Sections: General Index
Present Section: Index
Selected Texts Quotes Glossary
QUOTES:
•
“Adam,” “Eve,” “Christ,” and “Mary” and the Rest – Denote the Various Spiritual
Elements Constituting the Individual
“The subject of her
second lecture (…) was the second clause of the Creed: “And in Jesus Christ, His
only Son, our Lord; who is conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin
Mary.” Concerning this clause, she said that in insisting upon the esoteric
signification as alone true and of value, we are but reverting to the ancient
and original usage. It is the acceptance of the Creed in its exoteric and
historical sense which is really modern. For all sacred mysteries were
originally regarded as spiritual, and only when they passed from the hands of
properly instructed initiates into those of the ignorant and vulgar, did they
become materialised and degraded to their present level. The esoteric truth of
this article of the Creed can be understood only through a previous knowledge,
first, of the constitution of man, and next, of the meaning of the terms
employed in the formulation of religious doctrine. This doctrine represents
perfect knowledge of human nature, and the terms in which it is expressed –
“Adam,” “Eve,” “Christ,” and “Mary” and the rest – denote the various spiritual
elements constituting the individual, the states through which he passes, and
the goal he finally attains in the course of his spiritual evolution. For, as
•
Anna Kingsford “Apologia”; or, a Brief Presentation of Her
Religious Views
“August 20, 1887.
“Until the occurrence of a recent incident, it had not
entered my mind that any of my relations would regard it as
a duty to interest himself actively about my religious
faith, and to press upon me the performance of certain
customary religious rites, either as a means of saving my
own soul or of satisfying family scruples. I had believed
that my recently published works were sufficient evidence of
the ground taken by me in regard to dogmatic Christianity,
and that the whole course of my life during the past ten
years would show the state of my mind respecting popular
conceptions of religion. But as it seems necessary that I
should not die without some sort of
Apologia,
I will attempt in this brief letter to explain my position.
“When, in 1872, I entered the Communion of the Roman Church,
I was actuated by the conviction – which has since
enormously strengthened – that this Church, and this alone,
contained and promulgated all truth. Especially was I
attracted by the doctrine of Transubstantiation and the
Sacrifice of the Mass, and by the cultus of the B.V.M. But I
did not then comprehend the spiritual import of these
doctrines, but endeavoured to accept them in the sense
ordinarily understood. My Spirit strove within me to create
me a Catholic without my knowing why. It was not until
1875-6 that I began by means of the Inner Light to
comprehend why my
(p. 328)
Spirit had caused me to take this step. For then began to be
unfolded to my soul, by means of a long series of interior
revelations, extending over ten years, that divine system of
the
Theosophia which I afterwards discovered
to be identical with the teaching of the Hermetic science,
and with the tenets of the Kabala, Alchemy, and the purest
Oriental religion. Enlightened by this Inner Light, I
perceived the fallacy and idolatry of popular Christianity,
and from that hour in which I received the spiritual Christ
into my heart, I resolved to know Him no more after the
flesh. The old historical controversies over the facts and
dates and phenomena of the Old and New Testaments ceased to
torment and perplex me. I perceived that my soul had nothing
to do with events occurring on the physical plane, because
these could not, by their nature, be cognates to spiritual
needs. The spiritual man seeketh after spiritual things, and
must not look for Christ upon earth, but in heaven. ‘He is
not here; He is risen.’ I therefore gave up troubling myself
to know anything about Jesus of Nazareth in the flesh, or
whether, indeed, such a person ever existed; not only
because no certainty in regard to these matters is
intellectually possible, but because, spiritually, they did
not concern me any longer. I had grasped the central truth
of Alchemy that is one with the doctrine of
Transubstantiation, namely, that the Objective must be
transmuted into the Subjective before it can be brought into
cognate relation with the soul. Truth is never phenomenal;
it is always noumenal. If I have not sufficiently explained
my meaning, I earnestly refer readers of this letter to the
Preface to the Revised Edition of
The Perfect
Way.
“In the faith and doctrine set forth in that book I desire
to die. And, having ceased to require assurance in any
physical or historical fact whatever as a factor of my
redemption, or to crave for any sort of outward ceremony as
a means of spiritual beatitude, I am content to trust the
future of my soul to the Justice of God, by whom I do not
understand a personal being capable of awarding punishments
or pardons, but the Pivotal Principle of the Universe,
inexorable, knowing neither favour nor relenting. For, as
says the Kabala, ‘Assuredly, thus have we learned, – There
is no judge over the wicked, but they themselves convert the
measure of Mercy into a measure of Judgment.’ This is a
declaration of the esoteric doctrine of
Karma,
which I fully accept, believing with Buddha and with
Pythagoras, and the whole company of wise and holy teachers
of the East and of the Kabala, that the soul is many lived,
and that men are many times reborn upon earth. As I am
certainly not yet perfected, I shall return to a new birth
after my merits have been exhausted in Paradise. Or if I
should, on the contrary, need purgation in the subjective
states, I accept that gladly as the will of Justice.
“But how or why, holding such belief as this, should I, on
my deathbed, seek the intervention of a priest, seeing that,
to accept such intervention, I must necessarily deceive him?
“I die, therefore, a Hermetist, believing in the spiritual
Gods, with whom, I indeed aver, I have inwardly conversed
and have seen them face to face; in the Evolution of Soul
from the lowest grade of Jacob’s Ladder unto the Presence of
the Holy One; in the solidarity and brotherhood of all
creatures, so that all may come at
(p. 329)
length to eternal life which are on the upward path. For
Christ gives Himself for all, and shall save both man and
beast. And therefore I desire after death to be burned, as
the Greeks were burned, and as the Orientals are who believe
as I believe. ANNA KINGSFORD.” [Life of
Anna Kingsford, Vol. II, pp. 327-329]
•
Appealing to the
Intellectual as well as to the Devotional Side
“In an
age distinguished, as is the present, by
all-embracing research, exhaustive analysis, and
unsparing criticism, no religious system can endure
unless it appeals to the intellectual as well as to
the devotional side of man’s nature. At present the
faith of Christendom is languishing on account of a
radical defect in the method of its presentation,
through which it is brought into perpetual conflict
with science; and the harassing and undignified task
is imposed on its supporters of an incessant
endeavour to keep pace with the advances of
scientific discovery, or the fluctuations of
scientific speculation. The method whereby it is
herein endeavoured to obviate the suspense and
insecurity thus engendered, consists in the
establishment of these two positions: –
“(1)
That the dogmas and symbols of Christianity are
substantially identical with those of other and
earlier religious systems.
