Writings
of H P Blavatsky
Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24 -1DL
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831 – 1891)
The Founder of Modern Theosophy
By
H
P Blavatsky
O ye Lords of Truth who are
cycling in eternity . . . save me from the annihilation in this Region of the
Two Truths. Egyptian Ritual of the Dead
THAT the world moves in
cycles, and events repeat themselves therein, is an old, yet ever new truism.
It is new to most, firstly, because it belongs to a distinct group of occult
aphorisms in partibus infidelium,
and our present-day Rabbis and Pharisees will accept nothing coming from that
Nazareth; secondly, because those who will swallow a camel of whatever size,
provided it hails from orthodox or accepted authorities, will strain and kick
at the smallest gnat, if only its buzz comes from theosophical regions. Yet
this proposition about the world cycles and ever-recurring events,
is a very correct one. It is one, moreover, that people could easily verify for
themselves. Of course, the people meant here are men who do their own thinking;
not those others who are satisfied to remain, from birth till death, pinned,
like a thistle fastened to the coat-tail of a country parson, to the beliefs
and thoughts of the goody-goody majority.
We cannot agree with a writer
(was it Gilpin?) who said that the grandest truths are often rejected, not so
much for want of direct evidence, as for want of inclination to search for it.
This applies but to a few. Nine-tenths of the people will reject the most
overwhelming evidence, even if it be brought to them without any trouble to
themselves, only because it happens to clash with their personal interests or
prejudices; especially if it comes from unpopular quarters. We are living in a
highly moral atmosphere, high sounding in words. Put to the test of practice,
however, the morality of this age in point of genuineness and reality is of the
nature of the black skin of the negro minstrel:
assumed for show and pay, and washed off at the close of every performance. In
sober truth, our opponents advocates of official science, defenders of orthodox
religion, and the tutti quanti
of the detractors of Theosophy who claim to oppose our works on grounds of
scientific evidence, public good and truth, strongly resemble advocates in our
courts of law miscalled of justice. These in their defence
of robbers and murderers, forgers and adulterers, deem it to be their duty to
browbeat, confuse and bespatter all who bear witness against their clients, and
will ignore, or if possible, suppress, all evidence which goes to incriminate
them. Let ancient Wisdom step into the witness-box herself, and prove that the
goods found in the possession of the prisoner at the bar, were taken from her
own strong-box; and she will find herself accused of all manner of crimes,
fortunate if she escape being branded as a common fraud, and told that she is
no better than she should be.
What member of our Society can
wonder then, that in this our age, pre-eminently one of shams and shows, the
theosophists’ teachings so (mis-)
called, seem to be the most unpopular of all the systems now to the fore; or
that materialism and theology, science and modern philosophy, have arrayed
themselves in holy alliance against theosophical studies perhaps because all
the former are based on chips and broken-up fragments of that primordial system.
Cotton complains somewhere, that the metaphysicians have been learning their
lesson for the last four (?) thousand years, and that it is
now high time that they should begin to teach something. But, no sooner is the
possibility of such studies offered, with the complete evidence into the
bargain that they belong to the oldest doctrine of the metaphysical philosophy
of mankind, than, instead of giving them a fair hearing at least, the majority
of the complainers turn away with a sneer and the cool remark: Oh, you must
have invented all you say yourself!
Dear ladies and gentlemen, has
it ever occurred to you, how truly grand and almost divine would be that man or
woman, who, at this time of the life of mankind, could invent anything, or
discover that which had not been invented and known ages before? The charge of
being such an inventor would only entitle the accused to the choicest honours. For show us, if you can, that mortal who in the
historical cycle of our human race has taught the world something entirely new.
