Seções: Índice Geral
Seção Atual: Índice
Obra: Índice
Seguinte: 1. O Credo do Cristianismo
(p.
1)
[Note: This page number refers to the pages in the original.]
PREFÁCIO BIOGRÁFICO
By
Samuel Hopgood Hart
“I found him whom my soul loveth, I held him, and would not let him go, until I had
brought him into my Mother’s house, and into the chamber of her that bore me.” – Cant. III, 4.
“Some put their trust in chariots, and some in
horses, but we will remember the name of the Lord our God. They are brought
down, and fallen: but we are risen, and stand upright.”
– Ps. XX, 7-8.
“Thou shalt
break the ships of the sea through the east wind.” – Ps.
XLVIII, 7.
“INTERIOR knowledge, earnest aspiration, and purity of
thought and life, are the keys by which alone can be opened the gates of the
inmost and highest sphere.” (C.W.S., Pt. I, Nº. XXXIX.) The Bible tells us that “the words of the Lord
are pure words – even as the silver, which from the earth is tried, and purified
seven times in the fire;” (Ps. XII,
6.) from which we are intended to understand that God’s truth is spiritual, and that all divine revelations are to be
understood, not in a literal but in a spiritual sense. The
(p. 2)
and fact,
if he be worthy and faithful God reveals to him the higher plane of the Noumenal
and Divine, where alone truth eternally abides.” In these pregnant words is to
be found the keynote of the present volume of Lectures, Essays and Letters given
and written by the late Anna Kingsford, (1)
to which have been added some letters written by her friend and collaborator,
the late Edward Maitland.
Most of
the Lectures in this volume were given by Anna Kingsford to the Hermetic
Society, which she founded, and of which she was the President, but which, owing
to her early death, came to an untimely end. As, however, the value of Anna
Kingsford’s life is to be measured not by the number of years she lived – she
was but in her forty-second year when she died – but by its quality and great
achievement, so the importance of the Hermetic Society, which had a life of but
little over two years, must be measured not so much by the short period of its
existence as by the value of the work accomplished by means of or through its
agency – for, as will be seen, it was for the purpose of creating a then
much-needed platform for the dissemination of teaching, such as is represented
by these Lectures, that the Hermetic Society was founded. And it served its
purpose, for had it not been for such Society, these Lectures would not have
been given – lectures which were intended to “raise the level of the national
religious ideal; and, by withdrawing it from the external and natural to the
interior and spiritual plane, to defeat the designs of materialism upon the
stronghold of the moral life.”
The
circumstances which led to the formation of the Hermetic Society are fully set
forth in that priceless record, The Life of Anna Kingsford, (2)
and it is chiefly therefrom that the following
particulars have been obtained.
In the
months of May, June, and July, 1881, Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland gave to
a private audience in
(p. 3)
some
wonderful lectures on Esoteric Christianity, which, in the following year, were
published anonymously under the title of The
“Among
these were sundry members of a body with which we now first formed acquaintance,
bearing the name of the British
Theosophical Society. These were a group of students of the occult science
and mystical philosophy of the East, who formed a branch of a parent Society
founded originally in New York by a Russian lady, Madame H. P. Blavatsky, and an
American, Colonel H. S. Olcott, but whose headquarters were then in India.”
(Life of A.K., Vol. II, p. 15.)
Anna
Kingsford’s and Edward Maitland’s purpose was “the restoration of the true,
esoteric, and spiritual Christianity,” (Ibid., p. 277.) and they
regarded it as a very remarkable coincidence that while the object of their
collaboration had been, and was, “the restoration of the esoteric philosophy or
Theosophy of the West, and the interpretation thereby of the Christian and
kindred religions,” the collaboration between Madame Blavatsky and Colonel
Olcott had a similar object in regard to the esoteric philosophy or Theosophy of
the East; and “both parties had until then been working on lines thus parallel
in complete ignorance of each other’s existence.” But, Edward Maitland says,
“while our knowledges were derived directly from celestial sources, the
hierarchy of the Church invisible in the holy heavens, (3) theirs claimed as their source certain ancient Lodges of Adepts
said to inhabit the inaccessible heights of the Thibetan
Himalayas, an order of men credited with the possession of knowledges and powers
which constituted them beings apart and worthy of divine honours.”
(Life of A.K., Vol. II, p.
16.)
(p. 4)
While
the Theosophical Society was new, Theosophy was ancient. As Edward Maitland has
pointed out:
“It was
known very long before eight centuries ago. For it was no new
thing in the days of
To the
reviewer of one of her books who had fallen into the error of regarding
Theosophy “as a thing of recent invention, or, at least, importation,” Anna
Kingsford replied:
“Theosophy – both the term itself and the system properly so called – has
subsisted in the Church from the beginning; and what I have done is to restore
and develop it – not as lately ‘come over to Europe,’ but as held by St Paul, by
St Dionysius ‘the Areopagite,’ by the scholastics, and
by the host of Christian mystical philosophers, to whom alone it is due that
Christianity is now in any degree a spiritual religion, instead of having
degenerated into a mere fetish-worship. I propound no ‘Modern Theosophy’ which
is not also ‘Olden Mysticism’.” (Life of A.K., Vol. II, p. 257.)
Among the
members of the British Theosophical Society who attended the above-mentioned
Lectures were Charles Carlton Massey, Dr. George Wyld,
the Hon. Roden Noel, and Isabel de Steiger.
During
the year, 1881, A. P. Sinnett came over from
“We were
naturally curious to know what he had to say, and he, on his part, was curious
to make the acquaintance of those who – if all were true which he had heard
about us – were in certain respects setting themselves up as rivals of his own
venerated chiefs. It was arranged, therefore, that he should pass an evening
with us. There were several points on which we desired information, especially
the existence and powers of the alleged ‘Mahatmas,’ and the system of thought
which
(p. 5)
constituted their
‘esoteric doctrine.’ That there should be persons such as the Mahatmas were
stated to be was not impossible for us, it followed from the teaching we had
already received, and which was contained in our eighth Lecture, (See The Perfect Way, Lect. VIII.) though we had never before heard it said that
such persons actually existed in the world now. We knew, too, that
Reincarnation, under the name of Transmigration, was an Eastern tenet, and,
consequently, the doctrine of Karma, which we had received in such plenitude of
detail without ever having heard of that term for it. We were, therefore,
greatly surprised to learn from Mr. Sinnett that these tenets formed no part of
the doctrine of the Theosophical Society, being neither contained in their chief
text-book, the Isis Unveiled of its founders, nor communicated to it by its
Masters, and on these grounds Mr. Sinnett rejected them, sitting up with us
until long after midnight arguing against them, and saying, among other things,
of the doctrine of Reincarnation, that even of the Spiritualists only a few who
followed Allan Kardec accepted it. Whereupon we stated
our conviction that it would yet be given to his Society by its Eastern
teachers, and that, as for Allan Kardec’s
writings, we knew of them enough to know that they were far from trustworthy,
and his presentation of that doctrine especially was unscientific and erroneous.
For the sole source of his information was ordinary mediumship, as exercised by some
sensitives
who could see only in the astral, and represented, therefore, no true spiritual
vision, but only the ideas of living persons, whom they reflected. And when his
own book, The
Occult World, made its
appearance, as it did in the course of that same year, we were able to infer
from it that, if there really was a true system of esoteric philosophy in the
East, it had not yet been imparted to the Theosophical Society, if only for the
reason that the doctrine of that book was sheer materialism, and had no room for
the Theos, who
forms so essential an element in that which is denoted by the term ‘Theosophy.’
Thus far
our experience of that body was a disappointing one, or at least would have been
so had we yet anticipated much of it. Recognising, as we did, the time as having
come for the unsealing of the world’s Bibles, and our own appointed mission as
that of unsealing the Bibles of the West, we should have welcomed eagerly a
corresponding movement having for its purpose the unsealing of the Bibles of the
East. The Theosophical Society
(p. 6)
was,
however, still in its infancy, and we resolved to wait patiently and hopefully
for its further unfoldment.” (1)
Referring to this time, Edward Maitland says:
“Meanwhile, another notable sign of the times occurred to mark the year 1881.
This was the publication of the Revised Version of the English Bible. The fact
of a new translation was welcomed by us, if only as constituting a blow to the
idolatrous veneration in which the letter of the old translation was held, a
striking example of which we recognised in the ground of the opposition to the
proposed revision raised by the excellent Lord Shaftesbury
– that it would deprive many pious persons of some of their favourite texts; by
which it would appear that men’s blunders were more worthy of conservation than
the inspirations of the Holy Ghost, to which he implicitly ascribed the Bible.
The manner in which the work was accomplished would have been in the highest
degree disappointing to us had we anticipated any other result than was actually
attained. For we knew as did no others that the time was the winter solstice of
the human soul, and spiritual perception was at its lowest ebb, so that, be the
learning expended on it what it might, there would be no insight to guide it.
The very first verse of Genesis more than confirmed our gloomiest anticipations.
In the Authorised Version, the Hebrew word wrongly rendered ‘heaven’ in the
first chapter was rightly rendered ‘heavens’ in the second chapter. In the
Revised Version, both were wrongly rendered ‘heaven.’ This error in Hebrew as
well as in doctrine was for us, with chapters VII-X. of the Greater Mysteries (2) in our hands, proof positive the
translators had not begun to understand the system of thought which underlies
the Bible, and of which the Christ is the personal demonstration. And it was not
without a sense of elation that we reflected that the real and vital translation
of the Bible, its translation from the Letter to the Spirit, had been withheld
from the magnates of the dominant orthodoxy, backed by the national purse, to be
committed to such inconspicuous and poverty-stricken instruments as ourselves.
There was an irony
(p. 7)
about it
which argued a keen sense of humour in the divine disposers of events.” (Life of A.K., Vol.
II, pp; 22-23.)
The year
1881 also saw the founding in
On the
publication, in the following year, of The Perfect Way
– which, it will be remembered, was published anonymously – a copy of the book
was sent to the editors of the Theosophist
(2)
for review. At the same time, Anna Kingsford, without disclosing her name, (3)
wrote to Madame Blavatsky a letter, in which – referring to The Perfect Way – she said:
“It
would not have been in my mind to write thus to you, but that I find in the Theosophist for
February (on p. 114) certain words concerning ‘Initiates’ which cause me to
desire you should know something of the genesis of the book of which I have
spoken. I have said that all that book contains came
forth from my heart and lips. Yet I know nothing of your literature – and
between you and me there is, nevertheless, perfect agreement and accord.
Steadily, and not once nor twice, have I refused invitations to join the
Theosophical Society in
Madam: I
pray you to ask your Brothers whether I have the truth. Tell them, if they need
to be told, how it came to me, and whence I obtained it, and on what conditions.
You are
doing a splendid work in
The
first knowledge I had of you was from the author of the Occult World, who came to see me
in
(p. 8)
him I told
something of the method of my own initiation, and he was astonished. If you ask
him about me, and learn from him – or from any other person – my name, pray
consider it secret.”
In the
same year, 1882, she and Edward Maitland resumed their meetings which, in the
previous year, had proved such a success. (Life of A.K., Vol. II, p. 50.)
Two
remarkable Lectures which were given by her at this time are reprinted in the
present volume. I refer to the Lectures entitled “‘Violationism,’ or Sorcery in Science” and “The Systematisation and Application of Psychic Truth” respectively.
They were both given to the British National Association of Spiritualists.
Edward Maitland says that the former was “especially designed to rouse the
Spiritualists from their indifference on the subject of vivisection by
shewing them that their very claim to positive knowledge of the soul’s
reality and persistence constituted an obligation on them to oppose a practice
which is utterly at variance with all that the soul is and implies.” But, he
adds, “as the result proved, the Spiritualists were too exclusively absorbed in
their phenomenal experiences to care for the higher issues of their belief; and
between spiritualism and spirituality there was a gulf which had yet to be
bridged, and so far as they were concerned the appeal fell on deaf ears.” (Ibid., p. 47)
(1)
The object of the latter Lecture was “to raise the spiritualistic movement from
the level of mere phenomenalism,” (Life
of A.K., Vol. II, p. 60.) but, judging from some editorial
comments thereon which appeared in the following number of Light (Light, 1882,
pp. 269-270.) it is clear that her message was unacceptable to the
“Spiritualists” of her day. Her platform was too high for them.
Edward
Maitland says:
“The
latter part of May brought us from
(p. 9)
subjects dealt with
in our book, this review could not fail to have great interest for us; and it
was, accordingly, with much satisfaction that we found it described at the
outset as an ‘upheaval of true spirituality; a grand book by noble-minded
writers, and one that if every man in London above a certain level of culture
should read attentively, a theological revolution would be accomplished.’ (...)
But though thus highly appreciative of the book from some aspects, the reviewer
took violent exception to it from others, for he not only dissented from some of
its teachings on occult matters, but objected to the symbolism in which, in
order to interpret the Bible, we had followed the Bible – and notably the
adoption of the term ‘Woman’ to denote the Soul and the Intuition; and he even
ventured to assert positively that, instead of the Gospel narrative having been
written expressly to illustrate a certain doctrine, as stated by us, the
doctrine was but an ingenious application of the facts of the spiritual
consciousness to a story which was altogether unintended to bear such relation;
so that we were putting into the Gospels meanings of which their writers never
dreamed, as if mystical theology had been of subsequent invention to the
Christian era? instead of pervading – as we had shewn that it does pervade – the
Bible from the beginning, and is declared in the Bible itself to do so; as, for
instance, when St Paul declares of the books of Moses, ‘which things are an
allegory,’ and Jesus finds the Christ-doctrine of which He was the personal
illustration in the books of Moses. (...) Recalling his persistent denial of
Reincarnation on his visit to us in the previous year, we were interested to
find him now accepting the doctrine. (1) (...) Thus, while profoundly gratified by the review in some
respects, we were almost as profoundly antagonised by it in others. And the
result was a controversy in the pages of the Theosophist not altogether
devoid of bitterness. (...) It was, however, finally and happily composed. Our
reviewer concluded his part of the correspondence by describing us as ‘having
produced one of the most – perhaps the most – important and spirit-stirring of
appeals to the higher instincts of mankind which modern European literature has
yet evolved.’
(p. 10)
To which we
returned a conciliatory reply, pointing out at the same time certain respects in
which he had mistaken us. And the controversy wound up with the following
characteristic enunciation by the editor, Madame Blavatsky, in which, as will be
seen, she entirely threw over Mr. Sinnett in his repudiation of an intended
mystical sense as underlying Christianity.” (Life of A.K., Vol. II, pp. 64-67.)
In the Editor’s Note Madame Blavatsky said:
“It is
most agreeable to us to see our reviewer of The Perfect Way and the writers of
that remarkable work thus clasping hands and waving palms of peace over each
other’s heads. The friendly discussion of the metaphysics of the book in
question has elicited, as all such debates must, the fact that deep thinkers
upon the nature of absolute truth scarcely differ, save as to externals. As was
remarked in
Isis Unveiled, the
religions of men are but prismatic rays of the one only Truth. If our good
friends, the
Perfect Way-farers, would
but read the second volume of our work, they would find that we have been all
along precisely of their own opinion that there is a ‘mystical truth and
knowledge deeply underlying’ Roman Catholicism, which is identical with Asiatic
esotericism; and that its symbology marks the same
ideas, often under duplicate figures. We even went so far as to illustrate with
woodcuts the unmistakable derivation of the Hebrew Kabala from the Chaldean – the archaic parent of all the later symbology – and the kabalistic
nature of nearly all the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church. It goes without
saying that we, in common with all Asiatic Theosophists, cordially reciprocate
the amiable feelings of the writers of The Perfect Way for the
Theosophical Society. In this moment of supreme effort to refresh the moral
nature and satisfy the spiritual yearnings of mankind, all workers, in whatever
corner of the field, ought to be knit together in friendship and fraternity of
feeling. It would be indeed strange if any misunderstanding could arise of so
grave a nature as to alienate from us the sympathies of that highly advanced
(p. 11)
In the
latter part of the year 1882, being then in Switzerland, where they were engaged
in an anti-vivisection crusade, Edward Maitland received from England a letter,
in which the writer – Mr. G.B. Finch – informed him as follows: –
“The
Theosophical Society in
Edward
Maitland says:
“This
was the first suggestion to us of a conjunction with the Theosophical Society,
and the idea had not occurred to us before; nor, now that it was suggested, and
this by those whom we held in high esteem, did we feel drawn to it. On the
contrary, we already knew enough about the origin motives, and methods of the
Theosophical Society to distrust it. Its original prospectus committed the
glaring inconsistency of declaring the absolute tolerance of the Society of all
forms of religion, and then of stating that a main object was the destruction of
Christianity. Its founders had committed it also to the rejection of the idea of
a God, personal or impersonal, and this while calling it Theo-sophical. And it
claimed for its doctrine a derivation from sources which, even if they had any
existence – a matter on which we had no proof – were not to be compared with
those from whom ours was derived, (See p. 3, ante.) while the doctrine
(p. 12)
itself was
palpably inferior so far as yet disclosed, and this both in substance and form.
(...) The matter went no further at this time; but we were struck by learning
that Mary [Anna Kingsford] (1) had been recognised by the
mysterious chiefs of the Theosophical Society as ‘the greatest natural mystic of
the present day, and countless ages in advance of the great majority of
mankind.’” (Life
of A.K., Vol. II, pp.
80-81.)
The
receipt of the above-mentioned letter was followed by some correspondence with
C.C. Massey, the result of which was that Anna Kingsford consented to her
nomination as President of the British Theosophical Society, whereupon C.C.
Massey notified the Society of his intention to nominate her as its President
for the ensuing year. In the notice, issued to the members, C.C. Massey referred
to “the well-known fact that Anna Kingsford was one of the literary authors of
that remarkable work The Perfect Way, or the
Finding of Christ,” (2) and he added: “I may
say that I have not decided on making this proposal without the most careful
deliberation and consultation, and that I regard its adoption as of vital
importance.” (Life
of A.K., Vol. II, pp. 103-105.)
Edward
Maitland says:
“When at
length we gave consent, we did so on condition that we retain absolute freedom
of opinion, speech, and action, acknowledging no superiors,
nor any allegiance save to our own Illuminators, (3)
and reserving the right to use as we might deem fit any knowledges we might
acquire. For, having obtained what we had already received expressly for the
world’s benefit, we were resolved to remain unfettered in this respect. Our
association was thus so ordered as to have for its purpose a simple exchange of
knowledges. They should tell us what they knew, and we should tell them what we
knew, both sides reserving the right of criticism, acceptance, and rejection,
the Understanding alone, and in nowise Authority, being the criterion.” (Life of A.K., Vol. II, p.
105.)
The
election of Anna Kingsford as President, and Edward Maitland as Vice-President,
of the British Theosophical Society
(p. 13)
for the
ensuing year took place on Sunday the 7th January 1883, the day being that
following the feast of the Epiphany. Dr. G. Wyld, the
late President, was also elected a co-Vice- President along with Edward
Maitland.
The following
letter (Life of A.K., Vol. II, p.
106.) written at this time by Anna Kingsford to Madame de
Steiger
is of interest: –
“21
AVENUE CARNOT, PARIS,
11th
January 1883.
DEAR MADAME
DE STEIGER – I salute you in my new character of President of the British
Theosophical Society; and, though I shall not be able for some time to come to
take my place among you in the body, yet I hope that my new dignity will serve
as a fresh link in the tie of friendship already existing between us, and that
you will from time to time send me some account of your proceedings in the
Society, and of your own personal reflections on the teaching we are now
promised from the East.
I
pointed out to Mr. C.C. Massey in a recent letter the singular coincidence that
it was on Epiphany Sunday, the festival of the Magi, that the T.S. elected as
its President for the new year a King’s ford; and I suggested
that we might regard this fact as a happy augury for the prosperity of the
Society in the immediate future; since now indeed the way seemed at last opened
for the passage of the Kings of the East, and, as it is said in the Apocalypse,
the River is dried up that the way of the Kings of the East may be prepared.
(...) It gives me considerable surprise, and puzzles me not a little, to learn
that Dr. Wyld is still not only a member of the
Theosophical Society, but is absolutely accepted as co-Vice-President with Mr.
Maitland! I quite understood from Dr. Wyld himself,
and also from the circular issued by Mr. Massey, that the aims and programme of
the T.S. had become so distasteful to the Doctor that he had determined to
resign his connection with it. Strange that he should withdraw deliberately from
the
Presidency, only to come
forward as Vice-President so shortly
after! Can you explain this riddle? I should be very glad to have it solved.
I have
requested Mr. Massey to retain his place as my locum
tenens until I
return, and feel sure that, as he is so manifestly in harmony both with our
Indian correspondents and with myself, you will be glad of this arrangement.
(...)
ANNA KINGSFORD.”
(p. 14)
On the
20th May following they returned to England, when Anna Kingsford commenced her
duties as President of the British Theosophical Society, which, on her
suggestion, was afterwards designated the London Lodge of the Theosophical
Society. (Life of A.K.,
Vol. II, p. 119.)
Writing,
at this time, to Lady Caithness, Anna Kingsford says:
“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.” (Letter dated 8th June 1883.
Life of A.K., Vol. II, p. 119.)
And, in
a further letter, she says:
“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
Anna
Kingsford made her first public appearance in her new role as President of the
British Theosophical Society at the reception which, on the evening of the 17th
July 1883, was given by the Society, at the Princes’ Hall, Piccadilly, to Mr.
Sinnett, who had then recently returned from India to this country. An account
of the reception, which appeared in Light, (Light, 1883,
p. 335.) says:
“Some
270 guests assembled, and among them
were many faces well known in Society, and not a few men of letters and science
whose judgment and opinion the world is accustomed to treat with deference. The
company would be described in the language of the ordinary reporter as at once
fashionable and influential.”
