The Secret Doctrine, Volume 3 quotes

In our day no statement can hope for a fair trial, or even hearing, unless its arguments run on the line of legitimate and accepted enquiry, remaining strictly within the boundaries of official Science or orthodox Theology.

Our age is a paradoxical anomaly. It is preëminently materialistic and as preëminently pietistic.

Our literature, our modern thought and progress, so called, both run on these two parallel lines, so incongruously dissimilar and yet both so popular and so very orthodox, each in its own way.

This will be done in no spirit of malice or even criticism, as the writer readily admits that most of those she finds fault with stand immeasurably higher in learning than herself.

But great scholarship does not preclude bias and prejudice, nor is it a safeguard against self-conceit, but rather the reverse.

Moreover, it is but in the legitimate defence of our own statements, i.e., the vindication of Ancient Wisdom and its great truths, that we mean to take our “great authorities” to task.

The grossest ignorance reigned in the days of the Indian Rishis, and even in those of Thales, Pythagoras, and Plato. Theosophists must indeed be superstitious ignoramuses to speak as they do, in the face of such learned evidence to the contrary!

Truly it looks as if, since the world's creation, there has been but one age of real knowledge on earth—the present age.

In the misty twilight, in the grey dawn of history, stand the pale shadows of the old Sages of world renown.

We have, therefore, nothing for which to thank our forefathers.

The Ancients have at best prepared and fertilised the soil; it is the Moderns who have planted the seeds of knowledge and reared the lovely plants called blank negation and sterile agnosticism.

Such, however, is not the view taken by Theosophists. They repeat what was stated twenty years ago. It is not sufficient to speak of the “untenable conceptions of an uncultured past” (Tyndall); of the “parler enfantin” of the Vaidic poets (Max Müller);

Prof. Jowett remarks that “mysticism is not criticism.” No; but neither is criticism always fair and sound judgment.

La critique est aisée, mais l'art est difficile.

And such “art” our critic of the Neoplatonists—his Greek scholarship notwithstanding—lacks from a to z.

the Church insists that biblical patriarchs shall be regarded as historical personages, and terms her seven “Star-angels” the “historical channels and agents of the Creator.” Both are right, since each finds a strong party to side with it.

Mankind is at best a sorry herd of Panurgian sheep, following blindly the leader that happens to suit it at the moment.

Mankind—the majority at any rate—hates to think for itself. It resents as an insult the humblest invitation to step for a moment outside the old well-beaten tracks, and, judging for itself, to enter into a new path in some fresh direction.

Both are right, since each finds a strong party to side with it. Mankind is at best a sorry herd of Panurgian sheep, following blindly the leader that happens to suit it at the moment.

Mankind—the majority at any rate—hates to think for itself.

It resents as an insult the humblest invitation to step for a moment outside the old well-beaten tracks, and, judging for itself, to enter into a new path in some fresh direction.

When, for nearly two millenniums, [pg 015] a body of men has never ceased to lift its voice against Black Magic, the inference ought to be irrefutable that if Black Magic exists as a real fact, there must be somewhere its counterpart—White Magic.

False silver coins could have no existence if there were no genuine silver money.

Nature is dual in whatever she attempts, and this ecclesiastical persecution ought alone to have opened the eyes of the public long ago.

But for this restriction, many might contribute to these pages accounts of exploration, adventure, and discovery that would be read with interest.

The time will come, sooner or later, when the dreadful sand of the desert will yield up its long-buried secrets, and then there will indeed be unlooked-for mortifications for our modern vanity.

“The people of Pashai,”25 says Marco Polo, the daring traveller of the thirteenth century, “are great adepts in sorceries and the diabolic arts.” And his learned editor adds:

Beneath the surface is said to lie such wealth in gold, jewels, statuary, arms, utensils, and all that indicates civilization, luxury, and fine arts, as no existing capital of Christendom can show to-day.

The Gobi sand moves regularly from east to west before terrific gales that blow continually.

Occasionally some of the hidden treasures are uncovered, but not a native dare touch them, for the whole district is under the ban of a mighty spell. Death would be the penalty.

and thus, owing to the great amount of material scattered over two large volumes, much of its importance was lost upon the reader, while it still more failed to draw his attention on account of the faulty arrangement. But hints may now grow into explanations.

One can never repeat it too often—Magic is as old as man.

It cannot any longer be called charlatanry or hallucination, when its lesser branches—such as mesmerism, now miscalled “hypnotism,” “thought reading,” “action by suggestion,” and what not else, only to avoid calling it by its right and legitimate name—are being so seriously investigated by the most …

The vindication of the Occultists and their Archaic Science is working itself slowly but steadily into the very heart of society, hourly, daily, and yearly, in the shape of two monster branches, two stray off-shoots of the trunk of Magic—Spiritualism and the Roman Church.

Fact works its way very often through fiction.

Like an immense boa-constrictor, Error, in every shape, encircles mankind, trying to smother in her deadly coils every aspiration towards truth and light. But Error is powerful only on the surface, prevented as she is by Occult Nature from going any deeper;

And, whether by phenomenon or miracle, by spirit-hook or bishop's crook, Occultism must win the day, before the present era reaches “Shani's (Saturn's) triple septenary” of the Western Cycle in Europe, in other words—before the end of the twenty-first century “a.d.”

Truly the soil of the long by-gone past is not dead, for it has only rested.

The skeletons of the sacred oaks of the ancient Druids may still send shoots from their dried-up boughs and be reborn to a new [pg 024] life, like that handful of corn, in the sarcophagus of a mummy 4,000 years old, which, when planted, sprouted, …

“Fables,” and “superstition,” will be the answer. Be it so.

Before the lethal breath of selfishness and indifference every uncomfortable fact is transformed into meaningless fiction, and every branch of the once verdant Tree of Truth has become dried up and stripped of its primeval spiritual significance.

Our modern Symbologist is superlatively clever only at detecting phallic worship and sexual emblems even where none were ever meant.

Were not Alexander the Great needed by Philology as a sledge-hammer wherewith to break the heads of Brâhmanical chronological pretensions, he would have become long ago simply “a symbol for annexation,” or “a genius of conquest,” as has been already suggested by some French writer.