To the proud pretensions of this age, Occultism the real Eastern Occultism, or the so-called Esoteric Doctrine answers
through its ablest students: Indeed all your boasted knowledge is but the
reflex action of the by-gone Past. At best, you are but the modern popularisers of very ancient ideas. Consciously and
unconsciously you have pilfered from old classics and philosophers, who were
themselves but the superficial recorders cautious and incomplete, owing to the
terrible penalties for divulging the secrets of initiation taught during the
mysteries of the primæval Wisdom. Avaunt!
your modern. sciences and
speculations are but the réchauffé dishes of
antiquity; the dead bones (served with a sauce piquante
of crass materialism, to disguise them) of the intellectual repasts of the
gods. Ragonwas right in saying in his Maçonnerie Occulte, that Humanity
only seems to progress in achieving one discovery after the other, a sin truth,
it only finds that which it had lost. Most of our modern inventions for which
we claim such glory, are, after all, things people were acquainted with three
and four thousand years back.1 Lost to us through wars, floods and fire, their
very existence became obliterated from the memory of man. And now modern
thinkers begin to rediscover them once more.
Allow us to recapitulate a few
of such things and thus refresh your memory.
Deny, if you can, that the
most important of our present sciences were known to the ancients. It is not
Eastern literature only, and the whole cycle of those esoteric teachings which
an overzealous Christian Kabalist, in France, has
just dubbed the accursed sciences that will give you a flat denial, but profane
classical literature, as well. The proof is easy.
Are not physics and natural
sciences but an amplified reproduction of the works of Anaxagoras, of
Empedocles, Democritus and others? All that is taught now,
was taught by these philosophers then. For they maintained even in the
fragments of their works still extant that the Universe is composed of eternal
atoms which, moved by a subtle internal Fire, combine in millions of various
ways. With them, this Fire was the divine Breath of the Universal Mind, but
now, it has become with the modern philosophers no better than a blind and
senseless Force. Furthermore they taught that there was neither Life nor Death,
but only a constant destruction of form, produced by perpetual physical
transformations. This has now become by intellectual transformation, that which
is known as the physical correlation of forces, conservation of energy, law of
continuity, and what not, in the vocabulary of modern Science. But what’s
in a name, or in new-fangled words and compound terms,
once that the identity of the essential ideas is established?
Was not Descartes indebted for
his original theories to the old Masters, to Leucippus and Democritus, Lucretius, Anaxagoras and Epicurus? These taught that the
celestial bodies were formed of a multitude of atoms, whose vortical
motion existed from eternity; which met, and, rotating together, the heaviest
were drawn to the centres, the lightest to the circumferences; each of these
concretions was carried away in a fluidic matter, which, receiving from this
rotation an impulse, the stronger communicated it to the weaker concretions.
This seems a tolerably close description of the Cartesian theory of Elemental
Vortices taken from Anaxagoras and some others; and it does look most
suspiciously like the vortical atoms of Sir W.
Thomson!
Even Sir Isaac Newton, the
greatest among the great, is found constantly mirroring a dozen or so of old
philosophers. In reading his works one sees floating in the air the pale images
of the same Anaxagoras and Democritus, of Pythagoras, Aristotle, Timæus of Locris, Lucretius, Macrobius, and even
our old friend Plutarch. All these have maintained one or the other of these
propositions, (1) that the smallest of the particles of matter would be
sufficient owing to its infinite divisibility to fill infinite space; (2) that
there exist two Forces emanated from the Universal Soul, combined in numerical
proportions (the centripetal and centrifugal forces, of the latter day
scientific saints); (3) that there was a mutual attraction of bodies, which
attraction causes the latter to, what we now call, gravitate and keeps them within
their respective spheres; (4) they hinted most unmistakably at the relation
existing between the weight and the density, or the quantity of matter
contained in a unit of mass; and (5) taught that the attraction (gravitation)
of the planets toward the Sun is in reciprocal proportion to their distance
from that luminary.
