How the World Came to an End in 1881

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APPENDIX

NOTE 1, p. 12

EVERY great religious and moral revolution has been due to revelation, or unveiling, of knowledges contained in the sacred mysteries, the disclosure of which has been made by some natural mystic, the keenness of whose spiritual insight has enabled him to discover them for himself. Never until now has such disclosure received the sanction of those claiming to be the official guardians of the mysteries. The strictness of the secrecy imposed, and the danger of violating it, find frequent illustration in history. The charge against the Greek tragedian Æschylus, on which he was brought to trial, was that he had, in his dramas, disclosed some of the mysteries of Ceres. The real, though unavowed, cause of the condemnation of Socrates was the resentment of the priests at his public teaching of a doctrine – contained in their mysteries, the divulgence of which would be fatal to the sacerdotal system. This is the doctrine that real religion consists in seeking, not to any extraneous source for divine illumination and aid, or to any outward forms, but inwards, to the God within. Such has ever been the intuitional and prophetical, as distinguished from the ceremonial and sacerdotal method. And hence has come the world-old antagonism between priest and prophet which is typified in the parable of Cain and Abel, and of which the culminating example took place on

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Calvary. It is a tradition with the Jews that Jesus was delivered to death by their priests because he disclosed to the people teachings which they reserved for initiates – teachings identical with those of Socrates, in that they recognised religion as a thing interior, mystic, spiritual, and not of form and sense. The imprisonment of Galileo, and burning of Giordano Bruno are similarly to be accounted for. They proclaimed to all the esoteric truths, which the priests reserved for their own order, giving only the exoteric to the world. They gave the reality, where the priests gave only the appearance or symbol. Now, we can judge from the example of the solar system, and the difference which subsists between the real and the apparent movements of the heavenly bodies, how great may be the difference between real and apparent truth in matters of religion.

There are, nevertheless, mysteries the disclosure of which, saving to persons duly qualified, is divinely forbidden, and either prevented or punished. But in this case neither the prohibition nor the penalty is of human institution or infliction.

NOTE 2, p. 20

There are good grounds for believing that this classification of the angels of the planets is not strictly correct, and that Michael is the angel, not of the sun, but of Jupiter. Even if it were Michael that is referred to in the Apocalypse (XIX, 17) as seen “standing in the sun,” it does not follow that he is the angel of that orb, but may mean only that, as the presiding genius of the time and occasion, he occupied the post of honour designated by the sun. The question can scarcely be determined by means only of the records of the past, which were, probably, all that Trithemius had to guide him; but requires actual

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experience. For, as the kabbalists, or possessors of the secret knowledge, were under the necessity – if only for their own safety – of concealing the fact that the earth itself is but one of the planets, and of observing at the same time the sacred number seven, the matter was unavoidably left obscure. But, whether belonging to Jupiter or to the sun, it is still Michael who is the presiding angel of this period, and who is charged with the foundation of the universal empire of truth and justice now having its commencement in the recovered doctrine. In regard to the nature of this doctrine, not the least significant circumstance is the fact that, as the angel of Jupiter, Michael represents the dual reign of Zeus and Hera, and, consequently, the exaltation of the woman-element in humanity to an equal throne with the man-element, to the restoration of the equilibrium destroyed by the “Fall.” As precisely such a change in the position of women coincides with one of the most marked tendencies of the times, it constitutes one of the many respects in which the “watchers for the day” observe the spectacle of a world which scoffs at the idea of prophecy as an absurd impossibility, unconsciously setting itself to fulfil the prophecies. But it is one of the special qualifications of the prophet for his office, that he knows the world better than it knows itself.

NOTE 3, p. 27

Thus Sallust, the philosopher and friend of Julian, says, in his treatise “on the Gods” (cap. iv.), that “the aim of initiation in the mysteries is to bring man into relation with the order of the universe and with the Gods.” The famous neoplatonist, Proclus, speaks also of the mysteries and their initiations as designed to withdraw the soul from engrossment by the outer world into communion with the

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Gods. The testimony of antiquity to the same effect is abundant, and it finds the fullest confirmation in present experiences.

