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THE CADUCEUS EXPLAINED BY BLAVATSKY



 
The caduceus is the scepter that the Greeks related to the god Hermes, and the Romans related to the god Mercury (his alter ego), and it is characterized by having two snakes wrapped around a rod:
 
 
 
 
 
ORIGIN
 
On the origin of the caduceus, Blavatsky specified that:
 
«Thoth, as the Registrar and Recorder of Osiris in Amenti, the Judgment Hall of the Dead was a psychopompic deity; while Iamblichus hints that "the cross with a handle (the thau ortau) which Tot holds in his hand, was none other than the monogram of his name".
 
Besides the Tau, as the prototype of Mercury, Thoth carries the serpentrod, emblem of Wisdom, the rod that became the Caduceus.
 
Says Mr. Bonwick, "Hermes was the serpent itself in a mystical sense. He glides like that creature, noiselessly, without apparent exertion, along the course of ages. He is . . . a representative of the spangled heavens. But he is the foe of the bad serpent, for the ibis devoured the snakes of Egypt." »
(TG, Thot)
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
THE DIFFERENT MEANINGS
OF THE CADUCEUS
 
On what the caduceus symbolizes, Blavatsky revealed that:
 
« Caduceus (Gr.). The Greek poets and mythologists took the idea of the Caduceus of Mercury from the Egyptians.
 
The Caduceus is found as two serpents twisted round a rod, on Egyptian monuments built before Osiris.
 
The Greeks altered this. We find it again in the hands of Æsculapius assuming a different form to the wand of Mercurius or Hermes.
 
It is a cosmic, sidereal or astronomical, as well as a spiritual and even physiological symbol, its significance changing with its application.
 
Metaphysically, the Caduceus represents the fall of primeval and primordial matter into gross terrestrial matter, the one Reality becoming Illusion. (See SD I, p.550)
 
Astronomically, the head and tail represent the points of the ecliptic where the planets and even the sun and moon meet in close embrace.
 
Physiologically, it is the symbol of the restoration of the equilibrium lost between Life, as a unit, and the currents of life performing various functions in the human body. »
(TG, Caduceus)
 
 
 
 
 
ITS METAPHYSICAL SYMBOLISM
 
On what the caduceus metaphysically symbolizes, Blavatsky added:
 
«The Caduceus explains the mystery, and the four-fold Dodecahedron on the model of which the universe is said by Plato to have been built by the manifested Logos (synthesized by the unmanifested First-Born) yields geometrically the key to Cosmogony and its microcosmic reflection—our Earth. »
(TG, Ether)
 
 
 
And in her work, The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky specified the following:
 
«
 
 
Occultism, which knows of the existence and presence in Nature of the One eternal element at the first differentiation of which the roots of the tree of life are periodically struck, needs no scientific proofs. It says:
 
Ancient Wisdom has solved the problem ages ago. Aye; earnest, as well as mocking reader, Science is slowly but as surely approaching our domains of the Occult. It is forced by its own discoveries to adopt nolens volens our phraseology and symbols.
 
Chemical Science is now compelled, by the very force of things, to accept even our illustration of the evolution of the gods and atoms, so suggestively and undeniably figured in the caduceus of Mercury, the God of Wisdom, and in the allegorical language of the Archaic Sages. Says a commentary in the esoteric doctrine:
 
“The trunk of the Asvattha (the tree of Life and Being, the rod of the caduceus) grows from and descends at every Beginning (every new manvantara) from the two dark wings of the Swan (Hansa) of Life. The two Serpents, the ever-living and its illusion (Spirit and matter) whose two heads grow from the one head between the wings, descend along the trunk, interlaced in close embrace. The two tails join on earth (the manifested Universe) into one, and this is the great illusion, O Lanoo!
 
 
Every one knows what the caduceus is, already modified by the Greeks. The original symbol — with the triple head of the serpent — became altered into a rod with a knob, and the two lower heads were separated, thus disfiguring somewhat the original meaning.
 