The
proceedings were opened by Anna Kingsford, when she gave an eloquent address on
Theosophy and the aims and objects of the Theosophical Society. (1)
One of Mr. Sinnett’s objects in returning to this
country had been the publication of his book Esoteric Buddhism, which
had then recently appeared, but which, at that
(p. 15)
time, they
had not had an opportunity of carefully and critically studying. (1)
Speaking for herself as “a Catholic Christian,” and referring to the fact that
the guest of the evening was a Buddhist, (2) she laid particular
stress upon the fact that all the great religions of the world were
fundamentally one and the same, 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”; and, she said:
“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 the earlier and purer days, the Gods again may ‘come and go’ twixt [between]
mortal men and high Olympus.’”
Speaking
of Mr. Sinnett’s address on this occasion, Edward
Maitland says: “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.”
(Life
of A.K., Vol. II, p.126.)
The
first duty which devolved upon Anna Kings ford and Edward Maitland as the chiefs
of the London Lodge of the Theosophical Society, was to study Mr. Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism; and, as the
writers of The
Perfect Way, they were equally bound to acquaint themselves
with the teaching of and pass judgment on this book; and this, Edward Maitland
says, “not for the sake merely of the members of the Society, but for the sake
of our own work, and for the vindication before the world of the teaching
(p. 16)
committed to us,
and which we knew of ourselves to be true, while – as the writer of Esoteric Buddhism frankly admitted – he was entirely dependent for
his knowledge upon teachers of whom he had no personal knowledge, but whom,
nevertheless, he had learnt to trust implicitly.” And, “Such being the position,
our course seemed to us to be clear. This was to ignore persons, and judge the
doctrine on its own merits, making appeal only to the understanding. Having
ourselves insisted on the possibility of man’s attainment of knowledge and
powers even transcending those claimed for the Eastern Adepts, we were by no
means averse to the idea that such persons may actually exist. But there was no
sufficient evidence of their existence, (1)
or of the possession by those who asserted their existence of the ability to
recognise them, even in the case of contact with them. For, as only they who
possess the Christ spirit in a measure can recognise the Christ, so only they
who are themselves adepts in a measure can recognise the Adepts. And even if the
teaching in question came from the source alleged, what guarantee was there that
it had not undergone in transmission a change sufficient to vitiate it? 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. And might not the same thing have happened with the teaching now
propounded, and this while its propounders were acting
in the best faith, owing to the lack of spiritual insight on the part of the
recipients? The very designation, Esoteric Buddhism,
moreover, was open to grave question. And there was the further consideration,
(p. 17)
that to
accept it upon authority, and independently of the understanding, would be but
to establish a new sacerdotalism in place of that which we and they alike sought
to dethrone:
“And,
indeed, it very soon became evident that matters were not only in danger of
tending in this direction, but had already gone far in it. The idea of a group
of divinised men, dwelling high up in the fastnesses of the Himalayas, and
endowed with transcendent knowledges and powers, possessed a fascination for all
but the stoutest heads; and that many had succumbed to the glamour of the
supposed ‘Mahatmas,’ as the adept masters were called, was evidenced by their
readiness to accept implicitly all that was put forward in their name, even to
resenting as blasphemous the suggestion of need for caution and deliberation,
and their refusal to recognise the presence of an esoteric element in
Christianity corresponding to that which was claimed for Buddhism.
There
was also much in the tone and character of the publications issued from the
headquarters of the parent Society in India of which we disapproved as not only
calculated to impair the credit of the Society with the public, but as harmful
in itself and incompatible with its real aims. For, while we recognised the
Society as at once representing high aims and possessed of invaluable
knowledges, we were compelled to recognise the presence of other and conflicting
elements which, unless eliminated, would assuredly wreck the whole movement.
This is to say, that although, owing to the heterogeneous nature of
its elements, chiefly as regards the personalities of its foremost
representatives, it was but a chaos, we discerned in it the possibilities of a Kosmos, provided only those elements could be duly redeemed
from their limitations and fused into harmonious accord. For us its promoters
were as children who, having become possessed of a valuable instrument which
they were as yet incapable of appreciating, were in danger of destroying it
through the exuberance of their child-nature, and their consequent disposition
to play with it, instead of setting seriously to work to apply it to its proper
uses.” (Life of A.K.,
Vol. II, pp. 138-140.)
In view
of these objections, Anna Kingsford, as President of the London Lodge, and
describing herself as “a toiler in the Ship of Peter,” (1)
addressed to Colonel Olcott, as President of the
(p. 18)
Parent Society, a
long letter of remonstrance, (1) in which she pleaded for a truly
catholic theosophy, and stated what she believed to be the right aim and method
of their work, and the wisest policy for their Society to follow. In her letter
she laid stress upon the fact that in Christian countries it is not so much the
revelation of a new religious system that is needed, as a true interpretation of
the religion now existing. “Orthodox Christianity, both in Catholic and in
Protestant countries,” she said, “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.” And she pointed out that “It
should be the task of Theosophy 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.” (2) The Theosophical creed, she said,
“should be essentially spiritual, and all its
articles should relate to interior conditions, principles, and processes. It
should be based upon experimental knowledge, not on authority, and its central
figures should be attributes, qualities, and sacraments (mysteries), not
persons, nor events, however great or remarkable. For persons and events belong
to time and to the phenomenal, while principles and processes are eternal and
noumenal. The historical method has been the bane of the Churches. Let Theosophy
and Theosophists remember that history and individual entities must be ever
regarded by them as constituting the accidental, and not the essential element
in a system which aims at repairing the errors of the theologians, by
reconstructing the Mysteries on a scientific and intelligent basis.”
Their
dissent from Mr. Sinnett’s book, Esoteric Buddhism,
(p. 19)
and their attitude
towards the alleged “Masters,” was not appreciated by the majority of the
members of the London Lodge, who failed to understand them, and who failed to
see whither under Mr. Sinnett’s
influence they were being led and to what they were committing themselves and
their Society. In a letter, dated 2nd November 1883, to her friend Madame de Steiger, who was a prominent member of the Society, Anna
Kingsford, after saying that she never dreamed of disparaging the Brothers, nor
of imputing that she did not believe in them, and after referring to the feeling
of the members – the Cabal raised against her – and to the “folly” of the course
then recently pursued by Mr. Sinnett in “dragging the names of the Brothers
forward into undue prominence,” and so making the Society ridiculous in the eyes
of the world, said: “Following Mr. Sinnett’s lead, you have, most of you, read into my address
a meaning I had not the least wish to convey, and I am heartily sorry so many of
my friends should so much have misunderstood me.” This letter drew from Madame
de Steiger an answer, to which, in a letter dated 5th
November 1883, Anna Kingsford replied, giving the following clear statement of
her position: –
“(1) When I
was invited to join the Society, I was emphatically and distinctly told that no
allegiance would be required of me to the ‘Mahatmas,’ to Madame Blavatsky, or to
any other person real or otherwise, but only to Principles and Objects.
(2)
Consequently, I am no traitor to the express conditions on which I entered the
Society when I say that I neither owe nor do I acknowledge the allegiance which
now appears to be required of me to persons of whose existence and claims I am
utterly unable to affirm or deny anything positively.
(3) If,
then, it is the deliberate opinion of the whole Lodge – which it certainly was
not six months ago – that it must have a President whose allegiance to the
Mahatmas is sans peur et sans reproche, then I
certainly am not, from the nature of things, fitted to occupy your Chair. And I
do not see how anyone can occupy it, on such terms, who
is not, of his own personal experience, in a position to testify to the
existence and claims of the ‘Brothers.’ This even Mr. Sinnett cannot do, as he
only knows them ‘through a glass darkly, and not face to face.’
(4) I
cannot consent to pose before the world in the absurd position of a person
claiming to act on principles of exact knowledge and scientific methods, who has
abandoned the platform of Historical Christianity because its so-called events
and
(p. 20)
personages are
impossible of verification, and who yet accepts as indubitable another set of
events and personages the evidence for which is meagre and unsatisfactory in a
degree surpassing even that of Historical Christianity. All that is affirmed may be true; but I am not in a position to know its truth, and cannot therefore say I
believe it, or disbelieve it. The
utmost I can say in the present matter is – and this I say cordially – that I am
heartily willing and anxious to hear all that comes to us from the East with
serious attention, provided I am not called upon to connect it with subservience
to any personal authority claiming my belief and confidence as a duty; and
provided also that I may fairly and freely criticise what I hear, and test it by
reason and experience.
(5)
Madame Blavatsky calls the ‘Mahatmas’ Masters. Her experience and evidence may justify this
epithet for her, but they do not justify me in using it. I do not, therefore,
and will not, apply that term to any earthly being soever.
I may
add that it is not I who seek to
separate Esoteric Buddhism from Esoteric Christianity. First, the system
expounded by Mr. Sinnett is not – so far as I can see – esoteric at all, being
simply a scheme of transcendental physics; and, secondly, he is deliberately
seeking to silence every other voice
but that of the ‘Mahatmas.’ If there is to be unification and brotherhood, there
must be equality. It now seems to me
that I am the only representative of Christian doctrine left among you.
(...)” (Life of A.K.,
Vol. II, pp. 147-148.)
With a
view to the vindication of their own position in regard to Mr. Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism, they wrote a
pamphlet, which consisted of a letter, dated December 1883, from Anna Kingsford
to the London Lodge of the Theosophical Society; some “Remarks and Propositions on Mr. Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism,” by Edward Maitland; and a
copy of Anna Kingsford’s letter, dated 31st October 1883, to the President of
the Theosophical Society, to which reference has been [previously] made. (1) The following passage from Anna Kingsford’s first-mentioned
letter gives the key to the position taken up by them. She says:
“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
(p. 21)
human
spirit. I am myself as much the disciple of Buddha as of Christ, because the two
Masters are one in Doctrine. But, in my view, such a system as Mr. Sinnett’s book reveals to us is as opposed to Buddhism as it
is to Christianity, and is utterly incompatible with the avowed aims and
teachings of the Society under whose aegis it is issued. No universal religion,
no catholic brotherhood can be built on such a foundation as this; – it is but
the germ of a new sect, and one more materialistic, exoteric, and unscientific
than has ever yet been presented with serious claims to the modern world. Its
tendency is to divide, to scatter, to repel, making all chance of unification
impossible, instead of reconstructing, consolidating, and reconciling. East and
West will never meet on such a bridge as this doctrine, nor will the conflicting
testimonies of history and scientific criticism be silenced by enunciations of
transcendental physics which directly impinge on their domain. In a word, this
book is neither ‘Buddhism’ nor ‘esoteric.’”
(Life of A.K., Vol. II, p.
152.)
The
letter went on to propose that, on the recurrence of the elections for 1884 two
Sections be created in the London Lodge; one, to be formed by the Fellows who
desired to pursue exclusively the teaching of the Thibetan
Mahatmas, and to be presided over by Mr. Sinnett; the other, to be known as the
Catholic Section of the London Lodge, to be composed of Fellows who desired to
adopt a broader basis and to extend research into other directions – “more
especially with the object of encouraging the study of Esoteric Christianity,
and of the Occidental theosophy out of which it arose” – the principal studies
of this Section being addressed to “the analysis of the great religions and
philosophies which have swayed mankind in the past, and which divide their
allegiance in the present”; but notwithstanding these two Sections, Fellows of
either Section were to be free to belong to both, and free to attend each
other’s meetings.
Edward
Maitland says:
“The
great majority of the Lodge were strongly adverse to
the line taken by us, (...) and it became clear that, when the time came, as it
would come in January, for the annual election of Officers, we should be
displaced. This was a conclusion which, so far as concerned ourselves, we
contemplated with more than equanimity, with positive satisfaction and relief.
The turmoil of the position, and the personal conflicts engendered, were
distasteful to us in the extreme, and only the hope of saving the Society from
its own discordant elements,
(p. 22)
to become
a redeeming influence in the world, reconciled us to continued association with
it.” (Life of A.K.,
Vol. II, pp. 154-155.)
On the
21st December, after the printing of the above-mentioned pamphlet, Anna Kingsford
received from Madame Blavatsky a letter dated “Adyar,
25th November 1883,” which was said to have been written “under orders,” and
which asserted that the policy and actions of Anna Kingsford were known to and
approved of by the Mahatmas. The following is an extract from Madame
Blavatsky’s letter:
“I
happen to know – and I write this to Mr. Sinnett today – that notwithstanding
your own doubts and slight misconceptions of our Masters, and the opposition you
experienced (or rather Mr. Maitland) on the afternoon of October 26th – and all the rest, they are still
desirous (and ‘more than ever,’ as my Guru expresses it) that you should kindly
pursue your own policy, for they find it good. This I write à l’aveugle, for I know nothing
either of the said policy or what has been the nature of the disagreement
between you in its details, though acquainted with its general character. I
simply communicate to you the Order I receive, and the words used. ‘Future alone
will shew why we take another view of the situation than Mr. Sinnett’ – are the
words used. (...) I have always understood the Chelas to say that
They – the Masters – knew and watched your proceedings, that you were notified of Their presence,
and that you are the most wonderful sensitive in all Europe, not
Writing
of the position to Lady Caithness, Anna Kingsford says:
“The
doctrine we have received is that of
all Hermetic and Kabalistic teaching from time
immemorial; and to forsake that and embrace the strange and inconsistent creed
put forth as ‘Esoteric Buddhism’ would be to turn our backs at once and
definitively upon all that is divine and true in the highest sense. None of
us are capable of such folly as that
would be.” (Life of A.K.,
Vol. II, pp. 159-160, note.)
The
meeting of the Society, which was held on the 27th January 1884, passed without
any change being made. The reason for this was that both sides had represented
their views to the Founders – Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott – and the
elections were postponed until such time as word should be received from
(p. 23)
C.C.
Massey, to whom reference has been made, wrote at this time to a friend, saying:
“It is
desirable that we should, by re-electing Mrs. Kingsford (who is only opposed on
account of her independence), reaffirm with some
emphasis the principle of freedom of thought.” (Letter, dated 5th February 1884,
to W.F. Kirby)
Edward
Maitland says:
“When
the time came for the decisive meeting to be held, the occasion proved to be in
the highest degree dramatic. The tension was extreme, so high did feeling run on
both sides; and when, at the moment that the crucial question was to be put,
Mary produced a telegram (1) from India saying ‘Remain
President,’ and signed ‘Koot Hoomi,’ the sensation was indescribable. The mandate was at
once recognised as imperative, and the election was but a formality.”
(Life of A.K., Vol. II, pp.
159-160.)
The
result of the reference to
In their
rejoinder they said:
“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 Madame Blavatsky,
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, we regard the two systems as
complementary to each other, each being indispensable, as concerned
(p.
24)
with, or representing different
stages in, man’s spiritual evolution, Christianity, rightly interpreted,
representing the latter, and therefore the higher, in that it alone,
unequivocally, ‘has the Spirit.’” (1)
In March
1884 the Founders of the Theosophical Society were in
(p. 25)
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 adoption 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 A.K., Vol. II, p. 195.)
The Prospectus was accompanied by the
following note: –
“In
inviting your attention to the accompanying Prospectus, it is
considered desirable to state that the Hermetic Society has been formed, not in
any spirit of opposition to, or rivalry with, the Theosophical Society, or any
of its branches, but rather as a supplement and complement to it and them, and
in friendly co-operation to their declared aims. Desiring no less than the
Theosophical Society to study the philosophical systems of the
(p. 26)
East, and to
promote the sentiment of universal brotherhood, the Hermetic Society directs its
attention more particularly to the systems of the West, and seeks, by comparing
all systems, to ascertain their respective merits and mutual relation. In this
it is actuated by the conviction that the common object of both Societies – to
wit, the establishment of spiritual unity throughout the world – will be most
effectually promoted, not by seeking to include all men under one denomination,
but by exhibiting the substantial agreement already subsisting among their
various systems and creeds.
These
being the spirit and scope of the Hermetic Society, its Fellows feel that they
are entitled to look confidently for such reciprocity between it and the
Theosophical Society as will promote concurrent membership in both Societies.”
By the
rules of the Society it was expressly provided that (inter alia) distinctions of race, religion, or sex
should be no bar either to Fellowship or to office.
The
Hermetic Society was inaugurated on Friday the 9th May 1884 –
“(…)
made the legend of St George and the Dragon the basis of an exposition of
Hermetic doctrine, in the course of which she shewed that it was one of many
allegories of identical import. For as the Dragon of the sacred myths of old
was always Materiality, and the Princess exposed to it was the Soul, so the
Knight who rescues and finally carries her off in triumph as his bride to heaven
is always, directly or by delegation, Hermes, the Angel of the understanding of
divine things, by whose aid alone the soul is enabled to surmount the
sense-nature, and man realises his Divine potentialities.” (Life of A.K., Vol. II, p.
196.)
Applying
this to the present age, Anna Kingsford said:
“In the
revival of the Hermetic philosophy now taking place may be seen at once the
token and the agent of the world’s deliverance. For it means the supersession of a period of obscuration by one of
illumination, such that men can once more rise from the appreciation of the Form
to that of the Substance, of the Letter to that of the Spirit, and thus discern
the meaning of the Divine Word,
(p. 27)
whether written or enacted. Such recognition of the ideal
as the real signifies the reconstruction of religion upon a scientific basis,
and of science upon a religious basis. So long as religion builds upon the mere
facts and phenomena of history, she builds upon a sandbank, on which the
advancing tide of scientific criticism is ever encroaching, and which must
sooner or later be swept away with all that is founded upon it. But when she
learns the secret of Hermetic, that is Esoteric, interpretation, then, and then
only, does she build upon a rock, which shall never be shaken. Such is the
import of the term ‘Peter,’ which, as one with Hermes, properly denotes not only
rock, but interpreter.” (1)
And she
announced a series of discourses by herself at future meetings of the Society
explanatory of the terms of the Apostles’ Creed. (Light, 1884, p.198.) Edward
Maitland says:
“My
contribution on the occasion was a sketch of the history and character of the
Hermetic philosophy, which was followed by a discussion, the chief feature of
which was an account given by Colonel Olcott of the origin and aims of the
Theosophical Society, and of the derivation of its teaching from the sages of
the East, whose methods and doctrines, he said, were purely Hermetic – a
definition which we recognised as altogether excluding Mr.
Sinnett’s
Esoteric Buddhism.” (2)
(p. 28)
Writing
in her Diary on the 11th May – two days after the inauguration of the new
Society – Anna Kingsford says:
“I do
not yet know, myself, exactly what it is we seek to gain in this Society. I do
not want to be a Teacher, arrogating to myself all authority and illumination. I
want light. Perhaps the best way will be to have discussion days on the subject
of some paper previously read. What we really seek is to reform the Christian
system and start a new
And in a
letter, written on the following day, to Lady Caithness, she says:
“We want
to get
known. Sometimes I think that the truths and knowledges we
hold are so high and so deep that the age is yet unable to receive them, and
that all we shall be permitted to do is to formulate them in some book or books
to leave as a legacy to the world when we pass away from it. The truth we have
is far in advance of anything the disciples of Madame Blavatsky and her Gurus
possess.” (Life of A.K.,
Vol. II, pp. 187 and 188.)
At the
second meeting, on the 9th May 1884, Edward Maitland 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.” For, he says:
“(…) 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 A.K.,
Vol. II, p. 197.)
Anna
Kingsford’s forthcoming Lectures on the Creed were notified to the members of
the Society in a circular as follows: –
(p. 29)
The Hermetic Society
THE SUMMER SESSION MEETINGS
Of this Society for 1884 will be held, until further
notice, at
43
ON THE AFTERNOONS OF THURSDAY, JUNE 12, 19, 26,
JULY 3, 10, 17, 24, and 31.
To
commence at 5 o’clock precisely.
SUBJECT OF EXPOSITION AND DISCUSSION:
THE CREDO OF CHRISTENDOM
Its Esoteric and Occult Meaning; its Relation to the
Nature of Existence; and its Correspondence with
the Sacred Mysteries
of Antiquity.
To be introduced by
the President in Special Papers.
At
first, C.C. Massey did not like the idea of these lectures. Writing, shortly
after their announcement, to Edward Maitland on the subject he said:
“It
seemed too much like putting new wine into old bottles, and, in short, not quite
the sort of thing ‘Hermetists’ would look for. But
then it occurred to me that if she really can shew to the progressive minds in
the Church that the esoteric doctrine is signified by the historical form and
embodied in the Creeds, and that the historical faith is not really
Christianity, but just its vehicle, then that truth might be seized upon, and
might unite hundreds of influential minds in its propaganda. I mean that the
lead might thus be given to a movement of real importance in the Church, and one
which might re-ally it to philosophy.” (Life of A.K., Vol. II, p. 194.)
But Mr.
Massey was probably not then aware that Anna Kingsford had under Divine
Illumination recovered the sense in which the Creeds were intended by their
formulators, and in such sense she recognised
(p. 30)
them as
being indisputably true, in that they represent indispensable soul-processes.
(See E.M.’s letter in Light, 1890.
p.290.) In 1879, when a medical student in
“(…) by rendering
the Creed into the present tense (...) exhibited to our supreme satisfaction the
interior character of Christianity proper, to the confirmation of our own
independent conviction respecting the non-historical nature of all that is
essential in religion; and in such presentation we rejoiced to recognise the
death-blow to the superstition which insists on restricting to a time and to an
individual processes which are by their nature necessarily eternal and
universal.” (Life
of A.K., Vol. I, p.305.)
