Chapter IX: {293} (1)

“Thou can’st not call that madness of which thou art proved to
know nothing.”—TERTULLIAN: _Apology_

“This is not a matter of to-day,
Or yesterday, but hath been from all times;
And none hath told us whence it came or how!”—SOPHOCLES.

“Belief in the supernatural is a fact natural, primitive,
universal, and constant in the life and history of the human
race. Unbelief in the supernatural begets materialism;
materialism, sensuality; sensuality, social convulsions, amid
whose storms man again learns to believe and pray.”—GUIZOT.

“If any one think these things incredible, let him keep his
opinions to himself, and not contradict those who, by such
events, are incited to the study of virtue.”—JOSEPHUS.

From the Platonic and Pythagorean views of matter and force, we will now turn to the kabalistic philosophy of the origin of man, and compare it with the theory of natural selection enunciated by Darwin and Wallace. It may be that we shall find as much reason to credit the ancients with originality in this direction as in that which we have been considering. To our mind, no stronger proof of the theory of cyclical progression need be required than the comparative enlightenment of former ages and that of the Patristic Church, as regards the form of the earth, and the movements of the planetary system. Even were other evidence wanting, the ignorance of Augustine and Lactantius, misleading the whole of Christendom upon these questions until the period of Galileo, would mark the eclipses through which human knowledge passes from age to age.

The “coats of skin,” mentioned in the third chapter of _Genesis_ as given to Adam and Eve, are explained by certain ancient philosophers to mean the fleshy bodies with which, in the progress of the cycles, the progenitors of the race became clothed. They maintained that the godlike physical form became grosser and grosser, until the bottom of what may be termed the last spiritual cycle was reached, and mankind entered upon the ascending arc of the first human cycle. Then began an uninterrupted series of cycles or _yogas_; the precise number of years of which each of them consisted remaining an inviolable mystery within the precincts of the sanctuaries and disclosed only to the initiates. As soon as humanity entered upon a new one, the stone age, with which the preceding cycle had closed, began to gradually merge into the following and next higher age. With each successive age, or {294} epoch, men grew more refined, until the acme of perfection possible in that particular cycle had been reached. Then the receding wave of time carried back with it the vestiges of human, social, and intellectual progress. Cycle succeeded cycle, by imperceptible transitions; highly-civilized flourishing nations, waxed in power, attained the climax of development, waned, and became extinct; and mankind, when the end of the lower cyclic arc was reached, was replunged into barbarism as at the start. Kingdoms have crumbled and nation succeeded nation from the beginning until our day, the races alternately mounting to the highest and descending to the lowest points of development. Draper observes that there is no reason to suppose that any one cycle applied to the whole human race. On the contrary, while man in one portion of the planet was in a condition of retrogression, in another he might be progressing in enlightenment and civilization.

How analogous this theory is to the law of planetary motion, which causes the individual orbs to rotate on their axes; the several systems to move around their respective suns; and the whole stellar host to follow a common path around a common centre! Life and death, light and darkness, day and night on the planet, as it turns about its axis and traverses the zodiacal circle representing the lesser and the greater cycles.[484] Remember the Hermetic axiom:—“As above, so below; as in heaven, so on earth.”

Mr. Alfred R. Wallace argues with sound logic, that the development of man has been more marked in his mental organization than in his external form. Man, he conceives to differ from the animal, by being able to undergo great changes of conditions and of his entire environment, without very marked alterations in bodily form and structure. The changes of climate he meets with a corresponding alteration in his clothing, shelter, weapons, and implements of husbandry. His body may become less hairy, more erect, and of a different color and proportions; “the head and face is immediately connected with the organ of the mind, and as being the medium, expressing the most refined motions of his nature,” alone change with the development of his intellect. There was a time when “he had not yet acquired that wonderfully-developed brain, the organ of the mind, which now, even in his lowest examples, raises him far above the highest brutes, at a period when he had the form, but hardly the nature of man, when he neither possessed human speech nor sympathetic and moral feelings.” Further, Mr. Wallace says that “Man may have been—indeed, {295} I believe _must have been_, once a homogeneous race ... in man, the hairy covering of the body has almost entirely disappeared.“ Of the cave men of Les Eyzies, Mr. Wallace remarks further ” ... the great breadth of the face, the enormous development of the ascending ramus of the lower jaw ... indicate enormous muscular power and the habits of a savage and brutal race.”