“(2)
That the true plane of religious belief lies, not
where hitherto the Church has placed it, – in the
sepulchre of historical tradition, but in man’s own
mind and heart; it is not, that is to say, the
objective and physical, but the subjective and
spiritual; and its appeal is not to the senses but
to the soul. And,
“(3) That
thus regarded and duly interpreted, Christian
doctrine represents with scientific exactitude the
facts of man’s spiritual history.” (p. lxxii)
[From Preface to the Second (Revised) Edition,
of The Perfect Way; or, the Finding of Christ.
Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland. Fifth edition,
with additions, and Biographical Preface by
Samuel Hopgood Hart: John M. Watkins, London, 1923.
405 pp.]
• Awful Results of Roman Catholic Conventual System
“Much as she suffered through this course of experience [the experience of having a nun-nurse], she declared to me that it was most valuable to her, and she would not have missed it on any account. For she had before no conception of the awful results of the conventual system in crushing the minds and darkening the souls of its victims, and if allowed to recover – which she now more than ever desired for the purpose – she would make the exposure of it a leading part of her work. Such systematic suppression of the faculties divinely given us in order to be unfolded, and such refusal of the experiences calculated to unfold them, was nothing short of rank blasphemy against both God and man. No wonder the priesthood condemns and turns away from all that is Hermetic. It knows that, as the Spirit of Understanding, Hermes and their system cannot exist together.” [Life of Anna Kingsford, Vol. II, p. 357]
• Bacchic
Mysteries Are the Immediate Source and Pattern of
the Mysteries of the Catholic Christian Church
“My initiation was Greco-Egyptian, and therefore I
recall the truth primarily in the language and after
the method of the Bacchic mysteries, which are
indeed, as you know, the immediate source and
pattern of the mysteries of the Catholic Christian
Church.” [Life of Anna Kingsford, Vol.
II, p. 167]
• Baron Spedalieri on “The
“Eliphas
Levi was right when he told me that humanity needed not a new Revelation, but
rather an explanation of that which it already has. This explanation would, he
said, be given in the ‘latter times,’ and would constitute what he called the ‘Messianisme.’
The illuminated Guillaume Postel predicted likewise
that the ‘latter days’ would be distinguished by the comprehension of the
Kabala, and of the occult books of the Hebrews.
“You – the New
Messiah – you are now accomplishing this double mission, and you are doing it in
a manner veritably
miraculous.
For I cannot otherwise explain to myself how you have been able to acquire an
erudition so exalted and a knowledge so deep that before it all human
intelligence is dazzled. No initiation in any anterior state of existence
suffices to explain this wonder. Moreover, the doctrines you expound relate to
facts posterior to the ancient mysteries, and were therefore unknown to the
initiates of remote ages.
“Nothing was ever known
or written by any of the Christian Mystics, whether
“But this mission imposes
on you a great duty. Time presses; the harvest of the earth is ripe. Why do you
wait? Why confine yourselves to communicating to a small group of auditors that
which ought to regenerate humanity: Why not at once publish these chapters on
the Credo,
and later the rest of your Hermetic expositions of the teachings of the Church?
For then indeed the Church herself will for the first time learn with surprise
how great a treasure lies buried under the materialism of her doctrines.” [Life
of Anna Kingsford, Vol. II, p. 200]
• Buddhism
and Christianity Are Not Antagonistic or Rival
Systems
“For, as already said, so far from regarding
Buddhism and Christianity, properly interpreted, as
antagonistic and rival systems, we regard them as
one and the same system under different modes of
presentation; so that what would conduce to the
understanding of one, would conduce to the
understanding of the other.” [Life of Anna
Kingsford, Vol. II, p. 162]
•
Buddhism (Pure)
Is in No Radical Respect Different from Pure
Christianity
“Pure Buddhism is in no radical respect
different from pure Christianity, because esoteric
religion is identical throughout all time and
conditions, being eternal in its truth and immanent
in the human spirit. I am myself as much the
disciple of Buddha as of Christ, because the two
Masters are one in Doctrine.” [Life of Anna
Kingsford, Vol. II, p. 152]
• Christian
Religion Existed Among the Ancients (St. Augustine)
“IN the intervals passed at home this winter and spring Mary
wrote [in her diary] a number of meditations of very
profound character, on the mysteries, Egyptian, Hebrew,
Greek, and others, at a length which admits only of a few
brief examples here. They form a valuable confirmation of
the declaration of St. Augustine: ‘That which is called the
Christian Religion existed among the ancients, and never did
not exist, from the beginning of the human race until Christ
came in the flesh, at which time the true religion which
already existed began to be called Christianity.’” [Life of Anna
Kingsford, Vol. II, p. 172]
•
Christianity: Materials for Revising the Theology of
“All the materials for revising the
theology of Christianity are in our hands, being
divinely delivered from the original source in the
Church Celestial.” [Edward Maitland –
Life of Anna Kingsford,
quoted by Samuel H. Hart in Preface to the Third
Edition, p. v]
• Church’s Dogmas Have No Physical
Reference
“The entire
spiritual history of man is thus comprised in the Church’s two dogmas, the
Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. For they have no
physical reference, but denote precisely that triumph and apotheosis of the
soul, that glorification and perpetuation of the individual human ego, which
is the object and result of cosmic evolution, and consummation of the scheme of
creation.” [Life of Anna Kingsford, Vol. II, pp. 198-199]
•
Church’s Toleration of Vivisection – Earth Has Become a Hell
–
In Catholic Christendom the Creatures Endure Every
Species of Torment
“Argue with these ruffians, or with their priests, and they
will tell you ‘Christians have no duties to the beasts that
perish.’ Their Pope has told them so. So that Everywhere in
Catholic Christendom the poor, patient, dumb creatures
endure every species of torment without a single word being
uttered on their behalf by the teachers of religion. It is
horrible – damnable. And the true reason of it all is
because the beasts are popularly believed to be soulless. I
say, paraphrasing a
mot
of Voltaire’s, ‘If it
were true that they had no souls, it would be necessary to
invent souls for them.’ Earth has become a hell for want of
this doctrine. Witness vivisection, and the Church’s
toleration of it. Oh, if any living beings on earth have a
claim to heaven, surely the animals have the greatest claim
of all! Whose sufferings so bitter as theirs, whose wrongs
so deep, whose need of compensation so appalling? As a
mystic and an occultist, I know they are not destroyed by
death; but if I could doubt it – solemnly I say it – I
should doubt also the justice of God. How could I tell He
would be just to man if so bitterly unjust to the dear
animals?” [Anna Kingsford. From
Life of Anna
Kingsford, Vol. II, p. 312]
• Common
Sense
“I read a paper on Revelation as the Supreme
Common Sense, meaning that the consensus or
agreement which it represents is that, not of all
men merely, but of all parts of man; of mind, soul,
and spirit; of intellect and intuition, combined in
a pure spirit and unfolded to the utmost. There
is no contradiction between Reason and Revelation,
provided only it be the whole Reason and not the
mutilated faculty which ordinarily passes for such,
for that represents the intellect without the
intuition. And it is precisely the loss or
corruption of this last which constitutes the Fall,
the Intuition, as the feminine mode of the mind and
representing the soul, being mystically called “the
woman.”” [Life of Anna Kingsford, Vol.
