Chapter XLIII: concerns the Judgments; XLIV., the Supernal Man; and (3)

The extraordinary amount of information collated by that able
Egyptologist shows that he has thoroughly mastered the secret of
the production of the _New Testament_. Mr. Massey knows the
difference between the spiritual, divine and purely metaphysical
Christos, and the made-up “lay figure” of the carnalized Jesus. He
knows also that the Christian canon, especially the _Gospels_,
_Acts_ and _Epistles_, are made up of fragments of gnostic wisdom,
the ground-work of which is _pre-Christian_ and built on the
MYSTERIES of Initiation. It is the mode of theological
presentation and the interpolated passages—such as in Mark xvi.
from verse 9 to the end—which make of the Gospels a “magazine of
(_wicked_) falsehoods,” and throw a slur on CHRISTOS. But the
Occultist who discerns between the two currents (the true gnostic
and the _pseudo_ Christian) knows that the passages free from
theological tampering belong to archaic wisdom, and so does Mr.
Gerald Massey, though his views differ from ours.

-----

All of these are “magazines of falsehoods,” if accepted in the exoteric dead-letter interpretations of their ancient, and especially their modern, theological glossarists. Each of these records has served in its turn as a means for securing power and of supporting the ambitious policy of an unscrupulous priesthood. All have promoted superstition, all made of their gods bloodthirsty and ever-damning Molochs and fiends, as all have made nations to serve the latter more than the God of Truth. But while cunningly-devised dogmas and intentional misinterpretations by scholiasts are beyond any doubt, “falsehoods already exploded,” the texts themselves are mines of universal truths. But for the world of the profane and sinners, at any rate—they were and still are like the mysterious characters traced by “the fingers of a man’s hand” on the wall of the Palace of Belshazzar: _they need a Daniel to read and understand them_.

Nevertheless, TRUTH has not allowed herself to remain without witnesses. There are, besides great Initiates into scriptural symbology, a number of quiet students of the mysteries of archaic esotericism, of scholars proficient in Hebrew and other dead tongues, who have devoted their lives to unriddle the speeches of the Sphinx of the world-religions. And these students, though none of them has yet mastered all the “seven keys” that open the great problem, have discovered enough to be able to say: There _was_ a universal mystery-language, in which all the World Scriptures were written, from _Vedas_ to “Revelation,” from the “Book of the Dead” to the _Acts_. One of the keys, at any rate—the numerical and geometrical key[44] to the Mystery Speech is now rescued; an ancient language, truly, which up to this time remained hidden, but the evidences of which abundantly exist, as may be proven by undeniable mathematical demonstrations. If, indeed, the Bible is forced on the acceptance of the world in its dead-letter meaning, in the face of the modern discoveries by Orientalists and the efforts of independent students and kabalists, it is easy to prophesy that even the present new generations of Europe and America will repudiate it, as all the materialists and logicians have done. For, the more one studies ancient religious texts, the more one finds that the ground-work of the New Testament is the same as the ground-work of the Vedas, of the Egyptian theogony, and the Mazdean allegories. The atonements by blood—blood-covenants and blood-transferences from gods to men, and by men, as sacrifices to the gods—are the first key-note struck in every cosmogony and theogony; soul, life and blood were synonymous words in every language, pre-eminently with the Jews; and that blood-giving was life-giving. “Many a legend among (geographically) alien nations ascribes soul and consciousness in newly-created mankind to the blood of the god-creators. Berosus records a Chaldean legend ascribing the creation of a new race of mankind to the admixture of dust with the blood that flowed from the severed head of the god Belus. “On this account it is that men are rational and partake of divine knowledge,” explains Berosus.[45] And Lenormant has shown (_Beginnings of History_, p. 52, note) that “the Orphics ... said that the _immaterial part of man, his soul_ (his life) sprang from the blood of Dionysius Zagreus, whom ... Titans tore to pieces.” Blood “revivifies the dead”—_i.e._, interpreted metaphysically, it gives _conscious_ life and a soul to the man of matter or clay—such as the modern materialist is now. The mystic meaning of the injunction, “Verily I say unto you, except _ye eat the flesh_ of the Son of man and _drink his blood_, ye have not life in yourselves,” &c., can never be understood or appreciated at its true _occult_ value, except by those who hold some of the _seven keys_, and yet care little for St Peter.[46] These words, whether said by Jesus of Nazareth, or Jeshua Ben-Panthera, are the words of an INITIATE. They have to be interpreted with the help of _three_ keys—one opening the _psychic_ door, the second that of physiology, and the third that which unlocks the mystery of terrestrial being, by unveiling the inseparable blending of theogony with anthropology. It is for revealing a few of these truths, with the _sole view of saving intellectual mankind from the insanities of materialism and pessimism_, that mystics have often been denounced as the servants of Antichrist, even by those Christians who are most worthy, sincerely pious and respectable men.

