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Anterior: XXIV – Inverno em Paris
Seguinte: XXVI – Um Tempo de Controvérsia
(p. 116)
CHAPTER XXV
THE
THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
OUR campaign in Switzerland opened distressfully, Mary having contracted a
severe attack of erysipelas by sleeping in a damp bed at
Neuchâtel, where we rested the first night of our arrival in that
country. The malady developed itself at
(p. 117)
the fundamental principles of humanity itself. The
controversialists, moreover, were in deadly earnest; it was war to the knife
between them. And, to crown all, the champion who had issued the challenge, and
who stood like a youthful David against the Giant, or an
Athanasius
against the world, was not only a foreigner, but a woman, young, fragile, and
intensely feminine of aspect, in a community inveterately given to regard woman
as a negligible factor in humanity.
Besides arming herself at all points in regard to the general treatment of her
subject, she was careful to obtain the local knowledge calculated to give point
and application to it. To this end she bearded the lion in his den, or rather –
not to do that noble animal injustice – the demon in his pit, by presenting
herself at the laboratory and demanding an interview with its notorious
chieftain, which was accorded. I accompanied her on the enterprise, but was
careful to keep in the background, in order to allow of a more unrestrained and
spontaneous discussion than could have been possible in the presence of a third
person, and that one of the physiologist’s own sex. The professor gave
expression to the usual fallacies, admitting that in other laboratories than his
own there was deplorable cruelty, but that the subjects of his experimentations
regarded him as their best friend, owing to the pleasing effects of the
narcotics which – and not anaesthetics – he administered to them, – as aspect of
the subject of which Mary had no difficulty in disposing, as she did dispose of
it to his face, by convicting him of being like his brethren, as unscrupulous in
the statements whereby he defended his practice as in that practice itself.
All of which she duly recounted in her public addresses.
Failing to answer her indictment, they sought to impugn her authority to speak
on the subject by questioning the genuineness of her diploma, affirming it to be
of American manufacture, and void of value as a testimony to her competency; and
when the falsity of this charge was demonstrated, they fabricated others
injurious to her reputation as a woman, but of course only to meet with a
further exposure of their own utter unscrupulousness, I had the satisfaction of
making a laughingstock of one of them who had dated his diatribe from an
hospital for the insane, by suggesting that the “arlequinade”
he had
(p. 118)
perpetrated bespoke the writer to be, not the
physician of that institution, but one of its patients; all of which was duly
published in the
The immediate result of this expedition was the formation of two new societies,
one in
An interesting acquaintance made by us in
(p. 119)
Discussing with Mary, in reference to him, the
plea of utility advanced by its partisan on behalf of the practice, she was
emphatic in the expression of her conviction that, even could any alleviation be
procured by it for the physical sufferings of the race, it could never
compensate for the mental sufferings caused by the knowledge of it, to say
nothing of the degradation of humanity.
We arrived in
“ATCHAM VICARAGE, June 8 [1883].
“I did this because there are in
“I am going to do my utmost to make our London Lodge a really influential and
scientific body. (…) Besides, we do not want to pledge ourselves to Orientalism only, but to the study of all religions
esoterically, and especially to that of our Western Catholic Church. Theosophy
is equally applicable to such study; but Orientalism
can relate only to Brahmanism and Buddhism.
“As you see, I have left
(p. 120)
all the old false statements about the circulation
of the blood, etc., to which I see added a new falsity copied from Richet anent Galvani and his dead
frog. I shall notice and answer all these untruths in my article for Madame
Adam’s Nouvelle Revue, which I am going to write at once. If you are
writing to her in the course of the next few days, will you tell her that I am
preparing this article?
“As for Brown-Sequard’s experiments with carbonic
acid, it is difficult to understand why he should have injured the monkey’s
throat in order to test such a medicament, or why the creature should have
screamed so terribly, as it is admitted it did, if nothing painful was being
done. If the object of the professor really was to discover a new anaesthetical agent, he might have tested his drug more
satisfactorily at one of the veterinary colleges where injured animals are under
operation, without maiming wantonly creatures in health and soundness of limb. A
little extra trouble is all that is needed in nine cases out of ten to convert
cruel and unjustifiable tortures into praiseworthy experiments.”
To the same: –
“June
25 [1883].
