This is the ninth and last chapter
of the series of articles titled “Studies in Isis
Unveiled” published by Theosophy
journal.
Magical
Phenomena – Modern and Ancient
The accompanying article is made up
of textual extracts from Isis Unveiled, topically and sequentially arranged.
The page references from which the statements are taken, are given at the
conclusion of the article. — Editors
Science is daily and rapidly moving
toward the great discoveries in chemistry and physics, organology, and
anthropology. Learned men ought to be free from preconceptions and prejudices
of every kind; yet, although thought and opinion are now free, scientists are
still the same men as of old. An Utopian dreamer is he who thinks that man ever
changes with the evolution and development of new ideas. The soil may be well
fertilized and made to yield with every year a greater and better variety of
fruit; but, dig a little deeper than the stratum required for the crop, and the
same earth will be found in the subsoil as was there before the first furrow
was turned.
For many years we have watched the
development and growth of that apple of discord – MODERN SPIRITUALISM. Familiar
with its literature both in Europe and America, we have closely and eagerly
witnessed its interminable controversies and compared its contradictory
hypotheses. Many educated men and women – heterodox spiritualists, of course –
have tried to fathom the Protean phenomena. The only result was that they came
to the following conclusion: whatever may be the reason of these constant
failures – whether such are to be laid at the door of the investigators
themselves, or of the secret Force at work – it is at least proved that, in
proportion as the psychological manifestations increase in frequency and
variety, the darkness surrounding their origin becomes more impenetrable.
Many years of wandering among
"heathen" and "Christian" magicians, occultists,
mesmerizers, and the tutti quanti of white and black art, ought to be
sufficient, we think, to give us a certain right to feel competent to take a
practical view of this doubted and very complicated question. We have
associated with the fakirs, the holy men of India, and seen them when in
intercourse with the Pitris. We have watched the proceedings and modus
operandi of the howling and dancing dervishes; held friendly communications
with the marabouts of European and Asiatic Turkey; and the serpent-charmers of
Damascus and Benares have but few secrets that we have not had the fortune to
study. Therefore, when scientists who have never had an opportunity of living
among these oriental jugglers and can judge at the best but superficially, tell
us that there is naught in their performances but mere tricks of
prestidigitation, we cannot help feeling a profound regret for such hasty conclusions.
That such pretentious claims should be made to a thorough analysis of the
powers of nature, and at the same time such unpardonable neglect displayed of
questions of purely physiological and psychological character, and astounding
phenomena rejected without either examination or appeal, is an exhibition of
inconsistency, strongly savoring of timidity, if not of moral obliquity.
Learned investigators, all very
skeptical as to spirits in general and "departed human spirits" in
particular, during the last twenty years have taxed their brains to invent new
names for an old thing. Thus, with Mr. Crookes and Sergeant Cox, it is the
"psychic force." Professor Thury of Geneva calls it the
"psychode" or ectenic force; Professor Balfour Stewart, the
"electro-biological power;" Faraday, the "great master of
experimental philosophy in physics," but apparently a novice in
psychology, superciliously termed it an "unconscious muscular
action," an "unconscious cerebration," and what not? Sir William
Hamilton, a "latent thought," Dr. Carpenter, "the ideo-motor
principle," etc., etc. So many scientists – so many names.
The psychic and ectenic forces, the
"ideo-motor" and "electro-biological powers;" "latent
thought" and even "unconscious cerebration" theories can be
condensed in two words: the kabalistic ASTRAL LIGHT. The disputants are
battling about mere words. Call the phenomena force, energy, electricity or
magnetism, will, or spirit-power, it will ever be the partial manifestation of
the soul, whether disembodied or imprisoned for a while in its body – of
a portion of that intelligent, omnipotent, and individual WILL, pervading all
nature, and known, through the insufficiency of human language to correctly
express psychological images, as – GOD.
