Chapter VI (2)

In his book, Dr. Trumbull has collected a mass of data from a wide range of sources to illustrate what he terms the “_Primitive rite of covenanting by the inter-transfusion of blood_.”

Dr. Trumbull is anxious to make the efficacy of the rite depend upon the recognition of a vivifying virtue in the blood itself, as the essence of life. But such recognition appears to have been remote enough from the Primitive thought. The Aborigines were not Jews or Christians. They gave of their life without always thinking of the exact equivalent or superior value received. They gave it as the witness to the troth they plighted and the covenant which they intended to keep. His theory of interpretation is that there was a dominating and universal conviction that the “blood is the life; that blood-transfer is soul-transfer, and that blood-sharing, human or _divine_-human, secures an inter-union of natures; and that a union of the human nature with the divine is the highest ultimate attainment reached out after by the most primitive, as well as the most enlightened, mind of humanity.”

His collection of facts may serve a most useful purpose as eye-openers to other people (and for other facts to follow), just as they appear to have been to himself. The book is interesting, if not profound; and nothing that follows in this article is intended to decry it, or to prevent the readers of LUCIFER from looking into it if they do not feel too great a “scunner” at sight of the gilded-gory illustration on the cover. But the work is written by one who talks to us out of a window of Noah’s Ark, and who still seems to think the Hebrew Bible is the rim of the universe. We value and recommend the book solely for its facts, not for its theories, nor for its bibliolatry.

In all studies of this kind which make use of the word “Primitive,” it is the fundamental facts that we first need; and next a first-hand acquaintanceship with all the facts, so that we may do our own thinking for ourselves and strike our light within by which we can read the facts without, as the primary and essential procedure in the endeavour to attain the truth.

Also the facts may be genuine and honestly presented, yet the interpretation may be according to an inadequate or a “bogus” theory. The truth is that no bibliolator can be trusted to interpret the past of our race now being unveiled by evolution. He is born and begotten with the blinkers on. His mode of interpretation is to get behind us, to lay the hands upon our eyes in front, and ask us to listen whilst he gives us his views of the past! But the non-evolutionist cannot interpret the past from lack of a true standpoint with regard to the beginnings or rather the processes of becoming. He can begin anywhere and at any time short of the starting-point. There is nothing for it but to break away, and turn round to see for ourselves whether the traditionary vision of the Blinkerists be true or false. The facts alone are the final determinatives of the Truth. But we must have the whole of them and not a few, whether judiciously or Jesuitically selected to support a Christian theory. Whereas, the object and aim of this work, the bias of the writer, and the trend of his arguments, are all on the line of showing or suggesting that the blood-covenant was the result of some innate instinct or divine revelation which prefigured and foreshadowed, and may be taken to indicate and authorize, the Christian scheme of atonement, and the remission of sin by the shedding of innocent blood. The writer asserts that this primitive symbolism was “_made a reality in Jesus Christ_” in whom “_God was to give of his blood in the blood of his Son for the revivifying of the sons of Abraham in the Blood of the Eternal Covenant_.” But it can be demonstrated that the covenant by blood did not commence where Dr. Trumbull begins—with a religious yearning God-ward for the establishing of a brotherhood between the human nature and the Divine. The root-idea was not that of an “inter-union of the spiritual natures by the inter-commingling of blood for the sake of an inter-communion with deity.” That, at least, was by no means the “_primitive_ rite,” which the blood-covenant is here called. The many forms of the blood-covenant can only be unified at the root, _i.e._, in the beginning, not at the end. They are not to be understood apart from the primitive language of signs, as in Tattoo, the very primitive biology of the early observers, and the most primitive sociology of the Totemic times.

Time was, and may be still, when the blood-covenant would often serve as the one protection against being killed and eaten. Even the cannibals will not partake of their own Totemic brothers. Also the covenant was extended to certain animals which were made of kin and held to be sacred as brothers of the blood.

The Blood-covenant takes many forms besides that of the blood-brotherhood, which are not to be explained by this writer’s theory of exchange.

When the blood of an African woman accidentally spurted into the eye of Dr. Livingstone, she claimed him for her blood relation, without there being any exchange of blood for blood.

Dr. Trumbull claims the Egyptians as witnesses to the truth of his interpretation. But so far from their highest conception of “a union with the Divine nature” being an inter-flowing and interfusion of blood, the soul of blood was the very lowest, that is the first, in a series of seven souls!

Their highest type of the soul was the sun that vivified for ever called Atmu, the Father Soul.[53] The bases of natural fact which lie at the foundation of the Blood-covenant, preceded any and all such ideas as those postulated by the writer as being extant from the first, such as “a longing for oneness of life with God;” an “out-reaching after inter-union and inter-communion with God.” There was no conception of a one God extant in the category of human consciousness when the rites of a blood-covenant were first founded. There could be no atonement where there was no sense of sin or a breaking of the law. All through, the writer is apt to confuse the past with the present, and eager to read the present into the past.[54]

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Footnote 53:

The Theosophists are reminded that the “seven souls” are what we
call the “seven principles” in man. “Blood” is the _principle_ of
the Body, the lowest in our septenary, as the highest is “Atma,”
which may well be symbolized by the Sun; Atma being the light and
life in man, as the physical sun is the light and life of our
solar system.—ED.

