This is a letter that Blavatsky wrote to the editor of
the spiritualist magazine "Religio-Philosophical Journal"
explaining the kabbalistic meaning of the word elementary and the
mistakes that spiritualists make; and this letter was published in that
magazine in the edition of November 17, 1877, (p.1) with the title:
“ELEMENTARIES”
A LETTER FROM THE
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
(Note: for a better understanding of the text, I
recommend that you first read the theosophical definition of the elementaries
in this other link.)
Editor, Journal:
Dear Sir, — I perceive that of late
the ostracized subject of the Kabbalistic “elementaries,” is beginning to appear
in the orthodox spiritual papers, pretty often. No wonder; Spiritualism and its
philosophy are progressing, and they will progress, despite the opposition of
some very learned ignoramuses who imagine the cosmos rotates within the
academic brain.
But if a new term is once admitted
for discussion the least we can do is to first clearly ascertain what that term
means; we students of the Oriental philosophy count it a clear gain that
Spiritualist journals on both sides of the Atlantic are beginning to discuss
the subject of subhuman and earth-bound beings, even though they ridicule the
idea. Only do those who ridicule it know what they are talking about?
Having never studied the Kabbalist
writers, it becomes evident to me that they confound the
“elementaries”—disembodied, vicious, and earth-bound, yet human spirits, with
the “elementals,” or nature-spirits.
With your permission, then, I will
answer an article by Dr. Woldrich, which appeared in your Journal of the 27th
inst., and to which the author gives the title of “Elementaries.” I freely
admit that owing to my imperfect knowledge of English at the time I first wrote
upon the elementaries, I may have myself contributed to the present confusion,
and thus brought upon my doomed head the wrath of Spiritualists, mediums, and
their “guides” into the bargain. But now I will attempt to make my meaning
clear. Éliphas Lévi applies equally the term “elementary” to earthbound human
spirits and to the creatures of the elements.
This carelessness on his part is due
to the fact that as the human elementaries are considered by the Kabbalists as
having irretrievably lost every chance of immortality, they therefore, after a
certain period of time, become no better than the elementals who never had any
soul at all.
(Cid's note: this idea of the Kabbalists is incorrect
because the elementaries are destined for disintegration, while the elementals
- like the other kingdoms of nature - are in a process of evolution, although
they do not yet have a soul. well defined
as is the case with humans.)
To disentangle the subject, I have,
in my Isis Unveiled, shown that the former should alone be called
“elementaries,” and the latter “elementals” (Before the Veil, Vol. I, pp.
xxix-xxx).
The mistakes that Dr. Woldrich makes
Dr. Woldrich, in imitation of
Herbert Spencer, attempts to explain the existence of a popular belief in nature-spirits,
demons and mythological deities, as the effect of an imagination untutored by
science, and wrought upon by misunderstood natural phenomena. He attributes the
legendary sylphs, undines, salamanders and gnomes, four great families, which
include numberless subdivisions, to mere fancy; going, however, to the extreme
of affirming that by long practice one can acquire “that power which
disembodied spirits have of materializing apparitions by his will.” Granted
that “disembodied spirits” have sometimes that power, but if disembodied, why
not embodied spirit also, i.e., a yet living person who has become an adept in
occultism through study?
According to Dr. Woldrich’s theory
an embodied spirit or magician can create only subjectively, or to quote his
words:
-
“He is in the habit
of summoning, that is, bringing up to his imagination his familiar spirits,
which, having responded to his will, he will consider as real existences.”
I will not stop to inquire for the
proofs of this assertion, for it would only lead to an endless discussion. If
many thousands of Spiritualists in Europe and America have seen materialized
objective forms which assure them they were the spirits of once living persons,
millions of Eastern people throughout the past ages have seen the Hierophants
of the temples, and even now see them in India, also evoking, without being in
the least mediums, objective and tangible forms, which display no pretensions
to being the souls of disembodied men.
But I will only remark that, as Dr.