Such are the glimpses which anthropology affords us of men, either arrived at the bottom of a cycle or starting in a new one. Let us see how far they are corroborated by clairvoyant psychometry. Professor Denton submitted a fragment of fossilized bone to his wife’s examination, without giving Mrs. Denton any hint as to what the article was. It immediately called up to her pictures of people and scenes which he thinks belonged to the stone age. She saw men closely resembling monkeys, with a body very hairy, and “as if the natural hair answered the purpose of clothing.” “I question whether he can stand perfectly upright; his hip-joints appear to be so formed, he cannot,” she added. “Occasionally I see part of the body of one of those beings that looks comparatively smooth. I can see the skin, which is lighter colored ... I do not know whether he belongs to the same period.... At a distance the face seems flat; the lower part of it is heavy; they have what I suppose would be called prognathous jaws. The frontal region of the head is low, and the lower portion of it is very prominent, forming a round ridge across the forehead, immediately above the eyebrows.... Now I see a face that looks like that of a human being, though there is a monkey-like appearance about it. All these seem of that kind, having long arms and hairy bodies.”[485]

Whether or not the men of science are willing to concede the correctness of the Hermetic theory of the physical evolution of man from higher and more spiritual natures, they themselves show us how the race has progressed from the lowest observed point to its present development. And, as all nature seems to be made up of analogies, is it unreasonable to affirm that the same progressive development of individual forms has prevailed among the inhabitants of the _unseen_ universe? If such marvellous effects have been caused by evolution upon our little insignificant planet, producing reasoning and intuitive men from some higher type of the ape family, why suppose that the boundless realms of space are inhabited only by disembodied _angelic_ forms? Why not give place in that vast domain to the spiritual duplicates of these hairy, long-armed and half-reasoning ancestors, their predecessors, and all their successors, down to our time? Of course, the spiritual parts of such primeval members of the human family would {296} be as uncouth and undeveloped as were their physical bodies. While they made no attempt to calculate the duration of the “grand cycle,” the Hermetic philosophers yet maintained that, according to the cyclic law, the living human race must inevitably and collectively return one day to that point of departure, where man was first clothed with “coats of skin;” or, to express it more clearly, the human race must, in accordance with the law of evolution, be finally _physically_ spiritualized. Unless Messrs. Darwin and Huxley are prepared to prove that the man of our century has attained, as a physical and moral animal, the acme of perfection, and evolution, having reached its apex, must stop all further progress with the modern genus, _Homo_, we do not see how they can possibly confute such a logical deduction.

In his lecture on _The Action of Natural Selection on Man_, Mr. Alfred R. Wallace concludes his demonstrations as to the development of human races under that law of selection by saying that, if his conclusions are just, “it must inevitably follow that the higher—the more intellectual and moral—must displace the lower and more degraded races; and the power of ‘natural selection,’ still acting on his mental organization, must ever lead to the more perfect adaptation of man’s higher faculties to the condition of surrounding nature, and to the exigencies of the social state. While his external form will probably ever remain unchanged, except in the development of that perfect beauty ... refined and ennobled by the highest intellectual faculties and sympathetic emotions, his mental constitution may continue to advance and improve, till the world is again inhabited by a single, nearly homogeneous race, no individual of which will be inferior _to the noblest specimens of existing humanity_.” Sober, scientific methods and cautiousness in hypothetical possibilities have evidently their share in this expression of the opinions of the great anthropologist. Still, what he says above clashes in no way with our kabalistic assertions. Allow to ever-progressing nature, to the great law of the “survival of the fittest,” one step beyond Mr. Wallace’s deductions, and we have in future the possibility—nay, the assurance of a race, which, like the Vril-ya of Bulwer-Lytton’s _Coming Race_, will be but one remove from the primitive “Sons of God.”

It will be observed that this philosophy of cycles, which was allegorized by the Egyptian Hierophants in the “circle of necessity,” explains at the same time the allegory of the “Fall of man.” According to the Arabian descriptions, each of the seven chambers of the Pyramids—those grandest of all cosmic symbols—was known by the name of a planet. The peculiar architecture of the Pyramids shows in itself the drift of the metaphysical thought of their builders. The apex is lost in the clear blue sky of the land of the Pharaohs, and typifies {297} the primordial point lost in the unseen universe from whence started the first race of the spiritual prototypes of man. Each mummy, from the moment that it was embalmed, lost its physical individuality in one sense; it symbolized the human race. Placed in such a way as was best calculated to aid the exit of the “soul,” the latter had to pass through the seven planetary chambers before it made its exit through the symbolical apex. Each chamber typified, at the same time, one of the seven spheres, and one of the seven higher types of physico-spiritual humanity alleged to be above our own. Every 3,000 years, the soul, representative of its race, had to return to its primal point of departure before it underwent another evolution into a more perfected spiritual and physical transformation. We must go deep indeed into the abstruse metaphysics of Oriental mysticism before we can realize fully the infinitude of the subjects that were embraced at one sweep by the majestic thought of its exponents.