The Creed, as
received by Anna Kingsford, is as follows:
“THE CREDO;
being a
summary of the spiritual history of the Sons of God, and the mysteries of the
kingdoms of the Seven Spheres.
I
BELIEVE in one God; the Father and Mother Almighty; of whose substance are the
generations of Heaven and of earth. And in Christ Jesus the Son of God, our
Lord; who is conceived of the Holy Ghost; born of the Virgin Mary; suffereth under the world-rulers; is crucified, dead, and
buried; who descendeth into hell; who riseth again from the dead; who ascendeth
into Heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God; by
whose law the quick and the dead are judged. I believe in the Seven Spirits of
God; the
He that
believeth and is initiated shall be saved; and he that believeth not shall
consume away.” (Clothed with the Sun, Pt.
II,
nº. 1.)
Referring to the concluding sentences, Edward Maitland says:
“The
long-standing controversy respecting the meaning of Nirvana has
been resolved for us in favour of both the interpretations assigned to it. This
is to say that, while it means extinction, the extinction
implied is of two different kinds. Of these, one called the celestial
Nirvana,
denotes the perfectionment and perpetuation of the essential selfhood of the
individual, accompanied by the extinction of the external and phenomenal
selfhood. Thus indrawn to his centre, the individual ceases
(p. 31)
to ex-ist but does not cease to be. In
other words, he is, but is not
manifest, the term existence, as opposed to being, implying the standing-forth,
or objectivisation, of that which is,
subjectively. The condition implies the return from matter to substance or
spirit.
The
‘Nirvana of the Amen,’ on the contrary; denotes the extinction, not only of the
externality of the individual, but of the individual himself; this occurring
through the persistent indulgence of a perverse will to the outer and lower,
such as to induce a complete deprivation of the inner and higher constituents of
man, and so to divest his system of its binding principle as to render not only
possible, but inevitable, complete dissolution and disintegration, to the total
extinction of the individuality concerned. This is not loss of substance or
spirit. The term Amen in this relation
signifies consummation or finality.
Like the
so-called ‘damnatory’ clauses of the ‘Athanasian
Creed,’ the declaration [at the end of the Creed, as given above] is simply a
solemn recognition, first, of the doctrine that salvation is neither arbitrary
not compulsory, but conditional and optional, the alternative to it being
extinction; and, next, of the Credo as a summary of the conditions of salvation.
These, it is true, are expressed in terms which, in being symbolical, do not
bear their meaning upon the face of them; but none the less are the conditions
themselves so simple and obvious as to be recognisable as self-evident and
necessarily true. That is to say, they represent the steps of a process
necessary to be enacted in the soul, and founded in the nature of the soul
itself; so that, when understood, the belief in them makes no greater strain
upon the faculties than does the belief in any self-evident proposition
whatever. Rather would the difficulty be to disbelieve them. Wherefore – to
state the case in other words – the declaration of the soul’s extinction through
non-compliance with the conditions herein affirmed to be indispensable to its
perpetuation, made by the initiate in the terms of the Credo, is the exact
parallel and counterpart of the declaration of the body’s extinction through
non-compliance with the conditions indispensable to its continuance, made by the
physiologist in the terms of his craft. The language is in each case technical,
but the truths it conceals (from the non-initiate) are incontestable; and so far
from their being disbelieved by those who do not understand them, they are
invariably acted upon by al – who are of sound mind – to the best of their
ability, despite their failure to
(p. 32)
understand them.
For, alike for soul and body, there is that within man which does believe, and
which accordingly does comply with the conditions requisite for his welfare,
quite independently of his knowledge of processes and terms spiritual or
physiological, and which needs but fair play, and not to be thwarted by his own
perverse will, to accomplish his salvation.
Wherefore the declaration in question is no menace, but rather is it a promise,
– a promise that when the time comes to understand the process whereby salvation
is accomplished, the very fact that it is understood is a token that salvation
is accomplished; for once understood, it can no more be disbelieved than
gravitation or any other certainty of the physical world. Now, to have this
understanding is to be ‘initiated.’” (Clothed with the
Sun, App. pp. i-iii.)
It is
the spiritual selfhood of man – the Christ Jesus within him – that is the
subject of the Christian Credo. “The Apostles’ Creed is an epitome of the
spiritual history of all those who become by re-generation ‘Sons of God.’”
(E.M., Light, 1893, p. 284; and
see
Life of A.K., Vol. I, p. 315.)
In reply
to and correcting one who had declared that “the old creed-makers meant the
Creed literally,” Edward Maitland said:
“This is
not the case. The adopters of it into the Christian Church meant it literally,
for the Church inherited its mysteries without the key to them, the ‘key of
knowledge,’ with the abstraction of which Jesus so bitterly reproached the
ecclesiasticism of His time, had not yet been restored. But it was not so with
the original formulaters of the Creed. (...) The
original and intended sense of the Creed is purely spiritual and devoid of any
physical reference.” (Light,
1884, p. 190.)
The
dates and subject-matter of the lectures given by Anna Kingsford and Edward
Maitland to the Hermetic Society during the first Session were as follows:
12th
June 1884, Anna Kingsford, on the clause of the Creed:
“I believe in God,
the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth.”
19th
June 1884, Anna Kingsford, on the 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.”
(p. 33)
26th June 1884, Edward Maitland, on “Mystics and Materialists.”
10th
July 1884, Anna Kingsford, on the clause of the Creed:
“He suffereth under Pontius Pilate.”
17th
July 1884, Anna Kingsford, on the clause of the Creed:
“I believe in the
Holy Ghost, the holy Catholic Church.”
24th July 1884, Anna Kingsford, on the same subject as the last.
31st
July 1884, Anna Kings ford, on the same subject as the last.
Speaking
of the Lecture on Mystics and Materialists,
given by himself, Edward Maitland says:
“I
shewed 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 has 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 A.K., Vol. II,
p.199.)
A
wonderful Illumination, (1) received and written down by Anna
(p. 34)
Kingsford while under trance, says:
“The
Church knows not the source of its dogmas. We (1) marvel also at the
blindness of the hearers, who indeed hear, but who have not eyes to see. We
speak in vain, – ye discern not spiritual things. Ye are so materialised that ye
perceive only the material. The Spirit comes and goes; ye hear the sound of
Its voice: but ye cannot tell whither It goeth nor whence It cometh. All that is true is spiritual.
No dogma of the Church is true that seems to bear a physical meaning. For matter
shall cease, and all that is of it, but the Word of the Lord shall remain for
ever. And how shall it remain except it be
purely spiritual; since, when matter ceases, it would then be no longer
comprehensible? I tell you again, and of a truth, – no dogma is real that is not
spiritual. If it be true, and yet seem to you to have a
material signification, know that you have not solved it. It is a mystery: seek
its interpretation. That which is true, is for spirit alone.”
What has
been said of the dogmas of the Church is true also of the Scriptures. Anna
Kingsford’s Lecture on “Bible Hermeneutics”
makes this very clear. She once, in her sleep, read in a book an Instruction “Concerning
the Intention of the Mystical Scriptures,” which she wrote down from memory
immediately on waking. The Instruction so read by her referred in particular to
the interpretation to be put upon the early books of the Old Testament, which
books were stated to be mystical, but the principles enunciated are applicable
to all sacred scriptures; and the purport of it was that if such books be Mystic
Books, they ought also to have a Mystic Consideration: “It ought to be known,
indeed, for the right Understanding of the Mystical Books, that in their
esoteric Sense they deal, not with material Things, but with spiritual
Realities. (...) The Mystic Books deal only with spiritual Entities. (...) They
are Idolaters who understand the Things of Sense where the Things of the Spirit
are alone implied.” (2)
On another occasion she found herself surrounded in her sleep by a group of
spirits, who conversed together concerning the “Fall.”
They began by saying that “all the mistakes made about the Bible arise out of
the Mystic Books being referred to times, places, and persons material,
(p. 35)
instead of
being regarded as containing only eternal verities about things spiritual.”
(Illumination “Concerning the Fall,” Clothed with the Sun, Pt. I, Nº. VII.)
Having
been interviewed by the late W.T. Stead, Anna Kingsford wrote for the Pall Mall Gazette, of which he was then the editor, the following
account of the Hermetic Society, which duly appeared in that journal:
“The
name of Hermes as the divine representative of the intellectual principle has
ever in the Western World been associated with the study of spiritual and occult
science, and with the knowledge of things hidden and removed from the reach of
the superficial sense. Hence the very word ‘hermetic’ has, in common parlance,
come to be applied to the enclosure and sealing up of objects which it is
desired to preserve inviolate and incorrupt. The Hermetic Society, however,
though, as its name implies, concerning itself mainly with the study of the
secret science, is not a secret association. Its Fellows are bound by no pledges
of silence, and use neither password nor sign. In a Society having a catholic
object, and aiming at the inauguration of a school of thought which, though old
in the history of the world, is new in that of our race and time, it is
considered that a policy of exclusiveness would be anachronistic and out of
place. Moreover, the origin and character of the Society are not of a nature to
render secrecy either necessary or desirable. Composed as it is, not of
initiates, but of students, and numbering in its ranks sound scholars and
competent thinkers more or less intolerant of ecclesiastical methods and
control, the task which the Society has set itself is one for which it seeks and
invites co-operation on the part of all able contributors to the thought of our
day. This task involves the investigation of the nature and constitution of man,
with a view to the formulation of a system of thought and rule of life which
will enable the individual to develop to the utmost his higher potentialities,
intellectual and spiritual.
The
Society represents a reaction that has long been observable, though hitherto
discouraged and hindered from public expression by still dominant influences.
Reaction is not necessarily, nor indeed usually, retrogressive. It bears on its
wave the best acquisitions of time and culture, and often represents the deeper
current of essential progress. The tendency of the age to restrict the
researches of the human mind to a range of study merely material and sensible is
directly inimical to the method of Nature, and must, therefore, prove abortive.
For
(p. 36)
it
represents an attempt to limit the scope and the possibilities of evolution, and
thus to hinder the normal development of those higher modes of consciousness
which mark certain advanced types of mankind. Reason is not less the test of
truth to the Mystic than to the Materialist; but the mode of it to which the
former appeals is on a higher level, transcending the operation of the outer and
ordinary senses. ‘Revelation’ thus becomes conceivable. Only to thought which is
absolutely free is the manifestation of truth possible; and to be thus free,
thought must be exercised in all directions, not outward only to the phenomenal,
but inward to the real also, from the expression of idea in formal matter to the
informing idea itself. Our age, failing to comprehend the mystic spirit, has
hitherto associated it with attributes which really belong not to mysticism, but
to the common apprehension of it – obscurity and uncertainty. The Hermetic
Society desires to reveal mysticism to a world which knows it not; to define its
propositions, to categorise its doctrine. And this can be done only by minds
trained in philosophical method, because mysticism is a science, based on the
essential reason of things – the most supremely rationalistic of all systems.
(...)
The
programme by which the Hermetic Society intends to regulate and direct its
labours is a rich one. It comprises the comparative study of all philosophical
and religious systems, whether of the East or of the West, and especially of the
‘Mysteries’ of
These
observations will suffice to shew that the Hermetic Society is not more friendly to the popular presentation of orthodox Church
doctrine than to the fashionable agnosticism of the hour. It represents, indeed,
a revolt against all conventional forms of belief, whether ecclesiastical or
secular, and a conviction that the rehabilitation of religion on reasonable and
scientific grounds is not only possible to the human mind, but
(p. 37)
is
essential to human progress and development. This line of thought was first
introduced to the public in a work entitled The
The
Hermetic Society has a mystic rather than an occult character; it depends for
guidance upon no ‘Mahatmas,’ and can boast no worker of wonders on the
phenomenal plane. Its Fellows do not, as Hermetists,
interest themselves in the study or culture of abnormal powers; they seek
knowledges only, and these not so much on the physical
as on the intellectual and spiritual level. Such knowledge must, they hold, be
necessarily productive of good works. Hermetists are
expected to be true knights of spiritual chivalry, identifying themselves with
movements in the direction of justice and mercy, whether towards man or beast,
and doing their utmost, individually and collectively, to further the
recognition of the Love-principle as that involving the highest and worthiest
motive and method of human action.” (Life of A.K., Vol.
II, pp. 205-207. See also Light, 26th July 1884, p.
302.)
Speaking of
mysticism, in her inaugural address to the Hermetic Society, Anna Kingsford
said:
“To be a
Mystic is in no wise to be a Yogee. (1)
The Mystic knows that the true secret of ruling the body is so to deal with it
that it shall not assert itself and thrust itself unduly on the observation.
Cruelty to the body is just as detrimental to the interests of self-liberation
as is sensual indulgence. For both these extremes tend to force the pleasure or
pain of the flesh on the attention of the mind, and thus to hinder
centralisation of spirit and the growth of the inward peace. The Mystic is the
King – not the Tyrant – of the body. Every act and desire of the physical man
which does not profit the intellectual man, he subdues and overcomes; but he
never torments the flesh for torment’s sake. For he knows that such a course
would result only in bringing the body into undue prominence; and that all the
powers of his mind would become drained out and exhausted with the constant
effort to stifle the cries of his victim. Hence he rules
(p. 38)
the body as
one should rule a servant, his object being so to equilibrate his nature that he
may not be aware of the body’s presence. (...)
The
Mystic subjugates his body, not by cruel violation of its will, but by bringing
this into union and agreement with the higher will of the mind, and thus
polarising and identifying all the forces of his complex nature. The
accomplished rider and his horse are as one creature. So the initiate and his
body are as one being. So long as a man is at war with his flesh, he is not its
Master. Inasmuch as a man wilfully maltreats and torments his body, insomuch he
sins against the law of Love. And by this law alone can any man become a Master.
Nor does
the Mystic condemn the body’s sense of Beauty in the outward world. Far from this. For he knows that through
the phantasmagoric veil of the material spheres the
eye of the soul may perceive the features of the Divine Glory. Whether in
cloud, or sea, or forest, whether in song, or sound of wind, or colour of hill
and moor: – in whatever guise Beauty finds and touches him, that which he loves
in Nature is the God: his spirit meets and kisses the Spirit within this lovely
Maya: all this earthly sweetness and joy, translated and transmuted in his mind,
become to him the focus of the eternal and heavenly Light. By means of the
outward reflect he rises into the apprehension of the inward Reality. The voice
of Nature sings into his soul the wonder of God.
Nor yet,
again, does the Mystic need to immerse himself in the
silence and loneliness of the cloister. He bears about his cloister in his
heart. There is his inward solitude, there his monastic retreat. Like the
halcyon among birds, is the Mystic among men. He builds himself a marvellous
nest which not only floats unharmed upon the waves of Existence, but with a
magic spell enchants the storm and charms the waves to stillness. In the midst
of the world he only knows how to be alone. And this great gift of power to
still the elements and make the soul a centre of rest the Gods bestow on man, as
then on Halcyone, as the reward of steadfast and
ardent Love. Therefore our Society, maintaining the doctrine and method of the
Mystics, seeks to unite the intention of its Fellows with all helpful and
merciful works throughout the world. The true Mystic lives the life of the ideal
Christhood. Of all that he knows and has, he freely gives. Not for himself alone
is the word of Life and Love, but for others through him. Champion and Knight,
as well as
(p. 39)
Thinker and
Student, the son of Hermes is of necessity a reformer of men, a redeemer of the
world. It is not enough for him to know the doctrine; he must likewise do the
will of the Gods, and bid the kingdom of the Lord come upon earth without, even
as in the heaven within his heart.
For the
Method of the Mystic is the Law of Love, and Love hath nothing of her own.”
Edward
Maitland says:
“Careful
abstracts of our own lectures, made by myself, were published in Light, and
among the recognitions received from persons who read them there was the
following from one whom we regarded as far and away the most advanced of them
all in mystic and spiritual knowledge – Baron Spedalieri, – (1) who wrote to us as
follows respecting Mary’s interpretations on the Creed: –
“
DEAR AND
HONOURED MADAME, – DEAR SIR AND FRIEND, – 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
(p. 40)
the mind
can but incline and adore, and which have made and will make my only strength in
the presence of death.
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.
Prepared
as I was by the study of The Perfect Way, your first two
lectures did not surpass my learning. But the rest have been for me a dazzling
revelation. They have opened to me new and unexpected horizons: the splendour of
the Kabala has been surpassed. I have thoroughly studied the résumés in Light in
order to grasp the depth and breadth – and shall I say the originality? –
of your commentaries. Your explanations of the Seal of Solomon are new to
me; but their profundity and truth have ravished my mind. I cried aloud as I
read, ‘How beautiful that is! How all the truth is there! Ah, my God, when will
all this be published?’
At last
I have found the explanation of the planetary system of Esoteric Buddhism. But what a difference between
the two. How simple is the truth, and how the reason is satisfied by it.
Beautiful and accurate also is the distinction you draw between Mysticism and
Occultism, whereby the superiority of the former is readily perceived.
Dear and
honoured friends, how can I speak of the great literary talent you have
exhibited in the treatment of those most difficult subjects? You have placed
them within the reach of every intelligence. You have
handled them with admirable lucidity. All that I can say would be beneath the
truth.
With
sentiments of the most profound and respectful attachment, I am your wholly
devoted
SPEDALIERI.” (Life of A.K., Vol. II, pp.
199-201.)
On the
18th September 1884, shortly after the close of her Lectures to the Hermetic
Society, Anna Kingsford was the recipient of an Illumination on “The Mysteries of the Kingdoms of the Seven
Spheres,” – “setting forth the correspondence between the seven final
clauses of the Creed and the
(p. 41)
Seven Spirits of
God, and consequently the seven planets and their Gods,” (Life of A.K., Vol.
II, p. 213) – as follows: –
“THE MYSTERIES OF THE
KINGDOMS OF THE
SEVEN SPHERES
|
I
BELIEVE IN THE HOLY GHOST, Whose seven spirits are as the seven rays of light; |
The Nous, the Sun, of the microcosm, the Spirit of Wisdom, the
ray of whose angel, Phoibos, is the red of the
innermost sphere. |
|
THE Or, kingdom of heaven within man; |
Hermes, or Peter, the Spirit of Understanding, and rock whereon the true
Church is built, the guardian and interpreter of the holy mysteries. |
|
THE
COMMUNION OF SAINTS, Or, the elect; |
Aphrodite, Venus, love, the Spirit of Counsel, or principle of sympathy,
harmony, and light, whereby heaven and earth are revealed to each other and
drawn together. |
|
THE
FORGIVENESS OF SINS, Or, passing-through of souls; |
Iacchos, the initiator, Lord of transmigration, whereby
alone
Karma is
satisfied and since wiped out by expiation and repentance. As the Spirit of
Power, he represents the force whereby creation and redemption alike are
accomplished, the direction only being reversed. |
|
THE
RESURRECTION (which is the redemption) OF THE BODY, From material limitations; |
Ares,
or Mars, the war-god, and Spirit of Knowledge of whom comes contention, at
the cost of suffering and death, for the divine knowledge whereby man learns
the secret of transmutation, which is the crowning conquest of matter by
spirit. |
|
THE
LIFE EVERLASTING; |
Zeus
and Hera, rulers of heaven, the dual-spirit of
Righteousness or godliness which is justice or the perfect balance and the
secret of eternal generation. |
|
AND
THE AMEN, Or, final consummation. |
Saturn, or Satan, the Spirit of the Fear of the Lord, being the angel-unfallen – of the outermost sphere, and keeper of the
boundary of the divine kingdom, within which is the perfection, and without
which, the negation of being.” (Clothed with the Sun, Pt.
II, Nº. XVII.) |
(p. 42)
The Seven Spirits of God and their correspondences are given in Clothed with the Sun (Pt. II, Illumination Nº. XVI), as follows: –
|
Elohim or Archangels |
Signification
|
Gods
|
Office
|
Tincture of Ray |
The Spirit of |
|
1. Uriel |
Fire of God |
Phoibos
Apollo |
Angel of the Sun |
Red |
Wisdom |
|
2. Raphael |
Physician of God |
Hermes |
Angel of Mercury |
|
Understanding |
|
3. Anael |
Sweet Song of God |
Aphrodite |
Angel of Venus |
Yellow |
Counsel |
|
4. Salamiel |
Acquired of God |
Dionysius |
Angel of the
Earth |
Green |
Power |
|
5. Zacchariel |
Man of God |
Ares |
Angel of Mars |
Blue |
Knowledge |
|
6. Michael |
Like unto God |
Zeus and Hera |
Angel of Jupiter |
Purple |
Righteouness |
|
7. Orifiel (or Satan) |
Hour of God |
Kronos |
Angel of Saturn |
Violet |
Divine Awe (Hence
Reverence and Humility) |
|
Gabriel |
Strength of God |
Artemisor Isis |
Angel of the Moon |
|
|
White,
being the combination of all the rays, implies full illumination and intuition
of God, the symbol of which is the full moon, and is the symbol of initiation.
Attaining to this state, the soul is the mystical “Woman clothed with the Sun”
of Apoc. XII, 1.
Gabriel, the angel of this state, represents the reflective principle of the
soul. He is not one of the seven Elohim, but is the complement of them all,
being the spirit of all the moons.
The man
fully regenerate needs no “moon” to reflect to him the “Sun”. Wherefore Gabriel,
having no function to fulfil in the perfected kosmos, is indrawn and does not appear in the Mysteries of
the Kingdoms of the Seven Spheres, referred in the first table above. (Clothed with the
Sun, Pt. II, Illumination Nº. XVII; and see Pt.
I, Illumination Nº. XIV. (Pt. II, “Concerning the Genius.”)