NOTE 4, p 33

The whole subject of these numbers is kabbalistic or occult, and can be fully treated only at great length. The magic talisman of the Arabs, called the Seal or Sign, of the Sun, comprises six columns of figures, the sum of each column being 111 whichever way reckoned, making the total 666. This number is contained also in the (Greek) words Teitan, and Lateinos, names applied by Irenæus to Antichrist, and evidently denoting a reign of materiality. (*) And Hippolytus, a martyr-bishop of the third century, found it in a form or inflection of the Greek verb arneomai, to deny, which also implies materialism or the denial of spirit. According to Eliphas Levi it is composed of the numbers of the famous magical symbol “Abracadabra,” and the “Decade” of Pythagoras, namely 66, and 600; the two together signifying materialism in its aspect of Idolatry, – Idolatry consisting in the materialisation of spiritual truths – a tendency which, as fatal to real humanity, is characterised as the “Beast.” It is through the evolution described in our text that man emerges from this condition. So that not only between the numbers themselves, but also between the ideas denoted by the numbers, there would seem to be a special relation.

(81:*) The war of Antichrist against Christ, says Hesychius, a Greek lexicographer of the fourth century, is identical with that of the Titans against Zeus, of Ahriman against Ormuzd, of darkness against light, of evil against good, in a word, of materialism against spirituality.

NOTE 5, p. 72

For instance, the late J.S. Mill (in his System of Logic, B. V. 3, 4, 1st edition)

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says, “Mysticism is neither more nor less than ascribing objective existence to the subjective creatures of the mind’s own faculties – to mere ideas of the intellect, and believing that by watching and contemplating these ideas of its own making, it can read in them what takes place in the world without.”

The defects of this statement are manifold. It ignores the reality of the interior, spiritual Ego – the anima divina – to whom that is objective and real which to the outer consciousness – or anima bruta – appears subjective and imaginary only. And it involves a denial both of this spiritual Ego – the true and permanent self of the individual – and of the spiritual world, simply on the strength of the writer’s own failure to attain to the consciousness of them – on the strength, that is, of non-experience – a proceeding altogether unscientific; the truly scientific attitude being that of the “mystic” who affirms only on the strength of his own oft-repeated and carefully observed experience. It is one of the salient characteristics of the dominant school – now, happily, soon to pass away – that while clamorously vaunting itself an experimental school, it denies with the utmost positiveness, and even seeks to repress and make penal, by treating as fraudulent or insane, all experiences which transcend its own experience or its hypothesis. The fact is, that in thus acting, its members both show themselves to be but mere rudimentary men, in that they have not yet evolved the consciousness of any but the outer and lower spheres of man’s manifold nature, namely, the material; and that, while thus rudimentary and undeveloped, they regard themselves as the sole proper representatives of humanity and judges of its potentialities!

How defective may be the logic even of one of the most renowned of the professors of logic, when, renouncing the intuition, he works but

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with the intellectual half of the mind, appears in Mill’s endeavour to detach the universe from its source by denying that it can be regarded as in any way affording a criterion of the character of the Divine Mind. As well argue, he says, that because a cook puts pepper into soup, he therefore contains the element of pepper in himself. Mill, in this, first ignores the obvious truth that unless the cook already possessed in his mind the idea of which the pepper represents the materialisation, he could have no cognition of the pepper. And, next, he regards the cook as producing the food he prepares – as God of necessity produces the universe – out of his own substance!

NOTE 6, p. 75

Already have some of the more enthusiastic among the faithful, adopted the style indicated on our title-page, by reckoning 1882 as the first year of the New Era, and calling it Anno Domimæ – the year of our Lady – 1, considering that the reign of the masculine and force-element is past, and the reign of the feminine and love-element has begun, the turning-point of the change being in 1881, from which hereafter will be dated the beginning of the removal of the “curse of Eve,” and the rehabilitation and restoration to her true place in the divine human system, of the Woman as representative of the soul and of the intuition.