, Spiritualism, and even Science.

“ Positivism,” perorates one of them, “is an integral doctrine. It rejects completely all forms of theological and metaphysical belief; all forms of supernaturalism, and thus Spiritualism. The true positive

—

spirit consists in substituting the

ena

study of the invariable laws of phenomwhether proximate or primary. On equally rejects atheism for the atheist is at bottom a theo;

for that of their so-called causes,

ground it he adds, plagiarizing sentences from Littre’s works “ the atheist does not reject the problems of theology, only the solution of these, and so he is illogical. We Positivists reject the problem in our turn on the ground that it is utterly inaccessible to the intellect, and we would only waste our strength in a vain search for first and final causes. As you see. Positivism gives a complete explanation [?] of the v'orld, of man, his duty and destiny ....”! Very brilliant this and now, by way of contrast, we will quote what a really great scientist. Professor Hare, thinks of this system. “Comte’s this

logian,"

:

j-

;

positive philosophy,” he says, “ after all, is merely negative. that he knows nothing of the

by Comte, laws

;

that their origination

Littr^ t

**

is

It is

admitted

and causes of nature’s so perfectly inscrutable as to make it idle to sources

“

: Paroles de Philosophic Positive, Spiritualism and Charlatanism.’^

vii., 57,

THE VEIL OF

8o

ISIS.

take up time in any scrutiny for that purpose makes him avowedly a thorough ignoramus, as

Of course his doctrine

causes of laws, or have no basis but the the means by which they are established, and can facts ascertained negative argument above stated, in objecting to the Thus, while allowing the atheist his relation to the spiritual creation. to the

m

and above the same material dominion, Spiritualism will erect within greater as eternity is to the space a dominion of an importance as much boundless regions of the fixed average duration of human life, and as the this globe. stars are to the habitable area of to destroy In short. Positivism proposes to itself

Theology, Metaand Science, and Pantheism, Materialism, physics, Spiritualism, Atheism, according to itself. De Mirville thinks that it

must

finally

end

in

destroying

the human mind only on the day Positivism, “ order will begin to reign in physics, and history a when psychology will become a sort of cerebral

Mohammed first disburdens man and kind of social physics.” The modern unwittingly disembovvels his woman of God and their own soul, and then metaphysics, which all the time own doctrine with the too sharp sword of out every vestige of phuosophy. he thought he was avoiding, thus letting a of the Institute, pronounced In 1864, M. Paul Janet, a member occur the following remarkable discourse upon Positivism, in which and fed on exact and “ There are some minds which were brought up impulse nevertheless, a sort of instinctive positive sciences, but which feel ey instinct but with elements that L- philosophy. They can satisfy this studied having psychological sciences, have already on hand. Ignorant in they nevertheless are deteinnne only the rudiments of metaphysics, of which they ki o as well as psychology, figh\ these same metaphysics imagine *emselyes this is done, they will af little as of the other. After have y Science, while the truth is that to have founded a Positive The) theory. metaphysical and incomplete built up a new mutilated and infallibility properly belong g arrogate to themselves the authority and calwhich are based on experience alone to the true sciences, those tive as for their ideas, de ec Sations but they lack such an authority, those ^''bich y to the same class as they may be, nevertheless belong their of rum their situation,_the final auack. Hence the weakness of scattered to the four winds, f •

ideas which are soon The Positivists of

America have joined hands m their To show their _|nn>artiah.y, .0 overthrow Spirittiaiism. follows pound such novel queries as * Prof. t

» Journal des

Dfebats,” 1864.

Hare

:

“ On

.

.

imtmnge

Positivism,” p 29.

See also des Mousseaux’s

“ Hauls Phen. de

la

Magie.

:

“ARTIFICIAL FECUNDATION. there in

is

) t

8l

Immaculate Conception, the Trinity submitted to the tests of physiology, mathe-

dogmas of

the

the

and Transubstanliation, if “undertake to say, that the vagamatics, and chemistry?” and tliey lespectin absurdity these eminently ries of Spiritualism do not surpass absurdity Very well. But there is neither theological able beliefs.” in depravity and imbecility nor spiritualistic delusion that can match Denying to them“ artificial fecundation.” of

notion

that positivist

they apply their insane woman for the worship theories to the construction of an impossible of man they companion of future generations; the living, immortal the wooden would replace with the Indian female fetich of the Obeah, eggs, to be hatched by the idol that is stuffed every day with serpents’ selves

all

thought on primal and

heat of the sun

final causes,

!

are permitted to ask in the name of common-sense, spiritualists why should Christian mystics be taxed with credulity or the revolting such embodying be consigned to Bedlam, when a religion

And

now,

we

if

even among Academicians ?—when such insane mouth of Comte rhapsodies as the following can be uttered by the they open each “ dazzled are eyes My and admired by his followers the social adbetween day more and more to the increasing coincidence vent of the feminine mystery, and the mental decadence of the eucharistabsurdity'" finds disciples

:

Already the Virgin has dethroned God in the minds of Positivism realizes the Utopia of the mediaeval Southern Catholics

ical

sacrament.

!

ages,

by representing

all

the

members

a virgin mother without a husband.

tnodus opera?idi

.

“The development

of the great family as the issue of .

.

And

.”

of the

again, after giving the

jieiv

process would

soon

cause to spring up a caste without heredity, better adapted than vulgar procreation to the recruitment of spiritual chiefs, or even temporal ones,

whose authority would then rest upon an origin truly superior, which * would not shrink from an investigation." To this we might inquire with propriety, whether there has ever been found

in

the “ vagaries of Spiritualism,” or the mysteries of Christianity,

anything more preposterous than

dency of materialism advocates, those

who

this ideal “

coming race.”

or not there will ever be a sacerdotal stirp so begotten,

end of progeny,

How

If the ten-

not grossly belied by the behavior of some of its publicly preach polygamy, we fancy that whether

is

we

shall see

no

—the offspring of “mothers without husbands.”

natural that a philosophy which could engender such a caste of

didactic incubi, should express

through

the

garrulous essayists, the following sentiments *

6

“ Philosophie Positive,”

:

pen of one of “ This

vol. iv., p. 279.

is

its

most

a sad, a very sad

;

THE VEIL OF

82

ISIS.

sent out in vain of dead and dying faiths ; full oMdle prayers But oh it is a glorious, ap, full ° search for the departing gods. at sun of science golden light which streams from the ascending

age,*

full

^

!

!

tn intellect, we do for those who are shipwrecked in faith, bankrupt the delusions who seek comfort in the mirage of spiritualism, but ... •” shall

.

o' the wisp of mesmerism? . of transcendentalism, or the will many dwarf philosoThe ianghorne, the translator of Plutarch : on the

“ Dionysius of Halicarnassus [L. ii.] is of opinion that Numa built the temple of Vesta in a round form, to represent the figure of the earth, for by Vesta they meant the earth.” Moreover, Philolaiis, in common with all

other Pythagoreans, held that the element of

centre of the universe

fire

was placed

in the

and Plutarch, speaking on the

subject, remarks of \ the Pythagoreans that “ the earth they suppose not to be without motion,

nor situated

but to make its revolution round being neither one of the most valuable, nor principal parts of the great machine.” Plato, too, is reported to have been of the in the centre of the world,

the sphere of

same opinion.

fire,

It

appears, therefore, that the Pythagoreans anticipated

Galileo’s discovery.

—

The

existence of such an invisible universe being once admitted as seems likely to be the fact if the speculations of the authors of the Unseen Universe are ever accepted by their colleagues many of the

—

phenomena, hitherto mysterious and inexplicable, become plain. It acts on the organism of the magnetized mediums, it penetrates and saturates them through and through, either directed by the powerful will of a mesinerizer, or by unseen beings who achieve the same result. Once that the silent operation

is

performed, the astral or sidereal phantom of the

mesmerized subject quits its paralyzed, earthly casket, and, after having roamed in the boundless space, alights at the threshold of the mysterious “bourne.” For it, the gates of the portal which marks the entrance to

the “ silent land,” are

now

but partially ajar ; they will fly wide open before the soul of the entranced somnambulist only on that day when, united with its higher immortal essence, it will have quitted forever its mortal frame. Until then, the seer or seeress can look but through a chink ; it depends on the acuteness of the clairvoyant’s spiritual sight to see more or less through it. demons [read devils], for they are such in reality !” adds the bishop of Hippo. But hen, under what class should we place the men wMout heads, whom Augustine wishe« us to believe he saw himself? or the satyrs of St. Jerome, which he asserts were ex-

hibited for a considerable length of time at Alexandria? They were, he tells us. “ men wi h the legs and tails of goats >> and, if we may believe him, one of these ; Satyrs was pickled and sent in a cask to the Emperor

Constantme

1

,

*

THE VEIL OF

i6o

ISIS.

The trinity in unity is an idea which all the ancient nations common. The three Dejotas— the Hindu Trimurti the Three

held in Headi^

;

one another and of the Jewish Kabala of the mythothat over one another.” The trinity of the Egyptians and of the first triple emanation logical Greeks were alike representations It is the union of the principles. co° taining two male and one female

hewn

“ Three heads are

in

female Aura or Animale Logos, or wisdom, the revealed Deity, with the “ the holy PneuTtia^' which is the Sephira of the Kabahsts and 77ta Mundi all things visible and Sophia of the refined Gnostics— that produced the

universal

While the true metaphysical interpretation of this their poetical dogma remained within the sanctuaries, the Greeks, with In the Dionysiacs charming myths. instincts, impersonated it in many represented as m is allegories, other of Nonnus, the god Bacchus, among the name of under Pneuma), love with the soft, genial breeze (the Holy Higgins to speak; Placida.\ And now we will leave Godfrey

invisible.

Aura

their calendar, they made the ignorant Fathers were constructing •’ SS. Aura and saints Catholic out of this gentle zephyr two Roman St. so far as to transfer the jolly god into

“

When

!

!

Placida -—nay, they even went

The festival relics at Rome. Bacchus, and actually shoio his coffin and of Octo5th the on occurs Placida, of the two “blessed saints,” Aura and Bacchus. J ber, close to the festival of St. how much greater the religious spirit to be ^

^

and In the boundless ” of creation found in the “ heathen Norse legends in blind fury rage where Ginnunga gap, abyss of the mundane pit, the primordial forces, suddenly blows the and conflict cosmic matter and the who sends his beneficent breath It is the “ unrevealed God,” thaw-wind. empyreal fire, within whose glowing from Muspellheim, the sphere of beyond the limits of the world of matter rays dwells this great Being, far

How

far

more

poetical,

!

over the dark, abys-

Spirit brooding and the animus of the Unseen, the and once having given the impulse mal waters, calls order out of chaos, in Cause retires, and remains for evermore to all creation the First

statu ahscondito

§ „ Scandinavian song of both religion and science in these There 1 hor, latter, take the conception of heathendom. As an example of the le grasp would Whenever this Hercules of the North the son of Odin. he thunderbolt or electric hammer handle of his terrible weapon, the He also wears a magical belt gantlets. obliged to put on hi s iron .^

is

*

“ Tria

capita exsculpta sunt,

“ Idra Suta,” sectio vii.) gal. (lit.) t Gentle

§ Mallett Etlda.

:

et

una intra alterum, .

" An.c.iyps.s 1 also : t Higgins “Northern Antiquities,” pp. 401-406, and ,

(Soliar,

alterum supra alterum

» n.mrms ” g

^

„

WHAT

DID THOR THE THUNDERER SIGNIFY?

l6l

whenever girded about his He rides upon a car person, greatly augments his celestial power. brow is encircled by awful drawn by two rams with silver bridles, and his His chariot has a pointed iron pole, and the sparkwreath of stars. as the “ girdle of strength," which,

known

a

He

thunder-clouds. scattering wheels continually roll over rumbling frost-giants, rebellious the hurls his hammer with resistless force against

When he repairs to the Urdar founhe dissolves and annihilates. of humanity, tain, where the gods meet in conclave to decide the destinies He walks, mounted. he alone goes on foot, the rest of the deities being whom

many-hued Hisir-bridge, the same time causing the

for fear that in crossing Bifrost (the rainbow), the

he might set

it

on

fire

with his thunder-car, at

Urdar waters to boil. Rendered into plain English, how can this myth be interpreted but as showing that the Norse legend-makers were thoroughly acquainted Thor, the euhemerization of electricity, handles his peculiar element only when protected by gloves of iro7i, which is its natHis belt of strength is a closed circuit, around which ural conductor. the isolated current is compelled to run instead of diffusing itself through with electricity

?

he rushes with his car through the clouds, he is electricity in its active condition, as the sparks scattering from his wheels and the The pointed iron pole of the rumbling thunder of the clouds testify.

When

space.

chariot

suggestive of the lightning-rod

is

his coursers are the familiar

power

;

;

the two rams which serve as

ancient symbols of the male or generative

their silver bridles typify the

female principle, for silver

is

the

we Therefore in the ram and combined the active and passive principles of nature in opposition, one rushing forward, and the other restraining, while both are in subordination to the world-permeating, electrical principle, which gives them With the electricity supplying the impulse, and the male their impulse. and female principles combining and recombining in endless correlation,

metal of Luna, Astarte, Diana.

his

bridle

see

the result

is

— evolution of

visible nature, the crown-glory of

planetary system, which in the mythic of glittering orbs which his awful

forces.

bedeck

his

Thor

brow.

is

allegorized

When

is

the

circlet

in his active condition,

But he goes afoot over the rainbow bridge.

latent state,

which he could not be

and annihilate

afraid to

by the

thunderbolts destroy everything, even the lesser other Titanic

mingle with other less powerful gods than himself, he fire

which

make

in his car

;

Bifrost, is

because to

obliged to be in a

otherwise he would set on

The meaning of the Urdar-fountain, that Thor is and the cause of his reluctance, will only be compre-

all.

boil,

hended by our physicists when the reciprocal electro-magnetic relations of the innumerable members of the planetary system, now just suspected, shall be thoroughly determined. Glimpses of the truth are given in the II

i

62

THE VEIL OF

ISIS.

recent scientific essays of Professors Mayer and Sterry Hunt. The ancient philosophers believed that not only volcanos, but boiling springs were

caused by concentrations of underground electric currents, and that this same cause produced mineral deposits of various natures, which form If it be objected that this fact is not distinctly stated curative springs. by the ancient authors, who, in the opinion of our century were hardly acquainted with electricity, we may simply answer that not all the works embodying ancient wisdom are now extant among our scientists. The

and cool waters of Urdar were required for the daily irrigation of and if they had been disturbed by Thor, or the mystical mundane tree mineral springs active electricity, they would have been converted into support the will above the as examples Such purpose. unsuited for the clear

;

ancient claim of the philosophers that there or a ground-work of truth in every fiction.

is

a logos in every mythos,

—

CHAPTER ‘

‘

Hermes, who

Then

Closes at

“

is

taking his will,

of

;

VI.

my

staff,

ordinances ever the bearer . . . with which he the eyelids of rnormls

and the

sleeper, at will,

reawakens.”— Orfj'sxej', Book V.

saw the Samothracian rings Leap, and steel-filings boil in a brass dish So soon as underneath it there was placed The magnet-stone and with wild terror seemed The iron to flee from it in stern hate. . . .” Lucretius, Book VI.

I

;

that which especially distinguishes the Brotherhood is their marvellous They work not by charms but by simples.” art.

" But

knowledge of the

re-

sources of the medical

(MS. Account of the Originand Attributes of the True Rosier ucians.)

O

NE

of the truest

ever said by a

things

man

of science

is

the

“ The remark made by Professor Cooke in his New Chemistry. scientific before prepared must be history of Science shows that the age The barren premonitions of science truths can take root and grow.

have been barren because these seeds of truth fell upon unfruitful soil and, as soon as the fulness of the time has come, the seed has taken every student is surprised to find how root and the fruit has ripened. very little is the share of new truth which even the greatest genius has .

added

to the

The

.

previous stock.”

revolution through which chemistry has recently passed,

calculated to concentrate the attention of chemists it

would

not be strange,

in less time than

if,

the claims of the alchemists

it

upon

To

;

and

has required to effect

would be examined with

studied from a rational point of view.

well

is

this fact

impartiality,

it,

and

bridge over the narrow gulf

which now separates the neto chemistry from old alchemy, is little, if any harder than what they have done in going from dualism to the law of Avogadro.

As Ampere served ists,

so Reichenbach

OD

to introduce

will

Avogadro

to our

contemporary chem-

perhaps one day he found to have paved the

was more

way with

his

than

years before molecules were accepted as units of chemical cal-

fifty

culations

;

it

for the just

may

appreciation of Paracelsus.

It

require less than half that time to cause the superla-

The warning parabe found elsewhere, might have

tive merits of the Swiss mystic to be acknowledged.

graph about healing mediums,* which *

From

a

London

will

Spiritualist Journal.

THE VEIL OF

164

ISIS.

“ You must understand, been written by one who had read his works. man which the infected life in he says, “ that the magnet is that spirit of And thus the seeks, as both unite themselves with chaos from without. healthy are infected by the unhealthy through magnetic attraction.”

primal causes of the diseases afflicting mankind ; the secret tortured by men relations between physiology and psychology, vainly speculations upon ; the of modern science for some clew to base their of the human body— all are specifics and remedies for every ailment Electro-magneworks. voluminous described and accounted for in his had been used by so-called discovery of Professor Oersted,

The

tism, the be demonstrated by examParacelsus three centuries before. This may his achievements Upon disease. ining critically his mode of curing by fair and unadmitted is chemistry there is no need to enlarge, for it greatest chemists of his time.=>= prejudiced writers that he was one of the and a^ees with Deleuze that Erierre de Boismont terms him a “ genius” The secret of his medicine. he created a new epoch in the history of cures lies in his sovereign consuccessful and, as they were called, magic “ Seeking for “ authorities ” of his age. tempt for the so-called learned if there were no ” says Paracelsus, “ I considered with myself that

m

truth

how would I set to learn the art ? teachers of medicine in this world, nature, written with the No otherwise than in the great open book of and denounced for not having entered finger of God. ... I am accused But which is the right one ? Galen, Avicenna, in at the right door of art. Through this believe, the last! Mesue, Rhasis, or honest nature? I nature, and no apothecary s lamp door I entered, and the light of directed

me on my

way.” ,

laws and This utter scorn for established with the ration of mortal clay to commingle

^ 1 scientific formulas, this aspi.

spirit

of nature, and look to was the cause o the

the light of truth,

alone for health, and help, and contemporary pigmies to the fire-philosoinveterate hatred shown by the he was accused of charlatamy and pher and alchemist. No wonder that charge, Hemmann boldly and fearlessly even drunkenness. Of the latter foul accusation proceeded from exonerates him, and proves that the order to learn his secre s, time “Oporinus, who lived with him some msciples and hence, the evil reports of his but his object was defeated ; He was the founder of the School of apothecaries.” He was properties of the magnet. and the discoverer of the occult marwere because the cures he made branded by his age as a sorcerer, was also accused of sorThree centuries later, Baron Du Potet vellous by of Rome, and of charlatamy

it

m

the cery and demonolatry by *

Hemmann: “

Church

Medico-Surgical Essays,” BerL,

THROWN AWAY.

A GREAT CHANCE

As the fire-philosophers say, it academicians of Europe. the “living fire ist who will condescend to look upon about

it

— or

rather, thou

thee!”* A work upon

is

not the chem-

otherwise than

hast forgotten what thy fathers tairght thee

“Thou

his colleagues do.

165

hast never

known

...

it

too

is

loud

for

would be magnetinconrplete without a particular notice of the history of animal of the schoolmen the it with staggered isnr, as it stands since Paracelsus magico-spiritual philosophy and occult science

latter half of the sixteenth century.

We

will

observe briefly

its

appearance in Paris when imported from Let us peruse with care and caution the

Germany by Anton Mesmer.

now mouldering in the Academy of Sciences of that capital, for there we will find that, after having rejected in its turn every discovery that was ever made since Galileo, the Immortals capjjed the climax by turning their backs upon magnetism and mesmerism. They volunold papers

shut the doors before themselves, the doors which led to those greatest mysteries of nature, which lie hid in the dark regions of the psychitarily

cal as well as the physical world.