Starting as a pure and perfect spiritual being, the Adam of the second chapter of _Genesis_, not satisfied with the position allotted to him by the Demiurgus (who is the eldest first-begotten, the Adam-Kadmon), Adam the second, the “man of dust,” strives in his pride to become Creator in his turn. Evolved out of the androgynous Kadmon, this Adam is himself an androgyn; for, according to the oldest beliefs presented allegorically in Plato’s _Timæus_, the prototypes of our races were all enclosed in the microcosmic tree which grew and developed within and under the great mundane or macrocosmic tree. Divine spirit being considered a unity, however numerous the rays of the great spiritual sun, man has still had his origin like all other forms, whether organic or otherwise, in this one Fount of Eternal Light. Were we even to reject the hypothesis of an androgynous man, in connection with physical evolution, the significance of the allegory in its spiritual sense, would remain unimpaired. So long as the first god-man, symbolizing the two first principles of creation, the dual male and female element, had no thought of good and evil he could not hypostasize “woman,” for she was in him as he was in her. It was only when, as a result of the evil hints of the serpent, _matter_, the latter condensed itself and cooled on the spiritual man in its contact with the elements, that the fruits of the man-tree—who is himself that tree of knowledge—appeared to his view. From this moment the androgynal union ceased, man evolved out of himself the woman as a separate entity. They have broken the thread between pure spirit and pure matter. Henceforth they will create no more _spiritually_, and by the sole power of their will; man has become a physical creator, and the kingdom of spirit can be won only by a long imprisonment in matter. The meaning of Gogard, the Hellenic tree of life, the sacred {298} oak among whose luxuriant branches a serpent dwells, and _cannot_ be dislodged,[486] thus becomes apparent. Creeping out from the primordial _ilus_, the mundane snake grows more material and waxes in strength and power with every new evolution.

The Adam Primus, or Kadmon, the Logos of the Jewish mystics, is the same as the Grecian Prometheus, who seeks to rival with the divine wisdom; he is also the Pimander of Hermes, or the POWER OF THE THOUGHT DIVINE, in its most spiritual aspect, for he was less hypostasized by the Egyptians than the two former. These all create men, but fail in their final object. Desiring to endow man with an immortal spirit, in order that by linking the trinity in one, he might gradually return to his primal spiritual state without losing his individuality, Prometheus fails in his attempt to steal the _divine_ fire, and is sentenced to expiate his crime on Mount Kazbeck. Prometheus is also the _Logos_ of the ancient Greeks, as well as Herakles. In the _Codex Nazaræus_[487] we see Bahak-Zivo deserting the heaven of his father, confessing that though he is the father of the genii, he is unable to “construct creatures,” for he is equally unacquainted with Orcus as with “the consuming fire which is wanting in light.” And Fetahil, one of the “powers,” sits in the “mud” (matter) and wonders why the living fire is so changed.

All of these _Logoi_ strove to endow man with the immortal spirit, failed, and nearly all are represented as being punished for the attempt by severe sentences. Those of the early Christian Fathers who like Origen and Clemens Alexandrinus, were well versed in Pagan symbology, having begun their careers as philosophers, felt very much embarrassed. They could not deny the anticipation of their doctrines in the oldest myths. The latest _Logos_, according to their teachings, had also appeared in order to show mankind the way to immortality; and in his desire to endow the world with eternal life through the Pentecostal fire, had lost his life agreeably to the traditional programme. Thus was originated the very awkward explanation of which our modern clergy freely avail themselves, that all these mythic types show the prophetic spirit which, through the Lord’s mercy, was afforded even to the heathen idolaters! The Pagans, they assert, had presented in their imagery the great drama of Calvary—hence the resemblance. On the other hand, the philosophers maintained, with unassailable logic, that the pious fathers had simply helped themselves to a ready-made groundwork, either finding it easier than to exert their own imagination, or because of the greater number of ignorant proselytes who were attracted {299} to the new doctrine by such an extraordinary resemblance with their mythologies, at least as far as the outward form of the most fundamental doctrines goes.

The allegory of the Fall of man and the fire of Prometheus is also another version of the myth of the rebellion of the proud Lucifer, hurled down to the bottomless pit—Orcus. In the religion of the Brahmans, Moisasure, the Hindu Lucifer, becomes envious of the Creator’s resplendent light, and at the head of a legion of inferior spirits rebels against Brahma, and declares war against him. Like Hercules, the faithful Titan, who helps Jupiter and restores to him his throne, Siva, the third person of the Hindu trinity, hurls them all from the celestial abode in Honderah, the region of eternal darkness. But here the fallen angels are made to repent of their evil deed, and in the Hindu doctrine they are all afforded the opportunity to progress. In the Greek fiction, Hercules, the Sun-god, descends to Hades to deliver the victims from their tortures; and the Christian Church also makes her incarnate god descend to the dreary Plutonic regions and overcome the rebellious ex-archangel. In their turn the kabalists explain the allegory in a semi-scientific way. Adam the second, or the first-created race which Plato calls gods, and the Bible the Elohim, was not triple in his nature like the earthly man: _i.e._, he was not composed of soul, spirit, and body, but was a compound of sublimated astral elements into which the “Father” had breathed an immortal, divine spirit. The latter, by reason of its godlike essence, was ever struggling to liberate itself from the bonds of even that flimsy prison; hence the “sons of God,” in their imprudent efforts, were the first to trace a future model for the cyclic law. But, man must not be “like one of us,” says the Creative Deity, one of the Elohim “intrusted with the fabrication of the lower animal.”[488] And thus it was, when the men of the first race had reached the summit of the first cycle, they lost their balance, and their second envelope, the grosser clothing (astral body), dragged them down the opposite arc.

This kabalistic version of the sons of God (or of light) is given in the _Codex Nazaræus_. Bahak-Zivo, the “father of genii, is ordered to ‘construct creatures.’” But, as he is “ignorant of Orcus,” he fails to do so and calls in Fetahil a still purer spirit to his aid, who fails still worse.

