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Hermes, Hermetic and the Hermetic Society. Anna Kingsford. Taken from The Life of Anna Kingsford: Her Life, Letters, Diary and Work. Edward Maitland. Two volumes. George Redway, London, 1896. 3rd Edition, edited by Samuel Hopgood Hart. John M. Watkins, London, 1913. Vol. I, 442 pp.; Vol. II, 466 pp.
Hermes, Hermetic and the Hermetic Society
“The name of Hermes as the divine representative of the intellectual principle has ever in the Western world been associated with the study of spiritual and occult science, and with the knowledge of things hidden and removed from the reach of the superficial sense. Hence the very word ‘hermetic’ has, in common parlance, come to be applied to the enclosure and sealing up of objects which it is desired to preserve inviolate and incorrupt. The Hermetic Society, however, though, as its name implies, concerning itself mainly with the study of the secret science, is not a secret association. Its Fellows are bound by no pledges of silence, and use neither password nor sign. In a Society having a catholic object, and aiming at the inauguration of a school of thought which, though old in the history of the world, is new in that of our race and time, it is considered that a policy of exclusiveness would be anachronistic and out of place. Moreover, the origin and character of the Society are not of a nature to render secrecy either necessary or desirable. Composed as it is, not of initiates, but of students, and numbering in its ranks sound scholars and competent thinkers more or less intolerant of ecclesiastical methods and control, the task which the Society has set itself is one for which it seeks and invites co-operation on the part of all able contributors to the thought of our day. This task involves the investigation of the nature and constitution of man, with a view to the formulation of a system of thought and rule of life which will enable the individual to develop to the utmost his higher potentialities, intellectual and spiritual. The Society represents a reaction that has long been observable, though hitherto discouraged and hindered from public expression by still dominant influences. Reaction is not necessarily, nor indeed usually, retrogressive. It bears on its wave the best acquisitions of time and culture, and often represents the deeper current of essential progress. The tendency of the age to restrict the researches of the human mind to a range of study merely material and sensible is directly inimical to the method of Nature, and must, therefore, prove abortive. For it represents an attempt to limit the scope and the possibilities of evolution, and thus to hinder the normal development of those higher modes of consciousness which mark certain advanced types of mankind. Reason is not less the test of truth to the mystic than to the materialist; but the mode of it to which the former appeals is on a higher level, transcending the operation of the outer and ordinary senses. ‘Revelation’ thus becomes conceivable. Only to thought which is absolutely free is the manifestation of truth possible; and to be thus free, thought must be exercised in all directions, not outward only to the phenomenal, but inward to the real also, from the expression of idea in formal matter to the informing idea itself. Our age, failing to comprehend the mystic spirit, has hitherto associated it with attributes which really belong not to mysticism, but to the common apprehension of it – obscurity and uncertainty. The Hermetic Society desires to reveal mysticism to a world which knows it not; to define its propositions, and to categorise its doctrine. And this can only be done by minds trained in the philosophical method, because mysticism is a science, based on the essential reason of things – the most supremely rationalistic of all systems.
“The programme by which the Hermetic Society intends to regulate and direct its labours is a rich one. It comprises the comparative study of all philosophical and religious systems, whether of the East or of the West, and especially of the ‘Mysteries’ of Egypt and Greece, and the allied schools of Kabalistic, Pythagorean, Platonic, and Alexandrian illumination. The researches of the Hermetists in the direction of Christian doctrine are especially interesting, on account not only of the importance of the subject, but of the novelty of the treatment accorded to it. In the papers on the Credo of Christendom now in course of delivery, the President deals with the historical element of our national faith as its accident and vehicle only, the dramatic formulation of processes whose proper sphere of operation is the human mind and soul.
“These observations will suffice to show that the Hermetic Society is not more friendly to the popular presentation of orthodox Church doctrine than to the fashionable agnosticism of the hour. It represents, indeed, a revolt against all conventional forms of belief, whether ecclesiastical or secular, and a conviction that the rehabilitation of religion on reasonable and scientific grounds is not only possible to the human mind, but is essential to human progress and development. This line of thought was first introduced to the public in a work entitled The Perfect Way; or, the Finding of Christ, with the production of which it is an open secret that the present President of the Hermetic Society had much to do. The book consists of a series of lectures, delivered to private audiences in London in the year 1881, and published in the following winter. The subject chiefly handled in these lectures is the Christian tradition; and the Roman Church, as the principal and completest exponent thereof, is connected with and referred to the Hermetic ‘mysteries’ of Egyptian and Hellenic origin; the method adopted by the neo-Platonic school in expounding these being applied, in The Perfect Way, to the Christian revelation, as their descendant and heir.
“Students of the ‘solar myth’ have again and again demonstrated the fact that the dogmas and central figures of Christianity are identical with those of all other religious systems, and are probably all traceable to a common astronomical origin; but it was reserved for the writers of the book in question to define the esoteric significance of the solar myth, and to point out the correspondence subsisting between the symbology of the various creeds founded on the terms of this universal myth, and the processes and principles concerned in the interior development of the individual human Ego.
“The appearance of this book, it is asserted by those who claim to know, awakened the interest of the Eastern ‘Adepts,’ whom the Theosophical Society venerates as its leaders and master; and the writers were invited by the London representatives of that Society to join its English branch in an official capacity. The views and aims of the two parties proved, however, to be in some important respects divergent. The writers of The Perfect Way found that their labours, though not inconsistent with personal interest in the propaganda of which Mr. Sinnett is the accredited exponent, could not be carried on within the same organisation. Their paramount idea lay in the direction of the revival of Christian mysticism, as the form of theosophy best adapted to the genius of the European mind. In this view many readers of their book concurred, and thus, while friendly to much in the objects of the Indian Theosophical fraternity, the Hermetic Society has its raison d’être in the distinctly Western proclivities of its promoters. It has a mystic rather than an ‘occult’ character; it depends for guidance upon no ‘Mahatmas,’ and can boast no worker of wonders on the phenomenal plane. Its Fellows do not, as Hermetists, interest themselves in the study or culture of abnormal powers; they seek knowledges only, and these not so much on the physical as on the intellectual and spiritual level. Such knowledge must, they hold, be necessarily productive of good works. Hermetists are expected to be true knights of spiritual chivalry, identifying themselves with movements in the direction of justice and mercy, whether toward man or beast, and doing their utmost, individually and collectively, to further the recognition of the Love-principle as that involving the highest and worthiest motive and method of human action.” (Vol. II, pp. 205-207) [Taken from The Life of Anna Kingsford: Her Life, Letters, Diary and Work. Edward Maitland. Two volumes. George Redway, London, 1896. 3rd Edition, edited by Samuel Hopgood Hart. John M. Watkins, London, 1913. Vol. I, 442 pp.; Vol. II, 466 pp.]
Hermes, Hermetic and the Hermetic Society. Anna Kingsford. Taken from The Life of Anna Kingsford: Her Life, Letters, Diary and Work. Edward Maitland. Two volumes. George Redway, London, 1896. 3rd Edition, edited by Samuel Hopgood Hart. John M. Watkins, London, 1913. Vol. I, 442 pp.; Vol. II, 466 pp.