The

great universal solvent, the Alka-

—

was within their reach they passed it by ; and now, after nearly a hundred years have elapsed, we read the following confession “Still it is true that, beyond the limits of direct observation, our hest,

:

science

although

(chemistry)

they

may

and our theories and systems, contain a kernel of truth, undergo frequent

not

is

all

infallible,

changes, and are often revolutionized.” f To assert so dogmatically that mesmerism are but hallucinations, implies that

and animal magnetism But where are it can be proved. have authority in science? Thou-

these proofs, which alone ought to sands of times the chance was given to the academicians to assure them-

Vainly do mesbut, they have invariably declined. selves of its truth merists and healers invoke the testimony of the deaf, the lame, the dis;

or restored to life by simple manipula“ Coincidence ” is the usual “ laying on of hands.” tions and the apostolic “ will-o’-thereply, when the fact is too evident to be absolutely denied

who were cured

eased, the dying,

;

wisp,” “exaggeration,” “quackery,” are favorite expressions, with our

but too numerous Thomases.

Newton, the well-known American

healer,

has performed more instantaneous cures than many a famous physician of New York City has had patients in all his life ; Jacob, the Zouave, has

had a

like success in

testimony of the

Must

France.

last

forty

Robert Elude!

:

then consider the accumulated all

illusion,

Even

to

breathe

confederacy with clever charlatans, *

w'e

years upon this subject to be

“Treatise III.”

and lunacy

f Prof. J. P.

?

Cooke:

“New

Chemistry.”

1

THE VEIL OF

66

ISIS.

such a stupendous fallacy would be equivalent to a self-accusation of lunacy.

Notwithstanding the recent sentence of Leymaiie, the scoffs of the skeptics and of a vast majority of physicians and scientists, the unpopularity of the subject, and,

Roman

above

all,

the indefatigable persecutions of the

mesmerism woman’s traditional evident and unconquerable is the truth of its phenomena that

Catholic

clergy,

fighting

in

enemy, so even the French magistrature was forced tacitly, though very reluctantly, The famous clairvoyatiie, Madame Roger, was to admit the same. obtaining money under false pretenses, in company with charged with On May i8th, 1876, she was arraigned her mesmerist, Dr. Fortin. Her witness was Baron before the Tribunal Correctionnel of the Seine. Du Potet, the grand master of mesmerism in France for the last fifty Truth for years ; her advocate, the no less famous Jules Favre. Was it the extraonce triumphed the accusation was abandoned. ordinary eloquence of the orator, or bare facts incontrovertible and unBut Leymarie, the editor of the impeachable that won the day ? Revue Spirite, had also facts in his favor ; and, moreover, the evidence of over a hundred respectable witnesses, among whom were the first names of Europe. To this there is but one answer the magistrates Spirit- photography, spiritdared not ^question the facts of mesmerism. rapping, writing, moving, talking, and even spirit-materializations can be there is hardly a physical phenomenon now in Europe and simulated

—

—

;

—

—

America but could be imitated with apparatus by a clever juggler. The wonders of mesmerism and subjective phenomena alone defy trickthe cataleptic sters, skepticism, stern science, and dishonest mediums ;

v7ipossible

state it is

to feign.

Spiritualists

who

are anxious to have their

and forced on science, cultivate the mesmeric phenomena. Place on the stage of Egyptian Hall a somnambulist plunged Let her mesmerist send her freed spirit to in a deep mesmeric sleep. all the places the public may suggest ; test her clairvoyance and clairaudience stick pins into any part of her body which the mesmerist may have made his passes over thrust needles through the skin below her truths proclaimed

;

;

burn her flesh and lacerate it with a sharp instrument. “ Do not fear! ” exclaim Regazzoni and Du Potet, Teste and Pierrard, Puy“ a mesmerized or entranced subject is never segur and Dolgorouky hurt'" And when all this is performed, invite any popular wizard of mimickthe' day who thirsts for puffery, and is, or pretends to be, clever at eyelids

;

—

ing every spiritual

phenomenon,

to submit his

body

to the

same

tests

* I

* In the “Bulletin de I’Academie de Medecine,” Paris, 1837, vol. i., p. 343 et Oudet, who. to ascertain the state of insensibility seq., may be found the report of Dr.

WISE WORDS FROM LACTANTIUS.

167

reported to have lasted an hour and a and the public spellbound by its elohalf, and to have held the judges it most readily ; only quence. VVe who have heard Jules Favre believe of his argument was unfoithe statement embodied in the last sentence of Jules Favre

The speech

is

and erroneous at the same time. “We are in the attempting to presence of a phenomenon which sciejice admits without physicians The public 7nay smile at it, but our most illustrious explain. has Justice can no longer ignore what science regard it with gravity. tunately premature

’’

acknowledged / Were this sweeping declaration based upon fact and had mesmeiism science, been impartially investigated by many instead of a few true men of

more desirous of questioning nature than mere expediency, the public would never smile. The public is a docile and pious child, and readily It chooses its idols and fetishes, and goes whither the nurse leads it. worships them in proportion to the noise they make and then turns ;

round

with a timid look of adulation to see whether the nurse, old Mrs.

Public Opinion,

is satisfied.

have remarked that no skeptic in his days would have dared to maintain before a magician that “for he the soul did not survive the body, -but died together with it rendead, thq of would refute them on the spot by calling up the souls dering them visible to human eyes, and making them foretell future events.”* * So with the magistrates and bench in Madame Roger’s case. Baron Du Potet was there, and they were afraid to see him mesmerize Lactantius, the old Christian father,

is

said to

;

and so force them not only to believe in the phenomwhich was far worse. enon, but to acknowledge it And now to the doctrine of Paracelsus. His incomprehensible,

the somnambulist,

—

though lively style must be read like the

biblio-rolls of Ezekiel, “

within

propounding heterodox theories was great and the Church was powerful, and sorcerers were burnt by the in those days dozens. For this reason, we find Paracelsus, Agrippa, and Eugenius Philalethes as notable for their pious declarations as they were famous

The

without.”

peril of

;

for their

achievements in alchemy and magic.

The

full

views of Paracel-

on the occult properties of the magnet are explained partially famous book, Archidaxarum, in which he describes the wonderful sus

in his tinct-

of a lady in a magnetic sleep, pricked her with pins, introducing a long pin in the flesh

up to

A

its

head, and held one of her fingers for

some seconds

cancer was e.\tracted from the right breast of a

lasted twelve minutes

her mesmerizer,

Tom. *

ii.,

p.

;

Madame

in the flame

Plaintain.

of a candle.

The operation

during the whole time the patient talked very quietly with felt the slightest sensation (“Bui. de I’Acad. de Med.,’’

and never

370).

Prophecy, Ancient and Modern, by A. Wilder

:

“ Phrenological Journal.”

THE VEIL OF

i68

ISIS.

a medicine extracted from the magnet and called Magisierium De Etite Dei, and De Ente Astrornm, Lib,

lire,

Magnetis, and partially in the

But the explanations are all given in a diction unintelligible to the “ Every peasant sees,” said he, “ that a magnet will attract profane. iron, but a wise man must inquire for himself. ... I have discovered that the magnet, besides this visible power, that of attracting iron, I.

and co7icealed power.” demonstrates further that in man lies hidden a “ sidereal force,” which is that emanation from the stars and celestial bodies of which the This identity of the astral spirit is composed. spiritual form of man essence, which we may term the spirit of cometary matter, always stands in direct relation with the stars from which it was drawn, and thus there The exists a mutual attraction between the two, both being magnets.

possesses another

He

—

—

and all other planetary bodies and body was a fundamental idea in his philosophy. “The

identical composition of the earth

man’s

terrestrial

body comes from the elements, the Man eats and drinks of the elements, flesh

;

spirit.”

[astral] spirit

from the

for the sustenance of his

stars.

.

.

.

blood and

and thoughts sustained in his The spectroscope has made good his theory as to the identical

from the

the intellect

stars are

stars ; the physicists noiv lecture to their classes upon the magnetic attractions of the sun and planets.* Of the substances known to compose the body of man, there have coinposition of mati

and

been discovered in the stars already, hydrogen, sodium, calcium, magnesium and iron. In all the stars observed, numbering many hundreds, hydrogen was found, except in two. Now, if we recollect how they have deprecated Paracelsus and his theory of man and the stars being composed of like substances how ridiculed he was by astronomers and between the physicists, for his ideas of chemical affinity and attraction and then realize that the spectroscope has vindicated one of his two ;

assertions at least,

is

it

so absurd to prophesy that in time

all

the rest of

be substantiated ? And now, a very natural question is suggested. How did Paracelsus come to learn anything of the composition of the stars, when, till a very constitrecent period till the discovery of the spectroscope in fact the learned acadeuents of the heavenly bodies were utterly unknown to our

his theories will

—

—

an incandescent globe is as one of the magazines has been computed that if the sun— recently expressed it— “going out of fashion.” It “were a solid block of coal, and sufficient whose mass and diameter is known to us rate necessary to produce the effects the burn at supplied to amount of oxygen could be And yet, till than 5,000 years.” less in consumed completely be we see, it would *

The theory

that

the sun

is

—

comparatively a few weeks ago, it was maintained— nay, metals is a reservoir of vaporized !

is still

maintained, that the sun

PARACELSUS THE DISCOVERER OF HYDROGEN.

l

6g

notwithstanding tele-spectroscope and other except a few elements and a hypovery important modern improvements, a mystery for them in the stais. thetical chromosphere, everything is yet the starry host, Paracelsus have been so sure of the nature of

And even now,

mies?

Could

means of which science knows nothing? Yet knowing very names of these nothing she will not even hear pronounced the means, which are hermetic philosojihy and alchemy. unless he had

—

mind, moreover, that Paracelsus was the discoverer properties and conipositioji long before of hydrogen, and knew well all its had studied any of the. orthodox academicians ever thought of it that he astronomy, as all the fire-philosophers did ; and that, if he

We

must bear

in

;

astrology and

did assert that

man

is

in

a direct affinity with the stars, he

knew

well

what he asserted. point for the physiologists to verify is his proposition that but stomach, the nourishment of the body comes not merely through the nature all imperceptibly through the magnetic force, which resides in

The next

also

and by which every individual member draws its specific nourishment to Man, he further says, draws not only health from the elements itself.” laving but also disease when they are disturbed. bodies are subject to the laws of attraction and chemical affinity, as science admits ; the most remarkable physical property of organic tissues,

when

in equilibrium,

according to physiologists, is the property of imbibition. What more natural, then, than this theory of Paracelsus, that this absorbent, attract-

and chemical body of ours gathers into itself the astral or sidereal “ The sun and the stars attract from us to themselves, and influences ? we again from them to us.” What objection can science offer to this? Wliat it is that we give off, is shown in Baron Reichenbach’s discovery of the odic emanations of man, which are identical with flames from magnets, crystals, and in fact from all vegetable organisms. The unity of the universe was asserted by Paracelsus, who says that “ the human body is possessed of primeval stuff (or cosmic matter) the spectroscope has proved the assertion by showing that the same chemical elements which exist upon earth and in the sun, are also found The spectroscope does more it shows that all the stars in all the stars. are suns, similar in constitution to our own * and as we are told by Professor Mayer, f that the magnetic condition of the earth changes with every variation upon the sun’s surface, and is said to be “in subjection ive,

;

:

;

*

See

Youmans

:

“Chemistry on the

Basis of

the

New

System

— Spectrum

Analysis.”

See his “ The Physics in the Stevens Institute of Technology. f Professor of Earth a Great Magnet,” a lecture delivered before the Yale Scientific Club, 1872. See, also, Prof. Balfour Stewart’s lecture on “ The Sun and the Earth.”

—

THE VEIL OF

170

ISIS.

to etnanations from the sun,” the stars being suns must also give off emanations which affect us in proportionate degrees. “ In our dreams,” says Paracelsus, “ we are like the plants, which have

also the elementary

and

sleep the astral body

is

body, but possess not the

vital

free

and can, by the

spirit.

In our

elasticity of its nature, either

hover round in proximity with its sleeping vehicle, or soar higher to hold converse with its starry parents, or even communicate with its brothers

Dreams

at great distances.

of a prophetic character, prescience, and

iwesent wants, are the faculties of the astral

and grosser body, these

bosom

into the

gifts

I'o our elementary

spirit.

are not imparted, for at death

of the earth and

it

descends

reunited to the physical elements,

is

while the several spirits return to the stars. The animals,” he adds, “ have also their presentiments, for they too have an astral body.”

Van Helmont, who was

a disciple of Paracelsus, says

much

the same,

on magnetism are more largely developed, and still more carefully elaborated. The Magtiale Magnum^ the means by which the secret magnetic property “ enables one person to affect another mutually, is attributed by him to that universal sympathy which exists between all things in nature. The cause produces the effect, the effect •“ Magnetism,” refers itself back to the cause, and both are reciprocated. he says, “ is an unknown property of a heavenly nature very much resembling the stars, and not at all impeded by any boundaries of space though

his theories

;

Every created being possesses his own celestial power and 'rhis magic power of man, which thus can operate externally, lies, as it were, hidden in the inner man. This magical wisdom and strength thus sleeps, but, by a mere suggestion is roused into activity, and becomes more living, the more the outer man of flesh and the darkness is repressed .... and this, I say, the it brings back to the soul that magical yet natural kabalistic art effects strength which like a startled sleep had left it.” * Both Van Helmont and Paracelsus agree as to the great potency of or time. is

.

.

.

closely allied with heaven,

;

the will in the state of ecstasy diffused

;

and the

spirit is the

;

they say that “ the

medium

spirit is

of magnetism

” ;

everywhere

that pure prim-

eval magic does not consist in superstitious practices and vain ceremo“ It is not the spirits of heaven nies but in the imperial will of man. nature, but “ the soul and physical and of hell which are the masters over spirit

of

man which

are concealed in

him

as the fire

concealed in the

is

flint.”

The

theory of the sidereal influence on

the mediaival philosophers. *

“The

man was

enunciated by

all

stars consist equally of the elements

“ De Magnelica Vulner Curatione,”

p. 722,

1.

c.

,

THE FRENCH COMMITTEE OF

spirit

but

;

.

.

.

this spirit is dififused

through the whole universe and is in full The magician who would acquire super-

accord with the

human

natural powers

must possess faith, love, and hope.

there

is

171

784.

Cornelius Agrippa, “ and therefore the ideas Influences only go forth through the help of the

of earthly bodies,” says attract each other.

1

spirits.

a secret power concealed,

... In

and thence come

the

all

things

miraculous

powers of magic.” theory of General Pleasanton* singularly coincides with His view of the positive and negative the views of the fire-philosophers. electricities of man and woman, and the mutual attraction and repulsion

The modern

of everything in nature seems to be copied from that of Robert Fludd,

Grand Master

the

of the Rosicrucians of England.

approach each other,” says the fire-philosopher, “ either passive or active

that

;

is,

positive or negative.

“

When two men

their

magnetism is emanations

If the

which they send out are broken or thrown back, there arises antipathy. But when the emanations pass through each other from bpth sides, then there is positive magnetism, for the rays proceed from the centre to the In this case they not only affect sicknesses but also moral sentiments. This magnetism or sympathy is found not only among circumference.

animals but also in plants and in animals.f ”

And now we

will notice how, when Mesmer had imported into baquet” and system based entirely on the philosophy and doctrines of the Paracelsites the great psychological and physiological discovery was treated by the physicians. It will demonstrate how much ignorance, superficiality, and prejudice can be displayed by a

France

his “

—

when the subject clashes with their own cherished theomore important because, to the neglect of the committee of the P'rench Academy of 1784 is probably due the present materialistic drift of the public mind and certainly the gaps in the atomic philosophy which we have seen its most devoted teachers confessing to exist. The committee of 1784 comprised men of such eminence as Borie, Sallin, d’Arcet, and the famous Guillotin, to whom were subsequently added, P’ranklin, Leroi, Bailly, De Borg and Lavoisier. Borie died shortly afterward and Magault succeeded him. There can be no doubt of two things, viz. that the committee began their work under strong prejudices and only because peremptorily ordered to do it by the king and that their manner of observing the delicate facts of mesmerism was injudicious and illiberal. Their report, drawn by Bailly, was intended to be scientific body, ries.

It is the

;

:

;

all

new science. It was spread ostentatiously throughthe schools and ranks of society, arousing the bitterest feelings

See

“On

a death-blow to the

out *

the Influence of the Blue Ray.”

I

Ennemoser:

“ History of Magic."

:

THE VEIL OF

1/2

ISIS.

large portion of the aristocracy and rich commercial class, whc had patronized Mesmer and had been eye-witnesses of his cures. Ant. L. de Jussieu, an academician of the highest rank, who had thoroughly investigated the subject with the eminent court-physician, d’Eslon, published a counter-report drawn with minute exactness, in which he advocated the careful observation by the medical faculty of the therapeutic effects of the magnetic fluid and insisted upon the immediate publication His demand was met by the of their discoveries and observations. appearance of a great number of memoirs, polemical works, and dogma-

among a

books developing new facts and Thouret’s works entitled Recherches et D'outes sur le Magneiisme Animal, displaying a vast erudition, stimulated research into the records of the past, and the magnetic phetical

;

nomena

successive nations from the remotest antiquity

of

were laid

before the public.

The

doctrine of

of Paracelsus,

Mesmer was

and Maxwell, the Scotchman of copying texts from the work of Bertrand, and

Van Helmont,

and he was even enunciating them

simply a restatement of the doctrines

guilty

Santanelli,

;

own principles.* In Professor Stewarts work,J universe as composed of atoms with some sort of the author regards our medium between them as the machine, and the laws of energy as the laws working

as his

machine.

this

doctrine,” but

we

Mesmer,

Professor

Youmans

calls this

“a modem

the twenty-seven propositions laid down by just one century earlier, in \\\?, Letter to a Foreign

find

among

in 1775 Physician, the following the heavenly bodies, the \st. There exists a 7nutual influence between

earth, id.

,

and

living bodies.

so as to admit no fluid, universally diffused and continued, whose subtility is beyond all comparison, a?td which, fr07n its receivmg, propagatuig, and co7ni/iU7iicatmg all the

A

vacuum,

7iature, is capable

of

the 77iediu/7i of this i7iflue7ice. of after all. this, that the theory is not so modern from appear It would " Professor Balfour Stewart says, “ We may regard the universe in the 77iotio7i, is

i77ipressio7is

And Mesmer

light of a vast physical

machine.”

3 ih.

and

it is

The animal body experiences

the alternate effects of this agent;

by hisinuathig itself into the substance of the nerves, that

it

im-

mediately affects them. Among other important works which appeared between

1798 and 1824, when the P'rench Academy appointed its second commission to investigate mesmerism, the A?inales du Magnetistne Animal, by the Baron

d’Henin de ber of the

Cuvillier, Lieutenant-General,

Academy

Chevalier of

Louis,

St.

many

of Sciences, and correspondent of

learned societies of Europe,

may be

memof the

In 1820 the Prussian government instructed the Academy of Berlin to offer a prize of three hundred ducats in gold for the best thesis on mesmerism. The Royal Scientific Society of Paris, under the presidency of His Royal consulted with great advantage.

Highness the Due d’AngouDme, offered a gold medal for the same purpose. The Marquis de la Place, peer of France, one of the Foidy of the Academy of Sciences, and honorary member of the learned societies of

all

the principal

European governments, issued a work

entitled

Essai

Philosophique sur les Frobabilites, in which this eminent scientist says “

Of

all

the instruments that

we can employ

know

to

:

the imperceptible

agents of nature, the most sensitive are the nerves, especially when exceptional influences increase their sensibility. The singular phe.

nomena which individuals,

new

result

from

this

.

.

extreme nervous sensitiveness of certain

have given birth to diverse opinions as to the existence of a been named animal magnetism. . We are so

agent, which has

.

.

from knowing all the agents of nature and their various modes of action that it would be hardly philosophical to deny the phenomena, sim-

far

ply because they are inexplicable, in the actual state of our information.

simply our duty to examine them with an attention as scrupulous as it seems difficult to admit them.”

It is

much more

Ihe experiments of Mesmer were vastly improved upon by the Marwho entirely dispensed with apparatus and produced

quis de Puysegur,

THE VEIL OF

174

ISIS.

remarkable cures among the tenants of his estate at Biisancy. These with being given to the public, many other educated men experimented Mediof Academy the like success, and in 1825 M. Foissac proposed to A special committee, consisting of Adecine to institute a new inquiry. lon, Parisey,

Marc, Burdin,

sen., with

Husson

as reporter, united in a

the recommendation that the suggestion should be adopted. They make irrevand absolute manly avowal that “ in science no decision whatever is should be afford us the means to estimate the value which

ocable,” and

of 1784, by sayattached to the conclusions of the Franklin committee appeared founded “ was judgment the experiments on which this ing that assemnecessary simultaneous and to have been conducted without the predispositogether of all the commissioners, and a/sc with moral

bling

they were apwhich, according to the principles of the fact which pointed to examine, must cause their complete failure/' been What they say concerning magnetism as a secret remedy, has tions,

Sihritualism, times by the most respected writers upon modern it to trials ; subject to namely “ It is the duty of the Academy to study it, stranquite of it from persons finally, to take away the use and practice it an object of lucre and gers to the art, who abuse this means, and make

said

many ;

speculation.”