Footnote 54:

The arcane doctrine teaches that the “blood” rites are as old as
the Third-Root race, being established in their final form by the
Fourth Parent race in commemoration of the separation of
androgynous mankind, their forefathers, into males and females.
Mr. G. Massey is a strict scholar, who holds only to that which is
made evident to him, and ignores the Occultistic division of
mankind into Races, and the fact that we are in our Fifth-Root
race, and would, of course, refuse to carry mankind back into
_pre_-Tertiary times. Yet his researches and the fruit of his
life-labour, corroborate, by their numberless new facts revealed
by him, most wonderfully, the teachings of the “Secret Doctrines.”
(ED.)

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The real roots of matters like these are to be found only in certain facts of nature which were self-revealing, and not in the sphere of concepts and causation! And it is only when we can reach the natural genesis of primitive customs and fetishtic beliefs, and trace their lines of descent, that we can understand and interpret their meaning in the latest symbolical and superstitious phase of religious rites. Nothing can be more fatally false than to interpret the physics of the past by means of modern metaphysic, with the view of proving that certain extant doctrines of delusion are the lineal descendants of an original Divine revelation, which has been bound up in two Testaments for the favoured few.

The blood-covenant is undoubtedly a primitive rite; but the author of this work does not penetrate to its most primitive or significant phases. These are not to be read by the light of Hebrew revelation, but by the light of nature if at all. Many primitive customs and rites survived amongst the Semites, but they themselves were not amongst the aboriginal races of the world. We have to get far beyond their stage to understand the meaning of the myths, legends, rites, and customs, that were preserved by them as sacred survivals from the remoter past. The symbolical and superstitious phases of custom cannot be directly explained on the spot where we may first meet with them in going back. In becoming symbolical they had already passed out of their primary phase, and only indirectly represent the natural genesis of the truly primitive rite. I have spent the best part of my life in tracking these rites and customs to their natural origin, and in expounding the typology and symbols by which the earliest meaning was expressed.

What then was the root-origin of a blood-covenant? The primary perceptions of primitive or archaic men included the observation that they came from the mother, and first found themselves at her breast.

Next they saw that the child was fleshed by the mother, and formed from her blood, the flow of which was arrested to be solidified, and take form in their own persons. Thus the red amulet which was worn by the Egyptian dead, was representative of the blood of Isis, who came from herself, and made her own child without the fatherhood, when men could only derive their blood and descent from the mother. This amulet was put on by her, says Plutarch, when she found herself _enceinte_ with Horus, her child, who was derived from the mother alone, or was traced solely to the blood of Isis. Primitive men could perceive that the children of one mother were of the same blood. This, the first form of a blood-brotherhood, was the first to be recognised as the natural fact. Uterine brothers were blood-brothers. The next stage of the brotherhood was Totemic; and the mode of extending the brotherhood to the children of several mothers implies, as it necessitated, some form of symbolic rite which represented them as brothers, or as typically becoming of the one blood. Here we can track the very first step in sociology which was made when the typical blood-brotherhood of the Totem was formed in imitation of the natural brotherhood of the mother-blood. The modes and forms of the Covenant can be identified by the Totemic mysteries, some of which yet survive in the crudest condition. The brotherhood was entered at the time of puberty; that is, at the time of re-birth, when the boy was re-born as a man, and the child of the mother attained the soul of the fatherhood, and was permitted to join the ranks of the begetters. The mystery is one with that of Horus, child of the mother alone, who comes to receive the soul of the father in _Tattu_, the region of establishing the son as the father, which is still extant in the mysteries, and the symbolism of _Tattoo_.

This re-birth was enacted in various ways by typically re-entering the womb. One of these was by burial in the earth, the tomb or place of re-birth being the image of the maternal birth-place all the world over. Thus when the Norsemen or other races prepared a hole under the turf, and buried their cut and bleeding arms to let the blood flow, and commingle in one as the token of a covenant, they were returning typically to the condition of uterine twins, and the act of burial for the purpose of a re-birth was a symbolical mode of establishing the social brotherhood upon the original grounds of the natural brotherhood of blood. Thus the blood-covenant did not originate in the set transfusion or inter-fusion of blood. In the Totemic mysteries the pubescent lad was admitted by the shedding of his blood, with or without any interchange. The blood itself was the symbol of brotherhood, and the shedding of it was the seal of a covenant.

Nor was this merely because flesh was formed of blood, or the first men were made of the mystical red soil, as with the _aarea_ of the Tahitians, or the red earth of the Adamic man. Most of these primitive rites, the Blood-Covenant included, had their starting-point from the period of puberty. It was at this time the lads who were not brothers uterine were made brothers of the Totem at what was termed the festival of young-man-making. The proper period for circumcision, or cutting and sealing, as still practised by the oldest aborigines, is the time of puberty, the natural coming of age. It is then they enter the Totemic Brotherhood. Now in Egyptian, the word _khet_ or _khut_ = cut, means to cut and to seal. _Khetem_ is to enclose, bind, seal, and is applied to sealing. The same root passes into Assyrian and Hebrew as _Khatan_, _Katam_ or _Chatan_, with the same meaning. In Arabic, _Khatana_ is to circumcise. Cutting and sealing are identical as the mode of entering into a Blood-Covenant. Circumcision was _one_ form of the sealing, but there were various kinds of cuts employed, and different parts of the body were scarified and tattooed. In the primary phase, then, the blood-brotherhood was established by the shedding of blood; the register was written in blood, and instead of the covenant being witnessed by the seal of red wax, it was stamped in blood.