“I have finished my article for the Nouvelle Revue. Will you please send
me Madame Adam’s address as soon as possible? I am going up to town on Saturday
to preside at the Theosophical Lodge meeting on Sunday, and also to give a
lecture at a garden party upon vivisection. I have a very long and interesting
letter from Madame H. in reply to a note I sent her. She seems thoroughly in
earnest, and may very likely be able, with the help of her Republican friends,
to draw attention to the horrors which go on unchecked in beautiful
“I have a plan which I earnestly hope I shall somehow have the means of carrying
into practice next spring. It is to give lectures in
“It is very pleasant to me to have this quiet little country retreat to resort
to, to think and write. But for it I could never have done the article for
Madame Adam; for in
To the same: –
“
“I write to ask you to beg Madame Adam very earnestly indeed not to delay the
publication of my reply to Professor Richet later than
August. Miss B. writes to me that R.’s
article in the Revue des Deux Mondes
has done and still is doing the most terrible injury to our cause, as it is
being repeated and quoted everywhere by the
(p. 121)
newspapers; and it is all a mass of lies,
‘gross and palpable,’ as I have clearly demonstrated in my reply. As to Lady
H.’s paper, that is on a subject of no particular and burning interest,
and one time is as good as another to talk about women’s rights; but the wrongs
of animals, and of humanity in general – these are themes which can ill afford
to wait, now that a general stir is being made so vigorously on the whole
subject in Paris. Supplicate Madame A. to publish my article at the earliest
possible date; otherwise I greatly fear that my reply may be anticipated by some
unscientific and unqualified writer, incompetent to deal with the question, and
thus worse harm may be done even than by Richet’s
falsehoods. I have had six or seven letters from
“To-day is our Lodge meeting. I congratulate you heartily on your election as
President of your Lodge. How can you think for a moment that I am not interested
in Theosophy? Is it because my love and pity and sense of justice are stirred so
strongly on behalf of the dumb and oppressed? Surely I should ill deserve the
name of a student of the wisdom of God if I did not do all in my power to save
the poor and the sorrowful. Are not Wisdom and Love one?”
To the same: –
“July
14 [1883].
“I have this morning received a note from Madame Adam in which she says that she
is alarmed at the length of my reply to Richet, and
will certainly have to cut a great deal. Now, I want you to do me and the cause
a great kindness and service. I want you to write to her, and ask her not to cut
out anything, but to publish the article in two parts, half in one number and
half in the next. It will be utterly impossible to mutilate it without omitting
much that is indispensable, because there is not a word de
trop in what I have written. It is because M. Richet
wrote so much that I am compelled to write much in reply, since it is obvious
that, if any point of his argument’s left untouched in my answer, our
adversaries will at once say. ‘She did not answer such and such a statement,
because she could not’; and the cause would be almost more injured by such an
omission than it would be were the thing left untouched altogether. You have weight with Madame A., and a word from you to this
effect would doubtless influence her. All our friends in
To the same: –
“August
1 [1883].
“I return herewith Madame Adam’s note. I suppose that when she says the article
is
trop
developpé, she objects – as I know
she does – to the basis from which I have argued the matters; to wit, the
Hermetic philosophy. But all this I thoroughly considered before putting pen to
paper. This vivisection question will never be really understood and rightly
judged until our true relations to other beings are rightly comprehended. The
commonplace ‘moral
(p. 122)
duty’ argument is quite insufficient, and has been
amply proved to be so, because the obvious answer to it is, ‘Man is of more
consequence than a thousand other creatures, and the motive of the vivisector
redeems his act.’ I am curious to see how Madame Adam’s critic will separate
what he calls the ‘abus de la
vivisection’ from legitimate torture. Such a line of argument cannot but
prove a fiasco, and will injure more than help the cause.”
The paper in question was eventually printed separately, the Nouvelle Revue being too
much under the influence of the dominant school to admit it. It was a reply to
Professor Charles Richet’s article, “Le
Roi des Animaux,”
and was entitled “Roi ou Tyran?” It found much acceptance with the friends of
the cause in France, both for its scientific and its philosophic value, and
served greatly to strengthen their hands. Atcham, from which the foregoing
letters are dated, was the parish of which A. had formerly been curate, and had
become incumbent during our absence from
The arrival of Mr. Sinnett in
(p. 123)
of the teaching received by us. And it was with no
little interest that we looked forward to an examination of
Esoteric Buddhism.
The proposed Epiphany of the Theosophical Society took the form of a public
reception to Mr. Sinnett, in Prince’s Hall, on July 17. The audience numbered
some three hundred, and – as stated in the press – “was at once fashionable and
influential.” The proceedings were opened by Mary, who in her capacity of
President,
delivered the following address: –
“No doubt our guests will expect me to explain what is meant by the word
‘Theosophy,’ and what are the aims and objects of the Society over which I
preside. I will attempt, in as few words as possible to give a reply to both
these questions.