There are two kinds of seership –
that of the soul and that of the spirit. The seership of the ancient Pythoness,
or of the modern mesmerized subject, vary but in the artificial modes adopted
to induce the state of clairvoyance. But, as the visions of both depend upon the
greater or less acuteness of the senses of the astral body, they differ very
widely from the perfect, omniscient spiritual state; for, at best, the subject
can get but glimpses of truth, through the veil which physical nature
interposes. The astral principle, or mind, is the sentient soul, inseparable
from our physical brain, which it holds in subjection, and is in its turn
equally trammeled by it. This is the ego, the intellectual
life-principle of man, his conscious entity. While it is yet within the material
body, the clearness and correctness of its spiritual visions depend on its more
or less intimate relation with its higher Principle. When this relation is such
as to allow the most ethereal portions of the soul-essence to act independently
of its grosser particles and of the brain, it can unerringly comprehend what it
sees; then only is it the pure, rational, supersentient soul. That state
is known in India as the Samaddi; it is the highest condition of
spirituality known to man on earth. The Hindu terms Pranayama, Pratyahara,
and Dharana, all relate to different psychological states, and show how
much more the Sanskrit is adapted to the clear elucidation of the phenomena
that are encountered by those who study this branch of psychological science, than
the tongues of modern peoples, whose experiences have not yet necessitated the
invention of such descriptive terms.
When the body is in the state of Dharana
– a total catalepsy of the physical frame, the soul of the clairvoyant may
liberate itself, and perceive things subjectively. And yet, as the sentient
principle of the brain is alive and active, these pictures of the past,
present, and future will be tinctured with the terrestrial perceptions of the
objective world; the physical memory and fancy will be in the way
of clear vision. But the seer-adept knows how to suspend the mechanical action
of the brain. His visions will be as clear as truth itself, uncolored and
undistorted, whereas, the clairvoyant, unable to control the vibrations of the
astral waves, will perceive but more or less broken images through the medium
of the brain. The seer can never take flickering shadows for realities, for his
memory being as completely subjected to his will as the rest of the body, he
receives impressions directly from his spirit. Between his subjective and his
objective selves there are no obstructive mediums. This is the real spiritual
seership, in which, according to an expression of Plato, the soul is raised
above all inferior good, when we reach "that which is supreme, which is simple,
pure and unchangeable, without form, color, or human qualities: the God – our
Nous."
This is the state which such seers
as Plotinus and Apollonius termed "Union to the Deity;" which the
ancient yogins called Isvara, and the modern call
"Samaddi;" but this state is as far above modern clairvoyance as the
stars above glow-worms.
In those visions there is as little
to be attributed to hallucination as in the glimpses which the scientist, by
the help of his optical instrument, gets into the microscopic world. A man
cannot perceive, touch, and converse with pure spirit through any of his bodily
senses. Only spirit alone can talk to and see spirit; and even our astral soul,
the Doppelganger, is too gross, too much tainted yet with earthly matter
to trust entirely to its perceptions and insinuations.
How dangerous may often become untrained
mediumship, and how thoroughly it was understood and provided against by
the ancient sages, is perfectly exemplified in the case of Socrates. The old
Grecian philosopher was a "medium"; hence, he had never been
initiated into the Mysteries; for such was the rigorous law. But he had his
"familiar spirit" as they call it, his daimonium; and this
invisible counsellor became the cause of his death. It is generally believed
that if he was not initiated into the Mysteries it was because he himself
neglected to become so. But the Secret Records teach us that it was
because he could not be admitted to participate in the sacred rites, and
precisely, as we state, on account of his mediumship. There was a law against
the admission not only of such as were convicted of deliberate witchcraft, but
even of those who were known to have "a familiar spirit." The law was
just and logical, because a genuine medium is more or less irresponsible; and
the eccentricities of Socrates are thus accounted for in some degree. A medium
must be passive; and if a firm believer in his "spirit-guide"
he will allow himself to be ruled by the latter, not by the rules of the
sanctuary. A medium of olden times, like the modern "medium"
was subject to be entranced at the will and pleasure of the
"power" which controlled him; therefore he could not well have
been entrusted with the awful secrets of the final initiation, "never to
be revealed under the penalty of death." The old sage, in unguarded
moments of "spiritual inspiration," revealed that which he had never
learned; and was therefore put to death as an atheist.
How then, with such an instance as that
of Socrates, in relation to the visions and spiritual wonders at the epoptai,
of the Inner Temple, can any one assert that these seers, theurgists, and
thaumaturgists were all "spirit-mediums?"
Neither Pythagoras, Plato, nor any
of the later more important Neo-platonists, nor Apollonius of Tyana, were ever
mediums; for in such case they would not have been admitted to the Mysteries at
all. Apart from natural "mediumship" there has existed, from the
beginning of time, a mysterious science, discussed by many, but known only to a
few.
The use of it is a longing toward
our only true and real home – the after-life, and a desire to cling more
closely to our parent spirit; abuse of it is sorcery, witchcraft, black magic.