The reason for phallic localization is to be sought in the fact that the young men not only entered the Brotherhood by the baptism of blood, they were also received into the higher ranks of the fathers, and sworn in to live an orderly, legal and cleanly life, henceforth, as the pro-creators and loyal preservers of the race.

But this was not the only clue directly derived from nature. There is another reason why blood should have become the sacred sign of a covenant. Amongst many primitive races blood, or the colour red, is the symbol of _Tapu_, the sign of sanctity. The bones of the dead were covered with red ochre as a means of protection by the most widely scattered races in the world. The stamp of a red hand on the building, or a crimson daub upon the gravestone will render them sacred. The Kaffirs will wash their bodies with blood as a protection against being wounded in battle. The colour of robin-redbreast still renders him _tapu_ or sacred to English children.

Blood having become a sign of that which is true and sacred, on account of the Covenant, it is then made the symbol of all that is sacred. It can be used for the purpose of anointing the living or the dead, can be the seal of the marriage or other ceremonies and rites of covenanting. It is the primæval token of _tapu_.

As I have elsewhere shown, blood was sworn by as the type of that which was true, the primary one of the typical Two Truths of Egypt. It was so in all the mysteries, and is so to-day, including the mysteries of Masonry. I have suggested the derivation of the masonic name from the Egyptian _Sen_ = son, for blood and brotherhood. The working Mason in Egyptian is the _makh_ (_makht_) by name. _Makh_ means to work, inlay by rule and measure. We see that _makh_ modifies into _mâ_ for measure, and for that which is just and true.

_Mâ-sen_ = Mason, would denote the true brotherhood; and as _sen_ is also blood, the true brotherhood as the blood-brotherhood would be the masons in the mystical or occult sense. Red is the colour of _Mâ_ or Truth personified, and _sen_ is blood. Blood is sworn by because it is the colour of truth, or the true colour. Now in old English the word _seng_ means both “blood” and “true.” Here, then, we find the origin of the oath, which constitutes the supreme expression in the vocabulary of our English roughs, when they use the oath of the blood-covenant, and swear by the word “bloody!” When they wax emphatic, everything they say becomes “bloody true.” This is the exact equivalent of “seng it is” for “it is true.” According to the primitive mysteries, this mode of swearing, or establishing the covenant, was sacred whilst kept piously secret, and it becomes impious when made public or profane. Such mysteries were very simply natural at first, and it was this primitive simplicity and nearness to nature which demanded the veil to protect them from the gaze of the later consciousness. Time was when the English felon would carry a red handkerchief with him to the scaffold, and hold it in his hand as a signal that he had betrayed no secrets, but died “bloody true,” or true blood.

These customs were symbolical, but there is a hint of the blood-covenant beyond them—a hint received direct from Nature herself—call it revelation if you please. In the first rude ethics we find that the time for the sexes to come together was recognised by the intimation of nature, made in her own sign-language at the period of feminine pubescence. Nature gave the hint, and a covenant was established. Henceforth, the child that could not enter that covenant would be protected from brutal assault, and was allowed, or rather compelled, to run about unclothed in token of her exemption. It is here in the swearing-in and covenanting of the sexes at the time of pubescence that we discover another real and most secret, _i.e._, sacred root of the rite.

The self-revelation made by nature to primitive man was very primitive in its kind. She not only demonstrated that the blood was the life, or that the life passed away with the letting out of the blood, but in another domain, which our author has not entered, she showed that blood was, and how it was, the future life. Blood was the primary witness to the future life which the child received from the mother. It was the token of the time when the female could become the bearer of that future life which took flesh and form in her blood.

The blood-covenanting of the primitive races is still a part of the most elaborate system of making presents, which are the express witnesses of proffered troth and intended fealty. The most precious or sacred things are parted from in proof. The best is given on either side. And in the offering of blood, they were giving their very life, that in which the best attains supremacy. But these primitive rites can never be truly read except by those who are deeply grounded in the fact, and well acquainted with the evidence, that sign-language was primordial, that gestures preceded verbal speech, and acting was an earlier mode of representing than talking. Primitive men could only _do_ that which we can _say_. In Egyptian that which is _said_ is _done_. And in these primitive customs and religious rites we see the early races of men performing in pantomime the early drama of dumb or inarticulate humanity. And it seems as if this primitive language could produce an impression and reach a reality that are unapproachable by means of words. The significance of the teaching went all the deeper when it was incised in the flesh and branded into the blood. For example, what a terrific glimpse of reality is revealed by the fact that the Malagasy make their sign of a blood-covenant by an incision in the skin that covers the bosom, and this opening with its utterance of blood is called _ambavfo_, the “mouth of the heart.” Thus the covenant is made in the blood, which is the very life, uttering itself with the mouth of the heart. In Egyptian the covenant, the oath, and the life, have the same name of _Ankhu_; and the greatest oath was to swear by the life or the blood of the Pharaoh. The primitive mode was to slash the flesh and let the hot blood spout and speak for itself with the “mouth of the heart,” the utterance of the living letter and red seal of the wound, as true witness.

