This
is a letter that Blavatsky wrote to the editor of the spiritualist magazine
"Religio-Philosophical Journal"
responding to the criticisms that the spiritualists had made her about the
explanations she gave on "spirits," and this letter was published in
this magazine in the edition of the
26 as January 1878 (p.2) with the title:
KABBALISTIC VIEWS ON "SPIRITS" AS PROPAGATED BY THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
(Note: at present the
word "elementals" refers mainly to the spirits of nature, but in the
past it was used to designate in a general way the different types of subtle
beings that exist in the astral world: the spirits of the nature, but also the
spirits of the deceased, the elementaries, etc. so when you read the word
"elementals" in the text, aware of this so that you do not go to
bewilder; as for the word "elementary, " you can read what it is in
this other article link.)
Dear Sir,
I must beg you to again allow me a
little space for the further elucidation of a very important question — that of
the “Elementals” and the “Elementaries.” It is a misfortune that our European
languages do not contain a nomenclature expressive of the various grades and
conditions of spiritual beings. But surely I cannot be blamed for either the
above linguistic deficiency, or because some people do not choose or are unable
to understand my meaning! I cannot too often repeat that in this matter I claim
no originality. My teachings are but the substance of what many kabbalists have
said before me, which, today, I mean to prove with your kind permission.
I am accused (1) of “turning
somersaults” and jumping from one idea to another. The defendant pleads not
guilty. (2) Of coining not only words, but philosophies out of the depths of my
consciousness: defendant enters the same plea. (3) Of having repeatedly asserted
that “intelligent spirits other than those who have passed through an earth
experience in a human body were concerned in the manifestations known as the
phenomena of Spiritualism:” true, and defendant repeats the assertion. (4) Of
having advanced, in my bold and unwarranted theories, “beyond the great Eliphas
Lévi himself.”
Indeed?
Were I to go even as far as he (see
his Science des Esprits), I would deny that a single so-called spiritual
manifestation is more than hallucination, produced by soulless Elementals, whom
he calls “Elementary.” (See Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie.)
I am asked,
“What proof is there of the
existence of the elementals?”
In my turn, I will inquire,
What proof is there of “diakkas,”
“guides,” “bands,” and “controls”?
And yet these terms are all current
among Spiritualists. The unanimous testimony of innumerable observers and
competent experimenters furnishes the proof. If Spiritualists cannot or will
not go to those countries where they are living, and these proofs are
accessible, they, at least, have no right to give the lie direct to those who
have seen both the adepts and the proofs. My witnesses are living men, teaching
and exemplifying the philosophy of hoary ages; theirs, these very “guides” and
“controls” who, up to the present time, are at best hypothetical, and whose
assertions have been repeatedly found, by Spiritualists themselves,
contradictory and false.
If my present critics insist that
since the discussion of this matter began a disembodied soul has never been
described as an “elementary,” I merely point to the number of the London Spiritualist
for February 18th, 1876 [p.74], published nearly two years ago, in which a
correspondent, who has certainly studied occult sciences, says:
« Is it not
probable that some of the elementary spirits of an evil type are those spirit
bodies which, only recently disembodied, are on the eve of an eternal dissolution,
and which continue their temporary existence only by vampirizing those still in
the flesh? They had existence; they never attained to being. »
Note two things: that human
elementaries are recognized as existing, apart from the gnomes, sylphs, undines
and salamanders — beings purely elemental; and that annihilation of the soul is
regarded as potential.
Says Paracelsus, in his Philosophia
Sagax:
« The current
of astral light with its peculiar inhabitants, gnomes, sylphs, etc., is
transformed into human light at the moment of the conception, and it becomes
the first envelope of the soul — its grosser portion; combined with the most
subtle fluids, it forms the sidereal (astral, or ethereal) phantom — the inner
man. »
And Éliphas Lévi in his “Dogme et
Rituel de la Haute Magie,” Vol. II, chapter on the conjuration of the four classes of
elementaries:
« The astral
light is saturated with elementary souls which it discharges in the incessant
generation of beings ... At the birth of a child, they influence the four
temperaments of the latter — the element of the gnomes, predominates in
melancholy persons; of the salamanders in the sanguine; of the undines, in the
phlegmatic; of the sylphs, in the giddy and bilious. ... These are the spirits
which we designate under the term of occult elements. »
He remarks in Vol. I, op. cit.,
p. 164:
« Yes, yes, these
spirits of the elements do exist. Some wandering in their spheres, others
trying to incarnate themselves, others, again, already incarnated and living on
earth. These are vicious and imperfect men. »
(Cid's observation: I feel that the
last thing that Levi wrote is confusing because it is not the spirits of nature
who “have incarnated and live on earth”, but the densest elementaries, which
are the people who were so evil that they cannot ascend to heaven and rest in
the Devachan before reincarnating again, and that is why those soulless
individuals after death are quickly reborn on Earth.)