Blank denial is the only refuge left to the critics.

It is the most secure asylum for some time to come in which to shelter the last of the sceptics.

Blank denial is the only refuge left to the critics. It is the most secure asylum for some time to come in which to shelter the last of the sceptics.

For one who denies unconditionally, the trouble of arguing is unnecessary, and he also thus avoids what is worse, having to yield occasionally a point or two before the irrefutable arguments and facts of his opponent.

Creuzer, the greatest of all the modern Symbologists, the most learned among the masses of erudite German Mythologists, must have envied the placid self-confidence of certain sceptics, when he found himself forced in a moment of desperate perplexity to admit that:

The books of Mercurius Trismegistus most attracted his attention.63 He is also warm in his praise of Hystaspes (or Gushtasp), of the Sibylline books, and even of the right Astrology.

There have been in all ages use and abuse of Magic, as there are use and abuse of Mesmerism or Hypnotism in our own.

The ancient world had its Apollonii and its Pherecydæ, and intellectual people could discriminate then, as they can now.

And as mankind progressed, and became with every generation more of the earth, earthly, the individuality of each temporary Ego began to assert itself.

It is personal selfishness that develops and urges man on to abuse of his knowledge and power.

And selfishness is a human building, whose windows and doors are ever wide open for every kind of iniquity to enter into man's soul.

the God of Just Retribution, not mercy, which is merely an incentive to evil-doing and to a repetition of it.

The greatest crime that was ever perpetrated upon mankind was committed on that day when the first priest invented the first prayer with a selfish object in view.

A God who may be propitiated by iniquitous prayers to “bless the arms” of the worshipper, and send defeat and death to thousands of his enemies—his brethren;

How came Dante to imagine the many descriptions given in his Inferno—a new Johannine Apocalypse, a true Occult Revelation in verse—his visit and communion with the Souls of the Seven Spheres?

In poetry and satire every Occult truth has been welcomed—none has been recognised as serious.

The Comte de Gabalis is better known and appreciated than Porphyry and Iamblichus.

they have been made immortal in various ways. They have burst upon the world in hundreds of volumes full of the quaint, head-breaking phraseology of the Alchemist; they have flashed like irrepressible cataracts of Occult mystic lore from the pens of poets and bards.

Genius alone had certain privileges in those dark ages when no dreamer could offer the world even a fiction without suiting his heaven and his earth to biblical text.

To genius alone it was permitted, in those centuries of mental blindness, when the fear of the “Holy Office” threw a thick veil over every cosmic and psychic truth, to reveal unimpeded some of the grandest truths of Initiation.

The above is simply a small portion of what might have been given in Isis Unveiled, had the time come then, as it has now.

One cannot study and profit by Occult Science, unless one gives himself up to it—heart, soul, and body.

Some of its truths are too awful, too dangerous, for the average mind. None can toy and play with such terrible weapons with impunity. Therefore it is, as St. Paul has it, “unlawful” to speak of them.

One cannot study and profit by Occult Science, unless one gives himself up to it—heart, soul, and body. Some of its truths are too awful, too dangerous, for the average mind.

None can toy and play with such terrible weapons with impunity.

Therefore it is, as St. Paul has it, “unlawful” to speak of them. Let us accept the reminder and talk only of that which is “lawful.”

To understand its full meaning, however, necessitates, first of all, belief in Reincarnation and all its mysteries; not as laid down in the doctrine of the French Reincarnationists of the Allan Kardec school, but as they are expounded and taught by Esoteric Philosophy.

Man must, in short, know who he was, before he arrives at knowing what he is.

And how many are there among Europeans who are capable of developing within themselves an absolute belief in their past and future reincarnations, in general, even as a law, let alone mystic knowledge of one's immediately precedent life?

… a number of Christians whom we know—whose hearts go out as strongly to their ideal of Jesus, as their souls are repelled from the theological picture of the official Saviour—who will reflect over our explanation and find in it no offence, but perchance a relief.

Magic is a dual power: nothing is easier than to turn it into Sorcery; an evil thought suffices for it.

Therefore while theoretical Occultism is harmless, and may do good, practical Magic, or the fruits of the Tree of Life and Knowledge,116 or otherwise the “Science of Good and Evil,” is fraught with dangers and perils.

… in the modern system of the “correlation of forces.”121 Even the polytheism of the “superstitious” Brâhman and idolater shows its raison d'être, since the three Shaktis of the three great Gods, Brahmâ, Vishnu, and Shiva, are identical with the “Three Mothers” of the monotheistic Jew.

The whole of the ancient religious and mystical literature is symbolical.

The Books of Hermes, the Zohar, the Ya-Yakav, the Egyptian Book [pg 072]of the Dead, the Vedas, the Upanishads, and the Bible, are as full of symbolism as are the Nabathean revelations of the Chaldaic Qû-tâmy;

Taken by itself, without the additional help of the Vaidic and of Brâhmanical literature in general, the Bible will never yield the universal secrets of Occult Nature.

The cubits, inches, and measures of this physical plane will never solve the problems of the world on the spiritual plane—for Spirit can neither be weighed nor measured.

The working out of these problems is reserved for the “mystics and the dreamers” who alone are capable of accomplishing it.

Localities are made to correspond with astronomical [pg 095] and even with psychic events.

History was thus made captive by ancient Mystery, to become later on the great Sphynx of the nineteenth century.

Only, instead of devouring her too dull querists who will unriddle her whether she acknowledges it or not, she is desecrated and mangled by the modern Œdipus, before he forces her into the sea of speculations in which the Sphynx is drowned and perishes.

As we see, neither the Book of Enoch (his “Wheel”), nor the Zohar, nor any other kabalistic volume, contains merely Jewish wisdom.

The doctrine itself being the result of whole millenniums of thought, is therefore the joint property of Adepts of every nation under the sun.

Nevertheless, the Zohar teaches practical Occultism more than any other work on that subject; not as it is translated and commented upon by its various critics though, but with the secret signs on its margins.