No verbal covenant or written record of the modern races has ever had the full force and effect of these modes of covenanting amongst the primitive people of the past. The moderns do not keep their word with anything like the inviolable sanctity of the aborigines; when once they are sworn to fealty, the covenant is almost never broken. Few things in poetry are more pathetic than the story related of Tolo, a chief of the Shastika Indians on the Pacific Coast. In the year 1852 he entered into a tribal treaty with Colonel McKee and was desirous of making a covenant for life in some way that could not possibly be violated. Instead of exchanging blood he proposed a transfer of their own two personal names. Henceforth he was to be known as McKee, and the Colonel as Tolo. But the treaty was discarded, the covenant was not kept by the American Government. In reply, the Indian cast off the title of McKee and refused to resume his own tarnished and degraded name of Tolo! He considered that his very identity was lost by this mode of losing his good name! I doubt whether 1,800 years of Christianity have evolved in the later races of men a consciousness of truth, probity, and loyalty, so quick and profound as that!

The writer of this book remains stone-blind to its own teachings with regard to the doctrine of survivals, and of the past persisting as a pattern for the present.

To quote his own words, he rejoices in the “_blessed benefits of the covenant of blood_,” and is still a fervent supporter of the great delusion inculcated by the gospel of ruddy gore.

The doctrine is fundamentally the same whether the Greek murderer was cleansed from his guilt by the filthy purification of pig’s blood or the modern sinner is supposed to be washed white in the Blood of the Lamb.

As I had already written in my “Natural Genesis,” “the religious ritual of the moderns is crowded like a kitchen-midden with the refuse relics of customs that were natural once, and are now clung to as if they were supernatural in their efficacy because their origin has been unknown. Indeed, the current masquerade in these appurtenances of the past is as sorry a sight to the archaic student as are the straw crowns and faded finery of the kings and queens whose domain is limited to the lunatic asylum.” Dr. Trumbull endorses the doctrine that “_Mortals gave the blood of their first-born sons in sacrifice to the Supreme Being, then the Supreme Being gave the blood of his first-born male in sacrifice_” for men; and there you have the covenant of blood in its final form!

It is true that first-born children were offered in sacrifice just as the first take of fish was returned to the waters with a lively sense of future favours from the Typhonian power thus propitiated, but where is the sense of talking about the thought of an intercommunion with the divine nature through a blood-union with God as a concept in the mind of primitive man? It is true the recognized nature-powers, or devils of physical force, were invoked with blood, but what was the status of these powers when the beasts of blood were their representatives on earth, and the blood, which is the life, was given to the Serpent, for instance, as the likeness of life itself because it sloughed its own skin and manifested the enviable power of self-renewal? The profounder and more fundamental our researches, the more clearly does it become apparent that we have been victimised by the unsuspected survival of the past in the present, and that the veriest leavings of primitive man have been palmed off upon us by the ignorant as sacred mysteries and revelations guaranteed to be original and divine. Continually we find that our errors of belief are based upon very simple truths that have been misunderstood through a misinterpretation of primitive matters and modes of representation by means of modern ignorance. The blood-covenant of the aboriginal races has undoubtedly survived and culminated as Christian in the frightful formula, “Without blood there is no remission of sin.” Not merely the blood of beasts or human creatures this time, but the ruddy life and ichor of a supposed Divine Being, who was made flesh on purpose to pour out the blood for Almighty vengeance to lap in the person of a gory ghost of God. One of the seven primal powers in Egypt was represented by the hawk, because it drank blood. One of the Seven in Akkad was the vampire. And this type of blood-drinking has been divinised at last as the Christian God.

Pindar says: “It is impossible for me to call one of the blessed gods a cannibal.” But the Christian scheme makes the Only God a cannibal, who offers the flesh and blood of his own Son and Very Self as sacrificial food made sacred for his followers. Such a god is, in two senses, _chimerical_. How natural an accompaniment is the picture of the Crucified Christ to the Zuni saying, “My Father, this day shalt thou refresh thyself with blood!” Such a doctrine is but an awful shadow of the primitive past—the shadow, so to say, of our old earth in the very far-off past—that remains to eclipse the light of Heaven to-day, and darken the souls of men in the present through the survival of savage spiritualism in its final Christian phase, where the extant doctrines are little more than an ignorant perversion of the most primitive knowledge.

It is in this final and not in the primitive phase that we shall identify the irrationality, the impiety, the disgusting grossness of Mythology under the surface of theological varnish and veneer. The only senselessness is in the survival of Myths without their sense.