Then steps on the stage of creation the “spirit”[489] (which properly ought to be translated “soul,” for it is the _anima mundi_, and which {300} with the Nazarenes and the Gnostics was _feminine_), and perceiving that for Fetahil,[490] the _newest man_ (the latest), the splendor was “changed,” and that for splendor existed “decrease and damage,” awakes Karabtanos,[491] “who was frantic and _without sense and judgment_,” and says to him: “Arise; see, the splendor (light) of the _newest_ man (Fetahil) has failed (to produce or create men), the decrease of this splendor is visible. Rise up, come with thy MOTHER (the _spiritus_) and free thee from limits by which thou art held, and those more ample than the whole world.” After which follows the union of the frantic and blind matter, guided by the insinuations of the spirit (not the _Divine_ breath, but the _Astral_ spirit, which by its double essence is already tainted with matter) and the offer of the MOTHER being accepted the Spiritus conceives “Seven Figures,” which Irenæus is disposed to take for the seven _stellars_ (planets) but which represent the seven _capital sins_, the progeny of an astral soul separated from its divine source (spirit) and _matter_, the blind demon of concupiscence. Seeing this, Fetahil extends his hand toward the abyss of matter, and says: ‘Let the earth exist, just as the abode of the powers has existed.’” Dipping his hand in the chaos, which he condenses, he creates our planet.[492]

Then the _Codex_ proceeds to tell how Bahak-Zivo was separated from the Spiritus, and the genii, or angels, from the rebels.[493] Then Mano[494] (the greatest), who dwells with the _greatest_ FERHO, calls Kebar-Zivo (known also by the name of Nebat-Iavar bar Iufin-Ifafin), Helm and _Vine_ of the food of life,[495] he being the _third life_, and, commiserating the rebellious and foolish genii, on account of the magnitude of their ambition, says: “Lord of the genii[496] (Æons), see what the genii, the rebellious angels do, and about what they are consulting.[497] They say, “Let us call forth the world, and let us call the ‘powers’ into existence. The genii are the _Principes_, the ‘sons of Light,’ but thou art the ‘_Messenger of Life_.’”[498]

And in order to counteract the influence of the seven “badly disposed” {301} principles, the progeny of _Spiritus_, CABAR ZIO, the mighty Lord of Splendor, procreates _seven other lives_ (the cardinal virtues) who shine in their own form and light “from on high”[499] and thus reëstablishes the balance between good and evil, light and darkness.

But this creation of beings, without the requisite influx of divine pure breath in them, which was known among the kabalists as the “Living Fire,” produced but creatures of matter and astral light.[500] Thus were generated the animals which preceded man on this earth. The spiritual beings, the “sons of light,” those who remained faithful to the great _Ferho_ (the First Cause of all), constitute the celestial or angelic hierarchy, the Adonim, and the legions of the _never-embodied_ spiritual men. The followers of the rebellious and foolish genii, and the descendants of the “witless” seven spirits begotten by “Karabtanos” and the “spiritus,” became, in course of time, the “men of our planet,”[501] after having previously passed through every “creation” of every one of the elements. From this stage of life they have been traced by Darwin, who shows us how our _highest_ forms have been evolved out of the _lowest_. Anthropology dares not follow the kabalist in his metaphysical flights _beyond_ this planet, and it is doubtful if its teachers have the courage to search for the _missing link_ in the old kabalistic manuscripts.

Thus was set in motion the _first cycle_, which in its rotations _downward_, brought an infinitesimal part of the created _lives_ to our planet of _mud_. Arrived at the lowest point of the arc of the cycle which directly preceded life on this earth, the pure divine spark still lingering in the Adam made an effort to separate itself from the astral spirit, for “man was falling gradually into generation,” and the fleshy coat was becoming with every action more and more dense.

And now comes a mystery, a _Sod_;[502] a secret which Rabbi {302} Simeon[503] imparted but to very few initiates. It was enacted once every seven years during the Mysteries of Samothrace, and the records of it are found self-printed on the leaves of the Thibetan sacred tree, the mysterious KOUNBOUM, in the Lamasery of the holy adepts.[504]

In the shoreless ocean of space radiates the central, spiritual, and _Invisible_ sun. The universe is his body, spirit and soul; and after this ideal model are framed ALL THINGS. These three emanations are the three lives, the three degrees of the gnostic _Pleroma_, the three “Kabalistic Faces,” for the ANCIENT of the ancient, the holy of the aged, the great En-Soph, “has a form and then he has no form.” The invisible “assumed a form when he called the universe into existence,”[505] says the _Sohar_, the Book of splendor. The _first_ light is His soul, the Infinite, Boundless, and Immortal breath; under the efflux of which the universe heaves its mighty bosom, infusing _Intelligent_ life throughout creation. The _second_ emanation condenses cometary matter and produces forms within the cosmic circle; sets the countless worlds floating in the electric space, and infuses the _unintelligent_, blind life-principle into every form. The third, produces the whole universe of physical matter; and as it keeps gradually receding from the Central Divine Light its brightness wanes and it becomes DARKNESS and the BAD—pure matter, the “gross purgations of the celestial fire” of the Hermetists.