Yet it is as good an illustration as can be for our purpose, this laya rod entwined by two serpents. Verily the wonderful powers of the magic caduceus were sung by all the ancient poets, with a very good reason for those who understood the secret meaning.
 
Now what says the learned President of the Chemical Society of Great Britain, in that same lecture, which has any reference to, or bearing upon, our above-mentioned doctrine. Very little; only this — and nothing more:
 
“In the Birmingham address already referred to I asked my audience to picture the action of two forces on the original protyle — one being time, accompanied by a lowering of temperature; the other, swinging to and fro like a mighty pendulum, having periodic cycles of ebb and swell, rest and activity, being intimately connected with the imponderable matter, essence, or source of energy we call electricity.
 
Now, a simile like this effects its object if it fixes in the mind the particular fact it is intended to emphasize, but it must not be expected necessarily to run parallel with all the facts. Besides the lowering of temperature with the periodic ebb and flow of electricity, positive or negative, requisite to confer on the newly-born elements their particular atomicity, it is evident that a third factor must be taken into account. Nature does not act on a flat plane; she demands space for her cosmogenic operations, and if we introduce space as the third factor, all appears clear.
 
Instead of a pendulum, which, though to a certain extent a good illustration, is impossible as a fact, let us seek some more satisfactory way of representing what I conceive may have taken place. Let us suppose the zigzag diagram not drawn upon a plane, but projected in space of three dimensions. What figure can we best select to meet all the conditions involved?
 
Many of the facts can be well explained by supposing the projection in space of Professor Emerson Reynolds’ zigzag curve to be a spiral. This figure is, however, inadmissible, inasmuch as the curve has to pass through a point neutral as to electricity and chemical energy twice in each cycle. We must, therefore, adopt some other figure. A figure of eight (8), or lemniscate, will foreshorten into a zigzag just as well as a spiral, and it fulfils every condition of the problem.”
 
 
A lemniscate for the evolution downward, from Spirit into matter; another form of a spiral, perhaps, in its reinvolutionary path onward, from matter into Spirit, and the necessary gradual and final reabsorption into the laya state, that which Science calls in her own way “the point neutral as to electricity” etc., or the zero point.
 
Such are the Occult facts and statement. They may be left with the greatest security and confidence to Science, to be justified some day. »
(SD I, p.549-551)
 
 
Cid's observation: I am very impressed by how the coiling of the two snakes corresponds to the shape of DNA, and apparently this figure is important not only on a scientific level but also on an esoteric level.
 
 
 
 
And Blavatsky also indicated that the occultist Éliphas Lévi had already taught something similar:
 
«
 
Eliphas Levi shows it very truly “a force in Nature,” by means of which “a single man who can master it . . . might throw the world into confusion and transform its face”; for it is the “great Arcanum of transcendent Magic.”
 
Quoting the words of the great Western Kabalist in their translated form (see The Mysteries of Magic, by A. E. Waite), we may explain them perhaps the better by the occasional addition of a word or two to show the difference between Western and Eastern explanations of the same subject.
 
The Author says of the great Magic Agent:
 
“This ambient and all-penetrating fluid, this ray detached from the (Central or ‘Spiritual’) Sun’s splendour . . . fixed by the weight of the atmosphere (?!) and the power of central attraction . . . the Astral Light, this electromagnetic ether, this vital and luminous caloric, is represented on ancient monuments by the girdle of Isis which twines round two poles . . . and in ancient theogonies by the serpent devouring its own tail, emblem of prudence and of Saturn” — emblem of infinity, immortality, and Kronos — “Time” — not the god Saturn or the planet.
 
