•
SHIRLEY, Ralph. Anna Kingsford &
Edward Maitland. Mandrake Press Booklets nº 13. Mandrake
Press, Thame (Inglaterra), 1993.
24 pp.
Informações:
É um livreto com um belo ensaio de caráter biográfico. Nele o autor
procura mostrar a elevada natureza e a importância do trabalho e da
mensagem de Anna Kingsford e Edward Maitland. Segue o texto Html completo, em
inglês:
(p. 1)
ANNA KINGSFORD & EDWARD MAITLAND
Ralph Shirley
[Thanks
to Mandrake Press Ltd., Thame, England, who first
published this essay as Mandrake Press Booklets: No. 13, 1993.]
WE ARE
ALL OF US FAMILIAR WITH THE OLD PROVERB THAT marriages are made in
Heaven, though there are few of us who believe it. It may, however, well
be true that there are certain spiritual marriages or associations which
are made in Heaven in the sense that they have a certain cosmic
foundation in the nature of things and in the relationship of one life
to another. It may also be true that two lives are brought together for
special and important purposes by influences working from another and a
far higher plane. Collaboration is a very commonplace word, but there
was certainly no element of the commonplace in the collaboration of Anna
Kingsford and Edward Maitland. History perhaps contains nothing more
remarkable, and romance nothing more romantic, than this singular
association of two strikingly diverse and original characters of
opposite sexes for a single and supreme purpose. To the two individuals
concerned, the sacrifice of two lives to the ideal which inspired them
seemed but little in view of the momentous character of the objects to
be achieved. The world may not set the same store on the high mission of
Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland, may not perhaps value it at the same
price as the two co-workers who gave up their all in pursuit of their
aims. Many may say, as many have said already, that, like Arthur’s
Knights of the Round Table, they their were pursuing a will-o’-the-wisp
and not the Holy Grail of their hearts’ desire. But assuming that they
partially misinterpreted the end to be achieved, or, alternatively,
over-estimated their own powers of achieving that end with anything like
the success that so high an ideal demanded, it should still be borne in
mind that those who under-estimate the greatness of their own mission
must inevitably fail to impress others with its value in
(p. 2)
[This
page contains a nice picture of Anna Kingsford.]
(p. 3)
the
scheme of things, and it is therefore far better to over-estimate your
own powers and the importance of the object aimed at than to underrate
either the one or the other.
People
are apt to look scoffingly at the man with a mission, but it is the men
and the women with missions who have in fact made the world what it is
to-day. “A crank,” said some wit, “is a little thing that makes
revolutions.” The saying is as true as it was in the times of Jesus
Christ, that God has “chosen the foolish things of the world to confound
the wise, and the weak things of the world to confound the things which
are mighty.” I there is one word in our language more misunderstood than
any other, it is the little word “Faith.” We have been told by the
cynical that faith is the capacity for believing that which we know to
be untrue, and the misinterpretation of this term by the orthodox clergy
is responsible for the derision which has been cast upon it. Worst of
all sinners within the fold of the Church has been the evangelical
contingent. “Believe,” they tell us, “all the dry-as-dust dogmas of
orthodox theology, and you will win eternal salvation.” This is not, we
may be sure, the sense in which Jesus used the word. Neither is it the
sense in which, in a magnificently eloquent passage, the word was
employed by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, when he spoke of
those who “through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness,
obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions; quenched the violence of
fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong,
waxed valiant in fight, and turned to flight the armies of the aliens.”
The
faith of Jesus and the faith of his apostles and followers is the faith
that implies and includes the power to achieve. It is what we call in
the ordinary language of the day “self-confidence,” but it is not the
confidence in the lower but in the higher
self; it is the confidence which comes of the conscious placing of
ourselves en rapport with what Prentice Mulford called
“the Infinite Life” and the “Divine Source.” This power is the secret
(p. 4)
of all
great achievement. The faith of the orthodox, on the other
hand, corresponds to the credulity of the man in the
street. It is the will-o’-the-wisp that leads fools to sacrifice the
reality for a chimera. It was in condemnation and in ridicule of such
folly as this that Omar Khayyám bade his friends “take the cash and let
the credit go.” It was in the spirit of this true self-confidence and
self-reliance that Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland entered upon the
daring project of their life’s work. It was this spirit of faith that
enabled them to carry it at length to a triumphant conclusion –
successful in spite of those imperfections inevitably incidental to a
work of the kind, achieved under the defective conditions of present-day
humanity.