“Theosophy is the science of the Divine. In this age the word science is readily
understood; not so the word Divine. We Theosophists understand by the word
Divine the hidden, interior, and primal quality of existence; the noumenal as opposed to the phenomenal. Our relations to the
Divine we hold to be relations, not to the exterior, but to the within; not to
that which is afar off, but to that which is at the heart of all Being, the very
core and vital point of our own true self. To know ourselves is, we hold, to
know the Divine. And, renouncing utterly the vulgar exoteric, anthropomorphic
conception of Deity, we renounce also the exoteric acceptation of all myths and
legends associated therewith, replacing the shadow by the substance, the symbol
by the significance, the quasi-historical by the true ideal. We hold that the
science of the Divine is necessarily a science of such subtle meanings and
transcendent verities that common language too poorly conveys them, and they
have thus, by universal consent throughout the world, found their only possible
expression by the medium of types and metaphors. For metaphor is the language of
the poet, or seer, and to him alone is it given to know and to understand the
Divine. In the picture-world in which he lives and moves all interior and primal
verities are formulated in visions rather than in words. But the multitude for
whom he records his visions takes the metaphor for the reality, and
exalts the eidolon in the place of the God.
“The object of the Theosophical Society is therefore to remove this
misapprehension; to unveil
(p. 124)
and to satisfy themselves that the fullest
claims of science are compatible with, and its latest revelations necessary to,
the true comprehension of esoteric religion.
“I have used the word religion. It is a word which has, unhappily, become
divorced from its true meaning, and associated with much that is inherently
repugnant thereto. One of the efforts of this Society will be to restore to
sacred things sacred meanings. Religion is the science of interpretation, the
science of binding together earth and Heaven, the science of correspondences, of
Sacraments, or, as they were called in all old times, the Mysteries. And the
religious man is he who is bound together, in whom heart and head have equal
sway, in whom Intellect and Conscience work together
and in harmony, who is at unity with himself and at one with the whole world of
Being. In this sense we are a religious society, for one of our avowed aims is
the promotion of universal brotherhood. We proffer an
Eirenicon
to all Churches, claiming that, 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. The guest of the evening, who sits beside me, is a Buddhist. I, the
President of the English Lodge, am a Catholic Christian. Yet we are one at
heart, for he has been taught by his Oriental Gurus the same esoteric doctrines
which I have found under the adopted pagan symbols of the Roman Church, and
which esoteric Christianity you will find embodied in The Perfect Way. Greek,
Hermetic, Buddhist, Vedantist, Christian – all these
Lodges of the Mysteries are fundamentally one and identical in doctrine. And
that doctrine is the interpretation of Nature’s hieroglyphs, written for us in
sky and sea and land, pictured for us in the glorious pageantry of night and
day, of sunset and dawn, and woven into the many-coloured warp and woof of
flower and seed and rock, of vegetable and animal cells, of crystal and
dewdrops, and of all the mighty phenomena of planetary cycles, solar systems,
and starry revolutions.
“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.
(p. 125)
“But not only is it necessary to the Theosophist to study the myths and symbology of former times and contemporary cults; it is also
necessary that he should be a student of nature. The science of the Mysteries
can be understood only by one who is acquainted, in some measure at least, with
the physical sciences; because Theosophy represents the climax and essential
motive-meaning of all these, and must be learned in and by and through them.
For unless the physical sciences be understood, it will be impossible to
comprehend the doctrine of Vehicles, which is the
basic doctrine of occult science. ‘If you understand not earthly things,’
said the Hierarch of the Christian Mysteries, ‘how shall you understand heavenly
things?’ Theosophy is the royal science. To the unlearned no truth can be
demonstrated, for they have no faculty whereby to cognise truth, or to test the
soundness of theorems. Ours may be indeed the religion of the poor, but it
cannot be that of the ignorant. For we disclaim alike authority and dogma; we
appeal to the reason of humanity, and to educated
and cultivated thought. Our system of doctrine does not rest upon a remote past;
it is built upon no series of historical events assailable by modern criticism;
it deals not with extraneous personalities or with arbitrary statements of
dates, facts, and evidence; but it relates, instead, to the living to-day, and
to the ever-present testimony of nature, of science, of thought, and of
intuition. That which is exoteric and extraneous is the evanescent type, the
historical ideal, the symbol, the form; and these are all in all to the
unlearned. But that which is esoteric and interior is the permanent verity, the
essential meaning, the thing signified; and to apprehend this, the mind must be
reasonable and philosophic, and its method must be scientific and eclectic.