The anathema, however, has not made the public any the wiser in the Mysteries of the Occult Sciences. In some respects the world is all the better for such ignorance.

The secrets of Nature generally cut both ways, and in the hands of the undeserving they are more than likely to become murderous.

Who in our modern day knows anything of the real significance of, and the powers contained in, certain characters and signs—talismans—whether for beneficent or evil purposes? Fragments of the Runes and the writing of the Kischuph, found scattered in old mediæval libraries;

Meanwhile there are the “turning-tables” of the modern medium for the babes, and the Kabalah for the strong. This may afford some consolation.

People are very apt to use terms which they do not understand, and to pass judgments on primâ facie evidence.

The difference between White and Black Magic is very difficult to realise fully, as both have to be judged by their motive, upon which their ultimate though not their immediate effects depend, even though these may not come for years.

The difference between White and Black Magic is very difficult to realise fully, as both have to be judged by their motive, upon which their ultimate though not their immediate effects depend, even though these may not come for years.

Between the “right and the left hand [Magic] there is but a cobweb thread,” says an Eastern proverb.

Let us abide by its wisdom and wait till we have learned more.

That which Irenæus199 and Epiphanius200 say of Simon Magus—namely, that he represented himself as the incarnated trinity; that in Samaria he was the Father, in Judæa the Son, and had given himself out to the Gentiles as the Holy Spirit—is simply backbiting.

Times and events change; human nature remains the same and unaltered under every sky and in every age.

The charge is the result and product of the traditional and now classical odium theologicum.

and finally, that by her he had “begotten the Archangels and Angels, by whom this world was created,” etc.

Now we all know to what a degree of transformation and luxuriant growth any bare statement can be subjected and forced, after passing through only half a dozen hands.

Moreover, all these claims may be explained and even shown to be true at bottom.

… those Adepts in Magic Arts who acted under her direct instructions and auspices were proclaimed to posterity and history as saints and friends of God, all others were hooted out of the Church and sentenced to eternal calumny and curses from their day to this.

Dogma and authority have ever been the curse of humanity, the great extinguishers of light and truth.

208

But he keeps silent as to another resemblance of which, as a learned Kabalist, he could not be ignorant. Moreover, according to his invariable custom, he mystifies the reader more than he teaches him, divulging nothing and leading him off the right track.

Like most of the historical heroes of hoary antiquity, whose lives and works strongly differ from those of commonplace humanity, Apollonius is to this day a riddle, which has, so far, found no Œdipus.

His existence is surrounded with such a veil of mystery that he is often mistaken for a myth. But according to every law of logic and reason, it is quite clear that Apollonius should never be regarded in such a light.

The groundwork of the Eclectic School is thus shown to be identical with the doctrines of the Yogîs—the Hindu Mystics; it is proved that it had a common origin, from the same source as the earlier Buddhism of Gautama and of his Arhats.

The Ineffable Name in the search for which so many Kabalists—unacquainted with any Oriental or even European Adepts—vainly consume their knowledge and lives, dwells latent in the heart of every man.

This mirific name which, according to the most ancient oracles, “rushes into the infinite worlds, ἀφοιτήτῳστροφάλιγγι,”can be obtained in a twofold way: by regular initiation, and through the “small voice” which Elijah heard in the cave of Horeb, the mount of God.

The tree is known by its fruits; the nature of the Adept by his words and deeds.

These words of charity and mercy, the noble advice put into the mouth of Apollonius (or of his sidereal phantom), as given by Vopiscus, show the Occultists who Apollonius was. Why then call him the “Medium of Satan” seventeen centuries later?

And we are told that the Kabalah “was first taught to a select company of angels” by Jehovah himself—who, out of modesty, one must think, made himself only the third Sephiroth in it, and a female one into the bargain.

So many Kabalists, so many explanations.

Some believe—perchance with more reason than the rest—that the substance of the Kabalah is the basis upon which Masonry is built, since modern Masonry is undeniably the dim and hazy reflection of primeval Occult Masonry, of the teaching of those divine Masons who established the …

“It becomes more convincing to me every day that in a far past time there was a mighty civilization with [pg 178]enormous learning, which had a common language over the earth, as to which its essence can be recovered from the fragments which now exist.”

Aye, there existed indeed a mighty civilization, and a still mightier secret learning and knowledge, the entire scope of which can never be discovered by Geometry and the Kabalah alone: for there are seven keys to the large entrance-door, and not one, nor even two, keys can ever open it sufficiently to allow more than glimpses of what lies within.

Every scholar must be aware that there are two distinct styles—two schools, so to speak—plainly traceable in the Hebrew Scriptures: the Elohistic and the Jehovistic.

Take the Zohar and find in it the description relating to Ain-Suph, the Western or Semitic Parabrahman. What passages have come so nearly up to the Vedântic ideal as the following:

The creation [the evolved Universe] is the garment of that which has no name, the garment woven from the Deity's own substance.

340

Furthermore, no ancient Hebrew Philosopher, Philo no more than the Sadducees, claimed, as do now the ignorant Christians, that [pg 191] the events in the Bible should be taken literally. Philo says most explicitly:

The verbal statements are fabulous [in the Book of the Law]: it is in the allegory that we shall find the truth.

Let us give a few instances, beginning with the latest narrative, the Hebrew, and thus if possible trace the allegories to their origin.

The mystery of the Sun is the grandest perhaps, of all the innumerable mysteries of Occultism.

A Gordian knot, truly, but one that cannot be severed with the double-edged sword of scholastic casuistry.

It is a true deo dignus vindice nodus, and can be untied only by the Gods. The meaning of this is plain, and every Kabalist will understand it.

Such are stray sentences, pearls of wisdom, fallen from time to time from scientific lips, and now chosen at random to illustrate a query.

We lift our diminished heads and look heavenward.

Such seems to be the fact:

… which will have to self-regenerate themselves once more on such occasions, thus producing an astral antinomy, and a kind of physical palinomy, since, as Laplace says, one would then see fluids disobeying themselves and reäcting in a way contrary to all their attributes and properties.

Newton felt very uncomfortable about the moon.