-----

Footnote 44:

“The key to the recovery of the language, so far as the writer’s
efforts have been concerned, was found in the use, strange to say,
of the discovered integral ratio in numbers of diameter to
circumference of a circle,” by a geometrician. “This ratio is
6,561 for diameter and 20,612 for circumference.” (Cabalistic
MSS.) In one of the future numbers of “LUCIFER” more details will
be given, with the permission of the discoverer.—Ed.

Footnote 45:

Cory’s _Anc. Frag._, p. 59, f. So do Sanchoniaton and Hesiod, who
both ascribe the _vivifying_ of mankind to the spilt blood of the
gods. But blood and _soul_ are one (_nephesh_), and the blood of
the gods means here the informing soul.

Footnote 46:

The existence of these _seven_ keys is virtually admitted,
owing to deep research in the Egyptological lore, by Mr. G.
Massey again. While opposing the teachings of “Esoteric
Buddhism”—unfortunately misunderstood by him in almost every
respect—in his Lecture on “The Seven Souls of Man,” he writes
(p. 21):—

“This system of thought, this mode of representation, this
septenary of powers, in various aspects, had been established in
Egypt, at least, seven thousand years ago, as we learn from
certain allusions to Atum (the god ‘in whom the fatherhood was
individualised as the _begetter of an eternal soul_,’ the
_seventh_ principle of the Theosophists,) found in the
inscriptions lately discovered at Sakkarah. I say in various
aspects, _because the gnosis of the Mysteries was, at least,
sevenfold in its nature_—it was Elemental, Biological, Elementary
(human), Stellar, Lunar, Solar and Spiritual—and _nothing short of
a grasp of the whole system can possibly enable us to discriminate
the various parts, distinguish one from the other, and determinate
the which and the what, as we try to follow the symbolical Seven
through their several phases of character_.”

-----

The first key that one has to use to unravel the dark secrets involved in the mystic name of Christ, is the key which unlocked the door to the ancient mysteries of the primitive Aryans, Sabeans and Egyptians. The Gnosis supplanted by the Christian scheme was universal. It was the echo of the primordial wisdom-religion which had once been the heirloom of the whole of mankind; and, therefore, one may truly say that, in its purely metaphysical aspect, the Spirit of Christ (the divine _logos_) was present in humanity from the beginning of it. The author of the Clementine Homilies is right; the mystery of Christos—now supposed to have been taught by Jesus of Nazareth—“was identical” with that which _from the first_ had been communicated “_to those who were worthy_,” as quoted in another lecture.[47] We may learn from the Gospel _according_ to Luke, that the “worthy” were those who had been initiated into the mysteries of the Gnosis, and who were “accounted worthy” to attain that “resurrection from the dead” _in this life_ ... “those who knew that they could die no more, being equal to the angels as sons of God and sons of the Resurrection.” In other words, they were the great adepts _of whatever religion_; and the words apply to all those who, without being Initiates, strive and succeed, through personal efforts to _live the life_ and to attain the naturally ensuing spiritual illumination in blending their personality—the (“Son”) with (the “Father,”) their individual divine Spirit, _the God within_ them. This “resurrection” can never be monopolized by the Christians, but is the spiritual birth-right of every human being endowed with soul and spirit, whatever his religion may be. Such individual is a _Christ-man_. On the other hand, those who choose to ignore the Christ (principle) within themselves, must die _unregenerate heathens_—baptism, sacraments, lip-prayers, and belief in dogmas notwithstanding.

In order to follow this explanation, the reader must bear in mind the real archaic meaning of the paronomasia involved in the two terms _Chréstos_ and _Christos_. The former means certainly more than merely “a good,” an “excellent man,” while the latter was never applied to any one living man, but to every Initiate at the moment of _his second birth and resurrection_.[48] He who finds Christos within himself and recognises the latter as his only “way,” becomes a follower and an _Apostle of Christ_, though he may have never been baptised, nor even have met a “Christian,” still less call himself one.

H. P. B.

(_To be continued._)

-----

Footnote 47:

“Gnostic and Historic Christianity.”

