William Judge explained
that there are also certain realities behind those tales.
For many years it has been customary to regard that collection of interesting
stories called “The Arabian Nights,” as pure fiction arising out of Oriental
brains at a time when every ruler had his story-teller to amuse him or to put
him to sleep. But many a man who has down in his heart believed in the stories
he heard in his youth about fairies and ghosts, has felt a revival of his young
fancies upon perusing these tales of prodigies and magic. Others, however, have
laughed at them as pure fables, and the entire scientific world does nothing
but preserve contemptuous silence.
The question here to be answered by men of science is how did such ideas
arise?
Taking them on their own ground, one must believe that with so much
smoke there must at one time have been some fire. Just as the prevalence of a
myth —such as the Devil or Serpent myth— over large numbers of people or vast
periods of time points to the fact that there must have been something,
whatever it was, that gave rise to the idea.
In this enquiry our minds range over that portion of the world which is
near the Red Sea, Arabia and Persia, and we are brought very close to places,
now covered with water, that once formed part of ancient Lemuria. The name Red
Sea may have arisen from the fact that it was believed really to cover hell:
and its lower entrance at the island of Perim is called “Babel Mandeb,” or “the
Gate of Hell.”
This Red Sea plays a prominent part in the Arabian Nights tales and has
some significance. We should also recollect that Arabia once had her men of
science, the mark of whose minds has not yet been effaced from our own age.
These men were many of them magicians, and they learned their lore either from
the Lemurian Adepts, or from the Black Magicians of the other famous land of
Atlantis.
We may safely conclude that the Arabian Nights stories are not all pure
fiction, but are the faint reverberations of a louder echo which reached their
authors from the times of Lemuria and Atlantis.
Solomon is now and then mentioned in them, and Solomon, wherever he was,
has always been reckoned as a great adept. The Jewish Kabbalah and Talmud speak
of Solomon with great reverence. His power and the power of his seal —the interlaced
triangles— constantly crop up among the other magical processes adverted to in
these tales. And in nearly all cases where he is represented as dealing with
wicked genii, he buried them in the Red Sea.
Now if Solomon was a Jewish King far away in Palestine, how did he get
down to the Red Sea, and where is there any mention made of his traveling at
all?
These genii were elemental spirits, and Solomon is merely a name
standing for the vast knowledge of magic arts possessed by Adepts at a time
buried in the darkness of the past.
1) In one tale, a fisherman hauls up a heavy load, which turns out to be
a large iron pot, with a metal cover, on which was engraved Solomon’s seal. The
unlucky man opened the pot, when at once a vapor rose out of it that spread itself
over the whole heavens at first, then condensed again into a monstrous form who
addressed the fisher, saying that ages before he had been confined there by
Solomon; that after two hundred years he swore he would make rich the man lucky
enough to let him out; after five hundred years that he would reward his
liberator with power; but after one thousand years of captivity he would kill
the one who should free him.
Then he ordered the man to prepare for death. The fisherman, however,
said he doubted that the genii had really been in the pot as he was too large.
To prove that he had been, the spirit immediately assumed the vaporous
condition and slowly with spiral motion sank into the iron pot again, when at
once the fisherman clapped on the cover and was about to cast him back into the
sea. The djin then begged for mercy and agreed to serve the man and not to kill
him, whereupon he was released.
Many persons will laugh at this story. But no one who has seen the wonders
of spiritualism, or who knows that at this day there are many persons in India,
as well as elsewhere who have dealings with elemental spirits that bring them
objects instantaneously, etc., will laugh before reflecting on the
circumstances.
Observe that the pot in which he was confined was made of metal, and
that the talismanic seal was on the cover. The metal prevented him from making
magnetic connection for the purpose of escaping, and the seal on the cover
barred that way. There were no marks on the sides of the pot. His spreading
himself into a vast vapor shows that he was one of the elementals of the airy
kingdom — the most powerful and malignant: and his malignancy is shown in the
mean, ungrateful oath he took to destroy whomsoever should be his liberator.
His spreading into vapor, instead of at once springing out of the pot, refers
to his invisibility, for we see that in order to enter it he was compelled to assume
his vaporous state, in which he again put himself into the pot.
2) In another story we see a young man visiting an elemental of the nature
of a Succubus, who permits him now and then to go out and perform wonders. But
the entrance to her retreat is unseen and kept invisible to others. In India
there are those who are foolish enough to make magnetic connection with elementals
of this class, by means of processes which we will not detail here.
The elemental will then at your wish instantaneously produce any article
which the operator may have touched, no matter how far away it may be or how
tightly locked up. The consequences of this uncanny partnership are very
injurious to the human partner. The records of spiritualism in America will
give other cases of almost like character, sufficient to show that a compact can
be entered into between a human being and an intelligence or force outside of
our sensuous perceptions.
3) In other stories various people have power over men and animals, and
the forces of nature. They change men into animals and do other wonders. When
they wish to cause the metamorphosis, they dash a handful of water into the
unfortunate’s face, crying: “Quit that form of man and assume the form of a
dog.”
The terrible Maugraby is a Black Magician, such as can now be found in
Bhutan, who had changed many persons, and the story of his destruction shows
that his life and power as well as his death lay in the nasty practices of
Black Magic. When the figure and the talisman were destroyed he was also. The White
Magician has no talisman but his Ātman, and as that cannot be destroyed, he is
beyond all fear.
_ _ _
But this paper is already too long. We are not forcing a conclusion when
we say that these admirable and amusing tales are not all fiction. There is
much nonsense in them, but they have come to us from the very land —now bleak
and desolate— where at one time the fourth race men held sway and dabbled in
both White and Black Magic.
(Theosophist,
October 1884, p.8-9; Echoes II, p.92-94)
OBSERVATIONS
William Judge also involves the
Lemurians, but from what I have studied, those who truly dominated the art of
magic were the Atlanteans, and some reminiscences of their knowledge were
scattered around the world creating traditions of magic and witchcraft that
managed to persist in various regions, although they have progressively
disappeared.
But it is necessary put things in
context, for example when these stories mention that powerful wizards
transformed people into animals. As far as I know, that cannot be done, but
instead esotericism explains that wizards can enchanted the brain of people to
make them believe that they have transformed into animals, and this even today
to some extent can be achieved by the hypnotism.
So removing all the fantasy and
exaggeration, I think that effectively there are behind these stories, notions of a bygone era that is
currently unknown to men.
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