^

*

j

1826, the Academy This report provoked long debates, but in May, illustrious names appointed a commission which comprised the following Magendie, Guersant, Husson, Leroux, Bourdois de la Motte, Double, de Mussy. Ihey began Thillaye, Marc, Itard, Fouquier, and Guenau continued them five years, communicating, their labors immediately, and :

the results of their observathrough Monsieur Husson, to the Academy classified under phenomena The report embraces accounts of tions. this work is not specially devoted thirty-four different paragraphs, but as brief extracts. magnetism, we must be content with a few to the science of

passes are invaof the hands, frictions, nor of staie, fixedness several occasions, the will, phenomena, even without the knowl-

They assert that neither contact

on have sufficed to produce magnetic and therapeutical phenomena edge of the magnetized. “ Well-attested ihe reproduced without it. depend on magnetism alone, and are not new of “ occasions the development state of somnambulism exists and denominations of clairvoyance, intuition, faculties, which have received the cirmagnetic) has “been excited ««der riably needed, since,

internal prevision.”

Sleep (the

not cumstances where those magnetized could

see,

an

were

occasion it. The magne ignorant of the means employed to is him completely mto somnambu “ once controlled his subject, may put sight, knowledge, out of his take him out of it without his The external senses of the sleeper doors.” tance, and through closed izer,

,

ACADEMICIANS

WHO WERE

HONEST.

175

be completely paralyzed, and a duplicate set to be brougiit into “ Most of the time they are entirely strangers to the external action. and unexpected noise made in their ears, such as the sound of copper

seem

to

any heavy substance, and so forth. them respire hydrochloric acid or ammonia without inconOne may make The veniencing them by it, or without even a suspicion on their part.” committee could “ tickle their feet, nostrils, and the angles of the eyes by the approach of a feather, pinch their skin so as to produce ecchymosis, prick it under the nails with pins plunged to a considerable depth, withIn out the evincing of any pain, or by sign of being at all aware of it. word, have most a we seen one person who was insensible to one of the painful operations of surgery, and whose countenance, pulse, or respiravessels, forcibly struck, the fall of

.

.

.

tion did not manifest the slightest emotion.”

So much

now let us see what they have to say about the internal ones, which may fairly be considered as proving a “ Whilst they marked difference between man and a mutton-protoplasm. for the external senses

;

are in this state of somnambulism,” say the committee, “ the magnetized

persons

we have observed,

which they be more faithful and more extensive. ... We have seen two somnambulists distinguish, with their eyes shut, the objects placed before them they have told, without touching them, the color and value of the cards they have read words traced with the hand, or some lines of books opened by mere chance. This phenomenon took place, even when the opening of the eyelids was accurately closed, by means of the fingers.” We met, in two somnambulists, the power of foreseeing acts more or less complicated of the organism. have whilst awake.

Their

retain the exercise of the faculties

memory even appears

to

;

;

One

of

them announced several days, nay, several months beforehand, and the minute when epileptic fits would come on and the other declared the time of the cure. Their previsions were

the day, the hour,

return

;

realized with

remarkable exactness.” say that “ it has collected and communicated facts important to induce it to think that the Academy should

The commission sufficiently

encourage the researches on magnetism as a very curious branch of psychology and natural history.” The committee conclude by saying that the are so extraordinary that they scarcely imagine that the Academy will concede their reality, but protest that they have been throughout animated by motives of a lofty character, “ the love of science and by

facts

the necessity of justifying the hopes which the of our zeal and our devotion.”

Academy had

entertained

Iheir fears were fully justified by the conduct of at least one of their

and, as

own number, who had absented himself from M. Husson tells us, “did not deem it right to

member

the experiments, sign the report.”

THE VEIL OF

1/6

ISIS.

fact stated by the This was Magendie, the physiologist, who, despite the at the experiments,” did official report that he had not “been present on Human Physio, not hesitate to devote four pages of his famous work summarizing its alleged phelogy to the subject of mesmerism, and after the erudition and nomena, without endorsing them as unreservedly as committee-men would seem to have scientific acquirements of his fellow

“ Self-respect and the dignity of the profession demand well-informed physician] will circumspection on these points. He [the and how apt the remember how readily mystery glides into charlatanry, its semblance when counteprofession is to become degraded even by the context lets his nanced by respectable practitioners.”' No word duly appointed by the Academy readers into the secret that he had been had absented himself from its sitto serve on the commission of 1826 phenomena, and had so failed to learn the truth about mesmeric tings “ Self-respect and the dignity ex parte. exacted, says

:

m

;

•

was now pronouncing judgment

silence of the profession ” probably exacted i. whose specialty is the Thirty-eight years later, an English scientist, that is even greater than investigation of physics, and whose reputation opthe ^\hen course of conduct, of Magendie, stooped to as unfair a 1

•

•

1

and

aid in

spiritualistic phenomena, portunity offered to investigate the dishonest investigators. Professor taking it out of the hands of ignorant or he his Fragments of Science, Tohn Tyndall avoided the subject but in in quoted which we have guilty of the ungentlemanly expressions ;

was

another place.

a-

j

attempt, and that suffice But we are wrong ; he made one table, to see low that he once got under a tells us, in the Fragments, ^uch as le with a despair for humanity, the raps were made, and arose and knee o Israel Putnam, crawling on hand never felt before estunate ffie which partially affords a parallel by .

!

she-wolf in her den,

dark after the chemist’s courage in groping in the

niensa and Tyndall was devoured by his shield. desperado ” should be the motto on his Teste of 1824, Dr. Alphonse committee Speaking of the report of the

nam

!

killed his wolf,

a g scientist, says that it pro uce a distino’uished contemporaneous que could “ one No convictions impresJon on the Academy, but few wel as gr commissioners, whose good faith as tion the veracity of the ““ undeniable, but they were suspected :

knowledge were truths ivhtc i In fact, there are certain unfortunate dupes a espocially who are so canM rtee who bdkve in thorn, and thoso h™ ory of his is, let the records avow them publUly.” How true this very day, attest. When Professor the earliest times to this investigations, his spiritualistic announced the preliminary results of

,

\n

BASE TREATMENT OF PROF. HARE. albeit

one of the most eminent chemists and physicists in the world, was, When he proved that he was not, he

nevertheless, regarded as a dupe.

was charged with having fallen into dotage the Harvard professors denouncing “his insane adherence to the gigantic humbug.” When the professor began his investigations in 1853, he announced that he “ felt called upon, as an act of duty to his fellow-creatures, to bring whatever influence he possessed to the attempt to stem the tide of popular madness, which, in defiance of reason and science, was fast setThough, accordting in favor of the gross deliisiori called Spiritualism.” ;

ing to his declaration, he “ entirely coincided with Faraday’s theory of

had the true greatness which characterizes the princes his investigation thorough, and then tell the truth. he was rewarded by his life-long associates, .let his own words tell.

table-turning,” he

make

of science to

How

In an address delivered “ he had been engaged tury,

and

New

York, in September, 1854, he says that upwards of half a cenaccuracy and precision had never been questioned, until he

his

in

in scientific pursuits for

had become a spiritualist while his integrity as a man had never in his been assailed, until the Harvard professors fulminated their report against that which he knezo to be true, and which they did noi knozv to ;

life

be

false.”

How much old

man

mournful pathos

of seventy-six

—a

truth

expressed in these few words

!

illustrious of British

scientists,

claimed his belief in spiritualism and mesmerism, of compassion. Professor Nicholas Wagner, of reputation as a zoologist

is

is

St.

having proin terms

spoken of

Petersburg, whose

one of the most conspicuous,

in his turn

the penalty of his exceptional candor, in his outrageous treatment

Russian scientists

There are

pays

by the

!

scientists zxiA scientists ;

the instance of

An

!

a century, deserted for telling Mr. A. R. Wallace, who had previously been

And now esteemed among the most

the

is

scientist of half

modern

spiritualism

and

if

the occult sciences suffer in

from the malice of one

class, neverthey have had their defenders at all times among men whose names have shed lustre upon science itself. In tlie first rank stands Isaac Newton, “the light of science,” who was a thorough believer in

theless,

magnetism, as taught by Paracelsus, phers in general.

No

one

will

Van Helmont, and by

presume

to

deny

the fire-philoso-

that his doctrine

of purely a theory of magnetism. If his own words mean anything at all, they mean that he based all his speculations upon the “soul of the world,” the great universal, magnetic agent, which he called the divine sensorium* “Here,” he says, “the universal space

and attraction

is

Fundamental Principles of Natural Philosophy.’*

12

THE VEIL OF

178 question

is

of a very subtile spirit which penetrates through

hardest bodies,

and which

is

strength and activity of this

together

ISIS.

when brought

concealed

spirit,

bodies attract

into contact.

all,

even the

Through the each other, and adhere

in their substance.

Through

it,

electrical bodies oper-

ate at the remotest distance, as well as near at hand, attracting and through this spirit the light also flows, and is refracted and repelling ;

and warms bodies.

reflected,

through

it

the animals

move

and But these things cannot be

All senses are excited by this their limbs.

spirit,

explained in few words, and we have not yet sufflcient experience to determine fully the laws by which this universal spirit operates.” There are two kinds of magnetization the first is purely animal, the ;

other transcendent, and depending on the will and knowledge of the mesmerizer, as well as on the degree of spirituality of the subject, and his capacity to receive the impressions of the astral light. But now it is next to ascertain that clairvoyance depends a great deal more on the former than on the latter. To the power of an adept, like Du Botet, the

most positive subject will have to submit. by the mesmerizer, magician, or spirit, the

If his sight

is

ably directed

must yield up its most for, if it is a book which is ever closed secret records to our scrutiny other hand it is ever to those “who see and do not perceive,” on the unmutilated opened for one who wills to see it opened. It keeps an light

;

minutest acts of our record of all that was, that is, or ever will be. The photographed on its rest lives are imprinted on it, and even our thoughts angel in the It is the book which we see opened by the eternal tablets. which the dead aie Revelation, “ which is the Book of life, and out of

judged according to

GOD

their works.”

It

is,

in

short, the

MEMORY of

!

characters, men, oracles assert that the impression of thoughts, this the things withand other divine visions, appear in the ^ther. ... In Chaldean Oracles the out figure are figured,” says an ancient fragment of

“The

....

of Zoroaster. *

and science, Thus, ancient as well as modern wisdom, vaticination the indeon is It kabalists. corroborating the claims of the

agree in

stamped the impression of stnictible tablets of the astral light that is perform ; and that future every thought we think, and every act we delineated as a events— effects of long-forgotten causes—are already Memory follow. prophet to vivid picture for the eye of the seer and the psychologist, the sphinx the despair of the materialist, the enigma of philosophies merely a name to of science— is to the student of old exerts, and shares witi express that power which man unconsciously *

» Simpl.

in Thys.,” 143

;

“ The Chaldean Oracles,” Cory.

THE DROWNING MAN many

of the inferior

MEMORY.

S

animals-to look with inner

179

sight

of past sensations and Ikh/ and there behold the images “

mto

the astral

incidents.

In-

micrographs of the living ganglia for stead of searching the cerebral which we visited, of incidents and the dead, of scenes that we have records vast repository where the have borne a part,” * they went to the are pulsation of the visible cosmos 0? every man’s li^ as well as every

up for all Eternity That flash of memory which

stored

!

drowning

man

.

is

.

„

traditionally

^ supposedj to show a

mortal every long-forgotten scene of his

as the land-

life

intermittent flashes of lightning scape is revealed to the traveller by struggling soul gets into the silent simply the sudden glimpse which the in imperishable colors galleries where his history is depicted experience one corroborated by the personal fact

—

The well-known

often recognize as familiar to us, of nine persons out of ten-that we which we see or hear for the scenes, and landscapes, and conversations, countries never visited before, is a result of first time, and sometimes in additional Believers in reincarnation adduce this as an the same causes. This recognition of bodies. proof of our antecedent existence in other is attributed by them men, countries, and things that we have never seen, But the men of old, experiences. to flashes of soul-memory of anterior

in

contrary opinion. with mediaeval philosophers, firmly held to a was one phenomenon affirmed that though this psychological preexistarguments in favor of immortality and the soul s

common They

of the greatest

endowed with an individual memory apart from As Eliphas brain, it is no proof of reincarnation.

ence, yet the latter being that of our physical

after everything that Levi beautifully expresses it, “ nature shuts the door The chrysalis forms. passes, and pushes life onward” in more perfected In the grub. again a become becomes a butterfly; the latter can never in the locked of the night-hours, when our bodily senses are fast stillness

fetters of sleep, free.

and our elementary body

rests, the astral

It then oozes out of its earthly prison,

and

form becomes

as Paiacelsus has

it

“confabulates with the outward world,” and travels round the visible as “ In sleep,” he says, “ the astral body (soul) well as the invisible worlds. then it soars to its parents, and holds converse with IS in freer motion Dreams, forebodings, prescience, prognostications and prethe stars.” sentiments are impressions left by our astral spirit on our brain, which ;

according to the proportion of the hours of sleep. The more the during blood with which it is supplied body is exhausted, the freer is the spiritual man, and the more vivid the

receives

them more or

less distinctly,

impressions of our soul’s memory. Draper

:

In heavy and robust sleep, dream-

“Conflict between Religion and Science.”

THE VEIL OF

i8o

ISIS.

and uninterrupted, upon awakening to outward consciousness, men may sometimes remember nothing. But the impressions of scenes and landscapes which the astral body saw in its peregrinations are still there, though lying latent under the pressure of matter. They may be awakened at any moment, and then, during such flashes of man’s inner memory, there is an instantaneous interchange of energies between the Between the “ micrographs ” of the visible and the invisible universes. less

cerebral ganglia and the photo-scenographic galleries of the astral light, And a man who knows that he has never a current is established.

nor seen the landscape and person that he recognizes still has he seen and knows them, for the acquaint-

visited in bod)^,

may

well assert that

ance was formed while travelling in “spirit.” To this the physiologists ran have but one objection. They will answer that in natural sleepperfect and deep, “ half of our nature which is volitional is in the condithe more so as the existence tion of inertia ” hence unable to travel soul is considered by them little or of any such individual astral body j

j

Blumenbach assures us that in the state of an assertion sleep, all intercourse between mind and body is suspended thr reminds honestly who R.S., F. which is denied by Dr. Richardson, mind and of connections German scientist that “ the precise limits and body being unknown” it is more than should be said. Phis confession, still more added to those of the French physiologist, Fourni6, and the else than a poetical myth.

;

physician, who frankly recent one of Dr. Allchin, an eminent London “ pursuits wliich avowed, in an address to students, that of all scientific concern the community, there is none peihaps which rests practically

gives us a certain so uncertain and insecure a basis as medicine,” those of the against scientists right to offset the hypotheses of ancient

upon

modern

ones.

•

,

,

j-

avoid leading man, however gross and material he may be, can in the invisiother the universe, a double existence one in the visible is chiefly in frame The life-principle which animates his physical ble. animal portions of him rest, the the astral body and while the more

No

;

;

We

are perfectly neither limits nor obstacles. to such a object will aware that many learned, as well as the unlearned, prefer would They life-principle. novel theory of the distribution of the knows ignorance and go on confessing that no one

more

spiritual

ones

know

remaining in blissful whither this mysterious agent appears or can pretend to tell whence and attention to what they conand disappears, than to give one moment’s Some might object on the ground sider old and exploded theories. have no immortal souls, and hence, taken by theology, that dumb brutes as well as laymen labor tinder can have no astral spirits for theologians same thing. soul and spirit are one and the ;

that the erroneous impression

l8l

TRANCE-LIFE. But

if

of we study Plato and other philosophers

we may

old,

readily per-

our astra soul,” by which Plato meant ceive that while the ^Hrrational at best have can representation of ourselves, body, or the more ethereal grave, continuity of existence be3mnd the only a more or less prolonged nnmortal by sold, by the Church-is the divine spirit-wrongly termed the disappreciate (Any Hebrew scholar will readily its very essence. words between the two tinction who comprehends the difference apart from nephesh) If the life-principle is something ruah and that the init is why connected with it, the astral spirit and in no way so much on the bodily prostratensity of the clairvoyant powers depends The deeper the trance, the less signs of life the tion of the subj'ect ? perceptions, and the more body shows, the clearer become the spiritual disburdened of the bodily powerful are the soul’s visions. The soul, greater degree of intensity than it senses, shows activity of power in a far Boismont gives repeated incan in a strong, healthy body. Brierre de The organs of sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearstances of this fact. mesmerized subject deprived ino are proved to become far acuter in a bodily, than while he uses them in of the possibility of exercising them his

normal state. invincible demonstraSuch facts alone, once proved, ought to stand as

at least for a certain period after tions of the continuity of individual life, reason of its being worn out or the body has been left by us, either by

But though during its brief sojourn on earth our soul may bushel, it still shines more or be assimilated to a light hidden under a influences of kindred spirits ; and less bright and attracts to itself the brain, it draws when a°thought of good or evil import is begotten in our by accident.

attracts iron impidses of like nature as irresistibly as the magnet with which intensity the This attraction is also proportionate to filings. and so it will be unthought-impulse makes itself felt in the ether

to

it

the

;

own epoch so forciderstood how one man may impress himself upon his ever-interchanging the through bly, that the influence may be carried

—

invisible currents of energy between the two worlds, the visible and the portion of large affects a it until another, to from one succeeding age

mankind. the authors of the famous work entitled the Unseen Unihave allowed themselves to think in this direction, it would be say but that they have not told all they might will be inferred

How much may

verse

difficult to

;

from the following language “

Regard

it

as

you

\zXtex

far beyond

no doubt

that the properties

higher order in the arena of nature than those And, as even the high priests of science still find the

of the ether are of a

op tangible matter.

:

please, there can be

much

their

comprehension, except in numerous but minute

—

THE VEIL OF

182

ISIS.

would not become us to speculate further. It is sufficient for our purpose to know from what the ether certainly does, that it is capable of vastly more than any has yet ventured to say." One of the most interesting discoveries of modern times, is that of the faculty which enables a certain class of sensitive persons to receive from any object held in the hand or against the forehead impressions of the character or appearance of the individual, or any other object with which it has previously been in contact. Thus a manuscript, painting, no matter Iww ancient conveys to the article of clothing, or jewelry sensitive, a vivid picture of the writer, painter, or wearer ; even though he Nay, more; a fragment of an lived in the days of Ptolemy or Enoch. ancient building will recall its history and even the scenes which tranA bit of ore will carry the soul-vision back to spired within or about it. This faculty is called by the time when it was in process of formation.

and often

isolated particulars,

it

—

— Professor

—

Buchanan, of Louisville, Kentucky psychometry. To him, the world is indebted for this most important addition to Psychological Sciences ; and to him, perhaps, when skepticism is found felled to the ground by such accumulation of facts, posterity its

will

discoverer

have

R.

J.

In announcing to the public

to elevate a statue.

his great dis-

covery, Professor Buchanan, confining himself to the power of psychom“ The mental and physiological etry to delineate human character, says :

appears to be imperishable, as the oldest specimens 1 have investigated gave their impressions with a distinctness and force, little impaired by time. Old manuscripts, requiring an anti-

influence imparted to writing

quary to decipher their strange old penmanship, were easily interpreted The property of retaining the impress by the psychometric power. Drawings, paintings, everything of mind is not limited to writing. volition have been expended, and thought, upon which human contact, .

may become the

.

.

linked with that thought and

mind of another when

life,

so as to lecall

them to

in contact.”

Without, perhaps, really

knovnng,

at

the early time of the grand dis-

prophetic words, the Professor adds

covery, the significance of his own “This discovery, in its application to the arts and to history, will open a mine of interesting knowledge.” * The existence of this faculty was first experimentally demonstrated in 1841.

It has since

been

verified

by a thousand psychonieters

:

in different

no It proves that every occurrence in nature parts of the world. impress upon matter how minute or unimportant leaves its indelible dismolecular appreciable no and, as there has been physical nature

—

;

* J. R. Buchanan,

Anthropology.”

M.D.

‘‘ :

of Outlines of Lectures on the Neurological System

183

THE QUEST OF THE PSYCHOMETER.

images ha« been proEther, or astral hgi ducedby that invisible, universal force— Denton ^ Soul of Things, Professor In Ids charming work, entitled The wrbance, the only inference possible

that these

is.