A great
work was certainly seldom, if ever, accomplished under such curious and
such self-contradictory conditions. A man and a woman have frequently
worked together before, and worked effectively and harmoniously, but
they have either been in the relationship of husband and wife, of avowed
lovers, independent of or having deliberately cast aside other ties, or
they have been free to work together as friends owing to the fact that
circumstances have left them unhampered by family conditions. The
peculiarity of the present case is that the relations of Anna Kingsford
and Edward Maitland subsisted in spite of a husband for whom his wife
had a very genuine and warm affection, and who most undoubtedly
reciprocated it to the full – in spite also of the fact that the husband
was fully aware of, and approved of; all that took place, without seeing
anything in it to lessen his esteem for his wife or compromise their
relationship – in spite also of the fact that the society of the day
held up its hands in horror at the scandal and more than suspected
immorality where there was none to suspect – in spite, finally, of the
fact that, joined to the respect and friendly feeling which Edward
Maitland felt for the husband, there was something in his whole attitude
and demeanour towards Anna Kingsford which was more in the
(p. 5)
nature
of the devotion of a lover to his mistress than anything else which the
ordinary terms of language can express. When Anna Kingsford passed away
to another sphere early indeed in life (she was but forty-two), but with
her life’s work accomplished, the two who joined hands over her grave
and who mourned her most deeply and most sincerely were the devoted
husband who loved her without understanding the most remarkable side of
her character, and the friend who loved and understood, but, better even
than the woman whom he loved, loved the work of which her presence and
being were to him the divine symbol and seal.
People
of the type of Anna Bonus Kingsford are too sensitive and impressionable
ever to be really happy for long. The acuteness of their feelings
exaggerates their own sufferings, and at the same time makes the
consciousness of the sufferings of others an ever present torture and
martyrdom. Mrs. Kingsford’s life, indeed, at times when her health,
always far from robust, was below the usual level, became absolutely
unbearable. The thought of bringing a child into the world to share her
own anguish and despair seemed in itself a crime.
I long
(she writes, in one of these moods of depression), I long for a little
rest and peace. The world has grown very bitter to me. I feel as if
every one were dead!
Ah,
what a life is before me! – a life of incessant struggle, reproach, and
loneliness. I shall never be as other women, happy in their wifehood and
motherhood. Never to my dying day shall I know the meaning of a home.
And
behind me, as I look back on the road by which I have come, all is storm
and darkness. I fought my way through my lonely, sad-hearted childhood;
I fought my way through my girlhood, misunderstood, and mistrusted
always; and now, in my womanhood, I am fighting still. On every side of
me are rebuke and suspicion, and bitter,
(p. 6)
abiding
sorrow. Pain and suffering of body and of spirit have hung on my steps
all the years of my life. I have had no respite.
Is
there never to be peace? Never to be a time of sunlight that shall make
me glad of my being?
Her
spirit was indeed naked and without defence against the arrows of the
world. Endowed with courage far greater than falls to the lot of most
women, with great independence and an utter fearlessness of
conventionality, she had no hesitation in avowing her own profound
belief in her divine mission. To one who, meeting her for the first
time, observed with ill-timed jocularity, “I understand, Mrs. Kingsford,
that you are a prophetess,” she retorted with the utmost solemnity, “I
am indeed a prophetess,” and on her interrogator continuing his banter
by inquiring: “But not, I suppose, as great as Isaiah?” “Yes,” she
returned, “greater than Isaiah.” Such mockery, however boldly she faced
it, caused her the most acute pain. There was, indeed, nothing
undignified about her avowal of her claims, nothing that jarred, nothing
of the charlatan in her composition. If she was deceived herself, at
least she never dreamed of deceiving others. She never posed or
attempted to gain a hearing by acting a part which was not natural to
her. She was too genuine, too intense in her convictions, and withal too
natural and too unaffected to be otherwise than always and everywhere
true to herself. She was essentially a child of nature, and in some of
the traits of her character she retained to the end the simplicity and
wayward playfulness which most people say good-bye to when they reach
years of discretion. Animals, of course, always appealed to her
strongest sympathies, and for nine long years she could not bear to be
parted except for occasional very brief periods from her favourite
guinea-pig, Rufus. Nature in its varying moods made the strong appeal
which it always does to people of so emotional a temperament. Once after
recovering from a serious bout of illness she was taken to convalesce at
(p. 7)
Dieppe.
An incident occurred here very illustrative of her susceptible nature.
Having stayed for some time and being greatly benefited by the change,
she was proceeding in company with Mr. Edward Maitland to see her
husband off by the steamer. Says her biographer:
It was
a day of days for beauty. While waiting, we sat watching the gambols of
a flock of sea-gulls, whose gleaming white wings, as they circled round
and round against a sky of clearest and tenderest blue, approaching each
other to give loving salute with their bills, and then darting off only
to return and repeat the act, uttering the white shrill notes of joy and
delight, made a spectacle of exquisite beauty, and one that went to file
invalid’s inmost heart, inducing an ecstatic sense of the possibilities
of happiness in the mere fact of a natural and healthy existence. Though
entranced by the scene no less than my companion, I did not fail to note
the effect upon her, and the thought arose in my mind, “This is the best
remedy of all she has yet had.”