Footnote 48:

“Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man _be born again_ he
cannot see the Kingdom of God.” (John iii. 4.) Here the birth
_from above_, the spiritual birth, is meant, achieved at the
supreme and last initiation.

-----

THE “SQUARE” IN THE HAND.

I am unable to say where or when the events related in the following pages took place. Neither can I give any details concerning the personal circumstances of the narrator. All I know is that she was a young woman of French nationality, and that the “uncle” of whom she speaks—her senior by some thirty years—was more distinguished as a philosopher than as an enthusiast. Whether the conspiracy against the reigning authorities in which our heroine and her friends were implicated, happened to be of any historical importance or not, is also more than I can say. As my object in reproducing the narrative is merely to illustrate the curious operation through natural channels of laws, which are usually regarded as “occult,” and the activity of which on the material plane has given rise to the common notion of “miracle,” I do not propose to trouble the reader or myself with any preamble of merely local interest. So, without more introduction, I leave the diary of the writer to recount the adventure set down therein by her own hand.

. . . . . . . .

“I was concerned in a very prominent way in a political struggle for liberty and the people’s rights. My part in this struggle was, indeed, the leading one, but my uncle had been drawn into it at my instance, and was implicated in a secondary manner only. The government sought our arrest, and, for a time, we evaded all attempts to take us, but at last we were surprised and driven under escort in a private carriage to a military station, where we were to be detained for examination. With us was arrested a man popularly known as ‘Fou,’ a poor weakling whom I much pitied. When we arrived at the station which was our destination, ‘Fou’ gave some trouble to the officials. I think he fainted, but at all events his conveyance from the carriage to the _caserne_ needed the conjoined efforts of our escort, and some commotion was caused by his appearance among the crowd assembled to see us. Clearly the crowd was sympathetic with us and hostile to the military. I particularly noticed one woman who pressed forward as ‘Fou’ was being carried into the station, and who loudly called on all present to note his feeble condition and the barbarity of arresting a witless creature such as he. At that moment my uncle laid his hand on my arm and whispered: ‘Now is our time; the guards are all occupied with ‘Fou;’ we are left alone for a minute; let us jump out of the carriage and run!’ As he said this he opened the carriage door on the side opposite to the _caserne_ and alighted in the street. I instantly followed, and the people favouring us, we pressed through them and fled at the top of our speed down the road. As we ran I espied a pathway winding up a hill-side away from the town, and cried: ‘Let us go up there; let us get away from the streets!’ My uncle answered: ‘No, no; they would see us there immediately at that height, the path is too conspicuous. Our best safety is to lose ourselves in the town. We may throw them off our track by winding in and out of the streets.’ Just then a little child, playing in the road, got in our way, and nearly threw us down as we ran. We had to pause a moment to recover ourselves. ‘That child may have cost us our lives,’ whispered my uncle breathlessly. A second afterwards we reached the bottom of the street which branched off right and left. I hesitated a moment; then we both turned to the right. As we did so—in the twinkling of an eye—we found ourselves in the midst of a group of soldiers coming round the corner. I ran straight into the arms of one of them, who the same instant knew me and seized me by throat and waist with a grip of iron. This was a horrible moment! The iron grasp was sudden and solid as the grip of a vice; the man’s arm held my waist like a bar of steel. ‘I arrest you!’ he cried, and the soldiers immediately closed round us. At once I realised the hopelessness of the situation; the utter futility of resistance. ‘_Vous n’avez pas besoin de me tenir ainsi_,’ I said to the officer; ‘_j’irai tranquillement_.’ He loosened his hold and we were then marched off to another military station, in a different part of the town from that whence we had escaped. The man who had arrested me was a sergeant or some officer in petty command. He took me alone with him into the guard-room, and placed before me on a wooden table some papers which he told me to fill in and sign. Then he sat down opposite to me and I looked through the papers. They were forms, with blanks left for descriptions specifying the name, occupation, age, address and so forth of arrested persons. I signed these, and pushing them across the table to the man, asked him what was to be done with us. ‘You will be shot,’ he replied, quickly and decisively. ‘Both of us?’ I asked. ‘Both,’ he replied. ‘But,’ said I, ‘my companion has done nothing to deserve death. He was drawn into this struggle entirely by me. Consider, too, his advanced age. His hair is white; he stoops, and, had it not been for the difficulty with which he moves his limbs, both of us would probably be at this moment in a place of safety. What can you gain by shooting an old man such as he?’ The officer was silent. He neither favoured nor discouraged me by his manner. While I sat awaiting his reply, I glanced at the hand with which I had just signed the papers, and a sudden idea flashed into my mind. ‘At least,’ I said, ‘grant me one request. If my uncle _must_ die, _let me die first_.’ Now I made this request for the following reason. In my right hand, the line of life broke abruptly halfway in its length; indicating a sudden and violent death. But the point at which it broke was terminated by a perfectly marked _square_, extraordinarily clear-cut and distinct. Such a square, occurring at the end of a broken line means _rescue_, _salvation_. I had long been aware of this strange figuration in my hand, and had often wondered what it presaged. But now, as once more I looked at it, it came upon me with sudden conviction that in some way I was destined to be delivered from death at the last moment, and I thought that if this be so it would be horrible should my uncle have been killed first. If _I_ were to be saved I should certainly save him also, for my pardon would involve the pardon of both, or my rescue the rescue of both. Therefore it was important to provide for his safety until after my fate was decided. The officer seemed to take this last request into more serious consideration than the first. He said shortly: ‘I may be able to manage that for you,’ and then at once rose and took up the papers I had signed. ‘When are we to be shot?’ I asked him. ‘To-morrow morning,’ he replied, as promptly as before. Then he went out, turning the key of the guard-room upon me.

