Chapter XLII: Part II: The Crescent (2)

The first part of “Light on the Path” is like a chord in music; the notes have to be struck together though they must be touched separately. Study and seize hold of the new desires before you have thrust out the old ones; otherwise in the storm you will be lost. Man while he is man has substance and needs some step to stand on, some idea to cling to. But let it be the least possible. Learn as the acrobat learns, slowly and with care, to become more independent. Before you attempt to cast out the devil of ambition—the desire of something, however fine and elevated, outside of yourself,—seize on the desire to find the light of the world within yourself. Before you attempt to cast out the desire of conscious life, learn to look to the unattainable or in other language to that which you know you can only reach in unconsciousness. In knowing that your aim is of this lofty character, that it will never bring conscious success, never bring comfort to you, that it will never carry you _in your own temporary personal self_ to any haven of rest or place of agreeable activity, you cut away all the force and power of the desires of the lower astral nature. For what avail is it, when these facts have been once realised, to desire separateness, sensation or growth?

The armour of the warrior who rises to fight for you in the battle depicted in the second part of “Light on the Path,” is like the shirt of the happy man in the old story. The king was to be cured of all his ills by sleeping in this shirt; but when the one happy man in his kingdom was found, he was a beggar, without care, without anxiety—and shirtless. So with the divine warrior. None can take his armour and use it, for he has none. The king could never find happiness like that of the careless beggar. The man of the world, however fine and cultivated he may be, is hampered by a thousand thoughts and feelings which have to be cast aside before he can even stand on the threshold of occultism. And, be it observed, he is chiefly handicapped by the armour he wears, which isolates him. He has personal pride, personal respect. These things must die out as the personality recedes. The process described in the first part of “Light on the Path,” is one which takes off that shell, or armour, and casts it aside for ever. Then the warrior arises, armourless, defenceless, offenceless, identified with the afflicters and the afflicted, the angered and the one that angers; fighting not on any side, but for the Divine, the highest in all.

GOLDEN SENTENCES OF DEMOCRITUS.

It is beautiful to impede an unjust man; but if this be not possible, it is beautiful not to act in conjunction with him.

Sin should be abstained from, not through fear, but, for the sake of the becoming.

Many who have not learnt to argue rationally, still live according to reason.

Vehement desires about any one thing render the soul blind with respect to other things.

The equal is beautiful in everything, but excess and defect to me do not appear to be so.

It is the property of a divine intellect to be always intently thinking about the beautiful.

THE RELATION OF COLOUR TO THE INTERLACED
TRIANGLES, OR THE PENTACLE.[166]

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Footnote 166:

A paper read before the Chicago Branch of the Theosophical
Society, by its Secretary, M. L. Brainard.

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Colour registers grades of vibration. Vibration registers grades of life. Life, esoterically considered, is ascent towards its source—the great First Cause, the celestial sun which lights universal creation.

If a ray of white light is passed through a triangular piece of glass, called a prism, it becomes separated into the seven colours known as the “solar spectrum.” Careful scientific analysis has proven that these colours are produced by different rates of vibration.

It has shown that the slowest vibrations are red, the quickest violet. The red ray of the spectrum gives 477 millions of millions (or billions) of vibrations in a second, the orange 506, the yellow 535, the green 577, the blue 622, Indigo 658, and violet 699.

Thus there is a regular ascent in the colour-scale from red to violet, and the trans-violet rays go on octaves higher, becoming invisible to the physical eye as their rates of vibration increase.

It has also been discovered that these seven prismatic rays of the solar spectrum correspond to the seven notes on the musical scale, the ray of slowest vibration, red, being a correlate of the base note of the musical gamut, and the violet ray answering to the highest musical note.

When the vibrations exceed a certain limit, the tympanum of the ear has not time to recoil before a succeeding impulse arrives, and it remains motionless. Darkness and silence are, therefore, equivalents for the cessation of vibrations on the retina of the eye and tympanum of the ear respectively. Incidentally it may be stated that cold is also considered to be the cessation of vibrations through the nerves of feeling.

Colour, therefore, is to light what pitch is to sound—both depend on length of vibrations.

The thought will immediately suggest itself in this connection that if colour and music are thus correlated, the perfect clairvoyant might _see_ a concert as well as hear it. This is true, and there are instances on record of such transcendent views. In one case of this kind, it was not alone a poetical play of colour springing into life under the touch of a German professor’s hands, but a host of airy sprites clothed in the various rays which called them forth.

_Isis_ declares that “sounds and colours are all spiritual numerals; and as the seven prismatic rays proceed from one spot in Heaven, so the seven powers of Nature, each of them a number, are the seven radiations of the unity, the central spiritual sun.”[167]

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Footnote 167:

“ISIS UNVEILED,” Vol 1., p. 514.

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It is easy to follow along the lines of these suggestions, and trace the origin of chanting the seven vowels to one of their gods, among the Egyptians, as a hymn of praise at sunrise. In the so-called mythical Golden Age this must have been the mode of putting themselves _en rapport_ or _in tune_ with the Cosmic powers, and ensuring harmony while the vibrations were synchronous.

The third necessary correlation to be considered in this analysis is that of form. Scientific research has proven that not only are music and colour due to rates of vibration, but form also marshals itself into objective being in obedience to the same mysterious law. This is demonstrated by the familiar experiment of placing some dry sand on a square of glass, and drawing a violin bow across the edge. Under the influence of this intonation, the sand assumes star shapes of perfect proportion; if other material is placed on the square of glass at the same time, other shapes are assumed, varying in proportion to the power resident in the atoms to _respond_ to the vibrations communicated.

It is noticeable, however, that the vibration makes the spaces, and the sand falls into the _rest_ places.