As we
were thus gazing and feeling, a shot was fired from a boat containing
some men and women, which, unperceived by us, had glided out from behind
the opposite pier; and immediately one of the birds fell into the sea,
where it lay fluttering in agony with a broken wing, while its
companions fled away with harsh, discordant cries; and in one instant
the whole bright scene was changed for us from one of innocence and joy
into one of the darkest gloom and misery. It was a murder done in Eden,
followed by the instant eclipse of all that made it Paradise. Mary was
frantic. Her so lately injured organism gave way under the shock of such
a revulsion of feeling. Her impulse was to throw herself into the sea to
succour the wounded bird, and it was with difficulty that I restrained
her; and only after giving vent to an agony of tears, and pouring on the
shooting party a storm of reproaches, at the imminent risk
(p. 8)
of
being given into custody as they landed bearing the bird, now dead, as a
trophy, did I succeed in getting her back to the hotel. For the next
twenty-four hours her state was one of raving mania.
No
incident could be more characteristic of her temperament or of her
outlook upon life. The charm and beauty and joy of life were all on the
surface and only served to conceal the horror and anguish which lurked
beneath. She felt, with the apostle, that all creation groaneth and
travaileth together, and to her hyper-sensitive spirit life itself was
all too frequently a very hell. One can well understand the ardour with
which a spirit like hers pursued the campaign against vivisection. But
it is rare indeed to find this temperament joined with a courage which
faced the presence of the horrors she so dreaded to go through the
entire medical course and qualify as a doctor at a time when obstacles
innumerable were placed in the way of women candidates for the
profession. It is in connection with this phase of her career that a
story is narrated which has attained for her a somewhat unenviable
notoriety. This is the record of the boast she is stated herself to have
made that she had brought about by her magical powers the death of one
of the most prominent supporters of vivisection in its worst form in the
medical wor1d. The doctor in question was the well-known Professor
Claude Bernard, and the claim that she made will probably be regarded by
the occultist as not wanting foundation in fact. The narrative had
better be given in her biographer’s own words:
It was
in mid-February, when, having occasion to visit the École de Médicine,
I accompanied her thither. It was afternoon. On reaching the place we
found it shut up, and a notice on the gate apprised us that the school
was closed for the day on account of the obsequies of Professor Claude
Bernard. We had not heard even of his illness. A cry, or
(p. 9)
rather
a gasp, of astonishment escaped her, and she exclaimed, “Claude Bernard
dead! Claude Bernard dead! Take hold of me! Help me to a seat or I shall
fall. Claude Bernard dead! Claude Bernard dead!” The only seat available
near was on the stony steps by which we were standing, and I accordingly
placed her on these, seeing that emotion had deprived her of all her
powers. Once seated she buried her face in her hands, and I stood before
her awaiting the result in silence. I knew that such an event could not
fail greatly to move her, but no special reason occurred to me.
Presently she looked up, her face strangely altered by the intensity of
her emotion, and asked me if I remembered what she had told me some
weeks ago about Claude Bernard, and her having been provoked to launch
her maledictions at him. I remembered perfectly. It was in the latter
part of the previous December. Her professor had forced her into a
controversy about vivisection, the immediate occasion being some
experiments by Claude Bernard on animal heat, made by means of a stove
invented by himself, so constructed as to allow of observations being
made on animals while being slowly baked to death. Her professor had
agreed with her as to the unscientific character and utter uselessness
for any medical purpose of such a method of research. But he was
altogether insensible to its moral aspects, and in answer to her strong
expressions of reprobation, had taken occasion to deliver himself of a
tirade against all sentiments generally of morality and religion, and
the folly of allowing anything so chimerical to stand in the way, not
merely of science, but of any object whatever to which one might be
inclined, and setting up a transcendental standard of right and wrong,
or recognising any limits to self-gratification saving the physical
risks to oneself Even the feeling which makes a mother weep over her
child’s suffering he sneered at as hysterical, and gloried in the
prospects of the time when science and intellect should be utterly
unrestrained by what people call heart
(p. 10)
and
moral conscience, and the only recognised rule should be that of the
bodily self.