Note that we have here described to
us more or less “intelligent spirits other than those who have passed through
an earth experience in a human body.” If not intelligent, they would not know
how to make the attempt to incarnate themselves. Vicious elementals, or
elementaries, are attracted to vicious parents; they bask in their atmosphere,
and are thus afforded the chance by the vices of the parents to perpetuate in
the child the paternal wickedness.
The unintellectual “elementals” are
draw in unconsciously to themselves; and in the order of nature, as component
parts of the grosser astral body or soul, determine the temperament. They can
as little resist as the animalcules can avoid entering into our bodies in the
water we swallow. Of a third class, out of hundreds that the Eastern
philosophers and kabbalists are acquainted with, Éliphas Lévi, discussing
spiritistic phenomena, says:
« They are
neither the souls of the damned nor guilty; the elementary spirits are like
children curious and harmless, and torment people in proportion as attention is
paid to them. »
These he regards as the sole agents
in all the meaningless and useless physical phenomena at séances. Such
phenomena will be produced unless they be dominated “by wills more powerful
than their own.” Such a will may be that of a living adept, or as there are
none such at Western spiritual séances, these ready agents are at the disposal
of every strong, vicious, earth-bound, human elementary who has been attracted
to the place. By such they can be used in combination with the astral
emanations of the circle and medium, as stuff out of which to make materialized
spirits.
So little does Lévi concede the
possibility of spirit return in objective form, that he says:
« The good
deceased come back in our dreams; the state of mediumism is an extension of
dream, it is somnambulism in all its variety, and ecstasies. Fathom the
phenomenon of sleep and you will understand the phenomena of the spirits. »
And again:
« According to
one of the great dogmas of the Kabbalah, the soul despoils itself in order to
ascend, and thus would have to re-clothe itself in matter to descend. There is
but one way, for a spirit already liberated to manifest himself objectively on
earth — he must get back into his body and resurrect. This is quite another
thing from hiding under a table or a hat. Necromancy, or the evocation of
materialized spirits is horrible. It constitutes a crime against nature. We
have admitted in our former works the possibility of vampirism, and even tried
to explain it. The phenomena now actually occurring in America and Europe
unquestionably belong to this fearful malady.
The mediums do not, it is true, eat
the flesh of corpses (like one Sergeant Bertrand), but they breathe in
throughout their whole nervous organism the phosphoric emanations of putrefied
corpses, or spectral light. They are not vampires, but they evoke vampires. For
this reason, they are nearly all debilitated and sick. »
(Science des Espirits, p.258)
Do those in Europe and America, who
have heretofore described the cadaverous odor, that, in some cases, they have
noticed as attending materialized spirits, appreciate the revolting
significance of the above explanation?
Henry Khunrath was a most learned
kabbalist, and the greatest authority among mediæval occultists. He gives, in
one of the clavicles of his Amphitheatrum Sapientiæ Æternæ, illustrative engravings of the four
great classes of elementary spirits, as they presented themselves during an
evocation of ceremonial magic, before the eyes of the magus, when, after
passing the threshold, he lifts the “Veil of Isis.” In describing them, Khunrath
corroborates Éliphas Lévi.
He tells us they are disembodied,
vicious men, who have parted with their divine spirits and become elementary.
They are so termed, “because attracted by the earthly atmosphere, and are
surrounded by the earth’s elements.” Here Khunrath applies the term
“elementary” to human doomed souls, while Lévi uses it, as we have seen, to
designate another class of the same great family —gnomes, sylphs, undines,
etc.— sub-human entities.
I have before me a manuscript,
intended originally for publication but withheld for various reasons. The
author signs himself “Zeus,” and is a kabbalist of more than twenty-five years’
standing. This experienced occultist, a zealous devotee of Khunrath, expounding
the doctrine of the latter, also says that the kabbalists divided the spirits of
the elements into four classes corresponding to the four temperaments in man.
It is charged against me as a
heinous offense that I aver that some men lose their souls and are annihilated.