(p. 43)
At the
close of the year (1884) they, “with profound regret,” terminated their
connection with the London Lodge of the Theosophical Society, on the ground
that, in
practice, such Lodge had departed from and in no small degree
renounced the professed objects of the Society; but though they severed their
connection with the London Lodge, they did not sever their connection with the
Parent Society, for the reason that Theosophy was not to be confounded with its
professors. (Life of A.K.,
Vol. II, pp. 221-223.) Edward
Maitland’s conviction was that “if the Gods were to wait until they found
perfect instruments, or perfect persons as instruments, for their work, they
would never begin at all.” A work is not to be judged by one’s conception of the
doers of it. It is due to Madame Blavatsky to record that when, some two years
later, she came to know them personally and to respect them, she frankly
admitted that they had been in the right in all their contentions, and their
opponents in the wrong, even though she herself was one of the latter; (1) and she subsequently proposed that Anna Kingsford should
accept the position of President of her (Madame Blavatsky’s)
own Lodge in her place, with the object of creating “a Theosophy which would
really be universal, and be everywhere recognised as such” (Life of A.K., Vol.
II, p. 271) – a proposal that could not, of course, be then entertained, but it
was important as marking the beginning of a change of attitude on the part of
the Society – or of some of the members thereof – which subsequently took place,
regarding Anna Kingsford and her teaching.
In 1889,
after the death of Anna Kingsford, Edward Maitland asked a certain clairvoyant
friend who had come to see him, and had declared that Anna Kingsford was
present, for information about the Theosophical Society and as to its possible
influence on their work, when he received the following reply: “The ultimate
effect of that Society will be to help your work. It will have acted as a great
net to draw people to these subjects;
(p. 44)
but they
will not long remain at the Society’s level, but will rise towards yours.”
(Life of A.K., Vol. II, p.
421.) And, shortly afterwards,
when writing of the Society Edward Maitland said that it had been
“the means of giving to the mighty wave of materialism, pessimism, and
agnosticism that was sweeping over the earth to the imminent extinction of every
noble and worthy sentiment in Humanity and all that makes life worth living,
such a check as to cause its agents and promoters to start in wonder and alarm
at seeing everywhere men and women of high intellectual character, culture and
judgement, turning their backs upon them, their system and their methods as
tried and found utterly wanting by reason of its failure to satisfy either the
intelligence or the moral conscience; and in virtue of their own indubitable
experiences recognising humanity as endowed with potentialities no less than
aspirations altogether transcending materialistic conception. And this is but
the beginning.” (Letter dated 11th April 1890.) And, later, in 1895, in his
Preface
to The
Life of Anna Kingsford, while regretting the necessity for
“outspokenness” in regard to certain contemporaneous institutions, writings, and
persons, he says: “The time will assuredly come when that movement [represented
by the Theosophical Society] will be accounted an important factor in the
religious history of our age, and any light that can be thrown on its
origines will be
of no less value than would be such light on the origines of
Christianity itself.”
In 1885,
the weekly meetings of the Hermetic Society were resumed, this time in the rooms
of the Royal Asiatic Society, Nº.
27th
April 1885, Anna Kingsford, on the Hermetic Fragment, Koré Kosmou.
13th May
1885, Anna Kingsford, on the Method of the Mystics.
20th May
1885, Edward Maitland, on the Revival of Mysticism.
3rd June
1885, Edward Maitland, on the Symbology of the Old
Testament.
17th
June 1885, Edward Maitland, on the Intention and Method of the Gospels.
1st July 1885, Anna Kingsford, on the Communion of
Saints.
(p. 45)
As on
the former occasion, abstracts of their Lectures made by Edward Maitland, were printed in Light.
For some
time past Anna Kingsford had been “much out of health, and unfit for mental
work.” Writing on the 15th June 1885 to Lady Caithness she said:
“I am so
hard-worked and so very much out of health that it has been impossible hitherto
to write and thank you for your charming and acceptable letters; for when I am
not busy, I am ill, and as soon as I recover, I have to get to work again.”
(Life of A.K.,
Vol. II, pp. 233-234.)
During
this Session her Lectures on the Creed had been suspended in order to permit
other speakers to be heard. Writing on the 2nd August 1885 to Lady Caithness
about her Lectures, she said how extremely difficult it was to impress a
catholic and mystic view of things on the British mind – the fogs and clouds
which enwrapped their isle seemed to have enshrouded their spirits also. – “And
yet,” she said, “how
lucent, how splendid, how entrancing this wonderful Truth is, could they only
receive it! Is it indeed the fact, I sometimes wonder, that a few of us have
senses developed which are unknown to the majority of our race; and do we really
walk about among a blind and deaf generation for whom the light we see and the words we hear are not? (Life of A.K.,
Vol. II, p.235.)
The
third Session of the Hermetic Society, like the previous one, was held in the
rooms of the Royal Asiatic Society. The programme, so far as Anna Kingsford and
Edward Maitland were concerned, being as follows: –
13th
April 1886, Anna Kingsford, on Bible Hermeneutics.
22nd
April 1886, Edward Maitland, on the Higher Alchemy.
27th May
1886, Edward Maitland, on a Forgotten View of Genesis.
22nd
June 1886, Edward Maitland, (by request) a second address, with considerable
additions, on the Higher Alchemy.
29th June 1886,
Edward Maitland read a joint paper, written by him and Anna Kingsford, on the
Nature and Constitution of the Ego. (1)
(p. 46)
15th
July 1886, Edward Maitland, on the New Illumination.
22nd July 1886,
Anna Kingsford replied to questions (which members had been invited to send in),
and re-read her third Lecture on the Creed. (Light, 1886, p. 366.)
Edward
Maitland says:
“At all
the meetings the papers were followed by discussions of the highest interest,
the attendance varying from thirty to fifty persons, many of whom were notable
for their talents, their erudition, and their piety. A special feature in Mary’s
Lectures consisted in the highly artistic diagrams, made by herself, of the
symbols explained, such as the double Triangle and the Seal of Solomon, on which
were shewn the stations of the Soul in the course of its elaboration; (1) also the drawings of man in his two states, degenerate and
regenerate, as indicated by the direction of the magnetic currents of his
system, according to the view shewn to her in vision. (2) Another feature worthy
of mention was the occasional presence of theatrical actors and professional
reciters, who came, they said, not because they could understand what
they heard – that, they frankly admitted, was beyond them – but in order to
listen to the President, whose gift of elocution they declared to be so perfect,
that to hear her speak was a lesson in their own art. This proved to be the
closing Session of the Hermetic Society.” (Life
of A.K., Vol. II, p. 258.)
In
acknowledging the receipt of the MSS. of some of their Hermetic Lectures, which
had been sent to her to read, the late Mrs. Atwood (3) said:
“I thank
you very much, not only for having afforded me a sight of these Lectures, but
for having written and delivered the same. You have full well maintained
throughout the dignity of the subject, of the which I
am naturally jealous; and the general view taken of the doctrine appears to me
correct and capable of all proof. The key is, as you recognise clearly and
forcibly, hidden within the new life of
(p. 47)
humanity (also
within the old, methinks). But you have wisely avoided touching on the
experimental methods of dealing with the universal subject; the terms relating
to which, and its degrees of progress, you may find, on further investigation,
to represent more essentially what they express than at first sight appears. It
was the vulgar chemists who borrowed these essential terms rather for the
designation of their own dead elements and drugs.” (Life of A.K., Vol. II, p. 266.)
At the
close of the season, which for many reasons had been “one of severe and
incessant toil,” Anna Kingsford’s health, which had never been good, was in a
failing condition – her strength having been “greatly overtaxed and reduced” –
so much so that Edward Maitland entertained “grave apprehensions of the result
to herself.” Her suffering from asthma and facial neuralgia was so great, that
“it soon became evident that the only hope of immunity from intense and constant
suffering, if not also from positive lung disease, lay in flight to some less
unfavourable conditions of climate”; and it was decided that she should pass the
coming winter abroad, which she did, but without the desired result.
In
consequence of her continued illness, Edward Maitland, early in 1887, despatched
to the members of the Hermetic Society a circular informing them of the
condition of the President and of the impossibility of holding a Session that
year. (1) The following extract from a letter written on the 2nd
January 1887 by Edward Maitland to Mrs. Drakoules
(then Mrs. Lewis) shews very clearly what Anna Kingsford’s state of health then
was:
“I regret to
have to say that, owing to Mrs. Kingsford’s severe illness, contracted through
the dampness of her English home in Shropshire, our plans for the winter have
had to be changed, and it is impossible to say when the Hermetic Sittings will
be resumed – if ever! For this is far on in the fourth month of her illness, and
she has only been able to get as far as Paris on the way to some southern
sanatorium, being now undergoing a course of blistering for congestion of the
lungs, and unable, therefore, to be removed. Of course our wish and desire are
to return in time to hold the usual Summer Session of the H.S. But at present
everything points to a prolonged absence on the Continent in order to
consolidate any improvement which may occur, and avoid the risk of a return
northwards.”
(p. 48)
An entry
in her Diary, written under date of 5th July 1887, at Bourboule-les-Bains, reads as follows: –
“Not
cured yet! No, nor even mended, were it but a little. Still the cough, still the afternoon fever, still the weakness, still
the neuralgia. From November to July the same continual malady and enforced
idleness. Where now are all the projects I had formed for this year, the book I
had to write on the Creed, the novel, the stories, the essays? I have passed a
year of bitterest suffering, of weariness of spirit and torment of body. My left
lung is in caverns, they say; my right is inflamed chronically. My voice is
broken and gone, with which I had hoped to speak from platforms: wreck and ruin
is made of all my expectancies. Can a miracle yet be wrought? Can will
accomplish what medicines fail to perform? The hard thing is that I cannot will
heartily, for lack of knowing what I ought to desire. Is it better for me to
live or to die? Unless I can be restored to the possibility of public life, it
is useless for me to live. Dying, I may sooner obtain a fresh incarnation and
return to do my work more completely.” (Life
of A.K., Vol. II, pp. 321- 322.)
On their
return to England, during the same month, she took up her abode at Nº.15
Wynnstay Gardens – London, then being the best place for her, but it
proved to be “a home for her to die in.” Writing, on the 10th August, Edward
Maitland says:
“Our
dear invalid continues in much the same state of fluctuation. At one time apparently at death’s door, and at another seeming
capable of recovery. But my fear is that the level of each recurring
depression is lower than before. (...) Perhaps the best I have to report is that
she herself has become of late more desirous to live, provided she can recover
health and strength to work and to escape suffering. But, as she says – and it
is difficult for one who knows how great cause she has for saying it [to think otherwise] – it would
be no kindness to wish to keep her here if life is to be the rack it has
hitherto been for her.” (Life
of A.K., Vol. II, p. 325.)
Soon
after her return to
“Seeing
how serious was her condition, he insisted peremptorily on her doing at once
three things – make confession to a priest, receive extreme unction, and make
her will. (...) She replied that – believing as she believed – no mere rites or
ceremonies
(p. 49)
possessed any
meaning or value for her. ‘Do you, then,’ he asked,
mean to say you are not a Christian? Don’t you believe in the Incarnation of our
Lord?’ To which she replied, ‘I am not a Christian in your sense,
nor a believer of the Incarnation in your sense. In the spiritual and
only true sense I am both.’ Having never heard of any sense but the traditional
and sacerdotal one, and being wholly unacquainted with her writings, he
necessarily failed to comprehend her, and after some further expostulations
concerning the impossibility of being saved without the last sacraments, he took
his leave.” (Life of A.K., Vol. II, p. 326.)
In
consequence of this visit she, desiring to put on record a clear, distinct, and
final statement of her position, “wrote off at a single sitting in her usual
faultless style, not staying her hand for a moment until it was finished,” the
following letter to her brother: –
“20th August 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 shew 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 Spirit had
caused me to this step. For then began to be unfolded to my soul, by means of a
long series of interior revelations, extending over
(p. 50)
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 and
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
Judgement.’ 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 re-born upon earth. As I am certainly
not yet perfected, I shall return
(p. 51)
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 the 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 length to eternal life
which are on the upward path. For Christ gives Himself for all, and shall save
both man and beast. (...)
ANNA
KINGSFORD.” (Life of A.K., Vol. II, pp. 327-329.)
The
letter, however, was never sent. On her shewing it to
Edward Maitland, he pointed out that her brother would understand neither the
argument nor the language, and she decided not to send it, but to keep it among
their archives, saying:
“It
would be a profanation of the mysteries to put such doctrine before those who
held such ideas. And she added in a tone almost of despair, ‘How is the truth to be got to the world, so
long as priests bear rule, preachers preach falsely, and the people are content
to have it so? Can it be that we have made a mistake, and come ages before the
time was ripe?’ To which I replied that the Gods do not make mistakes, and can
see better than we how far the time is ripe.” (Life of A.K., Vol. II, pp. 329-330.)
This
priceless letter was thus preserved for future publication. A day or two after
writing the above-mentioned letter she wrote in her diary:
“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
As the
months passed, her condition became worse and worse. At the end of December her
doctor declared her to be “rapidly sinking, and unlikely to live beyond another
week or two.”
(p. 52)
At the beginning of
the new year (1888) she rallied, but, before the end of
January, it became necessary for her to have a nurse. Edward Maitland says:
“As is
characteristic of consumption, the approach of the end was marked by increased
hopefulness on the part of the sufferer, leading her to fancy she was actually
mending, and might yet recover, even though at death’s door. (...) And then she
would descant on the work she would do in abolition of all the wicked falsehoods
which had brought the world into its present terrible plight, until, as may
readily be understood, I found her cheerfulness and hopefulness more saddening
even than her opposite moods, knowing as I did their deceptiveness and what they
portended.” (Life of A.K., Vol. II, pp. 359-360.)
On the
21st February she became worse, and on the following day – Wednesday, the 22nd
February – at noon, “after an eighteen hours’ struggle for breath,” she silently
and painlessly, and to all appearances consciously and voluntarily, exhaled out
her life in one long breath. She was then in her forty-second year. (1) One of her latest utterances was
that she could carry on the work better from the other side, where she would be
free of her physical limitations.
Thus
ended the most noble and self-sacrificing life of Anna Kingsford, – a life for
which, some day, the world will thank God. She was a divine soul, a soul
after God’s own heart. She loved Justice and hated Iniquity, and, therefore, was
she by God anointed with that “oil of gladness” above her fellows. Her trials
were many, and her sufferings were great; but, after her death, Edward Maitland
received concerning her the following message: “She rejoices to let you know
that the sufferings she enjoyed – yes, enjoyed – was the ladder that led her
spirit upward, ever upward.” (Life of A.K., Vol. II, p.
411.) The following words are as appropriate to her as to the Saint on
whose commemoration day they are appointed to be read: “Sinners,” says the
Introit to the Mass for St. Mary Magdalen’s day,
“have waited for me that they might destroy me: Thy testimonies, O Lord, have I
understood: I have seen the end of all perfection: Thy commandment is exceeding
broad.” She inclined her ear to the parable; she heard the word of God; and she
was faithful. “Blessed are they,” said Jesus, “that hear the word of God, and
keep it.” (Luke XI, 28.) Thus did
Anna Kingsford.
(p. 53)
Edward
Maitland, after her death, speaking of the origin of their teaching, said: (1)
“The two
most generally recognised sources of information on such subjects, next to the
Bible and the Church, are those called ‘Spiritualism’ and ‘Theosophy.’ The
teachings represented by me, while bearing relation to each and all of these,
are not derived from any of them. Nor are they compiled from occult books
previously in the world. When the researches of which they are the outcome were
commenced, neither my collaborator nor I were in bonds to any of the
orthodoxies, nor were we believers in ‘Spiritualism.’ And as for occultism, it
had never dawned upon us that there was a science or a literature which bore
such name or dealt with such subjects; nor had Theosophy yet made its
appearance. So far, however, from being Materialists, rather were we Idealists,
but in the stage in which one has yet to learn that the ideal is the
real, and the material is but the phenomenal. All, therefore, that we
obtained, whether of doctrine or of experience, was at first hand, and without prepossession on our part. The
object of our quest was a philosophy of existence, and one that would account
satisfactorily for all the facts of consciousness in such a way as to constitute
at once a true science, a true morality, and a true religion. For, as was
evident to us, only by having these – only, that is to say, by knowing how, and
of what, and for what, man is made, can he realise that which it is necessarily
the supreme ambition of a sane and intelligent being, namely, the turning of his
existence to the utmost account in the long run. To this
end, the title especially affected by us was that of Free-Thinker, meaning by it
one who suffers his thought to range equally in all directions open to thought;
both outwards and downwards to matter and phenomenon, and inwards and upwards to
spirit and reality. For only thus, it appeared to us, was it possible to obtain
the substantial idea whereby to interpret the phenomenal fact. As will be
observed, this is a definition judged by which many persons who lay claim to the
title of free-thinker not only are not free-thinkers, but can hardly be said to
be thinkers at all, seeing that they ignore altogether the inward and upward
direction of thought and make the bodily senses their sole criterion. Such
persons may have large intellects, but they have no intuition. And being thus,
they are as birds with
(p. 54)
one wing,
who cannot rise from the ground. Now, as we all know, the sparrow with two wings
can laugh to scorn the eagle with one wing.
Well,
finding ourselves possessed in a somewhat unusual degree of the more rare of the
two faculties, that whereby one thinks inwards and upwards, namely, the introvision or intuition; and finding also that by combining
our faculties we could obtain results far surpassing the mere sum of their
dissociated efforts, we resolved to join our mental forces in a collaboration,
for the effective accomplishment of which I made my home largely with my
friend’s family – for she was married – so as to allow of a constant interchange
of ideas, both of us adopting meanwhile the mode of life which, by those who
know, has always been regarded as indispensable to intuitional perception,
namely, abstinence from flesh-food and stimulants and whatever else might tend
to impair the mental faculties. And so it came that, seeking ardently the
highest truth for the highest ends, resolved to be content with nothing short of
the highest, we found the mists and clouds disappear from our mental atmosphere
and the heavens above – or rather, within
– become clear, and we were able to project the perceptive point of our minds
into those innermost regions of man’s system which constitute his permanent and
divine part, the sphere, namely, of the Soul and Spirit, and so to come into
open relations with the world of those who, having passed beyond the need for
any physical environment, consist entirely of these two principles and have
realised the divinity which is man’s proper birthright and destiny. These are
they who are called ‘Gods’ and ‘Archangels.’ Representing the summits of human
evolution, they constitute the Hierarchy of the Church invisible and celestial,
and are the supreme agents of divine revelation, their function being to
illuminate souls. And it was under such illumination that our teachings were
received, being given expressly, not for ourselves merely, but for the
restoration to the world of the truth of which its ecclesiastical systems
represent either the grievous perversion or the total loss, their priests having
materialised and made idolatrous and irrational, doctrines which, in their true
and divinely intended sense, are purely spiritual and wholly reasonable, being
founded in the nature of existence and comprehensible by those who to intellect
add intuition, and seek truth in a pure spirit.
We were,
moreover, enabled to recognise the restoration thus
(p. 55)
made as the
fulfilment of the numerous prophesies, Biblical and others, promising that
precisely at the time, and under the conditions and in the manner in which it
has actually occurred, such a revelation would be made.
There is
one further remark to be made which bears immediately on the subject of the
occasion. The method of the revelation thus received was entirely interior; this
is to say, it consisted in our being enabled to recover knowledges acquired by
our own Souls in past-earth lives as initiates of the sacred mysteries of
antiquity, as well as in other states of being. Being related to and of like
nature with the soul, such knowledges are retained by and stored up in the soul,
constituting an everlasting possession, and are available on the condition that
they be rightly sought for. For ‘Intuition is inborn
experience; that which the soul knoweth of old, having
learned it by experience.’
One word more. It is a noteworthy circumstance, and one that
bears the aspect of being something much more than an accidental coincidence,
that when the Founders of the Theosophical Society commenced the collaboration
which had for its object the exposition of the mystical system which underlies
the religions and sacred Scriptures of the East, we had already, a year or two
before, and wholly unknown to them, commenced the collaboration which proved to
have for its object the exposition of the mystical system which underlies the
religions and sacred Scriptures of the West, namely, the Egyptian, the Greek,
the Hebrew, and the Christian, all of which have proved to be modes of one and
the same system of thought: the name given to our work by its inspirers being
the ‘New Gospel of Interpretation,’ to denote that nothing new is told in it,
but that only which is ancient is interpreted. It was only after the publication
of our first book, The Perfect Way, which took place
in 1881, (1) that we and the Founders of the Theosophical Society became
aware of each other’s work, when they recognised the doctrine given to us as
substantially identical with that received by them, a fact tending to shew that
the human soul has in all times and places discerned one and the same truth.”