Thus
speaking, he had worked his pupil into a frenzy of righteous
indignation, and the vision rose before her of a future when, through
the teaching of a materialistic science, society at large had become
wholly demonised, even as already were this man and his kind. And seeing
in Claude Bernard the foremost living representative and instrument of
the fell conspiracy, at once against the human and the divine, to
destroy whom would be to rid the earth of one of its worst monsters, she
no sooner found herself alone than she rose to her feet, and with
passionate energy invoked the wrath of God upon him, at the same moment
hurling her whole spiritual being at him with ah her might, as if with
intent, then and there, to smite him with destruction. And so
completely, it seemed to her, had she gone out of herself in the effort
that her physical system instantly collapsed, and she fell back
powerless on her sofa, where she lay awhile utterly exhausted and unable
to move. It was thus that, on rejoining her, I found her, with just
sufficient power to recount the experience, and to ask me my opinion as
to the possibility of injuring a person at a distance by making, as it
were, a spiritual thunderbolt of oneself; for, if such a thing were
possible, and had ever happened, it must, she was convinced, have
happened then.
At the
moment the discussion on this subject was dropped, but further evidence
was subsequently sought which it was hoped would confirm or disprove the
idea that Anna Kingsford had been responsible for the great French
doctor’s death. Eventually, our heroine carne across an acquaintance of
the deceased Professor in the person of a practical student of occult
science. It appeared from his narrative that Claude Bernard was one of
the few members of the profession who also took an interest in this
subject, which had served as a link between them. He informed
(p. 11)
Mrs.
Kingsford that the doctor had described his earliest symptoms to himself
and had regarded them as somewhat mysterious. He was engaged, it
appears, in his laboratory in the Collège de France, being at the
time in his usual health, suddenly struck as if by some poisonous
effluvium which he believed to emanate from the subject of his
experiment. The effect, instead of passing off became intensified, and
manifested itself in severe internal inflammation, from which he
eventually died. The doctors pronounced the complaint to be Bright’s
disease. This was the disease which Claude Bernard had chiefly
endeavoured to investigate by inducing it in animals. The possibility of
such an incident is of course familiar to students of occultism, and
Paracelsus, with others before and since, have maintained its
feasibility. The great German occultist writes that it is possible that
the spirit without the help of the body may, “through a fiery will
alone, and without a sword, stab and wound others.” This is purely in
accordance with the general trend of his doctrine, a large part of which
is based on the belief that the will is a most potent operator in
medicine.
Anna
Kingsford was, it is well known, one of the earliest and foremost
champions of the movement for women’s rights, but the line she took in
this movement was supremely sane and wise, and was devoid of all the
extravagances which have since brought certain sides of one of the
greatest and most important movements of the day into well-deserved
contempt. Edward Maitland was in entire sympathy with her in this
matter, and in endorsing one of her communications to him observes: “I
send you to-day’s Times, with a report of the debate on
the Women’s Suffrage Bill, which will show you how much you are needed
in that movement. For the debate shows why it does not advance. They are
all on the wrong tack, supporters and opponents alike. The franchise is
claimed in hostility, not sought in love. The women are demanding it as
a means of defence and offence against man, instead of
(p. 12)
as a
means of aiding and perfecting man’s work. They want a level platform
with man expressly in order to fight him on equal terms. And of course
the instinct of the majority of men and women resents such a view.”
“Justice, in fact, as between men and women, human and animal,” was
among Anna Kingsford’s foremost aims; for, as her biographer well says:
“All injustice was cruelty, and cruelty was for her the one unpardonable
sin.” “Her love,” he adds in a curiously revealing passage, “was all for
principles, not for persons. The last thing contemplated by Anna
Kingsford was an aggravation of the existing divisions and antagonisms
between the sexes.” “And,” continues Mr. Maitland, “so far from
accepting the doctrine of the superiority of spinsterhood over wifehood,
she regarded it as an assertion of the superiority of non-experience
over experience as a means of education.” But that which most of all she
reprobated was “the disposition which led women to despise womanhood
itself as an inferior condition, and accordingly to cultivate the
masculine at the expense of the feminine side of their nature.” “It was
by magnifying their womanhood and not by exchanging it for a factitious
masculinity that she would have her sex obtain its proper recognition.”
This recognition no one more ardently desired than herself. She compares
the modem woman to Andromeda bound to the rock on the seashore, shackled
by the chains of ignorance and a helpless prey to that terrible monster
whose name is ennui. “When,” she asks, “will Perseus come to deliver the
fair Andromeda, to loosen her fetters and to set her free?” Much has
happened to better the position of women since this was written, but
much yet remains to be done.