Woldrich tells us that, though subjective and invisible to others, these forms
are palpable, hence objective to the clairvoyant, no scientist has yet mastered
the mysteries of even the physical sciences sufficiently to enable him to
contradict, with anything like plausible or incontrovertible proofs, the
assumption that because a clairvoyant sees a form remaining subjective to
others, this form is nevertheless neither a hallucination nor a fiction of the
imagination. Were the persons present endowed with the same clairvoyant
faculty, they would everyone of them see this “creature of hallucination” as
well; hence there would be sufficient proof that it had an objective existence.
And this is how the experiments are
conducted in certain psychological training schools, as I call such
establishments in the East. One clairvoyant is never trusted. The person may be
honest, truthful, and have the greatest desire to learn only that which is
real, and yet mix the truth unconsciously and accept an elemental for a disembodied
spirit, and vice versa. For instance, what guarantee can Dr. Woldrich give us
that “Hoki” and “Thalla,” the guides of Miss May Shaw, were not simply
creatures produced by the power of imagination?
This gentleman may have the word of
his clairvoyant for this; he may implicitly and very deservedly trust her
honesty when in her normal state; but the fact alone that a medium is a passive
and docile instrument in the hands of some invisible and mysterious powers,
ought to make her irresponsible in the eyes of every serious investigator. It
is the spirit, or these invisible powers, he has to test, not the
clairvoyant’s; and what proof has he of their trustworthiness that he should
think himself warranted in coming out as the exponent of a philosophy based on thousands
of years of practical experience, the iconoclast of experiments performed by
whole generations of learned Egyptian Hierophants, Guru-Brahmans, adepts of the
sanctuaries, and a whole host of more or less learned Kabbalists, who were all
trained Seers?
Such an accusation, moreover, is
dangerous ground for the Spiritualists themselves. Admit once that a magician
creates his forms only in fancy, and as a result of hallucination, and what
becomes of all the guides, spirit friends, and the tutti quanti from the sweet
Summerland crowding around the trance medium and seers? Why these would-be
disembodied entities should be considered more identified than the elementals,
or as Dr. Woldrich terms them, “elementaries” — of the magician, is something
which could scarcely bear investigation.
The Buddhist concept
From the standpoint of certain
Buddhist schools, your correspondent may be right. Their philosophy teaches
that even our visible universe assumed an objective form as a result of the
fancy followed by the volition or the will of the unknown and supreme adept,
differing from Christian theology, however, inasmuch as they teach that instead
of calling out our universe from nothingness, he had to exercise this will upon
pre-existing matter, eternal and indestructible as to invisible substance,
though temporary and ever-changing as to forms.
Some higher and still more subtle
metaphysical schools of Nepal even go so far as to affirm —on very reasonable
grounds too— that this pre-existing and self-existent substance or matter
(Svabhavat) is itself without any other creator or ruler; when in the state of
activity it is Pravritti, a universal creating principle; when latent and
passive, they call this force Nivritti. As for something eternal and infinite,
for that which had neither beginning nor end, there can be neither past nor
future, but everything that was and will be, IS, therefore there never was an
action or even thought, however simple, that is not impressed in imperishable
records on this substance called by the Buddhists Svabhavat, by the Kabbalists
astral light.
As in a faithful mirror this light
reflects every image, and no human imagination could see anything outside that
which exists impressed somewhere on the eternal substance. To imagine that a human
brain can conceive of anything that was never conceived of before by the
“universal brain,” is a fallacy, and a conceited presumption. At best, the
former can catch now and then stray glimpses of the “eternal thought” after
these have assumed some objective form, either in the world of the invisible or
visible universe.
The Mistakes Spiritualists Make
Hence the unanimous testimony of
trained seers goes to prove that there are such creatures as the elementals;
and that though the elementaries have been at some time human spirits, they,
having lost every connection with the purer immortal world, must be recognized
by some special term which would draw a distinct line of demarcation between
them and the true and genuine disembodied souls which have henceforth to remain
immortal. To the Kabbalists and the adepts, especially in India, the difference
between the two is all important, and their tutored minds will never allow them
to mistake the one for the other; to the untutored medium they are all one.