When the Central Invisible (the Lord Ferho) saw the efforts of the divine _Scintilla_, unwilling to be dragged lower down into the degradation of matter, to liberate itself, he permitted it to shoot out from itself a _monad_, over which, attached to it as by the finest thread, the Divine Scintilla (the soul) had to watch during its ceaseless peregrinations from one form to another. Thus the monad was shot down into the first form of matter and became encased in stone; then, in course of time, through the combined efforts of _living fire_ and _living water_, both of which shone their _reflection_ upon the stone, the monad crept out of its prison to sunlight as a lichen. From change to change it went higher and higher; the monad, with every new transformation borrowing more of the radiance of its parent, _Scintilla_, which approached it nearer at every transmigration. For “the First Cause, had willed it to proceed in this order;” and destined it to creep on higher until its physical form became once more the Adam _of dust_, shaped in the image of the Adam Kadmon. Before undergoing its last earthly transformation, the external covering of the monad, from the moment of its conception as an embryo, passes in turn, once more, through the phases of the several kingdoms. In its {303} fluidic prison it assumes a vague resemblance at various periods of the gestation to plant, reptile, bird, and animal, until it becomes a human embryo.[506] 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_.[507] It loses all recollection of the past, 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 liberated soul—Monad, exultingly rejoins the mother and father spirit, the radiant Augoeides, and the two, merged into one, forever form, with a glory proportioned to the spiritual purity of the past earth-life, the Adam who has completed the circle of necessity, and is freed from the last vestige of his physical encasement. Henceforth, growing more and more radiant at each step of his upward progress, he mounts the shining path that ends at the point from which he started around the GRAND CYCLE.

The whole Darwinian theory of natural selection is included in the first six chapters of the book of _Genesis_. The “Man” of chapter i. is radically different 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 “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 sex, or rather had both sexes united in themselves, like their Creator; and the ancients understood this so well that they represented many of their deities as of dual sex. The Biblical student must either accept this interpretation, or make the passages in 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 it is 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.

As we write, there appears in an American paper, _The Kansas City Times_, an account of important discoveries of the remains of a prehistorical _race of giants_, which corroborates the statements of the kabalists and the Bible allegories at the same time. It is worth preserving:

“In his researches among the forests of Western Missouri, Judge E. {304} P. West has discovered a number of conical-shaped mounds, similar in construction to those found in Ohio and Kentucky. These mounds are found upon the high bluffs overlooking the Missouri River, the largest and more prominent being found in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Until about three weeks ago it was not suspected that the mound builders had made this region their home in the prehistoric days; but now it is discovered that this strange and extinct race once occupied this land, and have left an extensive graveyard in a number of high mounds upon the Clay County bluffs.

“As yet, only one of these mounds has been opened. Judge West discovered a skeleton about two weeks ago, and made a report to other members of the society. They accompanied him to the mound, and not far from the surface excavated and took out the remains of two skeletons. The bones are very large—so large, in fact, when compared with an ordinary skeleton of modern date, they appear to have formed part of a giant. The head bones, such as have not rotted away, are monstrous in size. The lower jaw of one skeleton is in a state of preservation, and is double the size of the jaw of a civilized person. The teeth in this jaw-bone are large, and appear to have been ground down and worn away by contact with roots and carnivorous food. The jaw-bone indicates immense muscular strength. The thigh-bone, when compared with that of an ordinary modern skeleton, looks like that of a horse. The length, thickness, and muscular development are remarkable. But the most peculiar part about the skeleton is the frontal bone. It is very low, and differs radically from any ever seen in this section before. It forms one thick ridge of bone about one inch wide, extending across the eyes. It is a narrow but rather heavy ridge of bone which, instead of extending upward, as it does now in these days of civilization, receded back from the eyebrows, forming a flat head, and thus indicates a very low order of mankind. It is the opinion of the scientific gentlemen who are making these discoveries that these bones are the remains of a prehistoric race of men. They do not resemble the present existing race of Indians, nor are the mounds constructed upon any pattern or model known to have been in use by any race of men now in existence in America. The bodies are discovered in a sitting posture in the mounds, and among the bones are found stone weapons, such as flint knives, flint scrapers, and all of them different in shape to the arrow-heads, war-hatchets, and other stone tools and weapons known to have been in use by the aboriginal Indians of this land when discovered by the whites. The gentlemen who have these curious bones in charge have deposited them with Dr. Foe, on Main street. It is their intention to make further and closer researches in the mounds on the bluffs {305} opposite this city. They will make a report of their labors at the next meeting of the Academy of Science, by which time they expect to be able to make some definite report as to their opinions. It is pretty definitely settled, however, that the skeletons are those of a race of men not now in existence.”

The author of a recent and very elaborate work[508] finds some cause for merriment over the union of the sons of God with the “daughters of men,” who _were fair_, as alluded to in _Genesis_, and described at great length in that wonderful legend, the _Book of Enoch_. More is the pity, that our most learned and liberal men do not employ their close and merciless logic to repair its one-sidedness by seeking the true spirit which dictated these allegories of old. This spirit was certainly more _scientific_ than skeptics are yet prepared to admit. But with every year some new discovery may corroborate their assertions, until the whole of antiquity is vindicated.