Her behaviour in progressively narrowing the circumference of her orbit around the earth made him nervous, lest it should end one day in our satellite falling upon the earth.

Éliphas Lévi teaches correctly, though in language rather too rhapsodically rhetorical to be sufficiently clear to the beginner, that

Eternal life is Motion equilibrated by the alternate manifestations of force.

But why does he not add that this perpetual motion is independent of the manifested Forces at work? He says:

In short, this teaching does not embrace the Occult Cosmogony, but deals simply with Occult Geology and the formation of our cosmic speck. This is further shown by his making a résumé of the Sephirothal Tree in this wise:

God is harmony, the astronomy of Powers and Unity outside of the World.

This seems to suggest (a) that he teaches the existence of an extra-cosmic God, thus limiting and conditioning both the Kosmos and the divine Infinity and Omnipresence, which cannot be extraneous to or outside of one single atom;

But to This can never be offered profane worship. It can only be the “object of the most abstract meditation, which Hindus practise in order to obtain absorption in it.”

At the beginning of every “dawn” of “Creation,” eternal Light—which is darkness—assumes the aspect of so-called Chaos: chaos to the human intellect; the eternal Root to the superhuman or spiritual sense.

“Osiris is a black God.” These were the words pronounced at “low breath” at Initiation in Egypt, because Osiris Noumenon is darkness to the mortal. In this Chaos are formed the “Waters,” Mother Isis, Aditi, etc.

“The ignorant and superstitious Gnostics and Agnostics of the sects of ‘Pope’ and ‘Calvin’ (the two monster Gods of the Dynamite-Christian period) adored a pigeon and a sheep!”

There will be portable hand-fetishes in all and every age for the satisfaction and reverence of the rabble, and the Gods of one race will always be degraded into devils by the next one.

The cycles revolve within the depths of Lethe, and Karma shall reach Europe as it has Asia and her religions.

But when mankind, rapidly increasing in numbers, increased also in variety of idiosyncrasies of body and mind, then incarnated Spirit showed its weakness. Natural exaggerations, and along with these [pg 261] superstitions, arose in the less cultured and healthy minds.

Selfishness was born out of desires and passions hitherto unknown, and but too often knowledge and power were abused, until finally it became necessary to limit the number of those who knew.

Thus arose Initiation.

Or rather, the Initiates whom the Masons have never ceased to claim as their primitive and direct Masters.

The first and fundamental principle of moral strength and power is association and solidarity of thought and purpose.

“The Sons of Will and Yoga” united in the beginning to resist the terrible and ever-growing iniquities of the left-hand Adepts, the Atlanteans.

The Initiates were “priests,” we may be told—at any rate, all the Hindu, Egyptian, Chaldæan, Greek, Phœnician, and other Hierophants and Adepts were priests in the temples, and it was they who invented their respective exoteric creeds. To this the answer is possible: “

The cowl does not make the friar.

” If one may believe tradition and the unanimous opinion of ancient writers, added to the examples we have in the “priests” of India, the most conservative nation in the world, it becomes quite certain that the Egyptian priests were no more priests in the …

But the children of the Fifth Race had fallen too deeply into matter always to do so with impunity.

Those who failed disappeared from the world, without leaving a trace behind.

Which of the highest kings would have dared to claim any individual, however high his social standing, from the stern priests, once that the victim had crossed the threshold of their sacred Adytum?

Said Clemens Alexandrinus, referring to the Mysteries:

Here ends all teaching. One sees Nature and all things.

A Christian Father of the Church speaks then as did the Pagan Pretextatus, the pro-consul of Achaia (fourth century a.d.), “a man of eminent virtues,” who remarked that to deprive the Greeks of “the sacred Mysteries which bind in one the whole of mankind,” was …

But a few hints can be given of the great ceremonial Mysteries of Antiquity, which stood to the public as the real Mysteries, and into which candidates were initiated with much ceremony and display of Occult Arts.

Behind these, in silence and darkness, were the true Mysteries, as they have always existed and continue to exist.

In Egypt, as in Chaldæa and later in Greece, the Mysteries were celebrated at stated times, and the first day was a public holiday, on which, with much pomp, the candidates were escorted to the Great Pyramid and passed thereinto out of sight.

During the two thousand subsequent years the knowledge of the existence of great Adepts nearly died out in Europe. Nevertheless, in some secret places the Mysteries were still enacted in all their primitive purity.

The “Sun of Righteousness” still blazed high on the midnight sky; and, while darkness was upon the face of the profane world, there was the eternal light in the Adyta on the nights of Initiation.

The true Mysteries were never made public. Eleusinia and Agræ for the multitudes; the God Εὐβουλῆ “of the good counsel,” the great Orphic Deity, for the neophyte.

He sees it, and falls prostrate at the feet of the evanescent form, but is not entrusted with the great secret of its evocation, for it is the supreme mystery of the holy syllable.

The Initiate, says Éliphas Lévi, knows; therefore, “he dares all and keeps silent.”

Says the great French Kabalist:

The Initiate, says Éliphas Lévi, knows; therefore, “he dares all and keeps silent.” Says the great French Kabalist:

You may see him often sad, never discouraged or desperate; often poor, never humbled or wretched; often persecuted, never cowed down or vanquished.

For he remembers the widowhood and the murder of Orpheus, the exile and solitary death of Moses, the martyrdom of the prophets, the tortures of Apollonius, the Cross of the Saviour.

These round towers were built for no other purposes. Discredited as are all such monuments of Pagan origin by the Christian clergy, who thus “soil their own nest,” they are still the living and indestructible relics of the Wisdom of old. [pg 288]

Nothing exists in this objective and illusive world of ours that cannot be made to serve two purposes—a good and a bad one.

Thus in later ages, the Initiates of the Left Path and the anthropomorphists took in hand most of those venerable ruins, then silent and deserted by their first wise inmates, and turned them indeed into phallic monuments.

Mankind—having reached the last limit, and that turning point where its spiritual nature had to make room for mere physical organisation—had to “fall into matter” and generation.

But man's evolution and involution are cyclic. He will end as he began.