“In the Mahâ-Paranibbâna-Sutta, one of
the Buddhist theosophical books, is a passage recording
certain words of Gautama Buddha which express to some
extent the idea I wish to bring before you. It is this: –
“‘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.’
“It may, at the outset, appear strange that there should of late have set in
among us of the West so strong a current of Buddhism, and many, doubtless,
wonder how it comes about that the literary and thinking world of this country
has recently begun by common consent to write and talk and hear so much of the
sacred books of the East, and of its religious teachers. The Theosophical
Society itself has its origin in
“In all this is the finger of Law, inevitably and orderly fulfilling the
planetary cycle of human evolution with the self-same precision and certitude
which regulates the rotation of the globe in the inverse direction, or the
apparent course of the solar light.
“Human evolution has always followed the course of the sun, from the East to the
West, in opposition to the direction of the planet’s
(p. 126)
motion around its axis. If at times this
evolution has appeared to return upon its steps, it has been only the better to
gather power for some new effort. It has never deviated from its course in the
main, save to the right or left, south or north, in its orderly march westward.
And slowly, but surely, this great wave of human progress has covered the earth
in the wake of the light, rising eastward with the dawn, and culminating in
mid-heaven with the Catholic Church. In
“There are indications that our epoch has seen the termination of such a
planetary cycle as that described, and that a new dawn, the dawn of a better and
a clearer day, is about once more to rise in the sacred East. Already those who
stand on the hills have caught the first grey rays reflected from the breaking
sky. Who can say what splendours will burst from among the mists of the valley
west-ward when once the sun shall rise again?
“Some of us have dreamed that our English Branch of the Theosophical Society is
destined to become the ford across the stream which so long has separated the
East from the West, religion from science, heart from mind, and love from
learning. We have dreamed that this little Lodge of the Mysteries, set here in
the core of matter-of-fact, agnostic London, may become an oasis in the
wilderness for thirsty souls, – a ladder between earth and heaven, on which, as
once long since in earlier and purer days, the Gods again may ‘come and go’
twixt mortal men and high Olympus.’
“Such a dream as this has been mine. May Pallas Athenas
grant me, the humblest of her votaries, length of days enough to see it, in some
measure at least fulfilled!”
As this is not a history of the Theosophical Society, but only of our connection
with it, it is necessary to say only of Mr. Sinnett’s
address on this occasion, that, admirable as it was for its purpose, it struck
some notes which we recognised as scarcely harmonising with the conceptions
formed by us, and which therefore might not impossibly develop into an
irresolvable discord.
(p. 127)
The rest of the month was spent in cultivating relations with our new
associates, and in the beginning of August Mary visited her mother at Hastings,
I remaining in
The most notable features of this tour were, first the indescribable enthusiasm
everywhere evinced for Mary on account of the eloquence and luminousness of her
expositions and the charm of her personality; and, secondly, the intensity of
her physical sufferings, and the manner in which her spirit rose superior to
them and carried her triumphantly through. She had left home ill, the climatic
conditions of the place having proved in the highest degree deleterious to her,
and each day’s journey had completely prostrated her, sometimes inducing total
loss of consciousness while in the train, and always culminating in agonising
neuralgic headache on arrival, rendering her to all appearance utterly incapable
for the appointed task of the evening. (2) Her one remedy was the
immersion of the
(p. 128)
lower limbs in water as hot as she could bear it; and
thus would she occupy herself until the last moment before starting for the
lecture hall. Arrived there, she was a new person, and for the hour, or hour and
a half, of her address would stand firm, confident, and self-possessed, and pour
forth unfalteringly that which she had to say, with a natural spontaneous
eloquence which kept her audience spell-bound, to be greeted at the close with
an outburst of applause, electrical for its vehemence, and seeming as if with
difficulty repressed until then.
The tributes rendered to her gift were many and striking. Even persons of
slender culture and ordinarily unimpressible would
declare that, whatever the subject might be, they would to any distance to hear
her. Speaking of her one day, a notable
(p. 129)
publicist and philanthropist, himself an
admirable speaker, declared of himself and his compeers that they always felt
when listening to her as if they were beings of an inferior order hearkening to
the utterances of some superior being who had come down to teach them. She
herself and her teaching seemed alike to be to her hearers as a new revelation
of human possibilities.
