IN future
times, when the impartial historian shall write an account of the progress of
religious ideas in the present century, the formation of this Theosophical
Society, whose first meeting under its formal declaration of principles we are
now attending, will not pass unnoticed.
This much is certain. The bare
announcement of the intended inauguration of such a movement attracted
attention, and caused no little discussion in the secular as well as the
religious press. It has sounded in the ears of some of the leaders of the
contending forces of theology and science, like the distant blast of a trumpet
to the struggling armies in a battle.
The note is faint as yet, and indicates neither the strength nor
purposes of the body approaching. For
either side, it may mean a reinforcement that will help turn the tide of
victory; it may herald only the gathering of neutrals to watch events; or it
may threaten the discomfiture and disarmament of both antagonists.
From what
little has been said in its behalf, it is not yet clear to the public how this
"new departure" should be regarded.
Neither Church nor college knows whether to adopt a policy of
denunciation, misrepresentation, contumely, or amity. By some secular journals it is patronizingly encouraged as likely
to "enliven a prosaic age with exhibitions of mediæval tricks of
sorcery", while others denounce it as the forerunner of a relapse into
"the worst forms of fetishism".
The Spiritualists began, a few weeks ago, with voluminous and angry
protests against its promoters, as seeking to supplant the prevalent democratic
relations with the other world by an aristocratic esotericism, and even now,
while they seem to be watching our next move with the greatest interest, their
press teems with defamatory criticisms.
Neither of the religious sects has definitely committed itself, although
our preliminary advances have been noticed in a guarded way in some of their
organs.
Such
being the state of the case at the very onset of our movement, before one blow
has been struck, am I not warranted in repeating the statement that in the
coming time it is inevitable that the birth of this Society of ours must be
considered as a factor in the problem which the historian will be required to
solve?
The
present small number of its members is not to be considered at all in judging
of its probable career. Eighteen
hundred and seventy odd years ago, the whole Christian Church could be
contained within a Galilean fisherman's hut, and yet it now embraces one
hundred and twenty millions of people within its communion; and twelve
centuries ago, the only believer in Islamism, which now counts two hundred and
fifty million devotees, bestrode a camel and dreamed dreams.
No, it is
not a question of numbers how great an effect this Society will have upon
religious thought - I will go further, and
say, upon the science and philosophy - of the age: great events sometimes come
from far more modest beginnings. I need
not occupy time in quoting examples which will occur to every one of you in
corroboration of my point. Nor is it a
question of endowment funds and income any more than one of numerous
members: the propagandist disciples sent
out by Jesus went barefoot, ill-clothed, and without purse or scrip.
What is
it then, which makes me say what in deepest seriousness and a full knowledge of
its truth I have said? What is it that
makes me not only content but proud to stand for the brief moment as the
mouthpiece and figure-head of this movement, risking abuse, misrepresentation,
and every vile assault? It is the fact
that in my soul I feel that behind us, behind our little band, behind our feeble,
new-born organization, there gathers a MIGHTY POWER that nothing can withstand -- the
power of TRUTH! Because I feel that we are only the
advance-guard, holding the pass until the main body shall come up. Because I feel that we are enlisted in a
holy cause, and that truth, now as always, is mighty and will prevail. Because I see around us a multitude of
people of many different creeds worshipping, through sheer ignorance, shams and
effete superstitions, and who are only waiting to be shown the audacity and
dishonesty of their spiritual guides to call them to account, and begin to
think for themselves. Because I feel,
as a sincere Theosophist, that we shall be able to give to science such
evidences of the truth of the ancient philosophy and the comprehensiveness of
ancient science, that her drift towards atheism will be arrested, and our
chemists will, as Madame Blavatsky expresses it, "set to work to learn a
new alphabet of Science on the lap of Mother Nature".
As a
believer in Theosophy, theoretical and practical, I personally am confident that
this Society will be the means of furnishing such unanswerable proofs of the
immortality of the soul, that none but fools will doubt. I believe that the time will come when men
will be as ashamed of ever having advocated atheism in any of its forms, as,
thirty years hence, they will be of ever having owned a slave or countenanced
human slavery.