One thing, at least, has been shown in the Hebrew text, viz.: that there was one race of purely physical creatures, another purely spiritual. The evolution and “transformation of species” required to fill the gap between the two has been left to abler anthropologists. We can only repeat the philosophy of men of old, which says that the union of these two races produced a third—the Adamite race. Sharing the natures of both its parents, it is equally adapted to an existence in the material and spiritual worlds. Allied to the physical half of man’s nature is reason, which enables him to maintain his supremacy over the lower animals, and to subjugate nature to his uses. Allied to his spiritual part is his _conscience_, which will serve as his unerring guide through the besetments of the senses; for conscience is that instantaneous perception between right and wrong, which can only be exercised by the spirit, which, being a portion of the Divine Wisdom and Purity, is absolutely pure and wise. Its promptings are independent of reason, and it can only manifest itself clearly, when unhampered by the baser attractions of our dual nature.

Reason being a faculty of our physical brain, one which is justly defined as that of deducing inferences from premises, and being wholly dependent on the evidence of other senses, cannot be a quality pertaining directly to our divine spirit. The latter _knows_—hence, all reasoning which implies discussion and argument would be useless. So an entity, which, if it must be considered as a direct emanation from the eternal Spirit of wisdom, has to be viewed as possessed of {306} the same attributes as the essence or the whole of which it is a part. Therefore, it is with a certain degree of logic that the ancient theurgists maintained that the _rational_ part of man’s soul (spirit) never entered wholly into the man’s body, but only overshadowed him more or less through the _irrational_ or astral soul, which serves as an intermediatory agent, or a medium between spirit and body. The man who has conquered matter sufficiently to relieve the direct light from his shining _Augoeides_, feels truth intuitionally; he could not err in his judgment, notwithstanding all the sophisms suggested by cold reason, for he is ILLUMINATED. Hence, prophecy, vaticination, and the so-called Divine inspiration are simply the effects of this illumination from above by our own immortal spirit.

Swedenborg, following the mystical doctrines of the Hermetic philosophers, devoted a number of volumes to the elucidation of the “internal sense” of _Genesis_. Swedenborg was undoubtedly a “natural-born magician,” a seer; he was _not_ an _adept_. Thus, however closely he may have followed the apparent method of interpretation used by the alchemists and mystic writers, he partially failed; the more so, that the model chosen by him in this method was one who, albeit a great alchemist, was no more of an adept than the Swedish seer himself, in the fullest sense of the word. Eugenius Philalethes had never attained “the highest pyrotechny,” to use the diction of the mystic philosophers. But, although both have missed the whole truth in its details, Swedenborg has virtually given the same interpretation of the first chapter of _Genesis_ as the Hermetic philosophers. The seer, as well as the initiates, notwithstanding their veiled phraseology, clearly show that the first chapters of _Genesis_ relate to the _regeneration_, or a new birth of man, not to the creation of our universe and its crown work—MAN. The fact that the terms of the alchemists, such as _salt_, _sulphur_, and _mercury_ are transformed by Swedenborg into _ens_, _cause_, and _effect_,[509] does not affect the underlying idea of solving the problems of the Mosaic books by the only possible method—that used by the Hermetists—that of correspondences.

His doctrine of correspondence, or Hermetic symbolism, is that of Pythagoras and of the kabalists—“as above, so below.” It is also that of the Buddhist philosophers, who, in their still more abstract metaphysics, inverting the usual mode of definition given by our _erudite_ scholars, call the invisible types the only reality, and everything else the effects of the causes, or visible prototypes—_illusions_. However contradictory their various elucidations of the _Pentateuch_ may appear _on their surface_, every one of them tends to show that the sacred literature of every country, the _Bible_ as much as the _Vedas_ or the Buddhist _Scriptures_, can {307} only be understood and thoroughly sifted by the light of Hermetic philosophy. The great sages of antiquity, those of the mediæval ages, and the mystical writers of our more modern times also, were all _Hermetists_. Whether the light of truth had illuminated them through their faculty of intuition, or as a consequence of study and regular initiation, virtually, they had accepted the method and followed the path traced to them by such men as Moses, Gautama-Buddha, and Jesus. The truth, symbolized by some alchemists as _dew from heaven_, had descended into their hearts, and they had all gathered it upon the _tops of mountains_, after having spread CLEAN _linen cloths_ to receive it; and thus, in one sense, they had secured, each for himself, and in his own way, the _universal solvent_. How much they were allowed to share it with the public is another question. That veil, which is alleged to have covered the face of Moses, when, after descending from Sinai, he taught his people the Word of God, cannot be withdrawn at the will of the teacher only. It depends on the listeners, whether they will also remove the veil which is “upon their hearts.” Paul says it plainly; and his words addressed to the Corinthians can be applied to every man or woman, and of any age in the history of the world. If “their minds are blinded” by the shining skin of divine truth, whether the Hermetic veil be withdrawn or not from the face of the teacher, it cannot be taken away from their heart unless “it _shall turn to the Lord_.” But the latter appellation must not be applied to either of the three anthropomorphized personages of the Trinity, but to the “Lord,” as understood by Swedenborg and the Hermetic philosophers—the Lord, who is Life and MAN.