All who
knew Anna Kingsford unite in testifying to the impression conveyed to
them by her striking personality with its originality, freshness, and
force, no less than by her many-sidedness and the strange contradictions
of her character. Her biographer gives the following description of her
appearance at
(p. 13)
the
date when he first met her:
Tall,
slender, and graceful in form. Fair and exquisite in complexion. Bright
and sunny in expression. The hair long and golden, but the brows and
lashes dark and the eyes deep set and hazel, and by turns dreamy and
penetrating. The mouth rich, full, and exquisitely formed. The broad
brow prominent and sharply cut. The nose delicate, slightly curved, and
just sufficiently prominent to give character to the face. And the dress
somewhat fantastic as became her looks. Anna Kingsford seemed at first
more fairy than human and more child than woman. For though really
twenty-seven she appeared scarcely seventeen, and made expressly to be
caressed, petted and indulged, and by no means to be taken seriously.
These
impressions as regards her character were appreciably modified on
subsequent acquaintance, and Mr. Maitland observes that “when she warmed
to her favourite themes, her whole being radiant with a spiritual light,
her utterances were those in turn of a savant, a sage, and a child, each
part suiting her as well as if it were her one and only character.”
The
relationship between the authors of The Perfect Way and
the founders of the Theosophical Society in the days of its infancy
affords matter of no little interest. The basic idea of the Theosophical
Society, viz. the harmonising of the esoteric side of all religions,
naturally suggested to the promoters of the movement that in the authors
of so remarkable a work, they would find a tower of strength, and Madame
Blavatsky, in particular, was most anxious to obtain their support and
co-operation for the British section of the Society. Eventually, after
considerable hesitation, Anna Kingsford responded to the advances made
to her, and accepted the presidency of the British section. But the
arrangement was not one which was destined to last long. That it was not
likely to be a success might, I think, have been readily
(p. 14)
enough
foreseen. Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland were too uncompromising in
their point of view – too positive that the source of their own
information could not be impugned, to accept readily the bona fides
of other and, as they considered, lower oracles. This, however, was by
no means all. The attitude of Theosophy in its early days towards
Christianity was in the main hostile. To make the esoteric
interpretation of this creed the pivot of their teaching was the last
idea they contemplated. Madame Blavatsky had attacked Christianity in
Isis Unveiled. Mr. Sinnett was equally unsympathetic. The
basis of their actual teaching was an interpretation of Eastern
religions, whereas the basis of The Perfect Way was an
interpretation of Western. Anna Kingsford was just as unhesitating in
giving her preference to Christianity as the leaders of Theosophy were
in according theirs to Buddhism, Hinduism, and kindred Oriental
philosophies. Mrs. Besant’s attitude when she joined the Society showed
similar preferences. Her early experiences of orthodox Christianity were
not such as to bias her in its favour, and it was not until later days
that she assumed the mantle of the prophet of The Perfect Way,
and openly recognised the importance of the esoteric side of
Christianity to complete the circle of theosophical teachings. The views
with which Theosophy commenced have in the course of time been
materially modified, and a curious sidelight is thrown, by a letter of
Anna Kingsford’s, on the question whether the leaders of this Society
had originally adopted the reincarnation hypothesis, or whether this was
in the nature of a subsequent development. Mrs. Kingsford writes under
date 3rd July 1882, to her friend Lady Caithness, alluding to
the reception of The Perfect Way by the Press:
After
all this reviewing and fault-finding on the part of critics having but a
third of the knowledge which has been given to us, there is not a line
in The Perfect Way which I would alter were the book to be
reprinted. The very
(p. 15)
reviewer – Mr. Sinnett – who writes with so much pseudo-authority in the
Theosophist, has, within a year’s time, completely altered
his views on at least one important subject – I mean Reincarnation. When
he came to see us a year ago in London, he vehemently denied that
doctrine, and asserted, with immense conviction, that I had been
altogether deceived in my teaching concerning it. He read a message from
Isis Unveiled to confute me, and argued long on the
subject. He had not then received any instruction from his Hindu guru
about it. Now, he has been so instructed, and wrote Mr. Maitland a long
letter acknowledging the truth of the doctrine which, since seeing us,
he has been taught. But 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.