Look back
the few, the very few, years to the time when William Lloyd Garrison was led
through Boston streets with a rope around his neck. Compare that with the present state of the Slavery Question, and
then tell me what may not a few earnest, determined, unselfish persons
do. Why, in 1859, I myself went, at the
risk of my life, to report for the New York Tribune the hanging of John
Brown; and in 1857, while I was visiting Senator Hammond, of South Carolina,
solely in my character of a student of scientific agriculture, and having
nothing whatever to do with politics, an Augusta paper advised my commission to
jail because I wrote for the Tribune, although only upon
agriculture. Having passed through such
experiences, and seen so complete a reversal of conditions within the space of
less than a score of years, I feel that neither I nor this Society incurs any
great danger by displaying a little moral courage in so good a cause. Let the future take care of itself; it is
for us to so shape the present as to make it beget what we desire and what will
bring honour upon us. If we are true to
each other and true to ourselves, we shall surmount every obstacle, vanquish
every foe, and attain what we are all in search of, the peace of mind which
comes of absolute knowledge. If we are
divided, irresolute, temporizing, jesuitical, we shall fail as a Society to do
what is now clearly within our reach; and future years will doubtless see us
bewailing the loss of such a golden opportunity as comes to few persons in a
succession of centuries.
But if
this Society were to dissolve within one year, we should not have lived in
vain. To-day is our own; to-morrow may
be; but yesterday is gone for ever. In
the economy of nature, an impulse, however slight, once given to matter, is
eternal; and an act once performed, its consequences, be they great or small,
must be worked out sooner or later. The
passing caprice of a woman has changed the destiny of nations; the speaking of
a word in the mountains may bring a crushing avalanche upon the hamlet that
lies at their feet; the turning of a man's footsteps to the right or left, to
avoid a stone, or chase a butterfly, or gratify it matters not what idle whim,
may alter his whole life, and, directly or indirectly, result in momentous
consequences to a world.
About us
we see the people struggling blindly to emancipate their thought from
ecclesiastical despotism - without seeing more than a faint glimmer of light in
the whole black horizon of their religious ideas. They struggle from an irrepressible desire to be free from
shackles which bind their limping reason after their volant intuitions have outgrown
them. Upon the one side, the philosophical
chemists invite them to an apotheosis of matter; upon the other, the
Spiritualists fling open the painted doors of their "angel world". The
clergy hold them back and hiss warnings and anathemas in their ears. They waver, uncertain which way to go. Heirs to the spiritual longings of the race,
they shrink back from the prospect of annihilation, which, in their own case,
when life's burden presses heavily, may not always seem unwelcome, but which
was never meant for those near and dear ones who have died in their youth and
purity, and left behind a sweet fragrance when the alabaster box was broken and
they passed behind the Veil of Isis.
But when
they turn to Spiritualism for comfort and conviction, they encounter such a
barrier of imposture, tricky mediums, lying spirits, and revolting social
theories, that they recoil with loathing; secretly lamenting the necessity
which compels them to do it. They count
among their acquaintance, perhaps, many persons of irreproachable character who
can testify to the identification of departed friends and count themselves
Spiritualists; but they see these very friends attending their churches as
before, abstaining from Spiritualist meetings, and taking the Spiritualist
papers secretly. When they ask why this
is so, the universal reply is that so many immoral people have fastened upon
the cause, and mediums are being so constantly detected in trickery, that it is
almost disreputable to be an open and avowed Spiritualist. The organs of the class apologize for cheating
mediums, demanding that sceptics shall overlook the nine instances of fraud and
consider the one genuine phenomenon; forgetting that it requires blunt nerves
and a strong purpose to dig to the bottom of a muck-heap for the chance of
finding something of value there.
The
Protestant sects begin with the fatal assumption that an infallible and
inspired Bible will bear the test of reason, and so forecast their own doom;
for the analytical power of reason is bounded only by the limits of ascertained
truth, and fresh discoveries are daily made among the remains of antiquity,
which attack the very foundations upon which the whole scheme of Christianity
is based. The most audacious explorers
in science are recruits from Protestantism; that would-be mistress of our
conscience, is stabbed by her own children.
The Catholic Church having erected a theocracy upon the ruins of ancient
faiths, and stolen not only their allegories but their very exoteric symbolism
and revamped them for her own use, is gathering her forces for the struggle
that she knows too well is close at hand, and that will be mortal. Enraged at the progress of the age, which
has extinguished her penal fires, destroyed her torture-chambers, blunted her
axe, and made it impossible for her to re-bathe her hands in human blood, she
is working silently, cunningly, and with intense eagerness to regain her lost
supremacy. What this under-current is
we may see in the disgraceful Orange riot of 1872; the recent conviction of
poor Leymarie, in Paris; and the affair of Guibord, in Montreal, whose body has
just been buried in a ton of Portland cement and under the escort of thirteen
hundred armed police, infantry, and artillery, to protect it from the rage of
the Catholics, because Guibord belonged to a society which admitted liberal
books into its library! We may also see
the secret machinations of the Church in the perversions to its communion; the
establishment of schools, colleges, convents, monasteries; the schemes to
romanize a portion of our common schools; the building of costly cathedrals;
and the erection of parishes into bishoprics, and bishoprics into
archiepiscopal sees.