Between the two is placed natural "mediumship;" a soul clothed with
imperfect matter, a ready agent for either the one or the other, and utterly
dependent on its surroundings of life, constitutional heredity – physical as
well as mental – and on the nature of the "spirits" it attracts around
itself. A blessing or a curse, as fate will have it, unless the medium is
purified of earthly dross.
The reason why in every age so
little has been generally known of the mysteries of initiation, is twofold. The
first has already been explained by more than one author, and lies in the
terrible penalty following the least indiscretion. The second, is the
superhuman difficulties and even dangers which the daring candidate of old had
to encounter, and either conquer, or die in the attempt, when, what is still
worse, he did not lose his reason. There was no real danger to him whose mind
had become thoroughly spiritualized, and so prepared for every terrific sight.
He who fully recognized the power of his immortal spirit, and never doubted for
one moment its omnipotent protection, had naught to fear. But woe to the
candidate in whom the slightest physical fear – sickly child of matter – made
him lose sight and faith in his own invulnerability. He who was not wholly
confident of his moral fitness to accept the burden of these tremendous secrets
was doomed.
The philosophers, and especially
those who were initiated into the Mysteries, held that the astral soul is the
impalpable duplicate of the gross external form which we call body. It is the perisprit
of the Kardecists and the spirit-form of the spiritualists. Above
this internal duplicate, and illuminating it as the warm ray of the sun
illuminates the earth, fructifying the germ and calling out to spiritual
vivification the latent qualities dormant in it, hovers the divine spirit. The
astral perisprit is contained and confined within the physical body as
ether in a bottle, or magnetism in magnetized iron. It is a centre and engine
of force, fed from the universal supply of force, and moved by the same general
laws which pervade all nature and produce all cosmical phenomena. Its inherent
activity causes the incessant physical operations of the animal organism and
ultimately results in the destruction of the latter by over-use and its own
escape. It is the prisoner, not the voluntary tenant, of the body. It has an
attraction so powerful to the external universal force, that after wearing out
its casing it finally escapes to it. The stronger, grosser, more material its
encasing body, the longer is the term of its imprisonment. Some persons are
born with organizations so exceptional, that the door which shuts other people
in from communication with the world of the astral light, can be easily
unbarred and opened, and their souls can look into, or even pass into that world,
and return again. Those who do this consciously, and at will, are termed
magicians, hierophants, seers, adepts; those who are made to do it, either
through the fluid of the mesmerizer or of "spirits," are
"mediums."
Prophecies are delivered in two ways
– consciously, by magicians who are able to look into the astral light; and
unconsciously, by those who act under what is called inspiration. To the latter
class belonged and belong the Biblical prophets and the modern trance-speakers.
There are two kinds of
magnetization; the first is purely animal, the other transcendent, and
depending on the will and knowledge of the mesmerizer, as well as on the degree
of spirituality of the subject, and his capacity to receive the impressions of
the astral light. But now it is next to ascertain that clairvoyance depends a
great deal more on the former than on the latter. To the power of an adept, the
most positive subject will have to submit. If his sight is ably directed
by the mesmerizer, magician, or spirit, the light must yield up its most secret
records to our scrutiny; for, if it is a book which is ever closed to those
"who see and do not perceive," on the other hand it is ever opened
for one who wills to see it opened. It keeps an unmutilated record of
all that was, that is, or ever will be. The minutest acts of our lives are
imprinted on it, and even our thoughts rest photographed on its eternal
tablets. It is the book which we see opened by the angel in the Revelation, "which
is the Book of life, and out of which the dead are judged according to their
works." It is, in short, the MEMORY OF GOD!
It is on the indestructible tablets
of the astral light that is stamped the impression of every thought we think,
and every act we perform; and that future events – effects of long-forgotten
causes – are already delineated as a vivid picture for the eye of the seer and
the prophet to follow. Memory – the despair of the materialist, the enigma of
the psychologist, the sphinx of science – is to the student of old philosophies
merely a name to express that power which man unconsciously exerts, and shares
with many of the inferior animals – to look with inner sight into the astral
light, and there behold the images of past sensations and incidents. Instead of
searching the cerebral ganglia for "micrographs of the living and the
dead, of scenes that we have visited, of incidents in which we have borne a
part," they went to the vast repository where the records of every man's
life as well as every pulsation of the visible cosmos are stored up for all
Eternity!