Reference has been made to Anna Kingsford’s illuminations. In 1881 she had a
remarkable vision, wherein she was told that the three degrees of the heavens
were purity of life, purity of heart,
(p. 56)
and purity
of doctrine. The vision is too long to fully relate here, but it is given at
length in
Clothed with the Sun. (1) In part of her vision she found
herself within a temple, at the east end of which was a great altar, “from above
and behind which came faintly a white and beautiful light, the radiance of which
was arrested and obscured by a dark curtain suspended from the dome before the
altar. And the body of the temple, which, but for the curtain, would have been
fully illumined, was plunged in gloom, broken only by the fitful gleams of a few
half-expiring oil-lamps, hanging here and there from the vast cupola.” In her
account of the vision she says:
“At the
right of the altar stood the same tall Angel I had before seen on the temple
threshold, holding in his hand a smoking censer. Then, observing that he was
looking earnestly at me, I said to him: ‘Tell me,
what curtain is this before the light, and why is the temple in darkness?’ And
he answered, ‘This veil is not One, but Three; and the
Three are Blood, Idolatry, (2) and the Curse of Eve. (3)
And to you it is given to withdraw them; be faithful and courageous; the time
has come.’ Now the first curtain was red, and very heavy; and with a great
effort I drew it aside, and said, ‘I have put away the veil of blood from before
Thy Face. Shine, O Lord God!’ But a Voice from behind the folds of the two
remaining coverings answered me, ‘I cannot shine, because of the idols.’ And lo,
before me a curtain of many colours, woven about with all manner of images,
crucifixes, madonnas, Old and New Testaments,
prayer-books, and other religious symbols, some strange and hideous like the
idols of China and Japan, some beautiful like those of the Greeks and
Christians. And the weight of the curtain was like lead, for it was thick with
gold and silver
(p. 57)
embroideries. But
with both hands I tore it away, and cried, ‘I have put away the idols from
before Thy Face. Shine, O Lord God!’ And now the light was clearer and brighter.
But yet before me hung a third veil, all of black; and upon it was traced in
outline the figure of four lilies on a single stem inverted, their cups opening
downwards. And from behind this veil the Voice answered me again, ‘I cannot
shine, because of the Curse of Eve.’ Then I put forth all my strength, and with
a great will rent away the curtain, crying, ‘I have put away her curse from
before Thee. Shine, O Lord God!’
And
there was no more a veil, but a landscape, more glorious and perfect than words
can paint, a garden of absolute beauty, filled with trees of palm, and olive,
and fig, rivers of clear water, and lawns of tender green; and distant groves
and forests framed about by mountains crowned with snow; and on the brow of
their shining peaks a rising sun, whose light it was I had seen behind the
veils. And about the sun, in mid-air, hung white misty shapes of great Angels,
as clouds at morning float above the place of dawn. And beneath, under a mighty
tree of cedar, stood a white elephant, bearing in his golden howdah a beautiful
woman robed as a queen, and wearing a crown. But while I looked, entranced, and
longing to look for ever, the garden, the altar, and the temple were carried up
from me into heaven.”
This
book shows how faithfully and courageously Anna Kingsford fulfilled that part of
her high and divine mission which was connected with the withdrawal of the Veils
of Idolatry, and the Curse of Eve from before the face of God. In her and Edward
Maitland’s Addresses and Essays on Vegetarianism, (1)
I have shewn how, by attacking the practice, prevailing throughout Christendom,
of sustaining life by flesh-eating, she set herself to the task of withdrawing
the Veil of Blood; and I hope, shortly, to supplement the last-mentioned book by
bringing out an edition of their Addresses and Essays on that worst of all
crimes – Vivisection.
On the
announcement in Light of the death of
Anna Kingsford, the Hon. Roden Noel in a letter, dated
5th March 1888, to that paper said:
“She was
surely one of the most gifted women of our day and generation. Her spiritual
insight, her acute reasoning faculty, her knowledge in deep occult subjects,
were most notably married to a very remarkable gift of luminous
exposition, beautiful expression, and a vivid poetic imagination.
(p. 58)
None who were
privileged to hear her essays read at her own house, and at the rooms of the
Royal Asiatic Society, in connection with the Hermetic Society, of which she was
President, can easily forget them; their impression and influence are
ineffaceable. (...) She, being dead, yet speaketh.”
(Light, 1888, p. 119.)
Madame
Isabel de Steiger – another member of the Society –
said: “Truly she was a peerless and matchless woman, and there is no one to take
her place. (...) In losing Anna Kingsford, we have lost one of the most
excellent seeresses of modern times.”
(Light, 1888, p. 119.)
The
result to the Hermetic Society of Anna Kingsford’s death was that it forthwith
fell into abeyance, (1) and it has never been revived.
Although
written some years after her death, the following testimony of the late W.T.
Stead is worthy of notice. In a review of The Life of Anna Kingsford he
says: –
“I
remember Anna Kingsford. Who that ever met her can forget that marvellous
embodiment of a burning flame in the form of a woman, divinely tall and not less
divinely fair! I think it is just about ten years since I first met her. It was
at the office of the Pall Mall Gazette, which I was
editing in those days. She did not always relish the headings I put to her
articles. She was as innocent as the author of The
Bothie
of Tober-na-Vuolich of the necessity
for labelling the goods in your shop-window in such a way as to attract
attention, but we were always on good terms, being united by the strong tie of
common antipathies. I saw her once at her own place, when, I remember, she wore
a bright red flower – I thought it was a great gladiolus, but it may have been a
cactus, which lay athwart her breast like a sword of flame. Her movements had
somewhat of the grace and majesty that we associate with the Greek gods; and, as
for her speech – well, I have talked to many of the men and women who have in this generation had
the greatest repute as conversationalists, but I never in my life met Anna
Kingsford’s equal. From her silver tongue as in a stream, ‘strong without wrath,
without o’erflowing full,’ her sentences flowed in one
unending flood. She talked literature. Had an endless phonograph been fitted up
before her so as to be constantly in action,
(p. 59)
the
cylinders might have been carried to the printer, and the copy set up without
transcription or alteration. Never was she at a loss for a word, never did she
tangle her sentences, or halt for an illustration. It was almost appalling after
a time. It appeared impossible for her to run dry, for you seemed to feel that
copious as was her speech, it was but as a rivulet carrying off the overflow of
the ocean which lay behind.” (The Review of Reviews, 15th January
1896.)
And
quite recently another well-known journalist – George R. Sims – in giving an
account of his life, (“My Life,” by
George R. Sims, in The Evening News, 2nd
February 1916.) says of Anna Kingsford (who appears to have been a frequent
visitor at his mother’s house): –
“Dr.
Anna Kingsford was a lovely woman, with classical features and a mass of
wonderful golden hair. I think she was the most beautiful ‘clever’ woman I have
ever known.
She told
me one evening at a dance at my mother’s house that she would like above all
things to see a rehearsal of a pantomime, so I took her to the dress rehearsal
of the Grecian pantomime, and George Conquest kindly gave me a box.
I
could see that everyone on the stage was struck by the ethereal beauty of my
companion. After the rehearsal was over, when I had gone behind to speak to
Conquest, he told me that whenever he had looked at the box that evening he felt
as if he were entertaining an angel unawares.
And then
I told him that he had been.”
In a
chapter on
post-mortem
experiences in The Life of Anna Kingsford, Edward
Maitland relates the fulfilment of promises made by Anna Kingsford, to come to
him after her death for the purpose of continuing their collaboration. On one
occasion, on the 5th June 1889, he says, a message was received by him from her
through Mrs. H–, a lady who, without being a medium in the sense of going under
control, was in a remarkable degree clairvoyant and clairaudient to spiritual
presences. The message was to the effect that she (Anna Kingsford) wished
certain of her writings, “and, by-and-by, her Lectures on the Credo,” to be
published: – her reason for desiring the postponement of the publication of such
Lectures being that they were then in advance of people, but would not be so for
long as people were themselves advancing. (Life of A.K., Vol. II, pp. 406, 421.)
(p. 60)
I first
met Edward Maitland in 1894. He was then living alone, in Chambers, at Nº. 1
Thurloe Square Studios, Thurloe
Square, South Kensington, London, and was busy writing The Life of Anna
Kingsford – his magnum opus
– and otherwise doing all he could to make known “the New Gospel of
Interpretation” to which he had given the best years of his life. There was
still much remaining for him to do, and time was short. His health was
indifferent, his strength was failing, and at times he feared he would not live
to complete his work. It was pathetic to see this man at the close of a long and
arduous life, at a time when he should have been able to look for some rest,
living alone and working hard in order that he might finish the work that he had
undertaken or that had been given him to do. It was a labour of love. But there
was no one who could have helped him even had he desired it, for his work was
such that it could be done only by him. He alone had the requisite knowledge and
ability. He alone was qualified for the task. The world owes a great debt of
gratitude to Edward Maitland for this his last labour.
On the
27th May 1895 he wrote to me that he was (at the request of the publisher)
curtailing the biography, “not by omitting anything historical and biographical,
but by eliminating certain literary remains”; and, he added:
“I am
greatly curtailing in the same way also the account of our relations with the
Theosophical Society, which I have related with much fullness, giving our
letters and pamphlets in which we convicted them of having utterly mistaken the
teaching they had received. For I thought it well that the world should see to
what an extent that movement has been transformed from being subversive of all
religion into being, as it now is, a valuable aid to the restoration of true
religion, and this through the revelation given to us.” (1)
Notwithstanding drawbacks, the biography was, at length, completed, and in
January 1896 it was published. Until then, though failing in health, he had
retained his faculties and sufficient strength for his work; but, from that
time, his decline – both mental and physical – was remarkably rapid, and it soon
became evident to all who saw him that he was fast breaking up.
(p. 61)
The strain of his
work had been too much for him, or the effort to hold himself
together being then no longer required, could no longer be continued. He had
accomplished his task, he had lived to see the completion of his life-work, and
he was now free to depart in peace to the place where he would be. So rapid was
his decline that, after the lapse of a few months, he was not in a fit state to
continue living alone without anybody (other than the housekeeper and his wife)
to look after him, and many of his friends felt very anxious about him.
In the
latter part of the year – I think it was in September – I went to the Studios to
see him, when I was informed by the housekeeper that he was ill in bed, having
had “a stroke,” and that he was not well enough to see anybody; and some short
time afterwards, when I again called to learn how he was progressing, I was told
that he had left London, and was staying with some friends in the country. The
friends, I afterwards learnt, were Colonel and Mrs. Currie, who lived at
Tonbridge, and their house proved to be his last home.
On the
22nd December I received from Mrs. Currie, who was then a stranger to me, a
letter as follows: –
“THE WARDERS, TOMBRIDGE,
21st December 1896.
DEAR SIR, – I take the liberty of writing to you on
behalf of Mr. E. Maitland, who has made his home with us for the few remaining
days of his life. Mr. Maitland has been failing fast all this last year, both
bodily and mentally, and is now quite unable to answer any letters, or even to
reply to questions concerning his life-work. It is most sad that it should end
thus, but I believe that his spirit has already left his body (although, of
course, not yet entirely separated from it), so complete is his mental decay.
If you
would like to come down and see him at any time, we shall be most happy to offer
you lunch. – Believe me, yours very truly,
C. G. CURRIE.”
I
accepted Mrs. Currie’s invitation, and on the day following the receipt of her
letter I went to “The Warders,” and there, for the last time, saw my friend, and
was satisfied that Mrs. Currie’s description of his condition was correct. He
was physically helpless. He could speak only with great difficulty, and his
(p. 62)
words were so
incoherent, that it was difficult to understand what he said. Conversation was
impossible. His intelligence had gone. His body only lived. Psyche had fled. I
do not think he knew me. None of us thought that he could continue for many
days, but we were mistaken. He lingered on in this condition for some months,
most of his time being passed in sleep. It was not until the 2nd October 1897
that he obtained the release for which he had so long waited. On the evening of
that day, at the close of his seventy-third year, “he breathed his last, quite
quietly and painlessly.” Thus ended the life of Anna Kingsford’s friend and
collaborator – one of the best and most noble lives ever lived for God and
humanity. And this is my testimony: When I was hungry, he gave me food; when I was thirsty,
he gave me drink. It was he who put
into my hands their book The Perfect Way, and to him and
his dear colleague I owe more than I can repay. Those who would know more of him
and Anna Kingsford and their work must read that wonderful biography – which is
also an autobiography – which he spent his last years in writing.
When at
Colonel Currie’s, realising Edward Maitland’s hopeless condition, it occurred to
me that if he had left at the Studios any MSS. of value the same ought to be
safeguarded, and I suggested that Colonel Currie was the proper person to take
charge of them; but, not having any legal right or authority, he did not see his
way to take any action in the matter; at the same time he wished me, on my
return to London, to go to the Studios and ascertain if there were there any
MSS. of value and to let him know. This I consented to do, and as soon as
possible I went to the Studios, where I saw the housekeeper who, in reply to the
questions I put to him, informed me that he was not aware of the existence of
any MSS. at the Studios, and he thought it most unlikely that there should be
any there, because, he said, Edward Maitland, immediately prior to his leaving
for the country, had “spent three days in tearing up and burning old papers”;
and, while he could not give me any information as to the nature of the papers
that had been so destroyed, he left no doubt in my mind that the destruction had
been wholesale. I paid one further visit to the Studios, thinking that, perhaps,
in the meantime, something might have been discovered; but I learnt nothing
fresh about any MSS., the housekeeper merely repeating what he had told me on
the former occasion. On one of the above-mentioned visits – I forget which – he
told me that,
(p. 63)
in addition to the
papers that had been burnt, Edward Maitland had thrown away a number of old
newspapers, etc., which had been taken downstairs into the basement, and which
were then being used for lighting fires; there were still some of them left, and
if I cared to go down and look through them, I was welcome to do so, and should
there be anything among them that would be of use to me, I was at liberty to
take it. I availed myself of the invitation, and was shewn a large heap of
papers – all printed material – which I went through, and picked out some
numbers of Light and possibly some
other papers that I thought might be of use to me, but there was little or
nothing among the papers that I saw that was of any value. There were not among
them any MSS. I reported to Mrs. Carrie the result of my visits, and there the
matter ended.
On the
11th April 1897 Mrs. Currie wrote to me: “I suppose you know that his chambers
have now been emptied and the furniture disposed of. All his books are being
stored by his niece for the time being, while all manuscripts, letters, and
papers are with us to be taken over after his demise.” The above-mentioned
letter was the first information I had of the facts therein referred to.
As
already stated, Edward Maitland died on the 2nd October 1897. He died intestate,
and, after his death, Colonel Currie, on behalf of those entitled, took
possession of his effects. Soon afterwards, I was informed that Colonel Currie
had received from the late Secretary of The Esoteric Christian Union (1)
“a box presumably containing all the papers of the E.C.U.”; and a few months
later, Colonel Currie asked me to take over all the E.C.U. papers
that has been sent to him, and also the MSS. which had been left by Edward
Maitland; and this I agreed to do, and in due course they were sent to me. The
papers sent to me consisted of (inter
alia) the MSS. of many of Edward Maitland’s
Lectures – including those given by him to the Hermetic Society, – but they did
not include the MSS. of any of Anna Kingsford’s Lectures to the Hermetic Society
or otherwise, with the exception of a MS., in Edward Maitland’s handwriting, of
Anna Kingsford’s Inaugural Address to the Hermetic Society.
In 1906
I purchased all Anna Kingsford’s copyrights, the purchase to include all her
MSS., etc. The copyrights were duly
(p. 64)
assigned, but no
MSS. were handed over, as none could be found. On my agent enquiring of the Rev.
A.G. Burton (formerly the Rev. A.G. Kingsford) (1) about them, he
received a reply as follows:
“21st August 1906.
I
have none of the MSS. you want. I should think Mr. Hart has them; as they were
in possession of Mr. Maitland. I never had them. (...)
A. G. BURTON.”
In order
to leave no stone unturned I, on the 8th September 1906, wrote to Colonel
Currie, informing him of my purchase and of the assignment to me of Anna
Kingsford’s copyrights; and, with reference to her MSS., I said:
“I am
under the impression that you sent to me everything that was in E.M.’s possession in the nature of MSS., whether his or
A.K.’s MSS. Will you kindly confirm this or otherwise, as it is now
important that I should know where the MSS. are that are not in my possession?
What I particularly want are A.K.’s
MSS. of any Lectures given by her – particularly her Lectures on the Christian
Creed given to the members of the Hermetic Society. Can you throw any light on
the subject? If you can, it will be welcome. My idea is that poor E.M., when he
was not responsible for his actions, just before he left
In due
course I received from Colonel Currie the following reply: –
“24th September 1906.
(...) We have none of the
manuscripts of either Anna Kingsford or E. Maitland, or would send them to you.
I think it is very likely that E.M., as you say, may have destroyed them,
thinking them of no further value. – Yours truly,
ALGERNON CURRIE.”
Since
then, and until recently, I have been endeavouring to trace the whereabouts of
the missing MSS., but without success. That there must have been MSS. of Anna
Kingsford’s Lectures
(p. 65)
to The Hermetic
Society I am convinced, because, it will be remembered, Anna Kingsford, on the
22nd July 1886, “re-read” to the Hermetic Society her third Lecture on the Creed
(See Life of A.K., Vol. II, p. 258.),
and this she could not have done without a MS.; and, after her death, she
desired her Lectures on the Creed to be published; and the Hon. Roden Noel wrote of her Lectures to the Hermetic Society as
having been “read”; and Edward Maitland speaks of their “papers” as having been
followed by discussions; and he says, “In acknowledging the receipt of the MSS.
of some of our Hermetic Lectures, sent to her to read them in full, Mrs. Atwood
wrote to me, etc.” (Life of A.K., Vol.
II, p. 266) It would appear that the last-mentioned MSS. included MSS. of some
of Anna Kingsford’s Lectures, because Edward Maitland uses the word “our.” Apart
from evidence such as this, I do not think it possible that Anna Kingsford’s
Lectures to the Hermetic Society could have been delivered on the spur of the
moment without carefully prepared MSS. or notes of some kind to which to refer;
and, assuming their existence, I have long believed that they were among the
papers said to have been destroyed by Edward Maitland when he was in the failing
condition of mind and body to which I have referred. At the same time, until the
occurrence of a recent event about to be related, I never quite gave up hope of
tracing their whereabouts, and partly for this reason I have delayed the
bringing out of this book until the present time.
I must
now relate my story. On the 9th February 1914 I received from a Mr. George
Cripps, who was then unknown to me, a letter informing me that he had recently
bought a copy of The Life of Anna Kingsford, the
two volumes of which were “studiously pencil-marked,” and he thought that they
might have belonged to Edward Maitland, and could I help him? I replied, asking
him to come and see me at my office on the following Thursday afternoon. In a
letter accepting my invitation, he informed me that he was “an old mystic
student and a practical Pythagorean”; and that in the writings of Anna Kingsford
and Edward Maitland he had found all he wanted; and, he added, he was
“clairvoyant, and especially so in the sleep-making condition.”
On the
appointed day Mr. Cripps called on me as arranged,
(p. 66)
and
brought with him two second-hand volumes of the first edition of The Life of Anna
Kingsford. They contained some marginal notes written in
pencil, but not in the handwriting of Edward Maitland, nor were the notes of any
value whatever. On returning to him the books, I said that, although they had
been the means of bringing us together, I was sure that it was not in
connection with them that he had come to see me, though, at the moment, I could
not say for what purpose he had come. He then said that he felt the same, but he had been told
by Anna Kingsford to come. For some time past he had wanted to come and
see me, but until then he had not been allowed to do so. However, yesterday
morning, at about 5 a.m., a picture of a harvest-field had been shewn to him in
a vision, and Anna Kingsford had said to him: “Go and see Mr. Hart, and tell him
of the picture you have seen; and give him this message: ‘The Harvest is Ripe;
the Reapers are few.’” He gave me an account of his vision (which he promised to
write out for me), but except for the above-mentioned command, it did not, at
the time, appear to me to have any particular import. (1) He also told me that this was not the
(p. 67)
first
symbolic vision he had received, he had received other communications purporting
to come from the same source, all which he had learnt to regard as authentic. In
particular, he said it was through a similar communication that he had become
the happy possessor of the two volumes which he then had with him. Having long
wanted to possess a copy of the Life of Anna Kingsford, and
not being able to afford it, he had mentally asked Anna Kingsford if she could
help him to obtain the book, and, in answer to his request, she had come to him
in sleep and told him that if he would go to a certain shop in a certain street
in London he would find what he wanted. Acting on the information thus received,
he, as soon thereafter as possible, went to the place indicated, and there he
saw, and obtained at the low cost of 12s. 6d.,
a second-hand copy of the book. It was the only copy in the shop, and before he
left, a clergyman entering and seeing the book offered him, £1, 1s. for it, which he declined. That
was how he had come to possess his treasure. He had obtained it through
information given to him by or purporting to come from Anna Kingsford.
The man
was, apparently, sincere in all that he said, and – knowing the possibility of
such communications – it occurred to me that if Anna Kingsford could so
circumstantially direct him as to enable him to obtain possession of a certain
book that he wanted, she could also direct him sufficiently to enable me to
trace the whereabouts of her missing MSS. – assuming them to be in existence;
and I thought it possible that she had sent him to me expressly for that
purpose. So, without saying anything to Mr. Cripps about my fears as to their
having been destroyed – for I did not want to influence his mind in any way – I
told him that I was endeavouring to trace the whereabouts of some of Anna
Kingsford’s MSS. which I had purchased but which could not be found; and (as it
then came to me) I said: “Now I know
why you have come to see me; it is to help me to trace the whereabouts of these
missing MSS.”; and asked him, if possible, to obtain from Anna Kingsford replies
to the following questions which I then wrote out and handed to him: “1) Have
you any message for me? 2) Can you give me any information about your MSS.?” I
also aske1d if Edward Maitland had any message for me. Mr. Cripps took the
questions away with him, and promised to do his best for me, and if he should
receive anything to let me know.
I did
not see Mr. Cripps again until the beginning of April,
(p. 68)
but during the
remainder of the month I received from him several letters, written chiefly for
the purpose of recording visions that he was receiving, but none of which was
related to or connected with the one matter concerning which I desired
information, and I began to think that, perhaps, after all, he would not be able
to throw any light on the subject.
In one
of his letters he asked me if I had ever had any idea that Edward Maitland might
have put Anna Kingsford’s MSS. in her coffin and had them buried with her, to
which I replied that I had never had any such idea, nor had I reason to suppose
that such a thing had been done, because Edward Maitland would have required
them when writing her Life, and the
particular MSS. that I then sought would have been required for publication
after her death.