It is the winged dragon of Medea, the double serpent of the caduceus, and the tempter of Genesis; but it is also the brazen snake of Moses encircling the Tau . . . lastly, it is the devil of exoteric dogmatism, and is really the blind force (it is not blind, and Levi knew it), which souls must conquer in order to detach themselves from the chains of Earth; ‘for if they should not,’ they will be absorbed by the same power which first produced them and will return to the central and eternal fire.” »
(SD I, p.253)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
ESOTERIC SYMBOLISM
OF THE SERPENT
 
About other symbols that at an esoteric level are associated with the serpents of the caduceus, Blavatsky commented:
 
« The sovereign will [of the adept] is represented in our symbols by the woman who crushes the serpent’s head, and by the resplendent angel who represses the dragon, and holds him under his foot and spear; the great magical agent, the dual current of light, the living and astral fire of the earth, has been represented in the ancient theogonies by the serpent with the head of a bull, a ram, or a dog.
 
It is the double serpent of the caduceus, it is the Old Serpent of Genesis, but it is also the brazen serpent of Moses entwined around the tau, that is to say, the generative lingam. It is also the goat of the witch-sabbath, and the Baphomet of the Templars; it is the Hylê of the Gnostics; it is the double-tailed serpent which forms the legs of the solar cock of the Abraxas: finally, it is the Devil of M. Eudes de Mirville.
 
But in very fact it is the blind force which souls [i.e., the lower Manas or Nephesh] have to conquer to liberate themselves from the bonds of the earth; for if their will does not free them from this fatal attraction, they will be absorbed in the current by the force which has produced them, and will return to the central and eternal fire. »
(CW 12, p.373-4)
 
 
 
But Blavatsky also pointed out that the snake has different symbolisms:
 
« That the Serpents were ever the emblems of wisdom and prudence is again shown by the caduceus of Mercury, one with Thot, the god of wisdom, with Hermes, and so on.
 
The two serpents, entwined around the rod, are phallic symbols of Jupiter and other gods who transformed themselves into snakes for purposes of seducing goddesses — but only in the unclean fancies of profane symbologists.
 
The serpent has ever been the symbol of the adept, and of his powers of immortality and divine knowledge.
 
Mercury in his psychopompic character, conducting and guiding with the caduceus the souls of the dead to Hades and even raising the dead to life with it, is simply a very transparent allegory. It shows the dual power of the Secret Wisdom: the black and the white magic. It shows this personified Wisdom guiding the Soul after death, and its power to call to life that which is dead — a very deep metaphor if one thinks over its meaning.
 
Every people of antiquity reverenced this symbol, with the exception of Christians, who chose to forget the brazen Serpent of Moses, and even the implied acknowledgment of the great wisdom and prudence of the Serpent by Jesus himself, “Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves.”
 
The Chinese, one of the oldest nations of our Fifth Race, made of it the emblem of their Emperors [which they later transformed into elongated flying dragons]. »
(SD II, p.364)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

THE HODGSON REPORT REVIEWED BY GRACE KNOCHE

 
Grace F. Knoche was a leading Theosophist of the Pasadena Theosophical Society, and on this subject she wrote the following article:
 
 
 
H. P. BLAVATSKY AND THE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
 
Historical events
 
In 1882 The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was founded in London, England, for the purpose of examining impartially in a scientific spirit those paranormal faculties which are inexplicable by recognized norms.
 
The SPR intrigued by certain happenings reportedly occurring by or in the presence of H. P. Blavatsky, which after careful inquiry appeared to several SPR members to merit investigation, a Committee of Reference was appointed to amass evidence from theosophists visiting London during the summer of 1884 – notably Henry S. Olcott, H. P. Blavatsky, and Mohini M. Chatterji, an attorney from Calcutta, India; also Alfred P. Sinnett who had alluded in his book The Occult World (1881) to several extra-ordinary happenings.
 
While their findings were inconclusive, a number of strange events reported by several theosophists of repute led the SPR Committee to issue a "preliminary and provisional Report" in December 1884. Because of its tentative character it was circulated privately, and whereas the Committee withheld endorsement of what they had seen and heard, the reportage by and large was fair and open-minded.
 