We have now discovered a triangular key—light, music, form—which will disclose to us the exact relations which colour sustains to the interlaced triangles, the six-rayed star, universal symbol of creative force acting upon matter.[168] This triangular key is simply three modes of one being, three differential expressions of one force—vibration.

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Footnote 168:

Hence in Kabalistic symbolism the _pentacle_, or the six-pointed
star, is the sign of the _manifested_ “Logos,” or the “Heavenly
man,” the Tetragrammaton. “The four-lettered Adni (_Adonai_, “the
Lord”), is the _Eheieh_ (the symbol of _life_ or existence), is
the Lord of the six limbs (6 Sephiroth) and his Bride (_Malkuth_,
or physical nature, also Earth) is his seventh limb.” (Ch. _Book
of Numbers_ viii. 3-4.)—ED.

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That which causes the vibration we can only represent by the Ineffable Name, behind which burns the quenchless glory of En Soph, the Boundless.

Thus, in our symbology we start from the centre of a circle, which should be represented by white light.

The seven rays issuing therefrom, must first pass through the interior and invisible triangle of Akasa, the prism A.U.M., before they can flow outward, and by their action upon chaos, wheel the myriad forms of physical life into consonance with their rates of vibration. In this manner is the visible formulated from the invisible. By such subtle music is born the gorgeous flora of our tropics, drinking its wealth of colour from the yellow and warm rays of the sunlight; and in accord with the same harmony is produced the subdued vegetation of colder climes. The blue and violet beams carry the quick pulses of the parent flame deep within the earth, and by-and-bye she gives back that which she has received, transformed into a thousand brilliant hues woven in the magic loom of Love, presided over by the solar spectrum. Or, as Egyptian myth phrases it, Osiris (the sun) weds Isis (the earth), and the child, Horus-Apollo, glorifies all things as the product of this divine union.

The culmination of light resides in the yellow ray, and hence to that colour is given the East point in our symbolised centre of radiation.[169] The others follow in the order of the solar spectrum.

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Footnote 169:

It is the secret of the great reverence shown in the East for this
colour. It is the colour of the _Yogi_ dress in India, and of the
_Gelupka_ sect (“Yellow caps”) in Thibet. It symbolizes _pure
blood_ and sunlight, and is called “the stream of life.” Red, as
its opposite, is the colour of the _Dugpas_, and black
magicians.—ED.

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But it is noticeable in this connection, that _in_ that order, the coarsest and warmest of the visible rays—red—is placed next to the coldest and most refined ray, the violet. Here we have the analogy of contraries. The ray of lowest refrangibility and the ray of highest refrangibility become next-door neighbours in the divergent circle of necessity. What is the result? It is not hard to discover, when we know that the cooling colours are essential to the balanced action of the thermal rays. “A small amount of blue when combined with other rays will even increase the heat, because it kindles into activity its opposite warm principle, red, through chemical affinity.”

Having determined the law which should govern the symbology of colours at the centre of our circle, we come next to the interlaced triangles.

The truly Theosophical Pentacle should be made by the interlacing of a white triangle with a black triangle—the white representing pure spirit, the black, gross matter. This is the true symbology, for the reason that white reflects all colours, and black absorbs all colours. It is the face of the White Ancient looking into the face of the Black Ancient.

Absolute blackness appears to give back nothing; nor does it ever, save through processes of slow evolution, wrought by continued vibration upon its molecules from the Divine Centre of Light.

Continuous vibration polarizes these particles, so that at last rising from the lowest grade of refrangibility to the highest, into the invisible octaves of being, our planetary chain in its culmination will reach a point where every atom will give an answering thrill of resonance to the throbbing of the heart of the Universe—the Central Spiritual Sun.

As every substance in Nature has its colour, so the human family publish their grades of advancement to the clairvoyant eye by their astral colours; and seekers after the true Light may know what “ray” they are in, by a comparison of their own auras with the colours of the overshadowing soul.

The middle rays of the solar spectrum—blue, green, and yellow—give a very powerful triangle, a wonderful _working_ triangle of forces; for green is Hermetic silver, yellow is Hermetic gold, and blue is a despatch-messenger from the “Lord of the Worlds,” Jupiter.

The blue and the yellow of this group, on account of their position—the third and the fifth reckoned both ways—have been chosen as the colours of our incense-holders, alternating on the points of the Pentacle. As odours are also correlated with colours, and as sandal-wood is the perfume which belongs to the sun, we use that incense to intensify the vibrations from the radiating points, in order to increase the volume of accord which will reach other centres at a distance; for the akasa is more sensitive than an Eolian harp—it registers the very aroma of our thoughts. It was, therefore, no exaggeration of the poet when he said:

“Guard well thy thought:
Our thoughts are _heard_ in Heaven.”

But if colours and sounds are spiritual numerals, then the seven symbolical points of the Pentacle represent numbers of the greatest importance in world-building, and in soul-building also. For we must all build our own souls. And the symbology of the interlacing of the triangle of spirit with the triangle of matter, finds its correspondence in man, the little world, who, though a spiritual ego, yet dwells in a physical house, and whose business it is to merge himself completely into the region of the white triangle.

When Man has raised his vibrations into perfect harmony with the universal sun, he has then unbound himself from the wheel of re-birth—the Zodiac—and is ready to enter Nirvana.

The word “heaven” in Hebrew signifies the abode of the sun. When, therefore, the Nazarene said “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you,” he virtually declared that all the seven cosmic powers are resident within us.

Esoteric science recognises man as a septenary, working in conjunction with other orders of numerals which register divine vibrations.

