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• BLAVATSKY, Helena Petrovna.
The Late Mrs. Anna Kingsford, M.D.
(A Falecida Sra. Anna Kingsford, Médica.) Em H.P.
Blavatsky Collected Writings (Obras Completas de H.P.
Blavatsky), Vol. IX, pp. 89-91. TPH, Madras (Índia), 1962, 487 pp.
Primeiro publicado em Lucifer, Vol. II, nº. 7, março de
1888, pp. 78-79.
Informações:
Trata-se de um obituário escrito por Madame Blavatsky, com grandes
elogios à Dra. Anna Kingsford, onde podemos ler:
“Ela era (...) uma
líder do pensamento espiritual e filosófico, dotada dos mais
excepcionais atributos psíquicos. Junto com o Sr. Edward Maitland, seu
mais verdadeiro amigo (...) ela escreveu várias obras tratando de temas
metafísicos e místicos. A primeira e mais importante delas foi O
Caminho Perfeito, ou, A Descoberta de Cristo, que dá o
significado esotérico do Cristianismo. (...) Era alguém cujas aspirações
de toda a vida estiveram sempre voltadas para o eterno e o verdadeiro.
Uma mística por natureza – a mais ardente das místicas para aqueles que
a conheceram bem – ela era mesmo assim uma mulher marcante até na
opinião dos materialistas e dos incrédulos. (...) Toda a sua vida adulta
foi empregada para trabalhar inegoisticamente pelos demais, para a
elevação do lado espiritual da humanidade.”
Segue o texto completo,
em inglês:
(p.
89)
THE LATE MRS. ANNA KINGSFORD, M.D.
OBTUARY
[Lucifer,
Vol. II, No. 7, March, 1888, pp. 78-79]
We have
this month to record with the deepest regret the passing away from this
physical world of one who, more than any other, has been instrumental in
demonstrating to her fellow-creatures the great fact of the conscious
existence – hence of the immortality – of the inner Ego.
We
speak of the death of Mrs. Anna Kingsford, M.D., which occurred on
Tuesday, the 28th of February, after a somewhat painful and
prolonged illness. Few women have worked harder than she has, or in more
noble causes; none with more success in the cause of humanitarianism.
Hers was a short but a most useful life. Her intellectual fight with the
vivisectionists of Europe, at a time when the educated and scientific
world was more strongly fixed in the grasp of materialism than any other
period in the history of civilization, alone proclaims her as one of
those who, regardless of conventional thought, have placed themselves at
the very focus of controversy, prepared to dare and brave all the
consequences of their temerity. Pity and Justice to animals were among
Mrs. Kingsford’s favourite texts when dealing with this part of her
life’s work; and by reason of her general culture, her special training
in the science of medicine, and her magnificent intellectual power, she
was enabled to influence and work in the way she desired upon a very
large proportion of those people who listened to her words or who read
her writings. Few women wrote more graphically, more takingly, or
possessed a more fascinating style.
Mrs.
Kingsford’s field of activity, however, was not limited to the purely
physical, mundane plane of life. She was a Theosophist and a true one at
heart; a leader of spiritual and philosophical thought, gifted with the
most exceptional psychic attributes. In connection with Mr. Edward
Maitland, her truest friend – one whose incessant,
(p. 90)
watchful care has undeniably prolonged her delicate ever-threatened life
for several years, and who received her last breath – she wrote several
books dealing with metaphysical and mystical subjects. The first and
most important was The Perfect Way, or the Finding of Christ,
which gives the esoteric meaning of Christianity. It sweeps away many of
the difficulties that thoughtful readers of the Bible must contend with
in their endeavours to either understand or accept literally the story
of Jesus Christ as it is presented in the Gospels.
She was
for some time President of the “London Lodge” of the Theosophical
Society, and, after resigning that office, she founded “The Hermetic
Society” for the special study of Christian mysticism. She herself,
though her religious ideas differed widely on some points from Eastern
philosophy, remained a faithful member of the Theosophical Society and a
loyal friend to its leaders. [Original footnote: Both Mr.
Maitland and Mrs. Kingsford had resigned from the “London Lodge of the
Theosophical Society,” but not from the Parent Society.]
She was
one, the aspirations of whose whole life were ever turned toward the
eternal and the true. A mystic by nature – the most ardent one to those
who knew her well – she was still a very remarkable woman even in the
opinion of the materialists and the unbelievers. For, besides her
remarkably fine and intellectual face, there was that in her which
arrested the attention of the most unobserving and foreign to any
metaphysical speculation. For, as Mrs. F. Fenwick Miller writes, though
Mrs. Kingsford’s mysticism was “simply unintelligible” to her, yet we
find that this does not prevent the writer from perceiving the truth. As
she describes her late friend, “I have never known a woman so
exquisitely beautiful as she who cultivated her brain so assiduously.
(…) I have never known a woman in whom the dual nature that is more or
less perceptible in every human creature was so strongly marked – so
sensuous, so feminine on the one hand,
(p. 91)
so
spirituelle, so imaginative on the other hand.” [Compiler’s Note:
“Woman: Her Position and Her Prospects, Her Duties and Her Doings,”
Lady’s Pictorial, London, March 3, 1888.]
The
spiritual and psychic nature had always the upper hand over the sensuous
and feminine; and the circle of her mystically-inclined friends will
miss her greatly, for such woman as she are not numerous in the same
century. The world in general has lost in Mrs. Kingsford one who can be
very ill-spared in this era of materialism. The whole of her adult life
was passed in working unselfishly for others, for the elevation of the
spiritual side of humanity. We can, however, in regretting her death
take comfort in the thought that good work cannot be lost nor die,
though the worker is no longer among us to watch for the fruit. And Anna
Kingsford’s work will be still bearing fruit even when her memory has
been obliterated with the generations of those who knew her well, and
new generations will have approached the psychic mysteries still
nearer.
[Original
footnote: The statement made by some papers that Mrs. Kingsford did
not find her resting place in psychic force, for “she died a Roman
Catholic,” is utterly false. The boasts made by the R.C. Weekly
Register (March 3 and March 10, 1888) to the effect that she
died in the bosom of the Church, having abjured her views, psychism,
theosophy, and even her Perfect Way, and writings in
general, have been vigorously refuted in the same paper by her husband,
Rev. Algernon Kingsford, and Mr. Maitland. We are sorry to hear that her
last days were embittered by the mental agony inflicted upon her by an
unscrupulous nun, who, as Mr. Maitland declared to us, was smuggled in
as a nurse – and who did nothing but bother her patient,
“importune her, and pray.” That Mrs. Kingsford was entirely against the
theology of the Church of Rome, though believing in Catholic
doctrines, may be proved by one of her last letters to us, on “poor
slandered St. Satan,” in connection with certain attacks on the name of
our Journal, Lucifer. We have preserved this and several
other letters, as they were all written between September, 1887 and
January, 1888. They thus remain eloquent witnesses against the
pretensions of the Weekly Register. For they prove that
Mrs. Kingsford had not abjured her views, not that she died “in fidelity
to the Catholic Church.”]
[Transcrito
de: H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings (Obras
Completas de H.P. Blavatsky), Vol. IX. Theosophical Publishing
House, Madras (Índia), 1962. 487 pp.]
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