. . . . . . . .

“The dawn of the next day broke darkly. It was a terribly stormy day; great black lurid thunderclouds lay piled along the horizon, and came up slowly and awfully against the wind. I looked upon them with terror; they seemed so near the earth, and so like living, watching things. They hung out of the sky, extending long ghostly arms downwards, and their gloom and density seemed supernatural. The soldiers took us out, our hands bound behind us, into a quadrangle at the back of their barracks. The scene is sharply impressed on my mind. A palisade of two sides of a square, made of wooden planks, ran round the quadrangle. Behind this palisade, and pressed up close against it was a mob of men and women—the people of the town—come to see the execution. But their faces were sympathetic; an unmistakable look of mingled grief and rage, not unmixed with desperation—for they were a down-trodden folk—shone in the hundreds of eyes turned towards us. I was the only woman among the condemned. My uncle was there, and poor ‘Fou,’ looking bewildered, and one or two other prisoners. On the third and fourth sides of the quadrangle was a high wall, and in a certain place was a niche partly enclosing the trunk of a tree, cut off at the top. An iron ring was driven into the trunk midway, evidently for the purpose of securing condemned persons for execution. I guessed it would be used for that now. In the centre of the square piece of ground stood a file of soldiers, armed with carbines, and an officer with a drawn sabre. The palisade was guarded by a row of soldiers somewhat sparsely distributed, certainly not more than a dozen in all. A Catholic priest in black cassock walked beside me, and as we were conducted into the enclosure, he turned to me and offered religious consolation. I declined his ministrations, but asked him anxiously if he knew which of us was to die first. ‘_You_,’ he replied; ‘the officer in charge of you said you wished it, and he has been able to accede to your request.’ Even then I felt a singular joy at hearing this, though I had no longer any expectation of release. Death was, I thought, far too near at hand for that. Just then a soldier approached us, and led me, bare-headed, to the tree trunk, where he placed me with my back against it, and made fast my hands behind me with a rope to the iron ring. No bandage was put over my eyes. I stood thus, facing the file of soldiers in the middle of the quadrangle, and noticed that the officer with the drawn sabre placed himself at the extremity of the line, composed of six men. In that supreme moment I also noticed that their uniform was bright with steel accoutrements. Their helmets were of steel and their carbines, as they raised them and pointed them at me, ready cocked, glittered in a fitful gleam of sunlight with the same burnished metal. There was an instant’s stillness and hush while the men took aim; then I saw the officer raise his bared sabre as the signal to fire. It flashed in the air; then, with a suddenness impossible to convey, the whole quadrangle blazed with an awful light—a light so vivid, so intense, so blinding, so indescribable that everything was blotted out and devoured by it. It crossed my brain with instantaneous conviction that this amazing glare was the physical effect of being shot, and that the bullets had pierced my brain or heart, and caused this frightful sense of all-pervading flame. Vaguely I remembered having read or having been told that such was the result produced on the nervous system of a victim to death from fire-arms. ‘It is over,’ I said, ‘that was the bullets.’ But presently there forced itself on my dazed senses a sound—a confusion of sounds—darkness succeeding the white flash—then steadying itself into gloomy daylight; a tumult; a heap of stricken, tumbled men lying stone-still before me; a fearful horror upon every living face; and then ... it all burst on me with distinct conviction. The storm which had been gathering all the morning had culminated in its blackest and most electric point immediately over-head. The file of soldiers appointed to shoot me stood exactly under it. Sparkling with bright steel on head and breast and carbines, they stood shoulder to shoulder, a complete lightning conductor, and at the end of the chain they formed, their officer, at the critical moment, raised his shining, naked blade towards the sky. Instantaneously heaven opened, and the lightning fell, attracted by the burnished steel. From blade to carbine, from helmet to breastplate it ran, smiting every man dead as he stood. They fell like a row of nine-pins, blackened in face and hand in an instant—in the twinkling of an eye. _Dead._ The electric flame licked the life out of seven men in that second; not one moved a muscle or a finger again. Then followed a wild scene. The crowd, stupefied for a minute by the thunderbolt and the horror of the devastation it had wrought, recovered sense, and with a mighty shout hurled itself against the palisade, burst it, leapt over it and swarmed into the quadrangle, easily overpowering the unnerved guards. I was surrounded, eager hands unbound mine, arms were thrown about me; the people roared, and wept, and triumphed, and fell about me on their knees praising Heaven. I think rain fell, my face was wet with drops, and my hair—but I knew no more, for I swooned and lay unconscious in the arms of the crowd. My rescue had indeed come, and from the very Heavens!”