All nature listens to that universal song, and the music of the spheres is no fable. The swarming zöospores in the protoplasm of plants hear it, and thrilled by that enchantment, fall into invisible rhythm, bringing up by quick marches into the region of Day the tiny dwellers in stem and leaf. How do we know that the mystery of the six-sided cell of the honey-bee may not find its solution here? Perhaps the bee is susceptible only to vibrations which fall into these lines, and faithfully obeys the master-musician in the construction of its hexagonal house. The great law of cosmic and microcosmic correspondence was revealed ages ago to the Sages who _listened_, and listening, _heard_ the wondrous revelations breathed forth from the harp of Akasa. Sighing winds from other worlds passed over the delicate strings, and as they passed, uttered in soundless tones the profound mystery of near and remote planets. These Sages dwelt in that White Palace—the Lotus of the Heart—the sun-palace indeed. From centre to circumference their vast circle of vision was permeated by the reflected _All_, and from the White Palace they ascended the sacred mountain Meru, where dwelleth wisdom and love.

The key which opens the White Palace is held by the seven mystic children of the Royal Arch of the Rainbow, guarding the seven gates of the Sun, every gate of which answers to a musical note, and every note of which enfolds three tones.

Hence, if we understand the analogies of colour, we may open the six doors of Nature, and also the seventh, to Nirvana.

M. L. BRAINARD.

QUESTIONS.

What can we do in temptation’s hour?
How shall we conquer its fiery power?
How can we master it—standing _alone_,
Just on the threshold of things unknown?

Strong is its power as Death and Hell,
Led by its lure, even angels fell!
Dazed by the glare of a rising light
How shall poor mortals see aright?

Tempted we were in the morning of life,
With earth’s simple joys that are ever rife,
To idly bask in the sun’s warm beam
And to care no jot for a holier dream.

Tempted again in the heyday sun,
To choose fair paths and in gardens run,
_Claiming_ as ours, all joy—all love,
Flowerets of bliss from the Heavens above.

Temptings come now, in life’s later prime,
Deeper and stronger than in past time,
To feed with fuel the inward fire,
The passionate dream of the _soul’s desire_!

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Two feet are creeping on paths unknown,
Weary and mournful, sad and lone;
Two eyes are looking and longing for light,
Two hands are locked in a desperate fight.

A heart is breaking with pain and grief,
A soul in strong agony cries for relief;
Echoes no kindred chord above?
Stretcheth no Hand in responsive love?

Is our Great God, but a God of stone?
Are we—His people—dazed and alone?
Is there no Ear that can hear us cry?
No Christ,—to succour us e’er we die?

L. F. Ff.

A THEORY OF HAUNTINGS.

Very few persons realise the powerful and long-lasting effects of human “auras”—those mysterious psychical emanations which are mentally cognised, and which silently impress one as to the character of a locality, the idiosyncrasies of a nation, a family, or an individual. Personal auras are strictly speaking the effects of the innate, and presumably hidden natures, of individuals, and are entirely the effluence of soul and mind. A house, or a neighbourhood, becomes imbued with the individual or collective auras of its inhabitants, which convey to the psychic senses, and thence to the mind, a powerful impression of character. At the same time within the aura of individuals, or families, are indelibly imprinted their thought-pictures, which may, or may not, have been embodied in acts; the faces and forms of relatives, friends, visitors, of the very animals they pet, the image of their pursuits, in short the whole life. These are imprinted in the _astral_ element which surrounds each individual soul, as the atmosphere surrounds our bodies; and as the air we breathe becomes changed in respiration, so this ethereal atmosphere becomes transformed by personal impress.

Education, morality, religion, health, disease, happiness or misery, are largely the effects of the widely diffused auras of individuals continually given forth into the ambient atmosphere. As a man, or body of men, think, act, and live, such is the quality of the aura, or odylic sphere they emanate. This has an effect for good or evil upon all who approach within its radius; a formative, educating effect upon the ignorant, if it is of a high, intellectual, or spiritual quality; or a depressing, stultifying, deforming effect upon the minds and souls of innocent, or negative sensitives, when it is of an impure, debased, or brutal character.

Thought governs the world. It is by thought, and its embodiment in acts, that progress is made. Every thought has its aura, and nothing can prevent its diffusion in the atmospheres, both the astral and the natural or physical. Hence being continually surrounded by the effects of thoughts universally diffused, we are insensibly governed by their aura of good or evil, and we grow in beauty, or are warped in deformity, mental and bodily, from infancy, under the moulding consequences of the local thought-auras of the family, neighbourhood and nation in which we happen to be born.

Psychometry proves that even stones retain the impression of the scenes which have been enacted in their neighbourhood. That is, the stone having been bathed in the psychic emanations of creatures, human and animal, during, perhaps, centuries, retains such auras indestructibly in its atmosphere; and a psychometric clairvoyant will gradually perceive the most trivial details of the more active life which has daily passed in the vicinity of the stone. A fragment from the Temple of Diana of Ephesus, for instance, were it procurable, would enable a good psychometrist to describe every minute particular of the ancient temple worship and ceremonies. A stone from the Colosseum held in the hand, or to the forehead of a psychometrist, would produce a vision of the scenes in the arena which were wont to attract the Roman population. A fossil of some antediluvian animal would bring before the mind’s eye surroundings corresponding to the period in which the animal had lived. In truth, upon the plane of more ethereal matter adjacent to this, are to be found the images of all things, subject neither to time nor the changes of time; and there our image-producing faculties, temporarily divested of the blinding veil of flesh, may call them up at will.

The aura of a great crime becomes diffused in the neighbourhood of its commission, and concealment would be impossible if the psychic vision of men were open instead of being closed. A picture of the deed committed becomes impressed upon the astral atmosphere, with the faces and forms of those engaged in its commission. This effect is never destroyed, but may be recalled at will by a good clairvoyante. At the same time the aura of good deeds is equally powerful and indestructible. The one is like a transitory convulsion, disturbing the beauty of order and harmony with Nature; the other is the fixed and equable moral atmosphere arising from thoughts and actions consonant with wisdom. In short, the aura of good thoughts and deeds is the _pabulum_ of souls; the invigorating and supporting air they inspire and respire, producing health, happiness, mental activity, and inciting to progress. If it were not for the good on the earth, we might doubtless often cry in vain—“Heaven help us!”—for we should be so smothered under evil auras that spiritual breathing, and rapport with purer realms of life, would be a radical impossibility.