That flash of memory which is
traditionally supposed to show a drowning man every long-forgotten scene of his
mortal life – as the landscape is revealed to the traveller by intermittent
flashes of lightning – is simply the sudden glimpse which the struggling soul
gets into the silent galleries where his history is depicted in imperishable
colors.
Dreams, forebodings, prescience,
prognostications and presentiments are impressions left by our astral spirit on
our brain, which receives them more or less distinctly, according to the
proportion of blood with which it is supplied during the hours of sleep. The
more the body is exhausted, the freer is the spiritual man, and the more vivid
the impressions of our soul's memory.
No man, however gross and material
he may be, can avoid leading a double existence; one in the visible universe,
the other in the invisible. The life-principle which animates his physical
frame is chiefly in the astral body; and while the more animal portions of him
rest, the more spiritual ones know neither limits nor obstacles. If we study
Plato and the philosophers of old, we may readily perceive that while the
"irrational soul," by which Plato meant our astral body, or
the more ethereal representation of ourselves, can have at best only a more or
less prolonged continuity of existence beyond the grave; the divine spirit –
wrongly termed soul, by the Church – is immortal by its very essence.
If the life-principle is something
apart from the astral spirit and in no way connected with it, why is it that
the intensity of the clairvoyant powers depends so much on the bodily
prostration of the subject?
The deeper the trance, the less
signs of life the body shows, the clearer become the spiritual perceptions, and
the more powerful are the soul's visions. The soul, disburdened of the bodily
senses, shows activity of power in a far greater degree of intensity than it
can in a strong, healthy body.
But though during its brief sojourn
on earth our soul may be assimilated to a light hidden under a bushel, it still
shines more or less bright and attracts to itself the influences of kindred
spirits; and when a thought of good or evil import is begotten in our brain, it
draws to it impulses of like nature as irresistibly as the magnet
attracts iron filings. This attraction is also proportionate to the intensity
with which the thought-impulse makes itself felt in the ether; and so it will
be understood how one man may impress himself upon his own epoch so forcibly,
that the influence may be carried – through the ever-interchanging currents of
energy between the two worlds, the visible and the invisible – from one
succeeding age to another, until it affects a large portion of mankind.
The medium is but an ordinary person
who is magnetized by influx from the astral light. The intensity and permanency
of mediumistic power is in proportion to the saturation of the medium with the
magnetic or astral force. This condition of saturation may be congenital, or
brought about in any one of these ways: – by the mesmeric process; by
spirit-agency; or by self-will. As to the process of self-saturation, the
ecstatic so enormously reinforces his willpower, as to draw into himself, as
into a vortex, the potencies resident in the astral light to supplement his own
natural store.
It is in the denial of the boundless
and endless Entity, possessor of that invisible Will which we for lack of a
better term, call GOD, that lies the powerlessness of every materialistic
science to explain the occult phenomena. It is in the rejection a priori of
everything which might force them to cross the boundary of exact science and
step into the domain of psychological, or, if we prefer, metaphysical
physiology, that we find the secret cause of their discomfiture by the
manifestations, and their absurd theories to account for them. It is easier by
far to deny the reality of such manifestations from a secure distance, than
find for them a proper place among the classes of natural phenomena accepted by
exact science. And how can they, since all such phenomena pertain to
psychology, and the latter, with its occult and mysterious powers, is a terra
incognita for modern science.
The highest visions, the most truthful,
are produced, not through natural ecstatics or "mediums," as
it is sometimes erroneously asserted, but through a regular discipline of
gradual initiations and development of psychical powers.
The AUM contains the evocation of
the Vedic triad. It is the trinity of man himself, on his way to become
immortal through the solemn union of his inner triune SELF – the exterior,
gross body, the husk not even being taken into consideration in this human
trinity. Ceres-Demeter and her earthly wanderings in search of her daughter are
the euhemerized descriptions of one of the most metaphysico-psychological
subjects ever treated of by human mind. It is a mask for the transcendent
narrative of the initiated seers; the celestial vision of the freed soul of the
initiate of the last hour describing the process by which the soul that has not
yet been incarnated descends for the first time into matter. The Lesser
Mysteries signify occultly the condition of the unpurified soul invested
with an earthly body, and enveloped in a material and physical nature. The body
is the sepulchre, the prison of the soul. The astral soul is placed between
matter (body) and the highest intellect (its immortal spirit or nous).