ANNA KINGSFORD, M.D.

FREEDOM.

Know, striving soul, on truth intent,
That not with words by mortal sent—
Faint shimmerings of earthly light—
Shall ever-living truth be taught,
Or light to gild the path be bought,
That leads us upward from the night.

But govern mind with ordered will,
Subduing this with knowledge still,
Fanning the spark within that glows,
The essence of that power divine,
The pledge to man from mystic time,
The light from thrones above that flows.

Then may the spirit, bathed in light,
Soar upward from the realms of night,
No more a fettered earth-bound thing,
But freed from clay, and doubt, and slime,
Triumphant over death and time!
To the eternal ever cling!

P. H. D.

THE INVISIBLE WORLD.

In many of the tasks of life the first step costs the great effort, and the investigation of truth in the higher regions of Nature justifies the familiar maxim. The first step for the modern inquirer is that which carries his consciousness across the threshold of matter into the invisible world. Never mind for the moment whether occult progress be attempted by a direct onslaught on the defences of the invisible world, or by purely internal combats with the desires of the lower self. The unseen must first become a reality for anyone who seriously desires to enter into relations with it, whether he sets his will to work to vanquish his own frailties, or the forces of Nature on the astral plane. An internal struggle with material desire undertaken for a spiritual purpose, just as much as the other kind of contest, is a recognition of the superior realm; and it is not a struggle of the kind we are contemplating at all, if it is merely undertaken for a worldly purpose, as thrifty habits may be cultivated, for instance, at the bidding of the grossest material selfishness. But though a recognition of the invisible world must in this way have been forced, at an early stage of his inquiry, on the mind of everyone who becomes an earnest explorer of Nature’s higher laws, its invisibility is a terrible barrier in the way of the progress that would otherwise be made by the throngs of intelligent materialists who people civilised countries at this epoch of our history. From the point of view of conventional thinkers—of those alike who sacrifice their Sunday mornings to provide for the contingency that there may be something in religion after all, and of those who are frankly incredulous of any Nature lying beyond the reach of instrumental research—a tremendous revolution in all their views of life is accomplished if they are somehow brought face to face with the reality of super-material phenomena, if they ever discover the invisible world and come to know it, or any part of it, as an unequivocal fact.

Long experienced explorers of the unseen often forget how profoundly clouded the whole region seems from the shore of materialistic thought. Indeed, from the shore of other systems where habits of metaphysical speculation would lead men to repudiate the charge of materialism, the unseen appears to be equally impenetrable to all human faculties. It is as though we lived beside an ocean always shrouded from view by a belt of mist. A few persons are in the constant habit of pushing out beyond in boats, but these, when they come back, are told, “Nonsense! there is no ocean; you have been dreaming!” For the vast majority, the mist is an infinite void. Only by a minority have the few who have passed through it, been even encountered. Will anyone who knows his generation pretend to say that even among ordinary religious people the next world is a certain fact in Nature, like the next street? How many are there who do more than rest on the hypothesis that there may be somewhere a heaven to “go to” when the dreadful moment comes at which mortal man must perforce bid adieu to the warm precincts of the cheerful day. “God forbid!” a bishop is said to have piously remarked when warned, during danger at sea, that he would be in Heaven that night. The next world of commonplace orthodoxy is but too often regarded as a desperate resource for ruined men, whose fortune of life has been wrung from them to the last drop. For those who are bankrupt of breath, “let us trust” (as a frequent phrase expresses the idea) that some compensation may be provided by Providence hereafter, though it does all remain so hopelessly obscure.