A crime is the insane product of an unbalanced, disordered mind. It causes a species of astral electric disturbance, which is as sensibly felt by sensitives as any explosion or convulsion on the natural plane. Astral, or ethereal molecules become violently displaced, and forced into new conditions of juxtaposition. A mysterious terror pervades the air, which affects all neighbouring minds, even to the very animals. It is as if the living soul of Nature had been violently wrenched from its normal condition of peace and happiness, and stood electrified with horror, whilst upon its veil of ethereal matter is fixed an indestructible image of the painful tragedy which has been suddenly enacted.

We are, in fact, surrounded, upon the soul plane of life, by an atmosphere which receives, so to speak, a photographic impression of even our very thoughts, which is a mirror to reflect our whole life, an image-world, retaining sounds as well as forms. It may be made subject to our will, which can call up before the mind, and make visible to the eye of the soul whatsoever, without exception, we will to see, to hear, or to know. The phantoms or apparitions of which we so frequently hear, are matters of fact to all psychic seers; are things as absolutely existent as any objects on the more familiar plane of dense matter. Once to realise this great fact, and to understand some of the laws which would enable us consciously to control, and illustrate to our satisfaction, certain of the hidden mysteries of the inner world of ethereal matter, from which our own proceeds as an effect from a cause, would set us upon a mountain height of knowledge whence all clouds of superstition, doubt, and uncertainty, would roll away.

There are many stories extant of certain haunting apparitions which have been seen at various times during the lapse of centuries, reappearing again and again in the same families as warnings, or otherwise; or it may be a mysterious sound, such as the cry of the “banshee” in Ireland. The popular fallacy regarding such apparitions is that a _human_ soul, or “spirit”—it may be wrongly called—is compelled, as a retribution for the commission of some crime, to remain on the earth haunting the scene of its former sins. Or, if the visitant be a benevolent ghost, it is supposed that it is some ancestor or ancestress, ever present in loving watchfulness over the destinies of the family, giving warning of death or danger. The idea of a human soul being chained in this melancholy fashion to the earth is exceedingly repugnant to most minds, and naturally excites the utmost compassion for the poor ghost which has to wear out so dreary a doom. Such a hypothesis contradicts all those religious teachings which assign to souls either a state of absolute unconscious sleep, until the day of judgment, or an abode, presumably in a conscious state, in heaven or hell. It contradicts all those more modern teachings of “progress” after death, of the gradual ascension of the soul to its place of rest. If we accept the ideas of Eastern teachers concerning those occult mysteries—that the higher self, the spiritualised entity, gradually separates from its more animal, or lower principles of organism, which adhere together for a longer or shorter period as a shell-like or shadowy personality—even then, these principles or ethereal molecules which go to form an astral body, disintegrate after a time. They would not be likely, at all events, to endure over a century. Apparitions of persons deceased _within_ a century might be considered as essentially ghosts, or shades—the shadowy, sidereal shapes of personalities passed away from the physical plane, and in a condition of gradual separation from all that can attach them to the earth. And it is presumable that a phantom which is seen repeatedly during the lapse of centuries, is merely a reflection in the astral light, called up by the will of a seer; or projected upon the plane of soul-vision either by some psychological disturbance, or by some change of condition on the part of those who see the phantom. The immediate action may be due to “_elementals_,” those mysterious entities called by Liebnitz “Monads,” which are in close attendance upon mankind, and have so much to do with his very existence that he would fare but indifferently without them. Not only are they as intimately consociated with him as his own thoughts, but certain grades of them depend upon him also for their existence. These beings often become tutelary, or “house-spirits,” and the _rôle_ of re-appearing again and again, as a sort of hereditary ghost, to give warning of death or danger, is not incompatible with their condition of existence. Time does not exist for them, and one century would be like any other. They live in the personal or family aura, and become intimately blended with the daily lives of its members. When, as in the case of royal or noble houses, the family aura remains undisturbed in its ancient palaces or castles during centuries, a haunting elemental would find it an easy matter to make itself visible, frequently by a semi-materialisation, or a condensation of the ethereal atoms of its body. In such a case it would be seen objectively by anyone who happened to be present. In other cases, when an apparition is only a reflection in the astral light, a sensitive in moments of abnormal or psychic lucidity would perceive it. Others sympathetically inclined would perceive the same. At length, after repeated similar visions, the locality would get the name of being haunted. The image so repeatedly beheld becomes fixed in the atmosphere of that particular spot. Upon entering a locality with such a reputation a species of psychological inebriation would assail every individual so constituted as to fall under the effects of the aura already established, and they would then always behold the spectre thus ideally produced. These mental or astral spectres need not necessarily be merely immovable pictures. They will move, or walk, threaten, or act a pantomime exactly as they may have the reputation of doing; or as the person who beholds them expects or imagines them to be doing.

In some respects these apparitions or warning cries may be mental legacies left indelibly impressed in the astral light by the powerful will of a departed ancestor, friendly or inimical, as a blessing or a curse; or even by a member of some alien family, as a pursuing Nemesis which falls as a retribution upon the perpetrator of evil, but can possess no power over the innocent and good.

FRANK FAIRHOLME.

(_To be continued._)

THE ESOTERIC CHARACTER OF THE GOSPELS.

III.