The everlasting conflict between the world-religions—Christianity, Judaism, Brahmanism, Paganism, Buddhism, proceeds from this one source: Truth is known but to the few; the rest, unwilling to withdraw the veil from their own hearts, imagine it blinding the eyes of their neighbor. The god of every exoteric religion, including Christianity, notwithstanding its pretensions to mystery, is an idol, a fiction, and cannot be anything else. Moses, _closely-veiled_, speaks to the stiff-necked multitudes of Jehovah, the cruel, anthropomorphic deity, as of the highest God, burying deep in the bottom of his heart that truth which cannot be “either spoken of or revealed.” Kapila cuts with the sharp sword of his sarcasms the Brahman-Yoggins, who in their mystical visions pretend to see the HIGHEST _one_. Gautama-Buddha conceals, under an impenetrable cloak of metaphysical subtilties, the verity, and is regarded by posterity as _an atheist_. Pythagoras, with his allegorical mysticism and metempsychosis, is held for a clever impostor, and is succeeded in the same estimation by other philosophers, like Apollonius and Plotinus, who are generally spoken of as visionaries, if not charlatans. Plato, whose {308} writings were never read by the majority of our _great_ scholars but superficially, is accused by many of his translators of absurdities and puerilities, and even of being ignorant of his own language;[510] most likely for saying, in reference to the Supreme, that “a matter of that kind cannot be expressed by words, like other things to be learned;”[511] and making Protagoras lay too much stress on the use of “veils.” We could fill a whole volume with names of misunderstood sages, whose writings—only because our materialistic critics feel unable to lift the “veil,” which shrouds them—pass off in a current way for mystical absurdities. The most important feature of this seemingly imcomprehensible mystery lies perhaps in the inveterate habit of the majority of readers to judge a work by its words and insufficiently-expressed ideas, leaving the spirit of it out of the question. Philosophers of quite different schools may be often found to use a multitude of different expressions, some dark and metaphorical—all figurative, and yet treating of the same subject. Like the thousand divergent rays of a globe of fire, every ray leads, nevertheless, to the central point, so every mystic philosopher, whether he be a devotedly pious enthusiast like Henry More; an irascible alchemist, using a Billingsgate phraseology—like his adversary, Eugenius Philalethes; or an _atheist_ (?) like Spinoza, all had one and the same object in view—MAN. It is Spinoza, however, who furnishes perhaps the truest key to a portion of this unwritten secret. While Moses forbids “graven images” of Him whose name is not to be taken in vain, Spinoza goes farther. He clearly infers that God must not be so much as _described_. Human language is totally unfit to give an idea of this “Being” who is altogether unique. Whether it is Spinoza or the Christian theology that is more right in their premises and conclusion, we leave the reader to judge for himself. Every attempt to the contrary leads a nation to anthropomorphize the deity in whom it believes, and the result is that given by Swedenborg. Instead of stating that God made man after his own image, we ought in truth to say that “man _imagines_ God after his image,”[512] forgetting that he has set up his own reflection for worship.

Where, then, lies the true, real secret so much talked about by the Hermetists? That there was and there is a secret, no candid student of esoteric literature will ever doubt. Men of genius—as many of the Hermetic philosophers undeniably were—would not have made fools of themselves by trying to fool others for several thousand consecutive years. That this great secret, commonly termed “the philosopher’s stone,” had a spiritual as well as a physical meaning attached to it, was suspected in all ages. The author of _Remarks on Alchemy and the Alchemists_ very truly observes that the subject of the {309} Hermetic art is MAN, and the object of the art is the perfection of man.[513] But we cannot agree with him that only those whom he terms “money-loving sots,” ever attempted to carry a purely _moral_ design (of the alchemists) into the field of physical science. The fact alone that man, in their eyes, is a trinity, which they divide into _Sol_, water of _mercury_, and _sulphur_, which is the _secret fire_, or, to speak plain, into _body_, _soul_, and _spirit_, shows that there is a physical side to the question. Man is the philosopher’s _stone_ spiritually—“_a triune or trinity in unity_,” as Philalethes expresses it. But he is also that stone physically. The latter is but the effect of the cause, and the cause is the universal solvent of everything—divine spirit. Man is a correlation of chemical physical forces, as well as a correlation of spiritual powers. The latter react on the physical powers of man in proportion to the development of the earthly man. “The work is carried to perfection according to the virtue of a body, soul, and spirit,” says an alchemist; “for the body would never be penetrable were it not for the _spirit_, nor would the spirit be permanent in its supra-perfect _tincture_, were it not for the body; nor could these two act one upon another without the soul, _for the spirit is an invisible thing_, nor doth it ever appear without another GARMENT, which garment is the SOUL.”[514]