After a few days’ rest at Atcham we visited
The following extract from a letter to me from Lady Caithness, received at this
time, is of interest, as showing her satisfaction with the evidences already
received of Mary’s identity with two characters named: –
“
“We went from
In relation to this subject it will be interesting to insert here the following
account
of a dream received by Mary a few weeks later, (1)
which referred to three of the historical characters she remembered having been,
two of them being those named in the above letter, and the other the character
her identification with which in Paris had so greatly shocked her, namely,
Faustine, the Empress of Marcus Aurelius. It was only after a good deal
of consideration that we found it to be a parable of Karma, founded on the facts
of her own history in her previous lives. For the lesson intended by the cards
was evidently that of the necessity of bringing thought and skill to the conduct
of life
(p. 130)
if man would work out his own salvation. Thus the
Ace of Diamonds represented the divine Particle within herself, which needed but
to be duly applied to enable her finally to overcome all limitations and realise
her destined perfection; while her partner was Hermes, in his usual character as
the Understanding, all the details about him according with her previous
manifold experiences of him: –
“I dreamed I was playing at cards with three persons, the two opposed to me
being a man and a woman with hoods pulled over their heads, and cloaks covering
their persons. I did not particularly observe them. My partner was an old man
without hood or cloak, and there was about him this peculiarity, that he did not
from one minute to another appear to remain the same. Sometimes he looked like a
very young man, the features not appearing to change in order to produce this
effect, but an aspect of youth, and even of mirth, coming into the face, as
though the features were lighted up from within. Behind me stood a personage
whom I could not see, for his hand and arm only appeared, handing me a pack of
cards. So far as I discerned, it was a man’s figure, habited in black. Shortly
after the dream began my partner addressed me, saying –
“‘Do you play by luck or skill?’
“I answered, ‘I play by luck chiefly; I don’t know how to play by skill, but I
have generally been lucky.’
“In fact, I had already lying by me several ‘tricks’ I
had taken. He answered me –
“‘To play by luck is to trust to without; to play by skill is to trust
to within. In this game within goes farther than
without.’
“‘What are trumps?’ I asked.
“‘Diamonds are trumps,’ he answered.
“I looked at the cards in my hand, and said to him, ‘I have more clubs than
anything else.’
“At this he laughed, and seemed all at once quite a youth. ‘Clubs
are strong cards after all,’ he said. ‘Don’t despise the black suits. I have
known some of the best games ever played won by players holding more clubs than
you have.’
“I examined the cards, and found something very odd about them. There were the
four suits, diamonds, hearts, clubs, and spades; but the picture-cards in my
hand seemed different altogether from any I had ever seen before. One was Queen
of Clubs, and her face altered as I looked at it. First it was dark, almost
dusky, with the imperial crown on the head; then it seemed quite fair, the crown
changing to a smaller one of English aspect, and the dress also transforming
itself. There was a Queen of Hearts, too, in an antique peasant’s gown, with
brown hair; and presently this melted into a suit of armour, which shone as if
reflecting firelight in its burnished scales. The other cards seemed alive
likewise, even the ordinary ones, just like the court-cards. There seemed to be
pictures moving inside the emblems on their faces. The clubs in my hand ran into
higher figures than the spades; these came next in number,
and diamonds next. I had no picture-cards of diamonds,
(p. 131)
but I had the Ace, and this was so bright I could
not look at it. Except the two
“‘It is difficult to play at all, whether by luck or by skill, for I get such a
bad hand dealt me each time.’
“‘That is your fault,’ he said. ‘Play your best with
what you have, and next time you will get better cards.’
“‘How can that be?’ I asked.
“‘Because after each game the ‘tricks’ you take are added to the
bottom of the pack, which the dealer holds, and you get the ‘honours’ you have
taken up from the table. Play well and take all you can. But you must put
more head into it; you trust
too much to fortune. Don’t blame the dealer; he can’t see.’
“‘I shall lose this game,’ I said presently, for the two persons playing against
us seemed to be taking up all the cards quickly, and the ‘lead’ never came to my
turn.
“‘It is because you don’t’ count your points before putting down a card,’ my
partner said. ‘If they play high numbers you must play
higher.’
“‘But they have all the trumps, ‘I said.
“‘No’, he answered; ‘you have the highest trump of all in your own hand. It is
the first and the last. You may take every card they have with that, for it is
the chief of the whole series. But you have spades too, and high ones.’ (He
seemed to know what I had.)