Presumably in this matter Mr. Sinnett reflected Madame Blavatsky’s
views, and the fact that he cites Isis Unveiled seems to
me to leave little doubt in the matter. Surely if he had misunderstood
her, H.P.B. would have taken pains to put him right! I think that the
date given will fix approximately the period at which official Theosophy
was of openly converted to the doctrine of Reincarnation. Until that
time, if it was not uniformly denied, at least there were wide
diversities of opinion, and apparently its opponents mustered more
strongly than its supporters. Eventually Anna Kingsford and Edward
Maitland rounded between them the Hermetic Society. This
was not destined to a long lease of life, mainly owing to the breakdown
of Anna Kingsford’s health. But while Theosophy showed the greater
vitality, in spite of scandals and discords which might well have
shattered it to its base, the teachings of the authors of The
Perfect Way exercised a profound influence in leavening the mass
of Theosophical teaching. Though possessing no little dogmatism in her
own intellectual organisation, Anna Kingsford had no great liking for
any
(p. 16)
form of
society that taught dogmatically, her idea being that every one must
necessarily find out the truth for himself and realise it spiritually
from his own individual standpoint. Theosophy was altogether too
dogmatic for her, without being dogmatic on her own lines. She was
readier to admit the existence of the Mahatmas than to grant the
inspired source of their communications. In any case she looked upon
their teaching as of a radically lower order than her own, and
reflecting those vices and defects which she and Maitland were wont to
associate with the denizens of the astral plane. On the subject of
communications with such entities, or with those whom she suspected of
belonging by nature to this region, she was never tired of inveighing.
The
secret (she says) of the opposition made in certain circles to the
doctrine set forth in The Perfect Way is not far to seek.
It is to be found in the fact that the book is, throughout, strenuously
opposed to idolatry in all its forms, including that of the popular
“spiritualism” of the day, which is, in effect, a revival, under a new
guise and with new sanctions, of the ancient cultus known as
Ancestor-worship. The Perfect Way, on the contrary,
insists that truth is accessible only through the illumination, by the
Divine Spirit, of man’s own soul; and that precisely in proportion as
the individual declines such interior illumination, and seeks to
extraneous influences, does he impoverish his own soul and diminish his
possibilities of knowledge. It teaches that “Spirits” or “Angels,” as
their devotees are fond of styling them, are untrustworthy guides,
possessed of no positive divine element, and reflecting, therefore,
rather than instructing, their interrogators; and that the condition of
mind, namely, passivity, insisted on by these “angels” is one to be
strenuously avoided, the true attitude for obtaining divine illumination
being that of ardent active aspiration, impelled by a resolute
determination to know nothing but the Highest. Precisely such a state
(p. 17)
of
passivity, voluntarily induced, and such veneration of and reliance upon
“guides” or “controls,” are referred to by the Apostle when be says:
“But let no man beguile you by a voluntary humility and worshipping of
angels.” And precisely such exaltation of the personal Jesus, as
The Perfect Way repudiates and its opponents demand, is by the
same Apostle condemned in the words: “Henceforth know we no man after
the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now
henceforth know we him no more.”
Accordingly, as Maitland and Kingsford fell foul of the Theosophical
Society on the one hand, they fell foul of the Spiritualists on the
other. But the cleavage between Spiritualism and the teaching of
The Perfect Way was far deeper than that between this teaching
and Theosophy. With Theosophy indeed, in its broadest sense, there was
nothing in Kingsford and Maitland’s teaching that was radically
antagonistic. The Perfect Way might in fact be accepted
to-day, with some reservations on minor points, as a theosophical
text-book, and, looked at from this point of view, it is the fullest,
the most complete, and the most coherent exposition of Christianity as
seen through theosophical spectacles. Anna Kingsford had indeed herself
been received into the fold of the Roman Catholic Church, though
certainly Roman Catholicism never had a more rebellious or more
independent subject. On the doctrine of authority she would never have
made concessions, and, without this admission, one fails to see what
status the Roman Church can be held to occupy. It is indeed a case of
Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. Her leanings, however, towards the
ancient mother of Christian churches was, even in its modified form,
gall and wormwood to her partner and collaborator, and in the end it
brought about some very unhappy and regrettable scenes in connection
with her last hours, and a dispute as to the faith in which she died,
which must have been
(p. 18)
exceedingly painful to all concerned.
Perhaps
in no single point does Roman Catholicism present a worse and more
undesirable aspect than in the manner in which its missionaries besiege
the last hours of the passing soul in the effort to induce its victims,
when too weak for resistance, to say “ditto” to the formulae which their
priests pretend to regard as constituting a password to the celestial
realms. Certainly, in Anna Kingsford’s case, the admission of a Roman
Catholic Sister of Mercy to tend her in her last illness was productive
of the worst results, troubling her last hours with an unseemly wrangle
that did not cease even after her body was consigned to its final
resting-place.
A
sidelight is thrown on Mrs. Kingsford's attitude towards Roman
Catholicism by the record of a conversation which her biographer cites
her as having had on one occasion with a Roman Catholic priest. She was
calling on a Catholic friend on the occasion, and speaking as usual in
her very free and self-confident manner with regard to the religious
views which she held. Some remark which she made elicited from the
priest the rebuke, “Why, my daughter, you have been thinking.