.

discussion of this subject enters at great length into a powei, wiici of examples of the psychometncal I-Ie gives a multitude iceio s fragment o degree. Mrs. Denton possesses in a marked 1slightest her to describe, without the

the geologist,

A

m

house, at Tusculum, enabled on her forehead, not only mation as to the nature of the object placed ° also the previous the great orator’s surroundings, but Dicthe Sulla called, is usually building, Cornelius Sulla Felix, or, as he o Chuici Christian fragment of marble from the ancient tator. and officiating priests. Smyrna, brought before her its congregation Greece, Ararat, and other Specimens from Nineveh, China, Jerusalem, in the life of various perplaces all over the world brought up scenes of years ago. In many sonages, whose ashes had been scattered thousands by reference to historical case ° Professor Denton verified the statements of the More than this, a bit of the skeleton, or a fragment records. the seeress to perceive the tooth of some antediluvian animal, caused for a few brief moments its creature as it was when alive, and even live Before the eager quest of the psylife, and experience its sensations. of naUire yield up chometer, the most hidden recesses of the domain

A

their secrets

;

rival in vivid-

and the events of the most remote epochs

circumstances of yesterday. “ Not a leaf waves, not an insect Says the author, in the same work by a thousand crawls, not a ripple moves, but each motion is recorded This is just as true faithful scribes in infallible and indelible scripture.

ness of impression the

flitting

;

of

past time.

all

From

the

dawn

of light

upon

this infant globe,

when

moment, nature has

the steamy curtains hung, to this hers been busy photographing everything. What a picture-gallery is in scenes that imagine to impossibility It appears to us the height of

round

its

cradle

!

some temple

ancient Thebes, or in

of prehistoric times should be photo-

graphed only upon the substance of certain atoms.

The images

of the

and ever-retaining events are imbedded medium, which the philosophers call the “ Soul of the World,” and Mr. Denton “ the Soul of Things.” The psychometer, by applying the fragment of a substance to his forehead, brings his inner-self into relations in that all-permeating, universal,

with the inner soul of the object he handles.

now

It is

admitted that

even the most solid. preserves the images of all

the universal tether pervades all things in nature, It is

*

beginning to be admitted, also, that

W.

and Elizabeth M. F. Denton

searches and Discoveries.”

:

this

“ The Soul of Things

Boston, 1873.

;

or

Psychometric Re-

;

THE VEIL OF

184

When

things which transpire.

he

is

brought in contact

ISIS.

the psychoraeter examines his specimen,

connected

Avith the current of the astral light,

with that specimen, and which retains pictures of the events associated

with

its

history.

These, according to Denton, pass before his vision with scene after scene crowding upon each other so

the swiftness of light rapidly, that

to hold

it is

any one

in the field of vision long

The psychometer Unless

;

only by the supreme exercise of the will that he

is

clairvoyant

his will-power is

;

that

enough is,

to describe

is

able

it.

he sees with the inner eye.

very strong, unless he has thoroughly trained

phenomenon, and

knowledge of the capabilities of his sight are profound, his perceptions of places, persons, and events, must necessarily be very confused. But in the case of raesmerization, in which this same clairvoyant faculty is developed, the operator, whose will holds that of the subject under control, can force him to concentrate his attention upon a given picture long enough to observe all its minute details. Moreover, under the guidance of an experienced mesmerizer, the seer would excel the natural psychometer in having a prevision of future himself to that particular

events,

more

distinct

and clear than the

his

latter.

And

to those

who might

object to the possibility of perceiving that which “yet is not,” we may put the question Why is it more impossible to see that which will be, :

than to bring back to sight that which

is

gone, and

is

no more

?

Accord-

ing to the kabalistic doctrine, the future exists in the astral light in embryo, as the present existed in embryo in the past. While man is free

he pleases, the manner in which he will act was foreknown from simply on the all time ; not on the ground of fatalism or destiny, but may be foreas it and, harmony unchangeable universal, ; principle of will not, and vibrations its struck, known that, when a musical note is can have eternity cannot change into those of another note. Besides, to act as

space, in its neither past nor future, but only the present ; as boundless Our places. proximate nor distant neither strictly literal sense, can have to attempt experience, conceptions, limited to the narrow area of our

not an end, at least a beginning of time and space but neither of for in such case time would not be eternal, nor these exist in reality future, as we have space boundless. The past no more exists than the and our memories are but the glimpses said, only our memories survive ;

fit if

;

;

of the astral of the reflections of this past in the currents of the emanations astral the from light, as the psychometer catches them that’

we catch

object held by him. of the influences of light Says Professor E. Hitchcock, when speaking upon them by means of upon bodies, and of the formation of pictures pervades all nature influence “ It seems, then, that this photographic it know but it may imprint upon nor can we say where it stops. We do not :

i85

PICTURES ON THE COSMIC CANVAS. modified features, as they are the world around us our

and thus it

by vauo us pa s^ns.

impressions of all oui actions nature with daguerreotype which nature, more sk. fu may be, too, that tlere are tests by fill

out and fix than any photographist, can bring as on a great senses than ours shall see them ; Perhaps, too, they may never the material universe. ^ yo in the great pictiue-galleiy vas, but become specimens lange c i hencefort } is The “ perhaps ” of Professor Hitchcock e triumphant certitu demonstration of psychometry into a exc pclairvoyant faculties w 1 understand these psychological and than ouis are idea, that acuter senses tion to Professor Hitchcock’s and mam canvas, supposed cosmic needed to see these pictures upon his senses ot his limitations to the external tain that he should have confined immortal Spirit, appreThe human spirit, bein^ of the Divine, the bodv. These sees all things as in the present. ciates neither past nor future, but the upon quotation are imprinted daguerreotypes referred to in the above before-and, according to the Hermetic astml light, where, as we said demonstrated is already accepted and teaching, the first portion of which be. all that was, is, or ever will by science-is kept the record of a particular attention to Of late, some of our learned men have given They begin “ superstition.” mark of a subject hitherto branded with the of tie authors The worlds. speculating on hypothetical and invisible take the lead, and already they Unseen Universe were the first to boldly Unwhose speculations are given find a follower in Professor Fiske, o ground insecure Evidently the scientists are probing the seen World. their feet, are preparing for a materialism, and, feeling it trembling under Jevons confirms in case of defeat. less dishonorable surrender of arms thought, displacing the partiBabbage, and both firmly believe that every in motion, scatters them throughout cles of the brain and setting them particle of the existing matter must be the universe, and think that “each On the other hand. Dr. Thomas a register of all that has happened.” f most positively invites Young, in his lectures on natural philosophy, _

m

_

us to “ speculate with freedom

on the

possibility of

independent woilds

,

pervading each other, unseen and space may not be the same space, and others again to which

existing in different parts, others

some unknown,

in

a necessary

mode

of existence.”

scientific point of view, such If scientists, proceeding from a strictly the invisible universe— as the possibility of energy being transferred into in such speculations, why indulge and on the principle of continuity,

should occultists and spiritualists be refused the “ Religion of Geology.”

I

same

“ Principles of Science,”

privilege ?

vol.

ii.,

p. 45S-

Gan-

;

1

THE VEIL OF

86

ISIS.

on the surface of polished metal, are registered and preserved for an indefinite space of time, according to science and Professor Draper illustrates the fact most poetically. “ A snadow,” says he, “ never falls u]3on a wall without leaving thereupon a permanent trace, a trace which might be made visible by resorting to proper pro-

glionic impressions

may be

cesses.

.

.

.

The

portraits of

our

friends, or landscape-views,

may be hidmake their

den on the sensitive surface from the eye, but they are ready to appearance, as soon as proper developers are resorted to.

A

concealed on a

make

it

come

silver or

glassy surface, until, by our necromancy,

forth into the visible world.

private apartments, where

spectre

we

Upon

is

we

the walls of our most

think the eye of intrusion

is

altogether shut

and our retirement can never be profaned, there exist the vestiges * of all our acts, silhouettes of whatever we have done.” If an indelible impression may be thus obtained on inorganic matter,

out,

and

nothing

if

is

lost or passes

completely out of existence in the uni-

a scientific levee of arms against the authors of the Unseen Universe 1 And on what ground can they reject the hypothesiniulsis that “ Thought, conceived to affect the matter of another universe

verse,

why such

taneojisly with this,

In our opinion,

may if

explain a future state ? ” f psychometry is one of the grandest proofs of the

indestructibility of matter, retaining eternally the impressions of the outward world, the possession of that faculty by our inner sight is a still

greater one in favor of the immortality of man’s individual spirit. Capable ago, of discerning events which took place hundreds of thousands of years eternity, the in why would it not apply the same faculty to a futuie lost in

which there can be neither past nor

present

future, but only

one boundless

?

Notwithstanding the confessions of stupendous ignorance things,

made by

the scientists themselves, they

of that mysterious spiritual force, lying

still

in

some

deny the existence

beyond the grasp of the ordinary

be able to apply to living beings the same laws which they have found to answer in reference to dead matter. “ puigations And, having discovered what the kabalists term the gross over rejoiced have they motion— of Ether— light, heat, electricity, and the of colors the their good fortune, counted its vibrations in producing further. any spectnim and, proud of their achievements, refuse to see its protean over less or more pondered Several men of science have it “ an called photometers, essence, and unable to measure it with their to supposed tenuity, hypothetical medium of great elasticity and extreme

physical laws.

They

still

hope

to

;

* J •|-

W.

Draper: “Conflict between Religion and Science,”

“Unseen Universe,”

p.

IS9‘

pp. 132 * I33*

—

:

187

THE TRINITY OF MYSTERY. pervade

and, “to space, the interior of solid bodies not excepted;” Others, of transmission of light and heat” (Dictionary).

all

medium

be the

whom we

will

name “the

will-o’-the-wisps” of

science— her

pseudo-

it examined it also, and even went to the trouble of scrutinizing sons spirits neither “through powerful glasses,” they tell us. But perceiving treacherous waves nor ghosts in it, and failing equally to discover in its and called all round turned anything of a more scientific character, they “ insane particular, believers in immortality in general, and spiritualists in * the whole, in doleful accents, perfectly fools” and “ visionary lunatics appropriate to the circumstance of such a sad failure.

Say the authors of the Unsten Universe : “ We have driven the operation of that mystery called Life out of the The mistake made, lies in imagining that by this objective universe. process they completely get rid of a thing so driven before them, and It does no such thing. that it disappears from the universe altogether. only disappears from that small circle of light which we may call Call it the trinity of mystery the universe of scie 7itific perception. mystery of matter, the mystery of life and the mystery of God and It

—

—

these three are One!' f Taking the ground that “ the visible universe

formable energy, and probably in ciple of continuity .

.

.

.

.

the authors of this

.”

i7iatter,

must certainly, in transcome to an end,” and “ the prin-

demanding a continuance of the universe remarkable work find themselves forced to believe still

is something beyond that which is visible t system is not the whole universe but only, it may be, a very small visible Furthermore, looking back as well as forward to the origin part of it.” of this visible universe, the authors urge that “ if the visible universe is all that exists then the first abrupt manifestation of it is as truly a break

“that there

•

•

overthrow” (Art. 85). Therefore, as such a against the accepted law of continuity, the authors come to the

of continuity as

break

•

is

its

final

following conclusion “ Now, is it not natural to imagine, that a universe of this nature, :

which

connected by bonds of energy with from it ? May we not regard Ether, or the medium, as not merely a bridge § between

we have

reaso7i to

thmk

the visible universe,

* F.

\

is

exists,

and

is

also capable of receiving energy

.

.

.

R. Marvin: “Lecture on Mediomania.”

“Unseen Universe,”

§ Behold

!

p. 84, et seq. X Ibid., p. 89. great scientists of the nineteenth century, corroborating the

Scandinavian fable, cited in the preceding chapter.

wisdom of the

Several thousand years ago, the

between the visible and the invisible universes was allegorized by ignorant “heathen,” in the “ Edda»Song of Vbluspa,” “The Vision of Vala, the

idea of a bridge

Seeress.”

For what

is

this

bridge of Bifrost, the radiant rainbow, which leads the

THE VEIL OF

i88

ISIS.

one order of things and another, forming as it were a species of cement, in virtue of which the various orders of the universe are welded together and made into one ? In fine, what we generally called Ether, may be not a mere medium, but a medium plus the invisible order of things, so that when the motions of the visible universe are transferred into Ether, part of them are conveyed as by a bridge into the invisible universe, and Nay, is it even necessary to are there made use of and stored up. May we not at once say that when retain the conception of a bridge ? energy

is

carried from matter into Ether,

the invisible carried from

;

and that when

it

is

carried from the visible into

it is

carried from Ether to matter

” the invisible into the visible?

—

it

is

(Art. 198, U?iseeti Universe.')

and were Science to take a few more steps in that direction and fathom more seriously the “hypothetical medium” who knows but Tyndall’s impassable chasm between the physical processes passed at least intellectually of the brain and co?isciousness, might be Precisely

;

—

with surprising ease

and

safety.

So far back as 1856, a man considered a savant in his days— Dr. the Jobard of Paris,— had certainly the same ideas as the authors of of w'orld Unseen Universe^ on ether, when he startled the pi ess and the “ I hoid a discovery which frightscience by the following declaration one, brute and blind, is electricity ens me. There are two kinds of produced by the contact of metals and acids ” (the gross purgation) Electricity has bifur“the other is intelligent and clairvoyant The brute Matteuci. and Nobili, cated itself in the hands of Galvani, while the Moncal, and force of the current has followed Jacobi, Bonelli, Chevalier Thilorier, and the intellectual one was following Bois-Robert, :

;

.

.

.

;

!

.

.

.

The electric ball or globular electricity contains a thought freaks ... We which disobevs Newton and Mariotte to follow its own Duplanty.

proofs of ike intellihave, in the mrnals of the Academy, thousands of But I remark that I am pei mitting myself . gence of the electric holt disclosed to you little more and / should have become indiscreet. .

.

A

to

about to discover to us the universal spirit. science and The foregoing, added to the wonderful confessions of Universe, throw an additional what we have just quoted from the Unseen In one of the preceddeparted ages. lustre on the wisdom of the long quotation from Cory’s translation o ing chapters we have alluded to a of the Chaldean Oracles Ancient Fragments, in which it appears that one language singularly like in expresses this self same idea about ether, and

the key which

is

but the same Dea as eods to their rendezvous, near the Urdar-fountain, ? by the authors of the “Unseen Universe offered to the thoughtful student March 2, 1856, p. 67. * “ L’Ami des Sciences,”

fiiat

which

is

WATER, THE UNIVERSAL SOLVENT.

1

89

It states that from jether Unseefi Universe. that of the authors of the that the images of all will return have come all things, and to it all upon it ; and that it is the store-house of thinf^s are indelibly impressed It ideas. all visible forms, and even the genus or of the remains of whatever that our assertion appears as if this case strangely corroborates found to have been anticibe will discoveries may be made in our days ;

’

many thousand years by our “ simple-minded ancestors. attitude assumed by the At the point at which we are now arrived, the being perfectly defined, we materialists toward psychical phenomena

pated by

key lying loose on the threshold would stoop to pick it up. of the “ chasm” not one of our Tyndalls How timid would appear to some kabalists these tentative efforts Although so far in ether to solve the great mystery of the universal what the philosophers, advance of anything propounded by cotemporary speculate upon, was to the intelligent explorers of the Unseen Universe To them ether was not of hermetic philosophy familiar science.

may

assert with

safety that were this

!

masters

the universe, but merely a bridge connecting the seen and unseen sides of led through the mysacross its span their daring feet followed the road that will not or cannot unlock. terious gates which modern speculators either the more often he explorer, modern deeper the research of the

The

comes face to face with the discoveries of the ancients. Does Elie de Beaumont, the great French geologist, venture a hint upon the terrestrial he finds himcirculation, in relation to some elements in the earth’s crust, by the old philosophers. Do we demand of distinguished origin technologists, what are the most recent discoveries in regard to the Sterry Professor them. one of hear We of the metalliferous deposits ? Hunt, in showing us how water is a universal solve?it, enunciating the

self anticipated

doctrine held and taught by the old Thales, more than two dozen centuries listen to the same proago, that water was the principle of all things.

We

fessor,

with de

Beaumont as

authority,

expounding the

terrestrial circulation,

and the chemical and physical phenomena of the material world. While we read with pleasure that he is “ not prepared to concede that we have in chemical and physical processes the whole secret of organic life,” we note with a still greater delight the following honest confession on his part “ Still we are, in many respects, approximating the phenomena of the :

kingdom and we at the same time and depend upon each other that we begin

organic world to those of the mineral learn that these so far interest

;

a certain truth underlying the notion of those old philosophers, who extended to the mineral world the notion of a vital force, which led them to speak of the earth as a great livmg organism, and to look upon the

to see

various changes of

belonging to the

its air, its

life

waters, and

of our planet.”

its

rocky depths, as processes

THE VEIL OF

190

ISIS.

world must have a beginning. Things have latterly gone so far with scientists in the matter of prejudice, that it is quite a wonder that even so much as this should be conceded to ancient philoThe po.or, honest primordial elements have long been exiled, sophy. Everything

in this

and Qur ambitious men of science run races to determine who shall add one more to the fledgling brood of the sixty-three or more elementary Mean.vvhile there rages a war in modern chemistry about substances. “ chemical eleare denied the right to call these substances essences self-existing ments,” for they are not “ primordial principles or * Such ideas associated with out of which the universe was fashioned.” Greek philosophy, but old the for enough the word clcvic7it were good

We

terms.

Cooke

they are “ nothing to do unfortunate terms,” and experimental science will have smell, or with any kind of essences except those which it can see, oi the nose, the eye, the in put be It must have those that can taste.” It leaves others to the metaphysicians. mouth “ though a homogeneal Therefore, when Van Helmont tells us that, converted into water, part of elementary earth may be artfully (artificially) by nature alone for done “ be that the same can though he still denies offering no natural agent is able to transmute one element into another,” the same, we must believe as a reason that the elements always remain disciple of the unprogressed an least him, if not quite an ignoramus, at

modern science

rejects

them

j

for,

as Professor

says,

!

;

mouldy “ old Greek philosophy.”

Living and dying in

blissful

ignorance

either he or his old masof the future sixty-three substances, what could Nothing, of course, but metaphysical and crazy ter, Paracelsus, achieve ? common to all mediceval speculations, clothed in a meaningless jargon

notes, we find in the and ancient alchemists. Nevertheless, in comparing “ The study chemistry, the following latest of all works upon modern class of substances, from no one of chemistry has revealed a remarLable been produced by any chemical of which a second substance has ever ... by no chemweighs less than the original substance :

process which

substance weighing less process whatever can we obtain from iron a we can extract from word, In a than the metal used in its production. Moreover, it appears, according to Professor nothing but iron.”

ical

iron

f

not know there was any difCooke, that “ seventy-five years ago men did compound substances, for in old times ference ” between elementary and weight is the measure of material, alchemists had never conceived “ that but, on t le con is ever lost and that, as thus measured, no material ;

inexperiments J as these the substances trary, they imagined that in such shor Centuries, transformation. .

volved underwent a mysterious *

Cooke

:

“

New

Chemistry,”

p. 113.

.

m

.

iio-iii. f Ibid., pp.

’

Ibid., p. 106.

,

I9I

ALCHEMICAL PRINCIPLES. “were wasted

vain

in

transform

attempts to

the

baser metals into

gold.”