From the
25th February until the 23rd March I did not receive any communication from him
whatever, but on the morning of the 23rd March I received from him a letter as
follows: –
“22nd
March 1914.
DEAR MR. HART, – Alone in my den today. I am
impressed to break the silent spell and ask if you have received any message (re our
Quest), and to tell you that I have had one, but as I did not receive it personally, I have
been waiting all this time expecting it to be verified thro’ myself. Up to the
present, I am sorry to say, it has not.
My wife
(who resides at Rowledge, Farnham,
(p. 69)
A.K. or E.M. works,
except what I have told her. Lives rather a lonely life. Our girl, her
cottage and garden is the sum total of her existence, but ever ready to give a
helping hand if she can.
Now why this message should come in this way, rather puzzles me, as I have had
several messages in the interim.
GEORGE CRIPPS.”
On
receipt of this letter I at once wrote to Mr. Cripps and, for the first time,
informed him of Edward Maitland’s failing condition of health after the
publication of The Life of Anna Kingsford; and of
my visit to the Studios, and what was then told me by the housekeeper; and that,
taking these things into consideration, I felt that the message which his wife
had received was true.
On the
26th March he wrote to me: “The message was confirmed by a vision this morning.
I will write it out for you tonight. I am now convinced (it is true), and so far
as I am concerned (personally) the search is over. It remains true for me until
proved to the
contrary.”
This
letter was followed by another (written on the same day) giving an account of
his confirmatory vision.
In July 1915
I, for the first time, met Anna Kingsford’s only child – Eadith Kingsford – who told me that she had not and never
had any of her mother’s MSS., nor did she know of the existence of any, but she
had always understood that whatever MSS. (if any) her mother had left, were, in
accordance with the provisions contained in her will, handed over to or left in
the possession of Edward Maitland; and in confirmation of this, at my request
she afterwards wrote to me as follows: –
“7th
July 1915.
DEAR MR. HART, – You
have asked me if I have in my possession or know the whereabouts of any of my
mother’s MSS.
On my
father’s death, in 1913, all the articles in his house that belonged to my
mother were handed over to me, and there were not among such articles any MSS.
I have
not and never had in my possession any of my mother’s MSS. I always understood
that on her death all her MSS. were handed over to or retained by Edward
Maitland, because my mother left to him a life interest in her writings. Apart
from this, I do not know of the existence or whereabouts of any of my mother’s
MSS. Yours sincerely, E. KINGSFORD.”
(p. 70)
As
stated, I had long previously come to the conclusion that the MSS. of Anna
Kingsford’s Lectures on the Creed were among the papers destroyed by Edward
Maitland, my belief being that he destroyed them under an overwhelming impulse
that they were too sacred to be allowed
after his death – which he then knew to be impending – to pass into the hands of
any third person; and the message received through Mrs. Cripps, coupled with the
information given to me by Miss Kingsford, has confirmed my opinion. To me, of
course, the loss of these MSS. is irreparable. Had the Lectures been published,
it would not have been so disastrous, because, in that case, the text at least
would not have been lost. As it is, the best – the only – thing I could do was
to give the “abstracts,” of them which were published in Light; and these, scanty
though they be, are most precious, for, in addition
to their authoritative value, they are, I believe, the only records that have
come down to us of Anna Kingsford’s inspired Lectures on the Credo of
Christendom. Though incomplete and fragmentary, and on that account difficult in
places to follow, they nevertheless contain that which,
so far as I know, is not elsewhere to be found in any literature. They are as
“leaves given for the healing of the nations.” Those who have eyes that see and
ears that hear will see and hear.
The
question will be asked: What is the Hermetic Gnosis which the following Lectures
are intended to expound, and of which Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland speak
with such admiration and respect? Edward Maitland says:
“The
Hermetic System may be summarised as follows: Spirit is the one real Being, of
which all things are modes. Creation represents the manifestation of Spirit, by
means of its descent or ‘fall’ into lower modes, of which matter is the lowest.
But, inasmuch as matter is spirit, it can revert to its original condition of
spirit. Such reversion constitutes Redemption; and this occurs in man by means
of Regeneration, or the re-constitution of the individual of the higher mode of
his own substance, wherein from consisting of material elements, he becomes
constituted of spiritual elements, – that is, of pure soul substance, and Divine
Spirit. Hermetic science consists in the systematisation of the process whereby
this redemption by regeneration is accomplished.” (1)
(p. 71)
In an
admirable article on “The Hermetic Books”
in The Virgin of the World, Edward
Maitland says:
“Those
who, enamoured of conventional methods, are unable to recognise any
organon of
knowledge except the superficial faculties, or any plane of knowledge
transcending the range of those faculties, are necessarily intolerant of the
idea that there has been in the world from the earliest times a system of
esoteric and positive doctrine concerning the most hidden mysteries of
Existence, of such a character, and so obtained as to fulfil all the conditions
requisite to constitute a divine revelation. Nevertheless, this is the
conclusion to which we have found ourselves compelled by sheer force of
evidence, at once exoteric and esoteric. It is in Hindostan
and Egypt that we find its earliest traces; (1) and if, as assuredly
is the case, there are coincidences between the ancient doctrines of those lands
and those of Greece, Judaea, and Christendom, (2)
it is because the same truth has passed from people to people, everywhere
finding recognition, and undergoing re-formulation
(p. 72)
according to the
genius of the time and place of its sojourn. And this, we may add, is a process
which must inevitably continue until man has become either so far degenerate as
to lose all care for and perception of truth; or so far regenerate as to attain
to the full perception of it, and fix it for evermore as his most precious
possession.”
In a
further article – “The Hermetic System and
the Significance of its Present Revival” – in the same book, he says:
“The system designated the Hermetic Gnosis – the earliest formulation of
which, for the Western world, belongs to the prehistoric times of ancient Egypt
– has constituted the core of all the religio-philosophical systems of both East and West,
Buddhism and Christianity, among others, being alike intended as vehicles for
and expressions of it, though the fact has been recognised by only the initiated
few. The great school of scholastic mysticism which was the glory of the Church
of the Middle Ages had, although unavowedly, the same
basis. This school represented a strenuous and sustained endeavour to rescue
religion from the exclusive domain of the historical and the ceremonial, and the
control of a sacerdotalism, grossly materialistic and idolatrous, by restoring
its proper intuitional and spiritual character. That the endeavour failed to
secure a lasting success, and the Church of the Middle Ages continued to sink
deeper and deeper into superstition, with its usual accompaniment of religious
persecution, was due to no fault of the system itself. This requires for its
reception, that the spiritual consciousness of the many should have attained a
development hitherto possessed only by the few. And the world was not then ripe
for a doctrine which represents reason in its highest mode.”
He then
proceeds to give the following “general sketch” of the nature of the Hermetic
Doctrine “which has played so important a part in the past, and bids fair to do
as much, and even more, in the future.” He says: –
“Starting from the axiom that from nothing nothing
comes, and recognising Consciousness as the indispensable condition of
existence, the Gnosis, with resistless logic, derives all things from pure and
absolute Being, itself unmanifest and unconditioned,
but in the infinity of its plentitude and energy
possessing and exercising the potentiality of manifestation and conditionment, and being, rather
than
having, life,
substance, and mind, comprised in one Divine Selfhood, of which the universe is
the manifestation.
(p. 73)
Regarding all things as modes of consciousness, the Gnosis necessarily regards
consciousness as subsisting under many modes, and as being definable as the
property whereby whatever is, affects, or is
affected in, itself; or affects, or is affected by, another; which is really to
say, as constituting the things themselves. There is, thus, a mechanical
consciousness, a chemical consciousness, a magnetic, a mental, a psychic, consciousness, and so on up to the divine, or
absolute, consciousness. And whereas all proceed from this last, so all return
to this last, in that every entity possesses the potentiality of it. Herein lies
the secret of evolution, which is no other than the expression of the tendency
of things to revert, by ascension, to their original condition – a tendency, and
therefore an expression, which could have no being were the lowest or material
mode of consciousness to be the original and normal mode.
By thus
making matter itself a mode of consciousness, and therein of spirit (1)
– spirit being absolute consciousness – the Gnosis escapes at once the
difficulties which stand in the way of the conception of an original Dualism,
consisting of principles inherently antagonistic; and also those which arise out
of the kindred conception of non-consciousness as having a positive existence.
All being modes of the One, no inherent antagonism, or essential difference, is
possible; but that which is regarded as unconsciousness is but a lower mode of
consciousness – consciousness reduced, so to speak, to a minimum, but still
consciousness so long as it is. Total
unconsciousness is thus not-being; and bears to consciousness the relation of
darkness to light, the
(p. 74)
latter alone
of the two being, however reduced, positive entity, and darkness being
non-entity.
However
various the manifestations of the universal consciousness, or being, whether as
regards its different planes, or its different modes on the same plane, they all
are according to one and the same law, which, by its uniformity, demonstrates
the unity of the informing spirit, or mind, which subsists eternally and
independently of any manifestation. For, as said in the Divine Pymander (B.V.): –
‘He
needeth not to be manifested; for He subsisteth eternally.
‘But in that He is One, He is not made nor
generated; but is unapparent and unmanifest.
‘But by
making all things appear, He appeareth in all and by
all; but especially is He manifested to or in those wherein he willeth.’
And
again: –
‘The
Essence of all is One.’
From the
oneness of original Being comes, as a corollary, the law of correspondence
between all planes, or spheres, of existence, in virtue of which the macrocosm
is as the microcosm, the universal as the individual, the world as man, and man
as God. ‘An earthly man,’ says The Key, ‘is a
mortal God, and the heavenly God is immortal man.’ The same book, however, is
careful to explain that by man is meant only those men
who are possessed of the higher intelligence, or spiritual consciousness, and
that to lack this is to be not yet man, but only the potentiality of man. It
avoids also the error of anthropomorphism by defining Divinity to be, itself,
neither life, nor mind, nor substance; but the cause of these.
Ignorance of God is pronounced to be the greatest evil, but God is not to be
discerned in phenomena, or with the outer eye. The quest must be made within
oneself. In order to
know, man
must first be. This is
to say, he must have developed in himself the consciousness of all the planes,
or spheres, of his fourfold nature, and become thereby wholly man. It
is to his inmost and divine part, the spirit, that
the mystery of existence appertains, since that is Pure Being, of which
existence is the manifestation. And, as man can recognise without him that only
which he has within him, it is essential to his perception of spiritual things
that he be himself spiritual. ‘The natural man,’ says the Apostle Paul,
following at once the Hermetists and the Kabalists, who are at one in both doctrine and method, and
(p. 75)
differ only in
form, ‘receiveth not the things of the Spirit, neither
can he know them, for they are spiritually discerned,’ that is, by the spiritual
part in man. In such degree as man develops this consciousness he becomes an organon of
knowledge, capable of obtaining certitude of truth, even the highest; and from
being ‘agnostic’ and incapable of knowledge, he becomes ‘gnostic,’ or has the Gnosis, which consists in the knowledge
of himself and of God, and of the substantial identity of the two.
From
this it is obvious that what is demonstrated by the agnosticism of the present age, is simply the immaturity of its professors. This is to
say, the philosophy of the day represents the conclusions of men who, how
developed soever intellectually, are still rudimentary
in respect of the spiritual consciousness, and fall short, therefore, of their
spiritual and true manhood – the manhood which belongs to the highest plane.
Being to such extent not human but sub-human, and ignorant of the meaning and
potentialities of man, they confound form with substance, and mistake the
exterior and phenomenal part of man for man himself, and imagine accordingly
that to gratify this part is necessarily to benefit the man, no matter how
subversive of the real humanity the practices to which they have recourse. Out
of this condition of spiritual darkness the Gnosis lifts man, and, giving him
the supreme desideratum
– which it is the object of all divine revelation to supply – a definition of
himself, demonstrates to him, with scientific certainty, the
supremacy of the moral law, and the impossibility either of getting good by
doing evil, or of escaping the penalty of the latter. The attempt to get good by
evil doing only puts him back, making his fate worse. The doctrine of Karma is no
less Hermetic than Hindu, the equivalent term in the former being Adrasté, a goddess to whom is committed the administration
of justice. In the Greek Pantheon she appears as Nemesis and Hecate. They all represent the inexorable law of cause and
effect in things moral, in virtue of which man’s nature and conditions in the
future are the result of the tendencies voluntarily encouraged by him in the
past and present.
The
Hermetic method to the attainment of perfection, on whatever plane – physical,
intellectual, moral, or spiritual – is purity. Not
merely having, but being, consciousness, man
is man, and is percipient according to the measure in which he is pure; perfect
purity implying full perception, even to the seeing of God, as the Gospels have
it. In the same proportion he has
(p. 76)
also power.
The fully initiated Hermetist is a Magian, or man of power, and can work what to the world seem
miracles, and those on all planes – physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual
– by force of his own will. But his only secret of power is purity, as his only
motive is love. For the power with which he operates is
spirit, and spirit is keen and mighty in proportion as it is pure.
Absolutely pure spirit is
God. Hence the miracles of the Magian, as
distinguished from the magician, are really worked by God – the God in and of
the man.
A word on the organon of
Hermetic knowledge. This is emphatically the mode of the mind
termed the intuition. (1) Following this in its centripetal
course, man comes into such relations with his own essential and permanent self
– the soul – as to be able to receive from her the knowledges she has acquired
of divine things in the long ages of her past. But this implies no disparagement
to the mind’s other and centrifugal mode, the intellect. This also must be
developed and trained to the utmost, as the complement, supplement, and
indispensable mate of the intuition – the man to its woman. Perfecting and
combining these two, and only thus, man knows all things (2) and perpetuates himself. For he
knows God, and to know God is to have, and to be, God, and the ‘gift of God is
eternal life.’
A
foremost Hermetic doctrine is that of the soul’s multiple re-births into a
physical body. Only when the process of regeneration – an Hermetic term – is
sufficiently advanced to enable the spiritual entity, which constitutes the true
individual, to dispense with further association with the body, is he finally
(p. 77)
freed from
the necessity of a return into materiality. The doctrine of correspondence here
finds one of its most striking illustrations, but one which nevertheless was
wholly missed by the chief modern restorer and exponent of that doctrine,
Emanuel Swedenborg. This is the correspondence in virtue of which, just as the
body uses up and sheds many times its external covering of integument, plumage,
shell, or hair, to say nothing of its artificial clothing, so the soul wears out
and sheds many bodies. The law of gravitation, moreover, pervades all planes,
the spiritual as well as the physical; and it is according to his spiritual
density that the plane of the individual is determined, and his condition
depends. The tendency which brings a soul once into the body, must be exhausted before the soul is able to dispense
with the body. The death of the body is no indication that the tendency has been
overcome, so that the soul will not be again attracted to earth. But it is only
the soul that thus returns; not the magnetic or ‘astral’ body which constitutes
the external personality.
Such is
the
rationale of the
orthodox doctrine of transmigration, according alike to the Hermetic, the Kabalistic, and the Hindu systems. It permeates, occultly, the whole of the Bible, and is implied in the
teaching of Jesus to Nicodemus, the whole of which, as is also the entire
Christian presentation, is, in its interior sense, Hermetic. Not that the new
birth insisted on by Jesus is other than purely spiritual; but it involves a
multiplicity of physical re-births as necessary to afford the requisite space
and experiences for the accomplishment of the spiritual process declared to be
essential to salvation. Seeing that regeneration must – as admitted by
Swedenborg – have its commencement while in the body, and must also be carried
on to a certain advanced stage before the individual can dispense with the body,
and also that it denotes a degree of spiritual maturity far beyond the
possibility of attainment in a single, or an early, incarnation; it is obvious
that without a multiplicity of re-births to render regeneration possible, the
Gospel message would be one, not of salvation, but of perdition, to the race at
large. What is theologically termed the ‘forgiveness of sins’ is dependent upon
the accomplishment in the individual of the process of regeneration, of which
man, as Hermetically expressed, has the seed, or potentiality, in himself, and
in the development of which he must co-operate. Doing this, he becomes ‘a new
creature,’ in that he is re-born, not of corruptible matter,
(p. 78)
but of
‘water and the spirit,’ namely, his own soul and spirit purified and become
divine. Thus reconstituted on the interior and higher plane of the spirit, he is
said to be born of the ‘Virgin Mary’ and the ‘Holy Ghost.’
While
purely mystical and spiritual, as opposed to historical and ceremonial, the
Hermetic system is distinguished from other schools of mysticism by its freedom
from their gloomy and churlish manner of regarding nature, and their contempt
and loathing for the body and its functions as inherently impure and vile; (1)
and so far from repudiating the relations of the sexes, it exalts them as
symbolising the loftiest divine mysteries, and enjoins their exercise as a duty,
the fulfilment of which, in some at least of his incarnations, is essential to
the full perfectionment and initiation of the individual. It is thus pervaded by
an appreciation of beauty and joyousness of tone which at once assimilates it to
the Greek, and distinguishes it from the Oriental, conception of existence, and
so redeems mysticism from the reproach – too often deserved – of pessimism. The
Hermetist, like the Prophet who found God in the sea’s depths and the
whale’s belly, recognises divinity in every region and department of nature. And
seeing in ‘ignorance of God the greatest of all evils,’ (2)
he seeks to perfect himself, not simply in order the sooner to escape from
existence as a thing inherently evil, but to make himself an instrument of
perception capable of ‘seeing God’ in every region of existence in which he may
turn his gaze. The pessimism ascribed to some Hermetic utterances, especially in
the Divine Pymander, is but
apparent, not real, and implies only the comparative
imperfection of existence as contrasted with pure and divine being.
It is to
this end that the renunciation of flesh as food is insisted on, as in the ‘Asclepios.’ Belonging neither by his physical nor his moral
constitution to the order of the carnivora, man can be
the best that he has it in him to be only when his system is cleansed and built
up anew of the pure materials derived from the vegetable kingdom, and indicated
by his structure as his natural diet. The organon of the
beatific vision is the intuition. And not only is the system, when flesh-fed,
repressive of this faculty, but the very failure of the individual to recoil
from violence and slaughter as a means of sustenance or gratification is an
indication of his lack of this faculty.
(p. 79)
In no
respect does the Hermetic system shew its unapproachable superiority to the pseudo-mystical
systems than in its equal recognition of the sexes. True it is that the story of
the Fall is of Hermetic origin; but it is no less true
that this is an allegory, having a significance wholly removed from the literal,
and in no way implying blame or inferiority, either to an individual or to a
sex. Representing an eternal verity of divine import, this allegory has been
made the justification for doctrines and practices in regard to women which are
altogether false, unjust, cruel, and monstrous, and such as could have proceeded
only from elementary and sub-human sources.
In conclusion. All history shews that it is to the
restoration of the Hermetic system in both doctrine and practice that the world
must look for the final solution of the various problems concerning the nature
and conduct of existence, which now – more than at any previous time – exercise
the human mind. For it represents that to which all enquiry – if only it be free
enquiry, unlimited by incapacity, and undistorted by prejudice – must ultimately
lead; inasmuch as it represents the sure, because experimental, knowledges,
concerning the nature of things which, in whatever age, the soul of man
discloses whenever he has attained full intuition. Representing the triumph of
free-thought – a thought, that is, which has dared to probe the consciousness in
all directions, outwards and downwards to matter and phenomena, and inwards and
upwards to spirit and reality – it represents also the triumph of religious
faith, in that it sees in God the All in All of Being; in Nature, the vehicle
for the manifestation of God; and in the Soul – educated and perfected through
the processes of Nature – the individualisation of God.”
Speaking
of the evil of flesh-eating, Anna Kingsford, in a note to the “Asclepios on Initiations,” says: –
“The key
to the Hermetic Secret is found when the aspirant adopts the Edenic Life: the life of purity and charity which all
mystics – Hebrew, Egyptian, Buddhist, Greek, Latin, Vedic,
with one consent, ascribe to man in the golden age of his primeval
perfection. The first outcome of the Fall, or
Degeneracy, is the shedding of blood and eating of flesh. The license to kill is
the sign-manual of ‘Paradise Lost.’ And the first step towards ‘Paradise
Regained’ is taken when man voluntarily returns to the manner of life indicated
by his organism as that alone befitting him, and thus reunites himself to the
harmony of Nature and the Will of God. No man who follows this path and
(p. 80)
faithfully keeps
to it will fail to find at length the Gate of Paradise. Not necessarily in a
single life-time, for the process of purification is a long
one,
and the past experiences of some men may be such as to shut them out for many
lives from the attainment of the promised land. But, nevertheless, every step
faithfully and firmly trodden brings them nearer to the goal,
every year of pure life increasingly strengthens the spirit, purges the mind,
liberates the will, and augments their human royalty. On the other hand, it is
idle to seek union with God in the Spirit, while the physical and magnetic
organism remains insurgent against Nature. Harmony must
be established between man and Nature before union can be accomplished between
man and God. For Nature is the manifest God; and if man be not in perfect
charity with that which is visible, how shall he love that which is invisible?
Hermetic doctrine teaches the kinship and solidarity of all beings, redeemed and
glorified in man. For man does not stand aloof and apart from other creatures,
as though he were a fallen angel dropped from some supernal world upon the
earth, but he is the child of earth, the product of evolution, the elder brother
of all conscient things; their lord and king, but not
their tyrant. It is his part to be to all creatures a Good Destiny; he is the
keeper, the redeemer, the regenerator of the earth. If need be, he may call on
his subjects to serve him as their king, but he may never, without forfeiting
his kingship, maltreat and afflict them. All the children of God, in every land
and age, have abstained from blood, in obedience to an occult law which asserts
itself in the breast of all regenerate men. The mundane Gods are not averse to
blood, for by means of it they are invigorated and enabled to manifest.