Of course to our grossly material minds even the sublime symbolism of Kosmos conceived in the matrix of Space after the divine Unit had entered into and fructified it with Its holy fiat, will no doubt suggest materiality. Not so with primitive mankind.

Says Sir William Drummond in Œdipus Judaïcus:

The truths of science were the arcana of the priests because these truths were the foundations of religion.

But why should the missionaries so cruelly twit the Vaishnavas and Krishna worshippers for the supposed grossly indecent meaning of their symbols, since it is made clear beyond the slightest doubt, and by the most unprejudiced writers, that Chrestos in the pit—whether the pit be …

The flowing blood streamed from the crown, or the piercing circlet of the thorns of Hell.

The Rose is feminine. Its lustrous carmine petals are guarded with thorns.

The Rose is the most beautiful of flowers. The Rose is the Queen of God's Garden (Mary, the Virgin). It is not the Rose alone which is the magical idea, or truth.

This is what may be termed spiritual photography. The soul is the camera in which facts and events, future, past, and present, are alike fixed; and the mind becomes conscious of them.

Beyond our everyday world of limits, all is as one day or state—the past and future comprised in the present.

Probably this is the “great day,” the “last day,” the “day of the Lord,” of the Bible writers—the day into which everyone passes by death or ecstasis.

This is what may be termed spiritual photography.

The soul is the camera in which facts and events, future, past, and present, are alike fixed; and the mind becomes conscious of them.

Beyond our everyday world of limits, all is as one day or state—the past and future comprised in the present.

Our macrocosm and its smallest microcosm, man, are both repeating the same play of universal and individual events at each station, as on every stage on which Karma leads them to enact their respective dramas of life.

False prophets could have no existence had there been no true prophets.

And so there were, and many of both classes, and in all ages.

Thus under the title of Magic was taught every Science, physical and metaphysical, natural or deemed supernatural by those who are ignorant of the omnipresence and universality of Nature.

Divine Magic makes of man a God; human magic creates a new fiend.

We wrote in Isis Unveiled:

The day of the Karma of Christian theology will come in its turn. Already the Protestants have begun the first chapter of the religion that will seek to transform the “Seven Spirits” and the host of the Roman Catholics into demons and idols.

Every religion has its Karma, as has every individual.

That which is due to human conception and is built on the abasement of our brothers who disagree with us, must have its day. “There is no religion higher than truth.”

Every religion has its Karma, as has every individual. That which is due to human conception and is built on the abasement of our brothers who disagree with us, must have its day. “

There is no religion higher than truth.

”

In the voluminous work of the Cardinal above-quoted is found a very suggestive sentence, the authorship of which has been variously attributed to Pascal, to Cusa himself, and to the Zohar, and which belongs by right to the Books of Hermes:

The world is an infinite sphere, whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.

This is changed by some into: “The centre being nowhere, and the circumference everywhere,” a rather heretical idea for a Cardinal, though perfectly orthodox from a Kabalistic standpoint.

In His anxiety to make away with the false Gods, He revealed in the “Seven Paths to Nirvâna” some of the mysteries of the Seven Lights of the Arûpa (formless) World.

A little of the truth is often worse than no truth at all.

Truth and fiction are like oil and water: they will never mix.

In His anxiety to make away with the false Gods, He revealed in the “Seven Paths to Nirvâna” some of the mysteries of the Seven Lights of the Arûpa (formless) World. A little of the truth is often worse than no truth at all.

Truth and fiction are like oil and water: they will never mix.

His new doctrine, which represented the outward dead body of the Esoteric Teaching without its vivifying Soul, had disastrous effects: it was never correctly understood, and the doctrine itself was rejected by the Southern Buddhists.

For the Occultist “Space” and “Universe” are synonyms.

In Space there is not Matter, Force, nor Spirit, but all that and much more.

It is the One Element, and that one the Anima Mundi—Space, Âkâsha, Astral Light—the Root of Life which, in its eternal, ceaseless motion, like the out- and in-breathing of one boundless ocean, evolves but to reabsorb all that lives and feels and thinks and has …

As said of the Universe in Isis Unveiled, it is:

The combination of a thousand elements and yet the expression of a single Spirit—a chaos to the sense, a Kosmos to the reason.

Such were the views upon the subject of all the great ancient Philosophers, from Manu down to Pythagoras, from Plato to Paul.

Plato's “God” is the “Universal Ideation,” and Paul saying “Out of him, and through him, and in him, all things are,” had surely a Principle—never a Jehovah—in his profound mind.

The key to the Pythagorean dogmas is the key to every great Philosophy.

It is the general formula of unity in multiplicity, the One evolving the many and pervading the All. It is the archaic doctrine of Emanation in a few words.

we find ourselves facing the incomprehensible, for such is every force in nature. Where is, then, that matter which you all pretend to know so well, and from which—being so familiar with it—you draw all your conclusions and explanations, and attribute to it all things?...

That which can be fully realized by our reason and senses is but the superficial; they can never reach the true inner substance of things.

Such was the opinion of Kant. If you consider that there is in a human head some sort of a spirit, then you are obliged to concede the same to a stone.

And let us say at once:

Men are no authority for us in questions of conscience, nor ought they to be for anyone else.

If anyone holds to Buddha's Philosophy, let him do and say as Buddha did and said; if a man calls himself a Christian, let him follow the commandments of Christ—not the interpretations of His many dissenting priests and sects.

A. No.

We are earnestly enjoined to accept nothing whatever on faith, whether it be written in books, handed down from our ancestors, or taught by sages.

Our Lord Buddha has said that we must not believe in a thing said merely because it is said; nor traditions because they have been handed down from antiquity; nor rumours, as such; nor writings by sages, because sages wrote them:

He who is unable to comprehend the subtle, and yet so potent, difference between existence in a material or physical state and a purely spiritual existence—Spirit or “Soul-life”—will never appreciate at their full value the grand teachings of the Buddha, even in their exoteric form.

Individual or personal existence is the cause of pains and sorrows; collective and impersonal life-eternal is full of divine bliss and joy for ever, with neither causes nor effects to darken its light.