At the theosophical headquarters in India, however, matters had taken a drastically different turn. During HPB's and Olcott's several months' absence in Europe, Emma and Alexis Coulomb – whom HPB had sheltered in 1880 and to whom she had given posts of responsibility – had been dismissed for flagrant misconduct by the Board of Control appointed by Olcott. Their keys to HPB's rooms were handed over to Dr. Franz Hartmann. It was discovered that Alexis Coulomb was in process of constructing a secret passage in the wall behind the "shrine" (1) as well as trapdoors and sliding panels elsewhere in her rooms – evidently in hopes of "proving" that communications to and from the Adepts were nothing but a sham concocted by HPB.
 
In revenge, Emma Coulomb handed over to the Rev. Mr. George Patterson, editor of a missionary paper, the Madras Christian College Magazine, a number of letters purportedly written by HPB. (2)
 
Extracts from these appeared under the title, "The Collapse of Koot Hoomi," in its September and October 1884 issues. Had these been genuine, they would have confirmed that HPB had, with the Coulombs' assistance, engaged in producing fraudulent marvels on a massive scale.
 
It seems rather partisan of Mr. Patterson to have accepted these "incriminating" letters as having been written by H. P. Blavatsky solely on Emma Coulomb's word.
 
A few months after her dismissal, Mme. Coulomb put on an "Entertainment" on October 18, 1884, for the people of Madras, and stated that the phenomena that had supposedly occurred spontaneously were fake, that both she and her husband had assisted Mme. Blavatsky in producing them. (3)
 
When word of this base assault on her honor and that of her teachers and the Theosophical Society reached HPB –then in Elberfeld, Germany– she was outraged, and she and Olcott soon headed for India. Totally false, said HPB, backed by Olcott who had experienced since his New York days sufficient phenomena to know that the often mysterious incidents at Adyar occurring around HPB – many in his presence – though often difficult to explain scientifically were by no means faked.
 
 
 
 
The Richard Hodgson Report
 
The odor of "fraud" is subtle and pervasive, and Henry Sidgwick, Frederic Myers, and their SPR colleagues soon got wind of the possibility that HPB might have engaged in trickery. While reserving judgment, they decided to check out the situation themselves.
 
They deputized one of their younger members, Richard Hodgson, Australian-born Cambridge scholar and a student of pyschic phenomena, to go to India and investigate firsthand whether or not the reported phenomena had occurred at the theosophical headquarters at Adyar, Madras, and whether the letters allegedly received from chelas and/or Mahatmas were genuine.
 
Apparently it never occurred either to the SPR or to Hodgson how ill-equipped he was to undertake so delicate and significant a task as would be demanded of him.
 
On arrival at Adyar in December, Hodgson received a warm welcome by both HPB and Damodar, a young Brahman who had renounced family and caste in order to work full time at the theosophical headquarters. At the outset HPB asserted that the letters published in the Christian College Magazine were forgeries.
 
At first Hodgson was predisposed to believe in her innocence, but soon he adopted Emma Coulomb's position: that she (Emma) not only had assisted HPB in fraudulent activities, but that HPB had herself written the so-called "Mahatma" letters.
 
Surprisingly, the SPR Committee failed to check the veracity of Hodgson's wholesale condemnations, and also accepted Emma Coulomb's statements at face value. Equally surprising is the summary comment of the SPR Committee of Reference in introducing Richard Hodgson's Report:
 
“For our own part, we regard her [H.P. Blavatsky] neither as the mouthpiece of hidden seers, nor as a mere vulgar adventuress; we think that she has achieved a title to permanent remembrance as one of the most accomplished, ingenious, and interesting impostors in history.” – Statement and Conclusions of the Committee (4)
 
This opinion, arrived at without the requisite disciplined research that HPB merited, introduces Richard Hodgson's "Account of Personal Investigations in India, and Discussion of the Authorship of the 'Koot Hoomi' Letters".
 
Totaling 200 printed pages, a fair part of it centers on Hodgson's claim that Madame Blavatsky "forged" the so-called Mahatma letters which she (and others) stated they had received from her teachers, the Adepts who sponsored the founding of the Theosophical Society in 1875.
 