Upon what
does this Church or any other ecclesiastical hierarchy stand, but upon the
congenital longing of man for an immortal existence; the obscurity of our view
of the other world by reason of intervening matter; and the urgency of material
wants, which oblige us to accept the intervention of a select class of
spiritual guides and expounders, or go without spiritual nourishment other than
such as we can pick up beside the dusty road along which we trudge from youth
to old age?
If the
founders of the Society are true to themselves, they will set to work to study
the religious question from the standpoint of the ancient peoples, gather
together their wisdom, verify their alleged Theosophic discoveries (I say alleged,
as president of a non-committal society of investigation; as an individual, I
should omit that word, and give full credit where it is due) and contribute to
the common fund whatever is of common interest. If there be any who have begun without counting the cost; if
there be any who think to pervert this body to sectarian or any other narrow,
selfish ends; if there be any cowards, who wish to meet with us in secret and
revile us in public; if there be any who begin with the hope or expectation of
making everything bend to their preconceived notions, regardless of the
evidence; if there be any who, in subscribing to the broad and manly principle
enunciated in the by-laws, that we will discover all we can about all
the laws of nature, do so with a mental reservation that they will back out if
any pet theory, or creed, or interest is endangered; if there be any such, I
pray them, in all kindness, to withdraw now, when they can do so without hard
words or hard feelings. For, if I
understand the spirit of this Society, it consecrates itself to the intrepid
and conscientious study of truth, and binds itself, individually as
collectively, to suffer nothing to stand in the way. As for me - poor, weak man, honoured far
beyond my deserts in my election to this place of honor and of danger - I can
only say that, come well, come ill, my heart, my soul, my mind, and my strength
are pledged to this cause, and I shall stand fast while I have a breath of life
in me, though all others shall retire and leave me to stand alone. But I shall not be alone, nor will the
Theosophical Society be alone. Even now
branch societies are projected in this country. Our organization has been noticed in England, and I am told that
an article upon the subject is about to appear in one of the greatest of the
quarterlies. Whether it shall be
couched in friendly or hostile spirit matters little; our protest and challenge
will be announced, and we may safely leave the rest to the natural order of
events.
If I
rightly apprehend our work, it is to aid in freeing the public mind of
theological superstition and a tame subservience to the arrogance of
science. However much or little we may
do, I think it would have been hardly possible to hope for anything if the work
had been begun in any country which did not afford perfect political and
religious liberty. It certainly would
have been useless to attempt it except in one where all religions stand alike
before the law, and where religious heterodoxy works no abridgment of civil
rights.
Our
Society is, I may say, without precedent.
From the days when the Neoplatonists and the last theurgists of
Alexandria were scattered by the murderous hand of Christianity, until now, the
revival of a study of Theosophy has not been attempted.
There
have been secret political, commercial, and industrial societies, and societies
of Freemasons and their offshoots, but, even in secrecy, they have not
attempted to perform the labour which lies before us and which we will do
openly.
To the
Protestant and Catholic sectaries we have to show the pagan origin of many of
their most sacred idols and most cherished dogmas; to the liberal minds in
science, the profound scientific attainments of the ancient magi. Society has reached a point where something
must be done; it is for us to indicate where that something may be found.
If we
would compare our organization with its archetype, where can it be found? It cannot be called theurgic, for the
theurgists not only believed in God, but knew Him through their knowledge of
His attributes as they exist in the Astral Light, or, as the old world
Kabbalists called it, the Matrix of the World.
The theurgists had two kinds of mysteries - the exoteric, or
public, and esoteric, or secret.
The exoteric comprised the working of wonderful effects at public
ceremonies - among others the causing of statues to walk, talk, and prophesy.
These effects were said to have been produced by natural forces in combination
with the elementary spirits, which lurk in the astral light. As the practice of even exoteric theurgy is
dangerous it was left to the High Priests and the "Initiates of the Outer
Temple". But the real esoteric
mysteries were chiefly confined to the hierophants. A life of the strictest purity and self-abnegation was required
for it - a life such as that of Jesus or Apollonius. Certainly the Theosophical Society cannot be compared to an
ancient school of theurgy, for scarcely one of its members yet suspects that
the obtaining of occult knowledge requires any more sacrifices than any other
branch of knowledge.