And the hope for such a life-eternal is the keynote of the whole of Buddhism. If we are told that impersonal existence is no existence at all, but amounts to annihilation, as was maintained by some French reincarnationists, then we would ask:

It is of this [idol- or image-worship] that the Barbarians [Western people] have heard, and know nothing of Bas-pa-Dharma [the secret Dharma or doctrine].

Why has truth to hide like a tortoise within its shell?

Because it is now found to have become like the Lama's tonsure knife,762 a weapon too dangerous to use even for the Lanoo. Therefore no one can be entrusted with the knowledge [Secret Science] before his time.

Within the body which admits sensations, acquires knowledge, thinks, and acts, there is the “true man without a position” Wu-wei-chen-jen. He makes himself clearly visible; not the thinnest separating film hides him. Why do you not recognise him?...

If the mind does not come to conscious existence, there is deliverance everywhere....

What is Buddha? Ans. A mind clear and at rest. What is the Law? Ans. A mind clear and enlightened. What is Tau? Ans. In every place absence of impediments and pure enlightenment. These three are one.

On the other hand, if he be good, generous, chaste and abstemious, or has any virtue hitherto latent and concealed in him, it will work its way out as irrepressibly as the rest.

Thus a civilized man who hates to be considered a saint, and therefore assumes a mask, will not be able to conceal his true nature, whether base or noble.

This is an immutable law in the domain of the occult.

and even the numerical value of the letters is added to or diminished according as such or another rhythm is made use of.

Let the student remember that number underlies form, and number guides sound.

Number lies at the root of the manifested Universe: numbers and harmonious proportions guide the first differentiations of homogeneous substance into heterogeneous elements; and number and numbers set limits to the formative hand of Nature.

But who is Padmapâni, in reality? Each of us must recognize him for himself, whenever he is ready.

Each of us has within himself the “Jewel in the Lotus,” call it Padmapâni, Krishna, Buddha, Christ, or whatever name we may give to our Divine Self.

The exoteric story runs thus:

This line, though you may call it “imaginary,” is, once you succeed in seeing it with your mental eye and give it a shape and colour, in truth as good as real.

A rope in a dream is not and yet is.

Moreover, according to the prismatic colour with which you endow your line, so will the influence act. Now Buddhi and Mercury correspond with each other, and both are yellow, or radiant and golden coloured.

Let the student protect himself from the “Powers of the Air” (Elementals) which throng public places, by wearing either a ring containing some jewel of the colour of the presiding planet, or else of the metal sacred to it.

But the best protection is a clear conscience and a firm desire to benefit Humanity.

[Transcriber's Note: This table was a wide pull-out insert into the book, with more columns than modern readers can display. It has been reformatted into several tables of more manageable width.]

If these three discrete or distributive degrees of Being be conceived, according to the Symbology of all the Eastern Religions, as contained in one Ovum, or Egg, the name of that Egg will be Svabhâvat, or the All-Being on the manifested plane.

This Universe has, in truth, neither centre nor periphery; but in the individual and finite mind of man it has such a definition, the natural consequence of the limitations of human thought.

In Diagram II., as already stated therein, no notice need be taken of the numbers used in the left-hand column, as these refer only to the Hierarchies of the Colours and Sounds on the metaphysical plane, and are not the characteristic numbers of the human …

… stated therein, no notice need be taken of the numbers used in the left-hand column, as these refer only to the Hierarchies of the Colours and Sounds on the metaphysical plane, and are not the characteristic numbers of the human principles or of the planets.

The human principles elude enumeration, because each man differs from every other, just as no two blades of grass on the whole earth are absolutely alike.

Numbering is here a question of spiritual progress and the natural predominance of one principle over another. With one man it may be Buddhi that stands as number one; with another, if he be a bestial sensualist, the Lower Manas.

Thus we see the Divine Essence of our Progenitors in Heaven circling through seven stages; Spirit becoming Matter, and Matter returning to Spirit.

As there is sound in Nature which is inaudible, so there is colour which is invisible, but which can be heard.

The creative force, at work in its incessant task of transformation, produces colour, sound and numbers, in the shape of rates of vibration which compound and dissociate the atoms and molecules.

In sleep also they are not all “at home.” For those which belong to the spiritual elements in the man, viz., Yellow, Buddhi; Indigo, Higher Manas; and the Blue of the Auric Envelope will be either hardly discernible, or altogether missing.

The Spiritual Man is free during sleep, and though his physical memory may not become aware of it, lives, robed in his highest essence, in realms on other planes, in realms which are the land of reality, called dreams on our plane of illusion.

A good clairvoyant, moreover, if he had an opportunity of seeing a Yogî in the trance state and a mesmerized subject, side by side, would learn an important lesson in Occultism.

It is like a Laplander, in all sincerity, denying the possibility of the catgut, strung loosely on the sounding-board of a violin producing comprehensive sounds or melody.

Our principles are the Seven-Stringed Lyre of Apollo, truly.

In this our age, when oblivion has shrouded ancient knowledge, men's faculties are no better than the loose strings of the violin to the Laplander.

Once define an idea in words, and it loses its reality; once figure a metaphysical idea, and [pg 487] you materialize its spirit.

Figures must be used only as ladders to scale the battlements, ladders to be disregarded when once the foot is set upon the rampart.

Let students, therefore, be very careful to spiritualize the Papers and avoid materializing them;

Every man may become a Botanist without apparent danger to his fellow-creatures; and many a Chemist who has mastered the science of essences knows that every one of them can both heal and kill.

Not an ingredient, not a poison, but can be used for both purposes—aye, from harmless wax to deadly prussic acid, from the saliva of an infant to that of the cobra di capella.

This every tyro in medicine knows—theoretically, at any rate.

Thus they have done more harm than good. Those who are successful owe it to their innate magnetic and healing powers, which very often counteract that which would otherwise be conducive to much evil.

Beware, I say; Satan and the Archangel are more than twins; they are one body and one mind—Deus est Demon inversus.

Such is another question often asked. I answer: Genuine concentration and meditation, conscious and cautious, upon one's lower self in the light of the inner divine man and the Pâramitâs, is an excellent thing.