II, p. 197]
•
Conditions [of Health] under which her Work was
Performed
“Such were the conditions [of health]
under which her work was performed, and rarely did a
week pass without some acute and prolonged access
either of pain, of prostration, or of insensibility.
So that when besides the shortness of her career is
considered also the numerous and extended periods of
complete disablement, the quantity of the work
accomplished by her – to say nothing of its quality
– appears little short of miraculous.” [Life
of Anna Kingsford, Vol. II, p. 127, footnote
2]
• Convert
the Material, Idolatrous, Interpretation of Ancestral
Doctrine into a Spiritual One
“Orthodox Christianity, both in Catholic
and in Protestant countries, is languishing on
account of a radical defect in its method, – to wit,
the exoteric and historical sense in which,
exclusively, its dogmas are taught and enforced. It
should be the task (…) in these countries to convert
the material – and therefore idolatrous –
interpretation of the ancestral faith and doctrine
into a spiritual one; to lift the plane of the
Christian creed from the exoteric to the esoteric
level, and thus, without touching a stone or
displacing a beam of the holy city, to carry it all
up intact from earth to heaven. Such a
transmutation, such a translation as this, would at
once silence the objections and accusations now
legitimately and reasonably brought by thinkers,
scholars, and scientists against ecclesiastical
teaching. For it would lift Religion into its only
proper sphere; it would enfranchise the concerns and
interests of the Soul from the bondage of the Letter
and the Form, of Time and of Criticism, and thus
from the harassing and always ineffectual endeavour
to keep pace with the flux and reflux of material
speculation and scientific discovery.
“Nor is the task thus proposed by any
means a hard one. It needs but to be demonstrated,
first, that the dogmas and central figures of
Christianity are identical with those of all other
past and present religious systems – a demonstration
already largely before the world; next, that these
dogmas being manifestly untrue and untenable in a
material sense, and these figures clearly
unhistorical, their true plane is to be sought not
where hitherto it has been the endeavour of the
Church to find them – in the sepulchre of tradition,
among the dry bones of the Past, but rather in the
living and immutable Heaven to which we, who truly
desire to find the ‘Lord,’ must in heart and mind
ascend.
“‘Why
seek ye the Living among the dead?
He is
not here, He is risen.’
“Lastly, it should be demonstrated that
these events and personages, hitherto wrongly
supposed to be purely historical, accurately
represent the processes and principles concerned in
interior development, and respond
perfectly to the definite and eternal needs of the
human Ego. And that thus the Initiate has no quarrel
with the true Christian religion or with its
symbolism, but only with the current orthodox
interpretation of that religion and symbolism. For
he knows that it is in the
noumenal
and not in the phenomenal world, on the spiritual,
not on the material plane, that he must look for the
whole process of the Fall, the Exile, the Immaculate
Conception, the Incarnation, the Passion, the
Crucifixion, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and
the Coming of the Holy Spirit. And any mode of
interpretation which implies other than this, is not
celestial but terrene, and due to that intrusion of
earthy elements into things divine, that conversion
of the inner into the outer, that materialisation of
the Spiritual, which constitutes idolatry.
“For, such of us as know and live the
inner life are saved, not by any Cross on Calvary
eighteen hundred years ago, not by any physical
blood-shedding, not by any vicarious passion of
tears and scourge and spear; but by the Christ
Jesus, the God with us, the Immanuel of the heart,
born and working mighty works, and offering oblation
in our own lives, in our own persons, redeeming us
from the world and making us sons of God and heirs
of everlasting life.” [Life of Anna Kingsford,
Vol. II, pp. 142-143]
• Current
Christianity (Position in Regard to the)
“Our own position in regard to the current
Christianity was that the Church had all the truth,
having received it from a Divine source, but that
the priests had materialised it, making themselves
and their followers idolaters.” [Life of Anna
Kingsford, Vol. II, p. 139]
• Divine Order of Chivalry Is the Order of the Christ
“The divine Order of Chivalry is the enemy of ascetic
isolation and indifferentism. It is the Order of the Christ
who goes about doing good. The Christian knight, mounted on
a valiant steed (for the horse is the symbol of
Intelligence), and equipped with the panoply of Michael, is
the type of the spiritual life, – the life of heroic and
active charity.” (p. 278) [Anna Kingsford. From:
Dreams
and Dream-Stories – Edited by Edward Maitland.
Second Edition: George Redway, London, 1888. 281 pp.]
• Doctrine of Caste, Teach It Above All Things
“My Genius says that we are, above all things, to teach the doctrine of Caste. The Christians made a serious mistake in requiring the same rule of all persons. Castes are as ladders whereby to ascend from the lower to the higher. They are properly spiritual grades, and have no relation to the outward condition of life. Like all other doctrines, that of Caste has been materialised. The Castes are four in number, and correspond to the fourfold nature of man.” (Vol. II, p. 5) [Anna Kingsford – Her Life, Letters, Diary and Work. Two volumes. 3rd Edition, edited by Samuel Hopgood Hart. John M. Watkins, London, 1913. Vol. I, 442 pp.; Vol. II, 466 pp.]
• Dry Bones Shall Live: Symbols Remain Forms to Enclose Living Spirit
“Nevertheless, the symbols we have loved need not be cast aside, but may still remain as forms to enclose the living spirit, if only we are careful to remember that they are but forms. For, remembering this, and cherishing them only as forms, they will be so transmuted as to permit the indwelling reality to shine forth from within them, and will, therefore, be no longer as cerements of the historical and dead, but as robes of the ever-living garments of God, transmitting, even while veiling, the brightness of the divine glory.
And if to some the proposed task appear as a vain attempt to resuscitate the dead and decayed, we would point, in answer, to the apologue of Ezekiel as at once an encouragement and, possibly, an anticipation. Here are the prophet’s words. Let
(p. 93)
us suppose the creeds and other symbols of the Churches to be the dry bones: –
‘The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones. (...) and, lo, they were very dry.