“‘Diamonds are better than spades,’ I answered, ‘and nearly all my cards are
black ones. Besides, I can’t count; it wants so much thinking. Can’t you come
over here and play for me?’
“He shook his head, and I thought that again he laughed. ‘No’,
he replied; ‘that is against the law of the game. You must play for yourself.
Think it out.’
“He uttered these words very emphatically, and with so strange an intonation
that they dissipated the rest of the dream, and I remember no more of it.”
“Play
your best with what you have, and next time you will get better cards.”
Here was karma and reincarnation. It reminded us of the question put to Jesus by
His disciples, “Did this man sin, or his parents, that he was born blind?” and
of the saying of the writer of the Book of Wisdom, “Being good, I came into a
body undefiled.” A subsequent reading of the dream suggested to me a
correspondence between it and Rev., XII. For what but the soul is the woman persecuted of the
dragon of matter in the wilderness of the world? And what but the “man-child,”
the good deeds she performs during the term of her probation? She, indeed,
remains below for her allotted period. But the “man-child” – so called because
representing action, which is the result of force, and is masculine, and not
mere wish, which is feminine –
(p. 132)
which the dragon would fain devour, is caught up to
God and placed to her credit in the bank of heaven. And so, “after each game” of
life, “the tricks we take are added to the bottom of the pack which the Almighty
Dealer holds, and we get the ‘honours’ we have taken up from the table.” But to
work out our salvation we must not trust to fortune, but must put our head into
it and work with understanding. The dealer is not at fault. The divine Justice
is blind, and deals without partiality the cards we have earned. However low and
black these may be, we still have the possibility of the “Ace of Diamonds,” the
divine spark in us, which is capable of winning the game at last, against all
odds, if we but let it. The three female forms were obviously the characters she
had been led to regard as among her former selves. Nor had we any difficulty in
recognising Hermes as her partner and adviser, and in seeing in the dream a
correspondence with the fable of Io, to whom Mary had been wont to liken
herself. Io was the soul; the gadfly whereby she was tormented and driven from
place to place, until, at length, under advice of Hermes, she took refuge in
“There is corn in
“For in the kingdom of the body, thou shalt eat the
bread of thine initiation.
“But beware lest thou become subject to the flesh, and a bond-slave in the land
of thy sojourn.
“Serve not the idols of
“And Hermes, the Redeemer, shall go before three: for he is thy cloud of
darkness by day, and thy pillar of fire by night.”
It had been told us on a former occasion that “a soul may have as many former
selves in the astral light as a man may have
(p. 133)
changes of raiment,” The utterance found
illustration as follows in an experience received at this time. She beheld in
vision a crowd of persons, chiefly men, of many different peoples and races,
ranks and avocations, all of whom she felt herself as in some way identified
with, and was told by her Genius that she had been. She was, however, only able
to recognise positively the characters with whom she had previously been
identified, one of which was Joan of Arc. And concerning her she was told that,
“as the least unworthy of her past incarnations, Joan had been permitted to act
as a guardian angel to her in her present life.”
I made no remark at the time on the expression “least unworthy,” greatly as it
jarred on me. But, having occasion some time later to refer to the experience, I
purposely corrected for it “the most worthy,” but only to be instantly corrected
by her exclaiming with decisive emphasis, “No! The least
unworthy.” She had not made any record of the incident, but contented
herself with relating it to me. I obviously implied the consciousness of some
defect of character even in the apparently blameless French heroine. And the
inference was subsequently confirmed by a further revelation of Mary to herself
in that incarnation, when it was shown her that, with all her deep piety, her
heroism, and her wonderful gifts, Joan of Arc had not been free from a strong
vein of personal ambition, which detracted from her merits as seen from the
spiritual point of view. And though on some accounts Mary was indignant at her
being denied canonisation she admitted that on others the Church was in the
right to decline. It was not the possession of psychic gifts, however
extraordinary, that constituted saintship, but the unfoldment of
the moral and spiritual nature.