You should never do that. The Church saves us the trouble and danger of
thinking, by telling us what to believe. We are only
called on to believe. I never think: I dare not. I should go mad if I
were to let myself think.” Anna Kingsford replied that what she wanted
was to understand, and that it was impossible to do this without
thinking. Believing without understanding was for her not faith but
credulity. “How, except by thinking,” she asked, “does one learn whether
the Church has the truth?”
When
the Hermetic Society was founded, W.T. Stead was editor of the
Pall Mall Gazete, and Mrs. Kingsford wrote for him an account of
the new Society. Stead, with his usual taste for dramatic headlines,
entitled it “The Newest Thing in Religions.” This was the very last
description that its founders were likely to
(p. 19)
tolerate. Anna Kingsford wrote back an indignant letter of repudiation.
“So far,” she says, “from being the newest thing in religions, or even
claiming to be a religion at all, that at which the Society aims is the
recovery of what is really the oldest thing in religion, so old as to
have become forgotten and lost – namely, its esoteric and spiritual, and
therefore its true signification.” Elsewhere she writes of The
Perfect Way as not purporting to be a new gospel. “Its mission,”
she says, “is that simply of rehabilitation and re-interpretation
undertaken with the view, not of superseding Christianity, but of saving
it.” She continues:
For, as
the deepest and most earnest thinkers of our day are painfully aware,
the Gospel of Christendom, as it stands in the Four Evangels, does NOT
suffice, uninterpreted, to satisfy the needs of the age, and to furnish
a perfect system of thought and rule of life. Christianity –
historically preached and understood – has for eighteen centuries filled
the world with wars, persecutions, and miseries of all kinds; and in
these days it is rapidly filling it with agnosticism, atheism, and
revolt against the very idea of God. The Perfect Way seeks
to consolidate truth in one complete whole, and, by systematising
religion, to demonstrate its Catholicity. It seeks to make peace between
Science and Faith; to marry the Intellect with the Intuition; to bring
together East and West, and to unite Buddhist philosophy with Christian
love, by demonstrating that the basis of religion is not historical, but
spiritual – not physical, but psychic – not local and temporal, but
universal and eternal. It avers that the true “Lord Jesus Christ” is no
mere historical character, no mere demi-god, by whose material blood the
souls of men are washed white, but “the hidden man of the heart,”
continually born, crucified, ascending and glorified in the interior
Kingdom of the Christian’s own Spirit. A scientific age rightly refuses
to be any longer put off with data which are more
(p. 20)
than
dubious, and logic which morality and philosophy alike reject. A deeper,
truer, more real religion is needed for an epoch of thought, and for a
world familiar with Biblical criticism and revision – a religion whose
foundations no destructive agnosticism can undermine, and in whose
structure no examination, however searching, shall be able to find flaw
or blemish. It is only by rescuing the Gospel of Christ from the
externals of history, persons, and events, and by vindicating its
essential significance, that Christianity can be saved from the
destruction which inevitably overtakes all idolatrous creeds. There is
not a word in The Perfect Way at variance with the spirit
of the Gospel of the “Lord Jesus Christ.”
Nothing
shows the method adopted in their Gospel of Interpretation by the two
authors more clearly than their teaching with regard to the story of the
Garden of Eden and the Fall of Man. It is curious how literally this
story has been taken through many ages of the Church’s history, in view
of the fact that such a writer as Origen in the early days of the infant
Church observed that: “No one in his time would be so foolish as to take
this allegory as a description of actual fact. Kingsford and Maitland
refer the interpretation firstly to the Church, and secondly to
individual man. “The conscience,” they say, “set over the human reason
as its guide, overseer, and ruler, whether, in the general, as the
Church, or in the particular, as the individual, falls, when, listening
to the suggestions of the lower nature, she desires, seeks, and at
length defiles herself with, the ambitions and falsehoods of this
present world.” “Ceasing to be a trustworthy guide she becomes herself
serpent and seducer to the human reason, leading him into false paths
until, if she have her way, she will end by plunging him into the lowest
depths of abject ignorance, there to be devoured by the brood of
unreason and to be annihilated for ever. For she is now no longer the
true wife, Faith, she has become the wanton,
(p. 21)
Superstition.” On the other hand, “the Church at her best, unfallen, is
the glass to the lamp of Truth, guarding the sacred flame within and
transmitting unimpaired to her children the light received upon its
inner surface.” Hitherto this fall has been the common fate of all
Churches. “Thus fallen and degraded, the Church becomes a church of this
world, greedy of worldly dignities, emoluments, and dominion, intent on
foisting on the belief of her votaries in the name of authority fables
and worse than fables – a Church jealous of the letter which killeth,
ignorant of, or bitterly at enmity with, the spirit which giveth life.”
We now
come to the interpretation of the Fall as applied to individual Man.