Finally, is it not a
historical fact that the rotation of the Earth and the heliocentric system were
taught by Pythagoras not to speak of Hicetas, Heraclides, Ecphantus,
&c.,--over 2,000 years before the despairing and now famous cry of Galileo,
E pur, se muove? Did not
the priests of Etruria and the Indian Rishis still earlier, know how to attract lightning, ages
upon ages before even the astral Sir B. Franklin was formed in space? Euclid is
honoured to this day perhaps, because one cannot
juggle as easily with mathematics and figures, as with symbols and words
bearing on unprovable hypotheses. Archimedes had
probably forgotten more in his day, than our modern mathematicians, astronomers,
geometricians, mechanicians, hydrostaticians
and opticians ever knew. Without Archytas, the
disciple of Pythagoras, the application of the theory of mathematics to
practical purposes would, perchance, remain still unknown to our grand era of
inventions and machinery. Needless to remind the reader of
that which the Aryans knew, as it is already recorded in the Theosophist and
other works obtainable in
Wise was Solomon in saying
that there is no new thing under the Sun; and that everything that is hath been
already of old time, which was before us save, perhaps, the theosophical
doctrines which the humble writer of the present is charged by some with having
invented. The prime origin of this (very complimentary) accusation is due to
the kind efforts of the S. P. R. It is the more considerate and kind of this
world famous, and learned Society of Researches, as its scribes seem utterly
incapable of inventing anything original themselves even in the way of
manufacturing a commonplace illustration. If the inquisitive reader turns to
the article which follows, he will have the satisfaction of finding a curious
proof of this fact, in a reprint from old Izaak
Walton’s Lives, which our contributor has
entitled Mrs. Donne’s Astral Body. Thus even the
scientifically accurate
In short, it may be said of
the scientific theories, that those which are true are not new; and those which
are new are not true, or are at least, very dubious. It is easy to hide behind
merely working hypotheses, but less easy to maintain their plausibility in the
face of logic and philosophy. To make short work of a very big subject, we have
but to institute a brief comparison between the old and the new teachings. That
which modern science would make us believe, is this:
the atoms possess innate and immutable properties. That which Esoteric, and
also exoteric, Eastern philosophy calls divine Spirit Substance (Purusha Prakriti) or eternal
Spirit-matter, one inseparable from the other, modern Science calls Force and
Matter, adding as we do (for it is a Vedantic
conception), that, the two being inseparable, matter is but an abstraction (an
illusion rather). The properties of matter are, by the Eastern Occultists,
summed up in, or brought down to, attraction and repulsion; by the Scientists,
to gravitation and affinities. According to this teaching, the properties of
complex combinations are but the necessary results of the composition of
elementary properties; the most complex existences being the physico-chemical automata, called men. Matter from being
primarily scattered and inanimate, begets life, sensation, emotions and will,
after a whole series of consecutive gropings. The
latter non-felicitous expression (belonging to Mr. Tyndall), forced the
philosophical writer, Delboeuf2, to criticize the English Scientist in very
disrespectful terms, and forces us in our turn, to agree with the former.
Matter, or anything equally conditioned, once that it is declared to be subject
to immutable laws, cannot grope. But this is a trifle when compared with dead
or inanimate matter, producing life, and even psychic phenomena of the highest
mentality! Finally, a rigid determinism reigns over all nature. All that which
has once happened to our automatical Universe, had to
happen, as the future of that Universe is traced in the smallest of its
particles or atoms. Return these atoms, they say, to the same position and
order they were in at the first moment of the evolution of the physical Kosmos,
and the same universal phenomena will be repeated in precisely the same order,
and the Universe will once more return to its present conditions. To this,
logic and philosophy answer that it cannot be so, as the properties of the
particles vary and are changeable. If the atoms are eternal and matter
indestructible, these atoms can never have been born; hence, they can have
nothing innate in them. Theirs is the one homogeneous (and we add divine)
substance, while compound molecules receive their properties, at the beginning
of the life cycles or manvantaras, from within
without. Organisms cannot have been developed from dead or inanimate matter,
as, firstly, such matter does not exist, and secondly, philosophy proving it
conclusively, the Universe is not subjected to fatality. As Occult Science
teaches that the universal process of differentiation begins anew after every
period of Maha-pralaya, there is no reason to think
that it would slavishly and blindly repeat itself. Immutable laws last only
from the incipient to the last stage of the universal life, being simply the
effects of primordial, intelligent and entirely free action. For Theosophists,
as also for Dr. Pirogoff, Delboeuf
and many a great independent modern thinker, it is the Universal (and to us
impersonal because infinite) Mind, which is the true and primordial Demiurge.