The “philosophers by fire” asserted, through their chief, Robert Fludd, that sympathy is the offspring of light, and “antipathy hath its beginning from darkness.” Moreover, they taught, with other kabalists, that “contrarieties in nature doth proceed from one eternal essence, or from the root of all things.” Thus, the first cause is the parent-source of good as well as of evil. The creator—who is _not_ the Highest God—is the father of matter, which is _bad_, as well as of spirit, which, emanating from the highest, invisible cause, passes through him like through a vehicle, and pervades the whole universe. “It is most certain,” remarks Robertus di Fluctibus (Robert Fludd), “that, as there are an infinity of _visible_ creatures, so there is an endless variety of invisible ones, of divers natures, in the universal machine. Through the mysterious name of God, which Moses was so desirous of him (Jehova) to hear and know, when he received from him this answer, _Jehova is my everlasting name_. As for the other name, it is so pure and simple that it _cannot be articulated, or compounded, or truly expressed by man’s voice_ ... all the other names are wholly comprehended within it, for it contains the property as well of _Nolunty_ as _volunty_, of privation as position, of death as life, of cursing as blessing, of evil as good (though nothing ideally is {310} bad in him), of hatred and discord, and consequently of sympathy and antipathy.”[515]

Lowest in the scale of being are those invisible creatures called by the kabalists the “elementary.” There are three distinct classes of these. The highest, in intelligence and cunning, are the so-called terrestrial spirits, of which we will speak more categorically in other parts of this work. Suffice to say, for the present, that they are the _larvæ_, or shadows of those who have lived on earth, have refused all spiritual light, remained and died deeply immersed in the mire of matter, and from whose sinful souls the immortal spirit has gradually separated. The second class is composed of the invisible antitypes of the men _to be_ born. No form can come into objective existence—from the highest to the lowest—before the abstract ideal of this form—or, as Aristotle would call it, the _privation_ of this form—is called forth. Before an artist paints a picture every feature of it exists already in his imagination; to have enabled us to discern a watch, this particular watch must have existed in its abstract form in the watchmaker’s mind. So with future men.

According to Aristotle’s doctrine, there are three principles of natural bodies: privation, matter, and form. These principles may be applied in this particular case. The privation of the child which is to be we will locate in the invisible mind of the great Architect of the Universe—privation not being considered in the Aristotelic philosophy as a principle in the composition of bodies, but as an external property in their production; for the production is a change by which the matter passes from the shape it has not to that which it assumes. Though the privation of the unborn child’s form, as well as of the future form of the unmade watch, is that which is neither substance nor extension nor quality as yet, nor any kind of existence, it is still something which _is_, though its outlines, in order to be, must acquire an objective form—the abstract must become concrete, in short. Thus, as soon as this privation of matter is transmitted by energy to universal ether, it becomes a material form, however sublimated. If modern science teaches that _human_ thought “affects the matter of another universe simultaneously with this,” how can he who believes in an Intelligent First Cause, deny that the divine thought is equally transmitted, by the same law of energy, to our common mediator, the universal ether—the world-soul? And, if so, then it must follow that once there the divine thought manifests itself objectively, energy faithfully reproducing the outlines of that whose “privation” was first born in the divine mind. Only it must not be understood that this _thought_ creates matter. No; it creates but the design for the future {311} form; the matter which serves to make this design having always been in existence, and having been prepared to form a human body, through a series of progressive transformations, as the result of evolution. Forms pass; ideas that created them and the material which gave them objectiveness, remain. These models, as yet devoid of immortal spirits, are “elementals,“properly speaking, _psychic embryos_—which, when their time arrives, die out of the invisible world, and are born into this visible one as human infants, receiving in _transitu_ that divine breath called spirit which completes the perfect man. This class cannot communicate _objectively_ with 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 being, and, by comparison with the others, may properly be called nature-spirits, or cosmic agents of nature, each being confined to its own element and never transgressing the bounds of others. These are what Tertullian called the “princes of the powers of the air.”

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 which they belong and also of the ether. They are a combination of sublimated matter and a rudimental mind. Some 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 inner, or clairvoyant vision. They not only exist and can all live in ether, but can handle and direct it for the production of physical effects, as readily as we can compress air or water for the same purpose by pneumatic and hydraulic apparatus; in which occupation they are readily helped by the “human elementary.” More than this; they can so condense it as to make to themselves tangible bodies, which by their Protean powers they can cause to assume such likeness as they choose, by taking as their models the portraits they find stamped in the memory of the persons present. It is not necessary that the sitter should be thinking at the moment of the one represented. His image may have faded many years before. The mind receives indelible impression even from chance acquaintance or persons encountered but once. As a few seconds exposure of the sensitized photograph plate is all that is requisite to preserve indefinitely the image of the sitter, so is it with the mind.

According to the doctrine of Proclus, the uppermost regions from the zenith of the universe to the moon belonged to the gods or planetary {312} spirits, according to their hierarchies and classes. The highest among them were the twelve _ŭper-ouranioi_, or supercelestial gods, having whole legions of subordinate demons at their command. They are followed 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 their power and change it from one to another at will. These are evidently the personified forces of nature in their mutual correlation, the latter being represented by the third class or the “elementals” we have just described.