No one can be regarded as a Christian unless he professes, or is supposed to profess, belief in Jesus, by baptism, and in salvation, “through the blood of Christ.” To be considered a good Christian, one has, as a _conditio sine quâ non_, to show faith in the dogmas expounded by the Church and to profess them; after which a man is at liberty to lead a private and public life on principles diametrically opposite to those expressed in the Sermon on the Mount. The chief point and that which is demanded of him is, that he should have—or _pretend to have_—a blind faith in, and veneration for, the ecclesiastical teachings of his special Church.

“Faith is the key of Christendom,”

saith Chaucer, and the penalty for lacking it is as clearly stated as words can make it, in St. Mark’s Gospel, Chapter xvi., verse 16th: “He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.”

It troubles the Church very little that the most careful search for these words in the oldest texts during the last centuries, remained fruitless; or, that the recent revision of the Bible led to a unanimous conviction in the truth-seeking and truth-loving scholars employed in that task, that no such _un-Christ_-like sentence was to be found, except in some of the latest, fraudulent texts. The good Christian people had assimilated the consoling words, and they had become the very pith and marrow of their charitable souls. To take away the hope of eternal damnation, for all others except themselves, from these chosen vessels of the God of Israel, was like taking their very life. The truth-loving and God-fearing revisers got scared; they left the forged passage (an interpolation of eleven verses, from the 9th to the 20th), and satisfied their consciences with a foot-note remark of a very equivocal character, one that would grace the work and do honour to the diplomatic faculties of the craftiest Jesuits. It tells the “believer” that:—

“The two oldest Greek MSS. and some other authorities OMIT from
verse 9 to the end. Some authorities _have a different ending_ to
the Gospel.”[170]—

—and explains no further.

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Footnote 170:

Vide “Gospel according to St. Mark,” in the _revised_ edition
printed for the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, 1881.

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But the two “oldest Greek MSS.” _omit_ the verses _nolens volens_, as these _have never existed_. And the learned and truth-loving revisers know this better than any of us do; yet the wicked falsehood is printed at the very seat of Protestant Divinity, and it is allowed to go on, glaring into the faces of coming generations of students of theology and, hence, into those of their future parishioners. Neither can be, nor are they deceived by it, yet both _pretend_ belief in the authenticity of the cruel words worthy of a _theological Satan_. And this Satan-Moloch is their own _God of infinite mercy and justice_ in Heaven, and the incarnate symbol of love and charity on Earth—blended in one!

Truly mysterious are your paradoxical ways, oh—Churches of Christ!

I have no intention of repeating here stale arguments and logical _exposés_ of the whole theological scheme; for all this has been done, over and over again, and in a most excellent way, by the ablest “Infidels” of England and America. But I may briefly repeat a prophecy which is a self-evident result of the present state of men’s minds in Christendom. Belief in the Bible _literally_, and in a _carnalised_ Christ, will not last a quarter of a century longer. The Churches will have to part with their cherished dogmas, or the 20th century will witness the downfall and ruin of all Christendom, and with it, belief even in a Christos, as pure Spirit. The very name has now become obnoxious, and theological Christianity must die out, _never to resurrect again_ in its present form. This, in itself, would be the happiest solution of all, were there no danger from the natural reaction which is sure to follow: crass materialism will be the consequence and the result of centuries of blind faith, unless the loss of old ideals is replaced by other ideals, unassailable, because _universal_, and built on the rock of eternal truths instead of the shifting sands of human fancy. Pure immateriality must replace, in the end, the terrible anthropomorphism of those ideals in the conceptions of our modern dogmatists. Otherwise, why should Christian dogmas—the perfect counterpart of those belonging to other exoteric and pagan religions—claim any superiority? The bodies of all these were built upon the same astronomical and physiological (or phallic) symbols. Astrologically, every religious dogma the world over, may be traced to, and located in, the Zodiacal signs and the Sun. And so long as the science of comparative symbology or any theology has only two keys to open the mysteries of religious dogmas—and these two only very partially mastered, how can a line of demarcation be drawn, or any difference made between the religions of say, Chrishna and Christ, between salvation through the blood of the “first-born primeval male” of one faith, and that of the “only _begotten_ Son” of the other, far younger, religion?

Study the Vedas; read even the superficial, often disfigured writings of our great Orientalists, and think over what you will have learnt. Behold Brahmans, Egyptian Hierophants, and Chaldean Magi, teaching several thousand years before our era that the gods themselves had been only mortals (in previous births) until they won their immortality by _offering their blood to their Supreme God_ or chief. The “Book of the Dead,” teaches that mortal man “became one with the gods through an interflow of a common life in the common blood of the two.” Mortals gave the blood of their first-born sons in sacrifice to the Gods. In his _Hinduism_, p. 35, Professor Monier Williams, translating from the _Taitiriya Brâhmana_, writes:—“By means of the sacrifice the gods obtained heaven.” And in the _Tandya Brâhmana_:—“The lord of creatures offered himself a sacrifice for the gods.”... And again in the _Satapatha Brâhmana_:—“He who, knowing this, sacrifices with the _Purusha-madha_ or the sacrifice of the primeval male, becomes everything.”