What better illustrates the
theory of cycles, than the following fact? Nearly 700 years B.C., in the
schools of Thales and Pythagoras, was taught the
doctrine of the true motion of the earth, its form and the whole heliocentric
system. And in 317 A.D. Lactantius, the preceptor of Crispus Cæsar, the son of the
Emperor Constantine, is found teaching his pupil that the earth was a plane
surrounded by the sky, itself composed of fire and water! Moreover, the
venerable Church Father warned his pupil against the heretical doctrine of the
earth’s globular form, as the Cambridge and
Oxford Father Dons warn their students now, against the pernicious and
superstitious doctrines of Theosophy such as Universal Mind, Re-incarnation and
so on. There is a resolution tacitly accepted by the members of the T. S. for
the adoption of a proverb of King Solomon, paraphrased for our daily use: A
scientist is wiser in his own conceit than seven Theosophists that can render a
reason. No time, therefore, should be lost in arguing with them; but no endeavour, on the other hand, should be neglected to show
up their mistakes and blunders. The scientific conceit of the Orientalists especially of the youngest branch of these the
Assyriologists and the Egyptologists is indeed
phenomenal. Hitherto, some credit was given to the ancients to their
philosophers and Initiates, at any rate of knowing a few things that the
moderns could not rediscover. But now even the greatest Initiates are
represented to the public as fools. Here is an instance. On pages 15, 16 and 17
(Introduction) in the Hibbert Lectures of 1887 by
Prof. Sayce, on The Ancient Babylonians, the reader
is brought face to face with a conundrum that may well stagger the
unsophisticated admirer of modern learning. Complaining of the difficulties and
obstacles that meet the Assyriologist at every step
of his studies; after giving the dreary catalogue of the formidable struggles
of the interpreter to make sense of the inscriptions from broken fragments of
clay tiles; the Professor goes on to confess that the scholar who has to read
these cuneiform characters, is often likely to put a false construction upon
isolated passages, the context of which must be supplied from conjecture (p.
14). Notwithstanding all this, the learned lecturer places the modern Assyriologist higher than the ancient Babylonian Initiate,
in the knowledge of symbols and his own religion!
The passage deserves to be
quoted in toto:
It is true that many of the
sacred texts were so written as to be intelligible only to the initiated; but
the initiated were provided with keys and glosses, many of which are in our
hands(?) . . . We can penetrate into the real meaning of documents which to him
(the ordinary Babylonian) were a sealed book. Nay, more than this, the
researches that have been made during the last
half-century into the creed and beliefs of the nations of the world both past
and present, have given us a clue to the interpretation of these documents
which even the initiated priests did not possess.
The above (the italics being
our own) may be better appreciated when thrown into a syllogistic form.
Major premise: The ancient
Initiates had keys and glosses to their esoteric texts, of which they were the
INVENTORS.
Minor premise: Our Orientalists have many of these keys.
Conclusion: Ergo, the Orientalists have a clue which the Initiates themselves did
not possess!!
Into what were the Initiates,
in such a case, initiated?--and who invented the blinds, we ask.
Few Orientalists
could answer this query. We are more generous, however; and may show in our
next that, into which our modest Orientalists have
never yet been initiated all their alleged clues to
the contrary.
II
Go to, let
us go down and there confound their
language that
they may not understand
one another’s
speech . . . Genesis
HAVING done with modern
physical Sciences we next turn to Western philosophies and religions. Every one
of these is equally based upon, and derives its theories and doctrines from
heathen, and moreover, exoteric thought. This can easily be traced from
Schopenhauer and Mr. Herbert Spencer, down to Hypnotism and so-called Mental
Science. The German philosophers modernize Buddhism; the English are inspired
by Vedantism; while the French, borrowing from both,
add to them Plato, in a Phrygian cap, and occasionally, as with Auguste Comte, the weird sex-worship or Mariolatry of the
old Roman Catholic ecstatics and visionaries. New
systems, yclept philosophical, new sects and societies, spring up now-a-days in
every corner of our civilized lands. But even the highest among them agree on
no one point, though each claims supremacy. This, because no science, no
philosophy being at best, but a fragment broken from the WISDOM RELIGION can
stand alone, or be complete in itself. Truth, to be complete, must represent an
unbroken continuity. It must have no gaps, no missing links. And which of our
modern religions, sciences or philosophies, is free from such defects? Truth is
One. Even as the palest reflection of the Absolute, it
can be no more dual than is absoluteness itself, nor can it have two aspects.