For the mundane Gods are the forces of the astral element in man, which element
dominates in the unregenerate. Therefore, the unregenerate are under the
power of the stars, and subject to illusion. Inasmuch as a man is clean from the
defilement of blood, insomuch he is less liable to be beguiled by the deceptions
of the astral serpent. Therefore, let all who seek the Hermetic secret do their
utmost to attain to the Hermetic life. If entire abstinence from all forms of
animal food be impossible, let a lower degree be adopted, admitting the use of
the least bloody meats only – milk, fish, eggs, and the flesh of birds. But in
such a case, let the intention of the
aspirant be continually united with that of Nature, willing with firm desire to
lead, whenever
(p. 81)
possible, a yet
more perfect life; so that in a future birth he may be enabled to attain to it.”
(The Virgin of the World,
pp. 94-95.)
Reference has been made to the fourfold nature of
THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN
|
Fourfold Division. |
Sevenfold Division. |
EXTERIOR MAN (1)
|
1. Physical Body. |
1. Material Body
(Sthûla-sharîra), composed wholly of matter in its grossest and
most tangible form. 2. Vitality (Jív-âtma). Vital-Principle. Physical-Force. Nerve-Force. Animal-Vitality. |
|
2. Astral Body (Nephesh) or
Fluidic Shape. Shade. Magnetic Body. Odic or
Sidereal Body. Closely connected with the Mundane Mind and Outer Reason (Ruach). |
3. Astral Body (Linga-sharîra)
composed of highly etherialised matter. The lowest
mode of Soul-substance. The Sex-body. 4. Animal Soul or
Desiring Mind (Kârma-rûpa).
Related to all Covetous longings or Concupiscence. 5. Intellectual Soul or Mind (Manas). The Personality. The Earthly Mind. Concerned in the attainment of science related to physical things. The seat of the Outer Reason and of the Material Memory, Abilities, Affections, Cares, and Acquirements. The Anima bruta. Is shed at death with the body and the shade. |
(p. 82)
INTERIOR MAN
|
3. Soul (Neshamah). |
6. Spiritual
Soul, Mind, or Consciousness (Buddhi). The
Divine Idea. The Individuality. The true |
|
4. Spirit (Jechidah). |
7. Spirit (Âtma). An
emanation of the Absolute. Being. The Supreme Reason. Wisdom. God. (Cochmah).
Spiritual Word or Logos of the |
Of the
above, the Material Body represents that which is physical and vital; the Astral
Body, that which is animal and intellectual; the Soul, that which is moral and
human; and the Spirit, that which is spiritual and divine.
It has
been said that the intuition is the organon of
Hermetic knowledge, such knowledge being derived from the soul of the man and
not from extraneous sources. This truth is most clearly stated in one of Anna
Kingsford’s Illuminations (“Concerning
Inspiration and Prophesying”, Clothed with the Sun, Pt. I, Illumination Nº. II, Pt. 1.),
as follows: –
“Know
that there is no enlightenment from without: the secret of things is revealed
from within.
From
without cometh no Divine Revelation: but the Spirit within
beareth
witness.
Think
not I tell you that which you know not: for except you know it, it cannot be
given to you.
To him
that hath it is given, and he hath the more abundantly.
None is
a prophet save he who knoweth: the instructor of the
people is a man of many lives.
Inborn
knowledge and the perception of things, these are the sources of revelation: the
soul of the man instructeth him, having already
learned by experience. (1)
(p. 83)
Intuition is inborn experience; that which the soul knoweth of old and of former years.
And
Illumination is the Light of Wisdom, whereby a man perceiveth
heavenly secrets.
Which
Light is the Spirit of God within the man, shewing
unto him the things of God.
Do not
think that I tell you anything you know not; all cometh from within: the Spirit
that informeth is the Spirit of God in the prophet.”
(1)
In 1882
Edward Maitland took part in a controversy on Inspiration, which was carried on
in the pages of Light, (2)
and in reply to some of the writers who contended that extraneous spirits were
the sources of inspiration and divine knowledge, he said: –
“It is
to the spirit of the man himself, and not to any extraneous influences, that the
only true illumination is due. (...) Man himself not merely has, but is a
Spirit, and does not necessarily lose his spiritual powers by his investment
with a material body. The human organism is not a mere instrument dependent upon
any chance wandering influences which may alight upon it. It is the peculiar
habitat and
mode of manifestation of an incarnated portion of Divinity, and it is through
the unfoldment within him of the powers of this, his
own fixed, indwelling Spirit, that he finds his true inspiration, and not
through the suppression of this in favour of strangers. And
yet even more than this. Even where under the overshadowing of some
separate Spirit – often it may be the phantom of one of his own past selves – he
finds fresh and valuable knowledge, it is due, not to actual
(p. 84)
suggestion
proceeding from such entity, but to the fact that under such magnetism he is
lifted into a sphere of his own system not ordinarily accessible to him, and
enabled to regain the forgotten perceptions and recollections of his own soul.
Such is the nature and method of ‘inspiration’: the quality varying according to
the degree of purity of the individual’s mind and life.
. . . . . . . .
“To the
question, ‘How many of our past selves are in
existence?’ The Perfect Way replies, ‘A single Neshamah’ (or Anima Divina – the past of the man which becomes
re-incarnate) ‘may have as many of these former selves in the astral light as a
man may have changes of raiment.’ And the reason why ‘the (interior and higher)
spheres of our own systems are not ordinarily accessible to us,’ is that we are
accustomed to live so much in the outer and lower as to incapacitate ourselves
for the requisite aspiration; or, in biblical language, because ‘our
conversation is not in heaven’ – the celestial kingdom within us – but on earth,
the bodily and material part.
. . . . . . . .
Granting
the fact that a clairvoyant can see the Guardian Angel of a person actually
inspiring him with words, or more correctly, probably, with thoughts, it still
remains to be known what, precisely, is the nature of such angel and its
relation to its ‘client,’ before it can be decided whether the source of the
inspiration is extraneous or interior to the latter. Now on this point The
Perfect Way speaks explicitly, with a clearness and fullness
which leaves nothing to be desired. And it declares the proper Guardian Angel,
or ‘genius,’ of a person to be no extraneous Spirit, but a function of that
person’s own system, whose business it is to act as a connecting link of
communication between him and his own Divine, informing Spirit – a moon, as it
were, to reflect the sun to the planet man, each (spiritualised) person having
such ‘sun’ and ‘moon’ in himself, the human system being complex. (...) In
regard to the attainment of knowledge through the operation of a ‘past self,’ it
is not in such phantom that the knowledge in question mainly resides, but in the
re-embodied soul itself of the man, which, under the reflective influence of one
of such phantoms –always present in his system – is able to regain the memory of
the experiences appertaining to the particular incarnation represented by it. (1) It is,
(p. 85)
of
course, possible to hold intercourse with Spirits other than one’s own; but this
is not ‘inspiration,’ but conversation only. And no such Spirit, however
friendly and assiduous, is in the true sense a ‘Guardian Angel.’ Inspiration, in
the highest sense, comes only from the central Spirit, or ‘God,’ of the man,
either directly or through his ‘genius.’
(1)
And since all that is done by what is called Influx is to
illuminate – not to inform – the soul of the recipient, the knowledge obtained
under such illumination depends upon the quantity and quality of the experiences
already possessed by such soul. Where this is young and inexperienced, the lamp
of the Spirit can but light up a comparatively empty chamber. Hence the absolute
necessity of experience to the soul’s progress; and hence, also, the absolute
necessity of a multiplicity of re-births on the material plane, in order to
obtain the experiences of which alone come maturity and final emancipation from
matter. (...) Of man’s fourfold nature, his celestial part alone it is which
undergoes re-incarnation, and only when the consciousness of this part is
attained does the individual find in himself the proofs of his previous
existences. Consisting, as do these proofs, in personal memories, they are
incapable of communication to others, since no one can transfer his memory to
another. So that the only way to obtain the desired verification of the great
doctrine at issue, is by so living, in thought and deed, as to hasten the time
when between his inner and outer
(p. 86)
man shall
be such closeness of intercommunion as will enable his Spirit to ‘bring all
things to remembrance.’”
The letters written by Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland in the
controversy which took place in Light on “The Historic ‘Jesus’” are of very great
interest. In this connection, Anna Kingsford had, in 1881, been the recipient of
Illuminations “Concerning the Gospels;
their Origin and Composition,” and “Concerning the Actual Jesus.” In the
former Illumination Anna Kingsford, speaking in trance, said: –
“I am looking at the inside of the Serapeum at
Write
down these names and the dates which are specially shown me. Theophilus,
patriarch of
I see
the Serapeum destroyed; – not only the library but the
(p. 87)
temple, so
fearful were they of leaving any trace of the concoction. It was destroyed by
Christians at the instigation especially of Theodosius,
Ambrosius, and Theophilus. Their motive was a
mixed one, each of the leaders having a different aim. The object of the
concocters themselves was to sustain and continue the ancient faith by
transplanting it to a new soil, and engrafting it on Judaism. The object of
Theophilus
was to make the new religion the enemy and successor of the old, by making it
appear to have an independent basis and origin. Ambrose destroyed the library in
order to confute the Arians by leaving it to appear that Christianity had an
origin altogether supernatural. The concocters themselves did not intend it to
be regarded as supernatural, but as representing the highest human. And they
accordingly fixed and accumulated upon Jesus all that had been told of previous
Christs – Mithras, Osiris, Krishna, Buddha, and others, – the original draft
containing the doctrine of the transmigration of souls most explicitly and
distinctly. The concoction was undertaken in order to save religion itself from
extinction through the prevalence of materialism, – for the times corresponded
in this respect exactly to the present. And the plan was to compose out of
all the existing systems one new and complete, representing the highest
possibilities and satisfying the highest aspirations of humanity.
The
great loss, then, is not that of the first but that of the second library of
All the
conversations in the Gospels were fabricated by the aid of various books in
order to illustrate and enforce particular doctrines. I cannot recognise the
language of many of the ancient manuscripts used. The Latin ones which I see are
all in capitals, and without any division between the words, so that they look
like one long word.
I am
shewn the actual scene of the destruction of the library and dispersion of the
books. There is a dreadful tumult. The streets of
(p. 88)
me, it
hurts me so. It is extraordinary how exactly alike the two times are both
politically and religiously. Everything established is
breaking up in both; and that which comes out of each is the fuller revelation
of the divine Idea of Humanity. All works for us and the new revelation. But the
world suffers terribly in the birth. Afterwards things gradually become much
better.” (Clothed with the Sun, Pt. I, Illumination Nº. XXXII.)
In her
Illumination “Concerning the Actual Jesus,”
Anna Kingsford, also speaking in trance, said: –
“I am
shewn that there is but little of real value in the Scriptures. They are a mass
of clay, comparatively modern, with here and there a bit of gold. The Angel whom
I saw before, and who told us to burn the Bible, now puts it in the fire, and
there comes out a few pages only of matter which is original and divine. All the
rest is interpolation or alteration. This is the case with both Old Testament
and New. (...) Here and there is an original piece of the ancient Revelation,
but these are largely interspersed with additions and embellishments,
commentaries, and applications to the times by copyists and interpreters. And
when the Angel told us to put the Bible in the fire, he meant separate the gold
from the dross and clay. (...) As for the Gospels, they are almost entirely
parabolical. Religion is not historical, and in nowise depends upon past
events. For, faith and redemption do not depend upon what any man did, but on
what God has revealed. Jesus was not the historical name of the initiate and
adept whose story is related. It is the name given him in initiation. (...) The
Scriptures are addressed to the soul, and make no appeal to the outer senses.
The whole story of Jesus is a mass of parables, the things that occurred to him
being used as symbols. (...) The gospel life of Jesus is made up of the lives of
all the divine teachers before him, and represents the best the world had then,
and the best it has in it to be. And it is therefore a prophecy. The recorded
life of Jesus epitomised all the teachers before him, and the possibilities of
mankind some day to be realised.” (1)
(p. 89)
I have
long believed that these wonderful illuminations received by Anna Kingsford
contain the best answer that can be given concerning the origin of the Gospels,
and I have recently received what I cannot but regard as a remarkable
corroboration. Some few months ago my wife gave to me a book called The Restored New
Testament, by James Morgan Pryse.
It was published in
“(…) the allegory
of the Crucified is Hellenic in form, and embodies in its simple majesty the
profoundest truths of archaic religion. (...) All those portions of the New
Testament which may be regarded as genuine are, with the exception of a few
fragments of the Epistles, prose plagiaries from ancient Greek sacred poems, the
allegorical dramas forming part of the ritual in the Mysteries; and all the
passages by which the Jesous-mythos is connected with
the Old Testament, staged in Judaea, and given a
semblance of historicity, are the work of forgers, who employed stolen notes of
the Greek Mystery-ritual in fabricating a ‘sacred’ scripture upon which to found
a new religion.”
Thus,
the Apocalypse is by Mr. Pryse treated as a prose
version of a Greek Mystery-poem; but, regarding this, he says, “the version
seems to have been made with honest motives by a writer conversant with the
esoteric meaning of the original, and who presumably gave it a superficially
Jewish colouring to preserve it from being destroyed by the fanatics of the new
faith, who were endeavouring to suppress everything in ancient literature which
betrayed, or tended to prove, the fact that the new religion they had invented
and instituted was founded on a fabricated ‘history,’ and was merely a travesty
of the older religions.” Further, in his Introduction to the Anointing of Jesous – referring to the Synoptic Gospels – he says:
“The
original source from which they were drawn is considered to have been an
allegorical drama which formed part of the ritual of the Greek Mysteries. (...)
Judging by portions of the text, the original drama was a superb poem; but the
compilers of the Synoptic Gospels had only incomplete prose notes of it,
presumably made from memory, and these notes they could have obtained only by
dishonourable means.”
(p. 90)
I first
read the above-mentioned Preface and Introduction one evening just before
going to bed. When reading them, I could not help remarking how much there was
in common between Mr. Pryse’s theory concerning the
origin of the Gospels, and Anna Kingsford’s Illuminations on that subject. I was
particularly struck with Mr. Pryse’s
theory of the Gospels being founded on an allegorical drama which formed part of
the ritual of the Greek Mysteries. I went to bed with these thoughts uppermost
in my mind, and was soon asleep. It is not usual for me after going to sleep to
wake until it is time to get up; and, so far as I know, I have never in my life
walked in my sleep, and I have no reason to believe that I did so on this night,
in fact, I am sure I did not – had I done so it would certainly have waked my
wife, who was with me, and who is a very light sleeper. Well, in the middle of
the night I was surprised to find myself, without any apparent cause, wide
awake. My wife was fast asleep by my side. Both my arms were under the
bed-clothes, and there was not a movement in the bed or in the room. It was
dark, and all was still and quiet. Under these conditions I suddenly felt
something come into one of my hands, both of which were empty. On feeling this,
I immediately closed my hand, when, to my surprise, I found that I was holding a
key. How it came into my hand I do not know, and I have no theory to offer. I
simply relate the fact. My first thought was, “How came this key into my hand?
Am I awake or am I asleep? Am I in my right mind or am I
dreaming?” But no sooner had these thoughts passed through my mind –
which they did in far less time than I can tell them – than I knew the meaning
of what had happened, for these words came to me with great force, filling my
mind: “You have the key,” – meaning thereby: “You have in Anna Kingsford’s
Illuminations and in Mr. Pryse’s
theory the key to the origin of the Gospels.” I was certain that this was what I
was intended to understand, and that it was true. In order that there should not
be any doubt as to the reality of my experience, I put the key under my pillow,
saying to myself, “If I find it there when I wake in the morning, I shall know
that I have not been dreaming.” On waking, my first thought was “the key”; I
felt under my pillow, and there I found it. I had not been dreaming. It was a
small iron key which, my wife informed me, belonged to a drawer in another room,
and which she had on the previous night, before going to bed, put on her
dressing-table which stood at the other end of
(p. 91)
our
bedroom. My wife assured me that she did not take the key to bed with her, and I
am positive that I did not take it to bed with me. I did not even know that it
was in the room – or, indeed, of its existence, – until it came into my hand in
the manner related.
I will
conclude with an extract from one of the Lectures given by Edward Maitland to
the Hermetic Society, when he gave a master-key for the interpretation of Holy
Scripture and the dogmas of the Catholic Church. At the close of his Lecture on
“Revelation as the Supreme Common Sense,”
he said: –
“To the
interpretation of all mystic symbols, whether they be
creeds, dogmas, ceremonial rites, images, scriptures, or edifices, the key is
one and the same. And it is twofold, having two parts which are expressed in two
words. These are Now and
Within. The
first of them implies that Religion is not a thing relating to history, whether
in the past, present, or future, but is an ever-occurring actuality, an eternal
verity, representing for every man one and the self-same process, inherent in
the nature of existence, and necessary to be enacted in each man in its
entirety, irrespective of all other men whatsoever. So that, were there but one
man in existence, the whole stupendous drama of Creation, Fall, Incarnation,
Atonement, and Redemption, to their minutest details
as set forth in the Christian history and symbology,
would be enacted in his case precisely as for an universe of men. This is
because it relates, not to particular men, but to Man.
The
other term of the key, the word Within, implies that
Religion is purely interior, mystic, spiritual, and addressed, therefore, not to
the body and lower reason – though finding manifestation through these – but to
the soul, and has no concern with persons, events, or other things belonging to
the external and historical plane – ‘which things,’ as St. Paul says, ‘are an
allegory’ – that to which it relates being the spiritual nature of man.
This
being so, it is not with the faculties of the superficial or external man that
the Mysteries of Religion can be comprehended, or its verities discerned; not
even if such man be what is called a ‘religious man,’ however devoted and
sincere. For, it is not to mere pious zeal, but to ‘zeal according to
knowledge,’ that the discernment of Divine things appertains.
The
prevailing diversity of interpretation and the
(p. 92)
consequent
multiplicity of sects which divide and distract Christendom, are due to the
ignorance of this fact. Humanity is brimming over with love and piety and zeal,
and eager to do God and man service. But, for want of knowledge, its enthusiasm
and force are wasted, or worse than wasted, and all parties are engaged in
fighting or circumventing each other, instead of combining against the common
foe, the demon at once of negation and superstition. Meanwhile, the Truth which
alone can save and make free is in our midst, shut up in Bible parable –
mistaken for history – and in Church symbol and formula, because the common
sense which originally discerned and formulated it has long ceased to interpret
it.
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.
FOOTNOTES
[S.H.H. – are the initials of the author of this
Biographical Preface: SAMUEL HOPGOOD HART.]
(2:1) In the
case of her Lectures on the Creed, I have been able to give only abstracts of such
Lectures, the original MSS. (if any) thereof having been lost or destroyed. The
Articles and Letters which are given in this volume have been to a great extent
taken from
Light. Anna Kingsford and
Edward Maitland are said to have been “the ablest contributors that Light ever had”. (Mad. de Steiger in a letter to Light, 1886, p. 71). – S.H.H.
(2:2) The Life of Anna
Kingsford, by
Edward Maitland, in two large volumes: first edition, 1896; third edition,
complete with additions, 1913. All references in this book to The Life of Anna
Kingsford are to
the third edition. – S.H.H.
(3:1) A fourth edition of this book was published in 1909. – S.H.H.
(3:2) The Theosophical
Society was founded in
(3:3) Edward
Maitland says:
“The
revelation made to us was identical in source, method, and kind with that which
had been delivered to the inspired of old, and of which the Bible is the chief
surviving depository, being described by the Rabbins
of the Kabala as given by God to Adam in Paradise, and to Moses on Sinai,
expressions which denoted the state of illumination.” – Life of A.K., Vol. II, p. 31.
(4:1) E.M.’s letter, dated 22nd October 1891, to the Echo.
(6:1) Life of A.K., Vol. II, pp. 19,
20. See also letter, dated 3rd July 1882, from A.K. to Lady Caithness,
giving an account of this interview with Mr. Sinnett (ibid., p. 74).
(6:2) The reference is to certain divine Illuminations which had
been received by Anna Kingsford, and which – with other of her Illuminations –
were subsequently published in Clothed with the
Sun. The
Illuminations referred to appear as chapters vii.-x. of part II, of that book. – S.H.H.
(7:1) This paper, Edward
Maitland says, “proved a channel for the enunciation of our knowledges when the
general Press was entirely closed against us, and therein a stimulus to
ourselves to write what otherwise would have remained unsaid” (Life
of A.K., Vol. II, p. 49). –
S.H.H.
(7:2) The Theosophist was founded in
(7:3) The letter is signed “One of the Writers of The Perfect Way.” –
S.H.H.
(8:1) As
regards Spiritualism, Edward Maitland says: “It is simply a practice consisting
in holding or seeking intercourse with unembodied
intelligences or forces; and nothing in the world can make it anything else”
(Light, 1884,
p. 519). – S.H.H.
(9:1) After
seeing A.K. and E.M., in 1881, he had received instruction from his Guru about
the subject, but his instruction appears to have been partial only, because in a
letter, dated 3rd July 1882, to Lady Caithness, A.K. says: “he does not yet know
all the truth concerning it, and so finds fault with our presentation of that
side of it which, as yet, he has not been taught” (Life of A.K., Vol.
II, p. 74). – S.H.H.
(10:1) Life of A.K., Vol.