Which of these two will conquer? The result of the battle of life lies between
the triad. It is a question of a few years of physical enjoyment on earth and –
if it has begotten abuse – of the dissolution of the earthly body being
followed by death of the astral body, which is thus prevented from being united
with the highest spirit of the triad, which alone confers on us individual
immortality; or, on the other hand, of becoming immortal mystae; initiated
before death of the body into the divine truths of the after-life. Demi-gods
below, and GODS above.
"In ancient India, the mystery
of the triad, known but to the initiated, could not, under the penalty of
death, be revealed to the vulgar," says Vrihaspati.
Neither could it in the ancient
Grecian and Samothracian Mysteries. Nor can it be now. It is in the hands
of the adepts, and must remain a mystery to the world so long as the
materialistic savant regards it as an undemonstrated fallacy, an insane
hallucination, and the dogmatic theologian, a snare of the Evil One.
Subjective communication with the human,
god-like spirits of those who have preceded us to the silent land of bliss, is
in India divided into three categories. Under the spiritual training of a guru
the neophyte begins to feel them. Were he not under the immediate
guidance of an adept, he would be controlled by the invisibles, and utterly at
their mercy, for among these subjective influences he is unable to discern the
good from the bad. Happy the sensitive who is sure of the purity of his
spiritual atmosphere! But the guru's influence is there; it is the most
powerful shield against the intrusion of the bhutna*
into the atmosphere of the neophyte.
(* Bhutna or bhuta is a variant spelling
of bhuts, i.e. "spooks,"
elementaries, vampires, the larvae or reliquae of degraded human beings, the
still living but disembodied consciousness of suicides, etc. — Editors)
By those who have followed us thus
far, it will naturally be asked, to what practical issue this book tends; much
has been said about magic and its potentiality, much of the immense antiquity
of its practice. Do we wish to affirm that the occult sciences ought to be
studied and practiced throughout the world? Would we replace modern spiritualism
with the ancient magic?
Neither; the substitution could not
be made, nor the study universally prosecuted, without incurring the risk of
enormous public dangers. A sorcerer is a public enemy, and mesmerism* may most readily be turned into the worst of sorceries.
(* Students should be on their
guard to attach to words as far as possible the meaning poured into them by HPB.
Isis Unveiled was published in 1877 at which time no vocabulary of occultism or
occult terms existed in English, and HPB, taking the vocabulary as well as the
mind of the race as she found it, had to mould it to the meanings she had to
convey. — Editors)
We would have neither scientists,
theologians, nor spiritualists turn practical magicians, but all to realize
that there was true science, profound religion, and genuine phenomena before
this modern era. We would that all who have a voice in the education of the
masses should first know and then teach that the safest guides to human
happiness and enlightenment are those writings which have descended to us from
the remotest antiquity; and that nobler spiritual aspirations and a higher
average morality prevail in the countries where the people take their precepts
as the rule of their lives. We would have all to realize that magical, i.e.,
spiritual powers exist in every man, and those few to practice them who feel
called to teach, and are ready to pay the price of discipline and self-conquest
which their development exacts.
Besides, there are many good reasons
why the study of magic, except in its broad philosophy, is nearly impracticable
in Europe and America. Magic being what it is, the most difficult of all
sciences to learn experimentally – its acquisition is practically beyond the
reach of the majority of white-skinned people; and that, whether their effort
is made at home or in the East. Probably not more than one man in a million of
European blood is fitted – either physically, morally, or psychologically, – to
become a practical magician, and not one in ten millions would be found endowed
with all these three qualifications as required for the work. To become a
neophyte, one must be ready to devote himself heart and soul to the study of
mystic sciences. Magic – most imperative of mistresses – brooks no rival.
Unlike other sciences, a theoretical knowledge of formulae without mental
capacities or soul powers, is utterly useless in magic. The spirit must hold in
complete subjection the combativeness of what is loosely termed educated
reason, until facts have vanquished cold human sophistry.
(Note: The volume and page
references to Isis Unveiled, from which the foregoing chapter is compiled, are,
in the order of the excerpts, as follows: I, 40, 43, 55, 58; II, 590, 591, 117,
118, 119; I, 197-8, 200-1, 178, 179, 181, 499, 500, 61, 45, 46; II, 114, 111,
112, 114, 115, 634, 635, 636.)
(Theosophy, Los Angeles, June 1918, p.337-345)
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