“Ah, if you could only show me that there really is a life beyond this—a perpetuation of this real individual Me after I am what my friends will call dead—you would be giving me a blessing that no words could over-estimate.” That is a passionate cry from many hearts to those who talk of other lives for the soul—of spiritual rewards, or the fruit of Karma in future states of existence.

It is a cry which few people indeed, even among those who have been in contact with the invisible world, are in a position to satisfy. Most of us are obliged to reply: “This satisfaction can only be acquired by a resolute effort; it is impossible for us to bring you proof of what we know, to save you trouble. If you would know whether Africa exists, we cannot bring you Africa to prove it; we can only give you directions how to get there if you are willing to undertake the journey.” “But why,” we might ask, “cannot you believe the testimony of those who have had proof of the sort you require.” The answer always is in effect: “_C’est le premier pas qui coute_. It would be worth worlds to know, but to believe without personal knowledge—that would be an act of faith. I might as easily believe at once in the Roman Catholic Church.”

There is a great difference, really, between the surrender of that reason claimed by ecclesiastical tyranny and the faith required to enable a seeker after truth to gain personal cognisance of the invisible world. The priest and the occultist both claim faith from the neophyte; but the first bids him develop this by strangling his reason, the second by satisfying it. Sensible faith is that which recognises the logic of facts appealing to human intelligence. It is stupid to believe that which you have no reason for believing; it is no less stupid to disbelieve that which there is reason to believe. The majority of modern men and women, indeed—fed exclusively on the husks of knowledge—are too profoundly ignorant of the records accumulated by those who have penetrated the unseen to be called stupid for undervaluing them. But on one or the other horn of the dilemma they must take their place. They are unconscious of the existence of the records left, or of the work done by students of occultism in its various phases; or they must be held responsible for defects of understanding. Does anyone say: “What are the records you refer to?” The answer would be analogous to one that might be given to a person brought up in American backwoods, on modern practicalities exclusively, and who in mature life should hear someone refer to classical literature as important. “What book do you want me to read?” he might ask. What would an accomplished University devotee of Greek poetry _think_ in reply, even if he tried to disguise his answer in polite terms?

Any fairly considerable acquaintance with the literature of occult research—including in that broad designation records of any supermaterial phenomena—will put any man in a position in which he must either believe in the existence of the invisible world, or discover that he is an irrational being, whose “convictions” are merely acts of submission to the decrees of the multitude. And then, for most of those who perceive that they must believe, or who find that they cannot continue to disbelieve, some personal contact with some phases of the invisible world will probably follow in the sequence of events; because, once _believing_—once saturated with a complete conviction that there are other planes of Nature—these will present themselves to the mind as so interesting, that it becomes worth while to take trouble in order to get the gratification of beholding their phenomena in some way or other; and then success will sooner or later be attained. While people merely think “there _may be_ an invisible world, let us try if we can find it out,” they are easily baffled by failure. They draw one or two covers “blank” and retire from the effort declaring “there is nothing to be discovered; it is all a delusion.” The man who has read and assimilated what he has read is, as we have said above, saturated with a conviction on the subject. His state of mind remains unaffected by personal failure; and still impelled by the fascination of the idea, he will try again and again till he succeeds. When anyone says, “I _wish_ I could see something out of the common way, but I never have any luck in such things,” the answer is: “Then you certainly do not wish _much_.” Probably such people do not wish enough to take the trouble merely to study. What they wish is that conclusive phenomena demonstrating the existence of the invisible world should always be on view at some London theatre, where inquirers might go without liability to disappointment, when other engagements permitted.