‘ And he said unto me, Son of Man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, Thou knowest.
‘ And again he said unto me, prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.
‘Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live:
‘And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the Lord. (...)
‘So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.’” (Ezekiel XXXVII, 1-10.)
SAMUEL HOPGOOD HART.
CROYDON, October 1916.”
[The Credo of Christendom: and Other Addresses and Essays on Esoteric Christianity. Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland. Edited by Samuel Hopgood Hart. John M. Watkins, London, 1916. 256 pp. Biographical Preface by Samuel H. Hart, pp. 92-93]
• Edward
Maitland: Testimony by Samuel Hopgood Hart
“(…) and (seeing perhaps a look of surprise) he told
me of the mystical sense underlying
the account in the Old Testament of the children of
Israel in Egypt and their flight there from, and, in
fact, underlying all sacred scripture. The
interpretation was new to me, and I could not at
once grasp the full meaning of it all, but I was not
inclined to disbelieve or question what he said. I
felt that I had found a man who knew the truth, and
whose word alone was sufficient, and I had never
before met such a man. He gave me a copy of
The New Gospel of Interpretation, and
advised me to read his and Anna Kingsford’s books,
and to join the
Esoteric Christian Union.
I lost no time in following the advice given to me,
and in his and Anna Kingsford’s writings I found
that for which I had sought and which has ever since
been my greatest treasure. Before I read
The
Perfect Way, I was a seeker after truth; but
having read that book, I said
Nunc dimittis.
I owe to Edward Maitland a debt of gratitude that I
can never repay; for it was he who put me in the
“right way”; it was his and Anna Kingsford’s
writings that “brought me out of the horrible pit,
out of the mire and clay; and set my feet upon the
rock.” It was his and Anna Kingsford’s writings that
brought me to the fountain of true wisdom. The
teaching contained in the pages of
The Perfect
Way “put a new song in my mouth: even a
thanksgiving unto God.”” [Samuel H. Hart. From:
Life of Anna Kingsford, Preface to the
Third Edition, p. ix].
• Esoteric
Christianity and Esoteric Buddhism Are Complementary
Systems
“In Madame Blavatsky’s note are two or
three things which call for remark. (…) it is a
mistake to regard us as seeking to “set off Esoteric
Christianity against Esoteric Buddhism,” and this
for the very reason assigned by her, and in which we
have great pleasure in agreeing with her, namely,
because to do so would be “to offer one part of the
whole against another part of the whole.” For, as
stated at some length in
The Perfect Way
(First Edition: pp. 256-9; Fourth Edition: Lecture
VIII, pars. 49-51), we regard the two systems as
complementary to each other, each being
indispensable, as concerned with, or representing
different stages in man’s spiritual evolution;
Christianity, rightly interpreted, representing the
later, and therefore the higher, in that it alone,
unequivocally, “has the Spirit.” In
token of which may be adduced the fact that, while
it is a moot point, even for the Buddhists
themselves, whether or not Buddhism is an
“atheistic” system, no such question is or can be
raised concerning Christianity.” [Life of Anna
Kingsford, Vol. II, pp. 161-162]
• Faculty
of Knowing Intuitively Possessed by Anna Kingsford
“The other point regards her own conception of the
nature of the ‘gifts’ with which she is good enough
to credit me. I have no occult powers whatever, and
have never laid claim to them. Neither am I, in the
ordinary sense of the word, a clairvoyant. I am
simply a ‘prophetess’ – one who sees and knows
intuitively, and not by any exercise of any trained
faculty. All that I receive comes to me by
‘illumination,’ as to Proclus, to Iamblichus, to all
those who follow the Platonic method. And this
‘gift’ was born with me, and has been developed by a
special course and rule of life. It is, I am told,
the result of a former initiation in a past birth,
and the reason that I am enabled to profit by it is
that I am an ‘old spirit,’ having, by ‘thirst of
life,’ pushed myself on to a point of spiritual
evolution somewhat in advance of the rest of my
race, but to which all can attain in time
who
have really been once initiated. My
initiation was Greco-Egyptian, and therefore I
recall the truth primarily in the language and after
the method of the Bacchic mysteries, which are
indeed, as you know, the immediate source and
pattern of the mysteries of the Catholic Christian
Church.” [Life of Anna Kingsford, Vol.
II, p. 167]
• Faith That Is
Without Understanding Is Credulity
“True it is ‘faith that saves,’ but the faith
that is without understanding is not faith, but credulity”.
(p. xi).[Edward Maitland. Letter in Light of 17th December,
1892. Quoted by Samuel Hopgood Hart, in the Preface to the
Third Edition of The Story of Anna Kingsford and Edward
Maitland and of The New Gospel of Interpretation. The
Ruskin Press, Birmingham, 1905. 204 pp.]
• Hold
Fast to the Truth as Your Lamp – Gautama Buddha
“‘And whosoever, either now or after I
am dead, shall be a lamp unto himself, and a refuge
unto himself, betaking himself to no external
refuge, but holding fast to the truth as his lamp,
and to the truth as his refuge, looking not to any
one besides himself as a refuge, even he among my
disciples shall reach the very topmost height. But
he must be anxious to learn.’” [Life of Anna
Kingsford, Vol. II, p. 125: quoting the
Mahâ-Paranibbâna-Sutta, a Buddhist book
recording words of Gautama Buddha]
•
I Thought to Have Helped in the Overthrow of the Idolatrous
Altars
“I had hoped to
have been one of the pioneers of the new awakening of the
world. I had thought to have helped in the overthrow of the
idolatrous altars and the purging of the Temple. And now I
must die just as the day of battle dawns and the sound of
the chariot-wheels is heard. Is it, perhaps, all premature?
Have we thought the time nearer than it really is? Must I go
and sleep, and come again before the hour sounds?” [Life
of Anna Kingsford, Vol. II, pp. 331-332]
•
Immaculate Conception and the Assumption Have no Physical Reference
“The entire
spiritual history of man is thus comprised in the Church’s two dogmas, the
Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. For they have no
physical reference, but denote precisely that triumph and apotheosis of the
soul, that glorification and perpetuation of the individual human ego, which
is the object and result of cosmic evolution, and consummation of the scheme of
creation.” [Life of Anna Kingsford, Vol. II, pp. 198-199]
• Interpretation of the Passage (Parable) of the
Multitude of Fishes
“Suffer me, in conclusion, to expound
for your readers’ meditation a certain passage in
the Christian evangel [Luke 5, 1-10] which
has hitherto been supposed to bear a meaning purely
circumstantial, but which, in the light of the
interpretative method, appears to carry a
signification closely related to the work which I
trust to see inaugurated (…).