Cooke, so eminent in modern chemistry, equally profiIs not know ? cient in the knowledge of what the alchemists did or did diction ? alchemical he quite sure that he understands the meaning of the We are not. But let us compare his views as above expressed with but sentences written in plain and good, albeit old English, from the Is Professor

translations of

Van Helmont and

We

Paracelsus.

learn from their

own

admissions that the alkahest induces the following changes “ (i.) The alkahest never destroys the seminal virtues of the bodies for instance, gold, by its action, is reduced to a salt of thereby dissolved :

:

gold,

antimony

to

a salt of anthnony,

etc.,

of the same seminal virtues,

(2.) The subject exposed to or characters with the original concrete. principles, salt, sulphur, and merits operation is converted into its three

cury,

and afterwards into

length

is

which then becomes

salt alone,

wholly turned into clear water.

be rendered volatile by a sand-heat it be distilled therefrom, the body

;

(3.)

and left

is

if,

Whatever

volatile, it

and

dissolves

at

may

after volatilizing the solvent,

pure, insipid water, but always

find Van Helmont, the most untractable bodies elder, saying of “ equal in weight to the matinto substances of the same seminal virtues, and he adds, “This salt, by being several times cohobated ter dissolved with Paracelsus, sal circulatim, loses all its fixedness, and at length becomes an insipid water, equal in quantity to the salt it was made from.”* The objection that might be made by Professor Cooke, in behalf of modern science, to the hermetic expressions, would equally apply to the Egyptian hieratic writings they hide that which was meant to be concealed. If he would profit by the labors of the past, he must employ Paracelsus, like the rest, exhausted the cryptographer, and not the satirist. letters and abbreviations of words and his ingenuity in transpositions of sentences. For example, when he wrote sutratur he meant tartar, and mutrm meant nitrum, and so on. There was no end to the pretended Some imagined that it was explanations of the meaning of the alkahest. an alkaline of salt of tartar salatilized others that it meant algeist, a German word which means all-spirit, or spirituous. Paracelsus usually termed

equal in quantity

to its

Further,

original self!'

we

this salt that it will dissolve the

—

;

“ the centre of water wherein metals ought to die.” This gave rise to the most absurd suppositions, and some persons such as' Glauber thought

salt

—

—

was the spirit of salt. It requires no little hardihood to assert that Paracelsus and his colleagues were ignorant of the natures of elementary and compound substances they may not be called by the

that the alkahest

;

*“

De Secretis Adeptorum.” Werdenfelt

;

Philalethes

;

'Van

Helmont

;

Paracelsus.

,

THE VEIL OF

193

were known is proved by it by what name the gas given off sulphuric acid was called by Paracelsus, since

the results

nowin fashion, but What matters attained.

when

is

same names iron

as.

are

dissolved in

ISIS.

that they

recognized, even by our standard authorities, as the discoverer of hydrogen ? * His merit is the same and though Van Helmont may have the fact concealed, under the name “ seminal virtues,” his knowledge of is

lie

;

which the enthat elementary substances have their original properties, tering into

compounds only temporarily modifies

none” the

less

—never destroys—he was

the greatest chemist of his age, and the peer of modern He affirmed that the aurnm potabile could be obtained with by converting the whole body of gold into salt, retaining its

scientists.

the alkahest,

learn what seminal virtues, and being soluble in water. When chemists what he virtues he meant by auruni potabile, alkahest, salt, and seminal thought he meant really meant, not what he said he meant, nor what was such airs toward assume safely then, and not before, can our chemists and those ancient masters whose mystic teachings the fire-philosophers

One

they reverently studied.

thing

at

is clear,

any

rate.

Taken merely

language of Van Helmont shows that he underwhich Sterry Hunt stood the solubility of metallic substances in water,

in its exoteric form, this

We

would like our scientific contempoto see what sort of terms would be invented by proposition that man’s audacious ries to conceal and yet half-reveal their' the basement of “only God is the cineritious matter of his brain,” if in Avenue there were a torthe new Court House or the cathedral on Fifth them at will. ture-chamber, to which judge or cardinal could send “ The alchemists lectures f Professor Sterry Hunt says in one of his the basis of his theory of metalliferous deposits.

makes

;

sought aided

a universal solvent

in vain for in

some cases by

;

but

we now know

that water,

and the presence of^ certain carbonic acid and alkaline car-

pressure,

heat,

widely-distributed substances, such as insoluble bodies ; so that bonates and sulphides, will dissolve the most upon as the long-sought for alkahest or uniit

may,

after all,

be looked

versal menstruum.”

This reads almost like a paraphrase of himself

modern

!

They knew

Van Helmont,

or Paracelsus

solvent as well as the properties of water as a made no concealment of t e act

chemists, and what

is

more,

commen-

was not their universal solvent. Many hard y are still extant, and one can taries and criticisms of their works spectheir of finding at least one take up a book on the subject without

which shows that

*

this

Youmans: “ Chemistry,”

p.

169

;

and

Chemistry.” “ Origin of Metalliferous Deposits.” I

W.

B. Kemshead, F. R. A. S.

‘ :

‘

Inorganic

VAN HELMONT NO BOASTER.

193

This is what a mystery. which they neverr thought of mhking of 1820, moreover r, olrhpmists a satire, we find in an old work or written at the beginning of Illations of

—

—

vegetable, and mineral kingdoms.”* In of water. The alchemists understand well this universal potency Philalethes, Pantateiu, Tachenthe works of Paracelsus, Van Helmont, “ to dis“ the great characteristic of the alkahest,”^ ius, and even Boyle, alone excepted^' is explisolve and change all sublunary bodies— And is it possible to believe that Van Helmont, whose citly stated. whose great learning was uniprivate character was unimpeachable, and possessed of recognized, should most solemnly declare himself versally

the secret, were

it

but a vain boast

!

f

Professor Huxley laid In a recent address at Nashville, Tennessee, testimony as a certain rule with respect to the validity of human

down a

and science, which we are quite ready to apply to the “It is impossible,” he says, “that one’s practical life present case. which we may hold should not be more or less influenced by the views One of them is human as to what has been the past history of things.

basis of history

testimony in

its

various shapes

—

all

testimony from the lips of those

testimony of those

who have put

testimony of eye-witnesses, tiaditional

who have

been eye-wit>iesses, and the

their impressions into writing

and into

wherever he gives an print. ... If you read Caesar’s Commentaries, amount of concertain account of his battles with the Gauls, you place a You take his testimony upon this. You feel fidence in his statements. that Ccesar

them

would not have made in

logic

permit Mr.

believed

Huxlej^’s philosophical

be applied in a one-sided manner to Caesar.

was naturally truthful or a natural settled that point to his

history in his favor,

*

had

to be true."

Now, we cannot to

these stateme?its unless he

we

own

liar

;

Either that personage

and since Mr. Huxley has

satisfaction as regards the facts of military

insist that

C^sar

is

also a

John Bumpus: “ Alchemy and the Alkahest,” 85,

f See Boyle’s works.

rule

competent witness as

edition J. S. F.,

of 1S20.

THE VEIL OF

194

ISIS.

So with Herodotus, and augurs, diviners, and psychological facts. all other ancient authorities, unless they were by nature men of truth, I^alsus they should not be believed even about civil or military affairs. to

in ujio, falsus hi omnibus.

And

equally,

if

they are credible as to physi-

must be regarded as equally so as for as Professor Huxley tells us, human nature was now. Men of intellect and conscience did not lie cal

things, they

to spiritual things

of old just as

it

;

is

tor the pleasure of

bewildering or disgusting posterity.

The

probabilities of falsification

by such men having been defined so

by a nian of science, we feel free from the necessity of discussing Helmont and his the question in connection with the names of Van Paracelsus. much-slandered master, the illustrious but unfortunate

clearly

“ mythic, illuDeleuze, though finding in the works of the former many perhaps only because he could not understand them— sory ideas ” “an acute judgment,’ credits him nevertheless with avast knowledge, truths." “ He and at the same time with having given to the world “ great Withaerial fluids. was the first,” he adds, “ to give the name of gas to no new impulse to out him it is probable that steel would have given chances could we of doctrine what application of the

—

science.’’*

By

of resolving and discover the likelihood that experimentalists, capable have done, recombining chemical substances, as they are admitted to combining their substances, ignorant of the nature of elementary

were

them and the solvent or solvents, that would disintegrate the case theorists when wanted ? If they had the reputation only of its force, but the would stand differently and our argument would lose by their worst them, chemical discoveries grudgingly accorded to language than we have perenemies, form the basis for much stronger And, as this from a fear of being deemed over partial. energies,

mitted ourselves, there is a higher nature of work, moreover, is based on the idea that should be judged psycho o his moral and intellectual faculties

man, that

Helmont asserted, hesitate to reaffirm that since Van the alkahest, no “ most solemnly,” that he was possessed of the secret of or a visionary, liar a either modern critic has a right to set him down as this alleged of about the nature until something more certain is known

gically,

we do not

universal menstruum. in his preface “ Facts are stubborn things,” remarks Mr. A. R. Wallace, must be our facts as Miracles and Modern Spiritualism. Therefore,! .

to

“ De I’Opinion de Van Helmont sur la Cause, la Nature vv*. ii., and vol. *1., p. 198Vol. vui. i., p. n. jj. 4^, 45 rtiiLi du Magnetisme.” Anim. of Hume, Lecky, Arguments An Answer to the A. R. Wallace

et les Effets

* Deleuze:

.

.

:

Miracles.”

etc.

against ,

flammarion’s frank avowal. we

strongest allies,

will

bring as

many

mirac e of these forward as the The with us furnish times will the demonstrated scientijically

modern of antiquity and those of our authors of the Unsee7i Universe have psychological possibility of certain alleged

medium

195

phenomena through

the

proved Mr. Wallace has as scientifically of the universal ether. t e including of assumptions to the contrary,

that the whole catalogue face to face with strict sophisms of Hume, are untenable if brought skepticism his own experiMr. Crookes has given to the world of loo-ic he was conquered by the ments, which lasted above three years before own senses. A whole list most undeniable of evidence— that of his recorded their testimony could be made up of men of science who have French astronand Camille Flammarion, the well-known effect to that

;

of the skeptical, omer and author of many works which, in the eyes with Walcompany “ hi deluded,” should send him to the ranks of the our words m the following lines lace, Crookes, and Hare, corroborates on a personal “ do not hesitate to affirm my conviction, based :

I

examination of the

any

subject, that

scientific

man who

declares the

mediumic,’ and one who speaks

somnambulic,’ impossible, is be others not yet explained by also any man accustomed, and without knowing what he is talking about, provided that his by his professional avocations, to scientific observations— mental vision mind be not biassed by pre-conceived opinions, nor his in the common blinded by that opposite kind of illusion, unhappily too

phenomena denominated

‘magnetic,’

‘

‘

science, to

laivs of Nature are learned world, which consists in imagining that the to overstep the appears which already known to us, and that everything require a radical and limit of our present formulas is impossible, may ’

absolute certainty of the reality of the facts alluded to. called In Mr. Crookes’ Notes of an Enquiry into the Phenomeiia

gentleman quotes Mr. Sergeant Cox, who having “ As the oiganism named this unknown force, psychic, explains it thus by a force which either is itself moved and directed within the structure which constitutes the soul, spirit, or mind is, oris not controlled by the individual being we term the man,’ it is an equally reasonable conclusion that the force which causes the motions beyond the limits of Spiritual,

on

p. ioi,this

:

—

.

.

.

‘

the body body.

is

And,

of the often directed by intelligence, it is an

same force that produces

the

as the external force

equally reasonable

conclusion

is

that

the

^notion within the limits

directing

of

intelligence

the

intelligence that directs the force internally.”

the same comprehend this theory the better, we may as well divide propositions and show that Mr. Sergeant Cox believes

external force

is

In order to it

in four I.

'i'hat

:

theforce which produces physical

(consequently

is

generated in) the medium.

phenomena proceeds fro?n

THE VEIL OF

196 2.

That the

directing the force for the

intelligence

phenomena ^a) may sometimes be medium but of this the “ proof” is ;

is

production of

other than the intelligence of the “ insufficient ; ” therefore, {b) the

the

directing intelligence

ISIS.

probably that of the

medium

This Mr.

himself.

calls “

Cox

a reasonable conclusion.” 3. He assumes that the force which moves the table with the force which moves the medium’s body itself.

is

identical

He strongly disputes the spiritualistic theory, or rather assertion, “ spirits of the dead are the sole agents in the production of all the that 4.

phenomena.” Before we fairly proceed on our analysis of such views we must remind the reader that we find ourselves placed between two extreme the believers and. unbelievers in opposites represented by two parties

—

agency of human

this

point raised by Mr.

Neither seem capable of deciding the

spirits.

Cox

;

while the spiritualists are so omnivorous

for

every sound and

in their credulity as to believe

movement

in a circle to

be produced by disembodied human beings, their antagonists dogmatically deny that anything can be produced by ' spirits,” for there are none. Hence, neither class is in a position to examine the subject without bias.

which “ produces motion within the body”

If they consider that force

and the one “ which causes the motion beyond the limits of the body” But the identity of these to be of the same essence, the}' may be right. two forces stops here.

The

life-principle

nature as that of his

of the same medium, por is the

is

which animates Mr. Cox s body nevertheless he is not the ;

medium

latter Mr. Cox. This force, which, to please Mr. Cox and Mr. Crookes we may just as individual well call psychic as anything else, proceeds through not from the medium the in generated be would medium. In the latter case this force

and we are ready

to

show

that

it

cannot be so

;

neither in the instances of

of furniture and other objects the force shows reason and which without contact, nor in such and spiiitualists, It is a well-known fact to both mediums intelligence. and manitestations the former is passive, the better the

levitation of

human

bodies, the

moving

cases in

that the

more

;

every one of the

determined

will.

above-mentioned phenomena requires a consciotis In cases of levitation, we should have to believe

this self-generated force

would

raise the inert

mass

off the

pre-

that

ground, diiect

and lower it down again, avoiding obstacles and theieautomatically, the medium remaining by showing intelligence, and still act would be a If such were the fact, the medium all the while passive.

it

through the

air,

conscious magician, and

hands of

invisible

all

pretence for being a passive instrument

intelligences

would become

useless.

As

in the

well plead

197

SERGEANT COX’S SEVERAL POINTS.

raise the boiler

;

sufficient to

steam

that a quantity of

or a

Leyden

fill,

without bursting, a boiler, will

of electricity, overcome the inertia

jar, full

All analogy would seem to such a mechanical absurdity. upon operates in the presence of a medium indicate that the force which e himse medium back of the external objects comes from a source of inertia which overcomes the jar, as

of the

'

.

with the hydrogen is accumuThe gas, under the control of an intelligence, the balloon. o attraction the volume to overcome lated'in the receiver in sufficient ot articles On the same principle this force moves its combined mass. and though identical in its furniture, and performs other manifestations ;

may

rather

compare

it

essence with the astral for the latter remains the

mediumship

is

spirit

of the

medium,

it

cannot be his

spirit only,

cataleptic torpor, when all the while in a kind of Mr. Cox’s first point seems, therefore, not

genuine.

Of based upon an hypothesis mechanically untenable. well taken ; an is levitation supposition that course our argument proceeds upon the The theory of psychic force, to be perfect, must account observed fact. it is

“ visible motions

for all

...

in solid substances,”

and among these

levitation.

is

•

_

second point, we deny that “ the proof is insufficient is sometimes directed that the force which produces the phenomena

As

to

his

On the contrary by other intelligences than the mind of the “ psychic.” the mind of the that show to testimony there is such an abundance of phenomena, medium, in a majority of cases, has nothing to do with the assertion go unchalthat we cannot be content to let Mr. Cox’s bold lenged.

do we conceive to be his third proposition for if the channel of the the medium’s body be not the generator but simply which Mr. Cox’s upon question phenomena— a force which produces the that because follow not then it does researches throw no light whatever ” directs the medium’s organism, therethe medium’s “ soul, spirit, or mind Equally

illogical

;

—

fore

this

“ soul,

spirit,

or mind,”

a chair or raps at the call of the

lifts

alphabet.

namely, that “

to the fourth proposition,

As

sole agents in the production of issue at the present

all

the

moment, inasmuch

ducing mediumistic manifestations

is

spirits of the dead are the phenomena,” we need not join

as the nature of the spirits

pro-

treated at length in other chap-

ters.

The

philosophers, and especially those

Mysteries, held that the astral soul gross external form which

we

call

is

body.

who were

the impalpable duplicate of the It is the

cists and the spirit-form of the spiritualists.

cate,

and illuminating

it

as the

warm

initiated into the

perisprit of the Karde-

Above

this internal dupli-

ray of the sun illuminates the earth.

THE VEIL OF

198

ISIS.

germ and calling out to spiritual vivification the latent dormant in it, hovers the divine spirit. The astral perisprit is contained and confined within the physical body as ether in a bottle, or magnetism in magnetized iron. It is a centre and engine of force, fed from the universal supply of force, and moved by the same general laws which pervade all nature and produce all cosmical phenomena. Its

fructifying the qualities

inherent activity causes the incessant physical operations of the animal organism and ultimately results in the destruction of the latter by over-

use and

own

escape. It is the prisoner, not the voluntary tenant, of has an attraction so powerful to the external universal force, that after wearing out its casing it finally escapes to it. The stronger, its

the body.

It

more material

its encasing body, the longer is the term of its impersons are born with organizations so exceptional, that the door which shuts other people in from communication with the

grosser,

Some

prisonment.

world of the astral light, can be easily unbarred and opened, and their souls can look into, or even pass into that world, and return again.

Those who do

this consciously,

phants, seers, adepts

those

;

and

who

termed magicians, hierodo it, either through the are “ mediums.” The astral soul,

at will, are

made

are

to

mesmerizer or of “ spirits,” when the barriers are once opened, is so powerfully attracted by the universal, astral magnet, that it sometimes lifts its encasement with it and keeps it suspended in mid-air, until the gravity of matter reasserts its supremacy, and the body redescends again to earth. Every objective manifestation, whether it be the motion of a living fluid of the

limb, or the will

movement

and force

visible to

—

our eye

of

some inorganic body, requires two conditions makes the object so moved :

plus mattei', or that which •,

and these three are

correlation of the scientists.

all

convertible forces, or the force-

In their turn they are directed or rather

overshadowed by the Divine intelligence which these men so studiously leave out of the account, but without which not even the crawling of The simplest as the most the smallest earth-worm could ever take place. common of all natural phenomena, the rustling of the leaves which tremble under the gentle contact of the breeze requires a constant exerScientists may well call them cosmic laws, immucise of these faculties. Behind these laws we must search for the intable and unchangeable. which once having created and set these laws in motion, cause, telligent Whether has infused into them the essence of its own consciousness. we call this the first cause, the universal will, or God, it must always bear

—

—

intelligence.

And now we may

ask,

how can a

unconsciously at the same time

?

will manifest itself intelligently

It is difficult,

ceive of intellection apart from consciousness.

if

and

not impossible, to con-

By consciousness we do

199

BLIND FORCE plus INTELLIGENCE.

Consciousor corporeal consciousness. soul, ani ,k. or, in oUur rnoris, paralyzed. while the body is asleep or

•

•1

7

'Ih

activity even latter often displays

that

we do

uncon-

mechanically, we may imagine erv eannot appree.a.e .he j;usirb“-e our superiicial senses as latent purpose and its execution, ihe formulation of the

wifTeWrourfr...

m

between

and set our ma ter our vigilant will evolved force, the nature of the most motion. There is nothing in f mahe Mr. Coa's fteory p ausible. tic phenomena .0 Deio it pioof that ^ manifested by this force is no given out by evidence that it is unconsciously

Lemed

.0

n

us.

leL is it where the intelligence Crookes himself tells us of cases Mr. n^^ediuni in the instance from any one in the room ; as could not have emanated even to covered by his finger and unknown where the word “however,” whatever anation by planchette.- No exp himself, was correctly written if we exclude the only hypothesis tenable— can account for this case; faculties were spirit-power-is that the clairvoyant the a-ncy of a if, to escape and But scientists deny clairvoyance ; brou-ht into play. spirit

still •

phenomena to a spiritual alternative of accrediting the devolves upon the fact of clairvoyance, it then source, they concede to us this faculty is what of explanation them to ekher accept the kabalistic to impracticable of making a new theoij or achieve the task hitherto

the

unwelcome

admitted that Mr sake of argument it should be have been clairvoyantly read, what Crookes’ word “however” might prophetic charac mediumistic communications having a Agtin,

shall ter ?

if

for the

we say of Does any theory

foretell

events beyond

for the ability to of mediumistic impulse account

the

possible

knowledge

ot

both speaker and

Mr. Cox will have to try again. psychic force, and the ancient As we have said before, the modern sidereal, are identical in essence— oracular fluids, whether terrestrial or soundSo is air. And while in a dialogue the simply a blind force.

listener ?

_

speakers affect the same body

waves produced by a conversation of the of the fact that there are two perof air, that does not imply any doubt that when Is it any more reasonable to say sons talking with each other. medium and “ spirit ” to intercommua common agent is employed by one intelligence displaying itself? nicate, there must necessarily be but audible sounds, so are As the air is necessary for the mutual exchange of ether directed by an Intelligence, certain currents of astral light, or Blace the phenomena called spiritual. necessary for the production of

*

Crookes: “Researches,

etc.,” p. 96.