And yet, though it is so easy to blame and ridicule that attitude of mind, no one who has the influence of the higher occultism in his heart, and at the same time a capacity for sympathising with the best attributes of modern culture, can be otherwise than indefatigably anxious to waken up the present generation more fully to an appreciation of the sublime knowledge accessible to those who get across the outer barriers and come to realise the existence of the world beyond, once for all. Occultists will often fail to understand the situation aright. There are some who would do nothing but draw from their own knowledge of the invisible world a store of moral maxims, and serve these out to their brethren, fearing to suggest further inquiries lest danger should be incurred, for, of course, people are put in danger the higher they climb, falls being then more disastrous. But maxims to have any value must be in circuit with knowledge. “Be good!” is a sound maxim. “Be good children!” is often an efficient exhortation, but it will not survive the period when the persons addressed say “Why?” And all the educated world is saying “Why?” now in regard to injunctions which rest upon incredible assertions. Why is Society so tolerant of some misdoing which the Church has always specially condemned, though it lies outside the catalogue of offences like robbery and murder, proscribed by common convenience? Because maxims which merely rest upon religion have no longer any binding force; in other words, because religion is the science, or the sum total of the sciences of the invisible world, and men now claim to have cut and dried maxims overhauled on principles to which this age of science has accustomed them. It is quite possible to get this done. The fact that this _is_ a scientific age is a declaration, in other words, that a time has come for putting a scientific complexion on religious thought; in other words again, for beginning to lead the public, in flocks, where hitherto rare pioneers only have penetrated in secret—across the threshold unto the limitless realms of the invisible world. By flocks we need not be supposed to mean crude masses of humanity selected on no system, but large numbers compared to the rare explorers of former times, considerable groups of the most intelligent and advanced minds of the age. A man of the present day, who has obtained the beautiful culture of modern civilisation, who may be an accomplished classic, a finely-trained man of science, a poet, an artist, and yet a person so ignorant or stupid (as to certain facets of his mind) as not to know anything about the invisible world, is a creature who provokes in the more enlightened observer a feeling analogous to that with which one might look at a lady of fashion, beautiful in the face, but whose winning draperies you know to hide ugly deformities or repulsive disease. Or treating the subject more abstractedly, this lovely culture of modern civilisation is like the soulless statue—the Galatea without life. Surely it is time that the gods informed the marble with the breath of the spirit; and have they not shown themselves ready to do this if the sculptor does but appeal to them?

The man who penetrates, or gets into relations of some sort or other with the invisible world, will not necessarily be illuminated at once with a flood of exhilarating knowledge. The new realm may open out before the explorer in many different ways; and there is much going astray amidst its innumerable mazes for new comers, as a rule. But to discuss these perils in detail would be to attempt an essay on all branches of occultism. For the present we are arguing merely that to make no journeys there at all is to give up progress, to move no longer with the onward stream of evolution, to fall out of the line of march.

It is deplorable that men of intelligence, in the present day, should neglect to pick up the threads which might guide them to some knowledge of the invisible world, for two reasons, or rather, the reasons why this is deplorable may be divided into two great classes, those which have reference to knowledge, as such, and those which have reference to the spiritual interests of mankind. To people who appreciate spiritual interests, nothing else is relatively worth a thought; but for men of modern civilisation at large knowledge is worth everything for its own sake; it is the end they are pursuing, and this being so, it is astounding that they neglect the most subtle, fascinating and intricate phenomena of all nature, those which have to do with supermaterial planes of existence and natural force. And from that point of view, any passage across the threshold of the invisible world will do as well as any other. The tables that move without hands, the pencils that write without fingers, are surely linked with mysteries of Nature not yet understood, and, therefore, worth examination. Investigations concerning them bring one face to face with the forces of the invisible world.

Are we told that science cannot grasp these phenomena to investigate them? The statement is not true. They cannot be grasped at any time by anybody, but no more can the depths of stellar space be fathomed by whoever chooses whenever it suits his leisure. Great telescopes are scarce; nights perfectly fitted for observation must be waited for with patience. But when they come, the men who have got the telescopes take observations and make reports, and their records are studied by other astronomers, and used as the foundation of theories, as the raw material of current knowledge. If similar methods were adopted with even the crudest spiritualistic, not to speak of scientific, research in occult mystery, the world at large would not be blundering about as it is, with absurd denials of facts known to thousands. Clairvoyance again, by flights of perception through the invisible world, bridges gulfs that are materially impassable. But what does modern culture know of it? As a scientific fact, it is enormously more certain than the existence, for example, of the satellites of Mars; but who disputes the latter fact? They have been seen, those satellites, if they are not seen easily or often, and therefore their existence has been established. But five newspapers out of six in the present day—barometers of prevailing belief—would profess to disbelieve in clairvoyance if the subject had to be mentioned; to _disbelieve_ in that which is an elementary truth having to do with the most easily accessible region of supermaterial knowledge!