It can graft nothing of self on that eternal trunk whose sap throws out millions of personalities, like leaves from its branches, leaves which wither, die and fall at the end of their season.

These personalities bud, blossom forth and expire, some without leaving a trace behind, others after commingling their own life with that of the parent stem.

It is the Souls of the former class that are doomed to annihilation, or Avîtchi, a state so badly understood, and still worse described by some Theosophical writers, but which is not only located on our earth, but is in fact this very earth itself.

that, in fact, it is by ignoring the Higher Mind altogether that one reaches Râja Yoga. We say it is not so.

No single rung of the ladder leading to knowledge can be skipped.

No personality can ever reach or bring itself into communication with Âtmâ, except through Buddhi-Manas;

This, of course, is only a poetical exaggeration; yet it is a striking image to show how great results come from apparently trifling causes.

Good and evil are relative, and are intensified or lessened according to the conditions by which man is surrounded.

One who belongs to that which we call the “useless portion of mankind,” that is to say, the lay majority, is in many cases irresponsible. Crimes committed in Avidyâ, or ignorance, involve physical but not moral responsibilities or Karma.

In fact, H. P. B. had known Adepts whose intellectual powers were originally below the average. It is the Adept's purity, his equal love to all, his working with Nature, with Karma, with his “Inner God,” that give him his power.

Intellect by itself alone will make the Black Magician.

For intellect alone is accompanied with pride and selfishness: it is the intellectual plus the spiritual that raises man. For spirituality prevents pride and vanity.

Man alone is capable of conceiving the Universe on this plane of existence.

Existence is; but when the entity does not feel it, for that entity it is not.

The pain of an operation exists, though the patient does not feel it, and for the patient it is not.

Aum consists of two vowels and one semi-vowel, which latter must be prolonged. Just as Nature has its Fa, so each man has his: man being differentiated from Nature.

The body may be compared to an instrument and the Ego to the player.

You begin by producing effects on yourself; then little by little you learn to play on the Tattvas and Principles; learn first the notes, then the chords, then the melodies.

but it is only as in a dream, and the knowledge will fade away as memory of a dream fades, unless it be kept alive by conscious study.

Fear and hatred are essentially one and the same. He who fears nothing will never hate, and he who hates nothing will never fear.

Q. What is the meaning of the phrase: “Form a clear image of the Triangle on every plane;” e.g., on the Astral Plane, what should one think of as the Triangle?

Occultists know each minute portion of the heart, and have a name for each. They call them by the names of the Gods, as Brahmâ's Hall, Vishnu's Hall, etc. They correspond with parts of the brain.

The very atoms of the body are the thirty-three crores of Gods.

The sympathetic nerve is played on by the Tântrikas, who call it Shiva's Vînâ.

A.

Aum means good action, not merely lip-sound. You must say it in deeds.

Q. With reference to the triangle, is not the Âtmâ-Buddhi-Manas different for each entity, according to the plane on which he is?

You may not be fully conscious of it, and yet you may sense it. Âkâsha is at the root of the manifestation of all sounds. Sound is the expression and manifestation of that which is behind it, and which is the parent of many correlations.

All Nature is a sounding-board; or rather Âkâsha is the sounding-board of Nature.

It is the Deity, the one Life, the one Existence. (Hearing is the vibration of molecular particles; the order is seen in the sentence, “The disciple feels, hears, sees.”)

All Nature is a sounding-board; or rather Âkâsha is the sounding-board of Nature. It is the Deity, the one Life, the one Existence. (Hearing is the vibration of molecular particles; the order is seen in the sentence, “The disciple feels, hears, sees.”)

Sound can have no end.

H. P. B. remarked with regard to a tap made by a pencil on the table: “By this time it has affected the whole universe. The particle which has had its wear and tear destroys something [pg 550] which passes into something else.

Pythagoras was an Initiate, one of the grandest of Scientists. His disciple, Archytas, was marvellously apt in applied Science. Plato and Euclid were Initiates, but not Socrates. No real Initiates were married. Euclid learned his Geometry in the Mysteries.

Modern men of Science only rediscover the old truths.

H. P. B. proceeded to explain Kosmic Consciousness, which is, like all else, on seven planes, of which three are inconceivable, and four are cognizable by the highest Adept.

In us this is Manas, and the very Logoi are less high, not having gained experience. The Mânasic Entity will not be destroyed, even at the end of the Mahâmanvantara, when all the Gods are absorbed, but will re-emerge from Parabrâhmic latency.

Consciousness is the Kosmic seed of superkosmic omniscience.

It has the potentiality of budding into the Divine Consciousness.

The plane of Buddhi and the Auric Envelope. From here it goes to the Father in heaven, Âtmâ, and reflects all that is in the Auric Envelope. Five and six therefore cover the planes from the psychic to the divine.

Reason is a thing that oscillates between right and wrong. But Intelligence—Intuition—is higher, it is the clear vision.

To get rid of Kâma we must crush out all our material instincts—“crush out matter.” The flesh is a thing of habit; it will repeat mechanically a good impulse as well as a bad one. It is not the flesh which is always the tempter;

To get rid of Kâma we must crush out all our material instincts—“crush out matter.”

The flesh is a thing of habit; it will repeat mechanically a good impulse as well as a bad one.

It is not the flesh which is always the tempter; in nine cases out of ten it is the Lower Manas, which, by its images, leads the flesh into temptation.

The Silent Watcher is on the Fourth Kosmic Plane.

The higher Mind directs the Will: the lower turns it into selfish Desire.

The head should not be covered in meditation. It is covered in Samâdhi.

The Dhyân Chohans are made to pass through the School of Life.

“God goes to School.”

The best of us in the future will be Mânasaputras; the lowest will be Pitris. We are seven intellectual Hierarchies here. This earth becomes the moon of the next earth.

The “Pitris” are the Astral overshadowed by Âtmâ-Buddhi, falling into matter. The “Pudding-bags” had Life and Âtmâ-Buddhi, but no Manas. They were therefore senseless.

The reason for all evolution is the gaining of experience.

In the Fifth Round all of us will play the part of Pitris. We shall have to go and shoot out our Chhâyâs into another humanity, and remain until that humanity is perfected.