J

THE VEIL OF

200 two interlocutors

ISIS.

exhausted receiver of an air-pump, and, if they could live, their words would remain inarticulate thoughts, for there would be no air to vibrate, and hence no ripple of sound would reach in the

Place the strongest

their ears.

medium

in such isolating

atmosphere as

a powerful mesmerizer, familiar with the properties of the magical agent, can create around him, and no manifestations will take place until some

opposing intelligence, more potential than the will-power of the mesmerizer, overcomes the latter and terminates the astral inertia. The ancients were at no loss to discriminate between a blind force acting spontaneously and the same force when directed by an intelligence. Plutarch, the priest of Apollo,

when speaking

of the oracular vapors

which were but a subterranean gas, imbued with intoxicating magnetic properties, shows its nature to be dual, when he addresses it in these words “ And who art thou ? without a God who creates and ripens thee without a daemon [spirit] who, acting under the orders of God, directs ;

:

thou canst do nothing, thou art nothing but a vain Thus without the indwelling soul or intelligence, “ Psychic P'orce ” would be also but a “ vain breath.” Aristotle maintains that this gas, or astral emanation, escaping from

and governs thee

;

breath.” *

the sole sufficient cause, acting from within outwardly for the vivification of every living being and plant upon the external crust. In answer to the skeptical negators of his century, Cicero, moved by a

inside the earth,

is

just wrath, exclaims:

“And

what can be more divine than the exhala-

tions of the earth, which affect the

could the hand of time evaporate such a viryou suppose you are talking of some kind of wine or salted Do modern experimentalists claim to be wiser than Cicero,

predict the future

tue

Do

?

soul so as to enable her to

human

?

And

meat ? ”f and say that this eternal force has evaporated, and phecy are dry ? All the prophets of old

that the springs of pro-

— inspired sensitives—were said to be uttering

under the same conditions, either by the direct outward fluxion, rising from the etflux of the astral emanation, or a sort of damp temporary clothing of It is this astral matter which serves as a earth. Agrippa expresses Cornelius light. souls who form themselves in this

their prophecies

the

phantoms by describing it as “ In spirito turbido humidoque.” magicians Prophecies are delivered in two ways consciously, by by those unconsciously, and who are able to look into the astral light

same views moist or humid

as to the nature

the

of these

:

—

;

* Lucian j;

:

“

Pliarsalia,”

“ De Occulta

Book

Philosoph.

p.

v.

355.

f

“ De

Divinatio,”

Book

chap.

i. ,

3.

INSPIRATION, TRUE

AND

201

FALSE.

To the latter class belonged called inspiration. and the modern trance-speakers. and belong the Biblical prophets No ,oa„, a„ch prophets he says »ifh ,Ms fa« »-as Pla,o. .„a. of J prophetic truth and inspiration who

act

under what

is

:

•

•

when in his senses, attains possession when demented by some distemper or or

*

spirit)

“

Some persons

•

.

.

. .

f

they do not know that at all, but and are not to be called prophets call tliem

prophets

;

they are only repeaters prophecy,”— he adds. only transmitters of vision and ^ ^ Cox says “The most ardent In continuation of his argument, Mr. the existence of psychic force under spiritualists practically admit the whataffinity no has (to which it very inappropriate name of ma’gnetism the dead can only do the acts of spirits ever), for they assert that the magnetism (that is, the psychic force) of attributed to them by using the .

.

.

:

the mediums.” \

r

a-

,< which h. imp.r..hf, hy h.sh

all

Uie remotest antiquity ^ ^ Kneph, the

P

g

how

astronomical truth

Wkh

thorities,

^

^^rbUed It was only the literaU who taught it, Plutarch Pagans the Pythagoras, of the time TTven Even so early as tn y

proof have

Phi,.»..hy," gives .he followh.g

rA;:eTgyp.iandoa.Hna.-Theheg™ separaled..

' and from i. .he four elements h^.begnmng.,.d,.h^^^^^^^^^ .he world ‘be earn t crosses the shadow of it aving credite wi is Pythagoras Besides, planet ' e any rotated, and was but a u Lives of the

of Plato,” by Professor

|8 *=

Plato with having been T words pressed in the following extended is the pole which

translations (“

The Dialogues

introduction to “ Timmus,” notword lUeaBac in consequence of the

^^ich

is

our

universe '

.

jf ^

if

jher admits that “Aristotle

«Dial. ,

j^ave been extraordinary, t^agoras and who certainly

j

Pf’

.:rn:r;e. ISCe S-r.nof S.e:re: astronomical elementary such an 17.

we are to believe Timmu." - .0 mean cirBut

’’

A,,"Tord'n

e

Introduction to “ Timxus,”

xi.

..)

feels inclined to credit circling” or “compacted,” =, Plato’s doctrine is exnurse (compacted or) circling

un

should be ignorant “ Wisdom of Solomon,” ^

,

L

Aristotle Proclus and Simplicius, Ccelo), and Mr. Jowett (De revolving” cling or doctrine o attributed to Plato the

of Plato.”

0

the earth was round, that it (See Fenelon’s celestial bodies.

.

Lonnd

.

,

\

withstanding “an either capable of being translated

.j when

„„„„

do trut

.. .

J. »f .he

gn.n. s.mi.„.

EVOLUTION TAUGHT BY HERMES TRISMEGISTUS.

257

But to descend from universals to particulars, from the ancient theory of planetary evolution to the evolution of plant and animal life, as opposed to the theory of special creation, what does Mr. Proctor call the following language of of species

?

Hermes

but an anticipation of the

“ When God had

filled his

modern theory of evolution

powerful hands with those things

which are in nature, and in that which compasseth nature, then shutting Receive from me, O holy earth that art them close again, he said ordained to be the mother of all, lest thou shouldst want anything ; when :

‘

!

’

presently opening such hands as

down

all

that

was necessary

becomes a God

it

to have, he

to the constitution of things.”

poured

Here we

have primeval matter imbued with “ the promise and potency of every future form of life,” and the earth declared to be the predestined mother of everything that should thenceforth spring from her bosom. More definite is the language of Marcus Antoninus in his discourse “ The nature of the universe delights not in anything so to himself.

and present them under another form. This game and begin another. Matter is placed before her like a piece of wax and she shapes it to all forms and figures. Now she makes a bird, then out of the bird a beast now a flower, then a frog, and she is pleased with her own magical performances as men are

much is

as to alter

all

things,

her conceit to play one

—

with their

own

fancies.” *

Before any of our modern teachers thought of evolution, the ancients

Hermes, that nothing can be abrupt in nature ; that jumps and starts, that everything in her works is slow harmony, and that there is nothing sudden not even violent death. The slow development from preexisting forms was a doctrine with the Rosicrucian Illuminati. The Tres Matres showed Hermes the mysterious progress of their work, before they condescended to reveal themselves to mediteval alchemists. Now, in the Hermetic dialect, these three mothers are the symbol of light, heat, and electricity, or magnetism, the two latter being as convertible as the whole of the forces or agents which have a place assigned them in the modern “ Force-correlation.” Synesius mentions books of stone which he found in the temple of Memphis, on which was engraved the following sentence: “One nature delights in another, one nature overcomes another, one nature overrules another, and the whole of them are one." The inherent restlessness of matter is embodied in the saying of Hermes: “Action is the life of Phtaj” and Orpheus calls nature TloXvfx-qxavcy; ixdTrjp, “ the mother that makes many things,” or the ingenitaught us, through

she never proceeds by

ous, the contriving, the inventive

*

17

—

mother.

Eugenius Plhlalethes

:

‘‘

Magia Adamica.”

THE VEIL OF

258

ISIS.

“ All that that is upon and within the earth, all Mr. Proctor says vegetable forms and all animal forms, our bodies, our brains, are formed of materials which have been drawn in from those depths of space surrounding us on all sides.” The Hermetists and the later Rosicrucians held that all things visible and invisible were produced by the contention of light with darkness, and that every particle of matter contains within :

itself

a spark of the divine essence

— or

light, spirit

—which, through

its

from its entanglement and return to the central tendency source, produced motion in the particles, and from motion forms were “ Thus Says Hargrave Jennings, quoting Robertus di Fluctibus born. rudimentary possibility of plants all minerals in this spark of life have the have rudimentary sensations plants all thus and growing organisms transmute into which might (in the ages) enable them to perfect and to free itself

:

\

nobler or locomotive new creatures, lesser or higher in their grade, or thus all plants, and all vegetation might pass in their functions

meaner

;

roads)

off (by side

into

more

distinguished highways

as

it

were,

of

advance, allowing their original spark of light to

independent, completer urge forward expand and thrill with higher and more vivid force, and to wrought by planetaiy influwith more abounding, informed purpose, all of, the great original workers) ence directed by the unseen spirits (or architect.” *

u r termed by the kabalists, all the Sephiroth, or the Divine hitelligence, the mother of 1

Xf

3

Darkness and

the

(the

Lord Ferho) saw the

be dragged lower divine Santilla, umvilling to

efforts of

ffle

down

shoo out from itsel a he permitted the D as by the finest thiead, monad over which, attached to it from veregnaatioas daring its ceaseless (the soul) had to watch

of matter, to liberate

it

itself,

Sd“l

another.

Thus

the

monad was

to

shot

down m.o

new higher "the monad, with every which approached radiance of its parent, SMtla,

s-.r =.

ts

t

the

fi,.. f

nn

at every

f

REMAINS OF A RACE OF GIANTS. In

prison

its fluidic

it

303

assumes a vague resemblance at various periods

and animal, until it becomes a At the birth of the future man, the monad, radiating with all the glory of its immortal parent which watches it from the seventh sphere, becomes senseless, It loses all recollection of the past, f and returns to consciousness but gradually, when the instinct of childhood gives way to reason and intelligence. After the separation between the life-principle (astral spirit) and the body takes place, the of the gestation to plant, reptile, bird,

human embryo.*

liberated soul

—Monad, exultingly

radiant Augoeides, and the two,

rejoins the

merged

mother and father

spirit,

glory proportioned to the spiritual purity of the past earth-life, the

who has completed vestige

more

of his

the circle of necessity,

physical

the

into one, forever form, with a

and

is

Adam

freed from the last

encasement.

Henceforth, growing more and upward progress, he mounts the shining the point from which he started around the GRAND

radiant at each step of his

path that ends at

CYCLE. The whole Darwinian theory first six

of natural selection is included in the chapters of the book of Genesis. The “ Man ” of chapter i. is

from the “Adam” of chapter ii., for the former was created “ male and female ’’—that is, bi-sexed— and in the image of God while the latter, according to verse seven, was formed of the dust of the ground, and became “a living soul,” after the Lord God

radically different

;

“ breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” Moreover, this Adam was a male being, and in verse twenty we are told that “there was not found a helpmeet for him.” The Adonai, being pure spiritual entities,

had no Creator

many

had both sexes united in themselves, like their and the ancients understood this so well that they represented

sex, or rather ,

of their deities as of dual sex.

accept

this interpretation,

or

make

The

Biblical student

the passages in

must either

the two chapters

alluded to absurdly contradict each other. It was such literal acceptance of passages that warranted the atheists in covering the

Mosaic account

with ridicule, and

the dead letter of the old text that begets the materialism of our age. Not only are these two races of beings thus clearly indicated in Genesis, but even a third and a fourth one are ushered before the reader in chapter iv., where the “ sons of God” and the race of “ giants ” are spoken of. it

is

As we write, there appears in an American paper, Times, an account of important discoveries of the

The Kansas City

remains of a prehisof giants, which corroborates the statements of the kabalists and the Bible allegories at the same time. It is worth preserving torical race

:

*

Everard

:

athy.” * the scale of being are those invisible creatures called by There are three distinct classes of these. the kabalists the “ elementary.” The highest, in intelligence and cunning, are the so-called terrestrial spir-

Lowest

in

speak more categorically in other parts of this work. Suffice to say, for the present, that they are the larva, or shadows of those who have lived on earth, have refused all spiritual light, remained and died deeply immersed in the irure of matter, and from whose sinful souls comthe immortal spirit has gradually separated. The second class is can form No born. posed of the invisible antitypes of the men to be

its,

of which

we

will

existence—from the highest to the lowest—before or, as Aristotle would call it, the privathe abstract ideal of this form Before an artist paints a picture every tion of this form— is called forth. to have enabled us to disfeature of it exists already in his imagination abstract form this particular watch must have existed in its

come

into objective

—

;

cern a watch,

in the

watchmaker’s mind.

So with future men.

of natural to Aristotle’s doctrine, there are three principles These principles may be applied privation, matter, and form.

According bodies

:

in this particular case.

locate in the invisible

The mind

privation of the child which of the great Architect of the

to be we will Universe— pri-

is

pliilosophy as a principle vation not being considered in the Aristotelic as an external property in their proin the composition of bodies, but which the matter passes from duction for the production is^ a change by Though the privation of assumes. the shape it has not to that which it of the future form of the unmade the unborn child’s form, as well as nor extension nor quality as yet, watch, is that which is neither substance something which is, though its outnor any kind of existence, it is still must acquire an objective form— the abstract lines in order to be, must as this privation of matter is become concrete, in short. Thus, as soon fomi, howit becomes a material transmitted by energy to universal ether, affects thought human If modern science teaches that ever sublimated. simultaneously with this,” how ciui he who the matter of another universe is Cause, deny that the divine thought believes in an Intelligent First mediacommon of energy, to our equally transmitted, by the same law And, if so, then it must fol ow ? world-soul tor the universal ether— the energy thought manifests itself objectively, that once there the divine first bom was privation " of that whose faithfully reproducing the outlines thought not be understood that this must Only it in the divine mind No ; it creates but the design for the future creates matter. ;

fonn^

*

“

Mosaicall Philosophy,”

p.

i73-

^^59-

THE POWERS OF THE

31I

AIR.

always been in existence, matter which serves to make this design having through a series of proand having been prepared to form a human body, Pormspass; ideas evolution. of gressive transformations, as the result

them and the material which gave them objectiveness, re“ These models, as yet devoid of immortal spirits, are elementals,”

that created

main.

—

arrives, properly speaking, psychic embryos which, when their time human one as visible this die out of the invisible world, and are born into spirit which cominfants, receiving in tra?isitu that divine breath called objectively with communicate cannot This class the perfect man.

pletes

men.

The third class are the “elementals” proper, which never evolve into human beings, but occupy, as it were, a specific step of the ladder of by comparison with the others, may properly be called natureelespirits, or cosmic agents of nature, each being confined to its own what are These others. of bounds the ment and never transgressing Tertullian called the “ princes of the powers of the air.” This class is believed to possess but one of the three attributes of man. They have neither immortal spirits nor tangible bodies; only astral forms, which partake, in a distinguishing degree, of the element to They are a combination of which they belong and also of the ether. being, and,

sublimated

Some

matter and a rudimental mind.

are

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

They not only

inner, or clairvoyant vision.

exist

and can

all

production of physical

live in

can handle and direct it we can compress air or water for the same purpose by pneuin which occupation they are readily matic and hydraulic apparatus More than this they can so conhelped by the “human elementary.” dense it as to make to themselves tangible bodies, which by their Protean for the

ether, but

effects,

as readily as

;

;

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. the

moment

It is

sitter should be thinking at His image may have faded many

not necessary that the

of the one represented.

The mind

years before.

receives indelible impression even from chance

acquaintance or persons encountered but once.

As

ure of the sensitized photograph plate

is

indefinitely the

According

image of the

sitter,

so

is all

is it

a few seconds e.xposrequisite to preserve

with the mind.

to the doctrine of Proclus, the

zenith of the universe to the

that

uppermost regions from the to the gods or planetary

moon belonged

,

THE VEIL OF

312

ISIS.

according to their hierarchies and classes. The highest among them were the twelve uper-ouranioi, or supercelestial gods, having whole They are followed legions of subordinate demons at their command. next in rank and power by the egkosmioi, the intercosmic gods, each of these presiding over a great number of demons, to whom they impart These are evitheir power and change it from one to another at will. spirits,

dently latter

tire

personified forces of nature in their mutual correlation, the

being represented by the third class or the “ elementals

just described.

”

we have

—

of types, Further on he shows, on the principle of the Hermetic axiom and classes subdivisions and prototypes that the lower spheres have their of beings as well as the upper celestial ones, the former being always sub-

—

filled

He

held that the four elements are all with demons, maintaining with Aristotle that the universe is full,

ordinate to the higher ones.

and that there is no void in nature. The demons of the earth, air, fire, It is these and water are of an elastic, ethereal, semi-corporeal essence. and men. gods the between agents classes which officiate as intermediate demons, higher Although lower in intelligence than the sixth order of the They these beings preside directly over the elements and organic life. changes various and properties, the direct the growth, the inflorescence, are the personified ideas or virtues shed from the kingdom heavenly ule into the inorganic matter and, as the vegetable remove higher than the mineral, these emanations from the celes-

of plants.

They

;

is

one

It is gods take form and being in the plant, they become its soul. of principles three that which Aristotle’s doctrine terms the for7n in the and form. His natural bodies, classified by him as privation, matter, principle is another matter, original philosophy teaches that besides the and this is particle, necessary to complete the triune nature of every of the word, a subform; an invisible, but still, in an ontological sense animal or a really distinct from matter proper. Thus, in an

tial

stantial being,

brains, and the blood, in plant, besides the bones, the flesh, the nerves, the the besides the pulpy matter, tissues, fibres, and juice in

the former, and latter,

which blood and

nourishes

all

juice,

by

and fibres, and besides the animal

circulating through the veins

parts of both animal and plant

;

and the chemical energy which spirits, which are the principles of motion ; green leaf, there must be a substanis transformed into vital force in the Proclus, horse, the horses soul tial form, which Aristotle called in the philosomedueval the of every mineral, plant, or animal, and the demo 7i

phers, the elementary spirits of the four kingdoms. and gross superstition. All this is held^in our century as metaphysics these old hypotheses, in is, principles, there Still, on strictly ontological

some shadow

of probability,

some clew

“ miiising links to the perplexing

;

;

MAKING MAN A CLOCK-WORK AUTOMATON. of exact science. lies beyond the

The latter has become

313

so dogmatical of late, that all that

ken of induciive science is termed imaginary; and we that some of the best scientists find Professor Joseph Le Conte stating or vitality, as a remnant of^ “ridicule the use of the term ‘vital force,’ * De Candolle suggests the term “ vital movement, superstition."

^yhich thus preparing for a final scientific leap an automaton with a will transform the immortal, thinking man, into “ can we conceive of “ Conte, But,” objects Le clock-work inside him. is without force ? And if the movement is peculiar, so also

instead of vital force

;

f

movement the form of force."

In the Jewish Kabala, the nature-spirits were eral

name

them

all

of

devs

Shedim and divided

into four classes.

the Greeks, indistinctly designated

known under the genThe Persians called them as demons

the

The ancient Mexicans, says Kaiser, Egyptians knew them as afrites. shades of innobelieved in numerous spirit-abodes, into one of which the situated in cent children were placed until final disposal ; into another, spectres the sun, ascended the valiant souls of heroes; while the hideous subterrain despair of incorrigible sinners were sentenced to wander and nean caves, held in the bonds of the earth-atmosphere, unwilling and unable to liberate themselves.

with mortals, and frightening

They passed their time in communicating Some of the those who could see them.

In the Indian Pantheon there are of spirits, including elemenkinds no less than 330,000,000 of various Ihese tals, which latter were termed by the Brahmans the Daityas. beings are known by the adepts to be attracted toward certain quarters

African tribes

know them

as Yowahoos.

same mysterious property which makes the magnetic needle turn toward the north, and certain plants to obey The various races are also believed to have a spethe same attraction. human temperaments, and to more readily with certain cial sympathy Thus, a bilious, lymphatic, nervous, exert power over such than others. or sanguine person would be affected favorably or otherwise by condiof the heavens by something of the

tions of the astral light, resulting

from the

different aspects of the planet-

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 ary bodies.

changes in the heavenly bodies, to be able to trace, with approximate accuracy, the varying fortunes of the personage whose horoscope was reThe accuracy of the horoscope quired, and even to predict the future. * “ Correlation of Vital with Chemical and Physical Forces,”

“ Archives des Sciences,” J

vol. xlv., p. 345.

by December, 1872.

J.

Le Conte.

THE VEIL OF

3H

ISIS.

knowledge of would depend, of course, no less upon the astrologer’s than upon his astronomical the occult forces and races of nature, erudition.

#

clearness, in his Dogme et Eliphas Levi expounds with reasonable of reciprocal influences between the Rituel de la Haute Magic, the law •

,

•

upon the mineral, vegetable, and aniplanets and their combined effect He states that the astra mal kingdoms, as well as upon ourselves. day to day, and from hour to atmosphere is as constantly changing from quotes approvingly the doctrine of Pahour as the air we breathe. He and plant bears external and internal racelsus that every man, animal, the moment of germinal developevidences of the influences dominant at nothing is unimporHe repeats the old kabalistic doctrine, that ment birth of one child the as thing so small a tant in nature, and that even universe, as the planet has its effect upon the insignificant

upon our

influence upon whole universe has its own reactive attractions “ are linked to each other by “ The stars,” he remarks, regularity with move cause them to which hold them in equilibrium and to spheres light stretches from all the through space. This network of planet to which is n there is not a point upon any all the spheres, and

him.