Lastly, it is observable that in the genuine rite the covenant-makers always bled _directly_ and suffered each for themselves. Later on we find that other victims were substituted by purchase, by fraud, or by force; hence the blood-covenant by proxy. Now the Christian scheme is that which culminated in the blood-covenant and atonement by proxy. “_His offspring for his life he gave_,” is said of an Akkadian ruler who sacrificed his own son as an expiatory offering to save himself from the consequences of his own sin. And this doctrine of the despicable, this type of the fatherhood, is elevated to the status of divinity by Dr. Trumbull. To quote his own words, the inspired author of the narrative found in the Hebrew Genesis shows “Abel lovingly and trustfully reaching out toward God with _substitute_ blood!”

And there began for the Historic Christians that vast perversion of a primitive custom which culminated at last in the Christian doctrine of vicarious sacrifice, based upon the mythology of the Old Testament being literalized in the New. Now we have the ludicrous spectacle of salvation by means of a rite which has lost all the manhood, all the morality, all the meaning, that was put into it by the despised races of uncivilized men.

The eucharistic rite is incredibly primitive when really understood. The bread and wine of the Christian sacrament still represent the male spirit and the female source of life. The “Blood of Jesus,” which was to be “drink indeed,” is identical with the “Blood of Bacchus,” which preceded historic Christianity, and has been substituted for the human or animal blood of the earlier mysteries. Imbibing the blood of the Christ did not originate in any historic or personal transaction. Also the blood of Christ, or Mithras, or Horus, employed in drinking the covenant, was preceded by the blood of Charis. In some of the Gnostic mysteries we have the proof that the first form of the saving blood was feminine, not masculine at all. Irenæus presents us with a picture of profound interest from the anthropological point of view.

He tells us how Marcus performed the eucharistic rite with the blood of Charis, instead of the blood of Christ. He handed cups to the women and bade them consecrate these in his presence. Then, by the use of magical incantation, “Charis was thought to drop her own blood into the cup” thus consecrated. (B. I. 13, 2.)

There is but one known fact in natural phenomena which will fitly account as _Vera Causa_ for a monthly Sacrament, celebrated every twenty-eight days, or thirteen times to the year; which fact was commemorated by the Blood-Covenant of Charis ( _Vide_ “Nat. Gen.” V. ii. section 12, for proofs). This kind of blood-covenant can be paralleled in the Yain or Yonian mysteries of India.

When rightly understood, the eucharist is a survival of the “beastly cannibalistic ceremony,” whether considered as the blood of Charis or the blood of Christ, or partaken of as the red Tent wine or the “bloody wafer” of Rome.

We welcome Dr. Trumbull’s contribution on the subject, although he has but “breathed a vein” of it, because these rites and customs have to be unveiled, and when they are at last exposed in all the simplicity of naked nature the erroneous ideas read into them, the delusive inferences drawn from them, the false illusions painted upon the veil that concealed the truth about them, will be doomed to pass away. To explain the true is the only effectual mode of exploding the false.

GERALD MASSEY.

=Correspondence.=

CORRESPONDENCE ADDRESSED TO THE AUTHOR OF “LIGHT ON THE PATH.”

I.

“What are the senses called astral, in reality? Are they not really spiritual, seizing on the inner essence of things and interpreting it. The ordinary psychic or clairvoyant surely does not use the astral senses? Yet he sees things which we do not see. It would be well to explain this.”

B. K.

_A._ The senses called astral in the comments on “Light on the Path” are the senses which perceive the inner essence, certainly; which are cognisant of the life underlying every form of matter. The ordinary psychic or clairvoyant only perceives other forms of matter than those we ordinarily see, and perceives them as a child perceives the forms in this world at first, without understanding their meaning. The astral senses carry beyond matter, and enlighten man with regard to any form of life which especially interests him. They show the poet painter, and composer the things they express to other men, who regard these great ones as beings of another order—beings with the gift of genius. So they are, and the vigour of that genius carries them on into the inner life where meaning, and harmony, and the indefinable all-desired are to be perceived. Wordsworth saw it in nature, he recognised the “spirit in the woods”—not the wood-nymphs but the divine spirit of peace which teaches a lesson in life. Richard Jeffries saw it in nature, too, as perhaps no other man ever has seen it; through the finite visible world he perceived the infinite invisible one, and before he died he had begun to know that the visible world does not exist. Turner, perhaps, is the only parallel. By the invisible world I must repeat again that I do not mean what the spiritualists call by that name—a new world of other forms. I mean the formless world. It is the farthest limit man’s _consciousness_ can reach to; and only the pure and star-like soul can become even aware of its existence. It is not man’s divine nature, but the man who enters it with any reverence for the great miracle of life can only do so by the aid of his divine nature, whether as a poet, a painter, or an occultist. The soul which enters it without reverence is unable to endure its extreme rarity of atmosphere and turns to the psychic-astral in which to live; such men become madmen and suicides, more or less pronounced, as men do who refuse to dwell in any form of physical life but the grossest and simplest. There is some law of life which impels men onward—call it evolution or developement or what you will; and a man can no more go downwards without suffering than a tree can be placed with its branches in the ground, instead of its roots, without discomfort, and in the end, death.