The first step towards the accomplishment of Kriyâshakti is the use of the Imagination.

To imagine a thing is to firmly create a model of what you desire, perfect in all its details.

The Will is then brought into action, and the form is thereby transferred to the objective world. This is creation by Kriyâshakti.

In answer to a question, H. P. B. said that the diamond and the ruby were under the sun, the sapphire under the moon—“but what does it matter to you?”

When once out of the body, and not subject to the habit of consciousness formed by others, time does not exist.

Cycles and epochs depend on consciousness: we are not here for the first time; the cycles return because we come back into conscious existence. Cycles are measured by the consciousness of humanity and not by Nature.

The Hindus look upon death as impure, owing to the disintegration of the body and the passing from one plane to another.

“I believe in transformation, not in death.”

The Atom is the Soul of the molecule. It is the six Principles, and the molecule is the body thereof. The Atom is the Âtman of the objective Kosmos, i.e., it is on the seventh plane of the lowest Prakriti.

Samâdhi is the highest state on earth that can be reached in the body. Beyond that the Initiate must have become a Nirmânakâya.

Purity of mind is of greater importance than purity of body.

If the Upâdhi be not perfectly pure, it cannot preserve recollections coming from a higher state. An act may be performed to which little or no attention is paid, and it is of comparatively small importance.

The Brâhmans and Buddhists regard the Talas as hells, but in reality the term is figurative.

We are in hell whenever we are in misery, suffer misfortune and so on.

The Elementals in the Astral light are reflections. Everything on earth is reflected there. It is from these that photographs are sometimes obtained through mediums. The mediums unconsciously produce them as forms.

Thought arises before desire. The thought acts on the brain, the brain on the organ, and then desire awakes. It is not the outer stimulus that arouses the organ. Thought therefore must be slain ere desire can be extinguished. The student must guard his thoughts.

Five minutes' thought may undo the work of five years; and though the five years' work will be run through more rapidly the second time, yet time is lost.

H. P. B. began by challenging the views of consciousness in the West, commenting on the lack of definition in the leading Philosophies. No distinction was made between consciousness and self-consciousness, and yet in this lay the difference between man and the animal.

Instinct is the lower state of consciousness. Man has consciousness running through the [pg 574] four lower keys of his septenary consciousness; there are seven scales of consciousness in his consciousness, which is none the less essentially and pre-eminently one, a unit.

There are millions and millions of states of consciousness, as there are millions and millions of leaves; but as you cannot find two leaves alike, so you cannot find two states of consciousness alike; a state is never exactly repeated.

Is memory a thing born in us that it can give birth to the Ego? Knowledge, feeling, volition, are colleagues of the mind, not faculties of it. Memory is an artificial thing, an adjunct of relativeness;

Memory is acquired for this life, and can be expanded.

Genius is the greatest responsiveness of the brain and brain-memory to the Higher Manas.

Impressions on any sense are stored in the memory.

The Astral Body is molecular, however etherealized it may be: the Ego is atomic, spiritual. The Atoms are spiritual, and are for ever invisible on this plane; molecules form around them, they remaining as the higher invisible principles of the molecules.

The eyes are the most Occult of our senses: close them and you pass to the mental plane.

Stop all the senses and you are entirely on another plane.

It has nothing in common with the animal desire to create. Will is of the Higher Manas. It is the universal harmonious tendency acting by the Higher Manas.

Desire is the outcome of separateness, aiming at the satisfaction of Self in Matter.

The path opened between the Higher Ego and the Lower enables the Ego to act on the personal self.

The Lower Manas is asleep in sense-dreams, the animal consciousness being then guided towards the Astral Light by Kâma; the tendency of such sense-dreams is always towards the animal.

If we could remember our dreams in deep sleep, then we should be able to remember all our past incarnations.

There are twelve Nidânas, exoteric and Esoteric, the fundamental doctrine of Buddhism.

(2) A concatenation of causes and effects.

Every cause produces an effect, and this effect becomes in its turn a cause.

Each of these has as Upâdhi (basis), one of the sub-divisions of one of the Nidânas, and also an effect or consequence.

The Skandhas are Karmic and non-Karmic. Skandhas may produce Elementals by unconscious Kriyâshakti. Every Elemental that is thrown out by man must return to him sooner or later, since it is his own vibration. They thus become his Frankenstein. Elementals are simply effects producing effects.

They are disembodied thoughts, good and bad.

They remain crystallized in the Astral Light and are attracted by affinity and galvanized back into life again, when their originator returns to earth-life. You can paralyze them by reverse effects.

Fire is not an Element but a divine thing. The physical flame is the objective vehicle of the highest Spirit. The Fire Elementals are the highest.

Everything in this world has its Aura and its Spirit.

The flame you apply to the candle has nothing to do with the candle itself. The Aura of the object comes into conjunction with the lowest part of the other. Granite cannot burn because its Aura is Fire.

At every incarnation a new Ray is emitted, and yet it is the same Ray in essence, the same in you and me and every one. The dross of the incarnation disintegrates, the good goes to Devachan.

The Flame is eternal.

From the Flame of the Higher Ego, the Lower is lighted, and from this a lower vehicle, and so on.

H. P. B. was asked whether there was one Ego to one permanent Chhâyâ seed, oversouling it in a series of incarnations; her answer was:

“No, it is Heaven and Earth kissing each other.”

The animal Souls are in temporary forms and shells in which they gain experience, and in which they prepare materials for higher evolution.

Until the age of seven the astral atavic germ forms and moulds the body; after that the body forms the Astral.

The Astral and the Mind mutually react on each other.

The meaning of the passage in the Upanishads, where it says that the Gods feed on men, is that the Higher Ego obtains its earth experience through the Lower.

The Astral supports life; it is the reservoir or sponge of life, gathering it up from all the natural kingdoms around, and is the intermediary between the kingdoms of Prânic and physical life.

Life cannot come immediately from the subjective to the objective, for Nature goes gradually through each sphere.

Therefore the Linga Sharîra is the intermediary between Prâna and our physical body, and pumps in the life.