The precise locality as indestructible threads. adept then be calculated by the hour of birth, should calculation of the shall have made the exact astroloeace .

As

.

.

and harmony

;

bad demons,

the

we

ordinary souls,

to the

in tossing everything in confusion. can perceive them more rarely,

etc.” *

“The human

soul (the astral body)

a

is

demon

that our language

though m

may

a cer-

genius,” says Apuleius. f “She is an immortal man in whom she tain sense she is born at the same time as the way that she same Consequently, we may say that she dies in the

name

is.

is

born.”

world upon leaving another world {anima mundi), in which her existence precedes the one we all know (on earth). Thus, the gods who consider her proceedings in all the phases of various

“The

soul

is

born in

this

existences and as a whole, punish

during an anterior in

She dies when

life.

which she crossed

this life as in

secret

initiate

“ To the gods manes

not annihilate the soul,

it

who

for

committed body

sins

she separates herself from a

frail

And

bark.

meaning of the tumulary

not, the :

a

sometimes

her

is, if

I

mistake

inscription, so simple for the

lived!'

only transforms

this

it

But

this

kind of death does

into a le^ymre.

Lemures are

manes or ghosts, which we know under the name of lares. When they keep away and show us a beneficient protection, we honor in them the the

protecting divinities of the family hearth

;

but,

if

their crimes sentence

them to err, we call them larva. They become a plague for the wicked, and the vain terror of the good.” This language can hardly be called ambiguous, and yet, the Re'incarnationists quote Apuleius in corroboration of their theory that

through a succession of physical

human

births

upon

man

passes

this planet, until

he

But Apuleius distinctly is finally purged from the dross of his nature. says that we come upon this earth from another one, where we had an As the watch passes existence, the recollection of which has faded away. one part being added factory, in room a from hand to hand and room to and another there, until the delicate machine is perfected, according conceived in the mind of the master before the work was begun so, according to ancient philosophy, the first divine conception of man takes shape little by little, in the several departments of the universal workshop, and the perfect human being finally appears on our

here,

to the design ;

scene.

This philosophy teaches that nature never leaves her work *

“ Mysteries of

f

Second century, a.d.

-.rnfinished

the Egyptians.”

“Du

Dieu de Socrate,” Apul.

class.,

pp. 143-145.

;

—

—

THE VEIL OF

346 if

ISIS.

baffled at the first attempt, she tries again.

When

she evolves a

human

—

embryo, the intention is that a man shall be perfected physically, intelHis body is to grow mature, wear out, and lectually, and spiritually. die ; his mind unfold, ripen, and be harmoniously balanced ; his divine No human being spirit illuminate and blend easily with the iimer man. “ circle of necessity,” all these are or the until cycle, grand completes its accomplished.

As

the laggards in a race struggle and plod in their

first

quarter while the victor darts past the goal, so, in the race of immortality, some souls outspeed all the rest and reach the end, while their

under the load of matter, close to the Some unfortunates fall out entirely, and lose all chance starting-point. some retrace their steps and begin again. This is what the of the prize dreads above all things trarismigration and reincarnation ; only Hindu on other and inferior planets, never on this one. But there is a way to

myriad competitors are

toiling

;

avoid

it,

and Buddha taught

it

in his doctrine of poverty, restriction of

the senses, perfect indifference to

tire

objects of this earthly vale of tears,

freedom from passion, and frequent intercommunication with the Atma The cause of reincarnation is ignorance of our soul-contemplation. senses, and the idea that there is any reality in the world, anything except abstract existence. From the organs of sense comes the “hallucination” 'we call contact; “from contact, desire; from desire, sensation (which also is a deception of our body) ; from sensation, the cleavfrom this cleaving, reproduction ; and from reproing to existing bodies ;

duction, disease, decay,

and death.”

Thus, like the revolutions of a wheel, there is a regular succession of death and birth, the moral cause of which is the cleaving to existing controls objects, while the instrumental cause is karma (the power which “ thereis, It demerit. the universe, prompting it to activity), merit and the sorreleased from fore, the great desire of all beings who would be the rows of successive birth, to seek the destruction of the moral cause, cleaving to existing objects, or evil desire.” * is entirely destroyed, are called Arhats.

They, in

whom

Freedom from

evil desire

evil

desire

At his death, the Arhat insures the possession of a miraculous power. a word, by the bye, attains Nirvana is never reincarnated ; he invariably commentators. skeptical falsely interpreted by the Christian scholars and

—

effects or deluthe world of cause, in which all deceptive Nirvana is the highest attainable sphere. sions of our senses disappear. reincar?iated, by The pitris (the pre-Adamic spirits) are considered as to that of the superior far the Buddhistic philosopher, though in a degree Do not their astral bodies of earth. Do they not die in their turn ?

Nirvana

is

man

“ Eastern Monachism,”

p. 9.

SPECULATIONS OF DUPUIS AND VOLNEY.

347

feelings as when and rejoice, and feel the same curse of illusionary embodied? -n Pythagoras What Buddha taught in the sixth century, b.c., in India, Gibbon shows how deeply the taught in the fifth, in Greece and Italy. of souls. * Pharisees were impressed with this belief in the transmigration hoary The Egyptian circle of necessity is ineffaceably stamped on the monuments of old. And Jesus, when healing the sick, invariably used

suffer

_

the following expression

Buddhistical doctrine. altogether horn in sins, Christ)

disciples (of

Buddhists

Thy sins are forgiven thee.” This is a pure “The Jews said to the blind man: Thou wast and dost thou teach us ? The doctrine of the

is

“

:

analogous to the

‘

Merit and Demerit

of the

’

sins were forgiven."

for the sick recovered, if their

;

i

But,

f

on this planet,

believed in by the Buddhists, is not a life other people, the Buddhistical philosopher appreciated any more than

this former life for,

the great doctrine of cycles.

speculations of Dupuis, Volney, and Godfrey Higgins on the secret meaning of the cycles, or the kalpas and the yogs of the Brahmans and Buddhists, amounted to little, as they did not have the key to

The

No philosophy ever considered Him under His various

the esoteric, spiritual doctrine therein contained.

God as The manifestations.

speculated on

abstraction, but “ First Cause ” of the

Hebrew Bible, the Pythagorean “Monad,” the “One Existence” of the Hindu philosopher, and The Hindu are identical. the Boundless the kabalistic “ En-Soph ”

—

—

he enters the egg of the world, and emanates from it as Brahra, in the same manner as the Pythagorean Duad evolves from the highest and solitary Monas.J The Monas of the Samian

Bhagavant does not create

;

•

“ Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” iv. 385. Hardy “ Manual of Buddhism ” Dunlap; “ The World’s Religions.” tLempriere (“ Classical Dictionary,” art. “Pythagoras”) says that “ there j-

:

;

is

great

reason to suspect the truth of the whole narrative of Pythagoras’ journey into India,” and concludes by saying that this philosopher had never seen either Gymnosophists or If this be so,

their country.

Pythagoras, which But, above First Cause,

all,

is

how

far

how

more

account for the doctrine of the metempsychosis of

that of the

Hindu

in its details than the

account for the fact that the name

Monas,

Egyptian

the identical appellation given to that Being in the Sanscrit tongue

is

?

applied by him to the ?

In

when Lempri^re’s “Dictionary” appeared, the Sanscrit was, we may say, utterly unknown Dr. Haug’s translation of the “ Aitareya Brahniana ” (“ Rig-Vedas ”), in which lliis word occurs, was published only about twenty years ago, and until that 1792-7,

;

valuable addition to the literature of archaic ages was completed, and the precise age of

“ Aitareya

now

by Haug

—

2000-2400 B.c. was a mystery, it might be Hindus borrowed it from PythagBut now, unless philology can show it to be a “ coincidence,” and that the word oras. Monas is not the same in its minutest definitions, we have a right to assert that Pythagoras was in India, and that it was the Gymnosophists who instructed him in his meta-

the

fixed

at

suggested, as in the case of Christian symbols, that the

348

THE VEIL OF

philosopher is the Hindu

Monas

va, or material cause), nor ])ati,

manifests himself

first

is

(mind),

ISIS.

“who

has no

first

of

all

omniscience

i.

Fire;

Beings Soma, which gives 4, Siva material Ether 6, Death, or breath of destruction all living

;

—

;

Heaven

9,

;

(apfir-

Brahma, as Prajaas “ twelve bodies,” or attributes, which

are represented by the twelve gods, symbolizing 3,

cause

liable to destruction.” *

Agni, the Immaterial Fire

;

;

2, 5, 7,

the

Sun;

Vayn, or Earth

;

8,

and Cycle, “which

10, Aditya, the immaterial

;

ii. Mind; 12, the great Infinite female invisible Sun After that, Brahma dissolves himself imo the is not to be stopped.” f ;

Visible Universe, every

atom of which

is

himself.

not-manifested, indivisible, and indefinite

Monas

When

this is

done, the

retires into the undis-

The manifested deity, a duad at first, now becomes a triad ; its triune quality emanates incessantly Each of these spiritual powers, who become immortal gods (souls). and from the moment with a human being, turn souls must be united in its of its consciousness it commences a series of births and deaths. An turbed and majestic solitude of

its

unity.

has attempted to give pictorial expression to the kabalThe picture covers a whole inner wall of a istic doctrine of the cycles. subterranean temple in the neighborhood of a great Buddhistic pagoda,

Eastern

and

is

artist

strikingly suggestive.

design, as

we

recall

Let us attempt to convey some idea of the

it.

Imagine a given point in space as the primordial one ; then with compasses draw a circle around this point ; where the beginning and the end The circle itself is unite together, emanation and reabsorption meet. rings of a bracelet, and like the composed of innumerable smaller circles, each of these minor rings forms the belt of the goddess which represents As the curve of the arc approaches the ultimate point of that sphere. at which is placed our the nadir of the grand cycle the semi-circle planet by the mystical painter, the face of each successive goddess becomes more dark and hideous than European imagination is able to con-

—

—

covered with the representations of plants, animals, and human beings, belonging to the fauna, flora, and anthropology of that particular sphere. There is a certain distance between each of the spheres, purposely marked for, after the accomplishment of the circles through ceive.

Every

belt

is

;

physical theology. is

an elder

The

sister,” as

fact alone that

Max

Muller shows,

“ is

Sanscrit, as

not

compared with Greek and Latin,

sufficient to

account for the perfect iden-

Greek words Monas, in their most metaphysical, abstruse sense. a common The Sanscrit word Deva (god) has become the Latin deus, and points to diamerning word, same the source; but we see in the Zoroastrian “Zend-Avesta” word the comes which from spirit, evil or opposite, and becoming dahja,

tity of the Sanscrit and

metrically the devil.

*

Haug: “ Aitareya Brahmanam.”

j-

Ibid.

CANNES, THE MAN-FISH. various liansmigrations, the soul

is

349

allowed a time of temporary nirvana,

during which space of time the atma loses all remembrance cf past sorThe intermediate ethereal space is filled with strange beings. rows. Those between the highest ether and the earth below are the creatures of a “ middle nature

’’

;

nature-spirits,

or,

as the kabalists term

it

some-

times, the elementary.

copy of the one described to posterity by Betemple of Belus, at Babylon, or the original. We leave it to the shrewdness of the modern archaeologist to decide. But the wall is covered with precisely such creatures as described by the semi-demon, or half-god, Oannes, the Chaldean man-fish,* “ hideous This picture

either a

is

rosus, the priest of the

.

beings, which were produced of a two-fold principle”

.

—the

.

astral light

and the grosser matter.

Even remains of

architectural relics of the earliest races have been by antiquarians, until now. The caverns of Ajunta, which are but 200 miles from Bombay, in the Chandor range, and the ruins of the ancient city of Aurungabad, whose crumbling palaces and curious tombs have lain in desolate solitude for many centuries, have

sadly neglected

attracted

attention

but very recently. Mementos of long by-gone they were allowed to become the shelter of wild beasts for ages before they were found worthy of a scientific exploration, and it is only recently that the Observer gave an enthusiastic description of these archaic ancestors of Herculaneum and Pompeii. After justly blaming the local government which “ has provided a bungalow where civilization,

the traveller

may

to narrate the

words

find shelter and wonders to be seen

but that

is

all,”

proceeds

it

:

“ In a deep glen ples which are the at the

safety,

in this retired spot, in the following

present age

away up

the mountain there most wonderful caverns on the

is

a group of cave-tem-

earth.

It is not

known

how many

of these exist in the deep recesses of the mountains ; but twenty-seven have been explored, surveyed, and, to some extent, cleared of rubbish. There are, doubtless, many others. It is hard to realize with what indefatigable toil these wonderful

caves have been hewn from the solid rock of amygdaloid. They are said to have been wholly Buddhist in their origin, and were used for purposes of worship and asceticism. They rank very high as works of art. They extend over 500 feet along a high clilf, and are carved in the most c irious manner, exhibiting, in a wonderful degree, the taste, talent, and persevering industry of the

Hindu

sculptors.

preserved by Alex. Polyhostor;

Cory:

“Of

the

Cosmogony

THE VEIL OF

350

ISIS.

are beautifully cut and canned on the outside ; decorated with a vast but inside they were finished most elaborately, and These long- deserted temples have profusion of sculptures and paintings. the paintings and frescos are and suffered from dampness and neglect, are still brilthey were hundreds of years ago. But the colors

“These cave-temples

not what liant,

and scenes gay and

festive

still

Some

appear upon the walls.

of

for marriage-processions and scenes the figures cut in the rock are taken The female figures are as joyful. in domestic life that are represented and fair as Europeans. Every one of these .repre-

delicate,

beautiful,

and all of them are unpolluted by any grossness or representations of a obscenity generally so prominent in Brahmanical sentations

is aftistic,

similar character.

“These caves

are visited by a great

number

of antiquarians,

who

are

walls and deterdecipher the hieroglyphics inscribed on the mine the age of these curious temples. very far from “The ruins of the ancient city of Auriingabad are not repute, but is now deserted. It was a walled city of great these caves. They were palaces. crumbling There are not only broken walls, but as the solid as strength, and some of the walls appear

striving to

built of

immense

everlasting hills.

-rr-

j

where there are Hindu “ There are a great many places in this vicinity Many of and rock-cut temples remains, consisting of deep caves a circular enclosure, which is often these temples are surrounded by The figure of an elephant is very adorned with statues and columns. of a temple, as a soit of common, placed before or beside the opening beautifully cut in the Hundreds and thousands of niches are sentinel; each temples were thronged with worshippers, solid rock, and when these Orien a in the florid style of these niche had a statue or image, usually shamefully is here almost every image .

.

.

,

,

_

sculptures.

It is

a sad truth that

said that

no Hindu

will

bow down

to

defaced and mutilated. It is often Mahometans, knowing this, purposely an imperfect image, and that the the Hindus from worshipping them. mutilated all these images to prevent

and blasphemous avvakenregarded by the Hindus as sacrflegious his father, which eveiy Hindu inherits from ing the keenest animosities, been able to efface. and which centuries have not cities— sad rums geneia ) “Here also are the remains of buried royalty once In the grand palaces where without a single inhabitant.

This

is

years to co.ne. will fo, .housands of of yea,;, and probaHy

These rock

I

IS

REINCARNATION POSSIBLE

351

?

workmanship that cut temples, as well as these mutilated statues, show a is very evident that equal.* It no work now being done by the natives can hundreds of years since these hills were alive with a vast multitude, where now it is all utter desolation, without cultivation or inhabitants, and given over to wild beasts. “ It is good hunting ground, and, as the English are mighty hunters, they may prefer to have these mountains and ruins remain without change.”

We tion

hope they

fervently

earlier ages to

will.

Enough vandalism was perpetrated

permit us the hope that at least

and learning, science,

in its

in this

in

century of explora-

branches of archteology and philology, will

not be deprived of these most precious records, wrought on imperishable tablets of granite and rock.

We

will

now

reincarnation authority.

present a few fragments of this mysterious doctrine of

— as distinct from

Reincarnation,

rather of his astral

i.e.,

—

metempsychosis which we have from an the appearance of the same individual, or

monad, twice on the same planet,

is

not a rule in

an exception, like the teratological phenomenon of a twoheaded infant. It is preceded by a violation of the laws of harmony of nature, and happens only when the latter, seeking to restore its disturbed equilibrium, violently throws back into earth-life the astral monad which had been tossed out of the circle of necessity by crime or accident. Thus, in cases of abortion, of infants dying before a certain age, and of congenital and incurable idiocy, nature’s original design to produce a nature

perfect

;

it is

human

being, has been interrupted.

matter of each of these several entities

is

death,

through the vast realm of being,

monad

of the individual

Therefore, while the gross suffered to disperse itself at

the immortal spirit

and astral been set apart to animate a frame and the former to shed its divine light on the corporeal organization must try a second time to carry out the purpose of the creative

—

the latter having

—

intelligence.

been so far developed as to become active and disis no reincarnation on this earth, for the three parts of the triune man have been united together, and he is capable of running the race. But when the new being has not passed beyond the condition of monad, or when, as in the idiot, the trinity has not been completed, the immortal spark which illuminates it, has to reenter on the earthly plane If reason has

criminative, there

as

it

was frustrated in

its

first

attempt.

Otherwise, the mortal or astral.

Some writer has employed a most felicitous expression in describing the majesty of Hindu archaic monuments, and the exquisite finish of their sculpture. “ They built,” says he, “ like giants, and finished like jewelers. ” the

-

THE VEIL OF

352

ISIS.

progress m unison and the immortal or divine, souls, could not parallel with that o onward to the sphere above. Spirit follows a line hand in hand with the physical. matter and the spiritual evolution goes Conte (vide chap, ix.), As in the case exemplified by Professor Le rule applies to the spiritual as “there is no force in nature ’’—and the

and pass

;

evolution— “ which is capable of raising at once without stopping i to No. 3, or from 2 to 4, spirit or matter from No. on the in ter kind of a different and receiving an accession of force m athe That is to say, the monad which was imprisoned mediate plane." astral form of the futuie elementary being— the rudimentary or lowest highest physical shape the man— after having passed through and quitted or again an elephant, one o of a dumb animal— say an orang-outang, over that monad, we say, cannot skip the most intellectual of brutes— sudof the terrestrial man, and be the physical and intellectual sphere punisior reward What spiritual sphere above. well as to the physical

-

,

•

denly ushered into the disembodied human entities for a ment can there be in that sphere of this had not even time to breathe on fcetus or a human embryo which spirit exercise the divine faculties of the earth, still less an opportunity to doimant remaining senseless monad Or for an irresponsible infant, whose could as little prevent him from

casket, within the astral and physical Or for one idiotic from to death? person another burning himself as fiom hvent) cerebral circumvolutions is only birth, the number of whose is irretherefoie sane persons ; * and who to thirty per cent, of those of of hi. acts, or the imperfections sponsible for either his disposition,

.1theory is

licilf-ciGVclopGci intGllcct ?

VcLErrtint

Cneed ricUculotts

to

than

remlrk that

if

*

even hypothetical,

many others considered

thts

as strictly orthodox.

no more We must no

the inaptness of the folget that either through advanced or understood of sciences physiology itself is the least

reason

Td

that

some lench

physicians, with Dr. Fourn.e,

posmvely despair of

pure hypotheses. ever oroeressing in it beyond possibility, doctrine recognizes another Further thf same occult f.ven to mention it. that it is really useless albeit so rare and so vague it is universally ‘>“'• 1 occultists deny it, though the modern Occidental and anin al pa through vice, fearful crimes When, countries. n Eastern

'^

disLbodied

sS'I

npivard,

and

spirit

L

- -en .

once moie to a drowning man. struggle

» Anatomie

Cerebrale,” Malacorne,

MUan.

the^

;

;

WHEN ANNIHILATION

^

IS

POSSIBLE.

353

In the Magical and Philosophical Precepts of Psellus, we find one which, warning mankind, says

face.

“ Stoop not down, Drawing under a

for a precipice lies

descent

of SEVEN

below the

earth.

beneath which

steps

Is the throne of dire necessity.” *

A Strong aspiration to retrieve his calamities, a pronounced desire, will draw him once more into the earth’s atmosphere. Here he will wander and suffer more or less in dreary solitude. His instincts will znake him seek

with avidity contact with living persons. the invisible but too tangible magnetic vampires so well

made

known

to mediaeval ecstatics, nuns,

so fainous in the

.