II, pp 67-68. The two parts of the review appeared in The Theosophist of May and June
1882, and the articles in discussion in September and October of the same year,
and A.K.’s and E.M.’s
final reply and the above editorial in January 1883. On 3rd July 1882, Anna
Kingsford wrote to Lady Caithness, warning her not to be misled by the
“misrepresentations” of The
Perfect Way
contained in the above-mentioned review, and pointing out one of the “mistakes”
therein contained which, she said, was “so gross and palpable,” that she found
it hard to believe it had been committed innocently. (Life of A.K., Vol. II, p.
73). – S.H.H.
(12:1) The initiation name given to Anna Kingsford by her
Illuminators. – S.H.H.
(12:2) They were informed that the Chiefs of the Theosophical
Society recognised in this book “knowledges of which the Eastern adepts had
believed themselves to be the exclusive possessors, having been safeguarded by
them from the remotest ages”. (Article on “Mr. Edward Maitland” in Light, 1893, p. 104). – S.H.H.
(12:3)
Celestial personalities whom they knew as the Gods. (See Life of A.K., Vol. II, pp.
244, 257; and see p. 7, ante.)
– S.H.H.
(14:1) The
Address was reported in Light, 1883, pp.
337-338; and in a Supplement to The Theosophist, October 1883; and
it is reprinted in The Life of A.K., Vol. II, pp. 123-126.
(15:1) Edward
Maitland says:
“The
arrival of Mr. Sinnett in
(15:2) Mr.
Sinnett had introduced himself to them as a Buddhist. – S.H.H.
(16:1) To a
correspondent of Light who stated that
“anyone who chooses to live the necessary life can soon obtain personal evidence
of the existence and power of the Himalayan Mahatmas, and can, under their
direction, be put into the way to attain for himself the knowledge of the
hereafter,” Edward Maitland replied:
“As I
read this utterance it contains two errors of first-rate magnitude: it makes
salvation dependent on the chance of certain other persons existing and being
accessible in some abnormal way; and it assumes that the images formed in the
mind under strong previous impression are really the persons thought of, instead
of being but astral emanations of one’s own system, having
no necessary relation to extraneous personalities. It is of course open to your
correspondent to call his objectivised ideas Himalayan Mahatmas, just as it was
possible for St. Theresa to call hers Jesus Christ, and for Swedenborg to call
his David, Paul, or the Virgin Mary. But the practice shews a complete want of
knowledge respecting the occult side of human nature, and the image-making
powers of the subtler elements of one’s own system, as well also as the teaching
capabilities of one’s own spirit.” (Light,
1884, p. 139.)
(17:1) In 1870, Anna Kingsford had joined the Catholic Church. –
S.H.H.
(18:1) The
letter, which is one of great interest, is given in full in The Life of Anna
Kingsford, Vol. II, pp. 140-146. – S.H.H.
(18:2) In a letter, dated 1st September 1883, to Light, Anna
Kingsford said:
“Now
that the claims of Orientalism are being so widely and
popularly discussed, it is most proper and timely to point out the admirable
mysticism and the profound learning of the holy Catholic Church of the West. If
only the esoteric doctrine of that Church, and the sublime truths embodied in
the Liturgy and Creed of Rome, were clearly comprehended and laid to heart,
there would be no reason to fear lest some of us should suppose ‘Esoteric
Buddhism’ to be in opposition to ‘Esoteric Christianity’”
(Light, 1883,
p. 404).
In her
opinion, “the real enemies of the real Catholic Church” were “Atheism and
Agnosticism”. (Light, 1884, p. 519.) – S.H.H.
(20:1) Life of A.K., Vol.
II, pp. 148-154. See also pp. 163-164, where
the circumstances necessitating the writing of this pamphlet are very clearly
stated. – S.H.H.
(23:1) The
telegram had been received by her on the 9th December 1883, i.e. it was despatched after the printing of the above-mentioned
pamphlet. – S.H.H.
(23:2) Edward
Maitland says that when, later on, Madame Blavatsky published her magnum opus – The Secret
Doctrine – she:
“(…) threw over Mr.
Sinnett’s presentation in favour of ours, having meanwhile informed us
that it had been as much as she and Subba Row could do to make a plausible defence of Mr. Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism, as we were right
and it was wrong through its writer’s misapprehension of the teaching received
by him. ‘But,’ she added, with the candour
characteristic of her in her best moods, ‘we were obliged to support him then
because he represented us, but when the secret doctrine was concerned, it was
necessary to tell the truth’ – a position at least intelligible.”
(Life
of A.K., Vol. II, p. 160.)
(24:1) Life of A.K., Vol.
II, pp. 161-162. An interesting letter, dated 11th March 1884, written by Anna
Kingsford to Lady Caithness, with reference to T. Subba
Row’s pamphlet and their reply thereto, is to be found in the same volume, pp.
165-167.
(24:2) At the
close of the year they resigned their membership in the Lodge. – S.H.H.
(24:3) A
Charter was, in fact, granted by Colonel Olcott to the new Lodge, which was to
be known as the Hermetic Lodge of the Theosophical Society (see Light, 19th
April 1884, p. 154), and members of other Lodges were to be eligible for
admission to the Hermetic Lodge without renunciation of any previous
affiliation, and on the 9th April 1884, a meeting for the purpose of
inaugurating the new Lodge was held at C. C. Massey’s, Colonel H. S. Olcott
presiding; but owing to the issue by Colonel H. S. Olcott (on Mr.
Sinnett’s
recommendation), almost immediately afterwards, of the above-mentioned rule
prohibiting membership of more than one Lodge at a time, it became necessary to
make the new adventure outside of the
Theosophical Society; and, at a meeting held on the 22nd April 1884, it was
unanimously resolved to surrender the above-mentioned Charter, and to
reconstitute the New Society independently of the Theosophical Society (Life of A.K., Vol.
II, pp. 186-187; letter of E.M. in Light, 3rd May 1884, p.
182). – S.H.H.
(25:1) I.e. in the
revised
Prospectus dated
March 1885. For the Prospectus as originally
issued, see
Light, 1884,
p. 186. – S.H.H.
(27:1) Life of A.K., Vol.
II, p. 196.
“It is,
‘she said,’ on this Hermetic Rock of inward illumination and spiritual life –
called by Trismegistus ‘the Mount of Regeneration’ –
that the great Mystics of all time have ever taken their stand. Hereon were
founded the Pythagorean and Neoplatonic Schools, the system of the Alexandrian Gnostics,
and the various lodges of semi-oriental philosophy of Egypt and Asia Minor in
the centuries immediately preceding the Christian era. And in later days this
self-same illumination formulated itself by the lips and pens of the initiates
of the thirteenth and following centuries – the epoch of the ‘Angelic Doctor,’
of St. Bernard, of Thomas A. Kempis, of
Eckhart, Tauler, Ruysbroeck, Hugo of St. Victor, and others who sought the
‘Perfect Way’ and thereby found the ‘Christ.’ These men were not Occultists, but
Mystics. Though they wrought marvels, they cared little for miracles. For the
Mystic aspires after the power of the Spiritual life, not after that of the
physical or astral. He is no enemy of the Occult. He transcends it: and his
miracles are those of the inward state – triumphs of intellectual illumination,
solutions, realisations, conversions and transmutations performed in union with
the Will of God, in the medium of the mind and spirit.”
Her
exposition of the legend of St. George and the Dragon will be found in the
story, entitled “St. George the Chevalier,”
in Dreams and Dream Stories (third
edition, p. 288). – S.H.H.
(27:2) Life of A.K., Vol.
II, p. 196. None of Edward Maitland’s Lectures to the Hermetic Society are
included in the present volume. I hope, in the near future, to publish these in
a companion volume. – S.H.H.
(33:1)
Illumination “Concerning the Prophecy of
the Immaculate Conception.” It is
given in full in Clothed with the Sun, Pt. I, Nº. 3.
(34:1) The overshadowing influences, denoting the Hierarchy of the
Church invisible and celestial.
(34:2)
Illumination “Concerning the
Interpretation of the Mystical Scriptures,” Clothed with the
Sun, Pt. I. Nº. V; see also Illumination “Concerning the Mosaic Cosmogony,” Clothed with the Sun, Pt. I, Nº. VI.
(37:1) A Yogee or Yogi is one who practises Yoga (union). There are
two kinds of Yoga: Hatha-Yoga, in which the Yogee seeks to transcend the physical by reducing his own
lives to impotency; and Raja-Yoga, in which the Divine Union is sought by
concentration and meditation. Anna Kingsford must be understood as referring to
Hatha-Yoga only. – S.H.H.
(39:1) Baron
Giuseppe Spedalieri, a native of Sicily, and a
resident at Marseilles, was “the friend, disciple, and literary heir” of the
Abbé Constant, who wrote under the name of Eliphas
Levi (Life of A.K., Vol.
II, pp. 167-168). – S.H.H.
(43:1) Letter
of E.M. in The
Unknown World, 15th March 1895; Life of A.K., Vol.
II, pp. 223, 296 and 297.
When, in
1887, Anna Kingsford was “dying of consumption,” Madame Blavatsky wrote to her:
“If you
were well enough by the end of this month, I would ask you to write an answer to
Gerald Massey, who, speaking of the contradictions of the New Testament, calls
it ‘a volume of falsehoods and lies.’ I must do so if you do not feel strong
enough, for it is absolutely necessary to shew that the Bible is as esoteric as
any other Scriptures of old.” (Life of A.K., Vol. II, pp.
340-341.)
(45:1) This Lecture was,
subsequently, incorporated in their book The
(46:1) See
illustration nº 1. Edward Maitland says: “The Seal of Solomon
was the symbol used alike by Kabalists and Hermetists, in the East and the West, to represent the whole arcana of theosophy” (Light, 1884
p.302).
(46:2) See illustration in The
Perfect Way, p. 325.
(46:3) Mrs. Atwood, as the
writer of An Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery, and as
one of the profoundest of living mystics, was, Edward Maitland says, “in the
very foremost rank of those whose judgement we valued.” (Life of A.K., Vol. II, p.
265.) – S.H.H.
(47:1) A notice
to this effect appeared in Light, 23rd April 1887,
p. 181.
(52:1) She was born on the 16th September 1846.
(53:1)
The
occasion was a Lecture given by him on “Man Incarnate and Discarnate,” which I hope some day, with other of
Edward Maitland’s Lectures, to publish. – S.H.H.
(55:1) The
(56:1) See
Illumination “Concerning the Three Veils
Between Man and God,” Clothed with the Sun, Pt. I, Nº. 1.
(56:2)
Idolatry consists in the materialisation of spiritual Mysteries:
“They
are Idolaters who understand the things of Sense where the things of the Spirit
are alone implied, and who conceal the true Features of the Gods with material
and spurious presentations. Idolatry is Materialism, the common and original Sin
of Men, which replaces Spirit by Appearance, Substance by Illusion, and leads
both the moral and intellectual Being into error, so
that they substitute the Nether for the Upper, and the Depth for the Height.”
(See Illumination “Concerning the
Interpretation of the Mystical Scriptures,” Clothed with the
Sun, Pt. I, Nº. V.) – S.H.H.
(56:3) That
is, Eve – the moral Conscience of Humanity – subject to Adam – the intellectual
Force, – “whereby all manner of evil and confusion abounds, since her desire is
unto him, and he rules over her until now. But the end foretold by the Seer is
not far off.” (See Illumination “Concerning the Interpretation of the Mystical
Scriptures,” Clothed with the Sun, Pt. I, Nº. V.) – S.H.H.
(57:1) Addresses and
Essays on Vegetarianism, by
Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland, published in 1912.
(58:1)
Article, entitled “Mr. Edward Maitland,”
in Light, 1893, p. 104.
Edward Maitland subsequently founded the Esoteric Christian Union, which, on his
death in 1897, also fell into abeyance. – S.H.H.
(60:1) In the
present (third) edition of The Life of Anna Kingsford I have
been enabled to restore the whole or a considerable portion of the matter
referred to in the above-mentioned letter as having been omitted from the first
edition. – S.H.H.
(63:1) The
Esoteric Christian Union had been founded by Edward Maitland in November 1891,
but on his death it followed the same fate as had befallen the Hermetic Society
on the death of Anna Kingsford. – S.H.H.
(64:1) The
Rev. A.G. Kingsford, after Anna Kingsford’s death, married again, and took the
name of
(66:1) Mr.
Cripps subsequently sent to me the following account of his vision: –
“Wed., about 5 a.m.
Was taken to a harvest-field very golden and ripe. I stood
in a small square where cutting had commenced. Looking round, I saw you coming
towards us through the corn: your shirt-sleeves tucked up: hat (scout pattern),
did not notice the colour, on the back of your head: jacket slung over your left
shoulder and held with your right hand. Another form was behind you, but you
overshadowed him or her, don’t know which, so I could not see it clearly. You
both entered the square, and as you
were about to start work again, I was told to give you The Picture and this
Message: ‘The Harvest is Ripe; the Reapers are few.’”
In a
note to the above-mentioned account Mr. Cripps added that, since the vision, he
had been told that the form behind me was Edward
Maitland working with me.
It was
not until I had nearly finished writing the
Preface
to this book that the signification of this vision became known to me. It will
be remembered that, in 1884, Baron Spedalieri wrote to
Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland a letter urging that her “chapters on the
Credo,” which had appeared in
Light, should
forthwith be published, on the ground that “time pressed” and “the harvest of
the earth was ripe.” Had it not been for Anna Kingsford’s illness and untimely
death, the Lectures would undoubtedly have been published during her life-time.
After her death, however, she desired that they should be published “by-and-by,”
because “they were then in advance of people, but would not be so for long as
people were themselves advancing.” I now see that the vision was intended to let
me know that the
time had arrived for the publication of the “chapters on the Credo” which are contained in this book.
– S.H.H.
(70:1) Edward
Maitland, in reply to questions put to him at the close of an Address on “The Probable Course of Development and
Ultimate Issue of the Present Spiritual Movement,” given by him on the 2nd
April 1889 to The London Spiritualist Alliance (Light, 1889,
p. 182.) – S.H.H.
(71:1) In 1881
Anna Kingsford received an Illumination “Concerning the Great Pyramid and the Initiations Therein,” which is
given in full in Clothed with the Sun (Pt. I, Nº. XX.), and which contains the following passage:
“I
perceive that Jesus had been initiated in the mysteries of
See also
her Illumination “Concerning the Holy
Family.” (Clothed with the Sun, Pt. I, Nº. XXXV.) – S.H.H.
(71:2) Mr.
G.R.S. Mead in his monumental work Thrice Greatest Hermes,
speaking of the Trismegistic literature, says:
“The
fragments of the Trismegistic literature which have
reached us are the sole surviving remains of that ‘Egyptian philosophy’ which
arose from the congress of the religious doctrines of
And he
has no doubt that the Wisdom of Egypt was the main source of the Greek Trismegistic literature: and he agrees with W. Marsham Adams that the Wisdom of Egypt formed the main
background of some of the principal teachings of Early Christianity (Vol. I. pp.
68 and 80).
Thrice Greatest
Hermes, which is in three volumes, should be in the hands
of every student of Hermetic doctrine. – S.H.H.
(73:1) In her “Prefatory Essay” to Astrology
Theologised, Anna Kingsford says:
“It is
not Matter that is illusion, as is commonly supposed by superficial students of
Oriental theosophy, but the belief that Matter is a thing true and
self-subsistent without reference to any Beyond or Within. It is not fatal to
deliverance to believe that this world is, but to believe that it alone is, and
no other. This world in itself is certainly not illusion, for the matter which
composes it is the last expression, centrifugally formulated, of Spirit, and, in
fact, is Spirit, in a specialised and congelate
condition. But the illusion of it consists in apprehending Matter as eternal and
absolute, and in seeing in it the be-all and end-all of Life and Substance. The
image seen in the pool or the mirror is not illusion, but he would be deluded
who should suppose it to be other than an image. Mr. Lilly, in Ancient Religion
and Modern Thought, puts the case very clearly when he says:
‘Matter as distinct from Spirit is an abstraction, and, if taken to be real, an
illusion – as the old Vedic sages saw – the mocking Maya, from which Thought
alone can release.’ Here I cannot refrain from alluding to the classic myth of
the wandering Io, the personified Soul, pursued and afflicted by the astral
influences under the masque of Argus, the many-eyed giant, and finally delivered
from his tyranny by Hermes or Thought, the Thoth or Thaut of Egyptian arcana.” (p. 43.) – S.H.H.
(76:1) In answer
to one who, while he recognised the faculty of the intuition, regarded its
knowledges as “speculations,” Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland replied:
“The
intuition is not a creative but a perceptive and recollective
faculty; and, therefore, its results are not surmises or opinions, but knowledges, inasmuch
as they are founded on actual experience acquired either in the present or in
past lives.” (Letter, dated 10th July 1882, to The Theosophist.)
– S.H.H.
(76:2) That
there is no limit to be placed on man’s power to know, is clear from the
following passage taken from a letter written by Anna Kingsford and Edward
Maitland, wherein they say:
“As all
things proceed from mind, mind is necessarily competent for the comprehension of
all things. So that there is not ‘an infinity of truth beyond the
reach of human reason.’ But all that reason has to do is so to purify and
expand itself as to become one with the infinite reason which has produced all
things. It is not that truth is not infinite, but that reason, when perfected,
is also infinite. There is nothing that is incomprehensible or cannot be
understood. The doctrine of the paragraph in question has ever been the
stronghold of superstition, and worst enemy of the faith that is based on the
‘rock’ of the understanding, the only faith that ‘saves’.”
(Light, 1883, p. 475.)
– S.H.H.
(78:1) The term “corrupt,” which in the translation of the
Divine
Pymander, is applied to
things earthly, means simply perishable. – E.M.
(78:2) The title of one of the books in the Divine Pymander. – E.M.
(81:1) The
Principles belonging to the external man are evanescent as entities, and are not
subject to the influence of Karma directly,
because they are never re-born. That is to say, that Karma acting on the destiny
of the Interior Personality (the Soul) creates new Outer Personalities at each
birth. – S.H.H.
(82:1) The dependence of religion upon memory was pointed out by
Edward Maitland in a letter to Light, in which he said:
“Tradition and intuition – the two factors in religion – are each dependent upon
memory, the former dealing with its historical, the
latter with its spiritual, element. (...) But even more essential to religion
than the knowledge of events, historical merely and external, is the knowledge
of those interior experiences which represent the Divine operation within the
soul of the individual. Here it is that the intuition finds its especial office;
and inasmuch as without her recollection of those experiences the soul could not
communicate of them to the individual, and without his recollection of them the
latter could not impart of them to others, it is upon memory, again, that religion largely depends.
‘Perception and recollection – these are the sources of Inspiration.’” (Light, 1882, p. 551.)
– S.H.H.
(83:1) Says
Edward Maitland:
“The
practice of confounding the prophet and the saint with the mere ‘medium’ is an
error of the gravest kind, and fatal to the true Spiritualism. It is true the
former may have mediumistic gifts, but these are not what make him saint or
prophet. Mediumship is due to a peculiar condition of
the physical organism, and implies neither intellectual, moral, nor spiritual
development, whereas that which makes the prophet and the saint is precisely
such development and no peculiarity of organism, and the very possession of such
development is a safeguard against the liability to be ‘controlled’ which is the
characteristic of the mere medium.” (Light, 1887, p. 54.) – S.H.H.
(83:2) Light, 1882,
pp. 434, 466, 511, 551. Edward Maitland’s letters bear the nom de plume
“Cantab.” – S.H.H.
(84:1) “My
‘phantom,’” said Edward Maitland, “being a shade of my past self, is but a
note-book to facilitate the recovery of my own recollections.”
(Light,
1888, p. 551.) – S.H.H.
(85:1)
Writing of “The Descent of the Spirit,”
and to explain what he believed to be the process of Divine inspiration and
illumination, Edward Maitland suggested the following illustration from the
analogy of flame, between which and spirit there subsists a close
correspondence. He says:
“On
holding a suitable substance – such as a splinter of dry wood like the stem of a
match – over a lighted candle, ignition occurs, not immediately in the wood or
from the flame beneath it, but in the gas generated by the heat and at a
distance above the wood; and only by means of the descent upon it of the flame
along the current of ascending gas does the wood take fire, being thus ignited
from above and not from below.
It seems
to me that we have herein a parallel to the spiritual phenomenon in question;
and that there is both an ascent of the individual and a descent of the spirit
by which he is vivified and illumined. And also that although
the two must co-operate to accomplish the process, the initiative may be taken
by either of then. This is to say, the individual may in virtue of his
own spiritual fervour so polarise himself
to the highest as to kindle the Divine fire within him; or the spirit may take
him even unawares, and when otherwise engrossed, and, lighting upon him, itself
kindle the fire. Of course, for either to be possible the individual must have
previously attained a high degree of spiritual development. For if he had not
already so ‘ascended,’ the spirit could not descend upon him. He would not be
responsive to its influence.” (Light, 1888, p. 57.) – S.H.H.
(88:1) Clothed with the
Sun, Pt. I, Illumination Nº. XXXIII. Speaking of
deductions to be drawn from the loss of certain writings concerning the
Mystery-rites and Mystery-myths of the Egyptians and of the
Chaldaeans, Mr. G.R.S. Mead says that certain Jewish and Christian
mystics, whom Hippolytus calls Naassenes,
claimed “that Christianity, or rather the Good News of the Christ, was precisely
the consummation of the inner doctrine of the Mystery-institutions of all the
nations; and the end of them all was the revelation of the Mystery of Man.”
(Thrice
Greatest Hermes, Vol. I. p. 141.) – S.H.H.
Seções: Índice Geral Seção Atual: Índice Obra: Índice Seguinte: 1. O Credo do Cristianismo