But such truth is not for the majorities, in our world of illusion especially
for those minds which are devoid of the noëtic
element. These have to substitute for the high spiritual and quasi absolute
truth the relative one, which having two sides or aspects, both conditioned by
appearances, lead our brain-minds one to intellectual scientific materialism,
the other to materialistic or anthropomorphic religiosity. But even that kind
of truth, in order to offer a coherent and complete system of something, has,
while naturally clashing with its opposite, to offer no gaps and
contradictions, no broken or missing links, in the special system or doctrine
it undertakes to represent.
And here a slight digression
must come in. We are sure to be told by some, that this is precisely the
objection taken to theosophical expositions, from
Nor has a materialist any
right to the appellation, since it means a lover of Wisdom, and Pythagoras, who
was the first to coin the compound term, never limited Wisdom to this earth.
One who affirms that the Universe and Man are objects of the senses only, and
who fatally chains thought within the region of senseless matter, as do the
Darwinian evolutionists, is at best a sophiaphobe
when not a philosophaster never a philosopher.
Therefore is it that in this
age of Materialism, Agnosticism, Evolutionism, and false Idealism, there is not
a system, however intellectually expounded, that can stand on its own legs, or
fail to be criticized by an exponent from another school of thought as
materialistic as itself; even Mr. Herbert Spencer, the greatest of all, is
unable to answer some criticisms. Many are those who remember the fierce
polemics that raged a few years ago in the English and American journals
between the Evolutionists on the one hand and the Positivists on the other. The
subject of the dispute was with regard to the attitude and relation that the
theory of evolution would bear to religion. Mr. F. Harrison, the Apostle of Positivism,
charged Mr. Herbert Spencer with restricting religion to the realm of reason,
forgetting that feeling and not the cognizing faculty, played the most
important part in it. The erroneousness and insufficiency of the ideas on the
Unknowable as developed in Mr. Spencer’s works
were also taken to task by Mr. Harrison. The idea was erroneous, he held, be
cause it was based on the acceptation of the metaphysical absolute. It was
insufficient, he argued, because it brought deity down to an empty abstraction,
void of any meaning.3 To this the great English writer replied, that he had
never thought of offering his Unknowable and Incognizable,
as a subject for religious worship. Then stepped into the arena, the respective
admirers and defenders of Messrs. Spencer and Harrison, some defending the
material metaphysics of the former thinker (if we may be permitted to use this
paradoxical yet correct definition of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s
philosophy), others, the arguments of the Godless and Christless
Roman Catholicism of Auguste Comte,4
both sides giving and receiving very hard blows. Thus, Count d’Alviella of
It is not to discuss the
relative merits of materialistic Evolutionism, or of Positivism either, that
the two English thinkers are brought forward; but simply to point, as an
illustration, to the Babel-like confusion of modern thought. While the
Evolutionists (of Herbert Spencer’s
school) maintain that the historical evolution of the religious feeling
consists in the constant abstraction of the attributes of Deity, and their
final separation from the primitive concrete conceptions this process rejoicing
in the easy-going triple compound of deanthropomorphization,
or the disappearance of human attributes the Comtists
on their side hold to another version. They affirm that fetishism, or the
direct worship of nature, was the primitive religion of man, a too protracted-evolution
alone having landed it in anthropomorphism. Their Deity is Humanity and the God
they worship, Mankind, as far as we understand them. The only way, therefore,
of settling the dispute, is to ascertain which of the two philosophical and
scientific theories, is the less pernicious and the more probable. Is it true
to say, as d’Alviella
assures us, that Mr. Spencer’s Unknowable contains all the
elements necessary to religion; and, as that remarkable writer is alleged to
imply, that religious feeling tends to free itself from every moral element;
or, shall we accept the other extremity and agree with the Comtists,
that gradually, religion will blend itself with, merge into, and disappear in
altruism and its service to Humanity?