This is allegorically described as “the lapse of heavenly beings from
their first happy estate and their final redemption by means of penance
done through incarnation in the flesh.” The authors tell us that this
imagined lapse is a parable designed to veil and preserve a truth. This
truth is the Creative Secret, the projection of Spirit into matter, the
descent of substance into Maya, or illusion. From a cosmic standpoint
“the Tree of Divination or Knowledge becomes Motion or the Kalpa – the
period of Existence as distinguished from Being; the Tree of Life is
Rest or the Sabbath, the Nirvana. Adam is Manifestation; the Serpent –
no longer of the lower, but of the higher sphere – is the celestial
Serpent or Seraph of Heavenly Counsel.” By the Tree of Divination of
Good and Evil in this interpretation must be understood that condition
by means of which Spirit projected into appearance becomes manifested
under the veil of Maya, a necessary condition for the evolution of the
individual, but carrying with it its own inevitable perils. It is not,
say our authors, because matter is in itself evil that the soul’s
descent into it constitutes a fall. It is because to the soul matter is
a forbidden thing. By quitting her own proper condition and descending
into matter she takes upon herself matter’s limitations. It is no
particular act that constitutes sin. Sin does not consist in fulfilling
any of the
(p. 22)
functions of nature. Sin consists in acting without or against the
Spirit, and in not seeking the divine sanction for everything that is
done. Sin, in fact, is of the soul, and it is due to the soul’s
inclination to the things of sense. To regard an act as per se sinful is
materialism and idolatry. For in doing so we invest that which is
physical with a spiritual attribute, and this is of the essence of
idolatry.
Adam
signifies the manifested personality, or man, and is only complete when
Eve, his soul, is added to him as helpmeet. When Eve takes of the fruit
and enjoys it, she turns away from her higher spiritual self to seek for
pleasure in the things of her lower self, and in doing so she draws Adam
down with her till they both become sensual and debased. The sin which
commences in the thought of the soul, Eve, thus becomes subsequently
developed into action through the energy of the body or masculine part,
Adam. One of the inevitable results of the soul’s enslavement to matter
is its liability to extinction. In eating of the fruit Adam and Eve
absorb the seeds of mortality. As Milton says:
They
engorged without restraint,
And
knew not, eating Death.
The
soul in her own nature is immortal, but the lower she sinks into matter
the weaker becomes her vitality. A continuous downward course must
therefore end in the extinction of the individual – not of course of the
Divine Ray, which returns to the Source whence it came. It is well to
bear in mind that man is a dual being, not masculine or feminine only,
but both. This, of course, applies equally to man whether manifested in
a male or female body. One side is more predominant in man and the other
in woman, but this does not imply absence of the other side, but merely
its subordination. The man who has nothing, or next to nothing, of the
woman in him, is no true man, and the woman who has nothing of the man
in her, is no true woman. Man, whether
(p. 23)
man or
woman, consists of male and female, Reason and Intuition, and is
therefore essentially twofold. Owing to the duality of his constitution,
every doctrine relating to man has a dual significance and application.
Thus the sacred books not only present an historical narrative of events
occurring in time, but have a spiritual significance of a permanent
character in regard to which the element of time has no meaning. In this
sense Scripture is a record of that which is always taking place.
Thus,
the Spirit of God, which is original Life, is always moving upon the
face of the waters, or heavenly deep, which is original Substance. And
the One, which consists of these two, is always putting forth alike the
Macrocosm of the universe and the Microcosm of the individual, and is
always making man in the image of God, and placing him in a garden of
innocence and perfection, the garden of his own unsophisticated nature.
And man is always falling away from that image and quitting that garden
for the wilderness of sin, being tempted by the serpent of sense, his
own lower element. And from this condition and its consequences he is
always being born of a pure virgin – dying, rising and ascending into
heaven.
This,
in brief, is one of the most essential portions of the new Gospel of
Interpretation. It exemplifies the method adopted throughout which is
that to which we are accustomed to apply the word “Hermetic.” It is both
Christian and pre-Christian, for it is the interpretation of the meaning
of life, which was the Key to the ancient Gnostic faiths which,
subsisting before Christianity, became incorporated in the Christian
teaching. New generations and races of men require the old truths to be
put before them in a new guise. This was so when Christianity first came
to birth, but in the days of Jesus Christ there were many things which
the Prophet of Nazareth had to say to his disciples, but which, as he
told them, they were then too weak to understand. The mystical
(p. 24)
interpretation of Christian truth fell on deaf ears then. Re-stated and
re-interpreted, after a lapse of 1900 years, is it too much to hope that
it may no longer prove “to the Gentiles foolishness, and to the Jews a
rock of offence”?
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