Whenever I hear the Vedic rites discussed and called “disgusting human sacrifices,” and cannibalism (_sic._), I feel always inclined to ask, where’s the difference? Yet there is one, in fact; for while Christians are compelled to accept the allegorical (though, when understood, highly philosophical) drama of the New Testament Crucifixion, as that of Abraham and Isaac literally,[171] Brahmanism—its philosophical schools at any rate—teaches its adherents, that this (_pagan_) sacrifice of the “primeval male” is a purely allegorical and philosophical symbol. Read in their dead-letter meaning, the four gospels are simply slightly altered versions of what the Church proclaims as Satanic plagiarisms (by anticipation) of Christian dogmas in Pagan religions. Materialism has a perfect right to find in all of them the same sensual worship and “solar” myths as anywhere else. Analysed and criticised superficially and on its dead-letter face, Professor Joly (“Man before Metals,” pp. 189-190) finding in the _Swastika_, the _crux ansata_, and the cross pure and simple, mere sexual symbols—is justified in speaking as he does. Seeing that “the father of the sacred fire (in India) bore the name of _Twashtri_, that is the divine carpenter who made the _Swastika_ and the _Pramantha_, whose friction produced the divine child _Agni_, in Latin _Ignis_; that his mother was named _Maya_; he himself, styled _Akta_ (_anointed_, or _Christos_) after the priests had poured upon his head the spirituous _soma_ and on his body butter purified by sacrifice”; seeing all this he has a full right to remark that:—

“The close resemblance which exists between certain ceremonies of
the worship of _Agni_ and certain rites of the Catholic religion
may be explained by their common origin. _Agni_ in the condition
of _Akta_, or anointed, is suggestive of Christ; _Maya_, Mary, his
mother; _Twashtri_, St. Joseph, the carpenter of the Bible.”

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Footnote 171:

_Vide_ “The Soldier’s Daughter,” in this number, by the Rev. T. G.
Headley, and notice the desperate protest of this _true_
Christian, against the _literal_ acceptance of the “blood
sacrifices,” “Atonement by blood,” etc., in the Church of England.
The reaction begins: another _sign of the times_.

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Has the professor of the Science Faculty of Toulouse explained anything by drawing attention to that which anyone can see? Of course not. But if, in his ignorance of the esoteric meaning of the allegory he has added nothing to human knowledge, he has on the other hand destroyed faith in many of his pupils in both the “_divine_ origin” of Christianity and its Church and helped to increase the number of Materialists. For surely, no man, once he devotes himself to such comparative studies, can regard the religion of the West in any light but that of a pale and enfeebled copy of older and nobler philosophies.

The origin of all religions—Judaeo-Christianity included—is to be found in a few primeval truths, not one of which can be explained apart from all the others, as each is a complement of the rest in some one detail. And they are all, more or less, broken rays of the same Sun of truth, and their beginnings have to be sought in the archaic records of the Wisdom-religion. Without the light of the latter, the greatest scholars can see but the skeletons thereof covered with masks of fancy, and based mostly on personified Zodiacal signs.

A thick film of allegory and _blinds_, the “dark sayings” of fiction and parable, thus covers the original esoteric texts from which the New Testament—_as now known_—was compiled. Whence, then, the Gospels, the life of Jesus of Nazareth? Has it not been repeatedly stated that no human, _mortal_ brain could have invented the life of the Jewish Reformer, followed by the awful drama on Calvary? We say, on the authority of the esoteric Eastern School, that all this came from the Gnostics, as far as the name Christos and the astronomico-mystical allegories are concerned, and from the writings of the ancient _Tanaïm_ as regards the Kabalistic connection of Jesus or Joshua, with the Biblical personifications. One of these is the mystic esoteric name of Jehovah—not the present fanciful God of the profane Jews ignorant of their own mysteries, the God accepted by the still more ignorant Christians—but the compound Jehovah of the pagan Initiation. This is proven very plainly by the glyphs or mystic combinations of various signs which have survived to this day in the Roman Catholic hieroglyphics.

The Gnostic Records contained the epitome of the chief scenes enacted during the mysteries of Initiation, since the memory of man; though even that was given out invariably under the garb of semi-allegory, whenever entrusted to parchment or paper. But the ancient Tanaïm, the Initiates from whom the wisdom of the Kabala (_oral tradition_) was obtained by the later Talmudists, had in their possession the secrets of the mystery language, and it is _in this language that the Gospels_ were written.[172] He alone who has mastered the esoteric cypher of antiquity—the secret meaning of the numerals, a common property at one time of all nations—has the full proof of the genius which was displayed in the blending of the purely Egypto-Jewish, Old Testament allegories and names, and those of the pagan-Greek Gnostics, the most refined of all the mystics of that day. Bishop Newton proves it himself quite innocently, by showing that “St. Barnabas, the companion of St. Paul, in his epistle (ch. ix.) discovers ... the name of Jesus crucified in the number 318,” namely, Barnabas finds it in the mystic Greek I H T—the _tau_ being the glyph of the cross. On this, a Kabalist, the author of an unpublished MS. on the Key of Formation of the Mystery Language, observes:—“But this is but a play upon the Hebrew letters _Jodh_, _Chith_, and _Shin_, from whence the I H S as the monogram of Christ coming down to our day, and this reads as יהש or 381, the sum of the letters being 318 or the number of Abraham and his Satan, and of Joshua and his Amalek ... also the number of Jacob and his antagonist ... (Godfrey Higgins gives the authority for the number 608).... It is the number of Melchizedek’s name, for the value of the last is 304 and Melchizedek was the priest of the most high God, without beginning nor ending of days.” The solution and secret of Melchizedek are found in the fact that “in the ancient Pantheons the two planets which had existed from eternity (_æonic_ eternity) and were eternal, were the Sun and the Moon, or Osiris and Isis, hence the terms of _without beginning nor ending of days_. 304 multiplied by two is 608. So also the numbers in the word Seth, who was a type of the year. There are a number of authorities for the number 888 as applying to the name of Jesus Christ, and as said this is in antagonism to the 666 of the Anti-Christ.... The staple value in the name of Joshua was the number 365, the indication of the Solar year, while Jehovah delighted in being the indication of the Lunar year—and Jesus Christ was both Joshua and Jehovah in the Christian Pantheon....”

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Footnote 172:

Thus while the three Synoptics display a combination of the pagan
Greek and Jewish symbologies the _Revelation_ is written in the
mystery language of the Tanaïm—the relic of Egyptian and Chaldean
wisdom—and St John’s Gospel is purely Gnostic.