Useless
to say that Theosophy, while rejecting the one-sided-ness and therefore the
limitation in both ideas, is alone able to reconcile the two, i.e., the
Evolutionists and the Positivists on both metaphysical and practical lines. How to do this it is no there the place to say, as every
Theosophist acquainted with the main tenets of the Esoteric Philosophy can do
it for himself. We believe in an impersonal Unknowable and know well that the
ABSOLUTE, or Absoluteness, can have nought to do with
worship on anthropomorphic lines; Theosophy rejects the Spencerian
He and substitutes the impersonal IT for the personal pronoun, whenever
speaking of the Absolute and the Unknowable. And it teaches, as foremost of all
virtues, altruism and self-sacrifice, brotherhood and compassion for every
living creature, without, for all that, worshipping Man or Humanity. In the
Positivist, more-over, who admits of no immortal soul in men, believes in no
future life or reincarnation, such a worship becomes
worse than fetishism: it is Zoolatry, the worship of the animals. For that
alone which constitutes the real Man is, in the words of Carlyle, the essence
of our being, the mystery in us that calls itself ‘I’--
. . . a breath of Heaven; the Highest Being reveals himself in man. This
denied, man is but an animal the shame and scandal of the Universe, as Pascal
puts it.
It is the old, old story, the
struggle of matter and spirit, the survival of the unfittest, because of the strongest and most
material. But the period when nascent Humanity, following the law of the
natural and dual evolution, was descending along with spirit into matter is
closed. We (Humanity) are now helping matter to ascend toward spirit; and to do
that we have to help substance to disenthral itself
from the viscous grip of sense. We, of the fifth Root Race, are the direct
descendants of the primeval Humanity of that Race; those, who on this side of
the Flood tried, by commemorating it, to save the antediluvian Truth and
Wisdom, and were worsted in our efforts by the dark genius of the Earth the
spirit of matter, whom the Gnostics called Ildabaoth
and the Jews Jehovah. Think ye, that even the Bible of Moses, the book you know
so well and understand so badly, has left this claim of the Ancient Doctrine
without witness? It has not. Allow us to close with a (to you) familiar
passage, only interpreted in its true light.
In the beginning of time, or
rather, in the childhood of the fifth Race, the whole earth was of one lip and
of one speech, saith chapter XI of Genesis. Read
esoterically, this means that mankind had one universal doctrine, a philosophy,
common to all; and that men were bound by one religion, whether this term be
derived from the Latin word relegere, to gather, or
be united in speech or in thought, from religens,
revering the gods, or, from religare, to be bound
fast together. Take it one way or the other, it means most undeniably and
plainly that our forefathers from beyond the flood accepted in common one truth
i.e., they believed in that aggregate of subjective and objective facts which
form the consistent, logical and harmonious whole called by us the Wisdom
Religion.
Now, reading the first nine
verses of chapter XI between the lines, we get the following information. Wise
in their generation, our early fathers were evidently acquainted with the
imperishable truism which teaches that in union alone lies strength in union of
thought as well as in that of nations, of course. Therefore, lest in disunion
they should be scattered upon the face of the earth, and their Wisdom-religion
should, in consequence, be broken up into a thousand fragments; and lest they,
themselves, instead of towering as hitherto, through knowledge, heavenward,
should, through blind faith begin gravitating earthward the wise men, who
journeyed from the East, devised a plan. In those days temples were sites of
learning, not of superstition; priests taught divine Wisdom, not man-invented
dogmas, and the ultima thule
of their religious activity did not centre in the contribution box, as at
present. Thus ’Go to,’ they
said, ‘let us build a city and a tower,
whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make a name.’ And
they made burnt brick and used it for stone, and built therewith a city and a
tower.