But this last-named authority, “Zeus,” is equally culpable, for he says:
« They (the
kabbalists) taught that man’s spirit descended from the great ocean of spirit,
and is therefore, per se, pure and divine; but its soul or capsule,
through the (allegorical) fall of Adam, became contaminated with the world of
darkness, or the world of Satan (evil), of which it must be purified, before it
could ascend again to celestial happiness.
Suppose a drop of water enclosed
within a capsule of gelatine and thrown in the ocean; so long as the capsule
remains whole, the drop of water remains isolated: break the envelope, and the
drop becomes a part of the ocean, its individual existence has ceased. So it is
with the spirit, so long as its ray is enclosed in its plastic mediator or
soul, it has an individual existence. Destroy this capsule (the astral man, who
then becomes an elementary), which destruction may occur from the consequences
of sin, in the most depraved and vicious, and the spirit returns back to its
original abode — the individualization of man has ceased.”
. . .
This militates, —he adds,— with the
idea of progression, that Spiritualists generally entertain. If they understood
the law of harmony, they would see their error. It is only by this law that
individual life can be sustained; and, the farther we deviate from harmony the
more difficult it is to regain it. »
To return to Lévi, he remarks (Dogme
et Rituel de la Haute Magic, Vol. I, p. 319):
« When we die,
our interior light (the soul) ascends, agreeably to the attraction of its star
(the spirit), but it must first of all get rid of the coils of the serpent
(earthly evil—sin); that is to say, of the unpurified astral light, which
surrounds and holds it captive, unless, by the force of will, it frees and
elevates itself. This immersion of the living soul in the dead light (the
emanations of everything that is evil, which pollute the earth’s magnetic
atmosphere, as the exhalation of a swamp does the air) is a dreadful torture;
the soul freezes and burns therein, at the same time. »
The kabbalists represent Adam as the
Tree of Life, of which the trunk is humanity; the various races, the branches;
and individual men, the leaves. Every leaf has its individual life, and is fed
by the one sap; but it can live through the branch, as the branch itself draws
its life through the trunk.
The Kabbalah says
« The wicked are
the dead leaves and the dead bark of the tree. They fall, die, are corrupted,
and changed into manure, which returns to the tree through the root. »
My friend, Miss Emily Kislingbury,
of London, Secretary of the British National Association of Spiritualists, who
is honored, trusted and beloved by all who know her, sends me a
spirit-communication obtained, in April, 1877, through a young lady, who is one
of the purest and most truthful of her sex. The following extracts are
singularly à propos to the subject under discussion:
« Friend, you
are right. Keep our Spiritualism pure and high, for there are those who would
abase its uses. But it is because they know not the power of Spiritualism. It
is true, in a sense, that the spirit can overcome the flesh, but there are
those to whom the fleshly life is dearer than the life of the spirit; they tread
on dangerous ground. For the flesh may so outgrow the spirit, as to withdraw
from it all spirituality, and man become as a beast of the field, with no
saving power left. These are they whom the church has termed ‘reprobate,’
eternally lost, but they suffer not, as the church has taught — in conscious
hells. They merely die, and are not; their light goes out, and has no conscious
being. »
(Question): “But is this not
annihilation?”
(Answer): “It amounts to
annihilation; they lose their individual entities, and return to the great
reservoir of spirit — unconscious spirit.”
Finally, I am asked: “Who are the
trained seers?”
They are those, I answer, who have
been trained from their childhood in the pagodas, to use their spiritual sight;
those whose accumulated testimony has not varied for thousands of years as to
the fundamental facts of Eastern philosophy; the testimony of each generation
corroborating that of each preceding one. Are these to be trusted more, or
less, than the communications of “bands,” each of whom contradicts the other as
completely as the various religious sects, which are ready to cut each other’s
throats, and of mediums, even the best of whom are ignorant of their own
nature, and unsubjected to the wise direction and restraint of an adept in psychological
science?
No comprehensive idea of nature can
be obtained except by applying the law of harmony and analogy in the spiritual
as well as in the physical world. “As above, so below,” is the old Hermetic
axiom. If Spiritualists would apply this to the subject of their own
researches, they would see the philosophical necessity of there being in the
world of spirit as well as in the world of matter, a law of the survival of the
fittest.
Respectfully,
H. P. Blavatsky.
OBSERVATIONS
I perceive that the kabbalists have portions of the knowledge that the Transhimalayan masters gave
about what happens after death, but their explanations are somewhat confusing
because each kabbalist interprets it in his own way. And I prefer the
explanations that the theosophical instructors gave because they are much
deeper and more complete.
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