Spiritualists have never accepted
the suggestions and sound advice of certain of their seers and mediums. They
have regarded Mr. Peebles’ “Gadarenes” with indifference; they have shrugged
their shoulders at the “Rosicrucian” fantasies of P. B. Randolph, and his
“Ravalette” has made none of them the wiser; they have frowned and grumbled at
A. Jackson Davis’ “Diakka”; and finally lifting high the banner have declared a
murderous war of extermination to the Theosophists and Kabbalists.
What are now the results?
A series of exposures of fraudulent
mediums that have brought mortification to their endorsers and dishonor upon
the cause; identification by genuine seers and mediums of pretended
spirit-forms that were afterwards found to be mere personations by living
cheats — which goes to prove that in such instances at least, outside of clear
cases of confederacy the identifications were due to illusion on the part of
the said seers: spirit-babes discovered to be battered masks and bundles of
rags; obsessed mediums driven by their guides to drunkenness and immorality of
conduct — the practices of free love endorsed and even prompted by alleged
immortal spirits; sensitive believers forced to the commission of murder,
suicide, forgery, embezzlement and other crimes; the overcredulous led to waste
their substance in foolish investments and the search after hidden treasures;
mediums fostering ruinous speculations in stocks; free loveites parted from
their wives in search of other female affinities; two continents flooded with
the vilest slanders, spoken and sometimes printed by mediums against other
mediums; incubi and succubi entertained as returning angel-husbands or wives;
mountebanks and jugglers protected by scientists and the clergy and gathering
large audiences to witness imitations of the phenomena of cabinets, the reality
of which genuine mediums themselves and spirits are powerless to vindicate by
giving the necessary test-conditions; séances still held in Stygian darkness
where even genuine phenomena can readily be mistaken for the false and false
for the real; mediums left helpless by their angel guides, tried, convicted and
sent to prison and no attempt made to save them from their fate by those, who,
if they are spirits having the power of controlling mortal affairs, ought to
have enlisted the sympathy of the heavenly hosts in behalf of their mediums in
the face of such crying injustice; other faithful Spiritualist lecturers and
mediums broken down in health and left unsupported by those calling themselves
their patrons and protectors.
Such are some of the features of the
present situation, the black spots of what ought to become the grandest and
noblest of all religious philosophies — freely thrown by the unbelievers and
materialists into the teeth of every Spiritualist; no intelligent person of the
latter class need go outside of his own personal experience to find examples
like the above. Spiritualism has not progressed and is not progressing, and
will not progress until its facts are viewed in the light of the Oriental
philosophy.
Thus, Mr. Editor, your esteemed
correspondent, Dr. Woldrich, may be found guilty of two erroneous propositions.
In the concluding sentence of his article he says:
-
“I know not whether I
have succeeded in proving the ‘elementary’ a myth, but at least I hope that I
have thrown some more light upon the subject to some of the readers of the
Journal.”
To this I would answer: (1) He has
not proved at all the “elementary a myth,” since the elementaries are with a
few exceptions the earth-bound guides and spirits in which he believes together
with every other Spiritualist; (2) Instead of throwing light upon the subject
the Doctor has but darkened it the more; (3) Such explanations and careless
exposures do the greatest harm to the future of Spiritualism and greatly serve
to retard its progress, by teaching its adherents that they have nothing more
to learn.
Sincerely hoping that I have not
trespassed too much on the columns of your esteemed Journal, allow me to sign
myself, dear Sir, yours respectfully,
H.P. BLAVATSKY
Corresponding Secretary of the
Theosophical Society.
New York.
OBSERVATIONS
Spiritualists are very negative to accept the
statement made by theosophists and kabbalists that the vast majority of contacts
they have are not with "spirits of dead human" but with the
elementaries, which are astral shells that pose as deceased relatives or famous people to attract interest and thus be able
to energetically vampirize the people who attend the séances. And before the attacks that Blavatsky received because of this letter,
she sent another letter to this magazine in which she responded to accusations
and which you can read in the article before this one.