So far, this is a very old
story, known as well to a Sunday school ragamuffin as to Mr. Gladstone. Both
believe very sincerely that these descendants of the accursed Ham were proud
sinners whose object was like that of the Titans, to insult and dethrone
Zeus-Jehovah, by reaching heaven, the supposed abode of both. But since we find
the story told in the revealed6 Scripts, it must, like all the rest in them,
have its esoteric interpretation. In this, Occult symbolism will help us. All
the expressions that we have italicized, when read in the original Hebrew and
according to the canons of esoteric symbolism, will yield quite a different
construction. Thus:
1. And the whole earth (mankind),
was of one lip (i.e., proclaimed the same teachings) and of the same words not
of speech as in the authorized version.
Now the Kabalistic meaning of
the term words and word may be found in the Zohar and
also in the Talmud. Words (Dabarim) mean powers, and
word, in the singular, is a synonym of Wisdom; e.g., By the uttering of ten
words was the world created--(Talmud Pirkey Aboth c. 5., Mish. I). Herethe words refer to the ten Sephiroth,
Builders of the Universe. Again: By the Word, (Wisdom, Logos) of YHVH were the
Heavens made (ibid.).
2-4. And the man7 (the chief
leader) said to his neighbour, ‘Go to,
let us make bricks (disciples) and burn them to a burning (initiate, fill them
with sacred fire), let us build us a city (establish mysteries and teach the
Doctrine8) and a tower (Ziggurrat, a sacred temple
tower) whose top may reach unto heaven’ (the highest limit reachable in
space). The great tower of Nebo, of Nabi on the
temple of Bel, was called the house of the seven
spheres of heaven and earth, and the house of the stronghold (or strength, tagimut) and the foundation stone of heaven and earth.
Occult symbology teaches, that
to burn bricks for a city means to train disciples for magic, a hewn stone
signifying a full Initiate, Petra the Greek and Kephas
the Aramaic word for stone, having the same meaning, viz., interpreter of the
Mysteries, a Hierophant. The supreme initiation was referred to as the burning
with great burning. Thus, the bricks are fallen, but we will build (anew) with
hewn stones of Isaiah becomes clear. For the true interpretation of the four
last verses of the genetic allegory about the supposed confusion of tongues we
may turn to the legendary version of the Yezidis and
read verses 5, 6, 7, and 8 in Genesis, ch. xi,
esoterically:
And Adonai
(the Lord) came down and said: ‘Behold,
the people is one (the people are united in thought and deed) and they have one
lip (doctrine).’ And now they begin to spread it and ‘nothing
will be restrained from them (they will have full magic powers and get all they
want by such power, Kriyasakti,) that they have
imagined’.
And now what are the Yezidis and their version and what is Ad-onai? Ad is the Lord, their ancestral god; and the Yezidis are a heretical Mussulman
sect, scattered over
This is more logical than to
attribute to one’s God, the All-good, such ungodly
tricks as are fathered upon him in the Bible. Moreover, the legend about the
And so ought to weep all the
philosophers and lovers of Ancient Wisdom; for it is since then that the
thousand and one exoteric substitutes for the one true Doctrine or lip had
their beginning, obscuring more and more the intellects of men, and shedding
innocent blood in fierce fanaticism. Had our modern philosophers studied,
instead of sneering at, the old Books of Wisdom say the Kabala they would have
found that which would have unveiled to them many a secret of ancient Church
and State. As they have not, however, the result is evident. The dark cycle of
Kali Yug has brought back a
The slack sail shifts from
side to side;
The boat untrimm’d
admits the tide;
Borne down adrift, at random toss’d,
The oar breaks short, . . . the rudder’s lost
Lucifer, January, February,
1891
1 The learned Belgian Mason
would be nearer the mark by adding a few more ciphers to his four thousand
years.
2 In
the Revue Philosophique of 1883, where he translates
such gropings by atonements successifs.