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This is but an illustration to our point to prove that the Christian application of the compound name Jesus-Christ is all based on Gnostic and Eastern mysticism. It was only right and natural that Chroniclers like the initiated Gnostics, pledged to secresy, should veil or _cloak_ the final meaning of their oldest and most sacred teachings. The right of the Church fathers to cover the whole with an epitheme of euhemerized fancy is rather more dubious.[173] The Gnostic Scribe and Chronicler deceived no one. Every Initiate into the Archaic gnosis—whether of the pre-Christian or post-Christian period—knew well the value of every word of the “mystery-language.” For these Gnostics—the inspirers of primitive Christianity—were “the most cultured, the most learned and most wealthy of the Christian name,” as Gibbon has it. Neither they, nor their humbler followers, were in danger of accepting the dead letter of their own texts. But it was different with the victims of the fabricators of what is now called _orthodox_ and _historic_ Christianity. Their successors have all been made to fall into the mistakes of the “foolish Galatians” reproved by Paul, who, as he tells them (Galat. iii. 1-5), having begun (by believing) in the Spirit (of Christos), “ended by believing in _the flesh_,”—_i.e._, a _corporeal_ Christ. For such is the true meaning of the Greek sentence,[174] “ἐναρξάμενοι Πνεύματι νῦν σαρκι ἐπιτελεῖσθε.” That Paul was a gnostic, a founder of a new sect of _gnosis_ which recognized, as all other gnostic sects did, a “Christ-Spirit,” though it went against its opponents, the rival sects, is sufficiently clear to all but dogmatists and theologians. Nor is it less clear that the primitive teachings of Jesus, whenever he may have lived, could be discovered only in Gnostic teachings; against which discovery, the falsifiers who dragged down Spirit into matter, thus degrading the noble philosophy of primeval Wisdom-Religion, have taken ample precautions from the first. The works of Basilides alone—“The philosopher devoted to the contemplation of Divine things,” as Clement describes him—the 24 volumes of his _interpretations upon the Gospels_—were all burned by order of the Church, Eusebius tells us (H. E., iv. 7).

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Footnote 173:

“The claim of Christianity to possess Divine authority rests on
the ignorant belief that the mystical Christ could and did become
a Person, whereas the gnosis proves the corporeal Christ to be
only a counterfeit Presentment of the trans-corporeal man;
consequently, historical portraiture is, and ever must be, a fatal
mode of falsifying and discrediting the Spiritual Reality.” (G.
Massey, “Gnostic and Historic Christianity.”)

Footnote 174:

This sentence analyzed means “Shall you, who in the beginning
looked to the _Christ-Spirit_, now _end_ by believing in a Christ
of flesh,” or it means nothing. The verb ἐπιτελοῦμαι has not the
meaning of “becoming perfect,” but of “ending by,” becoming so.
Paul’s lifelong struggle with Peter and others, and what he
himself tells of his vision of a Spiritual Christ and not of Jesus
of Nazareth, as in the _Acts_—are so many proofs of this.

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As these _Interpretations_ were written at a time when the Gospels we have now, were not yet in existence,[175] here is a good proof that the Evangel, the doctrines of which were delivered to Basilides by the Apostle Matthew, and Glaucus, the disciple of Peter (_Clemens Al._ “_Strom._” vii. 7, § 106), must have differed widely from the present New Testament Nor can these doctrines be judged by the distorted accounts of them left to posterity by Tertullian. Yet even the little this partisan fanatic gives, shows the chief gnostic doctrines to be identical, under their own peculiar terminology and personations, with those of the _Secret Doctrine_ of the East. For, discussing Basilides, the “pious, god-like, theosophic philosopher,” as Clement of Alexandria thought him, Tertullian exclaims:

“After this, Basilides, the _heretic_, broke loose.[176] He
asserted that there is a Supreme God, by name Abraxas, by whom
Mind (_Mahat_) was created, which the Greeks call _Nous_. From
this emanated the Word; from the Word, Providence; from
Providence, Virtue and Wisdom; from these two again, Virtues,
_Principalities_,[177] _and Powers_ were made; thence infinite
productions and emissions of angels. Among the lowest angels,
indeed, and those that made this world, he sets _last of all_ the
god of the Jews, whom he denies to be God himself, affirming that
he is but one of the angels.”[178] (Isis Unv. vol. ii.)

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Footnote 175:

See “Supern. Relig.,” vol. ii., chap. “Basilides.”

Footnote 176:

It was asked in “Isis Unveiled,” were not the views of the
Phrygian Bishop Montanus, also deemed a HERESY by the Church of
Rome? It is quite extraordinary to see how easily that Church
encourages the abuse of one _heretic_, Tertullian, against another
_heretic_, Basilides, when the abuse happens to further her own
object.

Footnote 177:

Does not Paul himself speak of “_Principalities_ and _Powers_ in
heavenly places” (Ephesians iii. 10; i. 21), and confess that
there be _gods_ many and _Lords_ many (Kurioi)? And angels, powers
(Dunameis), and _Principalities_? (See 1 Corinthians, viii. 5; and
Epistle to Romans, viii. 38.)

Footnote 178:

Tertullian: “Præscript.” It is undeniably owing only to a
remarkably casuistical, sleight-of-hand-like argument that
Jehovah, who in the _Kabala_ is simply a Sephiroth, the third,
left-hand power among the Emanations (Binah), has been elevated to
the dignity of the _One_ absolute God. Even in the Bible he is but
one of the _Elohim_ (See Genesis, chapter iii. v. 22. “The Lord
God” making no difference between himself and others.)