For more than a century the Hodgson "verdict" has been cited by encyclopedias, dictionaries, and biographies as the accepted judgment of history.
 
To refute the claim, spirited defenses were immediately made by William Q. Judge, A. P. Sinnett, Annie Besant, and others, and through the years excellent books defended her, among them:
 
·       William Kingsland's The Real H. P. Blavatsky, A Study in Theosophy, and a Memoir of a Great Soul, 1928.
·       Beatrice Hastings' Defence of Madame Blavatsky, Volume II, The "Coulomb Pamphlet," 1937.
·       K. F. Vania's Madame H. P. Blavatsky: Her Occult Phenomena and The Society for Psychical Research, 1951.
·       Adlai E. Waterman's (penname of Walter Carrithers, Jr.) Obituary: The "Hodgson Report" on Madame Blavatsky, 1885-1960; Re-examination: Discredits the Major Charges Against H. P. Blavatsky, 1963.
 
 
It is gratifying to learn that Sir William Barrett, initiator of the SPR, and who had believed along with his Cambridge associates that HPB had been involved in fraud in connection with the production of supernormal phenomena, had a change of heart.
 
According to Dr. J. H. Cousins, years later, in 1915, when he and Sir William were riding together in a Dublin tramcar, he told Dr. Cousins that Richard Hodgson had "come to believe in quite as extraordinary things as he had condemned in the case of Madame Blavatsky, and he [Sir William] hoped that the Report, which was a blot on the Proceedings of the S.P.R., would some day be withdrawn". (5)
 
Alas! this has not occurred, and the dictum of the SPR is still given primacy by academia and continues to mislead the general public. On the positive side HPB has always had and continues today to have staunch defenders, not alone among theosophists, but among admirers who independently recognize the validity of her message. All are stunned by the unconscionable treatment she has been accorded by generations of detractors. Regrettably, many find it simpler to accept a prevailing view rather than check the facts for themselves.
 
 
 
 
The analysis that Dr. Vernon Harrison did
 
Notable among present-day defenders is Dr. Vernon Harrison of England. "Impelled by a strong feeling of the need for JUSTICE," this handwriting expert and professional examiner of questioned documents has made an exhaustive study of the handwritings of the Mahatma letters received in the early 1880s by Alfred P. Sinnett and Allan O. Hume. (6)
 
The content of the letters is not the present concern of Dr. Harrison, nor are their authors – known to students of H. P. Blavatsky's writings as the Mahatmas Morya (M) and Koot Hoomi (KH). His focus of interest is to determine whether or not HPB, in disguised handwriting, wrote the Mahatma letters herself, as Richard Hodgson categorically declared.
 
In 1986 Dr. Harrison wrote "a forceful critique" of Richard Hodgson's Report, "J'Accuse: An Examination of the Hodgson Report of 1885," published in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. (7)
 
Herein step by logical step he demolishes the grounds on which Hodgson based his charges and argued his case against the integrity of HPB. This year Dr. Harrison authored "J'Accuse d'autant plus [I accuse all the more]: A Further Study of the Hodgson Report," which, along with his 1986 Report, is now available in one volume, with 13 full color plates, under the title: H. P. Blavatsky and the SPR: An Examination of the Hodgson Report of 1885. (8)
 
Dr. Harrison, who joined the SPR as a young man and remains an active member, finds it incredible that the SPR Committee were blind to the extraordinary opportunity before them to observe and learn firsthand from HPB herself, a superbly gifted mediator – but no medium – and more, that without stringent scrutiny they should have accepted the unverified report of a young man who, though well educated by ordinary standards, was incompetent to handle an investigation of this scope and magnitude.
 
In his research Dr. Harrison examined microscopically each of the 1,323 slides comprising a complete set of the letters in the British Library, and wherever appropriate "read the writing in a line-by-line scan at a magnification of x50 diameters." (9)
 
From his extensive and detailed study, he has come to view the Hodgson Report as "a highly partisan document forfeiting all claim to scientific impartiality. It is the address of a Counsel for the Prosecution who does not hesitate to select evidence to suit his case, ignoring and suppressing everything that tends to contradict his thesis" (p.4).
 