“‘And it came to pass that as the
multitudes pressed upon Him to hear the word of God,
He stood by the lake of Gennesareth.
“‘And saw two ships standing by the
lake: but the fishermen were gone out of them, and
were washing their nets.
“‘And going into one of the ships, that
was Simon’s, He desired him to draw back a little
from the land. And sitting, He taught the multitudes
out of the ship.
“‘Now when He had ceased to speak, He
said to Simon: Launch out into the deep, and let
down your nets for a draught.
“‘And Simon answering said to Him:
Master, we have laboured all the night, and have
taken nothing: but at Thy word I will let down the
net. And when they had done this, they enclosed a
very great multitude of fishes, and their net broke.
And they beckoned to their partners that were in the
other ship, that they should come and help them. And
they came and filled both the ships, so that they
were almost sinking.
“‘Which when Simon Peter saw, he fell
down at Jesus’ knees, saying: Depart from me, for I
am a sinful man, O Lord.
“‘For he was wholly astonished and all
that were with him, at the draught of the fishes
which they had taken.
“‘And so were also James and John the
sons of Zebedee, who were Simon’s partners.
“‘And Jesus saith to Simon: Fear not:
from henceforth thou shalt catch men.’
“In this parable the Christ standing by
the water-side is the Logos, the Word of God, and
the lake by which He stands is the Psychic element,
the soul of the Macrocosm and Microcosm (Gennesareth,
the Garden of God). Beside these spiritual waters
there are two ships, but they are empty; their
owners have gone out of them and are washing their
nets. These empty ships are the two ancient parent
Churches of East and West, the Oriental and the
Pagan. At the time of the re-birth of the Mysteries
under the Christian dispensation, both these
Churches were barren and vacated, the life and vital
power which once thundered from their Sinais and
Olympuses were dead and gone out of them, the glory
of their ancient oracles and hierarchies was no
more, the nets with which they once had caught the
Gnosis
and spiritual graces needed
cleansing and renovation; the vivifying Spirits or
Angels which had animated these two Churches had
forsaken their shrines.
“And the Christ, the Word, entered into
one of them, which was Peter’s, and desired him to
thrust out a
little
from the land. The
ship into which the Christian Logos thus entered at
its outset was undoubtedly the Pagan Church, which
had its headquarters at Rome. It can be proved from
monumental evidence and from the writings of the
Fathers (see,
inter alia,
Monumental Christianity, by Presbyter
Lundy), that the new faith, whose epiphany must have
been at Alexandria, adopted from its earliest age
the symbols, the rites, and the ceremonials of the
expiring pagan system, incorporating them into its
own Mysteries, endowing them with new vitality, and
thus perpetuating and preserving them almost intact
to our own times.
“Peter is the universally accepted
representative of the Genius of Rome. Peter’s ship
is the Roman Church of this day, even as the ship of
Janus was in pre-Christian times the appropriate
symbol of Pagan Rome. Peter is the opener and
shutter of the Gates of the Church, even as Janus
was of the portals of heaven. It is, therefore, into
this Pagan Church of Rome that the Logos enters, and
prays its Genius to thrust out a little from the
land. Now, in sacred allegory, the ‘land’ or earth
is always a figure for the bodily element, as
opposed to water, or the soul. It represents Matter,
and the material plane and affinities.
“We see, then, that the Word, or
‘Christ,’ demanded in this first age of the
Christian dispensation the partial spiritualization
of the existing Church, – demanded the basis of
doctrine and dogma to be shifted from the mere dry
earthy bottom of materialism and hero-worship on
which it had become stranded, to the more
appropriate element of ethical religion, the
province of the soul, – not yet, however, far
removed from the shallows of literalism and dogma.
This done, the Word abides in the renovated Church,
and, for a time, teaches the people from its midst.
“Then comes the age which is now upon
us, the age in which the Logos ceases to speak in
the Christian Church; and the injunction is given to
the Angel of the Church: – Launch out into the deep
and let down your net for a draught. Quit the very
shores and coasts of materialism, give up the
accessories of human tradition which, in this era of
science, are both apt to offend and so to narrow
your horizon as to prevent you from reaping your due
harvest of truth; abandon all appeals to mere
historical exegesis, and launch out into the deeps
of a purely spiritual and metaphysical element.
Recognise this, and this alone henceforward, as the
true and proper sphere of the Church.
“And the Apostle of the Church answers,
Master, all through the dark ages, the mediaeval
times in which superstition and sacerdotalism
reigned supreme and unquestioned – the night of
Christendom, – we toiled in vain; the Church
acquired no real light, she gained no solid truth or
living knowledges. But now, at last, at thy word,
she shall launch out into the deep of thought, and
let down her net for a draught.
“And a mighty success is prophesied to
follow this change in the method and system of
religious doctrine. The net of the Church encloses a
vast multitude of mystic truths and knowledges –
more even than a single Church is able to deal with.
Their number and importance are such that the
Apostles or Hierarchs of the Christian Church find
themselves well-nigh overwhelmed by the wealth of
the treasury they have laid open. They call in the
aid of the ancient Oriental Church, with its Angels,
to bear an equal hand in the labours of
spiritualization, the diffusion of truth, the
propaganda of the Divine
Gnosis, and
the triumph of esoteric Religion. Henceforth the
toilers in the two Churches of East and West are
partners; the Vedas and the Tripitakas find their
interpretation in the same language and by the same
method as the Christian evangel; Chrishna, Buddha,
and Christ are united, and a true Brotherhood – a
true
Eirenicon – is preached to men.
“From that day forth, the Church
Catholic and Christian need have no fear, for she
shall indeed ‘catch men.’” [Life of Anna
Kingsford, Vol. II, pp. 144-146]
•
Interpretation of Your Bibles
“That which you need on Earth is the interpretation
of your Bibles, and of all the Scriptures which contain the
hidden wisdom, the mystery of which St. Paul so often speaks
as existing from the foundation of the world. [As in Romans
16:25]” (A Message to Earth.