To gain touch with this is _not_ to be put at once in possession of that certainty concerning the survival after death of the real “Me” in each case, which is the great point to be established for most European doubters, but it is the first step. Students of the laws which govern existence in the higher realms of Nature can gain no hearing from those to whom that great point remains unsatisfied. Once the higher realm is felt to be a reality, the possibility of gaining a knowledge of the laws which prevail there presents itself to the mind with an altogether new significance. And finally, closer attention shows that this knowledge certainly has been gained; that the path leading to spiritual wisdom is defined; that with some of the powers which reign in the invisible world we may enter into more or less definite relations beforehand here; that of all practical pursuits which men of clear heads and resolute purpose can set themselves to, during the space of incarnate earthly life, immeasurably the most practical, in so far as it has to do with objects which dwarf all others in their importance, are those which have to do with the culture and development of that Higher Self within them which has its natural home in the invisible world, and is but a passing guest in the midst of material occupations. To use and apply the knowledge of supermaterial laws which occult studies disclose is a life’s task, but of that for the moment we need not speak. It is with the heedless and frivolous generation at large that we are concerned in this appeal—with those who waste great gifts of intelligence and splendid energies and courage and indomitable industry on transitory pursuits, on money-making (in excess), on discovery and research that merely subserve passing material wants, on the struggle for flattering distinctions which cast a meteoric gleam on the brief journey to personal oblivion, on the “solid realities” of the visible world, which, like the ice drops of a hailstorm, are as hard as bullets one minute and dissolved in new forms the next. It is all for want of taking the first step that they are squandering their lives. Their immediate predecessors _knew_ no more than they perhaps of the hidden mysteries, but they were less critical of the distorted shape in which pious tradition told them of the future and of the powers above. The heirs of modern thought have grown in knowledge of molecules and of the transmutation of energy but as they look back upon the beliefs which contented their forefathers, they perceive that their fuller science of the physical plane has entirely shut out the wide, vague prospect that used to gleam on the earlier horizon.

Rational human creatures cannot afford to leave that prospect in a permanent eclipse. The neglect of all facts concerned with the durabilities of existence; the concentration of effort and interest on the hastily dissolving view of its physically manifested phases, is the crying folly of the period. To spring at once into complete conscious spiritual relationship with the higher planes of Nature is not an easy achievement. The great Realities lie within a domain which makes no direct appeal to the five senses of the earthly body, and the only way of approaching their comprehension is to press on through the darkness, beyond which other men before us declare that they have reached illuminated altitudes.

But meanwhile, the torpor of the educated world at large in regard to the promptings which ought now to stir its activity in this direction is little less than idiotic. Idiotic relatively, that is to say, to spiritual culture. There are men of illustrious fame in the various provinces of intellectual culture, who are behaving relatively to their own higher potentialities, as the luckless victim of a shallow skull may behave towards the teachings of science and art. But there is always one thing to be remembered about them; they are curable. Their cure can be undertaken with sure certainty of success at any moment, but for each sufferer from that inner cataract which shuts out from his consciousness the prospect of the invisible world, there is only one surgeon who can successfully perform the necessary operation—the man himself. What we can do who have accomplished the feat for ourselves, is to encourage others—not to _go_, but to come and do likewise.

A. P. SINNETT.

THE MYSTIC THOUGHT.

When will come rest? Is it alone the silent grave
That can bring true peace to the restless soul
That striving, yearns to reach some distant goal,
Toss’d like a boat on the crest of a mighty wave?
Is there oblivion in the cold, dark tomb
To dull the heart and kill the abject fear
Which loads the sense, when unknown dangers loom
From regions that our sense perceives not here?
When from the soul goes forth the mystic thought
That we have higher purpose than we know,
And each must reap the fruit he cares to sow,
Or learn the duties he himself has taught:
Can this be killed?—no, surely!—but that lamp can save
That burns within us here—and burns beyond the grave.

P. H. DALBIAC.

=THE BLOSSOM AND THE FRUIT=:

_THE TRUE STORY OF A MAGICIAN_.

(_Continued._)

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BY MABEL COLLINS,

Author of “THE PRETTIEST WOMAN IN WARSAW,” &c., &c.,
And Scribe of “THE IDYLL OF THE WHITE LOTUS,” and “THROUGH THE GATES
OF GOLD.”

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