3 As the above is repeated
from memory. it does not claim to be quoted with
verbal exactitude, but only to give the gist of the argument.
4 The epithet is Mr. Huxley’s.
In his lecture in Edinburgh in 1868, On the Physical Basis of Life, this great
opponent remarked that Auguste Comte’s
philosophy in practice might be compendiously described as Catholicism minus
Christianity, and antagonistic to the very essence of Science.
5
Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the
6 A
curious and rather unfortunate word to use, since, as a translation from the
Latin revelare, it signifies diametrically the
opposite of the now accepted meaning in English. For the word to reveal or
revealed is derived from the Latin revelare, to reveil and rot to reveal, i.e., from re again or back and velare to veil, or to hide something, from the word velum
or a vail (or veil), a cover. Thus, instead of unvailing, or revealing, Moses has truly only reveiled once more the Egypto-Chaldean
theological legends and allegories, into which, as one learned in all the
Wisdom of
7 This is translated from the
Hebrew original. Chief-leader (Rab-Mag) meaning
literally Teacher-Magician, Master or Guru, as Daniel is shown to have been in
8 Some Homeric heroes also
when they are said, like Laomedon, Priam’s father, to have built
cities, were in reality establishing the Mysteries and introducing the
Wisdom-Religion in foreign lands.
9 It is commanded in Ecclesiasticus XXI, 30, not to curse Satan, lest one should
forfeit his own life. Why? Because in their permutations the
Lord God, Moses, and Satan are one. The name the Jews gave while in
Babylon to their exoteric God, the substitute for the true Deity of which they
never spoke or wrote, was the Assyrian Mosheh or
Adar, the god of the scorching sun (the Lord thy God is a consuming flame
verily!) and therefore, Mosheh or Moses, shone also.
In
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Preface
Theosophy and the Masters General Principles
The Earth Chain Body and Astral Body Kama – Desire
Manas Of
Reincarnation Reincarnation Continued
Karma Kama Loka
Devachan
Cycles
Arguments Supporting Reincarnation
Differentiation Of Species Missing Links
Psychic Laws, Forces, and Phenomena
Psychic Phenomena and Spiritualism
Quick Explanations
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What is Theosophy
? Theosophy Defined (More Detail)
Three Fundamental Propositions Key Concepts of Theosophy
Cosmogenesis Anthropogenesis Root Races
Ascended Masters After Death States
The Seven Principles of Man Karma
Reincarnation Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
Colonel Henry Steel Olcott William Quan Judge
The Start of the Theosophical
Society
History of the Theosophical
Society
Theosophical Society Presidents
History of the Theosophical
Society in Wales
The Three Objectives of the
Theosophical Society
Explanation of the Theosophical
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The Theosophical Order of
Service (TOS)
Glossaries of Theosophical Terms
Index of
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H P Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine
Isis Unveiled by H P Blavatsky
H P Blavatsky’s Esoteric Glossary
Mahatma Letters to A P Sinnett 1 - 25
A Modern Revival of Ancient Wisdom
(Selection of Articles by H P Blavatsky)
The Secret Doctrine – Volume 3
A compilation of H P Blavatsky’s
writings published after her death
Esoteric Christianity or the Lesser Mysteries
The Early Teachings of The
Masters
A Collection of Fugitive Fragments
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy
Mystical,
Philosophical, Theosophical, Historical
and Scientific Essays Selected from "The
Theosophist"
Edited by George Robert Stow Mead
From Talks on the Path of Occultism - Vol. II
In the Twilight”
Series of Articles
The In the
Twilight” series appeared during
1898 in The Theosophical Review and
from 1909-1913 in The Theosophist.
compiled from information supplied by
her relatives and friends and edited by A P Sinnett
Letters and
Talks on Theosophy and the Theosophical Life
Obras Teosoficas En Espanol
Theosophische Schriften Auf Deutsch
An Outstanding
Introduction to Theosophy
By a student of
Katherine Tingley
Elementary Theosophy Who is the Man? Body and Soul
Body, Soul and Spirit Reincarnation Karma
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