I propose to use two phrases which have been suggested to me; the psychic-astral and the divine-astral. This seems the only way to make my meaning clear, for the word astral has two meanings, its own proper derivative one, from the Sanskrit _stri_ to strew light, and that given it by the use of all occultists. Paracelsus appropriated the word for all things sidereal, subject to the moon and stars, part and parcel of this material universe, even though formed as Dryden says of “purest atoms of the air.” In this sense the spiritualists and psychics have the right of custom to use it as they do, to describe their world of finer forms. In this meaning an astral shape is the form of the human soul, still in possession of the passions which make it human; and the astral senses perceive not the subtle and supreme glory which Shelley seized on in Prometheus, but a region full of shapes and forms differing but little from those we now wear, and still distinctly material.

The “astral man” in the “Comments on Light on the Path” should have been written the divine-astral man, according to this evident difference of meaning between the present writer and all other writers on occultism.

II.

“Are not the _astral_ senses used by every great poet or inventor though he does not see clairvoyantly at all? _i.e._ does not see elementals, astral pictures, forms, &c.”

FAUST.

The answer to the former question seems to contain the answer to this, which is clearly prompted by a conception of the word “astral” in its divine sense.

III.

1. “There is a law of nature which insists that a man shall read these mysteries for himself. Will all men seeking the occult path read these mysteries alike, or will each man find the interpretation peculiarly adapted to his own phrase of development. No two men read the mysteries contained in the Bhagavat Gita quite alike, each gains the glimpses of light which he is able to assimilate and no more.”

_A._ This seems to be rather a statement of a truth than a question which can be answered in any way other than putting it into different words, perhaps not so good.

2. “Is the outer world the reflection of the world within? like a shadowed reproduction in clumsy form, the inner being reality?”

_A._ This is what should be. But materialists have brought their sense of reality into the shadowed life.

3. “How is the intuition to be developed which enables one to grasp swift knowledge?”

_A._ To me no way is known but that of living the life of a disciple.

4. “Can the laws in super-nature only act on their own plane, or can their reflection be brought down intact in their own purity to govern physical life.”

_A._ Surely this must be so; yet rarely, for when it is accomplished the man would be divine, a Buddha!

5. “To be incapable of tears”—does not that mean that the physical emotions, being merged into the inner physical, that tears are impossible as being an outward phase of the physical nature—whereas the psychical emotions, to use a physical term are vibratory.

_A._ “The whole of ‘Light on the Path,’ is written in an astral cipher” is stated at the outset of the “comments;” the word “tears” does not refer to physical tears in any way.

It is the only word which will convey any idea whatever of the moisture of life, that which bursts from the human soul in its experience of sensation and emotion, and in the passion of its hunger for them.

6. “How is one to take the snake of self in a steady grasp and conquer it?”

W.

_A._ This is the great mystery which each man must solve for himself.

IV.

WALLASEY, Oct. 1st

Referring to the comments on “Light on the Path,” in the first number of LUCIFER, may I ask whether the full paradox “Before the eyes can see they must be incapable of tears, and yet no eyes incapable of tears can see,” _i.e._, see good or God, is not truer and stronger than its part?

“Therefore the soul of the occultist must become stronger than joy and greater than sorrow” I presume means that he must not _seek_ joy or _fear_ sorrow, not that he may not enjoy nor sorrow?

The phrase by itself may read “Before the eyes can see they must be incapable of tears,” tearless, dry, in fact dead! which is obviously not the author’s intention in “Light on the Path.”

Yours truly,
A. E. I.

_A._ Once more I must refer to the preliminary statement in the comments that “Light on the Path,” is written in an astral cipher, and that tears do not mean the tears of the physical body, but the rain drops that come from the passion-life of the human soul. These being stayed for ever, the astral sight is no longer blinded or blurred. Divine love and charity then find room, when personal desire is gone. Joy and sorrow, _for oneself_, then drop naturally into another place than that which they filled before.

V.

(1.) I desire very strongly to obtain conquest over “self;” would my using the occult means for so doing, which apparently to me lie without the _ordinary_ experience of Christians, necessitate my sacrificing any iota of my belief in the _power of Christ_?

(2.) If I submit myself to the occult conditions under which the four first rules in “Light on the Path” may be “engraved on my heart and life;” will these conditions permit me to _pray throughout_ for the Divine help and strength of the Eternal Christ, who has passed the portal, opened the “way,” and whom I believe to be the “Master of Masters,” the “Lord of Angels”?

(3.) Do the words—“the disciple” ... “must then so shut the gates of his soul that _no comforter_ can enter there nor any enemy”—mean, that we are wilfully to exclude ourselves from any desire for the sympathy, strength, and support of the spirit of One who said “No man cometh unto the Father but by Me,” and who drank the cup of agony to the very dregs for love of the Brotherhood?

L. H. FF.

_A._ (1.) Not any iota of your belief in the power of the Christ-spirit would or should be sacrificed; it would rather increase, for that spirit is the same Divine overshadowing which has inspired every Redeemer.

(2.) It matters very little by what name you call the Master of Masters, so that you do appeal to “_Its_” power throughout.