Edited by Edward Maitland. p. 69)
•
Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord; who is Conceived by the Holy Ghost, Born
of the Virgin Mary
“The subject of her
second lecture (…) was the second clause of the Creed: “And in Jesus Christ, His
only Son, our Lord; who is conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin
Mary.” Concerning this clause, she said that in insisting upon the esoteric
signification as alone true and of value, we are but reverting to the ancient
and original usage. It is the acceptance of the Creed in its exoteric and
historical sense which is really modern. For all sacred mysteries were
originally regarded as spiritual, and only when they passed from the hands of
properly instructed initiates into those of the ignorant and vulgar, did they
become materialised and degraded to their present level. The esoteric truth
of this article of the Creed can be understood only through a previous
knowledge, first, of the constitution of man, and next, of the meaning of the
terms employed in the formulation of religious doctrine. This doctrine
represents perfect knowledge of human nature, and the terms in which it is
expressed – “Adam,” “Eve,” “Christ,” and “Mary” and the rest – denote the
various spiritual elements constituting the individual, the states through which
he passes, and the goal he finally attains in the course of his spiritual
evolution. For, as
•
Knowledge Is the Prime Minister of Faith
“The fact
seems to be, that in order to have Religion, or
Love, one must have knowledge, and this positive,
and not merely intuitive, knowledge. I mean that, in
order not to mistrust the justice of universal Law,
one must have scientific knowledge of Nature.
Knowledge is therefore the prime minister of Faith.
How wonderfully the Church helps one in matters of
Theosophy! Where I am doubtful about Divine Order or
about Function in the human kingdom, I appeal
instinctively to the Catholic doctrine, and am at
once set in the right path. I think I should never
have clearly understood the Order and Function of
the Soul but for the Catholic teaching concerning
the Mother of God; nor should I have comprehended
the method of salvation by the merits of our Divine
Principle save for the doctrine of the Incarnation
and the Atonement.” [Life of Anna Kingsford,
Vol. II, p. 134]
• “Life
of Anna Kingsford”: the Great Biography by Edward
Maitland
“(…) the crowning work of his
life – his
magnum opus – a work
which, he was assured,
would
“educate the world
more than all else, by showing how the
divine life can
be led, and the faculties opened to divine truth,
and that to get that truth, the divine life
must be led”: – for Anna Kingsford’s life affords to
the world – “a world sunk
beyond all
precedent in the depths of Materialism” – a demonstration
anew of the Soul’s reality and transcendency, and
therein of the divine potentialities of humanity.
The great value
of the present Biography is that it was written by
one who
not only more than any other had intimate knowledge
of Anna Kingsford, but by one who knew of her as much as it is possible
for one human
being to know of another, and who, in addition
to such knowledge, was possessed of the
ability, literary and
other, necessary
to enable him to do justice to his subject; and
last but not least, it was written by one of
undoubted veracity”
[Samuel H. Hart. From:
Life of Anna Kingsford,
Preface to the Third Edition, p. vi].
•
“Life of
Anna Kingsford”: Testimony by Madame Isabel de
Steiger
“I have just finished reading
The
Life of Anna Kingsford, by Mr. Maitland.
(...) I do not intend to write more than a few
words, for I hope and expect that an abler pen than
mine will do the “Life” full justice
in a comprehensive review, but I should like to add
a few words of “testimony.” I felt as if reading a
page of my own history while going through this very
important and profoundly interesting work. I can,
therefore, with some claim to do so, admire its
strict truth and accuracy. The episodes come back to
me as occurring just as they are written. It is,
indeed, a plain and unvarnished narrative of one of
the very remarkable lives of this age.
“When one
thinks of all the memoirs one reads of all the able
and distinguished
women of the day, often edited by equally
distinguished men, not one can be recalled
that in the smallest degree approaches the
importance of this life. (...) Of the nobility,
extraordinary self-abnegation, patience, and the
most beautiful and touching living
memento of the truest,
purest friendship shown in every page of Mr.
Maitland’s own share in the work, one cannot say
enough.
“The books
they wrote must and will live when thousands of
volumes
of the
pseudo-philosophy of the day, now ignorantly
preferred, will have long died their deserved
death.” [Life of
Anna Kingsford, Preface to the Third
Edition, p. xi-xii]
•
Man’s Supreme
Function is Knowledge
“10. According to
mystical doctrine, on the other hand, he who is human in
form only, is but man rudimentary, and to be classed, in all
essential respects, with those lower grades of humanity, the
plants and animals. He has, like them, the potentiality only
of humanity, and is no realised humanity. For, according to
this doctrine,
man’s supreme function is knowledge;
so that he is not man until he knows, or, at least, has an organon of knowledge, and is capable of knowing. Besides,
the very term knowledge, has, in this relation, a special
meaning. For the [p. 181 in the original] mystic applies it
only to the cognition which is of Realities. That alone for
him is knowledge, which has for its subject the nature of
Being, his own nature, that is, and God’s; not phenomena
merely, but Substance, and its method of operation. And,
forasmuch as, in order to have this knowledge, a man must
have attained his spiritual consciousness, it follow that,
according to mystical definition, man is not man until he
has attained the consciousness of his spiritual nature. To
attain this, and this alone, is to attain true manhood. And,
prior to the attainment of this, the individual is but as an
infant, incompetent to fulfil, or even to comprehend, the
functions of manhood.” [The bold characters are not in the
original.]
[The Perfect Way; or, the
Finding of Christ.
Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland. Fifth edition, with
additions, and a Biographical Preface by Samuel
Hopgood Hart: John M. Watkins, London, 1923. 405 pp. (pp.
180-181)]
• Masonic System against the
Catholic Church
“The Pope’s recent denunciation of Masonry makes me
anxious to investigate more closely than I have
hitherto done the details and purport of the craft;
for I think I have discerned the cause
of the enmity borne by the Catholic Church against
the Masonic system. I believe it is nothing more nor
less than the ancient feud between Judaism and
Christianity. Yesterday I had a long conversation
with a Mason, and am convinced that the main object
of the craft is no other than the perpetuation of
the Jewish system and religion. It is fundamentally
opposed to the very spirit of the Catholic Church,
and especially to the worship of our Blessed Lady.
It is materialistic and male, and radically
subversive of spirituality and womanhood in its
supremest sense.” [Life of Anna Kingsford,
Vol. II, pp. 187-188]
•
Memory,
the Poet, the Soul and the Knowledge of the Divine
Self
“Here meditation passes into
illumination, and the Diary thus continues: –
“This faculty which we call Memory is
but the faint reflex and image in the material brain
of that function which, in all its celestial
plenitude, can belong only to the heavenly man. That
which is of time and of matter must needs think by
means of an organ and material cells, and these can
only work mechanically, and by slow processes. But
that which is of eternity and spirit needeth neither
organ nor process, since organism is related only to
time, and its resultant is process. “Yea, thou shalt
see face to face! Thou shalt know even as thou art
known!” And just as widely and essentially as the
heavenly memory differs from the earthly, so doth
the heavenly personality differ from that of the
material creature.