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Another proof of the claim that the Gospel of Matthew in the usual Greek texts is not the original gospel written in Hebrew, is given by no less an authority than S. Jerome (or Hieronymus). The suspicion of a conscious and gradual _euhemerization_ of the Christ principle ever since the beginning, grows into a conviction, once that one becomes acquainted with a certain confession contained in book ii. of the “Comment. to Matthew” by Hieronymus. For we find in it the proofs of a deliberate substitution of the whole gospel, the one now in the Canon having been evidently re-written by this too zealous Church Father.[179] He says that he was sent toward the close of the fourth century by “their Felicities,” the Bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus to Cæsarea, with the mission to compare the Greek text (the only one they ever had) with the Hebrew original version preserved by the Nazarenes in their library, and to translate it. He translated it, but under protest; for, as he says, the _Evangel_ “exhibited matter _not for edification, but for destruction.”_[180] The “destruction” of what? Of the dogma that Jesus of Nazareth and the _Christos_ are one—evidently; hence for the “destruction” of the newly planned religion.[181] In this same letter the Saint (who advised his converts to kill their fathers, trample on the bosom that fed them, by walking over the bodies of their mothers, if the parents stood as an obstacle between their sons and Christ)—admits that Matthew did not wish his gospel to be _openly written_, hence that the MS. _was a secret_ one. But while admitting also that this gospel “was written in Hebrew characters and _by the hand of himself_” (_Matthew_), yet in another place he contradicts himself and assures posterity that _as it was tampered with, and re-written by a disciple of Manicheus, named Seleucus_ ... “the ears of the Church properly refused to listen to it.” (_Hieron._, “Comment. to Matthew,” book ii. chapter xii., 13.)

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Footnote 179:

This is _history_. How far that _re-writing_ of, and tampering
with, the primitive gnostic fragments which are now become the New
Testament, went, may be inferred by reading “Supernatural
Religion,” which went through over twenty-three editions, if I
mistake not. The host of authorities for it given by the author,
is simply appalling. The list of the English and German Bible
critics alone seems endless.

Footnote 180:

The chief details are given in “Isis Unveiled,” vol. ii pp.
180-183, _et seq._ Truly faith in the infallibility of the Church
must be _stone-blind_—or it could not have failed being killed
and—dying.

Footnote 181:

See Hieronymus: “De Viros,” illust. cap. 3; Olshausen: “Neuen
Test.,” p. 32. The Greek text of Matthew’s Gospel is the only one
used or ever possessed by the Church.

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No wonder that the very meaning of the terms _Chrestos_ and _Christos_, and the bearing of both on “Jesus of Nazareth,” a name coined out of Joshua the _Nazar_, has now become a dead letter for all with the exception of non-Christian Occultists. For even the Kabalists have no original data now to rely upon. The _Zohar_ and the Kabala have been remodelled by Christian hands out of recognition; and were it not for a copy of the Chaldean _Book of Numbers_ there would remain no better than garbled accounts. Let not our Brothers, the so-called Christian Kabalists of England and France, many of whom are Theosophists, protest too vehemently; for _this is history_ (See Munk). It is as foolish to maintain, as some German Orientalists and modern critics still do, that the Kabala has never existed before the day of the Spanish Jew, Moses de Leon, accused of having forged this pseudograph in the 13th century, as to claim that any of the Kabalistical works now in our possession are as original as they were when Rabbi Simeon Ben Jochaï delivered the “traditions” to his son and followers. Not a single of these books is immaculate, none has escaped mutilation by Christian hands. Munk, one of the most learned and able critics of his day on this subject, proves it, while protesting as we do, against the assumption that it is a post-Christian forgery, for he says:

“It appears evident to us that the author made use of ancient documents, and among these of certain _Midraschim_ or collections of traditions and Biblical expositions, which we do not now possess.”

After which, quoting from Tholuck (l. c. pp. 24 and 31), he adds:

“Haya Gaon, who died in 1038, is to our knowledge the first author who developed the theory of the Sephiroth and he gave to them the names which we find again to be among the Kabalists (Tellenik, Moses ben Schem Tob di Leon, p. 13, note 5); this doctor, _who had intimate intercourse with the Syrian and Chaldean Christian savans_, was enabled by these last to acquire a knowledge of some of the Gnostic writings.”

Which “Gnostic writings” and esoteric tenets passed part and parcel into the Kabalistic works, with many more modern interpolations that we now find in the _Zohar_, as Munk well proves. The Kabala is Christian now, not Jewish.

Thus, what with several generations of most active Church Fathers ever working at the destruction of old documents and the preparation of new passages to be interpolated in those which happened to survive, there remains of the _Gnostics_—the legitimate offspring of the Archaic Wisdom-religion—but a few unrecognisable shreds. But a particle of genuine gold will glitter for ever; and, however garbled the accounts left by Tertullian and Epiphanius of the Doctrines of the “Heretics,” an occultist can yet find even in them traces of those primeval truths which were once universally imparted during the mysteries of Initiation. Among other works with most suggestive allegories in them, we have still the so-called _Apocryphal Gospels_, and the last discovered as the most precious relic of Gnostic literature, a fragment called _Pistis-Sophia_, “Knowledge-Wisdom.”

In my next article upon the Esoteric character of the Gospels, I hope to be able to demonstrate that those who translate _Pistis_ by “Faith,” are utterly wrong. The word “faith” as _grace_ or something to be believed in through unreasoned or blind faith, is a word that dates only since Christianity. Nor has Paul ever used this term in this sense in his Epistles; and Paul was undeniably—an INITIATE.

H. P. B.

(_To be continued._)

=Reviews.=

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“SPIRIT REVEALED.”[182]

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Footnote 182:

By Captain Wm. C. Eldon Serjeant. Published by Geo. Redway, York
Street, Covent Garden. Price 7s. 6d.

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