She received during her sojourn at home this summer [namely, on August 19, 1883]
the second part of the revelation
“Concerning the Christian Mysteries” (Clothed with the Sun, I, XLVIII) in
which an explanation purely reasonable and entirely satisfactory is given of the
cultus of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The following extracts from her Diary
at this period represent the processes purely intellectual in which she was wont
to exercise her mind in the intervals of special illumination: –
(p. 134)
May (1) 15 [1883]. – There is, I find, much evidence to show
that the primitive Christian Church understood her faith esoterically, and that
her great dogmas were symbols only, or at least chiefly. The monuments,
frescoes, and writings of the early years of the Church are evidence of this
fact. Within the first century, allusions, both pictured and written, to Christ
in the character of Apollo, of Orpheus, of Bacchus, and other Pagan gods, are
constant; and it is, moreover, remarkable that at this early date recognition of
Him as a historical character never occurs. Wherever He is depicted, it is as a
young God – a youth, lovely and blooming, surrounded with vines, doves, lambs,
fishes, and naked genii. He is never seen in His historical aspect, is never the
“Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” of the later times. The Stations of
the Cross, the “Gospel history,” as it is called, the crucifix, the agony, –
these find no representation in early Christian art. The first idea of Christ
was, strangely enough, purely esoteric and mystic. The Christians appear to have
devoted themselves in the primitive age of the Church to an attempt to purity
and reform the culture of the Gods, adopting their symbols and images, and
giving to them an interior and esoteric meaning. Such, indeed, they had in their
first intention, but this had long been lost to the
August 19 [1883]. – 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.
(p. 135)
Here follows the illumination (XLVIII, Part 2) above referred to, by which it
will be seen that the esoteric and spiritual sense in which she accepted these
doctrines is utterly destructive of the exoteric and idolatrous sense in which
alone they have been given to the world, inasmuch as they denote processes
interior to the individual man, and not actual persons.
August 23 [1883]. – De Lanessan
(1)
seeks to prove the non-existence of the soul by the following argument: –
(a) The idea of the soul supposes a vital principle, or Unity, one and
indivisible.
(b) Physiology shows that the body of a living creature may be divided into many conscient portions, like a tree; e.g. that a fish’s heart
will continue to beat after you have cooked and eaten the fish; that a rat’s paw
will grow and live engrafted on another rat; that the tail of a tadpole,
separated from the tadpole’s body, will increase and develop independently; that
a dog’s head cut off, and reanimated by the injection of blood from another dog,
will show signs of intelligence; that a man’s head after decapitation will
continue to manifest emotion, etc.
(c) He argues, thence, that these facts contradict the hypothesis of a Unity, or
single Force, because such a force could not manifest itself simultaneously in
different separate parts of the same body, and could not be restored in any one
part by the injection of blood from another body.
(d) He adds: That which lives in a pluri-cellular
being is not the being himself; it is each of the cells which compose him.
Now I think De Lanessan confuses the
Jiv-atma
(or animal vitality) with the Psyche (or Soul). Every portion of living matter
lives, and contains – as I suppose – its Four Principles, potentially, if not
actually. And that which continues to live in the amputated paw, tail, or head,
and in the abstracted hearts, is the local consciousness of the organ or member
concerned. It is exactly the difficulty of the “Shell” over again. Living matter
behaves like living matter, and cannot do otherwise until its forces are
disintegrated. And even then they will continue to function as disintegrated
corpuscles, because all matter is impregnated with spirit. It is no more
destructive to a man’s identity that his hand should continue to live engrafted
on another man’s body, than his blood, transfused into another man’s veins,
should nourish and become part of that other man. And even supposing it possible
that the decapitated head of a man could be reanimated by adaptation to the
trunk of another decapitated man, and continue to live so engrafted, – this
would only be an artificial reproduction of the “monsters” Nature sometimes
produces; e.g. the Siamese twins and the two-headed child, in whose bodies
a double consciousness makes itself felt. It appears to me that in all such
cases we have to deal with two kinds of consciousness, the lower and the higher.
In some entities the
(p. 136)
lower is the stronger and more apparent, as in trees,
insects, etc. In the higher animals, it is the higher consciousness which
dominates, but the lower is still there. The lower
consciousness in diffusive, because all consciousness is diffusive, from one
radiant point, which is the higher Ego.
At this point thought culminated in vision, and she wrote under illumination
Chapter XLIX, of Clothed with the Sun,
“Concerning Dying.”
“
“MY DEAR SIR, – On returning here, after an absence of
nearly three months, I had the pleasure of finding two numbers of Lumière et Liberté
and Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism, which
you have done me the honour of inscribing to me.