(3.) Man can find no comforter save in the Divine Spirit within himself. Does not the tale of the life of Jesus illustrate this, looking at it from one point of view? In what dread isolation he lived and died; His disciples, even those who were most beloved by Him, could not reach His spirit in its sublime moments, or in the hours of its keenest suffering. So with every one who raises himself by effort above the common life of man, in however small a degree. Solitude becomes a familiar state, for nothing personal, not even a personal God, can comfort or cheer any longer.

VI.

“Is there any chance of self-deception? May one enter the path so gradually as to be conscious of no radical change, representing a change of life or stage of progression? How is it with one who has never experienced a great and lasting sorrow, or an all-absorbing joy, but who in the midst of both joy and sorrow strives to remember others, and to feel that he hardly deserves the joy, and that his sorrow is meagre in the presence of the great all-pain? How is such a one to enter through the gates? By what sign shall he know them?”

Y. H.

_A._ It is difficult for such a one to know anything of what lies beneath the surface of his nature until it has been probed by the fiercer experiences of life. But, of course, the theory of re-incarnation makes it possible that such experiences are left behind in the past. The entrance to the gates is marked by one immutable sign; the sense that personal joy or sorrow no longer exist. The disciple lives for humanity, not for himself; works for all creatures that suffer instead of knowing that he himself has pain.

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“ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

“As the Editors of LUCIFER kindly invite questions concerning Theosophy and kindred subjects, an honest enquirer into these matters would welcome an answer to the following difficulty:

“In his book on ‘Esoteric Buddhism,’ Mr. Sinnett states that souls or spirits pass the long interval between the one incarnation and another in a sort of quiescent, and at least half-unconscious, state, losing enough of their identity to preclude their carrying any recollection of one incarnation on to the next. In his novel, “Karma,” Mr. Sinnett represents one character, Mrs. Lakesby, gifted with more than usual powers, as being very fond, when she has the chance, of allowing her spirit to escape from the trammels of the body and meeting the spirits of departed—that is, dead friends—“and others” on the Astral plane where she holds agreeable converse with them.

“How are these two statements reconcilable?

“October 22nd, 1887.

N. D.”

Mr. Sinnett would probably reply that the answer could only be given fully by reprinting all that he has written in various published works, on the conditions of existence in Kama-Loca, and Devachan, and on the higher and lower aspects of _Self_. The normal course of events will conduct a human being who quits the material body through Kama-Loca to the Devachanic state, in which Mrs. Lakesby would not be able to interview him. But while in Kama-Loca she might at least imagine she did this, and, perhaps not too wisely, indulge in the practice of so doing. If we remember rightly the Baron, in “Karma,” who is represented as knowing a good deal more than Mrs. Lakesby, gifted as she is, throws some discredit upon her view concerning the Astral plane and its inhabitants. At the best when a clairvoyant can gain touch with a soul in Kama-Loca, it is the lower self remaining there, though it has left the body, that she deals with. And though that lower self may be very recognisable for people who have known it in the earthly manifestation, it will be _lower_ than the lower self of earth and not higher because ethereal. That is to say on earth the living man is more or less under the guidance of his higher self. But the higher has no longer any business to transact with the lower self of Kama-Loca, and does not manifest there at all.

Finally it must always be remembered that a romance, even though written by an Occultist, is a romance still, designed to suggest broad conceptions rather than to expound scientific and doctrinal details.

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“Being courteously invited to address any questions bearing on the matter contained in LUCIFER to the Editors, Madame la Marechale Canrobert would gladly know:—First, What is the distinction made (page 11) between _the soul_ and the starry spirit? Is it that soul which is again alluded to (page 91) as the animal soul, in opposition to the Divine soul? Second, What are the external forms of the individualised being spoken of also on page 91?”

_A._ The human soul, that which is subject to human passions, but which can also yearn towards the nobility of the Divine soul, is that which is spoken of on page 11. The starry spirit is the Divine-astral. The animal soul is that which animates the mere physical life, the unintelligent existence of the body. The “external forms” referred to on page 91 are the successive human shapes which the starry spirit inspires during its long pilgrimage.

M. C.

=Reviews.=

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THE REAL HISTORY OF THE ROSICRUCIANS.[55]

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Footnote 55:

A. E. Waite. Published by G. Redway.

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Mr. Waite’s new book will be welcomed by that large class of readers who regard occultism, alchemy, and all like studies with antagonism and suspicion. Secret societies supposed to deal with such subjects are, from their point of view, better exposed and ridiculed than treated with respect or taken seriously. The author of the present volume does not, however, cast disrespect on occult science, nor does he discuss the Rosicrucians in a spirit of levity or disdain. He recognises that there may be, and probably is, a grand spiritual and moral philosophy in the higher aspects of true alchemy, but in these pages he treats the subject of the society from the historical, and not at all from the mystical side, and confines himself to tracing its recorded history, its rise, fall, and _raison d’etre_. The conscientious study of these records relating to the Brotherhood has brought Mr. Waite to the conclusion that they do not support the traditions which up to the present have surrounded the society with a veil of unknown antiquity and have endowed its members with a halo of marvellous wisdom. It is these conclusions that will charm the incredulous, and may probably blind them to the indications of an undercurrent of belief in the reality of occult science, _per se_, which the author has evidently not desired to suppress. To investigate and disentangle the network of facts, theories, and traditions which must necessarily envelope a society that up to the commencement of the seventeenth century had not been heard of by the general public is no easy task, and Mr. Waite may be congratulated upon the calm and judicial spirit with which he has treated his subject, as well as upon the moderation with which he advances his own views. To be able to gather from these open records how far the members of such a society may have held in their keeping some of the inner secrets of Nature is of course impossible to ordinary humanity. The real character and aims of such an association can be known only to passed Initiates. In his preface Mr. Waite says: “I claim to have performed my task in a sympathetic but impartial manner, purged from the bias of any theory, and above all uncontaminated by the pretension to superior knowledge, which claimants have never been able to substantiate.” This statement is fully justified in the pages of the book under review. Its value does not lie so much in any new presentation of the facts or theories pertaining to the Rosicrucians, and which are so frequently distorted by ignorant commentators, as in the compact and systematic arrangement of some of the principal writings available. He has brought together not only the leading works of the various writers known, or supposed to be Rosicrucians, but he has also collected the criticisms and conjectures on these current at the time of their appearance in Germany, together with others of a much more recent date. Consequently the reader has before him almost all the information of this description he could require, and which he could not obtain for himself except by the expenditure of time and trouble that very few are either able or willing to give.

It is not surprising that Mr. Waite should have satisfied himself that the Rosicrucians have no sort of claim to the reverence and admiration in which scholars and mystics have held them up to the present time. But these conclusions will form only one more of other proofs to students of esotericism, that the task of writing a true and real history of a secret occult society from its records, where such exist, is an impossibility. For even when such societies left reliable information of their pursuits, aspirations, and beliefs, the language employed has always been of such a character as to baffle entirely the ordinary exoteric reader, whether he were historian, literateur, or scientist. Such literature can be interesting only to the student on the track of esoteric knowledge, or to one who has in a great measure acquired the meaning conveyed, for himself in other ways. This method of giving to the world, as it were, the proceeds, of life-long research in the realms of unseen Nature, has been adopted by alchemists, magicians, priests, and hierophants from all ages. None but those who were sufficiently steadfast in the cause of truth could read and understand what was thus written. The numerous and minute directions for the working of spells and cures, etc., left by Paracelsus, and which are apparently as straight forward and practicable as the receipts in a modern cookery book, would turn out probably much less successful in the hands of an amateur, no matter how highly educated on the physical plane, than the more delicate dishes taken from such receipts manipulated by an entirely inexperienced servant. For these elaborate instructions are given in terms that appeal simply to the material senses of those who are in search of power rather than of wisdom, whereas the real effort to produce the result has to take place on the Astral plane of nature. The spiritual or soul side of man, must be awakened and utilised, before the Philosopher’s stone, or the elixir of life, can be discovered.

The comprehension of the potentialities of the human body, their nurture and eventual utilisation for purely unselfish ends and spiritual, _i.e._, real wisdom, is, or ought to be, the work of all secret occult societies. But to return to Mr. Waite’s book. The popular notion that this Brotherhood is of great, almost incredible antiquity, is utterly condemned by him. He fails to find any documentary evidence to show that it existed before the early part of the seventeenth century, and argues that the well-known antiquity of the Rose and Cross in symbolism is no proof of the antiquity of a society using them “at a period subsequent to the Renaissance.” Granting that the device of the Rose and Cross, as emblems of a particular order or brotherhood, does not guarantee its equal antiquity with them, still it must be admitted that these symbols bearing as they do a profoundly esoteric interpretation, and being adopted by a society of a distinctly occult character, is an argument in support of the theory that the founder or originator of this order had some reason other than fancy for thus labelling his fraternity. Elsewhere he says, “I have shown indisputably that there was no novelty in the Rosicrucian pretensions, and no originality in their views. They appear before us as Lutheran disciples of Paracelsus.”

The author here seems to be not entirely logical in his deductions. When he states that he has not met in his search with either letters, records, or papers that mention or suggest the existence of such a society before the seventeenth century, he is of course, as a historian, safely ensconced from attack. In this capacity as an impartial seeker after facts, it is outside the area of his work in the absence of data to theorise on probabilities. When, however, in dealing with the manifestoes of the seventeenth century, he finds therein evidence that shows him the Brotherhood had no back history or ancestry, his conclusions are open to criticism. The very fact of the want of originality and novelty in the views, aims and aspirations set forth in the “Fama,” and “Confessio” surely gives strength to the theory that holds to the antiquity of the society, rather than to its being the outcome of a spontaneous effort. All true students of mysticism have good reason to believe, even when they do not absolutely know, that the various schools of occultism considered from their highest or most spiritual and abstract teaching, lead to the same goal. They may be called by different names, and their methods in minor details may not be the same, but the wisdom _au fond_ is identical. Therefore when Mr. Waite casts discredit upon the Rosicrucians for not advertising novelties in their manifesto, in the mystical line of thought, he reminds us of a man who in making up his mind on the value of a violin, decides that it cannot be of great age, because it emits only the same set of sounds that such musical instruments have been accustomed to give forth from time immemorial.