The
Neoplatonists formed a school of philosophy which arose in Alexandria
coincidently with Christianity, and was the last public school of theurgy. It based its psychological system upon those
of Pythagoras and Plato, but drew a great deal more from the primeval source of
all religions, the books of Hermes and the Vedas - of Egypt and India
respectively. The Jewish Kabbala
colored Neoplatonism no little, for real theurgy having degenerated at that
time, and the few remaining adepts having sought solitude with the Essenes and
in India, the Neoplatonists had no longer access to the real treatises upon the
Divine Science, (which were carefully collected and withdrawn to a secret place
a few days before the burning of the Alexandrian library by Julius Cæsar), and
so they had to fall back upon the Kabbala of Moses and the Seventy. Neoplatonism was tinctured with both
Orientalism and Occidentalism; and its expounders tried to present the elements
of Theosophy and philosophy according to the primitive doctrines of the
Oriental prophets, in combination with poetical Platonism and the positivism of
Aristotle in the form of Grecian dialectics.
Their proper doctrines were: the
Oriental doctrine of Emanation; the Pythagorean Number of Harmony; Plato's
ideas of the creation and the
separation from the world of sense.
They
believed in elementary spirits, whom they evoked and controlled - a point of
especial interest to us.
We
cannot, of course, include ourselves among the number of American Spiritualists
who implicitly accept all the genuine phenomena to be produced by disembodied
spirits; for while some of us unreservedly believe in the occasional return of
human spirits and in the existence of true mediums, others discredit both. Moreover, of the believers, some not only
admit the possibility of occult forces of nature being directed, consciously or
unconsciously, by the human will for the production of startling results, but
also recognize in most of the physical phenomena called spiritual, the agency
of elementary spirits who often falsely personate persons not communing with
the circles, answer the thoughts which lie visible to them
. .
. as clear
As
pebbles within brooks appear,
and echo
and respond to every fanciful vagary which agitates the questioner's mind.
Spiritualism
proper was rife at Rome in the time of Ammianus Marcellinus, who tells us that
in the days of Emperor Valens (A.D 371) some Greeks wishing to form a society
of theurgists, were brought to trial for attempting to ascertain, through
magical arts, who should succeed to the throne. They employed a small table shaped like a tripod, which was
produced in court, and upon being put to the torture they confessed as
follows: "We constructed this
table of laurel-wood under solemn auspices.
Having duly consecrated it, by pronouncing over it prayers as ordered in
the treatises which we stole from a Grand Priest at Delphi, and by the use of magnetic manipulations, we succeeded in
making it deliver oracles." Over
the table hung suspended from the ceiling a large bronze ring, which swung
hither and thither, and striking the letters cut in the periphery of the
tabletop, gave lengthy communications.
Valens hated Theodorus, a man of virtue, and as the swinging ring spelt
out the letters T-h-e-o-d and stopped, the Emperor, to make sure that the
object of his displeasure should not occupy the throne, had him put to death:
but the murder proved a useless precaution, for Theodosius succeeded to
the purple, and the prognostication of the table turned out correct.
There is
the difference between the modern spiritualistic phenomena and effects produced
by the theurgists, that whereas no reliance can apparently be placed upon the
spontaneous communications of the former without corroboration, the latter
cannot be untruthful, since the adepts will not permit unprogressed spirits to
approach or speak.
The
mesmeric phenomena, which will of necessity invite us to careful study, were
known in the most remote periods, and are described by Seneca, Martial,
Plautus, and Pausanias.
We are
not representatives of the school of the Stoics, for "they thought the
Universe to be made of matter, and to be some great animal which lives because
there is nothing to interfere with it". Moreover, Zeno's pupils taught not only that
men should be free from passion and unmoved by joy or grief but also that they
should submit to the unavoidable necessity by which all things are governed;
and we found this Society in token of our discontent with things as they are
and to endeavor to bring about something better.
Finally,
we do not resemble the atomical atheists, who considered everything a congeries
of atoms, because matter can be separated into particles, and that, therefore,
there could be no indivisible incorporeal being, while the very title of our
Society indicates that we hope to obtain knowledge of the existence of a
Supreme Intelligence and of a world of spirits, by the help of physical
processes.