“Thou mayest the more easily gather
somewhat of the character of the heavenly
personality by considering the quality of that of
the highest type of mankind on earth – the Poet. (…)
“Their interests are individual and
limited: their home is by one hearth: four walls are
the boundary of their kingdom, – so small is it!
“But the personality of the poet is
divine: and being divine, it hath no limits.
“He is supreme and ubiquitous in
consciousness: his heart beats in every element.
“The pulses of all the infinite deep of
heaven vibrate in his own: and responding to their
strength and their plenitude, he feels more
intensely than other men. Not merely he sees and
examines these rocks and trees: these variable
waters, and these glittering peaks.
“Not merely he hears this plaintive
wind, these rolling peals.
“But he
is
all these; and with them – nay, in them – he
rejoices and weeps, he shines and aspires, he sighs
and thunders. (…)
“The great continual cadence of universe
life moves and becomes articulate in human language.
“O joy profound! O boundless selfhood! O
God-like personality! (…)
“Like unto the Gods, – therefore art
thou their beloved: yea if thou wilt, they shall
tell thee all things;
“Because thou only understandest, among
all the sons of men!
“Concerning memory; why should there any
more be a difficulty in respect of it? Reflect on
this saying, – “Man sees as he knows.” To thee the
deeps are more visible than the surfaces of things;
but to men generally the surfaces only are visible.
The material can perceive only the material, the
astral the astral, and the spiritual the spiritual.
It all resolves itself, therefore, into a question
of condition and of quality. Thy hold on matter is
but slight, and thine organic memory is feeble and
treacherous. It is hard for thee to perceive the
surfaces of things and to remember their aspect. But
thy spiritual perception is the stronger for this
weakness, and the profound is that which thou seest
the most readily. It is hard for thee to understand
and to retain the memory of material facts; but
their meaning thou knowest instantly and by
intuition, which is the memory of the soul. For the
soul takes no pains to remember; she knows divinely.
Is it not said that the immaculate woman brings
forth without a pang? The sorrow and travail of
conception belong to her whose desire is unto
“Adam”.
“By “Adam”, of course, was meant the
outer and lower reason. For “these things are an
allegory”.” [Life of
Anna Kingsford, Vol. II, pp. 100-102]
• Message Will
Become the Religion of Great Nations
“I know that
at some distant day, now, indeed, perhaps very remote, the message we preach in
a corner will become a religion of great nations.” (p. 1) [Anna Kingsford and Edward
Maitland.
Addresses and Essays on Vegetarianism.
Edited by Samuel Hopgood Hart. John M. Watkins, London, 1912. 227 pp.]
• Mystical Sense, and Not the Literal Sense
“Such was the first intimation (…) given us of the truth subsequently revealed
in plenitude, – the presence in Scripture of a mystical sense concealed within
the apparent sense, as a kernel in its shell, which, and not the literal sense,
is the intended sense.” (p. 53) [Edward Maitland.
The
Story of Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland and of the New Gospel of
Interpretation -
• Mystics, Mysticism and the
Materialistic School
“(…) I showed how dense was the ignorance and prejudice of the treatment
accorded by the materialistic school to Mystics and Mysticism, and described the
issue between the two parties as of the most tremendous import, being nothing
less than the nature of existence, the constitution and destiny of man, the
being of God and the spiritual world, the possibility of revelation, and the
validity of the religious sentiment. Respecting all these, I said, the
mystics claimed to have affirmative experiences of a kind absolutely
satisfactory, they themselves being, by reason of their character and eminence,
entitled to full credence. For the order to which they belonged comprised the
highest types of humanity, and in fact all those sages, saints, seers, prophets,
and Christs, through whose redeeming influence humanity has been
preserved from the abyss of utter negation in respect of all that makes and
ennobles humanity, and these have uniformly declared that the passage from
Materialism to Mysticism has been to them a passage, physically, from disease to
health; intellectually, from infancy to manhood; morally, from anarchy to order;
and spiritually, from darkness to light and from death to life – even life
everlasting. And none who had made that passage had ever been known to wish
to retrieve his steps. And as it was through the loss of the intuition that the
world has sunk into the materialism now prevailing, so it will be through the
restoration of the intuition, now taking place, that the world will be rescued
and redeemed.” [Life of Anna Kingsford,
Vol. II, p. 199]
• Nature
of the Faculty Possessed by Anna Kingsford
“(…) respecting the nature and range of
the faculty by the possession of which the President
of the London Lodge is removed from the category of
ordinary inquirers into Esoteric science. This, she
wishes it to be clearly understood, is not an
occult
faculty in the common acceptation of the term. It
involves no abnormal powers voluntarily directed, or
acquaintance with any method requiring to be
imparted by initiation of the secondary intellectual
principles. Nor, again, does the condition in which
it is exercised resemble the trance of ordinary
clairvoyance. She is, therefore, neither a “trained
occultist” nor a natural clairvoyant. The faculty
she possesses is one with which she was born, and it
has been developed by a fourteen years’ abstinence
from flesh-food, and by a series of experiences and
a manner of life not altogether at first the result
of choice. Students of the Platonic philosophy will
recognise the condition in question as one of
illumination
affecting the soul rather than the mind. It is
believed by her to be the result of psychic
reminiscence, through which the
gnosis
acquired by initiation in a previous birth is
revived and unfolded to her perception. She has
strong reason for the conviction that the school, in
virtue of her initiation into which these
illuminations occur, was the Greco-Egyptian. The
state during which they present themselves is one of
intense and breathless concentration. The whole
outer personality appears to be superseded and
transcended, and knowledges are vividly borne in on
the interior understanding as a vision, often of
symbolic character. It has been shown by means of
these very illuminations that this condition,
described as the result of psychic reminiscence, is
in her exceptionally developed in consequence of the
period now reached by her interior selfhood in its
planetary evolution. Hers is represented to be an
advanced Ego, which, having returned to definite
existence more rapidly and persistently than is the
normal case, has thus got ahead of the race
generally and thereby developed a faculty which will
in time be attainable by all souls
who have
been really initiated in a former birth.”
[Life
of Anna Kingsford, Vol. II, p. 162]
• Neither of Them Separately Is Man
“For – as already
stated – that whereby the man attains to manhood is
woman. It is his power to recognise, appreciate and
appropriate her, that stamps him, physically, man.
She it is who, influencing him through the
affections kindled by her in him, withdraws him from
his outward and aimless course, in which left to
himself, he would sooner or later be dissipated and
lost; and who, gathering him round herself, as
centre, redeems him and makes him into a system
capable of self-perpetuation, supplementing and
complementing meanwhile his masculine qualities as
will, force, and intellect with her feminine
qualities, as endurance, love, and intuition. Thus,
by the addition of herself she makes him Man.