In his Affidavit, he affirms:
 
"Having read the Mahatma Letters, I am left with the strong impression that the writers 'KH' and 'M' were real and distinct human beings, not demi-gods or 'shells'. . . ."
 
And under he further declares:
 
"I have found no evidence that the Mahatma Letters preserved in the British Library were written by Helena Blavatsky consciously and deliberately in a disguised form of her own handwriting cultivated over a period of several years, as claimed by Richard Hodgson. That is to say, I find no evidence of common origin between the 'KH', 'M' and 'HPB' scripts. In any ordinary legal case I would regard them as different scripts and attribute them to three different persons."
 
According to Dr. Harrison, there still remain "unanswered questions" with regard to HPB and the phenomena attributed to her, especially during the early years of her stay in India, first in Bombay and later in Adyar, Madras. About these, he is unable to express an opinion, as "All witnesses and items of first-hand evidence are gone and I have no way of checking whether any of the reported 'phenomena' were genuine; but, having studied Richard Hodgson's methods, I have come to distrust his account and explanation of the said 'phenomena'".
 
Hence, he concentrated on what is available: the handwritings of the Mahatma and Blavatsky letters in the British Library. He concludes his Affidavit with the following:
 
BE IT KNOWN THEREFORE that it is my professional OPINION derived from a study of this case extending over a period of more than fifteen years, that future historians and biographers of the said Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, the compilers of reference books, encyclopaedias and dictionaries, as well as the general public, should come to realize that The Report of the Committee Appointed to Investigate Phenomena Connected with The Theosophical Society, published in 1885 by the Society for Psychical Research, should be read with great caution, if not disregarded. Far from being a model of impartial investigation so often claimed for it over more than a century, it is badly flawed and untrustworthy.
 
 
 
 
Conclusion
 
The prophetic statement that "Time is the advocate of truth," is again proving its validity. Today, those whose thought-life and destiny have been changed for the better by absorption of theosophic values are passionately grateful to HPB for having had the raw courage, loyalty to truth, and fearless will to become the transmitter of a philosophy of life that is at once universal and yet intimately personal to meet the inner need of every human being.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Notes
1. A cabinet in an upstairs room used earlier by HPB and others for the transmission and receipt of Mahatmic letters and messages; but the evidence of unfinished carpenter work indicated that the cabinet had not been used by HPB for some time.
 
2. The so-called Blavatsky-Coulomb letters have never been found, despite vigorous efforts by several researchers to retrieve them from oblivion. Only an endorsed cheque for their purchase by Dr. Elliott Coues from the Rev. Mr. Patterson has been found among the Coues archives at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (Michael Gomes, "The Coulomb Case, 1884-1984," The Theosophist, Feb 1985, p. 185).
 
3. See K. F. Vania's Madame H. P. Blavatsky: Her Occult Phenomena and The Society for Psychical Research, pp. 238-41.
 
4. "Report of the Committee Appointed to Investigate Phenomena Connected with The Theosophical Society," Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Part IX, December 1885, p. 207.
 
5. Quoted in "On the Watch-Tower," The Theosophist, October 1925, p. 5.
 
6. The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, 1923, transcribed and compiled by A. Trevor Barker; Second Edition, 1926, photographic facsimile, Theosophical University Press, Pasadena, CA; Third and Revised edition, 1962, The Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, Madras, India; In Chronological Sequence, 1993, Theosophical Publishing House, Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines.
 
7. April 1986 (53:803), pp. 286-310. See editorial, "In the Interests of Truth . . ." Sunrise, August-September 1986, pp. 193-8.
 
8. Published by Theosophical University Press, Pasadena, 1997, 108 pages, cloth, ISBN 1-55700-117-0, $15.00.
 
9. H. P. Blavatsky and the SPR, Affidavit, p. 1.
 
 
 
(From Sunrise magazine, June/July 1997)