“I feel greatly obliged to you for this valuable gift, and hasten to thank you
for it before I have had time to examine its contents. I have skimmed the last
chapter only, which contains a summary of the doctrine, and I was glad to see
that the solution of the great riddles (such as the origin of evil and the
incompatibility of predestination and freewill) is sought in hypothesis of a
plurality of existences, which has always appeared to me to be the only key to
those locked mysteries. Of course, there is another point of view from which
these ‘mysteries’ appear as a mere illusion of pure reason, which like the
squinter and the drunkard, has the misfortune of seeing everything double, and
of dividing every oneness into two incongruous and apparently incompatible
opposites. This frailty (or defect) of rationalism can only be compensated by
some mystic premises or cured by dialectics. Mr. Sinnett’s book furnishes the former, and (as far as I can
judge) with complete success. But should there be minds incapable of accepting
such premises, let them try the dialectic method, which, like pure reason,
splits every notion into its constituent opposites, but which ends by reuniting
these opposites into a tertium aliquid which is no longer the original notion. This
process – for such it is – this alternation of dissension and reconciliation, is
a marvellous solvent of all so-called riddles. In fact, I cannot help comparing
this method with an achromatic lens whose layers induce an alternation of
compensating refractions. Pure (or poor!) prismatic reason can see naught but
broken rays, but armed with that metaphysical lens it sees the white united ray
of light, as though it had never split into pluralities and incompatibilities.
However, this is a mere matter of method. The result is the same in both cases.
I anticipate great pleasure from the careful perusal of Mr.
Sinnett’s work, and we may have occasion to discuss its contents
hereafter.
“You polemical correspondences with M. Fillion and Dr. Borel are highly satisfactory. Your reply to the latter
seems to me particularly good. M. Fillion, I think,
would have deserved a little less condescension on your part. He calls himself ‘architecte,’ and I am far from blaming him on the ground of incompetency. On the contrary, I hold that
everybody
is competent to be a juryman in this great trial. But there is something
indecorous in a layman’s defending vivisection. If a physiologist defends it
(and in doing so
(p. 137)
loses his temper or his good manners), we may see an
extenuating circumstance in his pleading pro domo. Such men talk as if they
felt that, deprived of their laboratory, they would have no raison
d’être, and we must make allowances for that. Borel’s impertinences, intolerable though they are, seem to
me less unpardonable than the architect’s amateur defence. On him your teachings
are wasted, but then the reader is perhaps the most important person on such
occasions, and for him you may not have written in vain. Mrs. Kingsford’s Geneva Discourse is excellent. May she have strength and
patience to continue her good work. With cordial thanks
for your great kindness, I remain, yours very truly,
“E. GRYZANOWSKY.”
FOOTNOTES
(127:1) On October 4, 1883, when at Edinburgh, Anna
Kingsford gave, under the auspices of the Scottish Society for the Total
Suppression of Vivisection, the important lecture, Unscientific Science,
which was afterwards published as a pamphlet, and which will be included in her
and Edward Maitland’s collected Addresses and Essays on Vivisection,
shortly to be published. – S.H.H.
(127:2) Owing to her liability to loss of
consciousness, Anna Kingsford occasionally suffered from falls. Edward Maitland
says: –
“Some of her falls, which occurred out of doors and when walking by herself, resulted in permanent injuries. Railway journeys
were a frequent occasion of them, being induce apparently sometimes by the
fatigue of packing – a thing she would suffer no one to do for her – and
sometimes by the effect of the vibration on the spine. She was thus affected at
least five or six times during our journeys together, when she would sink
unconscious on the floor of the carriage, the only warning being a sudden sharp
spasm of pain in the head. They were invariably followed by intense headache.
But distressing as they were, their effects were transient, and the closest
scrutiny failed to detect any mental deterioration as resulting from them. Over
and over again she would emerge from a condition of complete prostration, and a
few minutes later take her stand on the platform, looking radiant, as if
suffering and weakness were unknown to her, and for an hour or longer hold her
audience spell-bound by her eloquence, and never for a moment falter or seem
distressed or at a loss. Whether on occasions of this kind, or any others, such
as her examinations, when exact punctuality was indispensable, it rarely
happened but it was up to the last moment a grave question whether it would be
possible for her to be up to time. (…) On one occasion she was travelling from
“The explanation of the seizures which most commended itself to her was that of
the eminent physiologist Dr. H. Jackson, who likened them to an electric
discharge, such as that which constitutes a thunderstorm, but occurring in the
system of the individual. (…)
“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.” – S.H.H.
(129:1) The dream, as recorded
in Dreams and Dream-Stories, bears date “Atcham, December 7, 1883.”
– S.H.H.
(133:1) See Vol. I, p. 229.
(134:1) Probably a misprint
for August. S.H.H.
(135:1) A French physiologist whose book she
had been reading, and who had been one of her professors at
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