No, we
are neither of these, but simply investigators, of earnest purpose and
unbiassed mind, who study all things, prove all things, and hold fast to that
which is good.
Plotinus,
Porphyry, Iamblichus, and the Neoplatonists, all worked at theurgy separately,
and at their meetings imparted to each other the results of their study and
experiment. Their neophytes were
obliged to follow this rule with strictness; and all were bound to protect and
aid every philosopher, especially every theurgist, no matter whence he came or
what school he represented.
The
hermetists of the Middle Ages were all Neoplatonists, and learned their
doctrines from them. In some respects
we resemble them, and yet they had dogmas to impart, which under our by-laws we
have not; and, further, they were all believers in Theosophy, while we are,
with two or three exceptions, simply investigators, undertaking a task far more
difficult than theirs, since we have no ready-made material for belief at our
hand, but must create it for ourselves.
We are of
our age, and yet some strides ahead of it, albeit some journals and
pamphleteers more glib than truthful, have already charged us with being
reactionists who turn from modern light (!) to mediæval and ancient
darkness! We seek, inquire, reject
nothing without cause, accept nothing without proof: we are students, not
teachers.
We should
make ourselves familiar with the manifold powers of the human soul and test the
claims for the potency of the human will. Mesmerism, Spiritualism, Od, the
astral light of the ancients (now called the universal ether) and its currents
- all these offer us the widest and most fascinating fields of exploration. At
our semi-monthly meetings, we shall have the researches and experiments of our
members and of eminent correspondents in this and other countries read for our
instruction, and we shall have tests, experiments, and practical
demonstrations, as occasion offers. As our funds warrant, we shall print and
circulate our documents, and translate, reprint, and publish works by the great
masters of Theosophy of all times.
But until
our now somewhat incongruous elements are harmonized, and a common interest
results from increased familiarity with our subject, I do not anticipate that
at our general meetings we shall witness such theurgic phenomena as were
exhibited in the ancient temples.
It is as
impossible for these results to be obtained without perfect community of
thought, will, and desire, as it was for Jesus to work his wonders at Nazareth
because of the prevalent unbelief, or Paul his at Athens where the populace
knew how to check the subtle currents which he controlled by his will. A single very positive and unfriendly will
is competent when introduced at a spiritual circle to utterly destroy the
mediumistic power. If Professor Tyndall
had known this law, he would not have written his nonsense to the Dialectical
Society. Professor Stainton-Moses, of
the University College, London, writes me that the mere entrance of such a
person into the house -not even the room - has done this in his experience
frequently. Mr. Crookes says that
Florence Cook, his medium, has been spoiled for a season by a walk down Regent
Street; each person who brushed against her depriving her of some portion of
her mediumistic power. If she be in
fact a medium and not an impostor, I do not doubt the possibility of this being
the case. Every one who has studied
mesmerism is aware that no satisfactory results can be attained without perfect
accord among those engaged in the experiment or standing near by as
spectators. These things being so, how
can we expect that as a society we can have any very remarkable
illustrations of the control of the adept theurgist over the subtle powers of
nature?
But here
is where Mr. Felt's alleged discoveries will come into play. Without claiming to be a theurgist, a
mesmerist, or a Spiritualist, our Vice-President promises, by simple chemical
appliances, to exhibit to us, as he has to others before, the races of beings
which, invisible to our eyes, people the elements. Think for a moment of this astounding claim! Fancy the consequences of the practical
demonstrations of its truth, for which Mr. Felt is now preparing the requisite
apparatus! What will the Church say of
a whole world of beings within her territory but without her jurisdiction? What will the academy say of this crushing
proof of an unseen Universe given by the most unimaginative of its sciences? What will the Positivists say, who have been
prating of the impossibility of there being any entity which cannot be weighed
in scales, filtered through funnels, tested with litmus, or carved with a
scalpel? What will the Spiritualists
say, when through the column of saturated vapor flit the dreadful shapes of
beings whom, in their blindness, they have in a thousand cases revered and
babbled to as the returning shades of their relatives and friends? Alas!
poor Spiritualists - editors and correspondents - who have made
themselves jocund over my impudence and apostasy. Alas, sleek scientists, overswollen with the wind of popular
applause! The day of reckoning is close
at hand, and the name of the Theosophical Society will, if Mr. Felt's
experiments result favorably, hold its place in history as that of the body
which first exhibited the "Elementary Spirits" in this nineteenth
century of conceit and infidelity, even if it be never mentioned for any other
reason.
The Theosophical Society in Australia