“It is not to the
male moiety of the dualism constituted by them, that
the term Man is, properly, applicable, any more than
to the female moiety. Neither of them separately is
Man; and it is by an unfortunate defect of language,
that the masculine half of man is called a man. He
is man male, as she is man female. And only when
wedded, that is welded,
into one by a perfect marriage, does Man result, the
two together thus blended making one humanity – as
earth and water make one Earth – and by their power
of self-perpetuation and multiplication
demonstrating the completeness and perfection of
their system.”
(The Perfect Way,
pp. 181-182)
• No Contradiction between Reason and Revelation
“I read a paper on Revelation as the Supreme
Common Sense, meaning that the consensus or
agreement which it represents is that, not of all
men merely, but of all parts of man; of mind, soul,
and spirit; of intellect and intuition, combined in
a pure spirit and unfolded to the utmost. There
is no contradiction between Reason and Revelation,
provided only it be the whole Reason and not the
mutilated faculty which ordinarily passes for such,
for that represents the intellect without the
intuition. And it is precisely the loss or
corruption of this last which constitutes the Fall,
the Intuition, as the feminine mode of the mind and
representing the soul, being mystically called “the
woman.”” [Life of Anna Kingsford, Vol.
II, p. 197]
•
No
Single Ecclesiastical Creed Is Comprehensible by
itself Alone
“Once the veil of symbolism is lifted from the
divine face of Truth, all Churches are akin, and the
basic doctrine of all is identical (...). Greek,
Hermetic, Buddhist, Vedantist, Christian – all these
Lodges of the Mysteries are fundamentally one and
identical in doctrine. (...)
We hold
that no single ecclesiastical creed is
comprehensible by itself alone, uninterpreted by its predecessors and its
contemporaries. Students, for example, of Christian
theology will only learn to understand and to
appreciate the true value and significance of the
symbols familiar to them by the study of Eastern
philosophy and pagan idealism. For Christianity is
the heir of these, and she draws her best blood from
their veins. And forasmuch as all her great
ancestors hid beneath their exoteric formulas and
rites – themselves mere husks and shells to amuse
the simple-minded – the esoteric or concealed
verities reserved for the initiate, so also she
reserves for earnest seekers and deep thinkers the
true interior Mysteries which are one and eternal in
all creeds and Churches from the foundation of the
world. This true, interior, transcendental meaning
is the Real Presence veiled in the Elements of the
Divine Sacrament: the mystical substance and the
truth figured beneath the bread and the wine of the
ancient Bacchic orgies, and now of ours own Catholic
Church. To the unwise, the unthinking, the
superstitious, the gross elements are the objects of
the rite; to the initiate, the seer, the son of
Hermes, they are but the outward and visible signs
of that which is ever, and of necessity, inward,
spiritual, and occult.”
[Quoted by Samuel H. Hart, in
Preface to the Fifth
Edition
(pp. xii-xiii), from
The
Perfect Way, from
Life of
Anna Kingsford,
vol. 2, pp. 123-124.]
•
(It is)
Not the Crucifixion Eighteen Centuries Ago that Can
Save Us
“It is not the crucifixion of Jesus of
Nazareth on Golgotha eighteen centuries ago that can
save us, but the perpetual sacrifice and oblation,
celebrated sacramentally in the Mass and actually in
our hearts and lives. So also it is the mystical
birth, resurrection and ascension of the Lord,
enacted in the spiritual experience of the saint
that are effectual to his salvation, and not their
dramatic representation, real or fictitious in the
masque of “history.”” (Astrology Theologized, p. 40)
(p. 41)
For how can such events reach or relate
themselves to the soul, save by conversion into
spiritual processes? Only as processes can they
become cognates to the soul and make themselves
intelligible to and assimilable thereby. Throughout
the universe the law of assimilation, whether in its
inorganic or organic aspect, uniformly compels all
entities and elements, from crystals to the most
complex animate creature, to absorb and digest only
that which is similar to itself in principles and
substance. And if by the law of natural things the
spiritual are understood, as all apostles of
hermetic doctrine tell us, then it is obvious, by
the light of analogy as well as by that of reason,
that the spiritual part of man can assimilate only
that which is spiritual. Hence the Catholic doctrine
of transubstantiation, most necessary to right
belief, whereby the bread and wine of the mere
outward elements are transmuted into the real and
saving body and blood of the Lord. Can bread profit
to salvation, or can physical events redeem the
soul? Nay, but to partake the substance of God’s
secret which is the body of Christ, and to receive
infusion of Divine grace into the soul, which is the
blood of Christ, and by the shedding of which man is
regenerate. These processes are essential to
redemption from the otherwise certain and mortal
effects of original sin. It is not, therefore, part
of the design of hermetic teaching to destroy belief
in the historical aspect of Christianity any more
than to dissuade the faithful from receiving Christ
sacramentally, but to point out that it is not the
history that saves, but the spiritual truth embodied
therein, precisely as it is not the bread
administered at the altar that profits to salvation,
but the divine body therein concealed.
• Objects
of the Hermetic Society
“The objects of the Hermetic Society
were set forth in its prospectus (1)
as follows: –
“The designation of
this Society was chosen in conformity with that
ancient and universal usage of the Western world,
which, regarding HERMES as the supreme initiator
into the Sacred Mysteries of existence, has
identified his name with the knowledge of things
spiritual and occult.
“Its objects are at once
scientific, intellectual, moral, and religious.
‘‘Its chief
aim is to promote the comparative study of the
philosophical and religious systems of the East and
of the West; especially of the Greek Mysteries and
the Hermetic Gnosis, and its allied schools, the
Kabalistic, Pythagorean, Platonic, and Alexandrian,
– these being inclusive of Christianity, – with a
view to the elucidation of their original esoteric
and real doctrine, and the adaptation of its
expression to modern requirements.
“The
knowledges acquired will be applied, first, to the
interpretation and harmonisation of the various
existing systems of thought and faith, and the
provision thereby of an
Eirenicon
among all Churches and communions; and, secondly, to
the promotion of personal psychic and spiritual
development.
“To
these ends the Society encourages and undertakes the
publication of ancient and modern Hermetic
literature, and invites its Fellows to further its
efforts on this behalf by subscribing for the Works
issued, by actively co-operating in the general
purposes of the Society, and by contributing to the
promotion of its special objects.
“In
carrying out these designs, the Society accords to
its Fellows full freedom of opinion, expression, and
action; and in regard to doctrinal questions,
recognises reason and experience alone as affording
legitimate ground for conclusion.” [Life of
Anna Kingsford, Vol. II, p. 195]