.

These

spirits

are

the subjective dsemons and monks, to the “ witches ” and to certain sensitive clair-

Witch-Hammer own confessions.

voyants, according to their

mons

.

;

They

ai'e

of Porphyry, the larva

the blood-dae-

and lemures of the ancients the fiendish unfortunate and weak victims to the rack and stake. Origen held all the daemons which possessed the demoniacs mentioned in the New Testament to be human “ spirits.” It is because Moses knew so well what they were, and how terrible were the conseinstruments which sent so

;

many

to weak persons who yielded to their influence, that he enacted the cruel, murderous law against such would-be “witches;” but Jesus,

quences full

of justice

and divine love

to humanity, healed instead of killing them. Subsequently our clergy, the pretended exemplars of Christian principles, followed the law of Moses, and quietly ignored the law of Him whom they call their “ one living God,” by burning dozens of thousands of such pretended “ witches,”

AVitch mighty name, which in the past contained the promise of ignominious death ; and in the present has but to be pronounced to raise a whirlwind of ridicule, a tornado of sarcasms How is it then that there have always been men of intellect and learning, who never thought !

!

that

would disgrace their reputation

it

lower their dignity, to publicly affirm the possibility of such a thing as a “ witch,” in the correct acceptation of the word. One such fearless champion was Henry More, the learned scholar of Cambridge, of the seventeenth century. It is well worth our while to see how cleverly he handled the question. for learning, or

It appears that about the year 1678, a certain divine, named John Webster, wrote Criticisms atid Interpretations of Scripture, against the existence of witches, and other “ superstitions.” Finding the'^work “ a weak and impertinent piece,” Dr. More criticised it in a letter to Glanvil, the author of Sadducismus Triumphatus, and as an appendix sent a Psellus, 6, Piet. 2

23

;

Cory

:

“ Chaldean Oracles.”

;

THE VEIL OF

354

ISIS.

on witchcraft and explanations of the word witch, itself. This document is very rare, but we possess it in a fragmentary form in ail old manuscript, having seen it mentioned besides only in an insignificant work of 1820, on Apparitions, for it appears that the document itself was

treatise

long since out of print. The words witch and wizard, according to Dr. More, signify no more In the word wizard, it is plain at than a wise man or a wise woman. of the the very sight 3 and “the most plain and least operose deduction name witch, is from wit, whose derived adjective might be wittigh or and by contraction, afterwards witch ; as the noun wit is from wittich,

know. So that a witch, thus far, is no more than a knowing woman which answers exactly to the Latin word tnulta sciwitP saga, according to that of Festus, sages dicta anus qua plausible, as it more This definition of the word appears to us the

the verb to weet, which

is,

to ;

Slavonian-Russian names exactly answers the evident meaning of the The former is called vyedina, and the latter for witches and wizards. the root, moreover, vyed7nak, both from the verb to knoiu, vedat or vyeddt

Lecture on “Veda,” says Max Muller, in being positively Sanscrit. knowledge. Veda is the same the Vedas, “ means originally knowing, or [the digamma, vau being know word which appears in Greek olSa, I Furthermore, the wit.” * omitted], and in the English wise, wisdom, to Sanscrit

word

vidtna, answering to the

German wir

wissen,

means

lit-

while a great pity that the eminent philologist, Geiand Anglo-Saxon, Gothic, giving in his lecture the Sanscrit, Greek, roots of this word, has neglected the Slavonian. erally

man

know."

It is

comparative

the former being Another Russian appellation for witch and wizard, the same verb from (feminine) purely Slavonian, is zndhar and znaharka m 1678, given Thus Dr. More’s definition of the word, znat to know. is

perfectly correct,

and coincides

modern

in every particular with

lology.

•

j

phiA

1.

*

the word to “ Use,” says this scholar, “ questionless had appropriated was out of the common road or such a kind of skill and knowledge as u 7ilawfulness. But dVor did this peculiarity unply aJiy extraordinary. the words now-a-days which alone there was after a further restriction, in knowlthe is, for one that has witch and wizard are used. And that in an extraordinary way, and that edge and skill of doing or telling things with or implicit sociation or confederacy in virtue of either an express many so Moses, severe law of some bad spirits'.' In the clause of the as useit is difficult as well that witch, names are reckoned up with that of less to give here

the definition of every one of See “ Lecture on the Vedas.”

them

as

oun

m

r.

;

WITCHES AND WIZARDS.

355

be found among you any one time, or an enchanter, or a witch, that useth divination, or an observer of treatise.

More’s able

“There

shall not

spirits, or a wizard, or a necroor a charmer, or a consulter with familiar object of such will show, further on, the real mancer,” says the text. giving a For the present, we will remark that Dr. More, after severity. and showing the learned definition of every one of such appellations, that there is a proves value of their real meaning in the days of Moses, “ observers of time, etc., and vast difference between the “ enchanters,” “ many names are reckoned up in this prohibition of Moses,

We

So

a witch.

common law, the sense may be more sure, and leave no room to evasion. And that the name of ‘witch’ is not from any tiicks of the peoof legerdemain as in common jugglers, that delude the sight that, as in

our

ple at a market or

fair,

but that

it

spectres to deceive men’s

sight,

women and men who have

bad

mecassep/iah, that

a

is,

‘

is

the

name

of such as raise magical

and so are most

spirit in

them.

a witch, to

live.’

‘

certainly witches

Thou

shalt not suffer

’

Which would be a law

of extreme severity, or rather cruelty, against a poor hocus-pocus for his tricks of legerdemain.”

but the sixth appellation, that of a consulter with familiar spirits or a witch, that had to incur the greatest penalty of the law of Moses, for it is only a witch which must not be suffered to live, while all the others are simply enumerated as such with whom the people of Israel

Thus,

it

is

were forbidden to communicate on account of their idolatry or rather reshod This sixth word is ligious views and learning chiefly. “ with familiar a consulter aub, which our English translation renders, spirits ” but which the Septuagint translates, EyyacrTpt/Au0os, one that has a familiar spirit inside him, one possessed with the spirit of divination, which was considered to be Python by the Greeks, and obh by the Hebrews, the old serpent in its esoteric meaning the spirit of concupiscence and matter ; which, according to the kabalists, is always an elementary human ;

;

of the eighth sphere. “ Shoel obh, I conceive,” says Henry More, “ is to be understood of the The reason of the witch herself who asks counsel of her or his familiar.

spirit

was taken first from that spirit that was in the body of the and swelled it to a protuberancy, the voice always seeming to come out as from a bottle, for which reason they were named vefitrilo quists. Ob signifies as much as Pytho, which at first took its name from the pythii vates, a spirit that tells hidden things, or things to come. In Acts XVI. i6, TTvev/Ma ttv^oivos, when “ Paul being grieved, turned and said

name

obh,

party,

to that spirit, I

command

thee, in the

name

of Jesus Christ, to

come out

and he came out at the same hour.” Therefore, the words obsessed or possessed are synonyms of the word witch nor could this

of her,

THE VEIL OF

356

come that we

pytho of the eighth sphere

And

from her.

so

it is

or woman that hath a familiar iidegnoni) shall surely be put

ISIS.

out of her, unless

it

ivas

a spirit distinct

“A

man also see in Leviticus xx. 2 7 or that is a wizard (an irresponsible :

spirit,

to

them with

death, they shall stone

stones,

upon them.” law beyond doubt, and one which gives the lie to unjust and A “ a recent utterance of Spirits,” by the mouth of one of the most ])opular inspirational mediums of the day, to the effect that modern philological research proves that the Mosaic law never contemplated the killing of the poor “ mediums ” or witches of the Old Testament, but that the words, “ thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," meant to live by their An interpretation no less mediumship, that is, to gain their livelihood

their blood shall be

cruel

!

ingenius than novel. inspiration could

we

Certainly,

nowhere short of the source of such

find such philological profundity

* !

“ Shut the door in the face of the dmmon,” says the Kabala, “ and he which means, will keep running away from you, as if you pursued him,” obsession by of that you must not give a hold on you to such spirits

an atmosphere of congenial sin. These dmmons seek to introduce themselves into the bodies of the simple-minded and idiots, and remain there until dislodged therefrom by pure will, Jesus, Apollonius, and some of the apostles, a powerful and had the power to cast out devils, by purifying the atmosphere within

.attracting

them

into

to flight. without the patient, so as to force the unwelcome tenant the effect and Certain volatile salts are particularly obnoxious to them ; under the bed by Mr. the chemicals used in a saucer, and placed

of

some disagreeable Varley, of London, f for the purpose of keeping away * In order to avoid being contradicted by some spiritualists we give verbatim the of the oracular utterances of language in question, as a specimen of the unreliability capable of such effrontery spirits but certain “ spirits.” Let them be human or elemental, in philosophy, exact guides safe but anything may well be regarded by occultists as Tappan, in a public V. Cora Mrs. says remembered,” “It will be science, or ethics. to Spiritualism” (see “ BanRelations its and “ Occultism of History discourse upon the “ that the ancient word witchcraft, or the exercise of it, ner of Li"ht,” Aug. 26, 1876), is that no witch should be allowed was forbidden among the Hebrews. The translation and acting upon that, interpretation literal ; the That has been supposed to be to live. adequate testimony, numwithout death, put to ancestors your very pious and devout persons, under the condemnation of witchbers of very intelligent, wise, and sincere no interpretation or translation^ should be, that It has now turned out that the craft. is it That art their of practice the witches should be allowed to obtain a living by be so bold as to inquire of the celebrated should not be made a profession.” May we authority such a thing as evei urne -what to according speaker, through •whom or electrician of the Atlantic Cable ComUr. Cromwell F. Varley, the well-known of a debate at the his observations, in the course pany, communicates the result of

\

THE SACRED SLEEP OF physical

or

phenomena

human

spirits fear

themselves of terrestrial matter, terrestrial in no wise; such spirits are like a breath.

and the

357

truth. at night, are corroborative of this great

even simply inoffensive

souls

* * *

Pure

nothing, for having rid

compounds can affect them Not so with the earth-bound

nature-spirits.

degraded human spirits, that But when, or reincarnation. the ancient kabalists entertained a hope of for his desiie sincere a by helped how? At a fitting moment, and if or the person, amendment and repentance by some strong, sympathizing the erring spirit himwill of an adept, or even a desire emanating from him throw off the burden self, provided it is powerful enough to make Losing all consciousness, the once bright monad is of sinful matter. It is

for these carnal terrestrial larvcB,

and it caught once more into the vortex of our terrestrial evolution, child. living a as breathes again and repasses the subordinate kingdoms, process would this To compute the time necessary for the completion of Since there is no perception of time in eternity, the be impossible. attempt would be a mere waste of labor. As we have said, but few kabalists believe in originated with certain astrologers. certain historical

it,

and

this

While casting up the

personages renowned

for

some

doctrine

nativities of

peculiarities of disposi-

they found the conjunction of the planets answering perfectly to remarkable oracles and prophesies about other persons born ages later.

tion,

Observation, and what would

added

to

revelation during

closed the dreadful truth.

who ought

to

“ remarkable coincidences,”

now be termed

” the “ sacred sleep

So horrible

be convinced of

is

of the neophyte,

the thought that even those

prefer ignoring

it

dis-

it,

or at least avoid

speaking on the subject. This way of obtaining oracles was practiced in the highest antiquity. In India, this sublime lethargy is called “ the sacred sleep of * * * ” It is

an oblivion into which the subject is thrown by certain magical prosupplemented by draughts of the juice of the soma. The body

cesses,

of the sleeper remains for several days in a condition resembling death,

and by the power of the adept

is

purified of

Psychological Society of Great Britain, which don, April 14, 1876, pp. 174, 17s). the atmosphere was able to drive

He

is

its

earthliness

and made

fit

reported in the “ Spiritualist” (Lon-

thought that the

effect of free nitric acid in

He “unpleasant spirits.” 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 Here is a scientist, whose reputation extends putting the mixture under the bed. over two coiitinents, public

mccks

as

a

who

away what he

gives a recipe to drive

'‘superstition"

calls

away bad

spirits.

the herbs and incenses

And

yet the general

employed by Hindus,

Chinese, Africans, and other races to accomplish the self-same purpose.

;

THE VEIL OF

358 to

become

ISIS.

the temporary receptacle of the brightness of the immortal

Augoeides.

In

this state the torpid

body

is

made

to reflect the glory of

The the upper spheres, as a burnished mirror does the rays of the sun. sleeper takes no note of the lapse of time, but upon awakening, after four

What or five days of trance, imagines he has slept but a few moments. it the but as is spirit them never know which directs will he utter his lips ; For the time being the they can pronounce nothing but divine truth. poor helpless clod is made the shrine of the sacred presence, and converted into an oracle a thousand times more infallible than the asph)'xiand, unlike her mantic frenzy, which was ated Pythoness of Delphi exhibited before the multitude, this holy sleep is witnessed only within ;

the sacred precinct by those few of the adepts

who

are worthy to stand in

the presence of the Adonai. description which Isaiah gives of the purification necessary for a prophet to undergo before he is worthy to be the mouthpiece of heaven, applies to the case in point. In customary metaphor he says

The

:

“Then flew one of the seraphim unto me which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar upon my mouth and said, Lo this hath touched thy

having a live coal in his hand,

!

quity

is

.

.

lips

.

and he laid it and thine ini-

taken away.”

Augoeides, by the purified adept, is described in words of unparalleled beauty by Bulwer-Lytton in Zanoni, pasand there he gives us to understand that the slightest touch of mortal Not soul. sion unfits the hierophant to hold communion with his spotless but even only are there few who can successfully perform the ceremony, neophytes, some of instruction these rarely resort to it except for the and to obtain knowledge of the most solemn importance.

The invocation

of his

own

knowledge treasured up by these hiero“ There is public phants understood or appreciated by the general title of Kabala, another collection of writings and traditions bearing the Magic “but as Oriental scholars,” says the author ol Art-

And

yet

how

little

is

the

!

attributed to

or no value without a key, which can orily transcript would be of no be furnished by Oriental fraternities, its are ridiculed by every value to the general reader.” * And how they who wanders through India in pursuit

this repiarkable

work

is

of

Houndsditch commercial

little

traveller

misrepresented by every nimof “orders” and writes to the Times, and legerdemain, to the gapble-fingered trickster who pretends to show by magicians ing crowd, the feats of true Oriental t, k o ert the Algerian affair, But, notwithstanding his unfairness in and Moreau-Cinti, Houdin, an authority on the art of prestidigitation, !

^

“Art-Magic,”

p. 97.

•

PROFESSOR pepper’s GHOSTS.

359

They of the French mediums. another, gave honest testimony in behalf but none that Academicians, the testified, when cross-examined by

both

possibly produce the

phenomena

of table-rapping

the

“mediums” could

and

furnituie adapted for levitation without a suitable preparation and “ levitations without purpose. They also showed that the so-called

the

essional juggler; contact” were feats utterly beyond the power of the prof in a room supplied with that for them, such levitations, unless produced

machinery and concave mirrors, was impossible. moreover, that the simple apparition of a diaphanous hand,

1

secret

hej added

in a place in

having which confederacy would be rendered impossible, the medium work been previously searched, would be a demonstration that it was the Siecle, The might be. agency that of no human agency, whatever else published their suspicions that immediately newspapers Parisian other and the conthese two professional and very clever gentlemen had become federates of the spiritists Professor Pepper, director of the Polytechnic .Institute of !

London,

in-

vented a clever apparatus to produce spiritual appearances on the stage, and sold his patent in 1863, in Paris, for the sum of 20,000 francs. The phantoms looked real and were evanescent, being but an effect produced

upon the surface of plateto walk about the stage disappear, and They seemed glass. and play their parts to perfection. Sometimes one of the phantoms placed himself on a bench after which, one of the living actors would begin quarrelling with him, and, seizing a heavy hatchet, would part the head and body of the ghost in two. But, joining his two parts again, the spectre would reappear, a few steps off, to the amazement of the public. The contrivance worked marvellously well, and nightly attracted large But to produce these ghosts required a stage-apparatus, and crowds. There were nevertheless some reportmore than one confederate.

by the

reflection of a highly-illuminated object

to appear

;

ers

who made

this exhibition the pretext for ridiculing the spiritists

though the two classes of

phenomena had

the slightest connection

—as

!

What the Pepper ghosts pretended to do, genuine disembodied human when their reflection is materialized by the elementals, can actually They will permit themselves to be perforated with bullets or perform. spirits,

and then instantly form themselves anew. But the case is different with both cosmic and human elementary spirits, for a sword or dagger, or even a pointed stick, will cause them to vanish This will seem unaccountable to those who do not understand in terror. of what a material substance the elementary are composed ; but the kaba-

the sword, or to be dismembered,

understand perfectly. The records of antiquity and of the middle ages, to say nothing of the modern wohders at Cideville, which have beer

lists

judicially attested for us, corroborate these facts.

!

THE VEIL OF

36 o Skeptics,

mediums of

and even skeptical

ISIS.

spiritualists,

have often unjustly accused

when denied what they considered

fraud,

their inalienable

But where there is one such case, there are fifty in which spiritualists have permitted themselves to be practiced upon by tricksters, while they neglected to appreciate genuine manifestations procured for them by their mediums. Ignorant of the laws of mediumship, such do not know that when an honest medium is once taken possession of by spirits, whether disembodied or elemental, he is no longer his own He cannot control the actions of the spirits, nor even his own. master. They make him a puppet to dance at their pleasure while they pull the The false medium may seem entranced, and wires behind the scenes. yet be playing tricks all the while ; while the real medium may appear to be in full possession of his senses, when in fact he is far away, and his body is animated by his “ Indian guide,” or “control.” Or, he may be entranced in his cabinet, while his astral body (double) or doppelganger, is walking about the room moved by another intelligence. Among all the phenomena, that of re-percussion, closely allied with those of bi-location and aerial “ travelling,” is the most astounding. In the De Gasparin, middle ages it was included under the head of sorcery. right to test the spirits.

in his refutations of the miraculous character of the marvels of Cideville, treats of the subject at length

attempt to trace the phenomena back to the Devil,

their

failing in

but these pretended explanations were

;

turn exploded by de Mirville and des Mousseaux, who, while

all in their

did,

nevertheless, prove their spiritual origin.

prodigy of re-percussion,” says des Mousseaux, “ occurs when a blow aimed at the spirit, visible or otherwise, of an absent livmg person, or at the phantom which represents him, strikes this person himself, at the same time, and in the very place at which the spectre or his double “

The

We

blow is re-percussed, of the living person image and that it reaches, as if rebounding, from the the original, wherever he may be, in flesh his phantasmal * duplicate

is

touched

!

must suppose,

therefore, that the

—

—

and blood. “Thus,

an individual appears before me, or, remaining invisible, declares war, threatens, and causes me to be threatened with I strike at the place where I perceive his phantom, where I obsession. for instance,

hear him moving, where I feel somebody, something which molests and I strike ; the blood will appear sometimes on this place, and resists me. perhaps, dead occasionally a scream may be heard ; he is wounded

—

It is

done, and

* This j-

I

phantom

have explained the

is

See Bulwer-Lytton’s “ Strange Story.” works (1603), Paracelsus writes of the wonderful

called Sent Lecca.

In the Strasbourg

edition of his

fact.” f

SALEM WITCHCRAFT. “ Notwithstanding that, at the

moment

361 him, his presence

I struck

in

saw plainly this same wound is person, re-percussed upon his cheek or

saw another place is authentically proved ; the phantom hurt upon the cheek or shoulder, and .

I

.

.

yes, I

found precisely on the living Thus, it becomes evident that the facts of re-percussion have shoulder. either an intimate connection with those of bi-location or duplication^ spiritual or corporeal.”

The

history of the

Salem

witchcraft, as

we

find

it

recorded in the

works of Cotton Mather, Calef, Upham, and

others, furnishes a curious

corroboration of the fact of the double, as

also does of the effects of

allowing elementary spirits to have their

it

own way.

This tragical chapter

of American history has never yet been written in accordance with the A party of four or five young girls had become “ developed ” as truth. mediums, by sitting with a West Indian negro woman, a practitioner of

They began

Obeah. ing,

having pins stuck

to suffer all kinds of physical torture, such as pinchin

them, and the marks of bruises and teeth on

dif-

They would declare that they were hurt by the we learn from the celebrated Narrative of Deodat Lawson (London, 1704), that “some of them confessed that ferent parts of their bodies.

spectres of various persons, and

sufferers {i.